House With No Doors by Jeff Noon
Reviewed by Annabel Having been a fan of Jeff Noon’s cult spec fiction novels set in an alternate Manchester, I was surprised and delighted when his book Slow Motion Ghosts,…
Reviewed by Annabel Having been a fan of Jeff Noon’s cult spec fiction novels set in an alternate Manchester, I was surprised and delighted when his book Slow Motion Ghosts,…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth When an author is described as having a ”fresh voice”, I usually dismiss the description with a shrug; the attribute is repeated so often that it’s…
Reviewed by Harriet At fifty-five, Isobel Brocken was still a nice-looking woman. She dated, of course, all her female friends said so – poor Isobel certainly dated; she was plump,…
Paperback review by Rebecca Foster I almost passed on the chance to read this because I’d gotten the impression that it was nothing more than a romantic comedy with a…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Robert Jones, Jr. had doubts about writing The Prophets: “Not only was the subject matter too uncharted but the psychic weight of it felt too heavy…
Reviewed by Annabel …a lot of what I remember is not the same as what the others remember, which was partly what caused the trouble when I tried to write…
Reviewed by Harriet Jacqueline Winspear was born in 1955. Her debut novel – the first of her award-winning Maisie Dobbs mysteries – was published in 2003. Counting on my fingers…
Reviewed by Annabel Owning most of Ackroyd’s fiction output and a good chunk of his non-fiction (even if I haven’t quite read it all), I thought I had a grip…
Review by Pete Freeth As the British publishing industry continues to strive for greater diversity and cultural representation, initiatives like the #Merky Books New Writer’s Prize are incredibly valuable steps…
Reviewed by Annabel Max Porter emerged on the British literary scene in the mid-2010s as an author to be watched. His debut 2015 novella Grief is the Thing With Feathers…
Reviewed by Liz Dexter It used to be that we attended exhibitions and treated ourselves to the catalogue in the shop on the way out. Now, it’s more a case…
While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, occasionally, we give our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’ – they have been reading. A…
Paperback review by Susan Osborne Set in Carol Anshaw’s home town of Chicago in the months before and after the 2016 election, Right After the Weather explores both the state…
Reviewed by Peter Reason When I was a small boy—and this memory must reach back to around 1950—I played with a wooden puzzle made up of the historic counties of…
Reviewed by Harriet Ever since I started reading book review blogs, some years ago now, I have often encountered Margery Sharp’s name, generally accompanied by a heartfelt regret that many…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger Katie Mack is an American astrophysicist, but her writing is very informal and almost journalistic or chatty – which is great for a subject like this,…
Reviewed by Annabel A new novel from Tana French, Irish author of the acclaimed Dublin Murders series is always worth waiting for. Her latest, The Searcher, a standalone, is that…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger Early last year, Europa launched a new imprint “for explorers of the world”: The Passenger. Now, the list includes Berlin, India, Turkey, Brazil and Greece. But…
Reviewed by Peter Reason Opening this book, I am immediately drawn in: ‘Silence, snow and solitude have got hold of me and will not let me go. I am possessed…
By Annabel and Harriet It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? As if the pandemic lockdown wasn’t enough, in early April, Annabel managed to accidentally delete Shiny New Books –…
Reviewed by Annabel Jonathan Coe’s latest novel couldn’t be further from his Costa-winning Middle England (which I reviewed for Shiny here), which examined 21st century Englishness as we went about…
By Rebecca Foster The Stubborn Light of Things collects five and a half years’ worth of Melissa Harrison’s monthly Nature Notebook columns for The Times. The book falls into two…
Questions by Karen Langley 2020 has in many ways been the year of independent publishers; print books have been fighting back against the march of the e-book, and recently any…
Review by Eleanor Updegraff It can be difficult to get other people interested in your life. Many authors have tried, many have failed – often simply by taking themselves too…