Birkenhead Bookchats 31 May 2010

Answers the key questions about the great religions from Bahai to Unitarianism, via Jainism, Mormonism, Shinto and the major branches of Judasim, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.

They’ve considered him a murderer for eighteen years, so no-one in Dungirri is surprised when Morgan ‘Gil’ Gillespie returns and a woman’s body is found in his car. Wearied by too many deaths and doubting her own skills, local police sergeant Kristine Matthews isn’t sure whether Gil is a decent man wronged by life, or a hardened criminal she should be locking up. But she does know he’s not guilty of this murder, because she is his alibi.

After her husband's sudden death Ruth is left to face grief alone.

A historical novel about the first Korean immigrants to the United States. It covers a wide timeline from 1903 up to 1943. It describes their struggles for survival in the midst of racism, the Great Depression, and WWII. This story is a painful testimony of hardship common to all immigrants who came to America in the early part of twentieth century.

Elizabeth, monstrous yet pitiable; Nate, her husband, a patchwork man, gentle, disillusioned; Lesje, a young woman at the natural history museum for whom dinosaurs are as important as men. These three people form a sexual triangle in this story.

Looks lifts the veil from some ugly truths about beauty as it details a wide body of evidence pointing to its pervasive, sometimes detrimental, effect on our lives. Drawing from sources as diverse as fairy tales and biblical stories, historical cases and contemporary research, consumer advertising and reality TV, Looks exposes some of the unsettling facts about the attractiveness phenomenon. Even for those with looks to spare, all of this has an uglier side, too. Looks explores the rise of unhealthy body obsessions and provides sound advice for keeping a sane perspective in a superficial, celebrity-obsessed society. For both women and men, Looks provides a no-holds-barred expose of the powerful, sometimes damaging effects of beauty: profound knowledge that can change the way you live, work, or parent your children.

Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the village of St. Mary, England, until his brother's death sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs. Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs. Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But will their relationship survive in a society that considers Ali a foreigner?

.Casting his mind back to the village in southern Surrey where he grew up in the sixties and seventies, but plagued by a novelist's inability to stick to the truth, Louis de Bernieres brings us in "Notwithstanding" stories of a vanished England which will delight readers of his much-loved novels. Here we find the atmosphere of those times as it was in the countryside. "Notwithstanding" is not about an imagined idyll; it is about people who are worth remembering, whose lives are worth celebrating, and who would otherwise have been forgotten. Publisher description.

A New York lawyer, dominated by a demanding Jewish mother, plays out a sexual revenge in fact and fantasy.

In the early 1900s, in the elegant, isolated villa Il Piacere, the playwright Galeazzo D'Ascanio lived for Celia Sands. She was his muse and his mistress, his most enduring obsession. And she was the inspiration for his most stunning and original play. But the night before she was to take the stage in the leading role, Celia disappeared. Now, decades later, in a theatre on the grounds of Il Piacere, Alessandro D'Ascanio is preparing to stage the first performance of his grandfather's masterpiece. A promising young actress - who shares Celia Sands' name, but not her blood - has agreed to star. She is instantly drawn to the mysteries surrounding the play and to her compelling, compassionate employer. And even though she knows she should let the past go, in the dark - in her dreams - it comes back

Diana Athill will be ninety in December, 2007. This book tells the story of what it means to be old: how the pleasure of sex ebbs, how the joy of gardening grows, how much there is to remember, to forget, to regret, to forgive and how one faces the inevitable fact of death.

Since the beginning of time, great leaders have used their power of oratory to win and inspire followers. This book contains over 50 momentous and thought-provoking speeches from a wide range of historical eras and nations, and will both inspire readers and give them a greater understanding of the events of the time. Each speech is accompanied by a comprehensive introduction that explains its historical background, why it was significant and what happened as a result. A biography of each speechmaker explains how they came to stand at the crossroads of history.

"Alice Howland is proud of the life she worked so hard to build. At fifty years old, she's a cognitive psychology professor at Harvard and a world-renowned expert in linguistics with a successful husband and three grown children. When she becomes increasingly disoriented and forgetful, a tragic diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer's disease changes her life. As the inevitable descent into dementia strips away her sense of self, fiercely independent Alice struggles to live in the moment. While she once placed her worth and identity in her celebrated and respected academic life, now she must reevaluate her relationship with her husband, a respected scientist; her expectations of her children; and her ideas about herself and her place in the world. -Publisher description.

Ellen McKinnon sees things. She's managed to keep her unsettling visions to herself, but a recent experience that predicted the death of someone close to her has left both her marriage and her health teetering on the edge of total destruction. When she meets Liam, a sculptor from the south of Ireland, she thinks she has finally found an escape from the images that haunt her. So she flees with Liam to his countryside home, and with her new love comes new hope that she can suppress the strange powers developing within her. But Ellen, once so strong, is no match for the forces that seem to be taking over her entire being, and soon her "Seeings" mutate into an ability to heal. She fiercely guards her secret, but rumors quickly swirl around her community, and soon the infirm seek her out from far and wide for comfort and cure. Ellen's struggles to honor her gift, to save her marriage, and to make a life that is both honorable and uplifting form the core of this story.

Denver bookman Cliff Janeway would have liked Candice Geiger. She loved books with a true passion. Her collection of first-edition children's books is the best that Janeway ever hopes to see. Sadly, Janeway and Candice Geiger will never meet. She died much too young. Now, twenty years later, Janeway first learns about the juvenilia collection when Candice's elderly husband, H. R. Geiger, passes away and Janeway travels to their Idaho home to assess the collection. One look at the books tells Janeway something's wrong. Valuable titles are missing, replaced by cheap reprints. Other hugely valuable pieces remain. Why would a thief take one priceless book and leave an equally valuable volume on the shelf? The answer may lie in Candice's story. Two decades after Candice's strange death, Janeway finds himself deep in a book mystery that may turn out to be much more than a cataloging exercise. It may even involve murder. Candice's daughter, Sharon, may be one of the few people who can help Janeway discover the truth. Sharon has her own Idaho ranch where she takes in sick and injured horses. Janeway worries that her house contains…

These stories range from the Lake District to Dorset; from Wimbledon, where an old Victorian mansion has been converted into a home for unmarried mothers, to wartime London, where a hospital is the scene of a job interview in the middle of the Blitz; from ghost stories to a one-night stand and its ironic punishment to the tangle of emotions felt by a mother for her daughter.

Structured by decade, this anthology showcases some of the most memorable and well-loved books produced by the country's oldest publishing house, Reed Publishing. Historian Gavin McLean has poured over national archives, private collections and company documents to bring together extracts from nearly 100 publications pamphlets, pictorials, fiction, general history, Maoritanga, poetry, sport, cookery, reference, the outdoors and more to celebrate the diversity and phenomenal output of new New Zealand books by Reed, a tradition that continues into the twenty-first century. Each extract is contextualised with a biographical reference and most also feature the original cover jacket.