How to Age Disgracefully

An adventurous, madcap novel about a group of rebellious British pensioners who must fight to keep their community center ‘hangout’ open.

 

In How to Age Disgracefully, Clare Pooley delivers another off-beat comedy--with a hopeful message--that brings together a cast of quirky, raucous British pensioners whose lively antics will charm readers.

 

The story is set amidst a London-Metro community center in need of revitalization—literally and figuratively. A roof collapse kills the headmistress. Lydia, a 53-year-old wife and mother--and a once in-demand food stylist who is suffering a mid-life crisis--has been hired as the facility’s new Senior Citizens’ Social Club. However, a ceiling collapse kills one of their members during the first meeting. In addition to stepping up to establish the club, Lydia and the group also take on “Maggie Thatcher,” the “ugly-looking,” now orphaned dog of the deceased woman.

 

The small club is comprised of septuagenarians who are vastly different in backgrounds and temperaments who are in search of adventure. The group includes a former businesswoman-turned-loner with secrets; an aging actor with kleptomaniac tendencies, who’s tired of playing grumpy old men and dead bodies; a retired paparazzo; a hardcore knitting addict; and woman who is ‘pushy,’ in every sense of the word, including how she navigates her walker. Lydia learns that managing the health and safety of this less-than-sedate group--on a cash-strapped budget--is no easy task. And when the town threatens to bulldoze their hangout, the group rebels in hilarious ways—complete with help from kids at the nursery school, housed in the same facility.

 

Readers are in for great fun, traveling along with Pooley’s (The Authenticity Project, Iona Iverson’s Rules for Commuting) assembly of madcap characters who refuse to succumb to age—or play by the rules

 

How to Age Disgracefully by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books/Penguin, $29.00 hardcover, 352 pages, 9780593831496

Publishing Date: June 11, 2024 

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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as originally published on Shelf Awareness (July 5, 2024), link HERE 

The Locked Room

A police investigation during the Covid-19 pandemic--a quest to solve a series of stymying suicides--unearths the past and puts a noted forensic archaeologist and her 11-year-old daughter in grave danger.

Dr. Ruth Galloway is a (fictional) forensic archaeologist--a smart, captivating British heroine created by author Elly Griffiths--who always finds herself embroiled in murder and mystery.

Over the course of 13 novels, this bright, British amateur sleuth and college professor has dealt with discoveries such as child remains (The Crossing Places), unidentified corpses from WWII (The House at Sea’s End) and secret underground tunnels (The Chalk Pit) ... among other life and death dilemmas. She’s traveled to Italy (The Dark Angel) and despite being an avowed atheist, she’s even dealt with aspects of religion (The Woman in Blue). Readers have grown along with Ruth Galloway, seeing her through life changes and challenges that have included romance, motherhood, grief and loss. It’s most fitting, then, that Griffiths has set her latest Ruth Galloway mystery, The Locked Room, (the 14th in the series) during the early days of the Coronavirus pandemic. 

 

Just as Covid-19 is about to turn the entire world upside-down, Ruth and her 11-year-old daughter, Kate, are suddenly forced into lockdown at Ruth’s old childhood home, a cottage in Norfolk, where Ruth had been trying to tie up unresolved fragments from her late mother’s life. Forced into isolation, mother and daughter are befriended (at a safe distance) by a seemingly kind, nurse neighbor, Zoe, a frontline worker. In the midst of them all sheltering in place, Ruth’s on-again, off-again love interest, DCI Harry Nelson (and his team) enlists Ruth’s help in trying to solve clues from a decades-long investigation of stymying suicides by local women. Amidst the investigation--and limitations imposed by the lockdown--clues from the past, including prior ties to an old pandemic and spooky folklore, weave their way into dark danger that ultimately puts Ruth, Kate--and Zoe, a woman who might not be all she appears to be--deep into hot water.

