Miss Webster is a retired schoolteacher who lives alone in a little cottage in the English village of Little Blessingham. Everyone in the village knows her but she couldn’t be said to be friendly with any of them. Miss Webster doesn’t mince her words and over the years her terse manner and dismissive attitude have made people steer clear of her. When Miss Webster is suddenly taken ill, the doctors and nurses are unable to diagnose what is wrong with her. She lies in the hospital bed day after day, staring blankly ahead, seemingly unable to speak. When a specialist comes to see her, a man with oddly disfigured hands, he gradually manages to get Miss Webster to trust him. When the time comes for her to leave the hospital she asks him for some advice, she doesn’t want to be in this terrible state, reliant on others and, frankly, she has become the sort of needy person she has always despised. He tells her that she must travel to a faraway place where French is spoken and that the trip will do her good. She follows his advice and soon after goes to Morocco. There the staff at her hotel show her the utmost kindness, making her feel part of their family. Miss Webster returns to England feeling much more positive and determined to make the most of life.

Patricia Duncker

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Having been brought up by her grandfather in Miami after being taken from Cuba as a young child, the un-named central character of “Loving Che” receives a box of letters and news clippings from an anonymous sender. She has already made one visit to Havana to try to trace the mother who was left behind but wasn’t able to find her. Now the shocking information contained in the letter, relating to the identity of her father, persuades her to head back to Cuba to try again. She has grown up with the one-sided view of Cuba perpetuated by the exiles of Florida but finds that the truth is quite different as her quest to find her mother introduces her to Havana’s thriving artistic community. Refusing to accept that the claims of the letters are unlikely, she resolves to find out for herself whether the infamous El Che really was her father.

The short first and third sections of this novel are told by this young woman. The more substantial middle section is related through the writing of the woman’s mother, Theresa.

Ana Menendez, Che, Cuba

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What would be the better way of getting to know the authors of book reviews on Curious Book Fans site but to ask them to write an article about their favourite books.

That’s just an opening of our Creative section but watch this space for various articles related to books we love and some real creative writing…

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I have been reading books by the author Joy Fielding for as long as I can remember. Her books can best be described as psychological thrillers and in most cases I have been on the edge of my seat from the moments I have picked the books up. ‘Charley’s Web’ had a slightly different feel to it though and although I enjoyed the book very much I did not really experience the usual tension until towards the very end.

‘Charley’s Web’ is about a character called Charley Webb who is a somewhat provocative journalist for a Florida newspaper. She writes a weekly column that often provokes and shocks her readers which consequently leads to a lot of interesting emails and letters. Most are complaints but alongside all her regular post, she receives a letter from Jill Rohmer, a convicted child killer awaiting execution on Death Row. She wants Charley to write a book telling the story of what happened, and even though Charley is repulsed by the crimes, she agrees to do so and starts meeting Jill on a regular basis in order to piece the story together.

Joy Fielding

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Many years ago I received an unexpected marriage proposal from a man I’d met just a couple of hours earlier. My speedy admirer was an outrageously handsome Saudi Arabian working for an international oil company.

“I’ve never met anyone like you before” he said, and I thought to myself, “Yep, I can totally believe that”.

“Marry me and come to Saudi, you’ll never have to work again and I’ll brew alcohol in the bath for you”.

It’s not every day you get an offer like that; a good looking meal-ticket and a life of luxury and constant sunshine. However, there was one big thing standing in the way; my utter dislike and contempt for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the worst examples of a country with no rights for women. So it was a clear case of ‘Thanks but no thanks’.

dating, Rajaa Alsanea, Saudi

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I have been a fan of Danny Wallace for quite a while now – ever since I read his collaboration with Dave Gorman on the book ‘Are You Dave Gorman?’ Since then Danny has gone on to write a number of books of his own, all based on mad boyish escapades which manage to take him to far flung places and sometimes land him in a bit of bother! His latest book that I have read – Friends like These – is written in the same vein, although it does have some quite thought provoking and poignant moments too. It is also quite mad as well, which is the style I have come to know and love from Danny Wallace!

