Three Hours: The Top Ten Sunday Times Bestseller

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There are some fantastic characters in the book - some of the teachers Matthew Marr the brave head and his equally brave deputy Neil, Daphne the drama teacher, Jacinta the English teacher who read beautiful poetry to her students to distract them, student Hannah and one of the mums, Beth. Daphne is rehearsing Macbeth with the students when the drama starts and I love the recurring use of the Scottish play which creates some of the most powerful images and the students see that the events in the play mirror events outside the theatre and the end of the book ‘we were Burnham Wood coming up the hill to Dunsinane, marching to the beat of three words’ is just such an example. That image will stay with me for a long time. Their bravery is humbling.

Toddlers should be physically active every day for at least 180 minutes (3 hours). The more the better. This should be spread throughout the day, including playing outdoors. The ‘police procedural’ side of things did not daunt the reader and held some fascinating insights into what happens in these situations If you love fast-paced thrillers and multiple point-of-view books, Three Hours should definitely be on your radar. I highly recommend it!Although the timeline for this story is short, it delivers a chilling and mesmerising read. A tale of courage in adversity. Loved how the drama teacher encourages the pupils to rehearse their play Macbet, to keep their minds off this dangerous situations. This story is fast paced and terrifying at times, I held my breath scared to read on!! I think this book is hard hitting as we have all read in the news about shootings happening in schools so I can definitely relate to it. The sense of concealed menace hangs like a dense fog over the school never knowing if the killer is going to step out of the mist and shoot someone. The staff try to occupy the children without conveying fear but their anxiety is palpable. Worse still there’s more than one gunman! Over three hours from 9:15 am to 12:15 pm the lives of the school’s staff, pupils and parents will change forever.

This is an amazing book from an outstanding author. The start of the book is extremely dramatic and tense with students and teachers hiding in classrooms and the school theatre from gunmen and there are some superb images such as children piling books against the library door to prevent entry. This is every parents, teachers and students nightmare but the book goes deeper into issues that are so pertinent and relevant that from time to time I had to pause in the reading to reflect. The weather is almost a character itself within story line - as it's instrumental in obstructing police surveillance and causing severe delays when it comes to bringing the siege to an end. A Somerset school is under siege, it has been taken over by armed gunmen who have shot the headmaster Mathew Marr. Pupils at the school have barricaded themselves in their classrooms. There has been a snow storm and the police and emergency services are struggling to attend and are trying to find out who has a grudge against the school. Is it a disgruntled ex employee or pupil? Three Hours was chosen by the Times as their thriller of the year. The Sunday Times called Three Hours 'a brilliant literary thriller...reminiscent of both Greek tragedy and Shakespeare’ Three Hours is based on every parent's worst nightmare - a school siege, young pupils held hostage, teachers being shot and gunmen surrounding the school seemingly uninterested in negotiating. What makes this particular story stand out from others in this genre is that the school in question is based in Somerset, UK and in the midst of a fierce and unrelenting snow blizzard.

The extraordinary new novel everyone is talking about from the Sunday Times best-selling author of Sister Here are some great pre-set timers ready to use. They range from a 1 second timer - up to a year timer! It's pointless - but you asked for it! :-) Students mingled between Old School and New School; their various classes drew them toward the classrooms. The rehearsal of Macbeth was that morning; the children in the pottery class with their teacher; the library would have other students working. But it was the call from Rafi to the headmaster that started the amber alert. Then the gunshot which meant red alert; police assembled with helicopters and tactical response teams – all controlled by two gunmen. Three hours of terror, uncertainty, courage and bravery. Yes the story is ripped straight from a headline you hope never to see again. This has been done before you may say. No. Not like this. Not with this immersive level of quality in the prose, in the characters, in the overall impact of it. I cried for our society when I was done, I also believed in it. It's a brave and touchy topic to write about, especially considering the stories parallels to many events that have truly happened. The Columbine High School shootings come to mind, which adds an urgency to the narrative. Yes, it's fiction, but you keep reminding yourself that this could be happening for real. Because it has happened before.

I have read a handful of stories featuring the abhorrent circumstances depicted here but none, I believe, have been set in Britain. Facets of this setting felt familiar to me, which only served to, again, heighten the horror for the unknown that was also hidden amongst it. The 180 minutes can include light activity such as standing up, moving around, rolling and playing, as well as more energetic activity like skipping, hopping, running and jumping. The book give us different POVs from student and teachers in separate locations throughout the school, giving us insight to what they are experiencing. We see the harrowing levels the teachers go to in protecting the children and the students the love, courage and compassion they show under horrific circumstances. And of course it’s impossible not to shed tears for Rafi and his little brother. They were already getting through hell and now they’re living another traumatizing experience but they still hold each other and gather their strengths to survive together.For practical purposes we can round our final result to an approximate numerical value. We can say that three hours is approximately one hundred eighty minutes: The 180 minutes should include at least 60 minutes (1 hour) of moderate-to-vigorous intensity physical activity. Thank you for visiting this bio. My books are not easy to slot into a particular genre, and you can usually be found under 'contemporary fiction', 'literary fiction', 'political thriller' and 'psychological thriller.' If you try one I hope you enjoy it. The school is a campus of multiple buildings located in woodlands on the Somerset coast and includes a junior school, a senior school, pottery building and a theatre. It has continued to grow from the 1920s adding new to old and now provides education to 14 years of student needs. Several teachers and students occupy each of the buildings and their stories are told with compelling fascination when threat and fear hang over their every move. The novel explores how different people react, some stepping forward in moments of courage and those that don’t. A school is under a siege and the headmaster has been shot. The story is being told from the point of view of everyone involved – the students, the teachers, the worried parents, the investigators, even the bad guys… Different people are hiding in different places in the school, all hoping this is just a dream.