 

A cast of recurrent, familiar characters and their dramatic personal dilemmas--along with chillingly authentic details of pandemics, past and present--add to the suspense of Griffiths' well-conceived, brilliantly executed cozy that delivers a shocking plot twist.

 

The Locked Room: A Ruth Galloway Mystery Series (Book 14) by Elly Griffiths

Mariner Books, $18.99 paperback, 9780358671398, 384 pages

Publication Date: June 28, 2022

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When We Were Young

A moving, life-affirming story about two male friends who reunite and unravel old secrets and resentments while taking a long hike.

British novelist Richard Roper has the uncanny ability to embroil quirky characters in heart-wrenching situations, rendering their predicaments into immensely appealing fiction. In How Not to Die Alone (retitled and reissued as Something to Live For), a grief-stricken man grappled with his sad lot in life. In Roper's second novel, When We Were Young, he again mines the theme of how breaking the shackles of the past can lead to transcendence. 

As teenagers, Theo and Joel--would-be writers--were best friends until a life-changing accident drove a wedge between them. Now, estranged for more than 10 years, the two men lead separate lives. Hard-driving Joel, from a sordid family background, is a successful TV writer who harbors secrets. Floundering, lovesick and bitter Theo is barely scraping by, living in a backyard shed at his parents' house. Things take a turn when Joel crashes Theo's 30th birthday party, hoping to reconnect with his long-lost friend and to convince him to make good on a promise made in their youth: to hike all 184 miles of the Thames Path, from Gloucestershire to south east London. As the two set out on the long, arduous journey, they wind through episodic memories of the past--what united and divided them. What will it take for them to bury the hatchet and make peace? 

Roper delivers an enormously moving and surprising story about the rarely documented bond of male friendship, focusing on the lengths some must travel in order truly to forgive and sacrifice for another. 

When We Were Young: A Novel by Richard Roper

G. P. Putnam’s Sons, $26.00 Hardcover, 9780525539919, 352 pages

Publication Date: July 20, 2021

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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (July 27, 2021), link HERE

The Windsor Knot

In a witty, clever mystery, Queen Elizabeth II secretly unravels details of a possible murder at Windsor Castle.

Queen Elizabeth II... a super-sleuth? In the vivid imagination of British author SJ Bennett (aka YA author Sophia Bennett), Her Royal Majesty becomes swept up in a possible murder investigation at Windsor Castle. This clever fictional premise humorously plays out with grand appeal.

The first in a proposed series, The Windsor Knot commences in April 2016, as 89-year-old Queen Elizabeth II takes in "an almost perfect spring day" in the bucolic countryside on the grounds of Windsor Castle. The night before, Prince Charles had gathered a who's who of high-profile overnight guests to "curry favor with some rich Russians for one of his pet projects." At the soiree, a performer--a good-looking Russian pianist in his early 20s--"played Rachmaninoff like a dream" and even danced with the Queen. The next morning, however, the young musician is found dead in his bedroom. At first, it appears that he died in his sleep. But at breakfast, banter among the guests sheds new light. There's talk that ladies' underwear and lipstick were found near the man's nude corpse, "strung up like a Tory MP" near his bedside. Foul play? Suicide?

While professional detectives work the case, Queen Elizabeth enlists the help of her loyal private secretary, Rozie Oshodi, who assists as the tenacious, resolute Queen secretly investigates the murder on her own. Bennett portrays the perceptive, resourceful Queen with great wit and affection, and a well-drawn supporting cast further enlivens a fast-moving, spirited and suspenseful plot.

 

The Windsor Knot: A Novel (Her Majesty the Queen Investigates; Book One) by SJ Bennett

William Morrow, $27.99 Hardcover, 288 pp, 97800630500006

Publication Date: March 9, 2021

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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (March 12, 2021), link HERE

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (March 5, 2021), link HERE

 

The Thursday Murder Club

In this clever, cozy whodunnit, four residents of a British retirement community wield their crime-solving powers to catch a killer.

With The Thursday Murder Club, British TV personality Richard Osman (The World Cup of Everything) has crafted a very funny cozy mystery set in an upscale assisted living community in bucolic Kent, England.

