A Kid’s Guide to Italy (Lonely Planet), by Alexa Ward
A short review by Annabel We don’t often review children’s books at Shiny, but when Lonely Planet sent me the latest in their ‘Kid’s Guide’ series after we’d reviewed some…
The Artist by Lucy Steeds
Reviewed by Harriet Just out in paperback, Lucy Steeds’ debut novel was greeted with much praise when published at the beginning of last year, and was selected by Waterstones as…
Wilderness of Mirrors by Olufemi Terry
Review by Annabel Les Fugitives is a small indie press that initially specialised in French translations, of both literary fiction and nonfiction (see here). Lately, they’ve widened their scope to…
Lifeboat at the End of the World: A Volunteer’s Story, by Dominic Gregory
Review by Liz Dexter Then there was Dungeness itself. True to its contrary nature, slack water came around the headland a couple of hours either side of the peak or…
Shiny Archive Reading List #5 – Nature & Ecology
Compiled by Annabel We haven’t done one of our archive reading lists for a couple of years, but what better occasion to celebrate belatedly than Sir David Attenborough reaching his…
The Village on the Edge of the World: Writing and Surviving Ceaușescu’s Romania, by Herta Muller
Translated by Kate McNaughton Review by Karen Langley Nobel-prize winner Herta Muller is a Romanian-German novelist, poet and essayist who’s known for work which captures the experience of living under…
The Given World by Melissa Harrison
Review by Peter Reason Melissa Harrison combines duties as novelist and nature writer. Her nature writing often takes a narrative form, and her novels pay greater respect to the contribution…
Cynics by Anatoly Marienhof
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Review by Karen Langley When faced with a totalitarian regime and a disintegrating world, how should the writer or artist respond? In many cases they turn…
The Delusions by Jenni Fagan
Review by Annabel I was always going to pick up this book – galactic cats on the cover! A must-read: luckily, the contents were also brilliantly quirky. Somehow I’ve never…