Ann Cleeves - Blue Lightning

This is the fourth book in Ann's Shetland Quartet. I am really hoping that she will be persuaded to write more as I really want to know how things work out for Detective Jimmy Perez.
This book sees him returning home to Fair Isle with his fiancee only to have a murder take place at the local bird observatory. This occuring during a storm when the island is cut off. Mix in some fairly bizarre twitchers and visitors and you have the classic whodunnit. This book nicely links a biographical detail of Ann, as I see she was bird observatory cook. I am glad she survived because this book is great and a fitting ( possible?) end to the series.

Jenna Burtenshaw - Wintercraft

This is a great book. It is being marketed as a Teen novel but makes a very good crossover novel for those of you that like me that enjoy them . It is fantasy at its most inventive. Forget vampires etc here we have a truly immersible environment. We have a country Albion set in a pseudo medieval age but with trains! I particularly liked the High Council ruled in a Venetian style political arena. Into this mix are born people with special skills, "The Skilled" they have the ablilty to see beyond the veil and some can walk within it. None more so than the family of the Winters who wrote the definative book Wintercraft. We have a powerful heroine in Kate Winters, brought up in ignorance of her family history but forced through circumstance to not only face her past but utlise it in the fight against evil and corruption.
I can see a series coming!

Carlos Ruiz Zafon - Shadow of the WInd

I have just read this for the fourth time and it is still as fresh, engaging and simply mind blowing as the first time.

This book defies classification. Is it a crime novel, gothic horror, historical, political, or just totally unique?!

In the book we follow the growing up of Daniel Sempere, his father owns a book shop and we watch him struggle with post Civil war Spain, with love, with life and a unique mystery. To say too much would just ruin the story, read it and enjoy.

Reading it again you pick up multilayers and clever asides that you had forgottten or missed the last time. Each one is a gem. This is a book to read slowly and savour. It is a modern classic and a must for all Reading Groups!

On a personal note on the basis of reading this book the first time, I went to Barcelona and that doesn't disappoint either.......