Journey Under the Midnight Sun by Keigo Higashino
Translated by Alexander O Smith with Joseph Reeder. Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the first novel I’ve read by Keigo Higashino – indeed, my first Japanese crime novel –…
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Swing Hammer Swing! by Jeff Torrington
Reviewed by Noreen Masud What a city was Glasgow! It was really more into vaudeville than it was into violence, a fact seldom appreciated. There’s a wealth of Scottish fiction…
The Crystal Beads Murder by Annie Haynes
Reviewed by Lyn Baines It struck me while I was reading this book that one of the differences between the Golden Age murder mystery and a lot of modern detective novels…
Hand Of God (A Scott Manson Thriller) by Philip Kerr
Reviewed by Linda Boa This isn’t a Bernie Gunther book, nor is it a standalone. It’s a new thriller series by Philip Kerr about a man called Scott Manson, who…
Summer by Edith Wharton
Reviewed by Harriet I suppose most people who know about Edith Wharton think of her as a writer whose subject was the social elite – think of The House of Mirth,…
Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography by Claire Harman
Reviewed by Simon This marks the third biography I’ve reviewed in Shiny New Books that is about a major figure in my doctoral thesis – three out of three of…
Dust And Desire by Conrad Williams
Reviewed by Linda Boa Dust And Desire is the first in a trilogy (the other two are out next year) featuring London-based Private Investigator Joel Sorrell. Joel is an ex-policeman whose…
Caroline, and Narcissa by Richmal Crompton
By Elaine Simpson-Long As a long time fan of the adult novels of Richmal Crompton, I was delighted to hear that Bello, the digital print arm of Pan Macmillan, is…
Letters to the Sphinx by Oscar Wilde
Reviewed by Simon This is the reason that small reprint publishers exist. Who else would print this attractive slim volume – only 63 pages – and bring back into print…
After You by Jojo Moyes
Reviewed by Laura Marriott “Don’t think of me too often … Just live well. Just live. Love, Will” After You is the sequel to the much loved international best seller Me Before You by…
Number 11 by Jonathan Coe
Reviewed by Annabel I was lucky enough to have discovered Jonathan Coe fairly early on in his career, back when the paperback edition of What a Carve Up! was published…
Career of Evil by JK Rowling writing as Robert Galbraith
Reviewed by Harriet I can’t remember ever enjoying writing a novel more than Career of Evil…Robert Galbraith has always felt like my own private playground. So says JK Rowling at the…
Paradise by A.L. Kennedy
Reviewed by Julie Barham It is probably a good thing to sometimes read outside our comfort zone. For me, Paradise was such a book. It is a reprint, though originally published as…
Greengates by R.C. Sheriff
Reviewed by Anna Barber There’s often a moment in the middle of reading a reprint when you wonder how a story like this could ever have been forgotten. Perhaps the…
Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell
Reviewed by Harriet I can empathise with people who are driven by dreadful impulses. I think to be driven to want to kill must be such a terrible burden. I…
Morvern Callar by Alan Warner
Reviewed by Kirsty Doole Despite being a proud Scot and committed bookworm, there are an embarrassing number of great Scottish novels that I am yet to read. Vintage Classics have…
As Strangers Here by Janet McNeill
Reviewed by Simon As Strangers Here (published in 1960) is set against the backdrop of 1950s Belfast and the terror of the warring factions of those who called themselves Protestants or…
Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld
Reviewed by Bookgazing Scott Westerfeld is undeniably an imaginative author, even in the context of the SFF world where authors produce fun and wild new concepts every other day. His Uglies series…
More by Max Beerbohm
Reviewed by Simon Max Beerbohm’s name is known today, if at all, as the author of Zuleika Dobson – a curious sort of modernised Greek myth, where a preternaturally beautiful woman bewitches…
Angel Killer by Andrew Mayne
Reviewed by Harriet First published in America in 2014, Andrew Mayne’s debut novel is just out in the UK. If I described this novel as ‘detective uses magic to solve…
A Lion Was Learning to Ski by Ranjit Bolt
Reviewed by Annabel Ranjit Bolt is well known as a translator and playwright. He came to prominence when two of his translations of French comedies by Pierre Corneille, The Liar and The Illusion,…
The Oxford Companion to Fairy Tales, second edition, edited by Jack Zipes
Reviewed by Helen Parry I’ve always loved the Oxford Companions, ever since I first encountered the Companion to English Literature about twenty-five years ago. They’re very easy to use and the alphabetically…
Us by David Nicholls
Paperback review by Laura Marriott Us is David Nicholls’ fourth novel and the follow up to 2009’s surprise hit One Day. Nicholls is an award winning author and screenwriter whose earlier books…
The Crossing by Andrew Miller
Reviewed by Judith Wilson I’d been introduced to Andrew Miller’s writing via his richly evocative Costa Award-winning novel, Pure (2011), set in and around a cemetery in eighteenth century Paris. So I…