R. Linda Books

[Valda Atkeson]

KateRuby is a pseudonym for an award-winning TV drama producer and screenwriter. Her previous novel, Tell Me Your Lies, was a Richard and Judy Book Club pick in 2022 and is now in development for TV with a major US network after a fierce bidding war for the rights. Everything You Have is already under option for the screen. Kate balances her writing career alongside her work as an executive producer, with recent credits including The Girl Before for the BBC and HBO and The Flatshare for Paramount Plus.

The plot is smashing. As Rena has signed up for a dating app, she has also inadvertently signed herself up to repeating the same 24 hours over and over again until she finds her perfect love. I had anticipated that this structure might make the story repetitive, but not a bit of it. Molly James makes it fresh, lively, humorous and hugely entertaining. The narrative romps along.

Lastly, an old milk bottle covered in barnacles. I love that the ocean turned it into a home for sea creatures, then in time would have transformed it to sea glass, then sand. The transformative power of nature in three simple steps!

Goodness me. One Grand Summer is glorious. Intense and achingly beautifully written and translated, this is a story of the fragility and resilience of youth, of first love and longing, and of hope and despair in a heady cocktail of exquisite storytelling and I absolutely adored it.

The attention to detail, the scent of the summer for example, is just wonderful. The reader can envisage the scene effortlessly and yet is completely affected by each word. I found One Grand Summer the kind of book that seeps into the soul.

The nuances of theme are gorgeously wrought too. Ewald Arenz explores growing up, burgeoning sexuality and friendship through Frieder, but he also considers, marriage, love, mental health and family, looking at reputation, responsibility and honour too so that there is a maturity and depth to even the most casual seeming aspects. I found myself deeply, emotionally affected by reading this book.

Ewald Arenz was born in Nuremberg in 1965, studied English, American literature and history, and now works as a teacher at a grammar school. His novels and plays have received numerous awards. Tasting Sunlight was longlisted for the Waterstones Debut

Fiction Prize, shortlisted for the German Booksellers Best Novel Award, and featured on the Spiegel bestseller lists in both hardback and paperback for months. One Grand Summer won the German Booksellers Prize in 2021, and was a number-one bestseller in

Germany. Ewald lives with his family near Frth.

Meet Dora Wildwood: runaway bride, book lover, and aspiring detective.

Likes: solving crimes, peppermint creams, trousers and her own independence.

Dislikes: cracked book spines, tyrannical behaviour, beetroot.

As Dora alights at Paddington station, she is immediately forced to run from the loathsome Charles Silk-Butters. She ducks into the London Library to hide and it is there, surrounded by books, where she should feel most safe, that Dora Wildwood stumbles across her first dead body.

However, here I can say that D is for Death is a real triumph, being witty, pacy, totally absorbing and a brilliantly constructed whodunnit and well as an intelligent whydunnit. I thought it was excellent.

Helen Fisher spent her early life in America, but grew up mainly in Suffolk where she now lives with her two children. She studied Psychology at Westminster University and Ergonomics at UCL and worked as a senior evaluator in research at the RNIB. She is now a full-time author. Space Hopper was her first novel.

The victim: Eighteen-year-old Janie leaving home for a new life.

The criminal: World-famous rockstar, Robbie, who harbours a shocking secret.

The protector: Witness support officer, Vanessa, desperate to right the wrongs of her past.

However, here I can say that I Died on a Tuesday is an absolutely cracking read with something for everyone in an enthralling and twisty plot that feels mature, engaging and thoroughly entertaining.

In 1859, across the Pacific, India is ravaged by the disease. In desperation, the India Office dispatches the injured expeditionary Merrick Tremayne to Bedlam, under orders to return with cinchona cuttings. But there he meets Raphael, an enigmatic priest who is the key to a secret which will prove more valuable than they could ever have imagined.

Writing is a highly personal, idiosyncratic endeavor. Advice that works for one writer may not work for another. Still, I love reading about how other writers work, and in doing so I found the two most important tools I use in my own writing. (Please note that these are probably more relevant for those who write novels or other longer works.)

