Murder on the Orient Express (Poirot) (Hercule Poirot Series Book 10) by Agatha Christie

    

An Agatha Christie - what is not to love!

Tremarnock: The Lives, Loves and Secrets of a Cornish Village by Emma Burstall

A 59p deal from Kindle - an easy read.  Quite enjoyable, no thinking needed! 

The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

 

This is the story of the difficult lives of four Indian immigrants in Sheffield.

At times is a stressful book to read, but relevant and necessary story. Everything about the book is depressing - the characters, their desperation, the futility of their dreams and the shocking realities they find themselves in, in land they're not fully familiar with.

There is however too much description and mundane background details.

I couldn't really get into the stories of any of the main characters to any great depth and struggled care about their hardships the way I did in A Little Life.    

The Chimes by Anna Smaill

 

 I often seem to enjoy books that have a slightly science-fiction feel, where the author has imagined a whole different world. Here The Chimes is set in a reimagined London, in a world where people cannot form new memories, and the written word has been forbidden and destroyed.  In the absence of both memory and writing is music.

It was sometimes hard to follow as the author used various musical terms. 

Some issues were definitely left unresolved.

The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma

 

The story is narrated by Ben, both as a 10-year old child and an adult man looking back. Ben is the 4th son of a tightly knit Nigerian family that begins to unravel when the disciplinarian father takes a job at the Nigerian Central Bank in another city.  The story is presented as a fable, with nearly each chapter named after an animal and beginning with who that animal represents. 

I didn't enjoy the first half of the book which is heavily involved in the setting, but the second half is moving and memorable.