The Triskellion by Will Peterson

From the back of the book:

Rachel and Adam are sent from their New York home to stay with their Grandmother following their parents' bitter divorce. But the quiet English village where their mother was born is a sinister and unsettling place, is their a genuninely dark hert beating beneath the thatched roofs of the picturesue village of Triskellion?

Against a brooding background of very real danger, the two young outsiders follow an incredible trail on an archealogical adventure with a startling paranormal twist. In a community that has existed in the same place for centuries, many terrible secrets lie hidden, and the villagers of Triskellion have a great deal to protect.

This is my sort of thing. It's got Green Men, twins that read each others minds, archaeology, dark secrets and a paranormal element, who could ask for more?

I was left a bit baffled by the ending but saw in the end notes that part two is out in March 2009, am looking forward to it.

King Solomon's Carpet by Barbara Vine

From the back of the book:

Jarvis Stringer lives in a crumbling schoolhouse overlooking a tube line, compliling his obsessive secret history of London's Underground. His presence and his strange house draw a band of misfits into his orbit; young Alice, who has run away from her husband and baby: Tom, the busker who rescues her: trunt Jasper who gets his kicks on the tubel and mysterious Axel, whose dark secret later casts a shadow over all their lives.

Dispossessed and outcast, those who come to inhabit Jarvis's schoolouse are gradually brought closer to violent and unforseen wys by Lodon's forbidding and dangerous Underground.....

Barbara Vine/Ruth Rendell is one of my favourite authors, she has written some terrific novels. Sadly, for me, this wasn't one of them. There were too many characters, I found I couldn't get fully focussed on one before the story jumped to another one. I didn't empathise with any of them except perhaps for the elderly, bewildered Cecililia whose daughter Tina lives in the schoolhouse and sleeps around.

I did like the facts and history given about the underground, I like trains (though steam is more my thing) and it was this that probably kept me reading. Also, the schoolhouse is set in Westend Lane, a road I travelled most days of my life in London. The Railway Tavern is even mentioned, a pub I ran as a rock venue in the early 1990s. It's always enjoyable reading books set in areas we know well, another factor that kept me reading. Overall though, this has to be my least favourite Vine book, I'm disappointed to come across something of hers I actually don't like that much.

The Magic of Provence by Yvone Lenard

It was lovely to experience Yvone Lenard's adventures in the Provence of the 1980s-1990s. Some of her tales made me laugh out loud, I just had to read them out to my husband. Others were more poignant, more sad, just like life really. I found myself liking Yvone and her husband Wayne, her narrative style is so warm and lively, I just want to be invited round for dinner now!

Darkhenge by Catherine Fisher

This was a unique reading experience as it is set in the village where I live and its surrounding areas. On the first page Rob, the book's protagonist, is on Windmill Hill with his friend Dan. I couldn't help but turn my head to look at Windmill Hill out the window, a surreal experience!

I picked this book up from the teenage section at the library as I liked the title. I don't think (from looking at reviews on the internet) that it is especially aimed at teenagers, it just happens that the story evolves around a teenager. Catherine Fisher has obviously spent a great deal of time here in Avebury and its surrounds, she is familiar with its people, the bustle of tourists, the illegal camping sites where the Pagans stay, she is totally able to recreate the village in her book.

The story has all the elements I love, mystery, myth and magic, and archeology to boot. In it you'll find Taliesin, the Goddess Ceridiwen of course, the Darkhenge, which leads to the Unworld, where Rob must fight the forest to bring his sister Chloe to the family waiting for her.

A concise review here.