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The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland (A Silkstone Standalone Comedic Mystery Book 3) by [Barbara Silkstone]

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Barbara Silkstone

The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland (A Silkstone Standalone Comedic Mystery Book 3) Kindle Edition

by Barbara Silkstone (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

115 ratings

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Curious how our lives can take on the shadings of a fairy tale, the line between reality and fantasy becoming fuzzy. A cozy comedy thriller in the style of Carl Hiaasen, Janet Evanovich, with touches of Monty Python. The adventure is inspired by the original Alice in Wonderland but with a totally different adult plot.

Miami real estate broker, Alice Harte’s addiction to being right almost does her in when she falls for the wrong White Rabbit. Nigel Channing is an international conman with a gift for crafting Byronesque emails. He sweeps Alice off her feet and down a rabbit hole laden with mugs, thugs, and be-headers as they race one-step ahead of Nigel’s enemies.

Will Alice be able to keep her head when all about her are losing theirs? Are the cards stacked against her or will she find true love? Is there a Joker in the deck?

This adventure takes place in 1997 and is slightly based on true events. Enjoy!

~~~
Praise for The Secret Diary of Alice in Wonderland:
“This wacky book is a delight. The author does a great job in providing cutting edge entertainment, weaving it all in a tall tale and at the same time making the farcical plausible. The fun, the play on words, the punastic delights run wild and the story hops on down the bloody, fishy, and stinky bunny trail. Well done and well worth your time to read this book.” ~The Shadow

“This book was a fun, fast paced read and almost as strange as the original AIW, in a good way. The climactic scenes in the courtroom were fascinating. The many threads of the story pulled together at the end came together smoothly and I really enjoyed it. I loved watching the courtroom scenes play out. Ohhh… the dirty little secrets all coming to light and taking out the bad guys one by one... great!” ~ Red Adept Reviews

“I love this story as much for the comedy as I do for the perfect characterization. These characters are just as mad and scary as the original Lewis Carroll characters. The humor is clean and perfectly in context with the characters delivering it, for example, Nigel Channing's British humor is very John Cleese and Kit the Drag Queen's take down of one of the corrupt lawyers is hilarious, a perfect ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’ moment. This is a highly polished story and the author’s writing style is very easy to read and enjoy, which makes this the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy afternoon." ~ Mandy Ward, Author

Silkstone’s writing has been described as “perfectly paced and pitched - shades of Janet Evanovich and Carl Hiaasen without seeming remotely derivative. Fast moving action that shoots from the hip with bullet-proof characterization.”

Print length

250 pages
Language

English
Publication date

November 27, 2013
File size

3722 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Barbara Silkstone is the author of over thirty-six novels and novellas. She has currently written sixteen Pride & Prejudice variations both Regency and Contemporary—always with a light comic touch. Look for Darcy and Elizabeth Serendipity and Darcy, Lizzy and Emma. Enjoy her Mister Darcy series comedic mysteries. --This text refers to the paperback edition.

Product details

ASIN : B003BIGFSE
Publication date : November 27, 2013
Language : English
File size : 3722 KB
Text-to-Speech : Enabled
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 250 pages
Lending : Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,395,171 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #2,777 in Legal Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- #3,755 in Legal Thrillers (Books)
- #22,166 in Cozy Mystery

Customer Reviews:
115 ratings

Customer reviews

5 star		49%
4 star		20%
3 star		8%
2 star		9%
1 star		15%

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Top reviews from the United States

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GraceKrispy (MotherLode blog)

Quirky fun in this outlandish adventure!

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2011

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This quirky, outlandish, and unpredictable book takes the reader places that are both unexpected and ridiculous. Written as somewhat of a parallel to Alice in Wonderland's zany adventure, each chapter starts with a fitting phrase from Lewis Carroll's classic that mirrors the happenings in Alice Harte's life. When reading this book, just as when reading the original "Alice," one has to suspend all logic and just let the wave take you where it will. Barbara Silkstone manages to weave details from the classic into this book in a way that pads out the rest of the book. Without that connection, I think the overall plot wouldn't have been as strong as it was. The connection between the two Alices was what made this book so interesting. Although the story dragged and meandered a bit in some places, it was still interesting.

