Earlier this year, Sir Michael Caine announced his retirement from acting. Rather than rest on his laurels, the 90-year-old has embarked on a new career as a novelist. Deadly Game, his first foray into fiction, is a contemporary thriller, following DCI Harry Taylor and his specialist team from the London Met as they race against international criminals to secure a box containing radioactive material.
East Side Voices: Essays Celebrating East and Southeast Asian Identity in Britain
LAURA Barnett follows up her best-selling debut, The Versions of Us, with a tale about Cass Wheeler, a singer-songwriter who found worldwide fame in the 1970s before mysteriously retiring from public life. Barnett fashions Cass as a kind of British answer to Joni Mitchell, with her ethereal voice and folk-influenced music. The story takes place over one day as Cass listens to her old albums to prepare her choice of songs for a greatest hits album, a primer for her return to making music. She wonders whether her incredible success has been worth the sacrifices she has made. With every track, she is thrust back into her past. Most of the chapters open with the lyrics to a song that Cass has written, the story of her life in music. In fact, Barnett has collaborated with Mercury-nominated singer-songwriter Kathryn Williams to write the lyrics and music, which have been recorded and released as a soundtrack to accompany the novel.
