#Blogtour The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller

It's a pleasure to take part in the Blogtour The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder by C.L. Miller.

About the Author

Cara Miller started working Life in publishing as an editorial assistant for her mother, Judith Miller, on the Miller’s Antique Price Guide to Europe before she went into hospitality and events. After she had children, she decided to follow her long-held dream of becoming an author and began writing full-time. She was an Undiscovered Voices winner in 2022 and was showcased in the UV 2022 anthology. She lives in a medieval cottage in Suffolk with her family. Follow @CLMillerAuthor on X

'This book was written in consultation with international antiques expert Judith Miller (1951–2023), a regular specialist on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow. Judith was also the co-founder of the bestselling annual Miller’s Antiques Price Guide, which started in 1979. She went on to write more than 120 books on antiques and interiors.'

About the book

What Antique would you kill for? 

Freya, it’s down to you to finish what I started . . . - Freya Lockwood has avoided the quaint English village in which she grew up for the last twenty years. That is until news arrives that Arthur Crockleford, antiques dealer and Freya’s estranged mentor, has died . . . and the circumstances seem suspicious.

You will uncover a reservation, I implore you to attend . . . - But when a letter from Arthur is delivered, sent just days before his death, and an ordinary pine chest concealing Arthur’s journals, including reservations in her name, are revealed, Freya finds herself sucked back into a life she’d sworn to leave behind.

But beware, trust no one. Your life depends on it . . . - Joining forces with her eccentric Aunt Carole, Arthur’s staunch best friend, Freya follows both clues and her instincts to an old manor house for an ‘antiques enthusiasts’ weekend’. But not is all as it seems; the antiques are bad reproductions, and the other guests are menacing and secretive.

Can Freya and Carole solve the mystery surrounding the weekend before a killer strikes again?

Review

What antique would you kill for? Seems like such a simple question and premise, but when I started to think about it - about what kind of antique could create the kind of obsession and need to posses that could result in killing someone for it. The first step was determining what kind of item would have such a pull on me. I agree that provenance would be a major factor, but I am equally invested in great things of beauty, creation with an elusive quality. 

The past few decades have been quiet in comparison to the life Freya Lockwood once led, but she finds it difficult to put the past and antiques dealer Arthur Crockleford's offences behind her. His death doesn't bother her, but being thrust back into the past is a trigger. What is even more annoying is the way Arthur has left a mystery to solve - for her to solve, which is a direct path back into a life she once lived.

It's the kind of concept I would love to see on the small screen with the sleuthing duo of Frey and Aunt Carole on the hunt for a different antique every season. Whilst we wait for that there is more to come from this enigmatic and determined pair in Death on the Red Sea.

I would start a treasure hunt for certain items, okay perhaps quite a few items - would I kill for one of them though? It's probably one of those questions best left unanswered, just in case I preemptively incriminate myself. Just saying.

Buy The Antique Hunter's Guide to Murder at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Published by Pan MacMillan, pub date 29th February £16.99 Hardback. Buy at Amazon com.

#BloggerDay One Moment by Becky Hunter

Life or death. Love or loss. It can all happen in One Moment.

About the Author

Becky Hunter worked for many years in London in the publishing industry, before taking a career break in Mozambique, where she volunteered with horses and decided to give writing a go. She now works as a freelance book publicist. One Moment is her debut novel. Follow @Bookish_Becky on X (formerly known as the artist called Twitter).

About the book

One moment in time can change everything... The day Scarlett dies should have been one of the most important of her life. It doesn't feel fair that she'll never have the chance to fulfil her dreams - all because she stopped to help a stranger. And now, she's still... here - wherever here is - watching the ripple effect of her death on those she loved the most.

Evie cannot contemplate her life without Scarlett, and she certainly cannot forgive Nate, the man she blames for her best friend's death. But Nate keeps popping up when she least expects him to, catapulting Evie's life in directions she'd never let herself imagine possible.

If you could go back, knowing everything that happens after, everything that happens because of one choice you made, would you change the course of history or would you do it all again?

Review

I was pleasantly surprised by this book - it wasn't at all what I was expecting. A serious note on death, sisterhood and friendship. The realisation that our lives can change in the blink of an eye. One choice, one path taken - just one moment in time. In this case Evie makes a choice that leads to her death, and peculiarly she or her soul is left to see the aftermath of her tragic end.

