Exhausted new mother Lucy is rushing her baby to hospital. Distracted by her sick child, she loses control of the car, and hits Roger, her elderly neighbor.
Terrified of being sent to prison and separated from her infant son, she makes a split-second decision and flees the scene. Her boyfriend Ian realizes what she has done and helps her cover it up. Lucy is incredibly grateful, until she begins to understand that his kindness comes at a price.
Small favors become demands. Demands become threats.
The bargain she has made is clear. If Lucy doesn’t do everything Ian wants, he’ll go to the police and she’ll go to jail, losing access to her child.
Meanwhile, Roger’s wife Mary is circling closer to the truth and the police start asking questions. Lucy’s world has become a suffocating prison with no hope of escape.
JJ Burgess has a degree in Economics and lives in Bristol with his wife and two sons. By day he is the Director of a greetings card company, by night he writes psychological thrillers that ask questions about the world we live in. When he isn’t writing, he is usually running through the woods around Bristol, thinking of new characters and dark plots.
My thoughts: Lucy makes a split second, terrible decision with her baby son in the car. She can’t bear the thought of being separated from him ever. So she tells a lie and let’s her neighbour die on the side of the road. Unfortunately she confesses to her slimy boyfriend Ian, who turns out to be genuinely awful. He manipulates her, threatens her, abuses her and uses her fear against her.
But Mary, the kindly neighbour whose husband was Lucy’s victim, is asking questions and she doesn’t like Ian. She sees through him and wants to help Lucy.
As the story twists and turns and Lucy’s life gets worse and worse, her plans to flee with her son going nowhere, a virtual prisoner in her home, can Mary do anything to help her?
Clever, gripping and with a really unpleasant antagonist (ergh, Ian, so gross) you’re rooting for Lucy and Mary all the way through.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Julia loves donning her gardening gloves for the first blooms of spring. But when out working in the local wildflower meadow, she does not expect to find a dead body…!
Spring has come to Berrywick, and Julia Bird is determined to enjoy the fine weather. But not all life is in flower when she stumbles across the body of building expert Basil Crow next to a bright yellow digger. And Julia believes this is no accident.
Julia’s suspicions are confirmed when forensics report a brutal blow to the head. Julia soon learns from pie shop owner, and Basil’s first wife Delilah, that he was not widely liked and left behind three failed marriages. Could one of his ex-wives have wanted revenge? Julia’s friend Tabitha was in a neighbourly dispute with him after he blocked her car in her driveway. But is this motive enough to kill?
Then local choir singer Esmeralda is found dead in the woods. The police think the murders are unconnected. Unlike Basil, Esmeralda was a well-loved soul. Who would want her dead? Digging for clues, Julia realises that both victims had a link to the proposed redevelopment of the meadow Basil was found in. But would someone really kill to save it? Can Julia find the murderer before someone else is pushing up the daisies?
A page-turning and totally charming cozy mystery set in the English countryside. Fans of M.C. Beaton, Faith Martin and Betty Rowlands will love the Julia Bird Mysteries!
Katie Gayle is the writing partnership of best-selling South African writers, Kate Sidley and Gail Schimmel. Kate and Gail have, between them, written over ten books of various genres, but with Katie Gayle, they both make their debut in the cozy mystery genre. Both Gail and Kate live in Johannesburg, with husbands, children, dogs and cats. Unlike their sleuth Epiphany Bloom, neither of them have ever stolen a cat from the vet.
My thoughts: Dog walker finds body, and once again it’s Julia Bird! This time she’s stumbled across the body of local council planning officer Basil, and it turns out there are plenty of people who might have a motive to kill him, including Julia’s librarian friend Tabitha, and it isn’t for defacing library books!
As the police threaten to stop Tabitha heading to Ghana for a family wedding, Julia goes into detective mode, determined to find the culprit and prove Tabitha’s innocence.
Could the develop of a local beauty spot, popular with picnickers and dog walkers, be the reason Basil, and his colleague Esmerelda, have met sad ends in the open air? Well, the only way to find out is to read the book!
