![]() ![]() When he introduces her to the older and debonair Patrick she is impressed, he is knowledgeable and a real grown up and shows her a life previously hidden from her traditional and small upbringing. ![]() When he shows an interest in her she is both flattered and thrilled and they forge a friendship and begin to spend time together. Through her letter we discover that teenage Marion had had a crush on Tom for some time, he was her best friend’s older brother and she had admired him from afar and spent many hours day dreaming about him. Patrick has had a catastrophic stroke and has come to live with Marion and Tom and it is this event which encourages to write down her memories, thoughts and feelings. The book opens in the present day, with Marion writing a letter about Tom, her relationship with him and by extension her relationship with Patrick. Set in both 1950s Brighton and the (almost) present day, this book examines what happens when a gay man is unable to be open about his sexuality, choosing instead to marry a woman to maintain a veneer of respectability. ![]() Tom, Patrick and Marion meet in 1950s Brighton and their lives collide with irreversible and terrible consequences. My Policeman by Bethan Roberts is a pretty wonderful and heart-wrenching tale of a love triangle between three people. ![]()
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![]() ![]() The majority of the stories take place during this new British scientific revolution – spurred by Charles Babbage’s invention of the Difference Engine, an invention that in this reality he never actually built. Years before the story takes place, political Luddites opposed new technologies, while the Industrial Radical Party embraced the new analytical machines with all their applications. In Britain, intellectual savants – backed by scientific achievement instead of breeding – have become the new aristocracy. However, I was soon swept away by the characters and their fantastic world of invention and intrigue. ![]() All I knew was that it was a classic and had something to do with steampunk. When I first delved into The Difference Engine, by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, I had no previous experience reading the work of either author. “ The book does prominently feature three of the foundational touchstones of all things steampunk: giant airships, brass computers, and kinky feminine underwear.” ~ Bruce Sterling, Afterword, The Difference Engine ![]() ![]() ![]() Caught between a passle of dead gods and monsters, hexes galore, Rook’s witchery, and the ruthless calculations of his own masters, Morrow’s only real hope of survival lies with the man without whom Rook cannot succeed: Chess Pargeter himself. But Rook, driven by desperation, has a mind to shatter the natural law that prevents hexes from cooperation, and change the face of the world a plan sealed by unholy marriage oath with the Mayan Aztec goddess Ixchel, mother of all hanged men, who has chosen Rook to raise her bloodthirsty pantheon from its collective grave through sacrifice, destruction, and apotheosis. Because magicians, despite their awesome powers, have never been more than a footnote in history: cursed by their own gift to flower in pain and misery, then feed vampirically on each other never able to join forces, feared and hated by all. ![]() Morrow’s task: get close enough to map the extent of Rook’s power, then bring that knowledge back to help Professor Joachim Asbury unlock the secrets of magic itself. ![]() Two years after the Civil War, Pinkerton agent Ed Morrow has gone undercover with one of the weird West’s most dangerous outlaw gangs the troop led by Reverend Asher Rook, ex Confederate chaplain turned hexslinger and his notorious lieutenant and lover Chess Pargeter. ![]() |