See the reaction of people to her death, which is a bit of an eye-opener at times. In a way she is narrating her own death throughout the book. An unexpected event that opens up Evie, and her way of perceiving the world around her,  and gives her a new perspective. On the life she no longer gets to life, to finish with her goals achieved and all her dreams fulfilled. 

It's emotional and simultaneously beautiful - it captures the relationship between the two of them perfectly. Evie and Scarlett, best friends and roommates, but even best friends fight. Evie wonders whether she wants to be able to change the status quo if it changes things for the worse for her friend.    

It's a wonderful read about embracing what we are unable to control, and realising that sometimes some things are meant to be and should be left to evolve or not.  I look forward to reading more by this author in the future. She has a knack for spinning the kind of yarn readers really want to experience.

Buy One Moment at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads for any other retailer. Publisher : ‎Corvus pub date 31 August 2023. Buy at Amazon com.

#BlogTour Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters by Amy Binns

It's my turn on the BlogTour Hidden Wyndham by Amy Binns.

About the Author
With a decade of experience in news reporting, Dr Amy Binns is now a writer, researcher and journalism lecturer at the University of Central Lancashire.

Her PhD was on solutions to difficult behaviour on social media and other online communities, and she has contributed to a report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life on the intimidation of parliamentary candidates. She regularly speaks on Radio Five Live on social media issues.

Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters, is Dr Binns’ second book. She has also written about local history in the book “Valley of a Hundred Chapels”, also available on Amazon. She has also published papers and chapters on interwar feminism and social history. Dr Binns lives in Yorkshire with her husband and two children.

Follow @AmyB_writer on Twitter, on Goodreads, on Amazon, Visit amybinns.wordpress.com, Buy Hidden Wyndham

About the book
The first biography of the life of science fiction author John Wyndham is now available. It includes the first publication of a collection of love letters to his long-term partner and later wife, Grace Wilson.

Hidden Wyndham: Life, Love, Letters, by Dr Amy Binns, author and senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLan), explores Wyndham’s wealthy but traumatic childhood. This was transformed by a spell at the first mixed-sex public school Bedales from 1915 to 1918, the source of the strange but fervent feminism of Consider Her Ways and Trouble with Lichen.

The biography covers his formative years as a pulp fiction writer, his experiences as a censor during the Blitz and his part in the Normandy landings. He described his struggles with his conscience in a moving series of letters to Grace, the teacher with whom he had a 36 year love affair.

 After the war, he transformed the searing experiences of wartime London, France and Germany into a series of bestselling novels: The Day of the Triffids, The Chrysalids, The Midwich Cuckoos and The Kraken Wakes. But he remained intensely private, shunning fame and finally retiring to live anonymously with Grace in the countryside he loved.

Review
Wyndham made a huge mark as a sci-fi writer with The Day of the Triffids, a book and visual experience that remains one of the most memorable works of the last century. This biography gives an insight into the man behind the words. The creative mind that used his stories to cross boundaries and worlds.

Binns doesn't rely on gossip, Chinese whispers or the myth behind the stories. This is well- researched and also quite intimate at times. For a man who tried to keep himself and his life out of the spotlight I wonder what he would have thought about the invasive nature of not only his story being told, but also readers evaluating the information.

Either way this book gives the kind of intimate glance into a life Wyndham tried very hard to keep away from not only the curious public, but also from everyone else. Sort of begs the question whether we need access to certain information to be able to understand or better enjoy the written or visual work.

Personally I found it gave an interesting perspective to a man taught to keep his emotions tight to the chest. His inner torment and how he questioned the morality of specific things he was a part of, which he wouldn't have been able to air in public without being perceived a certain way. His emotions and love being hindered by scars of the past - a fear of public commitment and abandonment perhaps.

It's a well thought thorough open window into the world, emotions and secrets of Wyndham. Binns does an excellent job of introducing us to the soul and heart he kept hidden.

Buy Hidden Wyndham at Amazon Uk or go to Goodreads at any other retailer. Publisher: Grace Judson Press; pub date 1 Oct. 2019. Buy at Amazon com.