The Book Plank

Best Books of 2015 So which books did I enjoy the most? Compared to the other lists this was definitely the hardest one to make. I would have loved to make this a 10 book list but I had to stick to my own set rules. After a lot of contemplation I came down to the following 5 books. Just as with Harry August Claire North/Catherine Webb managed to shock and awe me with Touch a terrific blend of Science Fiction and Thriller. As I said in the review, this book would make a perfect storyline for a movie. The new Bourne series? It has my vote.  Sebastien de Castell wrote a solid entry with Greatcoats  last year but has really outdone himself with Knight's Shadow this year. In every possible way he has raised the bar for himself. The book itself is action packed. Sword fights, arrows zooming through the air and of course magic and gods that walk the Earth. Time Salvager  is the best time traveling book of this year. Welsey Chu had proved himself with the Lives of Tao and ...

Touch by Claire North Kepler had never meant to die this way — viciously beaten to death by a stinking vagrant in a dark back alley. But when reaching out to the murderer for salvation in those last dying moments, a sudden switch takes place. Now Kepler is looking out through the eyes of the killer himself, staring down at a broken and ruined body lying in the dirt of the alley. Instead of dying, Kepler has gained the ability to roam from one body to another, to jump into another person’s skin and see through their eyes, live their life -- be it for a few minutes, a few months or a lifetime. Kepler means these host bodies no harm — and even comes to cherish them intimately like lovers. But when one host, Josephine Cebula, is brutally assassinated, Kepler embarks on a mission to seek the truth — and avenge Josephine’s death. Last year I read a book by Claire North, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August and it was awesome. Plain awesomeness in a book. When I visited Lo...

Author interview with Catherine Webb / Claire North Author bio: Catherine Webb is a Carnegie Medal-nominated British author. Her debut, Mirror Dreams , was completed when Catherine was just 14 years old. The book was published under her own name in 2002 by Atom Books. The novel garnered comparisons with Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullman. Catherine went on to publish a further seven young adult novels under her own name, earning extensive critical acclaim and two Carnegie nominations for her novels Timekeepers and The Extraordinary and Unusual Adventures of Horatio Lyle . Under the open pseudonym Kate Griffin, Webb has published a further six fantasy novels for adults. Dubbed the Matthew Swift and Magicals Anonymous novels, these books are set in an alternate modern-day London saturated with magic. A lifelong Londoner, Webb describes herself as a fan of big cities, urban magic, Thai food and graffiti-spotting, and she is endlessly fascinated by such questions as wh...