Book Club

BOOK OF THE WEEK with Linda Jennings. Cometh the Hour (The Clifton Chronicles), Jeffrey Archer, ISBN 978-1447252191 (Macmillan) BD11.300 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members

Cometh the Hour opens with the reading of a suicide note, which has devastating consequences for Harry and Emma Clifton, Giles Barrington and Lady Virginia.

Giles must decide if he should withdraw from politics and try to rescue Karin, the woman he loves, from behind the Iron Curtain. But is Karin truly in love with him, or is she a spy?

Lady Virginia is facing bankruptcy, and can see no way out of her financial problems, until she is introduced to the hapless Cyrus T Grant III from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, who’s in England to see his horse run at Royal Ascot.

Sebastian Clifton is now the chief executive of Farthings Bank and a workaholic, whose personal life is thrown into disarray when he falls for Priya, a beautiful Indian girl. But her parents have already chosen the man she is going to marry. Meanwhile, Sebastian’s rivals Adrian Sloane and Desmond Mellor are still plotting to bring him and his chairman Hakim Bishara down, so they can take over Farthings.

Harry Clifton remains determined to get Anatoly Babakov released from a gulag in Siberia, following the international success of his acclaimed book, Uncle Joe. But then something unexpected happens that none of them could have anticipated.

Cometh the Hour is the penultimate book in the Clifton Chronicles and, like the five previous novels – all of which went to number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list – showcases Jeffrey Archer’s extraordinary storytelling with his trademark twists.

Read it now in paperback
The Buffer Girls, Margaret Dickinson, ISBN 978-1447290896, (Pan) BD3.900 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members It is 1920 in the Derbyshire dales. The Ryan family is adjusting to life now that the war is over. Walter has returned home a broken man and so it falls to his son and daughter, Josh and Emily, to keep the family candle-making business going.

The Ryan children grew up with Amy Clark, daughter of the village blacksmith, and Thomas ‘Trip’ Trippett, whose father owns a cutlery business in Sheffield.

Romance blossoms for Josh and Amy while Emily falls in love with Trip, but she is unsure if the feeling is mutual.

Martha Ryan is fiercely ambitious for her son and so she uproots her family to Sheffield, but all Josh wants is to continue the family business and marry Amy.

As the Ryans do their best to adapt to city life, their friendly neighbour, Lizzie, helps Emily find employment as a Buffer Girl, polishing cutlery at a local factory.

It turns out that it is Emily who is best equipped to forge a career but, as time goes on, problems and even dangers arise that the Ryan family could not possibly have foreseen.

My favourite read of the week
The Unmumsy Mum, The Unmumsy Mum Blogger, ISBN 978-0593076446 (Bantam Press) BD7.300 for Gulf Weekly Book Club members The Unmumsy Mum writes candidly about motherhood like it really is: the messy, maddening, hilarious reality, how there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach and how it is sometimes absolutely fine to not know what you are doing.

The lessons she’s learned while grappling with two small boys – from birth to teething, 3am night feeds to toddler tantrums, soft play to toilet training – will have you roaring with laughter and taking great comfort in the fact that it’s definitely not just you ...