Books in the news... 5-6 December

Ghosts by Tess McLennan
After the mysterious disappearance of her mother Marella, Imogene Fuller is left as the sole carer of her younger sister, Clementine.
Forced to give up her dreams of becoming a photographer, Imogene vows to support her sister's ambitions of becoming a professional dancer, taking a menial job at Johnny's Mega Market, in the girls' hometown of Miller Creek.
Discontented and unfulfilled, Imogene meets Henry Bishop by chance, and his sister Aggie, the embodiment of everything Imogene wishes she could be. However, when Aggie goes missing unexpectedly, Imogene and Henry come across her journal, which sheds light on Aggie's fragile state of mind in the months leading up to her disappearance. Imogene and Henry then embark on a perilous journey to find her, while beginning to uncover dark and frightening secrets hidden in the rugged outback, and also answers about what really happened to Marella Fuller, the day she disappeared.

Hemingway in love by A.E Hotchner
In June of 1961, A.E. Hotchner visited an old friend in the psychiatric ward of St. Mary's Hospital. It would be the last time they spoke: a few weeks later, Ernest Hemingway was released home, where he took his own life. Their final conversation was also the final installment in a story whose telling Hemingway had spread over nearly a decade.
In characteristically pragmatic terms, Hemingway divulged to Hotchner the details of the affair that destroyed his first marriage: the truth of his romantic life in Paris and how he lost Hadley,the real part of each literary woman he'd later create and the great love he spent the rest of his life seeking. And he told of the mischief that made him a legend: of impotence cured in a house of God; of a plane crash in the African bush, from which he stumbled with a bunch of bananas and a bottle of gin in hand; of F. Scott Fitzgerald dispensing romantic advice; of midnight champagne with Josephine Baker; of adventure, human error, and life after lost love. This is Hemingway as few have known him: humble, thoughtful, and full of regret.

The man with the golden typewriter Edited by Fergus Fleming

When he has finished writing Casino Royale, the first in the James Bond series, Ian Fleming treated himself to a gold-plated typewriter. It was on this glittering machine that he typed not only his bestselling novels, but also his letters. Though Fleming was not an especially reflective or literary man - he preferred action to analysis - his correspondence is energetic, engaging and direct, and full of wry remarks, succinct comments and insightful observations.

WC Ian Fleming wrote to publishers, fans, critics and friends. Whether dealing with his editor's concerns about the title of Moonraker or badgering his publisher Jonathan Cape about his quota of free copies (they tossed a coin: Fleming lost), replying to a reader who feared for 007's attention to perfume or and another who worried about Bond's influence on the assassination of JFK, his letters were always charming and often witty. A few of the letters he received marked the beginning of lengthy WC exchanges. One day, out of the blue, came a letter from one Geoffrey Boothroyd taking issue with James Bond's choice of sidearm (the Beretta was a 'ladies' gun'), and despite Fleming's perturbation at being caught out, the correspondence that followed developed into a relationship that lasted until Fleming's death. Boothroyd was appointed Bond's fictional armourer and kept the author up to date on a huge variety of weapons that might be useful to Bond. On another occasion a book dealer advised him rather forcefully about American slang, while one of his most affecting exchanges was with the another great thriller writer, Raymond Chandler - the man who created Philip Marlowe.

Trumbo by Bruce Cook

Dalton Trumbo was the central figure in the "Hollywood Ten," the blacklisted and jailed screenwriters. One of several hundred writers, directors, producers, and actors who were deprived of the opportunity to work in the motion picture industry from 1947 to 1960, he was the first to see his name on the screen again. When that happened, it was Exodus, one of the year's biggest movies.
This intriguing biography shows that all his life Trumbo was a radical of the homegrown, independent variety. From his early days in Colorado, where his grandfather was a county sheriff, to Los Angeles, where he organized a bakery strike, to bootlegging, to Hollywood, where he was the highest-paid screenwriter when he was blacklisted (and a man with constant money problems), his life rivaled anything he had written. His credits include Kitty Foyle, The Brave One, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Spartacus, Lonely are the Brave, and Papillon, and he is the author of a power pacifist novel, Johnny Got His Gun.

Wildflower by Drew Barrymore

Wildflower is a portrait of Drew's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross country road trip, saying goodbye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today. It is the first book Drew has written about her life since the age of 14.

Inbetween Days by Vikki Wakefield
At seventeen, Jacklin Bates is all grown up. She’s dropped out of school. She’s living with her runaway sister, Trudy, and she’s in secret, obsessive love with Luke, who doesn’t love her back. She’s stuck in Mobius—a dying town with the macabre suicide forest its only attraction—stuck working in the roadhouse and babysitting her boss’s demented father.
A stranger sets up camp in the forest and the boy next door returns; Jack’s father moves into the shed and her mother steps up her campaign to punish Jack for leaving, too. Trudy’s brilliant façade is cracking and Jack’s only friend, Astrid, has done something unforgivable.

Jack is losing everything, including her mind. As she struggles to hold onto the life she thought she wanted, Jack learns that growing up is complicated—and love might be the biggest mystery of all.