Carol Naylor's REVIEW it...

                  The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings."Julius Caesar. Cassius rejected the popular theory relating to astrology. The fault here is cancer and the film looks at how two teenagers, in particular, Hazel Grace and Augustus Waters deal with their afflictions and the effects it has on their relationships with their parents. Directed by Josh Boone and produced by Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen. The film is based on the hugely successful book by American writer, John Green. Shailene Woodley (The Secret Life of the American Teenager and The Descendants) stars as Hazel. Ansel Elgort (Carrie, Tommy Ross and Caleb Prior) plays Augustus. Hazel is 16 and has battled cancer for the past 3 years. It is terminal and in order to breathe she needs to carry around with her an oxygen cylinder. She is encouraged to attend a support grou...

              Tulip Fever by Deborah Moggach. "I gazed into the water and saw a dream world, mirroring my own, where I could be happy. How wrong I was. For it was nothing-just the glitter of moonlight on the surface, the sheeny satin lustre of a dress." The author admitted to having had a love affair (so to speak) with Dutch paintings. What emerged was a love-letter sadly reflecting on the lost world of serene and dreamy domestic interiors otherwise known as Tulip Fever. We are plunged into the 17C world of Amsterdam that saw the rise and obsession of tulip mania during the 1630s, at its worst symbolising human greed and passion. It made many men rich beyond their wildest dreams but once the bubble burst it brought inevitable ruin and destruction. Sophia was 24, innocent and oblivious to the evils of the world. When her father had died leaving unmarried daughters and lots of debts, Cornelis, a wealthy merchant who owned a warehouse i...

The Black Hoard. A Remedy Rumstry Caseload by Carole Tempest . "The thrill of the chase and the mystery of solving a puzzle is one thing, but being the object of the chase and evading police and things alike was more adventure than I craved." Some of the characters have quirky names along with the places where this detective and murder story is set. For instance, Remedy Rumstry, Private Investigator who may sometimes show his droll sense of humour or reveal his sexual fantasies towards Detective Vi Bradley, one of his clients although he does take his work a bit more seriously, in fact a bit too seriously. His trademark is a fedora named after the 1882 drama by Victorien Sardou. Vi Bradley is trying to track down her boss, officially her ex-boss, Chief Inspector Vanaheim known simply as Van, a master of disguises and probably one of the smartest coppers around. So what is the problem? Her ex-husband, Shirley "Krow" Cankrow, owner of The Daily Mayhem ...

                 The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult, Book Review. "I wrote this book because stories matter, and there are six  million people who did not have the opportunity to tell theirs."(Picoult) Some stories need to be told and retold. Can someone who's committed truly heinous acts ever atone with subsequent good behaviour? Put another way-should you offer forgiveness to someone if you aren't the party who was wronged? Can we or should we forgive the unforgivable? This harrowing and unforgettable journey through the Holocaust was inspired by Simon Wiesenthal's book  The Sunflower. He was a prisoner in a Nazi concentration camp, brought to the deathbed of an SS soldier who wanted to confess to and be forgiven by a Jew. From this, Picoult explored whether decades later the same request made to a Jewish prisoner's granddaughter would have the same moral conundrum over genocide victims and their perpetrators. This is...