I’m reading Black and British by David Olusoga, a terrific read reaching back to Roman times when forces of Afro-Romans arrived in the third century and were stationed in Cumbria. Olusoga sweeps forward through the Blackamoors, during Elizabethan times, to Black Britains who fought at Trafalgar, through to the wars of the 20^th century. He writes much about the Georgian fashion for having a young black pageboy, such children were often treated like pets among the wealthy, dressed up and fete...

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Halloween is next week and the search for scary books is upon us.

I am not a fan of being scared. My imagination can go into overdrive with the gentlest of noise in the middle of the night – Once I spent a night wide-eyed, convinced there was a ghost dragging chains behind him in the hallway and it turned out to be a mouse trying to get out of a plastic-lined bin. When it comes to inciting fear, I need little help from a book.

However, at Hookline we do have a few scary novels.

What lies...

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Many manuscripts reach me but few grab my attention so completely as Mission by Paul Forrester-O’Neill. This story, set in the United States, begins with a small boy who overhears his mother tell his father a horrendous lie. The plot follows the boy to adulthood as he tries to make amends to his father.

A boy and his father are separated by an unforgivable lie. Twenty years later they meet, and the dying father tells John of the men who cheated him and the town of Mission that spurned him...

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County lines is a big crime issue. Gangs are using young teens as runners to transport drugs and money across the country. The teens are young enough to not arouse suspicion by police and, once drawn into the world of drug running, getting out is near impossible. Young people have been stabbed, murdered and even pushed to suicide.  

It’s a terrifying world that did not exist when many of us were young. However, we read about it in newspapers and imagine it far away from our own lives. This...

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Mark Billingham said he gives a new book 20 pages. If the story hasn't set up its plot, given him characters worth following and prose he cares about then he tosses it aside. 
Now Mark is a crime writer who knows his craft. The successful crime novelist's books regularly feature in best seller lists and his Thorne novels were turned into a television series. However, he said his wife disagrees with him. Speaking at this year's Cheltenham Literature Festival, he said that she soldiers on throug...
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