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  Pablo Neruda was a Nobel Prize-winning Chilean poet and politician. Neruda’s real name was Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He wrote many acclaimed collections of poetry, including Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair.  Books include: Twenty Poems of Love and a Song of Despair. See also: Poem no 10, One Hundred Love … Continue readings →

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was an English poet of the Romantic movement. She wrote her first ‘epic poem’ aged 12. In 1826, she published An essay on mind and other poems anonymously, later translating Aeschylus’s Prometheus unbound in 1833. It was the 1844 collection Poems that brought her to the attention of poet Robert Browning. Over … Continue readings →

  As a nod to the season of love, we’re posting our favourite 10 love poems. They’re a mixture of ‘between the shadow and the soul’, as our No 10 poet Pablo Neruda so eloquently puts it. This is a collection of the modern and the timeless – celebratory, passionate, hopeful and heartbreaking prose, put … Continue readings →

  ‘You need sex’, Beatrice proclaimed. ‘And maybe a new kitchen.’ ‘I need more than sex. I need a life.’ Viola looked at all the chrome surrounding them as she delivered a cup of coffee to her older sister. The kitchen was cold and impersonal, just like her ex-husband Charles, who’d picked it all out. … Continue readings →

Kate Perry is the author of several very successful books, most famously the Laurel Heights’ and Summerhill series, set in San Francisco and London, respectively. BOOKS INCLUDE: How Sweet It Is REVIEWS: ‘From London to Paris and back again – Kate Perry’s How Sweet It Is, A Review‘, in The Literary Lounge See also: Mary … Continue readings →

  She sulked over her eggs. Even bacon lost some appeal with the prospect of wrangling with Summerset. ‘Isn’t it bad enough I have to face hours of swarming decorators, then end that small nightmare by having Trina pour gunk all over me? Now I have to face the smirking disapproval of our resident corpse?’ … Continue readings →

Tags : crime fiction, Eve Dallas, Eve–Roarke series, female crime-fiction detectives, Festive in Death, In Death series, JD Robb, Lieutenant Eve Dallas, Nora Roberts, NYPD homicide crime fiction, Piatkus, Putnum Adult, Roarke, women in crime fiction

    My sister left a message for me yesterday afternoon, saying how sorry she was that Maya Angelou had died and how she was thinking of me. Then several other friends sent similar messages. Although I was lucky enough to meet Maya Angelou once a very long time ago at The Algonquin Hotel in … Continue readings →

  EDITOR’S CHOICE ‘…[E]ven though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be … Continue readings →

  Michael Morpurgo is the former Children’s Laureate (2003–5) and is an acclaimed, much-loved award-winning author of fiction, plays and poetry. His work includes: War Horse; Kensuke’s Kingdom (a personal favourite) and The Goose Is Getting Fat. In 2014, he edited the World War I charity anthology Only Remembered.   REVIEW: ‘Only Remembered – remembering World … Continue readings →

  This year marks the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the World War I (1914–18), a war that changed the landscape of the modern world and a catastrophic historical event that must be remembered. Among the very many good books, films and TV series being released this year is the anthology Only Remembered … Continue readings →

  ‘They were feeling somewhat maudlin, the seven of them, the members of the self-styled Survivors’ Club. Once they had all spent several years here at Penderris, recuperating from wounds sustained during the Napoleonic Wars. Although each had had to fight a lone battle toward recovery, they had also aided and supported one another and … Continue readings →

  EDITOR’S CHOICE A Welsh-born Canadian writer, Mary Balogh is the prolific author of Regency romances. A former school teacher, Balogh came to Saskatchewan on a two-year contract and met and married her husband, Robert. Her first book, A Masked Deception, was signed by Hilary Ross at Signet and published in 1985 to popular acclaim. … Continue readings →

  n. 1. A passion for cats. 2. An intense enthusiasm for having many cats around; sometimes, even when conditions are not suitable for their existence. 3. An abnormal love of cats.   Opposite Ailurophobia n. An extreme or irrational fear of cats.      

  ‘Oh,’ she brushed tears away. ‘I just killed off a sympathetic character. It had to be done, but I feel really bad about it. I’m going to miss him.’ ‘Human or werewolf.’” –The Collector, page 387     Nora Roberts’ new book The Collector, along with Concealed in Death (the latest JD Robb, her … Continue readings →

Tags : art theft, Carolina Moon, Concealed in Death, crime fiction, Faberge, In Death series, JD Robb, Nora Roberts, Northern Lights, romance, romantic-suspense, romantic-suspense novels, The Collector, Twentieth-Century Romance and Historical Writers

  A relative ‘newbie’ to the historical romance genre, Ella Quinn has published four books in quick succession in Kensington’s digital programme. Desiring Lady Caro (April 2014) is the latest book in Quinn’s acclaimed ‘The Marriage Game’ series, a book of eight proposed novels and a novella.   ‘THE MARRIAGE GAME’ SERIES: The Seduction of … Continue readings →