 

In the luxury facility, four elderly residents--each retired, sharp and energetic--meet once a week in the Jigsaw Room, where they covertly gather to crack actual cold case murders. The group was founded by resident Elizabeth, a shrewd and devious former spy, and Penny, a retired police detective inspector who provided the cases to solve. With Penny now in a coma, however, Elizabeth keeps the club in session, continuing to work cold cases with other fellow residents and mystery aficionados. They include dapper Ibrahim, a psychiatrist; brassy, tattooed Ron, a former trade union official; and unassuming Joyce, a nurse whose interspersed diary commentaries enlighten readers to the often zany inner workings of the club.

 

When a real-life murder happens at the facility--the bludgeoning of the builder who constructed the retirement community--the club and its members employ their offbeat skills and talents to root out the killer. They skillfully manipulate the help of a 26-year-old female police constable--an ambitious transplant from London--and her Detective Chief Inspector boss, who follow a host of leads and red herrings.

 

Osman's suspenseful, complex and deeply entertaining storytelling--along with rich characterizations depicting the quirky absurdities and power of pensioners--transforms darker themes of murder and crime-solving into smart, clever fun.

 

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman

Pamela Dorman Books, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781984880963, 368 pages

Publication Date: September 22, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

 

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (October 2, 2020), link HERE

This Time Next Year

A lively rom-com about two Brits--born on the same day, in the same hospital--who meet after 30 years and are forced to reconsider their lives and shared history.

Sophie Cousens's first novel, This Time Next Year, is a clever, offbeat romantic comedy about two young Brits whose lives play out in vastly different ways.

Minnie Cooper--whose mother, Connie, had the audacity to name her daughter after the car--always had a challenging life. On the day of Minnie's birth, New Year's 1990, her mother had her heart set on naming her Quinn. However, when Connie's roommate in the maternity ward, Tara Hamilton, gave birth a minute before Connie, Tara stole the name, bestowing "Quinn" upon her own baby, a son. Connie is forced to go with her second choice--a watershed moment in the lives of the two newborns and their emotionally wounded mothers.

Minnie grows up taunted by peers and comes to believe nothing good ever happens on New Year's. This self-fulfilling prophecy, further propagated by her mother, plays out in extraordinary ways on New Year's 2020, which also happens to be Minnie's 30th birthday. When Minnie's beau drags her to a party thrown by one of his coworkers, Minnie loses her coat, gets vomited upon and then is locked in a bathroom overnight. Ugh! On New Year's Day, Minnie is finally freed from the loo by none other than Quinn Hamilton. The Quinn--born on the same day, a minute before Minnie, at the same hospital 30 years before. 

Cousens's colorful, quirky cast becomes embroiled in big, memorable scenes that capture and unravel the histories of both Minnie and Quinn. Rom-com readers will revel in Cousens's wry, lively story, which probes themes of self-discovery, acceptance and forgiveness, and the abiding nature of friendship.

This Time Next Year: A Novel by Sophie Cousens

Putnam, $16.00 Paperback, 9780593191200, 352 pages

Publication Date: December 1, 2020

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NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (December 8, 2020), link HERE

  

The Authenticity Project

This is a fun, clever, very modern story offering a poignant message of hope!

A notebook created for the purpose of confessing intimate, personal truth turns British strangers into friends as they form an unlikely bond of trust.

Online, everyone's lives look happy and perfect, which makes Clare Pooley's (The Sober Diaries) charmed novel, The Authenticity Project, a fresh, welcome and necessary change of pace.

Monica is a single, 37-year-old Brit who gave up her corporate law to open a London café. She discovers a simple exercise book left behind in her coffee shop, with three words etched on the cover: "The Authenticity Project." The first page reads: "Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead...? Not on the internet, but with those real people around you?"

