The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly
Review by Hayley Anderton For those of us who can dimly remember the late 1970s there’s a good chance that Kit Williams’ Masquerade is a foundational memory. The riddles and…
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Suddenly at His Residence: A Mystery in Kent by Christianna Brand
Reviewed by Harriet First published in 1946, Suddenly at his Residence is a wartime novel. You wouldn’t necessarily think so at first – the novel is very much a country…
My Men by Victoria Kielland
Translated by Damion Searls Reviewed by Harriet This extraordinary, powerful novel begins in Norway, in 1876, and it begins as it means to go on: Brynhild’s head was wrapped in…
A Thread of Violence: A Story of Truth, Invention, and Murder, by Mark O’Connell
The Irish journalist Mark O’Connell’s books are particularly notable for his increasingly personal take on the subjects he is investigating. In his 2018 Wellcome Prize winner debut, To Be a…
Pipers and a Dancer, by Stella Benson
Review by Helen Parry Mrs Hinds beamed at Ipsie through pince-nez and bubbled her joy through thin lips, but Ipsie made no reply. Americans see English people always reduced to…
Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
Review by Hayley Anderton It seems as if there’s an almost bottomless appetite for retellings of Greek myths for every age group and across ever more genres; how far are…
Prom Mom by Laura Lippman
Reviewed by Harriet Amber typed her next query into Google: Amber Glass, Joe Simpson, Prom Mom, Cad Dad. Ah, here they were, the headlines and images she had fought so…
Henry VIII – The Heart & The Crown by Alison Weir
Review by Julie Barham Many people have asked Alison Weir about writing the story of Henry to go alongside her excellent Six Tudor Queens series (Anna of Kleve – Queen…
The Beasts of Paris by Stef Penney
Reviewed by Harriet Stef Penney is not a prolific author – there were five years between each of her first three novels, and it’s been seven years since the publication…
The Last Whale by Chris Vick
Review by Peter Reason The Last Whale is a fiction book for teens and young adults that covers serious themes in an engaging story. The narrative threads together tragedy and…
Morgan is My Name by Sophie Keetch
Review by Annabel In a publishing world that has been fairly swamped by feminist retellings of the heroines and heroes of the Ancient Greek myths, much as I enjoy reading…
Remainders of the Day by Shaun Bythell
Review by Julie Barham A further book recording life in all its humour and honesty, this is a brilliant read which captures so much from the perspective of Shaun Bythell,…
The Mill House Murders by Yukito Ayatsuji
Translated by Ho-Ling Wong Review by Terence Jagger This is another of Yukito Ayatsuji’s homages to the British Golden Age of mystery writing, like The Decagon House Murders I reviewed…
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Review by Max Dunbar Welcome, Stranger I was born in the early eighties. My childhood was coloured by reflective screens of jumping pixels. I became fascinated by video games. There…
The Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain
Review by Lory Widmer Hess In the expansive days of summer, what better book could there be to read than a classic of travel literature, Mark Twain’s career-making account of…
The Waste Land: A Biography of a Poem by Matthew Hollis
Review by Terence Jagger T S Eliot, when I read The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, was my introduction to modernism as a reluctant and noisily sceptical schoolboy, and…
The Voluble Topsy by A.P. Herbert
Reviewed by Harriet First published in 1927, nearly a hundred years ago, in the satirical British magazine Punch, the letters of fictional girl-about-town Topsy to her best friend Trix actually…
Tokyo Express by Seicho Matsumoto
Translated by Jesse Kirkwood Review by Karen Langley Summer reading tastes vary, but for me there’s nothing better than settling down with a satisfying mystery novel, particularly of the Golden…
The Queen of Dirt Island by Donal Ryan
Review by Susan Osborne Opening with a beginning and an end, The Queen of Dirt Island follows four generations of women in one unconventional household, all devoted to each other…
The House on the Via Gemito by Domenico Starnone
Translated by Oonagh Stransky Review by Rob Spence The British are not receptive to literature in translation. Sure, any decent bookshop will have a smattering of foreign classics – Proust,…
Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Reviewed by Harriet There’s probably a name for a sub-genre of books that echo or allude to earlier works of literature, something that has to be well done to make…
The Book of Goose by Yiyun Li
Review by Susan Osborne Yiyun Li’s The Book of Goose is the story of an obsessive friendship between two young girls in 1950s rural France, one of whom will briefly…
The Mess We’re In by Annie Macmanus
Review by Annabel Having very much enjoyed Annie Macmanus’ debut novel Mother Mother last year, I was really keen to read her next. The Mess We’re In is as similar…
Not Just for the Boys: Why We Need More Women in Science by Athene Donald
Review by Liz Dexter This book is written for anyone who is wondering why, in spite of decades of effort to promote change, the numbers of women pursuing careers in…