All the Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J Church
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Elizabeth J. Church’s debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, was about an 87-year-old amateur ornithologist whose husband was one of the creators of the atomic…
Rex V. Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders by Laura Thompson
Review by Karen Langley The Thompson-Bywaters murder case (also known as “The Ilford Murder”) is notorious, but I think most of my previous knowledge of it comes from two sources:…
The Vintage Shetland Project by Susan Crawford
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton The Vintage Shetland Project has had quite a journey into print, one that I’ve followed with interest for the last 3 years from when I first…
Rosie by Rose Tremain
Reviewed by Harriet I’m a huge admirer of Rose Tremain’s brilliant novels, and very fond of childhood memoirs as a genre, so this one was a must for me. It’s…
The Unbeliever by Oggy Boytchev
Reviewed by Annabel Oggy (Ognian) Boytchev grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria. He developed an interest in spies and spy novels as a child, after hearing propaganda on…
Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce
Reviewed by Helen Skinner It’s 1941 and Britain is at war. Emmeline Lake has always wanted to be a journalist and is thrilled when she sees an advertisement in the…
A Chill in the Air by Iris Origo
Review by Terence Jagger This is a fascinating book, written during the year or so preceding Italy’s entry in to the 1939-45 war, when whether she would join – and…
How Shostakovich Changed My Mind by Stephen Johnson
Review by Karen Langley Readers of Shiny New Books will know of my love for Notting Hill Editions books; I’ve reviewed their “Beautiful and Impossible Things” and “The Russian Soul”…
The Golovlevs by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Translated by I.P. Foote Review by Karen Langley Back in SNB #13 I reviewed “The History of a Town” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the great Russian satirists of the 19th…
To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell
Review by Annabel I loved this book from the front cover to the back, starting with its title – that capital ‘B’ is crucial to the book’s premise. Subtitled ‘Adventures…
The Ropewalker and A People Without a Past by Jaan Kross
Translated by Merike Lepasaar Beecher Reviewed by Gill Davies Thanks to the wonderful Maclehose Press I have discovered another writer in translation who deserves to be much better known. Up…
What She Ate by Laura Shapiro
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton What She Ate looks at ‘six remarkable women and the food that tells their stories’. It comes at a time when food centred biographies, or food…
Moonrise & Lost Mars, ed. Mike Ashley
Reviewed by Karen Langley There can’t be many readers of Shiny New Books who aren’t aware of the lovely British Library Crime Classics series: long out-of-print and forgotten novels and…
Diary of a Bipolar Explorer by Lucy Newlyn
Reviewed by Jean Morris This is both useful and beautiful. Lucy Newlyn, recently retired Oxford professor of English literature, author of a lovely book, among others, about Dorothy and William…