The characters are a lot of fun in their wackiness. Nigel is somehow charming and comical, gross yet gallant. He's an engaging enigma who somehow has captured Alice's blind adoration. Of all the characters, I felt he was the one with the most life. Alice herself felt to me like she didn't quite reach her full potential as a character. She was almost there, but felt a little lacking somehow. Perhaps it was the choices she made and the way she went about things that didn't seem quite right. The other characters were quirky and fitting to their roles in the story. Leslie and Sunglasses, two main characters that have a lot of impact on the direction of Alice's life, seemed to disappear for a while in the middle of the book, leaving me to momentarily forget what Alice's conflict actually was. For that reason, it felt a bit like a few major sections to a story that came together at the end, but didn't interconnect as well as I had anticipated. In spite of some explanation, I still didn't feel like I totally understood Nigel's connection to the entire story.

If you're in the mood to slide down the rabbit hole, this book will take you there.

Read the full review [...]

2 people found this helpful

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William B. Cheney, III

Funny AND Weird!

Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2017

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Well Written. Let's see: you have Alice, Hares, lizzards, Cheshire cats, the AIWS, and a cast of crazy and evil people that would do Barry and the Queen of Hearts' court proud. It will definitely keep you gussing until the end, and maybe even after.
There is a reason the Alice on the cover is in a Straight Jacket. Oh and White Rabbits, lots of white Rabbits.

One person found this helpful

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Elyssanda Desertsong

4 3/4 Stars!

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2011

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This book was previously reviewed at redadeptreviews.com

Alice Harte's life is falling apart. Her boss at the real estate agency where she works is a litigious and murderous man with ties to "The Mob" in Florida. She KNOWS he has literally beheaded someone in the past.
Her whole life she has dreamed of living in England and meeting a man similar to John Cleese. In an attempt to start breaking away from her boss who is threatening her with a lawsuit, she flies to England to meet Nigel Channing, who has been charming her through e-mails and phone calls.
As her life in Miami falls apart, with mobsters and a pending fraud lawsuit, her romantic savior in England looks more and more tarnished by the hour.
How will she ever keep her head and win the lawsuit? And what about love?
Overall Rating: 4 ¾ Stars
Plot/Storyline: 5 Stars
There is a saying that there are no new stories, only new ways to tell old stories. Ms. Silkstone took the original Alice in Wonderland, and deftly wove it into something uniquely her own. Throughout this story there are continual references to the original, as the main character is enamored with AIW. Alice tells her story as a series of diary entries (instead of chapters) as her life falls apart.
This book was a fun, fast paced read and almost as strange as the original AIW, in a good way. Her trans-Atlantic relationship with Nigel keeps her hoping for a HEA, but Nigel has many strange people and things going on in his life too.
The climactic scenes in the courtroom were fascinating. The many threads of the story pulled together at the end came together smoothly and I really enjoyed it. I loved watching the courtroom scenes play out. Ohhh the dirty little secrets all coming to light and taking out the bad guys one by one... great!
Characters: 4 Stars
I really enjoyed the cast of characters.
Alice's boss Leslie is a frightening sleezeball.
His wife Maris is an amalgamated combination of neurosis, scheming, vindictiveness, and loneliness. Any woman willing to pee in her ex's cologne bottle is .. just wow!
Alice's romantic interest Nigel turns out to be a rather inept conman juggling multiple relationships.
Nigel's ex-wife is psychotic & deranged.
Surprisingly the character I did not believe perfectly was Alice herself. At 42 ¾ and twice BADLY divorced, she is still far too trusting and willing to blatantly ignore warning signs in her relationship with Nigel. His British accent and excuses are all she needs to fall for him time and time again even though she has evidence throughout the story of his infidelities and livelihood inconsistencies.
Writing Style: 5 Stars
Ms. Silkstone's story was very well written. I loved the descriptions throughout the story, they covered everything from the sights and sounds of Alice's life to the smells of rotting fish and fright and horror.

9 people found this helpful

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Mandy Ward

Magnificently Modern Fairytale!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 14, 2011

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Barbara Silkstone has created a magnificently modern version of Alice in Wonderland for her readers. All the characters are there, from the Cheshire Cat to the Mad Hatter and this enthralling fairy tale will transport you to a perfectly wonderful world of mobsters, crooked lawyers and thousands of white rabbits.

