Music Review of Keep Smiling for Macmillan Cancer Support by Stanley Bloom (son of Penelope Keith) featuring The Hairy Piper. Available Now On Spotify and other streaming channels @stanleybloommusic #Spotify #ITunes #MacMillanCancerSupport #StanleyBloom #music

Keep Smiling
By Stanley Bloom

review by Louise Cannon – Bookmarks and Stages

Stanley Bloom recently lost his mother, a woman special to many, to cancer. He has written a song called Keep Smiling, which you can find on Spotify , where you can download and listen to. Every listen helps this great charity and generates money. All money raised will go to MacMillan Cancer Support. Link here and others at end of review inc Spotify – Keep Smiling

Stanley Bloom’s mother was the warm, witty and talented Penelope Keith who lots of you will have known from The Good Life, To The Manor Born, Next of Kin, Death Comes To Pemberley, Hidden Villages and so much more… She also read MC. Beaton’s Agatha Raisin series for radio and performed a myriad of plays in theatres.

Keep Smiling is a fantastically upbeat single. It has smiley vibes about its uplifting lyrics and beat right from the intro with bagpipes and drums, that continue throughout in the background of the toe-tapping song. Although there’s bagpipes, seen as more tradition, this song in the style its sang brings more of a modern pop feel, that’s definitely welcome. If this were added into gigs, this is sure to be a crowd-pleaser.

The lyrics are about memories of summertime that everyone can relate to and to just keep smiling, keep trying and basically to just keep going. It holds a picture of hot summer days filled with sun and blue skies, hope and positivity. It is memories of friends and the good food and wine and having fun. It sounds carefree, except it perhaps isn’t, given the circumstances, which brings a bit of poignancy, perhaps making it all the more important for it to be out there in the world.

Keep Smiling is a bold and brave song that’s full of life that everyone can sing along to in their day. Having a good or bad day, this song will fill you with warm, comforting fun vibes that will keep you smiling throughout whatever life is bringing you.

Give it a listen. Let’s see if we can get this happiest of songs in the saddest of times charting for a great cause and in memory of Penelope Keith!

Here is the Spotify link because no one knows when they may need them. Lots of us know someone who has had or is living with cancer. So why not give it a listen to help this charity keep going for years to come.

Spotify – Keep Smiling

Apple Music

Amazon Music

Find even more places to listen to the music here: Stanley Bloom – Keep Smiling Website

#Review of Falling For You by Heidi Swain – A book to cosy up with this autumn @heidi_swain #fallingforyou #heidiswain @RandomTTours @simonschusterUK #romanticfiction #contemporaryfiction nightingalesquare #autumn

Falling For You
By Heidi Swain

Autumn has well and truly arrived and so has the latest book in the Nightingale Square series. I am delighted to be on the Random T. Tours blog tour with a review. I thank them for an e-book copy in-exchange of an honest review. Heidi Swain may write romance, but there’s always something even deeper at the core of her characters. Whether this is your first or a continuation of reading her books, this is one I highly recommend.

Skylar Shawe has moved to Nightingale Square in the heart of Norwich. People move here for many reasons, as those who follow the series know. You can, however read this as a stand-alone too. You soon get to know the people and places and even the mention of Wynbridge, which features in another series. It reads well as a brand new story with its cosy autumnal seasonal setting.

Skylar seeks a chance to connect with her father for the first the first time and to escape her normal life.

What Heidi Swain excels at is giving characters a fresh start in life, no matter what traumatic experiences they’ve been through. She oozes love and hope onto the page. She has a knack of seeping it into the soul of the reader to inspire them to at least wonder if such a place exists anywhere in reality ie off the page where things are cosy and better. It’s perhaps a bit of a message to society to do better.

Erik Svensson is wanting the quiet life in Nightingale Square. He was a celebrated rugby player, but his career got cut short due to a life-changing injury. The last thing he wants is to be bothered by anyone, let alone allow love to enter in.

The slow-burn romance and that sense of escapism is poignant and profound as neither were looking for love and Erik certainly didn’t want anyone significant in his life, but something deeply emotionally profound happens that changes their lives for the better. It’s heartwarming to see their romance unfold and something soften inside both Skylar and Erik to allow this to happen.