It’s another entertaining installment of Julia’s misadventures, and as well as the murders, things could be moving to the next level with Sean and there’s changes ahead for one of the charity shop crew too.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour,but all opinions remain my own.
A high-speed train. A deadly game. Three hours to save your family.
A father and daughter are caught in a deadly game of ‘I Spy’ on a train journey from Paris to London in this brand-new claustrophobic thriller from C. M. Ewan, author of The House Hunt and One Wrong Turn.
Whilst queuing for the Eurostar in Paris, Mark’s four-year-old-daughter points out a fellow traveller – a ‘Bad Man’ – during a game of ‘I Spy’. As they board the train, he realizes her description may not have been wrong, as the man now carries a different suitcase – and is sitting very near to them.
This new high-octane thriller weaves an emotional family survival plot and will leave readers shuddering.
C. M. Ewan is a pseudonym for Chris Ewan, the critically acclaimed and bestselling author of many mystery and thriller novels. Chris’s first standalone thriller, Safe House, was a bestseller in the UK and was shortlisted for the Theakston Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.
He is also the author of the thrillers One Wrong Turn, The House Hunt, The Interview, Dead Line, Dark Tides, Long Time Lost and A Window Breaks, as well as the Good Thief’s Guide series of mystery novels. The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam won the Long Barn Books First Novel Award and has been published in thirteen countries.
Chris lives with his wife and their two children in Somerset, where he writes full time.
Find Chris on twitter/X: @ChrisEwan and Instagram: @c.m.ewan
My thoughts: Travelling with children is stressful enough without one of them being kidnapped on the Eurostar between Paris and London, but that’s what happens to Mark as he returns from a solo parenting holiday with his young daughter and stepdaughter, teenager Freya.
He looks away for a few minutes and Freya’s gone. With his toddler in his arms, he can’t search as thoroughly as he’d like, but then a stranger tells him to sit down. If he does as he’s told then Freya will be fine. But if he doesn’t, she dies.
His wife Claire isn’t stuck at work dealing with IT chaos, she’s meeting someone, someone they all believed had died six years before. And the people who have Freya would like to talk to that someone. Mark has to make that happen. But with no way to talk to Claire due to the huge underwater tunnel he’s in, he’s stuck begging for the life of his teenage daughter and keeping his other daughter occupied. It might not be a long trip but for Mark it’s the longest train ride of his life.
It’s a really compelling and fascinating concept, they’re stuck on a train, there’s nowhere to go, no way to get help, but also super limited places to stash a teenage girl. Even when they arrive at St Pancras, with the millions of CCTV cameras everywhere, they still can’t rescue Freya from her captors without problems. And when you learn what it is the kidnappers want, and how totally beyond Mark and Claire’s normal life things have become, it’s jaw dropping.
Utterly gripping, very clever and filled with so many twists, you’ll be up all night!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Winter came for the pancakes. Hollowvale fed him the dead.
Dane Winter is unemployed and on a lonely road to nowhere. Riding his motorcycle west from New York, he spots a sign on the Interstate: Hollowvale, Pennsylvania. A place he hasn’t visited since his Redwind Security days. Back then, the town was known for its coal mines and the best pancakes he ever tasted.
A chance encounter with a distraught local woman pulls him into investigating her friend’s disappearance. When Jacob Rhodes’ body is found at the bottom of an abandoned mine shaft, the local authorities are quick to label it an accident. Winter isn’t convinced…
Between the death of Jacob and the unexplained illnesses spreading through the local population, it’s clear that nothing is as it seems in the town of Hollowvale. Worse still, Winter thinks it might have something to do with his time there two years earlier.
What starts as a quest for answers becomes a fight to expose a conspiracy that reaches far beyond the small town. But Winter is never one to give up, and he’s willing to burn it all down in order to uncover the horrific truth.
Sam Cogley is the author of popular action thrillers, melding suspense-laden espionage plots with the mesmerising world of high-tech innovations. He writes the high-octane Dane Winter thrillers for Boldwood Books. Sam lives in Victoria, Australia with his wife and children.