As he writes this book, Danny is fast approaching his thirtieth birthday which seems to be causing him a bit of a crisis. Although he is happily married to Lizzie, they own their own home and he has an interesting career;

Danny Wallace, friends, travel

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‘Berlin: The Downfall 1945′ was first published in 2002 and written by acclaimed historian Antony Beevor. It tells the grim story of the last months of World War 2 in Europe and the bloody battle for Berlin. My paperback copy is 431 pages long and includes a large number of maps and a useful glossary. It begins at Christmas 1944. Berlin is being bombed by the Americans during the day and by the RAF during the night. The city is being reduced to rubble as the 3 million inhabitants struggle to find enough air raid shelters and realise that Hitler has led the country to ruin. But the thing that scares people most of all is the Red Army. The Soviet Union has 6.7 million soldiers on a front from the Baltic to the Adriatic and thousands of tanks, planes, heavy guns and the terrifying ‘katyusha’ rockets. They are 40 miles from Berlin and the only thing that stands between them and the capital are the scrapings from the bottom of the barrel; foreign SS, Hitler Youth, Luftwaffe pilots organised into army divisions because there are few planes left to fly, what is left of the Wehrmacht and the Volkssturm – Germany’s version of the Home Guard. The surreal and ruthless nature of Germany’s pointless resistance – orchestrated by an increasingly isolated and mad Hitler in a damp bunker – is shatteringly conveyed by Beevor who never forgets the human element to battles and carnage.

1945, Antony Beevor, Berlin, Downfall

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It is a truth universally acknowledged that an economically independent professional woman in her thirties must be in search of a soul-mate and will ask herself “Why are all the men round here so rubbish?” When this happens, the logical thing to do is to crack open another bottle of chardonnay, unwrap a big bar of Dairy Milk, and curl up with a good DVD. Some women may vow there and then to do ‘something’ about it and Jennifer Cox was one of those. Rather than signing up for a class in car maintenance, taking up SCUBA diving or signing up for online dating, she decided that if London wasn’t big enough to provide a soul mate, she’d take on the world. She’d already observed that foreign men always seemed more interested in women than the ones she found at home who seemed to find it a challenge to tie their own shoelaces and use a knife and fork. Thus was born the idea behind “Around the World in 80 Dates” (ATWIED) or as it was cruelly dubbed by some wishful-thinking would-be daters, “Around the World in 80 Lays”. In a flash Cox has pinged off emails to friends and contacts around the world and set up a network of potential dates across Europe, North America, Asia and Australasia.

dating, Jennifer Cox

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Bernard Cornwell will doubtless be best known amongst you for the best selling Sharpe series of novels – you know, the ones that Sean Bean starred in as a Napoleonic era soldier when they were adapted for TV a few years back. Following on from this great success, he has now turned his talents towards a trilogy of novels (The Grail Quest) set during the 14th century (the other two books being “Vagabond” and “Heretic”); this review is on the first of the series, “Harlequin”. You may find it surprising that I am reading these at all, given their reputation as being very much “bloke’s books”; Cornwell’s preference for writing about warfare while relishing every grisly detail of it does seem to appeal to an almost exclusively male readership, I must admit. My interest in these books, though, comes from the fact that their central character is an English longbow archer. So what? Well, having previously dabbled in archery myself, I do have something of an interest in the history of the bow, and as anyone with even a passing interest in Medieval arms will know, the 14th century is the golden era of the longbow.

adventure, Bernard Cornwell, grail

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Ethel and Ernest is a graphic novel by the celebrated author and illustrator Raymond Briggs of The Snowman and Fungus the Bogeyman fame and was first published in 1998. The book is a tribute to his working-class parents and tells the story of their lives from the first meeting in 1928 through to their deaths in the early seventies. This is an immensely warm, nostalgic and sometimes poignant journey through the decades and provides a fascinating part social history of Britain as Ethel and Ernest meet, marry, and raise their son Raymond as the world gradually changes ever more around them. Through the often mundane but sometimes extraordinary lives of Ethel and Ernest we experience the first stirrings and eventual turmoil of war, the creation of the welfare state, the advent of television, doodlebugs, the bomb, indoor bathrooms, fridges, telephones, the blitz, rationing, Conservative and Labour governments, men on the moon, VE Day, and much more besides. As the blurb on the inside cover goes, ‘this is the reality of two decent, ordinary lives, of two people who, as Briggs tells their story, become representative of us all’.

family, Graphic novel, parents, Raymond Briggs

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I recently read The Baby Trail by Sinead Moriarty and absolutely loved it so it was not surprising that I could not wait to get my hands on another of her books. The one I chose was In My Sister’s Shoes which, in my opinion was even better. It was the sort of book that once I had started reading it; I could hardly put it down. In fact I read it in the space of two days which, considering I have two young daughters is some going!

The story follows two sisters – Kate and Fiona. Kate is just embarking on a potentially successful TV presenting career and has left the family home in Dublin to seek her fortune in London.

Sinead Moriarty, sisters

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