Compiled by the Shiny editors. We join in the celebrations of the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with our own little tribute: 1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland started off…
Written by Steerforth The reading public is usually fairly indifferent to publishing centenaries, but the 100th anniversary of Ladybird has been a phenomenal success, celebrated with books, merchandise, a popular…
Reviewed by Annabel What do you do when you seriously lose your reading mojo? I tend to retreat into a palate-cleansing thriller to get mine back, but I’ve never had…
By Andy Miller About ten years ago, I had a bright idea. It involved reading a baker’s dozen of books I had always meant to read but had never got…
Reviewed by Annabel Faber & Faber is one of my favourite publishers; in recent years with Faber Finds they’ve started to make the most of their impressive backlist – we’ve…
Reviewed by Victoria It is such a delightful surprise when a book you knew nothing about turns out to be a corker. I had never read any of Malcolm Pryce’s…
Reviewed by Harriet Ruth Galloway’s five-year-old daughter Kate is off to her first day at school. ‘Say goodbye to Daddy’, says Ruth.‘Bye, Daddy’.‘Bye, sweetheart’. Nelson takes a last picture of…
Reviewed by Harriet “Okay,” she said, and thought a moment. “Truthfully, I don’t think murder is necessarily as bad as people make it out to be. Everyone dies. What difference…
Translated by Andrew Bromfield Reviewed by Karen Langley We all believe in the transformative power of literature; however, what would happen if books really did change us in dramatic ways, bringing strength…
Translated from the French by Roland Glasser and Louise Rogers Lalaurie. Reviewed by Jean Morris The year is 1649 or thereabouts. In a verdant Swiss valley, a tall, bearded old…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar There’s an episode of the classic US prison show Oz where a new governor brings back the death penalty and sentences Jefferson Keane, a gangster serving life, as the…
Reviewed by Victoria In 2013, Alice Munro was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature, to put on the mantlepiece alongside her 2009 Man Booker International award, the National Book Critics…
Reviewed by Helen Parry It is 1872 and Max Duncker, handsome, young and irresponsible, is blessed with a not-too-onerous role in the publishing company he shares with his elder brother…
Reviewed by Victoria Moses Sweetland is an ornery, tough-skinned, self-sufficient, stubborn old man and he’s also a remarkably tenacious and vital force of life in Michael Crummey’s Robinson Crusoe-esque novel….
Reviewed by Victoria If I ever get to meet Matt Haig, the first thing I would like to do, now I’ve read his book, is give him a hug. I’m…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton No matter how many classics I read it never fails to surprise me how little people, or even society, seem to change. The realism of The Whirlpool reminded…
Reviewed by Harriet I was strong and he was not so it was me went to war to defend the Republic. I stepped across the border out of Indiana into…
Reviewed by Bookgazing Holly Black is one of the reigning queens of modern gothic. Her novel The Coldest Girl in Coldtown presented an original, nightmarish vampire world that mixed garish tourist stops,…
Reviewed by Stefanie Hollmichel I first read Orlando by Virginia Woolf many years ago. Fresh in love with Woolf’s writing and having just learned about her romance with Vita Sackville-West, I read…
Reviewed by Judith Wilson I began reading Weathering whilst staying on a Cornish estuary within sight of the sea, on a cold, damp day. This was fortuitous as the book is set…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Ann Morgan is a freelance writer for the Guardian, among other publications, and also part of a dedicated tribe of book bloggers. She spent 2011 on a…
Reviewed by Kate Gardner This novel (novella really – even bulked out with short stories, an introduction and a preface it’s still barely 200 pages) explores childhood, and specifically that…
Reviewed by Annabel After the success of her memoir Bedsit Disco Queen (which I reviewed here) in which she told us how she joined a band and had a brilliant…
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is a very enjoyable novel, in the American crime genre but with lots of other things going on too. It has a lively style, some…