My thoughts: Stopping off for what he remembers as excellent pancakes, Dane Winter finds himself embroiled in a murder case and some dodgy dealings at the local plastic recycling plant after a teacher knocks him off his motorbike.
Her friend is missing, having gone camping in the woods, and she fears the worst. Dane offers to help her search for him, but what they find will send shockeaves through the local community when the truth is exposed.
Gripping, full of twists and turns, bent cops, evil corporations and one man with the skills to stay alive and shine a light on the misdeeds of others.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
On the 1st December 1838, all slaves were finally freed on South Africa, four years after slavery had officially been abolished.
First of December follows three people during the week of November 1838: James and Caroline Kendrick, and an unnamed runaway slave making her way to Cape Town along the coast, desperate to reach it by midnight on the 31st November.
Caroline is trapped in an unhappy marriage, in a place she hates, always longing to go home; bored, lonely, without purpose or any sense of belonging. James is forever on the move, desperate for success after a lifetime of failure and humiliation, seeing South Africa as his last great hope, preparing for the climax of his work, a bank to serve the city. Each resents the other, feeling trapped and unloved, yet with a wish for it all to change.
Meanwhile the slave-apprentice, fearful of being caught before the deadline, meets others living on the coast, at the edge of society, yet always remaining alone, without any clear idea of what to expect in Cape Town.
My thoughts: This is a slender book that packs some serious thought-provoking heft. As the true freedom for South Africa’s slaves approaches, the British settlers fuss and worry about whether they will be murdered in their beds (maybe you should have treated your slaves better) when the 1st of December arrives.
Caroline is miserable, her husband never comes anywhere near her after her battle with typhus, she doesn’t really have any friends and she misses her family back home. Lonely and frustrated, she relies on Leah, her maid, who she thinks will stay with her once she is free.
Caroline’s husband James is worrying about his standing, he doesn’t think much about his wife and her feelings, scared that his business plans will all fall apart, that his bank will fail and he will be forced to return to England in disgrace. He’s broke and keeping it hidden is causing terrible stress.
The unnamed slave heading for the city, looking for a new start, a fresh page, the safety of anonymity. She’s terrified as she travels alone through potentially dangerous places, unsure of what she will find in the city, but certain anything has to be better than where she’s left.
All three characters stand on the cusp of huge changes, in their personal lives, in their society and country. The British like James and Caroline might have to adjust to life without staff, or at least to paying their servants.
But the freed slaves, embodied by the Everygirl making her way to the city, face uncertainty too. Will they be able to find paid employment, will they be able to find safe places to live, feed their families, reunite with their families who have been sent elsewhere?
Thoughtful and quietly moving, the shift comes quietly with the new day, not with the violence the military believes they will have to quell, but with a slow understanding that things will be, must be, different from now on.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
If this whole saga was a fight between good and evil, then who had won?
As far as Miriam could work out, neither good nor evil had triumphed yet. Now she was having to confront the grim consequences of Will’s behaviour, and she was mortally afraid. Maybe he and his darkness would win after all.
The tragic suicide of a young student starts a shocking chain of events for William Marshall, his wife Miriam and their son, Ollie. As Will descends into madness, a ghostly presence appears in their old house to protect Ollie. However, when two strangers threaten Miriam and an attempt is made to snatch Ollie, mother and son are forced to flee.
Amidst ever-present danger, they shake off pursuers to seek sanctuary in Rock House in Dorset, where they meet Caitlin and her friends. Twenty years have passed since Charlie Bond helped Caitlin solve the mystery of her mother’s death. Now, it is the turn of Charlie’s sidekick, Sam Haskell, to investigate a mysterious cult and unmask a killer.
Gill Calvin Thomas has retired from academic life and lives with her husband in Swanage, Dorset. She finds inspiration while walking in the Isle of Purbeck. Here, she is able to escape into a world of her own making, getting to know her characters, whilst she plans the next twist and turn of the plot.
As writing has become a major part of Gill’s life, she has withdrawn from taking a leading role in many community volunteer activities, although she has retained her interest in local and national politics. A lifelong feminist, Gill likes nothing better than a spirited debate on the issues of the day with family and friends. As her writing career develops, she hopes to explore those issues in her stories.
