The Clifton Chronicles: Be Careful What You Wish For by Jeffrey Archer

Rating: ✪✪✪✪✪ out of 5 Stars

Release Date:                      March 2014

Author’s Website:              http://www.jeffreyarcher.co.uk/site/

Purchase in Australia:       QBD Bookstore & other good book stores

Purchase Book U.S.:          Amazon

Publisher’s Website:          Pan MacMillan

Only Time Will Tell: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 1       Released 2011

The Sins of the Father: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 2    Released 2012

The Best Kept Secret: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 3     Released 2013

What You Wish For: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 4       Released March 2014

My thoughts:

Since Not A Penny More, Not a Penny Less, I’ve idolized Jeffrey Archer as an author. Jeffrey Archer is the master of characterization and suspense. Somehow he commands that you care about the results of a high school exam, the vote for a board Chairman, or whether a cruise-ship will meet its construction deadline. None of these challenges are exciting mysteries. Yet we must know the answer. 

At age 74, after 35 years as a best-selling author, and over 270 million copies of books sold, Lord Archer has brought us a great series: The Clifton Chronicles, which follows the life and story of Harry Clifton and his heirs. We meet Harry in 1919 Bristol and follow him and his friends through to the 1940’s and the Second World War, and in Be Careful What You Wish For, the fourth volume we are taken through 1957 to ’64.

This book is essentially Harry Clifton’s wife, Emma Barrington-Clifton’s, story. Readers enjoy front row seats at the boardroom drama of Barrington’s, Emma’s family’s ship-construction company. The board-members are gambling the future of the company on the building of a luxury liner. High stakes criminal Martinez, who bears a murderous grudge against the Clifton family, is out to scuttle Barringtons, and there is much fun with wheeling and dealing in shares and board appointees. Like the previous books, this leaves us hanging on a cliff. It has all the twists, turns, dirty tricks, tragedies and vendettas that have made this series so fabulous. 

Jeffrey Archer is possibly the greatest storyteller of our time. The Clifton Chronicles, his most ambitious story, requiring of Archer a commitment of more than five years, with rumors that the five-part series may become seven. The series only curse is that there’s a year's wait after each book.

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Book Blurb:

The Clifton Chronicles Series

Only Time Will Tell Released 2011

The epic tale of Harry Clifton's life begins in 1919, in the backstreets of Bristol. His father was a war hero, but it will be twenty-one tumultuous years before Harry discovers the truth about how his father really died and if, in fact, he even was his father.

Only Time Will Tell takes a cast of memorable characters from the ravages of the Great War to the outbreak of the Second World War, when Harry must decide whether to take his place at Oxford, or join the fight against Hitler's Germany.

In Jeffrey Archer's masterful hands, you will be taken on a journey that you won't want to end, even after you turn the last page of this unforgettable yarn, because you will be faced with a dilemma that neither you, nor Harry Clifton could ever have anticipated.

Only Time Will Tell: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 1      Released 2011

The Sins of the Father: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 2   Released 2012

The Best Kept Secret: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 3    Released 2013

What You Wish For: THE CLIFTON CHRONICLES 4      Released March 2014

About the author:

Jeffrey Archer, whose novels and short stories include Kane and Abel, A Prisoner of Birth and Cat O' Nine Tales, has topped the bestseller lists around the world, with sales of over 270 million copies. He is the only author ever to have been a number one bestseller in fiction (seventeen times), short stories (four times) and non-fiction (The Prison Diaries). The author is married with two sons and lives in London and Cambridge. www.jeffreyarcher.com

Googly Eyes & Fibber Board Games Reviewed

We’ve become real board game players in this house in the past few months. Mostly the game of choice is Monopoly or Uno. We’ve even bought a few different sets of Monopoly.  

The eleven-year-old, Harry, is a problem, though. He gets bored easily and doesn’t like Monopoly. So we have a quick game of Uno with him (a game he will play) and then we are down to wheeling and dealing on the real estate with the thirteen-year-old, Bailey. The eleven-year-old then heads off to play his video games. Such a shame, because board games are a fun family activity.

Our games cupboard is filled with various games, but there is nothing other than Uno (which is really a card game, I know) that all of us enjoy playing together. That is until we were sent Googly Eyes to trial and review.

Check out this video I made and photos and you will see why. Its absolute hilarious fun for all ages and my whole family recommends.

GOOGLY EYES

First up, the glasses alone supplied days of fun for the boys. They are hilarious to wear and to view through. Don’t drive with them or walk too far; they really do make it difficult to see.

This game is basically Pictionary but with your vision impaired. It is so much fun.

Now when I say, Shall we play a game? the instant response is “Googly Eyes”. The only negative is that the timer didn’t work. However, with smart-phones these days that isn’t a problem. I hope the makers will, also, bring out new card packs. We are playing it so much we are getting through the cards very quickly.

