The Long-Winded Lady by Maeve Brennan
Review by Karen Langley There has been a resurgence of interest in the fiction writing of author Maeve Brennan recently, with her short stories in particular having gained much critical…
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Shiny New Books
Shot with Crimson by Nicola Upson
Reviewed by Harriet This is the eleventh novel in Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey historical crime series; we’ve reviewed four of them on here as well as her standalone fictional biography…
Shakespeare: The Man who Pays the Rent, by Judi Dench
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long If I had my way every single teacher in the land who is attempting to teach Shakespeare should have a copy of this to hand as,…
Day by Michael Cunningham
Review by Simon A new novel by Michael Cunningham is cause for celebration. I’ve read and loved all his novels – give or take a not-to-my-taste venture into science fiction…
The Bone Flower by Charles Lambert
Review by Rob Spence We are in London at its Victorian zenith, a city of imperial majesty, and also a city where the most abject poverty exists side-by-side with the…
Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward
Reviewed by Harriet The first weapon I ever held was my mother’s hand. I was a small child then, soft at the belly. On that night my mother took me…
You’re All Talk: Why We Are What We Speak by Rob Drummond
Review by Lix Dexter This is a book about the relationship between how we speak and who we are. More precisely, it’s a book about the role of spoken language,…
Fifteen Wild Decembers by Karen Powell
Reviewed by Harriet ‘I’m sick of those two.’ The words arrived in my mouth like hard, round pebbles, threatened to take up all the space. I stopped for a moment,…
A Shiny & Happy Christmas
Last autumn the Shiny Eds, decided to scale back the number of reviews posted each week at Shiny New Books to keep everything manageable! This year, we have still posted…
Encounters With Everyday Madness by Charlie Hill
The growth of social media seems to have generated a huge increase in madness. Not real madness, of course. Rather, it’s the condition affected by so many TikTokers and Instagrammers,…
Stories for Winter: and Nights by the Fire
Introduction by Simon Thomas Reviewed by Harriet Devine When I saw the title and the snowflakey cover of this winter offering from the British Library Women Writers series, I thought…
Penelope Unbound, by Mary Morrissy
Reviewed by Rob Spence I was once assured by a James Joyce scholar that there was more critical material on Joyce than there was on Shakespeare – pretty good going,…
The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small, by Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Even if the ‘Rewilding your Garden’ chapter seems the only one of practical use to you – or, indeed, if you only have a window box…
A Date with Language by David Crystal
Reviewed by Karen Langley Bodleian Library Publishing is an imprint attached to Oxford University which specialises in bringing out books that share the riches of the Bodley’s wide-ranging collections with…
Re-reading The Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro
Review by Annabel Ever since I read and reviewed this novel, back in the spring of 2015 when it was first published – my review for Shiny is here –…
The Running Grave by J.K. Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith
Reviewed by Harriet Like me, many people will have been waiting impatiently for the next installment of the ongoing saga of private detectives Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott. Some (not…
Q&A with Nicholas Royle, author of David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine
Questions by Annabel Hello Nicholas, it’s great to ask you some questions about your fascinating new book which I enjoyed reading so much. I fondly remember our previous encounter for…
David Bowie, Enid Blyton and the sun machine by Nicholas Royle
Review by Annabel I’ve very much enjoyed reading Nicholas Royle’s books, the novel An English Guide to Birdwatching (reviewed here, with a Q&A with Nicholas here), and then his memoir…
Once a King: The Lost Memoir of Edward VIII, by Jane Marguerite Tippett
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long The author of this book, Jane Marguerite Tippett, came across a previously unknown cache of letters, memoranda and notes written by the Duke of Windsor when she…
Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones
Reviewed by Lory Widmer Hess Neil Gaiman and I have at least one thing in common: we both started reading Diana Wynne Jones when we picked up one of her…
The Temple of Fortuna, by Elodie Harper
Review by Lory Widmer Hess The Temple of Fortuna is the third book in a trilogy that began with The Wolf Den and continued with The House with the Golden…
West Heart Kill by Dann McDorman
Review by Annabel Imagine, it’s the mid-late 1970s, the Independence Day long weekend, and the founder members of an exclusive country/hunting club, West Heart, are gathered in the Club’s extensive…
The Fraud by Zadie Smith
Reviewed by Harriet He saw of course that she was an old woman, but she didn’t move or speak like one. A high bosom, handsome, her face had few wrinkles…
Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig
Translated by Anthea Bell Review by Terence Jagger Stefan Zweig was born in Vienna, but lived in England, the USA and Brazil, where he apparently died in a double suicide…