My thoughts: Worried about the changes in her husband, Miriam and her son Ollie flee their home for the safety of her cousin’s home in Dorset. Unfortunately the other members of the cult her husband seems to have founded are still after Ollie.
Especially the rather malevolent Sister Olive, who has plans of her own for William, her own husband Leo and young Ollie.
But Miriam has some new friends who want to help her stay safe and Sam goes undercover in the group to try to discern their plans and find the missing William.
Twisted and strange, this cult has deviated from their original beliefs and now Olive has seized control, and no one feels safe.
The story is clever and full of twists and turns as Miriam and Ollie try to stay ahead of this dangerous woman.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own
From two-million-selling author Steena Holmes, nine dark and gripping stories featuring Detective Meri Amber.
Nine missing girls. Nine cases the world wants to forget. One detective who never will.
Each file is someone’s daughter. Someone’s sister. And if Meri Amber can’t bring them home, she’ll make sure their stories end with justice.
As the FBI’s leading child abduction specialist, Meri has spent her career chasing the vanished – from Minnesota to Montana, from abandoned barns to dark cellars that still echo with screams. But every case cuts deeper than the last.
“I’m Detective Meri Amber. I’ve been searching for my sister for twenty years. Every missing girl is a mirror. Every scream behind a wall could be hers. I’ll never stop looking. These are the stories of the girls I’ve found, the truths I’ve uncovered, and the cracks in my own past I can’t seem to seal.”
From the horrifying secrets of the House of Dolls, to a macabre twelfth birthday party, to the sinister truths buried in the Widow’s Barn: delve into nine intriguing mysteries which will chill you to the bone.
NINE NAIL-BITING STORIES FULL OF SHOCKING TWISTS BY A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR.
With 2 million copies of her titles sold world wide, Steena Holmes was named in the Top 20 Women Author to read in 2015 by Good Housekeeping. She continues to write books that deal with issues that touch parents heart, whether it is through her contemporary fiction or psychological suspense novels.
My thoughts: Over nine cases Meri Amber looks for missing girls, girls like her sister, who she still wants to find, even if she can’t save her. She’s building a case, missing girl by missing girl, tracking evil across the country.
Sometimes she can help a vulnerable young woman, sometimes all she can do is ensure they aren’t forgotten, that any family they might have gets answers.
The stories are shocking, dark and sinister, there’s no happy endings here. There’s a narrative running through the nine stories, as Meri and her colleagues try to get justice, and stop the men who exploit, kidnap, abuse and kill.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
When she was five, her mother ran – with Steph and her younger sister in tow – from an abusive husband into the arms of a small Cherokee community, where she hoped they might finally belong. But Steph soon sets her sights as far away as she can get, vowing that she will let nothing interfere with her dream to become an astronaut, and ultimately, to go to the moon.
In Steph’s certainty that only her ambition can save her, she will stretch her bonds with the three women who know and love her most dearly: her younger sister Kayla, an artist whose determination to appear good takes her life to unexpected places; her college girlfriend Della, who strives to reclaim her identity as an adult after being removed from her family as a young girl through a challenge to the Indian Child Welfare Act; and her mother Hannah, who has held up her family’s history as a beacon of inspiration to her kids, all the while keeping the truth about her own past a secret.
Told through these women’s interwoven lives, and spanning three decades and several continents, To the Moon and Back is an astounding and expansive coming-of-age novel of mothers and daughters, love and sacrifice, alienation and heartbreak, terror and wonder. At its core, it is the story of the extraordinary lengths one woman will go to find a little space for herself.
Eliana Ramage holds an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She has received residencies and fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, Lambda Literary, Tin House, and Vermont Studio Center. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, she lives in Nashville with her family. To the Moon and Back is her first novel.
My thoughts: This is very good, a beautifully written, engaging, intelligent story about family, as complicated as that can be, told through the eyes of two sisters – Steph and Kayla, and their mother Hannah. As well as Steph’s friend Della.
Their lives haven’t been easy, as members of the Cherokee, they live with the memories of the trauma their people suffered over generations. And they have their own too.
