Wintering: A Season With Geese by Stephen Rutt
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Stephen Rutt and his partner move to Dumfries, to a flat near the Solway Firth, just as he’s finishing writing his first (wonderful) book The Seafarers…
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Shiny New Books
Women’s Weird 2: More Strange Stories by Women, 1891-1937, edited by Melissa Edmundson
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Women’s Weird: Strange Stories by Women 1890 -1940 was a standout book from last year – it’s still genuinely one of the most unsettling anthologies I’ve…
British Weird, Selected Shorter Fiction 1893-1937 edited by James Machin
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I spent some time looking up the definition of Weird as opposed to Horror in preparation for writing this, and now have the perfect opportunity to…
Bookshop.Org is OPEN in the UK
Please excuse the plug post, but now we’re going back into lockdown it is more important than ever to support our indie bookshops online. From today, there’s a new way…
The Harpy by Megan Hunter
Reviewed by Annabel Megan Hunter’s beautiful and poetic debut novella, The End We Started From (reviewed here for Shiny by Lucy Unwin), the story of a woman about to give…
The Unbearable Bassington by Saki
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Francesca Bassington sat in the drawing room of her house in Blue Street regaling herself and her estimable brother Henry with China tea and small cress…
Happy Half-Hours: Selected Writings of A.A. Milne
Review by Simon Thomas You might be familiar with the beautiful little hardbacks from Notting Hill Editions, where they select essays and other writings from across the range of an…
The Little Library Christmas by Kate Young
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I’m a proper fan of Kate Young and her Little Library books – they’re a delightful mix of recipes, reflection, and book recommendations, but even so…
The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante
Translated by Anne Goldstein Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Adolescence can be brutal, and in The Lying Life of Adults Elena Ferrante brings it out in all its ugly passions, grievances…
One Billion Years to the End of the World by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
Translated by Antonina W. Bouis Reviewed by Karen Langley Science fiction writing often gets a bad press; dismissed as lightweight genre writing, mocked for some of the horrendous cover art…
The Oxford Book of Theatrical Anecdotes, edited by Gyles Brandreth
Reviewed by Harriet This, obviously, is a book for those who like a good theatrical anecdote. I certainly do, and have been privy to many of them since I was…
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Universe: And Our place within it by Andrew Newsam
Reviewed by Annabel I’ve always loved books about space and I still have my beloved Hamlyn guides on Astronomy and Exploring the Planets by Iain Nicholson from 1970 that got…
Snow by John Banville
Reviewed by Harriet I’m rather ashamed to say that the only one of ‘multi-award-winning’ John Banville’s books I’ve read before is The Black-Eyed Blonde, which he published in 2014 under…
Kitted Out: Style and Youth Culture in the Second World War by Caroline Young
Reviewed by Liz Dexter This extremely well-researched and authoritative book takes us through the Second World War, in the UK, the US, the Far and Middle East and Europe, through…
Spoon-Fed by Tim Spector
Reviewed by Annabel Kings College Hospital-based Professor Tim Spector’s name is, I hope, becoming more widely known in the UK since the pandemic began. He’s been involved in the development…
Reviewer’s Choice: A Day to Remember to Forget by Rosalind Brackenbury
While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, we enjoyed giving some of our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’ they were reading this…
Final Cut by S. J.Watson
‘They tried to hide the truth. But the camera never lies…’ Review by Basil Ransome-Davies So runs the publisher’s tagline on the front cover of S. J. Watson’s third novel. …
The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida by Clarissa Goenawan
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth In one of the marketing quotes on its cover, The Perfect World of Miwako Sumida is described as “an elegantly cryptic, poetically plotted Murakami-esque whydunit.” Thematically…
Daughters by Lucy Fricke
Translated from the German by Sinéad Crowe Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff In the Translator’s Note at the end of Daughters, Sinéad Crowe writes of her concern about successfully translating the…
Knitting From Fair Isle by Mati Ventrillon
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton There are a few new knitting books, annuals, or journals in the offing that deal with Fair Isle or Shetland lace, but this is the first…
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Review by Annabel Of all the books that were published a couple of weeks ago in this September’s post-lockdown publishing splurge, Susanna Clarke’s second novel, Piranesi, was the one I…
Jack by Marilynne Robinson
Reviewed by Harriet He was walking behind her, two steps behind. She did not look back. She said, “I’m not talking to you”. “I completely understand”. “If you did completely…
The Madness by Narcís Oller
Translated from the Catalan by Douglas Suttle Reviewed by Eleanor Updegraff Joining the ranks of small presses dedicated to one particular region or language, Fum d’Estampa is a Barcelona–London go-between…
Unofficial Britain: Journeys Through Unexpected Places by Gareth E. Rees
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Opening notably and powerfully with a description of travelling through a traditional countryside location, innocent dry stone walls at first, then Civil War memories, a burning…