Star Gazing by Linda Gillard

The heroine of Star Gazing is prickly Marianne Fraser, a blind widow living in Edinburgh who sadly lost her husband in the Piper Alpha disaster of 1988. When Marianne meets Keir, an oilman from Skye, Marianne’s carefully ordered world quickly becomes dishevelled and unpredictable. Marianne has been living with Louisa, her novelist sister, and Keir’s [...]

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This Must Be the Place by Anna Winger

This novel is the equivalent of a European film. You know how American movies always have explosions, car chases & a mystery to be solved, but many European movies are filled with people talking about relationships? That’s what happens here. It’s early December in Berlin and a pre-war apartment building contains our 2 main characters. [...]

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Coming Up on Vulpes Libris

We‘ve got stars and bars and Berlin. Plus poetry and kissing. It’s a somewhat romantic week on VL, filled with memories and friends. A nice way to ease into the first month of Spring. Monday:Jackie looks at This Must be the Place, Anna Winger’s quiet novel set in present day Berlin. Tuesday: Lisa ponders Linda [...]

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The Pitmen Painters: a play by Lee Hall. Newcastle Live Theatre/ National Theatre co-production March 2009

Occasionally, one of the Foxes will go to the cinema or theatre, and come back inspired to write about it here. This time, Hilary has returned from a National Theatre matinee with something to tell. The story of the Ashington Group of painters is a fascinating and important one. Until I found out about this [...]

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A Secret Alchemy by Emma Darwin

Whenever one of the Bookfoxes has a novel published, we are naturally all eager to jump straight in, see what it’s all about and have a good natter. However, no matter how much you like the author, there’s no guarantee you’ll like the book, so when three of the Bookfoxes decided to read A Secret [...]

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David Calcutt: literary horror and post-apocalyptic experiments.

The joy of children’s literature is its infinite variety; it is a microcosm in which all the adult genres are reflected. Here you can find the commercial thriller, the literary thriller, the sci-fi, the chick-lit, the commercial-literary crossover, the historical novel, and the literary prose stylist. This last is not so easy to find nowadays, [...]

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Reverse of disassembly

Haynes CB400/4 Owners’ Workshop Manual The art of motorcycle maintenance is inevitably connected with Zen in the mind of the unregenerate but only those who have meditated on a stuck head bearing shell can know the deep spiritual content that comes with taking one from the freezer and driving the poxy object into place with [...]

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Shapes in the Sky: a reflection by Alan Fitzsimmons

Part of our celebration of the International Year of Astronomy.  A short piece inspired by a recent astronomical visit to the Chilean Andes, hoping in turn to inspire people to remove themselves from the modern world for a short while. We tend to revere our ancestors. Parents and grandparents can have a large influence on [...]

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‘Sod that for a game of toy soldiers!’ or H.G. Wells’ Little Wars

Article by Dr. Michael Ng For those who have read some of my prior thoughts on historical topics, I hope you can forgive me as I self-indulgently move to a different topic (though one also close to my heart).  Many of us have read some of H.G. Wells’ works and I have greatly enjoyed War [...]

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Deborah Knott mysteries by Margaret Maron

I’ve read books set centuries ago that seemed less strange than Margaret Maron’s American south. Her mysteries set in North Carolina show a world so very different from my Midwestern suburbs, that it’s hard to believe it’s in the same country. Not only do farmers grow different crops and people use different terms for things, [...]

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