Set in modern America with jaunts to Paris, Prague and England, we follow the adventures of Alice; a hapless heroine who looks to romance to get herself out of being an estate agent for warped businessman Leslie Archer.

She follows her own white rabbit, Nigel Channing into a mess of love and lies all over Europe, finally hopping back to the US where she is accused of fraud.
All the way through, her friend Ron, and her daughter, Dana support her and help her keep her head in what seems to be a never-ending maze of situations and encounters.

Finally, Alice has to defend herself in a courtroom that is squarely in the pocket of her ex-employer. She does so with Ron's help and manages to free herself, get Archer arrested and clean up the Floridian legal system in one clean sweep.

I love this story as much for the comedy as I do for the perfect characterisation. These characters are just as mad and scary as the original Lewis Carroll characters.

The humour is clean and perfectly in context with the characters delivering it, for example, Nigel Channing's British humour is very John Cleese and Kit the Drag Queen's take down of one of the corrupt lawyers is hilarious, a perfect "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" moment.

Every sub plot is tidily sewn up, even Alice's search for love, which ended up being just a phone call away in the form of her best friend, Ron. This is a highly polished story and Barbara's writing style is very easy to read and enjoy, which makes this the perfect book to curl up with on a rainy afternoon.

2 people found this helpful

Joo

Alice

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 15, 2013

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Barbara Silkstone writes what she calls "Fractured Fairytales" whereby she takes a tale and minces it up real good and throws it out the other side. In my opinion, the links are tenuous at best, however, the stories she writes are very enjoyable in an often frantic way.

In this story, Alice gets caught up in a world full of lawyers, mobsters, killers and strange English people.

This is frantic half the time, then a bit slow paced at others. I was over half way through when I re-read the synopsis and half the stuff hadn't happened yet. Sometimes Alice was a bit dumb, other times quite sneaky. I quite often forgot that she wasn't some 20 year old, but a 40-something, which is not the norm for a chick-lit type book. Perhaps my new heroines are double the age of my old ones.

Another fun read.

One person found this helpful

Windinthewillows

A refreshing departure from so many hard nosed and slick thrillers

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 2014

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From the very first line, "our lives can take on the shades of a fairy tale," the author speaks volumes about the cross genre of this book and what she is trying to realise, as outlined throughout the synopsis. In other words, I cannot think of a better opening sentence, in context. In the first few paragraphs, the pace of events is relentless and, in this sense for a start, justifies the term 'Thriller' as the abduction of Alice gets under way, courtesy of bull-neck and his coterie of thugs.
I have to say, Alice's 'Tweedle' with a 'bull-neck' was a juxtaposition which made me bite into my lip not to laugh; for I know the author probably didn't intend to amuse here. The combination of these two images, however, does succeed in depicting Alice's assailants as pretty mindless stooges whose right to occupy a space on this planet is justified only by their skill in manhandling people into cars/ limo's.
Alice's 'Walrus Moustache' man, made me almost draw blood out of my lower lip when I thought of the beefy thug he would be but, endearing though Alice's nicknames are, she can get positively feisty as she slaps away the 'fat finger' which Walrus Moustache 'poked... in my face.'
The first person works well, generating a conversational style with the reader and making Alice both likeable and accessible.
Some of the description is gorgeous, within the context of a thriller, 'Leslie was dead meat and I might be the side dish,' followed by, 'My stomach was like a washer on a spin cycle.' This is a refreshing departure from so many hard nosed and slick thrillers.

Michelle

I was expecting something fun, bouncy and adventurous but for me it didn't ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 9, 2017

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I couldn't get my head around this book, I was expecting something fun, bouncy and adventurous but for me it didn't feel that way, it felt cringing and awkward. The story line felt weak and there was no depth to that characters. The links to Alice in Wonderland felt a bit misplaced, this book definitely wasn't for me unfortunately.

Sibel Hodge

Fabulous Fun!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 25, 2013

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What's not to love about The Secret Diary of Alice ? It's witty, fun, quirky with a great dose of mystery, romance, and comedy combined. I was brought up with John Cleese, and his sense of humour, so Nigel Channing absolutely nails it for me.

Fast-paced and climatic, you won't be able to put this fabulous book down!

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