This tip I gleaned from author Katherine Paterson. Her books The Spying Heart and The Gates of Excellence are wonderful collections of essays on writing for children. Ms. Paterson explains that her method is to write two pages per day, every day. I adapted this as follows:

I'm keen to support independent booksellers and am lucky to have three excellent ones within range. Buying or ordering directly from the shops is of course the best way to support them, but if you do need to order on line, Bookshop.org lets you support local booksellers too. Look them up to see what they can offer, and what titles they're recommending. You can look up authors and illustrators, too - we can have our own 'shops'. Here's mine, where my various lists (growing ... compiling them at odd moments is hard to resist) include books I recommend, what's on my reading pile, categories such as the First World War, as well as my own titles by category.

Usually on World Book Day I'm dressed as a suffragette to visit a school, and talk about my two novels for young readers about the struggle for Votes for Women. They are GIRLS FOR THE VOTE (first published as POLLY'S MARCH) and UNTIL WE WIN, a short, dyslexia-friendly story for teenagers, published by Barrington Stoke. Read more about this specialist publisher and their excellent range of books here.

The launch was held at Copped Hall, near Epping - which I have fictionalised as Graveney Hall in The Shell House. Kathy Peyton, author of the wonderful Flambards quartet from which this grew, was of course the guest of honour - here we are in the mansion, with David Fickling. Launch photography is by Chris Normandale.

6 CHELSEA WALK is the new series title for what used to be called HISTORICAL HOUSE - six separate stories, two each written by Adele Geras, Ann Turnbull and myself. The whole series is being relaunched by Usborne, each story coinciding with a significant anniversary, and with this lovely new cover art by Tiziana Longo.

Linda Vista has a monthly book group offered jointly with San Rafael Branc Library for adults. For more information and meeting dates, see the branch calendar on this page, or book groups at all branches..

Linda Vista currently offers a weekly storytime. For more information about storytimes and other programs here and throughout the Pasadena Public Library, see the branch calendar on this page, or visit our Library Calendar.

The Linda Vista Branch Library has had its own Friends group since the early 1960s. Now called the Linda Vista Associates, they have helped support the library with donations of books, magazine subscriptions, and other gifts.

Through the vision of the Linda Vista Librarian, Robin Reidy, and with a generous donation from the Linda Vista Associates, the Linda Vista Branch Library has the only Decorative Arts Collection in the Pasadena Public Library system. Unlike fine art, the Decorative Arts emphasizes not just aesthetic qualities, but usefulness; therefore, ceramics, gardening, fashion, jewelry, interior design, furniture, pottery, metalwork, and floral decorations demonstrate the definition of Decorative Arts. By creating this specialized collection, the citizens of Pasadena now have an accessible resource to not only embark on new projects, but give them the opportunity to learn more about an art that is often taken for granted.

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"In the imaginary coffee-house of my mind, Nagata's Succession novels are hanging out with thematic and subgeneric cousins by Neal Asher, Iain M. Banks, Greg Bear, Greg Benford, Greg Egan, Kathleen Ann Goonan, and Robert Reed, discussing the post-human condition, how many nanotechnologies can fit on the head of a pin, the nature and place of sentience in the universe, and whether there is a Long Game in which humankind can play and survive. There's a portrait of Olaf Stapledon hanging over the mantelpiece, along with a long-barreled raygun. Both are icons of the tradition."

A new cycle of violence ignites when rumors of the elusive, rogue AI known as the Red go publicand Shelley is, once again, pulled into the fray. Challenged by his enemies, driven by ideals, Shelley feels compelled to act. But are the harrowing choices he makes really his own, or are they made for him, by the Red? And with millions of lives at stake in a game of nuclear cat-and-mouse, does the answer even matter?

"The Trials aptly continues the terse and involving story begun in The Red: First Light [...] Like the best middle installments of trilogies, The Trials moves us deeper into the psyches and lives of the characters we have met, while still broadening the threat to the world and setting up a huge payoff."

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