Intrigued, Monica learns the book was initiated by 79-year-old Julian Jessop, who committed his truth to its pages. Julian expresses the deep-seated loneliness he's experienced for five years, since the loss of his wife, Mary, whom he appreciated only once she was gone. Julian created the Authenticity Project to purge his own feelings and deliberately left the book with his story behind, hoping that whoever read his entry would be inspired to share their own story in its pages and then leave the book for others to do the same.

Monica searches for Julian online and discovers he is a famous portrait painter. In the meantime, she leaves the notebook, with her entry added, in a local wine bar. It lands with a cocaine addict, Hazard, who takes it with him as he sobers up on a remote island in the South China Sea. What ensues is a clever story of how the notebook travels from person to person, six strangers who ultimately discover each other and form bonds of commonality, friendship and love.

The Authenticity Project: A Novel by Clare Pooley

Pamela Dorman Books, $26.00 Hardcover, 9781984878618, 368 pages

Publication Date: February 4, 2020

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review as published via Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (February 7, 2020), link HERE

To read the longer form of this review as published on Shelf Awareness for the Book Trade (January 7, 2020), link HERE

Ellie and the Harpmaker

A harp causes two lonely Brits, stalled by fate and the choices they've made in life, to forge a deep, life-changing friendship.

Ellie and the Harpmaker is a lyrically written, delightfully charming story about two strangers--lost souls--drifting through their lives, until a harp brings them together.

Ellie Jacobs is a lonely housewife living in Exmoor, England. She is married to Clive, a pragmatic, domineering man who goes to work every day and is obsessed with football and finance. One day, on a walk through the West English countryside, while reflecting upon the first anniversary of her beloved father's death, Ellie stumbles upon a place she's never seen before: the Harp Barn. There, she meets Dan Hollis, the "Exmoor Harpmaker." Dan takes utmost pride in his work. He also feels the experiences of life very deeply, but exhibits a limited range of expression.

When Ellie shares the special significance of the day with Dan--and how learning to play the harp is actually on her things to accomplish "before-forty list"--Dan kindly offers Ellie a gift: a harp beautifully carved out of red-gold cherrywood. Ellie is overwhelmed and thrilled by Dan's generosity, but her joy is dashed when she returns home and Clive demands she return the harp. Clive's will and Dan's will ultimately pull Ellie in opposite directions. This calls into question her beliefs about herself and her marriage, while also raising inquiries into the many mysteries of Dan's life.

By telling the story from two intimate points of view, debut novelist Hazel Prior allows readers to discover startling truths right along with her well-drawn characters. This approach heightens the narrative tension and allows this beautiful, tender story about the harmonious meaning of true friendship and love to reverberate with many unexpected surprises.

Ellie and the Harpmaker by Hazel Prior

Berkley, $26.99 Hardcover, 9781984803788, 336 pages 

Publication Date: August 6, 2019

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (August 6, 2019), link HERE

I Owe You One

A fun, lighthearted story about a spirited 20-something woman tangled up in family, business and romantic woes.

Fawn "Fixie" Farr is dependable and loyal--the youngest child in a British family that owns and operates a West London home-goods store that sells everything from licorice to hardware to children's toys. Since Fixie's father's death, Fixie has honored him by preserving and growing the business he started, working alongside her mother and older siblings Jake and Nicole. "Family loyalty is a big thing" to 27-year-old Fixie, who earned her nickname because of her penchant for fixing things and people--and keeping everything in its proper place.

But all that's challenged when domineering Jake starts socializing with posh people and wants to overhaul the business to appeal to a more upscale crowd. When Fixie's mother has a health scare and takes a hiatus from the shop, normally non-confrontational Fixie locks horns with Jake and his high-minded plans, along with beautiful, yet "drifty and vague" Nicole, and her uncle, who steps in to lend a hand. Along the way, Fixie's former crush Ryan returns from an unsuccessful stint in Hollywood, and Fixie rescues the laptop of handsome investment manager, Sebastian, who, in his gratitude, proclaims to Fixie, "I owe you one." If Fixie takes Seb up on his offer, might it prove the impetus finally to upend the status quo of her life?

