The Life of Crime by Martin Edwards
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies Here is a hefty and impressive package, a bumper fun book and prodigious resource guide for all serious crime fiction fans (and who isn’t these days,…
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies Here is a hefty and impressive package, a bumper fun book and prodigious resource guide for all serious crime fiction fans (and who isn’t these days,…
Review by Terence Jagger We are all aware of placebos and their effects – the idea that a totally inactive substance can have a similar effect to, for example, a…
Review by Liz Dexter What role does music really, deeply play in our lives, from our first days to our last? Jude Rogers in her clever, educational and moving book…
Review by Annabel The current vogue for feminist retellings of stories from Greek and Roman myths and legends is showing no signs of slowing down and long may it continue….
Reviewed by Harriet ‘What if you didn’t have to live with your worst memories?’, asks the cover of this debut novel. Anyone who’s seen the film Eternal Sunshine of the…
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long I recently reviewed a biography of the Queen by Robert Hardman (reviewed here) which I described as an “admirable book” in its lack of hyperbole and…
Reviewed by Harriet It’s the first of September 1939. Hitler has invaded Poland, and though Britain is not yet at war with Germany, there is widespread fear of potential bombing…
Review by Annabel Shirley Collins is widely regarded as one of the most influential British folk singers of our times. Often singing alongside her sister and composer Dolly, she was…
Review by Julie Barham This book is a powerful, sometimes brutal historical novel set in the winter of 1607, when life seemed frozen by a cold that exploded trees and…
Review by David Hebblethwaite If Jon McGregor’s name is on the front of a book, I want to read it – it’s as simple as that. There are certain things…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster May is Maternal Mental Health Awareness Month and so the perfect time to consider two memoirs of postnatal depression, one that was just published this month…
Review by Anna Hollingsworth Imagine all the life crawling in the undergrowth of a garden. In Garden Physic, Sylvia Legris digs it all up and exposes sediments of emotion, science…
Review by David Hebblethwaite In 2011, journalist Chitra Ramaswamy was sent to interview Henry and Ingrid Wuga, a Jewish couple who had fled Nazi Germany and, by then in their…
Translated by Anne Mclean Review by Michael Eaude Javier Cercas rose to literary fame two decades ago with Soldiers of Salamis (2001), a novel structured as an investigation into an…
Review by Anna Hollingsworth On the cover of Fiona Benson’s Ephemeron, there is a butterfly trapped in a spider’s web. It’s a melancholy image, where beauty and death come together…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘two sisters, four nights, one city’ is the subtitle of this riveting new novel by Lucy Caldwell. I don’t think I’ve ever used the term riveting in…