Until I read this book, I hardly knew of the Uyghurs, let alone their plight in the western part of China. The Xi Jinping described in the book sounds like a modern-day Hitler, or worse. Pure evil. It never ceases to amaze me how cruel human beings can be to other humans. This is a story that’s character driven. There are a few likeable ones and ones that are far from it! Persey enters the competition along with seven other young contestants, but while most escape rooms are about teamwork and collaboration, this one is all about being cut-throat—literally. When contestants start getting killed off, Persey must solve a series of bizarre and gruesome puzzles, riddles, and games to make it out alive. Along the way she learns the contestants are mysteriously related—and someone is out for vengeance. Things fail to go as planned, and the woman reveals a more chilling face. She tells the man how the village union sells sand illegally to a concrete manufacturer. The man fulminates that this would endanger the lives of all those dependent on dams not bursting and bridges not collapsing. The woman replies, accusingly, “Why should we worry what happens to other people?” A Japanese reader of The Woman in the Dunes is invited to assume that the villagers are burakumin, the little-discussed caste of untouchables historically obliged to work in “unclean” trades such as butchery, tanning or sewage removal and live where nobody else wanted to, and who were considered little better than animals. The villagers thus have just cause to distrust - to despise - a mainstream society that has always oppressed them.

When those on the oil rig re-approach the islanders for help they discover there is an illness affecting some of them and its not long until one of their own group begins to succumb to the mysterious illness. Despite being seriously ill, this character insists on doing all they can to help not only their own small group but to help the islanders too. A powerful memoir that lays bares China’s repression of the Uyghur people by Nury Turkel, former president of the Uyghur Humans Rights Project and now a commissioner for the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, for readers of Escape from Camp 14and Red Notice. Casey Kelleher takes the readers into the seedy and murky world of the criminals at work on the Griffin Estate it’s not pretty, it’s violent, grubby and sometimes very disturbing, the scenes, the violence, the gangs that prey on the vulnerable residents of the estate give this book an authentic feel to the read. The author draws you into this world; you feel the fear and emotions of the residents, experience their frustrations and pain, the Estate comes alive thanks to the authors descriptive writing. I really enjoyed No Escape with its vibrant characters and gritty, authentic plot. Casey Kelleher’s writing goes from strength to strength and I’m keeping everything crossed this is the first book in a series featuring Lucy Murphy. Highly recommended

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Before reading Casey Kelleher books I was never a fan of gritty crime/gangland books BUT now I am totally turned around and LOVE them!! I was so excited to read No Escape after previously enjoying The Byrne Trilogy and I hope that this is the start of a new series for me to obsess over. No Escape was released on VHS and Laserdisc in 1994, the VHS was re-released on April 14, 1998. The DVD was released by HBO on July 29, 1998. Columbia TriStar also released the film on DVD, VHS and Laserdisc in other countries from 1995–2003, while Sony Pictures Home Entertainment re-released the DVDs in 2005–2017. The DVD was released in United Kingdom on October 3, 2003 by Pathé. The film was first released on Blu-ray in Germany by Nameless Media (under the label of SPHE) in 2017, and includes with Mediabook covers. On July 4, 2018, the film was released on Blu-ray and DVD by Umbrella Entertainment in Australia, and includes four TV Spots and Trailer. [13] Unearthed Films released the film on Blu-ray with Special Features for the North American releases in October 2022. She joins an escape room game and passes with flying colors, basically getting everyone out single handedly. This gets her into an exclusive escape game with a prize of millions of dollors 🤑 She is there to protect the estate’s vulnerable residents, including Shannon and Kian Winters, two kids struggling to deal with their alcoholic mother. Fifteen-year-old Shannon is working every spare hour to keep a roof over their heads, but thirteen-year-old Kian has fallen under the sway of gang leader Jax Priestly. And now Jax has plans for Shannon too… Secondly, if the Brownes were so well known in the Escape Room community then why the funk wouldn't anyone have known their kids? They'd have been recognized for sure, if not by the teens than by the cops who were connecting the dots since it was explained to them that those dead teens were responsible for the Browne deaths.

Lucy is an intriguing character. There is no doubt she is shaped by her past and with a very challenging family life, trying to maintain a home for her Grandmother who is slowly falling victim to dementia, the pressure is on. I really liked the way in which the author portrayed her fear, her tension as she found herself time and again on the estate, trying to stave off memories of her past whilst focusing on helping the residents and trying to get to the bottom of a serious assault that happens before we join the story. She is a determined and spirited young woman, very much empathetic towards those around her, but she is very likeable. She has a good sense of humour which stands her in good stead given that she is faced with a certain amount of inappropriate banter from colleagues. But it is her very down to earth nature that makes her a joy to read about, her desire to understand the residents of the estate rather than just dismiss them as trouble, that draws the reader on side.

Like the other Murdertrending novels, this one has a great pace and keeps you intrigued right up to the end. But that ending?! Come onnnnnnnnn.

it’s sad too cause i did like kevin, but i had a very strong suspicion that he was bad and i was really hoping he wasn’t 😭😭

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Shell finally explained what happened on board – and how murderous rampaging Denny (Sean Keenan) had shot a crying and defenceless Kitty as she called out for Lana, before he tipped her body overboard into the Philippine Sea. I can go on and on about the horrors this book brings to light, but all I am going to say is read/listen to it and learn from it. Freedom is such a fragile and precious thing. Technology is a tool that can be used for good or ill and it's obvious which way China has gone with it. Twenty years before Dee Guerra and the Death Row Breakfast Club took down The Postman and Alcatraz 2.0, long before Becca survived The Juggernaut and Who Wants to Be a Painiac?, the murder games first began with the wildly popular "escape room" trend. Specifically, with Escape-Capades, Ltd.?

Nury Turkel shares his own story, knowing that his family members still live in China and are at great risk. He also conducts interviews with survivors of the "reintegration" camps that are contributing to a massive genocide, both of people and an entire culture. Maybe, maybe, maybe. Buddhism is predicated on the impermanence of all things, including Buddhism. In a not dissimilar way, the meditations on freedom, captivity, the transient and the immutable in The Woman in the Dunes invite, and allow for, misinterpretations - which might be another word for “reinterpretations”. Even the novel’s opening epigram, “Without the threat of punishment there is no joy in flight”, has fuzzy edges: is this an oppressor’s justification or a would-be fugitive’s consolation? Since this was a prequel, I kept trying to figure out how it connected to the 1st & 2nd book. I had a few theories and once I figured it out, just wow... and creepy.

Months go by, and the man and woman evolve a working accommodation that one might find in an unsatisfactory but indissoluble marriage. They obtain piece-work to save money and buy a radio. Does love, of a sort, take root in their confinement? The question is a key one: on its answer, in part, hinges the issue of whether this is a book about a damnation or a salvation. For Timothy Iles, author of an analysis in English of Abe’s work, the man’s reaction to the reappearance of the rope ladder in the final scene is as bleak as the conclusion of 1984: an individual’s will to freedom has been crushed, and with it, his soul. The woman’s extra-uterine pregnancy is, for Iles, a symbol of sterility and desolation. But might it not also be true that the man hesitates to leave his prison because he feels a glimmer of belonging - of tenderness, even - which he never experienced in the days when he was “free”?