Cosy up as autumn sets in with your favourite seasonal treats with Falling For You.

Blurb

Can love blossom amongst the leaves?
When Skylar Shawe moves to Nightingale Square in the heart of Norwich, she’s hoping for a fresh start and the chance to connect with the father she never knew.

A break from the chaos of real life seems like the perfect way to
catch her breath…until she meets Erik, the brooding but wildly handsome neighbour with a past he’s still trying to
come to terms with.

Once a rugby hero, Erik Svensson now faces life on unfamiliar terrain after suffering a career-ending injury.

Unsure of the man he’s become, he’s determined to live a peaceful life while he finds himself again. What he doesn’t expect is to find himself drawn to the new girl in
Nightingale Square.
But sometimes, life – and love – has a way of sneaking up on you. As they navigate their new lives and their own troubles, they discover that healing isn’t just about moving
on … it’s about letting someone in. And in each other, they might just find exactly what they didn’t know they were looking for…

#Review of Returning Characters – Bloody Scotland Panel with Vaseem Khan, JackAnderson and Dr. Lucy Andrew @vaseemkhanwriter @jacktedanderson @drlucyandrew #BloodyScotland

Returning Characters

Returning Character in books in this panel were Q from James Bond, Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes and Emma from Jane Austen. It probably isn’t easy to bring other people’s characters back, but Vaseem Khan, Jack Anderson and Lucy Andrew have brought back very iconic characters. The most fascinating were in this order.

Q because Vaseem Khan, after writing many successful books, was commissioned by the Fleming Ian Fleming Publications – The Ian Fleming Estate/Trust. The first book in this series is Quantum of Menace. He also continues to write award-winning Malabar House series.

Q has been kicked out of MI6 and has to adapt. It doesn’t always go well.
His childhood friend, Peter Napier dies in mysterious circumstances, his ground-breaking work may have attracted sinister forces…

Q doesn’t turn up much in the books, but Vaseem Khan talked about keeping the dry humour that Ian Fleming had. He describes the series being between Mick Herron (Slow Horses) and Richard Osman (The Thursday Murder Club and We Solve Murders) in style.

It was revealed that Ian Fleming was kicked out of Eton and his mother wanted him to join something. It turns out he joined the Navy, which was the making of him.

Interestingly, the characters he created, Scaramanga and Goldfinger were darkly and understandably, his revenge on Eton and an architect.

Mysteriously, Vaseem Khan says to look out for “Easter eggs” in the books…
The latest is The Man With The Golden Compass

Jack Anderson loves a murder mystery, especially those with a dinner party. He’s decided the end Reichenbach Falls was too neat, so explores the what ifs. What if Moriarty pulled himself out, destitute.

He talked of one of the characters, Clara being more of her time and being all about high society in both dress and attitudes, but Moriarty being ahead of it in a way through his liberalism, but not to forget, he is a super criminal.

Lots of people want to write Sherlock Holmes pastiches and he was up against time, 3 months to get a first draft done. He has now successfully published a few books. He’s known for The Grief Doctor, but has now got a couple in the Sherlock Holmes world. The latest is The Return Of Moriarty, where there is a twist in what’s happened to Sherlock Holmes…

Lucy Andrew is passionate about Jane Austen and Harriet Smith, in-particular. She’s turned her role into a murder mystery as Ms Churchill drops dead…

After studying her for GCSE, she thought there needed to be more Austen and set about doing fan-fiction in a way. She looked back through the books, adds some references from books other than Emma and created a detective story. She talked about how she reckoned this might be the genre, Jane Austen would be writing in if she were alive today. She reckons there’s enough in the books she wrote that lends itself to this genre and witht

She appeared to be partly inspired by the film, Clueless. So, her debut emerged into the world as, Harriet Smith Investigates A Very Vexing Murder.

