Author: rrn69

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Ambition, betrayal and secrets lurking behind gleaming chandeliers

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In 1929, Rosie Ryan wants nothing more than to escape poverty of The Ward, Toronto’s roughest neighbourhood, and become a chambermaid at the brand-new Dominion Hotel where secrets lurk behind every locked door. She meets Damien, a charming and ambitious waiter who promises her a better life- and adds him to the top of her list. The Dominion offers her a chance to do well, but behind the gleaming chandeliers and polished marble lurk dangerous secrets involving its most notorious guests, a wealthy gangster who’s about to profit from The Crash that will decimate the economy. When a friend is … Continue reading Ambition, betrayal and secrets lurking behind gleaming chandeliers

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Lost dog, missing teenager and a house full of secrets

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Lisa Jowell, New York times bestselling author of Then She Was Gone, brings the suspense to this shocking new thriller about a lost dog, a missing woman, and a house of long buried secrets. Jane Trevally is walking her dogs on her country estate when a small white terrier appears, alone and with no sign of the teenaged girl he’d been staying with nearby. When the teenager is reported missing, Jane offers to return the dog to his registered owner, hours away in London. Arriving at a rundown house called Thornwood in the deepest backwaters of Hampstead, she is immediately … Continue reading Lost dog, missing teenager and a house full of secrets

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RCB wins IPL 2026

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IPL 2026 Final GT Vs RCB at Ahmedabad, India GT 155/8 of   GT 155/8 off 20 overs Washington Sundar 50 in 37 balls, 5 fours RCB 161/5 off 18 overs  Virat Kohli 75 in 42 balls, 9 fours, 2 sixes   RCB won by 5 wickets with 12 balls remaining Royal Challengers Bangalore RCB Beat Gujarat Titans GT ti win the IPL 2026, their second title. Earlier RCB won the toss and elected to bowl first, and although Bhuvneshwar Kumar did his best to secure the Purple Cap, but he fell short, Washington Sundar scored 50 in 37 balls … Continue reading RCB wins IPL 2026

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One’s own story submerged by someone else’s

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The haunting, multigenerational saga of a family of Sámi women fighting the devastation of their way of life. Elin Anna Lanna’s novel The Home of the Drowned, traces the story of a family- Ingá, her mother Rávdná, and her Aunt Anne – from 1942 to 1982. At a nearby lake recently dammed to build a hydroelectric power station floods their village. Their home, a type of hut called a goahti, is being submerged by the water. The Sámi are an indigenous people who historically inhabited northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and part of Russia. Due to state-sanctioned assimilation policies over the … Continue reading One’s own story submerged by someone else’s

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Memoir of self-development

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  When Irish writer, Brian Dillon was sixteen his mother died and he simply gave up all schoolwork. But his real education was going on elsewhere: with books, music, films and television. When at least he made it to university, his head was already full of avant-garde writing, art and ideas. Could academia liveup to the hopes and dreams he had invested in it? Halfway through college his father died, and the stakes of reading and writing seemed even higher. Ambivalence explores what learning meant to is author, what it enabled and denied between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, … Continue reading Memoir of self-development

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People living in the margins of society

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Josef Koudelka, 88, one of the world’s greatest and most revered photographers of the post-war period, who photographer lives on the edge of European society.  He came to prominence  through his powerful pictures smuggled out of his native Prague after the 1968 Soviet-led invasion, first published in western newspapers anonymously under the attribution P.P. ( “Prague Photographer”). Distilled from sixty-nine journal kept over the course of fifty-plus years, Hosef Koudelka: Diaries offers a peep inside the mind and artistic process of the iconoclastic Czech photographer renowned for a life in exile and legendary projects on the Roma, and the devastating impact humans … Continue reading People living in the margins of society

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34th RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

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RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVALRaindance Film Festival: 17 – R26 June at host cinema Vue Piccadillyhttps://raindance.org/festival/nominees-2026/To celebrate the outstanding films screening at the 34th Raindance Film Festival (17 – 26 June), jury awards are presented to features and shorts. Raindance’s awards system honours features in 11 categories: Best International Feature, Best Documentary Feature, Discovery Award for Debut Feature, Best Debut Director, Best Performance in a Debut Feature, Best UK Feature, Best Director of a UK Feature, Best Performance in a UK Feature, Best UK Cinematographthe Spirit of Raindance Award and new for 2026 is Best Horror Feature. Raindance is BIFA-qualifying for British features. An Oscar® qualifying festival, Raindance honours the work of short filmmakers with 4 awards. The recipient of Best Live Action Short, … Continue reading 34th RAINDANCE FILM FESTIVAL

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Friendship that can shatters people and compassion that can hold some of these pieces together

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The Left and the Lucky is the moving large-hearted story of a young boy in danger of slipping through society’s cracks and the unlikely father figure who takes him under his wing. “And try to breathe, man. You gotta remember to breathe. You won’t get so panicky if you can remember that.” This novel is about neighbourliness in Portland, Oregon. Eddie Wilkens runs his own house-painting business ( a job Vlautin did in his thirties while trying to make it as a writer and musician). Eddie primes and refreshes the walls and windows of well-heeled locals, while covering up the cracks … Continue reading Friendship that can shatters people and compassion that can hold some of these pieces together

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Poor agricultural workers’ dreams curtailed by exploitation

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In1934, a young José Revueltás travelled to Tamaulipas to support the cotton workers’ strike in Estación Camarón, which became the basis of his landmark novel Human Mourning. In her own ground-breaking novel, Autobiography of Cotton, Cristina Rivera Garza, a doctorate in history, recounts her grandparents’ journey from mining towns to those same cotton fields as it intersects with Revuelta’s life in a vivid and evocative history of cotton cultivation along the Mexico-US border. She reveals the story of how cotton farming developed in post-revolutionary Mexico, capturing a moment of possibility and hope that “white gold” might transform the lives of … Continue reading Poor agricultural workers’ dreams curtailed by exploitation

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Linguicide: cultural emergency, as half of 7,000 languages due to disappear this century

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Journalist Sophia Smith Galer who learnt French and Spanish at school  and added Arabic at university, travels across continents and generations to chart How to Kill a Language. She travel to Ghana to Kurdistan to explore minority languages that cling on, despite repression and neglect, and interview their speakers. In Ecuador, she sees first hand how shame deters parents from passing Kichwa onto their children. In Oman, she learns about languages with roots older than Arabic but never officially recognised. Smith Galer rushes to the 93-year-old emigrée’s beside in north London. In Italy, near Placenza where she grew up, she searches for … Continue reading Linguicide: cultural emergency, as half of 7,000 languages due to disappear this century