A gripping fictional story of love and separation, inspired by personal, political and historical events, set within two months of major upheaval in the Mediterranean paradise of Cyprus.

I looked forward to reading this book, since it is a subject I know something of and I expected to learn more about Portuguese exports of wolfram during World War 2. This slim volume, however, (147 pages, of which 127 are text) devotes only about a quarter of its pages to the story of wolfram. I felt as I read in the first half of the book about traditional industries in Portugal, and the activities of the Marquês de Pombal, (who said after the Earthquake, Bury the dead and feed the living) that the author was either padding out his story or he had lost his way. On page 6, he writes that Bartolomeu Dias (in 1488) and Vasco da Gama (in 1498) enjoyed the royal backing of Prince Henry the Navigator (who had died in 1460). Much more important for the impetus given to the discoveries in the 1490s was D João II, who is practically unknown and unsung outside Portugal. There is much more to the enclave of Goa than the island of Goa which most certainly does not lie off the coast of India.

Few know the business of transforming lives better that Lisbon healer Susana Cor de Rosa. Her life-changing guide Who We Are: The Code of Creation is now on its third print edition in her native Portugal.
And now the uplifting book which links science, healing and spirituality has been published in English.

It was a long-lost love that he has been able to rekindle, which has now taken the form of a book…and it is no ordinary book but one that has dived deep into the past to place under scrutiny numerous words that are very much a part of daily use in Sri Lanka.

For Sujeeva Nugawila, it has somewhat been like ‘parangiya kotte giya wage’ (like the Portuguese went to Kotte). The journey has been arduous and time-consuming but the culmination is ‘Lisbon to Colombo – A Study of Portuguese sounding words in the Sinhala Language’.

Make a pot of coffee or get a large glass of wine and get ready to stay up late!
Netherworld Books, Somerset England, has just published INTRUSION – A KEENO CRIME THRILLER NOVEL, by author Réal Laplaine.

INTRUSION is the first in a series of unique crime thrillers based on a Canadian crime fighter, Keeno McCole, who heads up the Royal Canadian Mounted Police anti-terrorism unit. He’s no suave James Bond. McCole is a tough Canadian with an attitude and he doesn’t give criminals a second chance. You cross paths with him and you’ll be sorry you did.

“The Clean Up” is a new book from a new author, set around an unnamed town in the central Algarve (could it be Albufeira?). It follows the daily trials and tribulations of an immigrant chef, unwittingly caught up in a mysterious sting, aimed at defrauding a pair of foreign businessmen with an eye on a quick buck.

If all you know about the conquistadors is what you learned in school, or if you’re the type who finds an excursion into their times irresistible, then a new book entitled Conquistador Voices (Spruce Tree Press, Oct. 2015) may be for you.

In this two-volume set written for the general reader, author Kevin H. Siepel takes you on the expeditions of five European explorers or conquistadors, using - to a greater extent than usual in historical works - the writings of the expedition participants themselves, allowing them to tell their own version of events, and supplying connecting narrative in the manner of a film documentary. The book therefore reads not as a dry, standard history book, but rather as a series of cohesive, lively stories told by the men who were there.

Two expats living in Lisbon have published their second crime novel. And once again, a substantial part of the action and the plot takes place in Portugal - this time, in the Algarve.

Axel Bugge and Barry Hatton, both senior foreign correspondents, write fiction together under the pseudonym Axel G. Barry.
They achieved their first success with “Lisbon Water Kills”, published in 2013, which took readers into the murky and deadly underworld of international finance during the European debt crisis. It featured colourful scenes in Lisbon and the Alentejo.