#Review of Dark Caledonia with authors Morgan Cry (Gordon Brown), Kate Foster and Louise Heren @morgancryauthor @katefosterauthor @ #LouiseHeren @panmacmillan @severnhouseimprint

Dark Caledonia
A Bloody Scotland Panel

Exploring Crimes

This was a thought-provoking, gripping talk explored Scotland’s dark past and a bit of its dark present. The authors questioned whether it is crime that changes society or is it the nature of crime of society that changes. Women aren’t being accused of being witches anymore, but crimes are still happening, just differently.
It was also looked at whether we are getting kinder in society and less violent.
It’s all food for thought!
The latest burning of witches in Scotland was 1727, so quite late and there’s still lots of crime. There are parallels from the past to present day for that.

The authors books, in different ways, between fictional and true crimes explores the misogyny and injustice in Scotland. The authors cleverly talked about historical crimes, yet linking in-part to something more relatable in present times, such as people with money and power getting away with a crime, whereas others would or may not.

The research that goes into the books is astonishing and fascinating. There were insights into looking through letters, recipes and finding the human, personal touches to life, hundreds of years ago. Scotland kept good records. You can find them at Scotland’s People Centre in Edinburgh.

There was a consensus that evolution doesn’t happen quickly, but there was enough to see that things do move on in 1660, women couldn’t speak in court and at least have that right nowadays.

There are many interesting parts the authors talked about in-light of the darker parts of life, including incest and rape. There are interesting differences between Scotland and England how they look at this and it came to light, Scotland was not coming out on top in this.

What’s the difference between true crime and real crime?

True crime can embellish, such as what you find in newspapers and podcasts. You may find embellishment in tone.
Real crime looks at the nitty-gritty, delving even into the minute details of the weather, which has its purposes.
In both, you need to be careful not to overstep the line as there are real people who may still be alive. There was discussion about anonymising cases and wisely checking details with lawyers.

The Books

Louise Heren’s Scottish History in 15 Violent Crimes explores real life crimes. Taking fifteen real-life criminal cases prosecuted at the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland between 1700 and 2000, this book explores developments in social attitudes and legal responses to violence.

Kate Foster was absolutely fascinating about her book, The Repentants. Set in St Monans, Fife, Scotland 1790. Two women are forced to publicly repent in church, one for adultery the other for breaching the sabbath. Florrie and Eliza, form a quick and unusual bond over their mutual humiliation. Florrie’s husband decides she must accompany him on a trade venture to Iceland and she wants Eliza with her.

She imparted fascinating information about Iceland about how someone in Scotland wanted Iceland. It evidently didn’t happen. It made me think about what is happening now, how now America wants Iceland and how neither idea would be good.

Morgan Cry as Gordon Brown, is currently writing as, is a founding director of Bloody Scotland, Scotland’s International Crime Writing Festival.
He introduced his new book, Dark Accords, a historical book, so rather different from his Blake Glover books, which he will return to.

What’s interesting is that his book is a Bloody Mackenzie Mystery. It turns out ‘Bloody Mackenzie’ was a real person who defended ‘witches in trial’. I took a further look into his life and it is fascinating what you can find out. It’s worth taking a look.

#Review of Nourish by Laura Baggaley An eco-food dystopian YA book #Nourish @zooloosbooktours #blogtour

Nourish
By Laura Baggaley

review by Louise Cannon – Bookmarks and Stages

A bit late due to family circumstance and other circumstances beyond my control, I have joined the Zooloos book tours, who gave me an e-copy of Nourish, a dystopian eco book for YA readers in-exchange of a review.

longlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize and the author won Best Book for Teenagers in the 2025 Wishing Shelf Book Awards.

When we think of nourish, we think of food or wellbeing. Nourish, is the follow-up to Dirt for YA readers. What seems dystopian with just hooking yourself up to what the powers at be says is nutrition, although seems rather synthetic, could actually become part of a generation’s future and it is far removed from perfect and perfect can be.

Cal lives in a post-food world. The population have something mysterious called “Nutritional Provision.” It isn’t all that it seems. There’s quite a darkness in this industry. The fact it is not actual food as we know it as such, should make teens sit up and think and know the value of food and how important it is, so it doesn’t become a world of something just called “Nutritional Provision”.

