April 30, 2015 Death in the Rainy Season by Anna Jacquiery Reviewed by Linda Boa I didn’t know much about Cambodia before I read Anna Jacquiery’s second Inspector Morel novel, Death In The Rainy Season. In this…
April 30, 2015 Introducing the Shiny Book Club We hope that some of you have managed to read our first Shiny Book Club choice – Laline Paull’s The Bees. We left you with…
April 30, 2015 Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke Reviewed by Jane Carter I have a very clear memory of visiting a bookshop, a good few years ago. I had a birthday book…
April 30, 2015 The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies by Martin Millar Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Altar of Pity: Martin Millar’s Athens ‘I’ve tried setting a novel in ancient Athens before,’ writes Martin Millar, in…
April 29, 2015 Victorian Fairy Tales, edited by Michael Newton Reviewed by Helen Parry The sun was now set, and the darkness coming on, but the child thought of no danger but the bears…
April 29, 2015 The Writing of Our Endless Numbered Days By Claire Fuller In 2011 a teenage boy turned up in Berlin claiming that he had been living in the German forests with his…
April 29, 2015 Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller Reviewed by Annabel They say that every picture tells a story – or sometimes more. When seventeen year old Peggy finds an old photograph…
April 28, 2015 The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell Paperback review by Annabel A large part of the novel Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel (which I reviewed here) was set twenty years after a…
April 28, 2015 The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black Reviewed by Harriet I thought there wasn’t much more damage that could be done to me that hadn’t already been done. You get hardened…
April 28, 2015 Geek Love by Katherine Dunn Reviewed by Claire Boyle Geek Love by Katherine Dunn is like nothing you have ever read before. Literally. Hyperbole or not, it is one of…
April 28, 2015 The Door That Led to Where by Sally Gardner YA review by Annabel Once Sally Gardner gained enough confidence to start writing novels for older children and teens, already being a fabulous illustrator…
April 28, 2015 The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr Reviewed by Linda Boa Well, after a short break, during which the ubiquitous Philip Kerr wrote Research and Prayer, Bernie Gunther has returned by popular demand for his…
April 27, 2015 Gretel and the Dark by Eliza Granville Review by Hayley Anderton When I started reading this book I was a little ambivalent about it. I was attracted by the promise of…
April 27, 2015 Hotel Arcadia by Sunny Singh Reviewed by Annabel Sam thought that the first shots were in her nightmares. … No, she never thought of bullets, except in her dreams….
April 24, 2015 Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper Reviewed by Annabel To those of us living in the UK, it probably seems inconceivable that you can live a whole life without ever…
April 23, 2015 Science in Wonderland: The Scientific Fairy Tales of Victorian Britain by Melanie Keene Reviewed by Helen Parry Thomas Gradgrind is the famously awful teacher from Hard Times. His philosophy: ‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys…
April 23, 2015 Five Fascinating Facts About… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland Compiled by the Shiny editors. We join in the celebrations of the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with our own little…
April 23, 2015 Celebrating the Centenary of Ladybird Books Written by Steerforth The reading public is usually fairly indifferent to publishing centenaries, but the 100th anniversary of Ladybird has been a phenomenal success,…
April 23, 2015 The Year of Reading Dangerously by Andy Miller Reviewed by Annabel What do you do when you seriously lose your reading mojo? I tend to retreat into a palate-cleansing thriller to get…
April 23, 2015 The Year of Reading Dangerously (and Seven Years of Living with the Consequences). By Andy Miller About ten years ago, I had a bright idea. It involved reading a baker’s dozen of books I had always meant…
April 23, 2015 Look Back in Anger by John Osborne Reviewed by Annabel Faber & Faber is one of my favourite publishers; in recent years with Faber Finds they’ve started to make the most…
April 23, 2015 The Case of the Hail Mary Celeste by Malcolm Pryce Reviewed by Victoria It is such a delightful surprise when a book you knew nothing about turns out to be a corker. I had…
April 23, 2015 The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths Reviewed by Harriet Ruth Galloway’s five-year-old daughter Kate is off to her first day at school. ‘Say goodbye to Daddy’, says Ruth.‘Bye, Daddy’.‘Bye, sweetheart’….
April 23, 2015 The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson Reviewed by Harriet “Okay,” she said, and thought a moment. “Truthfully, I don’t think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out…
April 23, 2015 The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov Translated by Andrew Bromfield Reviewed by Karen Langley We all believe in the transformative power of literature; however, what would happen if books really did change…
