The competition has now closed. Congratulations to our 5 lucky winners: Mel Butcher, Tina Parnell, Maxine Grant, Shelia Goss and Jesica Sharon. We will email you all to confirm details.
Thanks to everyone for taking the time to enter. We hope you enjoyed the excellent interview that Dorothy gave us too. Coming next is an interview with Norwegian crime writer, Jo Nesbo, and possibly a little book giveaway too…
****
Today we have the pleasure of welcoming bestselling author Dorothy Koomson to the BookRabbit warren. Dorothy’s lastest book, The Ice Cream Girls has just been released and already the reviews are excellent. You can find out more about Dorothy in her author profile, and enjoy this exclusive interview below. We also have 5 copies of The Ice Cream Girls to give away, courtesy of Sphere/Little, Brown. So make sure you enter the competition at the end of the interview!
BR: Welcome to BookRabbit Dorothy, and congratulations on a fantastic book – we finished it last night and thought it was a cracking read. Can you tell us how you would sum up your latest novel, The Ice Cream Girls?
Dorothy: I’m so glad you liked the book. The Ice Cream Girls is an emotional, intriguing look at some challenging subjects with a murder mystery subplot.
BR: The book deals with some incredibly dark issues including domestic violence, rape, mental cruelty – what compelled you to tackle such difficult and emotive subjects?
Dorothy: One of the best things about being a writer is having the chance to immerse myself in an emotionally difficult or challenging subject. With The Ice Cream Girls, I originally had an idea about two people who were accused of a crime but one went to prison and the other ‘got away with it’. They both claim to be innocent so who is telling the truth? As I thought the idea through, more elements of the story – such as domestic violence and the abuse of trust by an adult – cropped up.
My other books – to some extent – all deal with difficult subjects. Marshmallows For Breakfast, for example, dealt with alcoholism, and Goodnight, Beautiful dealt with mental illness.
Continue Reading »
It’s a great week for new book releases with all sorts of exciting titles coming out. Today alone there’s the gripping new page-turner from Linwood Barclay, Fear the Worst (his No Time for Goodbye was a Richard and Judy hit); The Ice Cream Girls by Dorothy Koomson (read a review here, we’re interviewing her next Tuesday); The Hopeless Life of Charlie Summers by master storyteller Paul Torday and The Other Family, Joanna Trollope’s latest, and sure to be a bestseller. And as if that wasn’t enough, here’s what we have on the go at BookRabbit HQ…
Simon I’m reading Under the Dome by Stephen King, it’s an epic 900-page hard back and it weighs a ton! It’s trashy and I’m hooked, I used to read Stephen King books when I was a teenager so it’s a bit weird revisiting his stuff, and I feel it’s a bit ‘low-brow’ but I haven’t had the patience to tackle a book as big as this before so I thought I’d give it a go. In typical Stephen King style it’s about a small American town which is suddenly and literally cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible and mysterious barrier. On ‘Dome Day’, as it’s called, planes and birds crash into the barrier and people and animals in the place where the dome descends have bits chopped off! It’s a page turner though and I’m enjoying it so far.
Continue Reading »
The competition is now closed. The 5 lucky winners of Jason’s latest book, Atomic Swarm, are: Jordan Duncan, Kimberley Stone, Sonia, Mar Dixon and Tozol. Congratulations to you all, we’ll email you for your addresses and get your books in the post. Thank you everyone for taking the time to enter and send us your brilliant gadget ideas. You never know, you might even see one appear in Jason’s next book… patent alert! patent alert! As always, there will be more interviews and competitions coming up soon. Have a good week!
****
Interviewing Jason Bradbury – presenter of The Gadget Show on Five and author of the Dot Robot series – could be likened to downing an entire packet of extra strong mints in one sitting. He is a blast. A totally wired, fizzing, buzzing ball of infectious energy with plenty to say and not much time to say it in (he’s a busy, busy guy!).
We managed to get him to sit down for long enough to chat to him about his latest book in the series, Atomic Swarm, as well as… hoverboards, invisible coats, robots (naturally) and even asteroid mining in China (yes, really). If you’d like to hear all about it, plus more on his latest book, his hugely popular roadshows and his favourite ereader (who better to run us through them, than the UK’s leading gadget guru?) then read on. And there’s a fantastic competition at the end of the interview to win one of 5 copies of Jason’s latest book Atomic Swarm.
Continue Reading »
This competition is now closed. 10 lucky winners this time! Rebecca Ball, Beverley S, Laura Driver, Steve Hitchman, Barbara Newman, Zoe Ashpole, Bella Smyth, Lora McGinlay, Anne Cater and Catherine Miller– well done to all of you, we will contact you by email shortly.
A massive thanks to everyone for taking part, we are feeling a warm glow down here in the Warren! Don’t forget there’s still time to enter our The Last Station competition
****
Stupid Cupid not coming knocking yet? Fear not, we have transformed into Romance HQ down here in the burrow this week thanks to those love gods and goddesses at Pan Macmillan, who have given us 10 copies of the heart stopping book, Love Letters of Great Men and Women to give away.
The competition is now closed. The lucky winner pulled from the hat 
is… Rebecca Ball! Congratulations Rebecca we hope you enjoy the book, and of course the luxury chocolate egg. Somehow we don’t think it’s going to last until Easter! Thank you all for entering, it was one of our most successful competitions to date, so thank you. More book giveaways and competitions next week. Have a great weekend everyone x
The Last Station is the critically acclaimed film based on the book of the same name by Jay Parini (read a review of the book here). Starring Christopher Plummer, Helen Mirren, James McAvoy and Paul Giamatti, The Last Station is a love story set during the last year of the life and turbulent marriage of the great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy and his wife the Countess Sofya.
The film has been nominated for two Golden Globes and is in cinemas on 19 February. To celebrate the release we’ve teamed up with Optimum Releasing and Hotel Chocolat to offer 1 lucky BookRabbiter the chance to win a copy of Jay Parini’s novel and, because it’s nearly Valentine’s Day… a luxury chocolate egg. Random? Slightly. Delicious? Exactly.
Continue Reading »