Hannah fled her abusive husband with her daughters, from Texas to Oklahoma, hoping to give them more than she had. Her parents threw her out when she was pregnant, and she does her best to love and support them, struggling to express that all the while.
Steph wants to be an astronaut, it’s her lifelong, obsessive, dream. It takes over at times and damages her relationships with her family, her friends and her girlfriend Della. She works diligently at achieving her goal, studying hard, applying for fellowships and eventually going to Hawaii to live in a simulated environment in an experiment.
But her interpersonal relationships are a mess, she’s bad at expressing her emotions, bad at communicating. Her obsessive plan to go to space overwhelms everything.
I found the relationship dynamics between the characters fascinating, they felt like real people – messy and complicated. The writing is confident and engaging. I don’t know a lot about Native Americans, living in the UK, they’re not something that we’re taught about, so a lot of those parts were interesting too.
It’s a really enjoyable book, and for a debut, is so confident and well written, I can’t wait to see what Ramage writes next.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
To celebrate the longlist (see image above) the books are being reviewed on book blogs and social media. To follow along search #SUDTP26
Worth £20,000, this global accolade recognises exceptional literary talent aged 39 or under, celebrating the international world of fiction in all its forms including poetry, novels, short stories and drama. The prize is named after the Swansea-born writer Dylan Thomas and celebrates his 39 years of creativity and productivity. The prize invokes his memory to support the writers of today, nurture the talents of tomorrow, and celebrate international literary excellence.
With an average age of 32, and comprising seven novels, three poetry collections, and two short story collections, the longlist is:
– Harriet Armstrong, To Rest Our Minds and Bodies (Les Fugitives) – novel
– Isabelle Baafi, Chaotic Good (Faber) – poetry
– Colwill Brown, We Pretty Pieces of Flesh (Chatto & Windus, Vintage) – novel
– Sasha Debevec-McKenney, Joy Is My Middle Name (Fitzcarraldo Editions) – poetry
– Suzannah V. Evans, Under the Blue (Bloomsbury Poetry) – poetry
– Vanessa Santos, Make a Home of Me (Dead Ink Books) – short stories
I read Gunk by Saba Sams, find my thoughts below ⬇️
From the award-winning author of the smash hit Send Nudes: an electrifying debut exploring love and desire, chaos and control – and family in all its forms
Jules has been divorced from her ex-husband Leon for five years, but she still works alongside him at Gunk, the grotty student nightclub he owns in central Brighton. She spends her nights serving shots and watching, from behind the bar, as Leon flirts with students on the dancefloor. In the early hours of the morning, she paces home to sleep.
But then Leon hires nineteen-year-old Nim to work the bar with Jules – Nim, with her shaved head and steady pour, her disarming sweetness and sudden distance – and Jules finds herself jolted awake. When Nim discovers she’s pregnant, Jules agrees to help. As the months pass, and the relationship between the two women grows increasingly intimate and perplexing, it emerges that Nim has her own unexpected gifts to give.
Now, alone in her small flat, Jules is holding a baby, just twenty-four-hours old, who still smells of Nim. But no one knows where Nim is, or if she’s coming back. What could the future – for Jules, Nim, and this unnamed baby – possibly look like?
Raw, exhilarating, tender and wise, Gunk is an electrifying debut novel exploring love and desire, safety and destruction, chaos and control – and family in all its forms.
My thoughts: Jules has been divorced for five years but still works in her husband’s student filled night club Gunk. When he hires Nim to work behind the bar, she and Jules become friends, and possibly more as Jules finds herself drawn to Nim.
When Nim finds she’s pregnant, she offers the baby to Jules, who has wanted to be a mother, but never managed to get pregnant. Nim moves in with her, and the two women share her flat while waiting for the baby to arrive.
Neither knows how the birth will change things, whether Nim will stay or how they will cope. Can their relationship, whatever that might be, survive the changes coming?
Jules is a complicated character, she’s basically stuck in a rut in her life, still in the same job, still looking after her ex-husband, not having started a new relationship or really moved on in her life in a long time. Nim’s arrival shakes things up, although there’s a big age difference and Nim doesn’t talk about her life before.
