Seed by Ania Ahlborn

This was an excellent read!! Never even heard of this author but trawling the kind of stuff I like on the amazon Kindle page came across the good reviews it gets. I like a bit of scary, spooky otherworld stuff to my stories to add that little something extra. This had it all. A great plot, not the ending I had envisaged and it did n't end well for most of the cast!! Jack Winter did n't have the best childhood but things started turning out really sour not long after he started hanging out in an old disused cemtery out the back of his Mum and Dad's trailer. After many visits he sees a haunting shadow-like creature with a long sinister jagged smile staring at him through the bushes. Tha moment shapes the rest of his life. As a grown up he thinks he has left it all behind but one night years later driving home witrh his wife and two young girls in the middle of the night he flips the truck when he sees those two eyes in the road ahead of him. In the aftermath it is clear that his 6-year old daughter saw it too. From there on the family seem haunted by strange occurances usually accompanied by scratching noises in their house walls. Now, he is not the only one it is chasing. Charlotte, starts acting somewhat schizophrenic and certainly psychotic as, as times (like her father), she seeems possessed by "Mr Scratch". In the end she does what Jack did, she murders her family and goes off to meet the devil and set up the cycle again thorugh the next generation. I ceertainly did not expect 10 year old Abigail to be hung from a tree by her sister using her own small intestines just before Charlotte rammed a knife into Jack's stomach and twisted it until he died!!! No happy endings here to say the least but a fine tale, jumps straight in at my number 2 :-)

Return of the prodigal son

He's back again!! My eldest son Tom came back from University on Saturday after his first full year of Physics in Leeds. It was the first time he had been to our new house and I had done his room out at some cost and time so it was special all round. We picked him up from St Ives at 10:30 on Saturday morning and having stopped at Tesco Huntingdon weheaded back home. He was with his gf of two-and-a-half years so it was great to see both of them. The sun shone brilliantly all weekend and so we had a great bbq on Saturday in the garden. The teenagers played wonderfully with the little people (my 6 year old and Kate's six and nine year olds) and I sank quite some beers ;-) I'm looking forward to having him around for a very long summer. Now to see if I can achieve what I failed to last year ..... to convince him to get a job!!!!

Children of the Fog by Cheryl Kaye Tardif

Enjoyed this although was kept somewhat confused by the formatting!! How so? Well, reading it on my Kindle I keep an eye on what percentage of the book I've read, just as I would watch the page numbers in a real book. I was pleasently surprised and intrigued when what I thought would be the ending came at 25%. The book rolled on nicely with the plot thickening through a good a story before at 64%, what's this, oh it must be another false summit .... well, I've fallen for that before so this is not the end. Well, actually it was. The book finished at 64% and the rest of it was part of the author's next book to get us drawn in! (It did not work with me as I have started something new!!). This is the story of a lady who has a criminal and a womaniser as a husband and whose sole joy in life is her 6 year old boy ...... until he is abducted and apparently killed by "The Fog". A man steals into homes like mist and who takes two children, a girl and boy, every spring. In this case our heroin comes into her son's room just as The Fog is taking the boy and she is warned that if she says she has seen the abductor the child will be returned in "little bloody pieces". She sketches a picture which she hides but her husband finds it and gives it to the police. The Fog calls her later and tells her that if she says nothing more then she can come and get her son but as she approaches the car where she thinks he is tied up she stumbles over a trip wire and the automobile explodes, killing him. She leaves town ............... looking for somewhere to go and finish the children's book she is writing for her son before ending it all but led by "signs" from conversations with her son in her head she is led to a place where, with the help of dead children, she solves the mystery and restores her happiness. Very good book.

Forty-four!

Yep, there goes another birthday, and apparently, I'm 44 now. Never really been hung up on age. Turning 30 and even 40 was never a problem, but I am starting to get a little apprehensive about being fifty, even though it is still six years away!!! Does age matter? Maybe! Of course we all change physically and mentally. Physically, I laughed out loud this week when I did my regular run more than minute faster than I did last week, when I was 43 ;-) My wonderful girlfriend of well over ayear now is five old years younger then me ....... maybe I am having that mid-life crisis - not! So as a 44 year old man what do I really want from my life this year? I'd like to be a little fitter, sure, maybe loose a cm or two off the old waisteline but there are n't many guys in their mid-forties who can't say that. I'd like to great hpotos of the people and landscape around me and I'd like more time to enjoy riding my bike, on and off road. What else, well, having moved to Warboys I now live just round the corner from my amazing wonderful girlfriend but I want more. I now have the 5 bedroomed house waiting for her to move into, but she has a 6 year old and 9 nine year old who need time to get their heads around things. My kids maybe need a little more time because they don't know Kate and her fsamily as well as I do. It will happen though, things are moving in the right direction :-)

Taunting the Dead by Mel Sherratt

Another cheapy off Amazon read on my Kindle and just finished yesterday. Set in Stoke-on-Trent of all places (but why not) this is story of the murder of a ganster-ish type of businessman's wife, of how she is sleeping with (and we find out from her autopsy that she is pregnant by) the henchman, who is told by the boss to kill her knowing full what he has been up to. He tries to get her best friend's husband to do the job whilst the henchman's thug of son overhears most of this and goes on to do the the hit himself. The ganster is a real good looking charmer who has massive sexual chemistry with the female DS leading the investigation so it all turns into a pretty decent plot. Well told, intrigue kept high and believable characters, even in Stoke on trent, the home of Slash ;-)

The Phoenix conspiracy by Richard Saunders

Read this ages ago and forgot all about it until yesterday. So, this was another freebie off amazon on the Kindle, I've got a feeling I might have read some of it on the a plane on the way back from Japan in Feb. Anyway, a cross between Star Trek and Star Wars this one, not brilliant but ok. One of the Federation's most trusted generals uses his spaceship to destroy a seemingly innocent trading convoy of aliens before legging it across the galaxy. Our hero is dispatched to bring him to justice with his new second in command, a beaustiful young lady who was the second in command of our criminal until just before the attack. The intrigue rolls out as the chase goes from one end of the galaxy to the other and, would you know it, but when the dust of the intergalactic firefight settles our badie is a goodie after all !!!! Plenty readable though, kept me entertained for hours and as a freebie it did of course appeal to my Yorkshire nature!!!

Windmills, the modern type. Not Dutch, no tulips and no Amsterdam. I'm having a wonderful Bank Holiday Weekend so far, and the joy of it is of course that there is no work tomorrow, Monday :-) The weather has not been good for the last week or so. Today, I drove through or past three "road closed - flooding" signs ...... but the water had almost gone and it was just that nobody could be bothered to come and remove the signs. The message is that it has rained loads in the last week or so, there are a lot of flooded fields around St Ives. But before that it was that glorious April weather of heavy showers, deep grey skies and wonderful sunshine to light it all up, if only fleetingly. To my shame, I did n't find time to get out with the camera, until this evening. Taking Kate into St Ives for a works night out I grabbed this on the way home. Windmills, the modern type, I think they look fantastic :-)