Half Moon Investigations by Eoin Colfer - A Detective’s Story

Eoin Colfer is an Irish author and comedian. He is most famous as the creator of the Artemis Fowl series, but he has also achieved success with other books.

Half Moon Investigations is a children's crime/comedy drama television series created by the BBC and based upon the novel of the same name by the author Eoin Colfer. It frames out a schoolboy, Fletcher Moon who spends much of his spare time solving petty crimes around his school, St. Jeromes. He is also known around school as "Half-Moon" due to his size, has qualified as a private eye after taking Internet classes. He graduated top of his class and received a gold plated detective's shield for his effort. Armed with his prized shield, Fletcher takes on various petty crime cases in his school.

Things were going well, until April Devereux hires him to find a lock of celebrity hair that was stolen from her playhouse. While working on the case, Fletcher gets attacked, and then accused of being an arsonist. One thing leads to another, and he finds himself holding up with Red Sharkey -- son of a local gangster and well-known for his family's criminal reputation. Fletcher Moon knows that this still does not solve the mysteries that included his assault.

Meanwhile, he finds that the link between the crimes was the school, Saint Jerome's. Having looked at information held within Saint Jerome's, it turns out that the affected victims were directly and indirectly linked to the school talent show. Now there is only a short period of time to clear their names and to find the guilty party. Will the thief just be one of the usual suspects? Or Will Fletcher will be declared to be a guilty one?

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Dead Man's Footsteps by Peter James - A Master Piece

Peter James, one of most successful authors in unleashing thriller novels, has released yet another crime novel -- Dead Man's Footsteps, the fourth Roy Grace thriller.

Superintendent Roy Grace is the protagonist, the story takes precedence in Dead Man’s Footsteps, with Roy's personal life taking a back seat apart from a few hints that the relationship with Cleo might be on the way out. Brighton is the base, but this time the action moves around the world. At the start of the book, the body of a young woman, long dead, is found in a storm drain in Brighton. Roy is one of the team called in to investigate, and finds himself increasingly tense as the circumstances seem to fit rather too well to the body being that of his long-missing wife, Sandy.

The second tale is about a failed businessman and perennial loser, Ronnie Wilson is in New York on a last ditch mission to secure funding for his latest venture. It’s 11th September 2001 and he’s heading to an early appointment in the South Tower of the World Trade Center. The third tale is about Abby Dawson who has just returned home after some years in Australia. She has moved into a luxury flat in Brighton in dread of an unknown threat. She's obsessively careful about making any sort of move into the outside world, but she doesn't think to check the lift. Its cable breaks, and she's trapped - the alarm doesn't work either.

Now the final tale is occurring across the other side of the world, in Australia, where another woman’s body is found decomposing in the boot of a car resting on the bottom of a river near Melbourne. She was apparently strangled. As this brilliantly complex tale moves between Brighton, New York and Melbourne, the threads binding these tales together become more and more tightly woven. Now it’s up to Roy to solve the mysteries.

Peter James is masterly, not just at keeping all the pages to move in mystery path, but also links his description to the World Trade Center tragedy, involving the reader in those events and their aftermath in a realistic and exciting way, as befits that awful day.

Until it's Over by Nicci French - Suspense floats in Air

The team of Nicci Gerard and Sean French provide a predictably involving and tense London-based thriller in “Until its over”. Nicci Gerrard was born in June 1958 in Worcestershire. After graduating with a first class honors degree in English Literature from Oxford University she began her first job -- working with emotionally disturbed children in Sheffield. Sean French was born in May 1959 in Bristol, to a British father and Swedish mother. He studied English Literature at Oxford University at the same time as Nicci, also graduating with a first class degree, but their paths didn't cross until 1990.

The first half is told from the point of view of Astrid Bell, a Young and athletic, London cycle courier who can't decide what to do with her life since graduating from university, so she has become a bike messenger until she can decide. She's happy in her lifestyle, living in a shared house with Pippa, an old university friend. Miles, the owner of the house and assorted other tenants. The action begins when Astrid has an accident on her bike, caused by an inattentive neighbour opening her car door without looking.