The relationship between them is quite strange, they share a bed as there’s only one in the flat, Jules is a caretaker, she wants to look after Nim, even though Nim finds it too much.
It’s an interesting book, even if I never felt I really knew the characters, even Jules, the narrator, her habit of being arms length with her family felt like she was written to keep the reader at a distance too.
The longlisted titles will now be whittled down to a six strong shortlist by an impressive panel of judges chaired by Irenosen Okojie MBE, award-winning Nigerian British author of Curandera, Butterfly Fish, SpeakGigantular and Nudibranch, and former Women’s Prize for Fiction judge, who is joined by: Joe Dunthorne, award-winningSwansea-bornpoet and novelist; Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe, poet, pacifist and fabulist; Prajwal Parajuly, multi-award nominatedauthor of The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee; Eley Williams, acclaimedauthor and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Last year’s prize was awarded to Palestinian writer Yasmin Zaher for her novel The Coin, and previous winners include Caleb Azumah Nelson, Arinze Ifeakandu, Patricia Lockwood, Max Porter, Raven Leilani, Bryan Washington, Fiona McFarlane, and Kayo Chingonyi.
The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize shortlist will be unveiled on Thursday 19 March, followed by a shortlist celebration event in London (13 May), with the winner revealed on International Dylan Thomas Day (14 May) at an evening ceremony in Swansea.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
Expert on body language and memory, and consultant to the Oslo Police, psychologist Kari Voss sleepwalks through her days, and, by night, continues the devastating search for her young son, who disappeared on his birthday, seven years earlier.
Still grieving for her dead husband, and trying to pull together the pieces of her life, she is thrust into a shocking local investigation, when two teenage girls are violently murdered in a family summer home in the nearby village of Son. When a friend of the victims is charged with the barbaric killings, it seems the case is closed, but Kari is not convinced. Using her skills and working on instinct, she conducts her own enquiries, leading her to multiple suspects, including people who knew the dead girls well…
With the help of Chief Constable Ramona Norum, she discovers that no one – including the victims – are what they seem. And that there is a dark secret at the heart of Son village that could have implications not just for her own son’s disappearance, but Kari’s own life, too…
Known as the Queen of French Noir, Johana Gustawsson is one of France’s most highly regarded, award-winning authors, recipient of the prestigious Cultura Ligue de l`Imaginaire Award for her historical thriller Yule Island. Number-one bestselling books include Block 46, Keeper, Blood Song and The Bleeding. Johana lives in Sweden with her family.
A former journalist, Thomas Enger is the number-one bestselling author of the Henning Juul series and, with co-author Jørn Lier Horst, the international bestselling Blix & Ramm series. One of the biggest proponents of the Nordic Noir genre, his books have been translated into twenty-eight languages. He lives in Oslo.
My thoughts: I knew from the authors that this was going to be good, gripping and shocking. There are lots of different sons in this book, from Kari’s, missing for seven years, to the suspect, whose parents don’t seem remotely interested in him, as friends and other connected people.
The town where two teenage girls are brutally murdered is called Son, it’s quiet, not many full time residents, and they’re planning a Halloween party, but someone decides to stop them from ever having a good time. The police arrest an acquaintance of theirs, who admits to being in the house, having been invited to bring over some drugs, but says he’s innocent. The detectives don’t believe him. Kari does. She analyses his body language, those nonverbal clues that say a lot more than words.
So she starts digging. Digging into the lives of the two victims, into the lives of their families and friends. She learns a lot of secrets – affairs, money troubles, blackmail. But are any of them bad enough to kill over? Or is it something she can’t even yet guess at?
This is a real page turner – each revelation and twist kept me hooked. Kari is an interesting character, she goes against her police colleagues, determined that the science proves she’s right and that somewhere in all the evidence she uncovers, will be the answer, the reason why two young women were brutally killed. And in helping the suspect, her lost son’s best friend, maybe she can find some peace too.
*this is a repost from last year’s hardback tour, when I was provided with a copy of the book, but as always, all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 