Silent Nights: Christmas Mysteries, ed. Martin Edwards
Reviewed by Harriet Christmas is a mysterious, as well as magical, time of year. Strange things can happen, and this helps to explain the hallowed tradition of telling ghost stories…
What Independent Theatre Taught me About Fiction Writing by Alexander Yates, author of The Winter Place.
There is a famous (and sometimes overused) piece of advice that writers like to give each other. It comes from Chekhov, in the form of a quote: “If in the…
The Winter Place by Alexander Yates (YA)
Reviewed by Annabel Tess’s mother died giving birth to her brother Axel. They live with their father in a cabin at the edge of a town in the middle of…
The Just City by Jo Walton
Reviewed by Stefanie Hollmichel Aside from The Death of Socrates and a few other pieces forced on me in school, I can’t say I have ever been interested in reading Plato. That Jo…
The House of Elrig by Gavin Maxwell
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I discovered Gavin Maxwell’s books when newly exiled from a rural Scottish childhood. The first of his books that I found was Harpoon at a Venture. Drawn…
Beautiful and Impossible Things by Oscar Wilde
Reviewed by Karen Langley There’s always the danger that when an author becomes more famous than his works, those works will become so eclipsed that we’ll end up with an…
The Z Murders by J Jefferson Farjeon
Reviewed by Harriet Golden Age crime has always been popular, and each of the so-called queens – Sayers, Christie, Allingham, March, Tey – has her loyal followers. But in the…
The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende
Translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson Reviewed by Alice Farrant The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende is a tender love story, traversing from the 1930s through to the present day,…
Pushkin Vertigo – titles by Piero Chiara & Leo Perutz
Reviewed by Victoria Pushkin Vertigo, the new crime imprint from Pushkin Press has got off to a flying start with its first batch of releases. Not surprisingly, perhaps, when you…
The Maiden Dinosaur by Janet McNeill
Reviewed by Julie B “Barbara Pym…Elizabeth Taylor…” exalted company for any author’s novel, and when I noticed these names on the front of this book I must admit I was…
Made to Kill by Adam Christopher
Reviewed by David Harris Made to Kill is the first volume of a projected trilogy featuring a PI (ostensibly) who is also the last robot on Earth. While being another book…
The Folly by Ivan Vladislavic
Reviewed by Karen Langley You can’t rush the building of a new house. You’ve got to get the whole thing clear in the mind’s eye. We all know the fable…
Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino
Translated by Alexander O Smith with Joseph Reeder. Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the first novel I’ve read by Keigo Higashino – indeed, my first Japanese crime novel –…
Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington
Reviewed by Noreen Masud What a city was Glasgow! It was really more into vaudeville than it was into violence, a fact seldom appreciated. There’s a wealth of Scottish fiction…
The Crystal Beads Murder by Annie Haynes
Reviewed by Lyn Baines It struck me while I was reading this book that one of the differences between the Golden Age murder mystery and a lot of modern detective novels…
Hand Of God (A Scott Manson Thriller) by Philip Kerr
Reviewed by Linda Boa This isn’t a Bernie Gunther book, nor is it a standalone. It’s a new thriller series by Philip Kerr about a man called Scott Manson, who…
Summer by Edith Wharton
Reviewed by Harriet I suppose most people who know about Edith Wharton think of her as a writer whose subject was the social elite – think of The House of Mirth,…
Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography by Claire Harman
Reviewed by Simon This marks the third biography I’ve reviewed in Shiny New Books that is about a major figure in my doctoral thesis – three out of three of…
Dust And Desire by Conrad Williams
Reviewed by Linda Boa Dust And Desire is the first in a trilogy (the other two are out next year) featuring London-based Private Investigator Joel Sorrell. Joel is an ex-policeman whose…
Caroline, and Narcissa by Richmal Crompton
By Elaine Simpson-Long As a long time fan of the adult novels of Richmal Crompton, I was delighted to hear that Bello, the digital print arm of Pan Macmillan, is…
Letters to the Sphinx by Oscar Wilde
Reviewed by Simon This is the reason that small reprint publishers exist. Who else would print this attractive slim volume – only 63 pages – and bring back into print…
After You by Jojo Moyes
Reviewed by Laura Marriott “Don’t think of me too often … Just live well. Just live. Love, Will” After You is the sequel to the much loved international best seller Me Before You by…
Number 11 by Jonathan Coe
Reviewed by Annabel I was lucky enough to have discovered Jonathan Coe fairly early on in his career, back when the paperback edition of What a Carve Up! was published…
Career of Evil by JK Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith
Reviewed by Harriet I can’t remember ever enjoying writing a novel more than Career of Evil…Robert Galbraith has always felt like my own private playground. So says JK Rowling at the…
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