December 17, 2015 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…
December 11, 2015 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…
December 11, 2015 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…
December 10, 2015 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…
December 10, 2015 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…
December 10, 2015 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…
December 9, 2015 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…
December 9, 2015 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…
December 9, 2015 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…
December 8, 2015 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…
December 8, 2015 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…
December 8, 2015 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…
December 8, 2015 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,…
December 8, 2015 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….
December 7, 2015 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…
December 7, 2015 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…
December 7, 2015 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…
December 4, 2015 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…
December 4, 2015 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…
December 4, 2015 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…
December 3, 2015 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…
December 3, 2015 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…
December 3, 2015 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…
December 3, 2015 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….
December 3, 2015 Paradise by A.L. Kennedy Reviewed by Julie Barham It is probably a good thing to sometimes read outside our comfort zone. For me, Paradise was such a book. It is…