Shaken but not seriously hurt, Astrid is looked after by her housemates -- but shocked to discover later that the woman who caused the accident has been found dead by the dustbins outside her house. Then a few days later, Astrid is asked to pick up a package from a millionaire's house in Hampstead, only to find that the woman from whom she's to collect the packet is lying dead in the hallway. For the police it's more than coincidence.

At the same time, the previously companionable atmosphere in the shared house has been shattered by Miles's girlfriend Leah, who has induced him to evict the tenants so that she and Miles can live alone in the house. Tensions mount, and enmities are increasingly brought into the open as the tenants negotiate with Miles for money to move out, while at the same time needing the emotional security of their home base. The story moves fast, climaxing in a third death which directly affects the whole cast of characters. However, as the pages turn, the tension begins to build again, particularly in the last couple of chapters.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - A Spooky Story

Sarah Waters was born in Wales in 1966. She has a PhD in English Literature and has taught at the Open University. She has been shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange prizes and three of her four novels have been adapted for television.

The Little Stranger, by Sarah is a pondering and evocative narrative set in Warwickshire, England in the late 1940s. Privation still continues even after World War II. Dr. Faraday is a country physician, inclined to all manner of disorders among the local, mostly working-class or poor residents. There had always been estates in Warwickshire. Hundreds Hall is a house that stands on the edge of financial ruin. Dr. Faraday visited once as a boy, when his mother worked as a nanny at the grand home of the Colonel and Mrs. Ayres.

Thirty years later, the Colonel is long dead. His son Roderick, who was severely injured during the war, is trying to manage the remaining farm and house. His sister Caroline had come back to take care of Roderick and their mother. Together they are holding on, with just enough to live on and afford one daytime housekeeper and one live-in maid.

One day, Dr. Faraday is called to the Hundreds Hall to cure the maid, Betty, a 14 yr old girl. He finds Betty only pretending to be ill. she is unhappy since she feels there is "something bad" in the house. Dr. Faraday offers to treat Roderick's injuries and begins to make regular trips to the Hundreds, and becomes a friend of the Ayres'. When a new family moves into a nearby estate, Mrs. Ayres decides to have a party to welcome them. The house is moving with great anticipation, but the night ends in tragedy.

From this stage, mysterious things happen at the hall, affecting one by one, becoming spookier as time goes on. Betty is convinced the house is haunted, perhaps by the spirit of the first Ayres child, a daughter who died in childhood of diphtheria; Roderick feels there is something in the house that he must be kept away and Caroline feels the house itself to be spookier. Dr. Faraday, irritated with all the superstition, tries to demonstrate there are rational explanations for everything. He thinks that it is a kind of emotion or rumor started by Betty and spread among the Ayres.

Inspite of Hopeless efforts, he shares the whole events to a fellow physician, who claims some kind of psychic force constituted in those living there. Is the house haunted? If so, Why and by What? These queries are raised to the reader when they are nearer to the conclusion of the story.

[ The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters ]

Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett - The Wizards’ Play

Terry Pratchett is one of the most popular authors writing today. He lives behind a keyboard in Wiltshire. He is the author of the phenomenally successful Discworld series and his trilogy for young readers, The Bromeliad, is scheduled to be adapted into a spectacular animated movie.

Unseen Academicals is a forthcoming novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. The story unbinds about the football game that has come to the ancient city of Ankh-Morpork. It is not football with the old fashioned, grubby pushing and shoving, but the new, fast football with pointy hats for goalposts and balls that go going when you drop them. The story will introduce several new characters, including a street urchin with a wonderful talent for kicking a tin can, a maker of jolly good pies, a dim but beautiful young woman, who might just turn out to be the greatest fashion model there has ever been, and the mysterious Mr. Nutt.