It’s an eco-book in that it’s about air-miles, where food comes from, real food, packaging. All important topics to take notice of and shown that there’s not one nor easy solution to possible food shortages, but it felt a bit negative at times towards food in-parts. The book could have teens thinking about food and its important future in a good light or in a bad light, which could have the devastating consequences of a no food future and for no choice. It walks on this fine line. Baggaley just manages to stop short of the book being preachy in the narrative in its modernity and world creating around the characters narrative, which is well-written.

Cal lives in a post-food world. People don’t eat. They have Nutritional Provision. He then comes across something rare, something that is properly edible and realises that what he’s been told has been a lie, so sets off to investigate with Andi who is at the same boarding school to find the truth about what food was, that it was real. This narrative creates a bit of a thriller feel, which becomes quite involving.

Nourish is far from a cosy read, but it is thought-provoking and like most dystopian books, it sees a bit into what the future could hold, which isn’t exactly pretty, but shows it doesn’t have to be like that.

Blurb

When Cal is enrolled in a fancy boarding school after the death of his father, he discovers a rare edible substance that forces him to question everything he’s been told about nourishment.

Determined to discover more, he joins forces with classmate Andi, heiress to the Nutritional Provision Corporation. But as their investigations lead to trouble and a friend’s life is in danger, will they dare risk everything to expose the truth?

Nourish was longlisted for the Yeovil Literary Prize and the author won Best Book for Teenagers in the 2025 Wishing Shelf Book Awards.

#Review of The Dark Wine Sea by Victoria Hislop @vichislop @headlinebooks #TheDarkWineSea #VictoriaHislop #review by Lou – Bookmarks and Stages

The Dark Wine Sea
By Victoria Hislop

review by Louise Cannon – Bookmarks and Stages

Victoria Hislop is an excellent storyteller of historic events and finding hidden or forgotten areas or those not perhaps at the forefront of people’s minds. She fills in those gaps with the meticulous research she does and then compels you to read it by mixing in fictional writing that’s intriguing, relatable and transporting in the places she travels to and the characters you meet. If you enjoyed The Island and The Figurine, this is one I recommend to put on your, possibly already burgeoning to-be-read piles.

The year is 1946 and there’s a power vacuum between the right and the left factions. You feel the tension in this period directly after the second world war. The world war may have finished, but it is shown that Greece is still at unrest with fighting. What’s painted is a frightful picture of life, not as we know it nor imagine it to be, shown through Fotina, who has had her second child. She later lands in prison, meanwhile the fate of children is not as you would think when the government’s soldiers arrive and families are separated.

It’s an all encompassing, absorbing book that makes you truly feel what’s happening, emotionally as well as sensory. The characters are the type you can invest in and you want Markella and Fontina to find their children safe and well. What comes next is a need to read more about what happens to the characters and travel further into this period of history. It ensures its place as an intriguing page-turner.

Blurb

Beloved, bestselling author Victoria Hislop explores the chaos unleashed on Greek families during the post-war era in this page-turning new novel that will delight fans who cherish The Island and The Figurine.

Greece, 1946. In the power vacuum remaining after the Second World War, a brutal civil war erupts between rival left- and right-wing factions. The conflict spirals as the country pays a bitter price in human lives and fighting soon erupts in the mountains, turning villages into battlefields and pulling ordinary women and children into the fray.

When the government soldiers come to Kalopetra, Fotini is nursing her newborn second child. She urges her daughter, Iliana, to hide with the older children as she and the other women are herded into trucks. Weeks later, soldiers return for the children . . . but they are not to be reunited with their mothers, a wholly different fate awaits them.

Fotini finds herself transported to a prison on the island of Chios, where she befriends Markella, whose little son, Nikos, is wise beyond his years. After months of imprisonment, when Fotini and Markella find themselves separated from one another – and from Nikos – Fotini vows to hunt not only for her own child but for Markella’s too.

The Wine-Dark Sea tells of families flung apart across continents and of a strong, determined mother who resolves not to let war destroy hers.

Victoria Hislop is at the height of her storytelling powers in this compelling and thought-provoking new novel, which offers insight into a little-known chapter of Greek history.