Where Shall We Run To? by Alan Garner
Reviewed by Annabel I’ve been a fan of Alan Garner’s novels ever since my childhood when I first encountered The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel The Moon of Gomrath in the 1960s. I…
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The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies At times crime fiction seems a genre so powerful that it sucks in and revitalises other forms. At others, literary fiction appears to piggyback expediently on…
Little by Edward Carey
Reviewed by Simon The name Madame Tussaud is familiar to most of us – particularly to anybody who has been a tourist in London, and visited the waxwork museum that…
Childhood by Gerard Reve
Translated by Sam Garrett Reviewed by Harriet Gerard Reve (1923-2006) was a Dutch writer – according to Wikipedia, one of the ‘Great Three’ of Dutch postwar literature. I have to…
The Women’s Atlas by Joni Seager
Review by Liz Dexter On the front of the book there’s a quote from Catherine Mayer, Co-Founder of the Women’s Equality Party: “The most important book that will be published…
Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: the Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce by Colm Tóibín
Review by Rob Spence Tóibín’s title, of course, comes from Lady Caroline Lamb’s snap judgement of Byron; it’s not clear whether the author here intends the epithets to be applied…
The New Yorker Encyclopedia of Cartoons, edited by Bob Mankoff
Foreword by David Remnick Review by Hayley Anderton I’m old enough to remember encyclopedias, and lucky to have grown up in a house that had a Victorian collection of books….
Searching for the Lost Tombs of Egypt by Chris Naunton
Reviewed by Harriet The civilisation of Ancient Egypt exerts a seemingly eternal fascination. All those pharaohs and their dynasties, stretching back to three thousand years before the birth of Christ,…
Only To Sleep by Lawrence Osborne
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies A short walk from my ergonomic study chair is my Chandler bookshelf. It includes some Philip Marlowe fiction not by Chandler: Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe, A…
Love is Blind by William Boyd
Reviewed by Harriet Sebastian Faulks has called William Boyd ‘the finest storyteller of his generation’, and it’s hard to argue with that. The stories he tells are mostly those of…
Nine Pints: A Journey through the Mysterious, Miraculous World of Blood by Rose George
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Rose George is the author of three previous wide-ranging nonfiction books, about refugees, human waste and foreign shipping. In Nine Pints, she dives deep into the…
The Long Shadow by Celia Fremlin
Reviewed by Harriet How Ivor would have loved being dead! It was a shame he was missing it all. First published in 1975, this very welcome reprint shows Celia Fremlin…
If Cats Disappeared From the World by Genki Kawamura
Translated by Eric Selland Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth Who doesn’t deal with the devil every now and again? Or perhaps a god from your chosen religion, for the more saintly…
Under the Rock: The Poetry of a Place by Benjamin Myers
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Benjamin Myers has been having a bit of a moment. In 2017 Bluemoose Books published his fifth novel, The Gallows Pole, which went on to win…
Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik
Reviewed by David Harris This was the first time I’d read a book by Novik. Her Temeraire series and Uprooted (reviewed for Shiny by Sakura here) have received lots of praise so I was pleased…
The Race to Save the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
Review by Karen Langley The fate of the last of the Romanov Tsars and his family has exerted a fascination over the public during the century since their violent death…
Eye of the Shoal by Helen Scales
Reviewed by Annabel In her third book, Helen Scales tuns her attention to another branch of the marine tree of life with each book. She began with the small genus…
Early Riser by Jasper Fforde
Reviewed by David Harris Skinny Pete went to sleep, underfed and bonySkinny Pete went to sleep, and died a death so lonely. The enemy aren’t the Villains, nomads, scavengers, insomniacs,…
‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’: On Where Eagles Dare by Geoff Dyer
Reviewed by Annabel Being a child of the ’60s and ’70s, I grew up with thrillers. We read loads of them: my father still does, and I enjoy an occasional…
Bloody Brilliant Women: Pioneers, Revolutionaries and Geniuses your History Teacher Forgot to Mention by Cathy Newman
Review by Liz Dexter Cathy Newman is one of Channel 4 News’ main studio presenters and specialises in investigative journalism, too. Here she brings her feminism and writing talents to…
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth What happens when the walls around someone collapse – in this case, both literally and metaphorically? One take is that when you’re left without shelter under…
The Flame by Leonard Cohen
Edited by Robert Faggen & Alexandra Pleshoyano Review by Rob Spence For a while in the mid sixties to the early seventies, the singer-songwriter reigned supreme in popular music. Dylan,…
Vanish in an Instant by Margaret Millar
Reviewed by Harriet Why had I never heard of Margaret Millar until I spotted this reprint by Pushkin Vertigo? Because, I suppose, she was one of those people who have…
The Light in the Dark: A Winter Journal by Horatio Clare
Review by Peter Reason Reading the title of this book and seeing the book cover, the prospective reader might, as did I, expect a book about the darker period of…