The main theme of the story is about the football match in which wizards of Unseen University have to win without using magic, so they're in the mood for trying everything else. The prospect of the Big Match draws in a street urchin who seems to be a poor lady, making good pies and the mysterious Mr. Nutt who is unknown to the wizard team. Even he himself doesn’t know whether he can play football well. This is how the story moves out. Did wizards win the match? If so did they win it without using the magic? And what sort of contribution is been made by the Urchin and Mr. Nutt? These are the queries that arise in the minds of the readers when they are at the middle of the story.

[ Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett ]

The Host by Stephenie Meyer - A Sci-fi, Romantic, Thrilling Story

Stephenie Meyer is an American author, known for her vampire romance series Twilight.

The Host is a Sci-fi romantic novel by Stephenie Meyer. The novel introduces an alien race, called souls, who take over Earth and its inhabitants. The book describes one soul's predicament when the mind of the host body refuses to cooperate with her takeover.

The Host is about a species invading earth and taking over the minds of their hosts-the humans. This book brings out the situation that arises if these little 'souls' are inserted into their hosts and the humans essentially are supposed to be gone although the soul has their memories. The story is all about such two combinations of a human and a soul i.e. Melanie-the human and the Wanderer-the soul. Melanie is one of few "wild" humans - rebels who have evaded the alien souls that have taken over the Earth. With her younger brother Jamie and the man she loves -- Jared Howe, She is on the run from souls who hunt down host bodies for use.

Souls are creatures that rely upon host bodies to survive. After insertion, they erase any mental presence of the being there prior and establish a claim over the body and mind. Earth is Wanderer's ninth planet, and Melanie is her ninth host body. The Wanderer goes crazy at first trying to get rid of her but eventually they find they like each other and develop a bond together. Wanderer started having more and more of Melanie's memories and feelings and they came to a sort of understanding with each other. She wanted her to feel all of the feelings and emotions she did so that she would not be destroyed.

When Melanie wants to know where the people she left behind are and when she and the Wanderer set out to do just that, the story becomes a struggle for survival and learning to live in a different world. Did the souls continued to occupy the minds and bodies of the humans? Was there any solution given by Melanie and the Wanderer?

In simple terms, the story delivers a gripping story of love and betrayal in a future with the fate of humanity at stake for the readers.

[ The host by Stephenie Meyer ]

D-Day: The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor - The Dark Historical Anecdote

Antony Beevor is the renowned author of Stalingrad, which won the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Wolfson Prize for History and the Hawthornden Prize for Literature, and Berlin, which received the first Longman-History Today Trustees’ Award. Antony is also known as a master of narrative, expertly blending the grand sweep with the telling anecdote.

“D-Day: The Battle for Normandy” is another historical narration of the War by the author Antony where the Normandy Landings that took place on D-Day involved by far the largest invasion fleet ever is been brought out in a dramatic, exciting, well-paced and lucid manner. The very scale of the undertaking and the meticulous planning were unparallel, but although the beachheads were established, it soon became clear that the next stage of the battle would be far more difficult than anyone had imagined.

The thick hedgerows of Normandy were ideal for the defender and the Germans, especially the Waffen-SS divisions, fought with cunning and a desperate ferocity. Making use of overlooked or new material from over thirty archives in half a dozen countries, Beevor shows how the British, Canadian and American forces became involved in battles whose savagery was often comparable to the Eastern Front. Casualties began to mount and so did the tension between the principal commanders on both sides. French civilians, caught in the middle of these battlefields or under Allied bombing, endured terrible suffering. Even the joys of Liberation had their darker side. The war in northern France marked not just a generation but the whole of the post-war world, profoundly influencing relations between America and Europe.

In this book, the writer’s gripping narrative conveys the true experience of war. He brings back the true story of that war and also reveals the heroism of the soldiers who fought bravely to save their country from the invasion.

[ D-Day The Battle for Normandy by Antony Beevor ]