Harper Collins

I found 'A Tolkein Tapestry' absolutely fascinating. I had never heard of Dutch artist Cor Blok before, but I would say that this is an extraordinary book on how a story (Lord of the Rings trilogy) can effect and inspire one man to produce this body of work which was exhibited in the Hague in 1961. Tolkein was so impressed by the five paintings his then publisher sent him that he even bought some - and went on to meet the artist as well.

This is a story about adoption and the custody battle for baby Keefer whose parents died in a car crash. On the whole I enjoyed the book once I had sorted out the family relationships. It was a bit slow to begin with and parts of it I found quite boring but as the story enfolds it improves enormously.

The book is written in a different style to the current trend for vampire-romance novels, being much more gory and graphic - the authors portraying vampirism as a disease, and the creatures as less than human. Although this book was a sequel, and I had not read the first instalment, I found it easy to pick up the story and follow the characters.

The blurb of this book doesn't do it justice. from what i read i was expecting a spy-type thriller, but what i got was a very cleverly thought out, not-quite-what-you-expect conspiracy story with a healthy dose of fiction mixed in. ..read more

On reflection, I found this book very strange. While I enjoyed reading it, I came to the end feeling that it lacked completion.

The individual stories that took place within the novel were interesting and engaging, but over all the book lacked the compellingness of Koontz's other works.

A good book, but I think log-term Koontz fans will be slightly disappointed.

Another gripping read from Koontz. Koontz's characters are completely relatable yet a little bit kooky, and come out with things that make you smile and laugh out loud. The storyline, if featured anywhere but a Koontz book, would be a little hard to believe, but fits in perfectly with his trademark mix of thrill and humour that make you not want to put the book down.

A good one for all Koontz fans.

Following on from his previous first novel Ship of Rome, Atticus the Greek is back on his ship the Aquila and we are back in the time of the Punic Wars when Rome fought against the Carthaginians.

John Stack writes a good adventure novel with loads of gory physical action at sea and murky political intrigue on land. The pace is fast, the characters solid and believable, there's some love interest and the amount of everyday and battle detail adds up to an exciting read.

This is quite an extraordinary companion book that breaks down everything to do with the Lord of the Rings. It is very long at nearly 900 pages - but is worth reading slowly just to absorb the incredible amount of information in it.

I highly recommend this for any Lord of the Rings fan.

I was utterly captivated by this charming book of 'Letters From Father Christmas' written by J.R.R. Tolkien for his children as they were growing up.

The letters start off by being very short when the children were young and getting longer and longer - complete with wonderful illustrations of Father Christmas and his activities at the North Pole as the children got older.

They are quite humerous and to see Tolkien's actual writing and illustrations only adds to this excellent book, and one I hope that would become a great stocking filler at Christmas.

Michael Crichton is always to be relied on for a gripping read, and State of Fear is no exception. It's no "Jurassic Park" but it's still heaps above any other book of its ilk. It's a little far fetched in its plot - but not it's concepts or its research. In fact, in the end, it wasn't the story that had my attention but the huge amount of information surrounding the man made global warming - in that, there is a lot of suppressed evidence that global warming isn't actually man made, and it's part of a larger cycle of things.