A cast of quirky characters infuses this briskly paced, lighthearted story. Kinsella (My (Not So) Perfect Life) adds another entertaining meet-cute rom-com to her long line of escapist fictions.

I Owe You One: A Novel by Sophie Kinsella

Dial Press, $27.00 Hardcover,  9781524799014, 448 pages

Publication Date: February 5, 2019

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (February 8, 2019), link HERE

The Songbird

In this tender novel, the bonds among inhabitants of a British estate transcend the stories, burdens and secrets of their lives.

Prolific author Marcia Willett (Summer on the River, Christmas in Cornwall) returns to the bucolic English countryside in The Songbird. The old Georgian estate Brockscombe Farm consists of a house, owned by the aging Francis Courtney, and three cottages.

In one cottage lives Charlotte, a 32-year-old web designer, her husband, Andy, and their five-month-old. The second cottage is home to William, Andy's father and Francis's cousin. William has been separated for several years from Fiona, Andy's mother. She left him to pursue an affair and a highfalutin architectural career in London, but begins paying regular visits to bond with her new grandson.

William shares his cottage with his other cousin, Kat, a retired ballet dancer in her 60s. She is a creative spirit coming to grips with the death of her Polish lover. And the third cottage is empty until Tim, on sabbatical, arrives to take a six-month lease. Connected to the others through Charlotte's sister, Tim is trying to regroup after a painful break-up. He is also secretly battling a neurological disease in its early stages. The atmosphere in Brockscombe proves as healing as the warm acceptance Tim receives from his new neighbors. But will they treat him differently if they know the truth?

Willett is an elegant writer and an unhurried storyteller. She understands people and the private burdens they carry, while empathizing with the consequences of their actions. This moving, multigenerational saga slowly reveals the essence of her fully realized cast of characters as the intimate stories of their lives unspool with tender, hopeful grace.

The Songbird: A Novel by Marcia Willett

Thomas Dunne Books, $27.99 Hardcover,  9781250177414,288 pages

Publication Date: December 4, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (December 14, 2018), link HERE

Cat Flap

A successful, British executive--a wife and mother--has her mind and soul metamorphosed into the family cat.

In his novel Cat Flap, British journalist Alan S. Cowell presents a modern fable: Dolores Tremayne--wife, mother and a successful corporate executive of African British descent--wakes one day and discovers that part of her has migrated and metamorphosed into the body of the family's "finely bred, highly pedigreed" indoor cat.

The human Dolores sets off on a Lufthansa flight bound for a high-powered business meeting with a prestigious car company in Munich, Germany. Her feline self--her mind and soul, aka "X"--stays behind and gains a surprising glimpse into the daily life of her sexy, white husband, Gerald, a former drug dealer-user and stalled novelist. His first book had been "well-received, if not well sold or marketed" and a three-book commitment looms over him, along with his daily, demanding responsibilities as a house-husband to his and Dolores's two little girls.

One day, when Gerald exits the apartment, curious X slips out and follows him. She discovers that he is a serial philanderer juggling numerous shocking exploits. Being trapped in the body of a cat shutters all of Dolores's emotional human instincts and reactions. However, through some creative ingenuity, X and human Dolores join forces as avenging spirits.

Cowell (The Terminal Spy) has never shied away from exploring dark themes in his writing--those found in newspaper journalism, politics, war, risk taking and spying. Readers will eagerly suspend their disbelief, immersing themselves in Cowell's cleverly conceived, satirical novel that probes contemporary issues of race, identity and sexuality. 

Cat Flap by Alan S. Cowell

St. Martin's Press, $24.99, Hardcover, 978125014659, 240 pages

Publication Date: July 31, 2018

To order this book on INDIEBOUND, link HERE

NOTE: This review is a reprint and is being posted with the permission of Shelf Awareness. To read this review on Shelf Awareness: Reader's Edition (August 3, 2018), link HERE