FIBBER

Fibber, the other game we were asked to review, was quite fun but really we would recommend it for maybe ten and under.

In this, you play cards down from your hand and have to say what the card is without showing it. The goal is to get rid of all the cards in your hand by pretending the type of cards you're playing are not actually what you are playing, if you don't have the right ones in your hand. 

If someone thinks you’ve fibbed about your discard card, then they can call you a “Fibber.” My kids enjoyed calling each other names for sure.  If the player is not telling the truth, the “Fibber” has to wear an extension on his glasses over his nose, à la Pinocchio, and pick up all the cards in the discard pile. If they were telling the truth, you do. Its pretty silly, but still fun. Each time you are caught fibbing, you get a another piece for your nose. If you enjoy a wine, I can imagine the laughs.

It’s very simple, but next to a game like Googly Eyes, it has nowhere near the appeal or longevity of play. Our family still had fun though, but its Googly Eyes all the way here.


If you want to find out more about these games or where they are stocked, please visit Crown and Andrews www.crownandandrews.com.au

Runner by Patrick Lee

Rating: ✪✪✪✪✪ out of 5 Stars

Release Date:                      February 2014

Author’s Website:               http://www.patrickleefiction.com

Purchase in Australia:       QBD Bookstore & good bookstores

Purchase Book U.S.:          Amazon U.S.A.

Publisher’s Website:          Penguin

My thoughts:

The first thing you will notice about “Runner” by Patrick Lee is the striking cover (Australian/UK version)The next thing is that the hours have gone by and you haven’t stopped reading. Time just runs away with this book.

It takes off from the first page at a gallop and never stops. In the beginning, you’re reading a thriller, then it seamlessly morphs into a techno sci-fi story. Last time I enjoyed a story in this genre as much, I was reading a Michael Crichton (I really miss Crichton) book.

Sam Dryden, a highly skilled ex-special forces soldier is taking an evening jog when he encounters eleven-year-old Rachel fleeing heavily armed men who are trying to kill her. Sam’s instincts kick in and, before he knows it, he’s helped the girl temporarily escape her pursuers.

However there’s something unusual about Rachel, and Dryden finds himself in the middle of a mystery that he needs to solve to save the girl. Rachel has no memory of her past except for the last two months, until Dryden begins to realize why she is the subject of the intensive search. She is a very special girl.

The secrets, danger, and pace don’t let up until the end, which if you are anything like me will come not long after you start reading. You literally cannot put this book down, a rare experience for me lately. The perspective fluidly switches between Rachel and Sam and their pursuers, who utilize state of the art technology in their pursuit.

Co-incidentally while I was reading “Runner” another avid reader friend told me about a great series that I must read as I was telling her about “Runner.” Turned out we were talking about books from the same author. So Lee’s trilogy “The Breach Series” “is now high on my list of must-reads.” We're both now big fans of Patrick Lee. Excuse the cliché but run to your nearest book outlet and grab this book?  Ready… set… go.

P.S. The red cover is the U.S. version. I much  prefer the Australian/UK version.  Its the reason I picked it up from my huge  pile of review books.

Book Blurb:

Sam Dryden, retired special forces, lives a quiet life in a small town on the coast of Southern California. While out on a run in the middle of the night, a young girl runs into him on the seaside boardwalk. Barefoot and terrified, she's running from a group of heavily armed men with one clear goal—to kill the fleeing child. After Dryden helps her evade her pursuers, he learns that the eleven year old, for as long as she can remember, has been kept in a secret prison by forces within the government. But she doesn't know much beyond her own name, Rachel. She only remembers the past two months of her life—and that she has a skill that makes her very dangerous to these men and the hidden men in charge.

Dryden, who lost his wife and young daughter in an accident five years ago, agrees to help her try to unravel her own past and make sense of it, to protect her from the people who are moving heaven and earth to find them both. Although Dryden is only one man, he's a man with the extraordinary skills and experience—as a Ranger, a Delta, and five years doing off-the-book black ops with an elite team. But, as he slowly begins to discover, the highly trained paramilitary forces on their heels is the only part of the danger they must face. Will Rachel's own unremembered past be the most deadly of them all?

About the author:

Patrick was born in west Michigan in 1976. His accomplishments over the next eighteen years

included waiting for Nintendo to be invented and then playing lots of Nintendo. In his twenties he sold two screenplays to movie studios in Los Angeles, but neither was produced. Patrick blames Hollywood's prejudice against rugged, Brad Pitt-aged protagonists. On the other hand, even Patrick's limited success in the movie business was a great way to avoid doing any actual work for the entirety of his twenties.

In his early thirties he started writing novels, and managed to sign with the coolest agent in the business: Janet Reid at FinePrint, who promptly sold the first two books of the Travis Chase series to HarperCollins. Patrick's relatives expressed relief that he probably wouldn't end up sleeping on their couches.