Heirloom Knitting by Sharon Miller
Review by Hayley Anderton Sharon Miller’s ‘Heirloom Knitting: A Shetland Lace Pattern Book’ had become almost a book of legend before this reprint made it readily available again (or still…
A Forger’s Tale by Shaun Greenhalgh
Reviewed by Harriet The subtitle of this fascinating book is ‘Confessions of the Bolton Forger’. Does that ring any bells? If you were keeping half an eye on the news…
Ornithology by Nicholas Royle
Reviewed by Annabel Earlier this year, I reviewed the novel An English Guide to Birdwatching by an author named Nicholas Royle, and I interviewed its author. Ornithology is not by…
This is Going to Hurt by Adam Kay
Review by Annabel I love reading medical memoirs, we’ve featured neurosurgeon Henry Marsh’s two volumes here at Shiny (see my review of Do No Harm here), and heart surgeon Stephen…
The Cocktail Book
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton My day job is selling wine, spirits, and beer, something I fell into when I became interested in learning more about wine. That was 18 years…
A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies However deeply the irony may have entered his soul, John le Carré has no reputation as a jester. An element of satire typifies his work, always….
Questions for Laura Wilson on The Other Woman
Interview by Harriet Harriet: Hi Laura – thanks for agreeing to answer some questions. I really loved The Other Woman and have some questions specifically about that. But first, our…
The Other Woman by Laura Wilson
Reviewed by Harriet A couple of years ago on Shiny I reviewed Laura Wilson’s The Wrong Girl. That was a tense psychological thriller centring on family relationships, and so, in…
New People by Danzy Senna
Reviewed by Alice Farrant Maria and Khalil are the perfect couple, “King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom”. Maria is a successful scholar, writing her dissertation on the Jonestown…
I Am I Am I Am by Maggie O’Farrell
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve always admired Maggie O’Farrell’s fiction, and greatly loved her most recent novel, This Must Be the Place, which I reviewed on Shiny last year. I didn’t…
Pan Books at 70: The SF Edit
Reviewed by Annabel Pan, founded in 1944, published its first mass market paperback in 1947 – Ten Stories by Rudyard Kipling with the famous Pan logo designed by Mervyn Peake…
Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is Attica Locke’s fourth novel and a stunning follow-up. Black Water Rising was set in 1981; Pleasantville in 1996 and both used the crime genre with deep political insight…
Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
Paperback review by Lucy Unwin There is no question, this book is stunning: in its scope, its ambition, in what it can teach us and in the skill on display….
The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Reviewed by Simon Thomas Many book lovers have fantasies about what it would be like to work in a bookshop – perhaps particularly a secondhand bookshop. There is an aura…
Sugar Money by Jane Harris
Reviewed by Harriet Jane Harris is not exactly a prolific novelist. Five years passed beween the publication of her debut novel The Observations (2006) and her second outing Gillespie and…
Giving A Voice - an Interview with Miranda Gold
Interview by Victoria Miranda Gold is a writer based in London. Her first novel, Starlings, published by Karnac in December 2016, reaches back three generations to explore how the impact of…
Return to the Dark Valley by Santiago Gamboa
Translated by Howard Curtis Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies I found a molten quality in this novel (if it is a novel). It burns off the page, as they say. It…