27th Feb 2020 – White Tulip Candles

PUBLISHERS BLURB

Hayley Chill isn’t your typical West Wing intern. Ex-military and as patriotic as she is principled, she is largely vilified by her peers and lauded by her superiors – it’s a quick way of making enemies.

It is Hayley who finds the body of the White House chief of staff, Peter Hall, on his kitchen floor having died from an apparent heart attack. It is also Hayley who notices a single clue which suggests his death was deliberate, targeted. That he was assassinated.

Unsure who to trust, Hayley works alone to uncover a wide-ranging conspiracy that controls the furthest reaches of the government. And Hall is just the beginning – the president is the next target.

Hayley must now do the impossible: stop an assassination, when she has no idea who the enemy is, all while staying hidden, with Peter’s final words to her ringing in her ears: Trust no one. Because the Deep State will kill to silence her. And they are closing in.

It is entrenched.

It is hidden.

It is deadly.

Who can you trust?

MY REVIEW

Deep State is a political thriller set in Washington.

Hayley Chill has left the army and has joined the whitehouse staff as an intern. She comes across a plot, which she believes is to assassinate the president. But just who can she trust.

There’s murder, secrets and lies in a power struggle within the government. With enough twists to keep even the most hardened thriller reader guessing.

A political thriller at its very best, gripping and thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.

Thank you to Anne Cater and Random Things Tours for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour, for the promotional materials and a free copy of the book. This is my honest, unbiased review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Chris Hauty is a screenwriter who has worked at all the major movie studios, in nearly every genre of film. He currently lives in Venice, California, in the company of a classic Triumph motorcycle and a feral cat. Deep State is his first novel.

PUBLISHERS BLURB

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.

Hidden Wyndham is distributed by Gardners Books and is now available on the Waterstones and Amazon websites, in Kindle and in paperback edition.

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MY REVIEW

This is a biography of John Wyndham, author of The Midwich Cuckoos, The Chrysalids and more famously The Day Of The Triffids.

It tells of his difficult and rather traumatic childhood with a distant mother who he felt didn’t do enough to protect him and his brother, and a controlling father who even forced him to drink a glass of sherry as a child. He had been sent to various schools and found them difficult, it wasn’t until he was sent to the co-Ed school, Bedales that he felt some happiness, as did his brother, Viv.

As he grew he continued to write his stories, determined to make a living as a writer. Struggling until finally finding success but he stayed living in modest rooms and happiest when in the countryside.

He was also sent to France during the war and saw many traumatic things during this horrific conflict. Told using many of Wyndham’s letters to his beloved Grace, during their 36 year love story and is very moving.

A beautifully written insight into the life of the quiet, private man that was John Wyndham and how that life is reflected in his books.

Thank you to Anne Cater and Random Things Tours for the opportunity to participate in this blog tour, for the promotional materials and a free copy of the book. This is my honest, unbiased review.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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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.