The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

An international publishing sensation, Stieg Larsson’s Girl with the Dragon Tattoo combines murder mystery, family saga, love story, and financial intrigue into one satisfyingly complex and entertainingly atmospheric novel.

Harriet Vanger, scion of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, disappeared over forty years ago. All these years later, her aged uncle continues to seek the truth. He hires Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently trapped by a libel conviction, to investigate. He is aided by the pierced and tattooed punk prodigy Lisbeth Salander. Together they tap into a vein of unfathomable iniquity and astonishing corruption.

Wow! What a fascinating, disturbing story. Almost in the Agatha Christie vein, we are taken on an interesting ride with an amateur sleuth attempting to solve a crime that happened over 40 years ago. We even have the classic Agatha Christie closed room/train idea with all the suspects entrapped on an island and unable to escape due to a crash on the only bridge to the mainland.
Quite gruesome and disturbing in parts, the story was also uplifting as it showed how Lisbeth began to grow as a woman and person, overcoming her disability, in fact using this very disability to help solve the mystery. Ausperger's Syndrome is mentioned, and I'm sure that's what she suffered from. 
Apparently, some of our club members had trouble 'getting in' to the book. I took this on board and read the first few pages very carefully and paid attention as to who was who. I was soon engrossed and had to be forced to put it down! I was so sorry to finish it, that I'm planning to read the next book in the series, "The Girl Who Played with Fire".
The original title for this book was "Män som hatar kvinnor" - "Men Who Hate Women". The illustration on the first run of books was pretty grim too. I much prefer the present title and illustration.
Megan

Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants
Sara Gruen




This is a great, glorious, big-hearted novel set in a travelling circus touring the backblocks of America during the Great Depression of the early 1930s. It's a story of love and hate, trains and circuses, dwarves and fat ladies, horses and elephants - or to be more specific, one elephant, Rosie, star of Benzini Bros Most Spectacular Show on Earth...

When Jacob Jankowski, recently orphaned and suddenly adrift, jumps onto a passing train, he enters a world of freaks, swindlers and misfits in a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression.

A veterinary student who almost earned his degree, Jacob is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie. It is there that Jacob meets Marlena, the beautiful equestrienne who is married to August, a charismatic but violently unpredictable animal trainer. Jacob also meets Rosie, an elephant who seems unmanageable until he discovers an unusual way to reach her.

Water for Elephants is a story that has it all - warmth, humour, poignancy and passion. It has an energy and spirit like the feeling under a big top when the show is about to begin. It is a novel that will win your heart.

The Shifting Fog

Summer 1924: On the eve of a glittering Society party, by the lake of a grand English country house, a young poet takes his life. The only witnesses, sisters Hannah and Emmeline Hartford, will never speak to each other again.

Winter 1999: Grace Bradley, 98, one-time housemaid of Riverton Manor, is visited by a young director making a film about the poet’s suicide. Ghosts awaken and memories, long consigned to the dark reaches of Grace’s mind, begin to sneak back through the cracks. A shocking secret threatens to emerge; something history has forgotten but Grace never could.

Set as the war-shattered Edwardian summer surrenders to the decadent twenties, The Shifting Fog is a thrilling mystery and a compelling love story.

Sweet Surrender: Love, Life And The Whole Damn Thing

The trilogy of books by Mary Moody describes her escape from mid-life crises - Au Revoir, Last Tango in Toulouse and The Long Hot Summer - has reached a generation of Australian women.

In her new book Sweet Surrender, after all of her escapades and adventures, Mary has come full circle and has embraced surrendering to the inevitable. Surrendering to ageing, to the pull of family, to the happiness derived from a life that is centred on others as well as herself, and to the undeniable influence of her parents and her family on the person she is.

It's been a journey that has taught her a lot, but in the end the needs of her family - her four children and her grandchildren - turned out to be a lot more important than her French affairs.

At the heart of Sweet Surrender, Mary challenges the illusion of eternal youth that's attributed to the baby boomer generation and the idea that she can obtain complete happiness by living life putting her own needs first. Yet like in her other books, she does so in a very personal way, describing how she herself was drawn in by the notion of denying the ageing process and by living life without the burden of obligation to the needs of others.

That was until events in her life conspired to make her realise that you can't just run away from the essence of who you are, and that the most deeply satisfying moment in life can be experienced when fulfilling the needs of those who you love.

Apparently, we are infringing copyright by publishing a picture of this book, or it may be the link to Gregory Maquire. Who knows? Anyway, I've removed the picture and the link and have only included the spiel.
What a lot of twaddle!!

Gregory Maguire's Wicked - The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West tells the life story of Elphaba, the Wicked Witch of the West, long before Dorothy arrives and squishes her sister.

Wicked Overview

After the prologue, the story begins with Elphaba’s Munchkinlander parents, and shortly after that, Elphaba’s birth. The tale then follows her as she grows into a child, then a teen and as she sets off to Shiz University. Among her fellow students, is the snobbish and perfect Glinda, the future Good Witch of the North, who Elphaba is forced to share a room with. Despite a rough beginning, these two eventually become firm friends. Elphaba’s dependant sister, Nessarose, who will eventually grow up to be the Wicked Witch of the East, later joins them at Shiz University.

Elphaba’s lecturer is a goat named Doctor Dillamond. His research involves proving that humans and Animals (note the intentional capitalisation) were not inherently different; so as to petition bans that will prevent Animals from teaching, and force them into servitude or hiding. Elphaba has strong feelings towards the treatment of Animals, and assists Doctor Dillamond with his research. Doctor Dillamond’s work has received the wrong sort of attention and he is murdered at the University. A stricken Elphaba, eventually heads to the Emerald City to confront the Wizard of Oz himself, who she now believes to be corrupt.

Handle with Care - Jodi Picoult

When Charlotte and Sean O’Keefe’s daughter, Willow, is born with severe osteogenesis imperfecta, they are devastated – she will suffer hundreds of broken bones as she grows, a lifetime of pain. As the family struggles to make ends meet to cover Willow’s medical expenses, Charlotte thinks she has found an answer. If she files a wrongful birth lawsuit against her ob/gyn for not telling her in advance that her child would be born severely disabled, the monetary payouts might ensure a lifetime of care for Willow. But it means that Charlotte has to get up in a court of law and say in public that she would have terminated the pregnancy if she’d known about the disability in advance – words that her husband can’t abide, that Willow will hear, and that Charlotte cannot reconcile. And the ob/gyn she’s suing isn’t just her physician – it’s her best friend.

Handle With Care explores the knotty tangle of medical ethics and personal morality. When faced with the reality of a foetus who will be disabled, at which point should an OB counsel termination? Should a parent have the right to make that choice? How disabled is TOO disabled? And as a parent, how far would you go to take care of someone you love? Would you alienate the rest of your family? Would you be willing to lie to your friends, to your spouse, to a court? And perhaps most difficult of all – would you admit to yourself that you might not actually be lying?

Cathy's pick. Xmas in July at Cathy's on July 7th. See you all there!

Still Tina

Hi All.....Im Still here just not visible. Thanks to Megan I am able to submit my thoughts..... now that could be dangerous.

Yes the book was easy to read..Thank God. Did really enjoy it. What happend to the ratings? 9/10.