Your Duck is My Duck by Deborah Eisenberg
Review by Terence Jagger This, in spite of its slightly silly sounding title, is an interesting and slightly mysterious collection of six short stories. They are all very different, but…
Wakenhyrst by Michelle Paver
Review by Annabel I read and really enjoyed Paver’s first two adult novels, both ghost stories. The first, Dark Matter was located in the Arctic, which was followed by Thin Air set in the Himalayas,…
Akin by Emma Donoghue
Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2010 I read Emma Donoghue’s best selling, prize winning Room. I admired it but I can’t say I enjoyed it. Not only because the story…
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo
Review by Liz Dexter Amma is a playwright and director who’s moved from the fringes to the mainstream (or has it moved to her?). Yazz is a millennial student, sure…
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve reviewed two of Elizabeth Strout’s novels on Shiny [here] and [here] and both were brilliant. But possibly my favourite up to now has been her 2009…
Find Me by André Aciman
Review by Anna Hollingsworth There are two kinds of novels to which I don’t want to see a sequel. There are, of course, the literary nightmares that I pray I…
Inheritance by Jenny Eclair
Review by Laura Marriott “Beginnings, middles and ends; Peggy, Serena, Natasha and Bel. This is the room that binds them, this is how consequences work . . . In deepest…
Heaven, My Home by Attica Locke
Review by Gill Davies This powerful and engrossing novel continues a series of crime novels in which Attica Locke uses plot and suspense to investigate inequality and American racism in…
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Reviewed by Harriet Ann Patchett believes in goodness, arguably a most unfashionable belief in today’s world. In the bookstore she runs, there’s a sign: ‘What good shall I do this…
The Second Sleep by Robert Harris
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies In his indispensable primer What Is History? E. H. Carr underlines the point that ‘History’ has a double meaning: both the events, or facts, of the past, and…
The Testaments by Margaret Atwood
Reviewed by Ali Hope Although I have pre-ordered new releases a few times before it’s not something I do very often – and never have I felt swept along by…
The Man Who Saw Everything by Deborah Levy
Review by Annabel Levy came to the forefront of our attention when her 2011 novel Swimming Home was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, something she’d repeat with her 2016…
The Confession by Jessie Burton
Review by Anna Hollingsworth Capturing an era with impeccable accuracy is a challenge that anyone writing about the past must face; there will always be that critic who enjoys combing…
Devotion by Madeline Stevens
Reviewed by Harriet ‘A dangerous novel – sharp, glittering and sexy’: so says the quotation on the cover of Madeline Stevens’ debut novel. I’m not sure that I would have…
Sanctuary by Luca D’Andrea
Translated by Howard Curtis and Katherine Gregor Review by Basil Ransome-Davies Big fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ‘em/And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, ad…
To Be Taught, If Fortunate by Becky Chambers
Review by Annabel Those who’ve visited Shiny New Books before may know of my passion for the novels of Becky Chambers, one of the most distinctive new voices in Science…
Beastings by Benjamin Myers
Reviewed by Kim Forrester Stories told in strong, distinctive voices using sparse, pared-back prose don’t come much better than Benjamin Myers’ Beastings, which has just been reissued by Bloomsbury. Originally published in…
Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield
Review by Jane Carter I fell in love with Diane Setterfield’s first book, I was disappointed by her second; but when I saw the title of this third novel I…
Belfast Stories, edited by Paul McVeigh & Laura Frank
Review by Laura Marriott In Donegall Square, in the centre of Belfast, Lisa is working in the Welcome Centre. Tourists flock in searching for Game of Thrones sites and she…
Flames by Robbie Arnott
Review by Susan Osborne Tasmanian writer Robbie Arnott’s Flames is not an easy book to write about. It’s quite some way out of my usual literary territory, steeped as it…
Scrublands by Chris Hammer
Reviewed by Kim Forrester Fans of Jane Harper’s The Dry will love this debut crime novel by Chris Hammer. As well as a similar setting — a drought-stricken country town in Australia —Scrublands is…
The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead
Reviewed by Harriet Having been blown away by Colson Whitehead’s 2016 prizewinning novel The Underground Railroad, I was delighted to see that this new work was due out this summer….
One Part Woman by Perumal Murugan
Translated from the Tamil by Aniruddhan Vasudevan Review by Anna Hollingsworth An author hardly tops any lists of most hazardous jobs, but looking at the whirlwind that Perumal Murugan has…
The Chain by Adrian McKinty
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies I’m no great fan of fiction written exclusively in the present tense, for all its reputed ‘immediacy’; I generally fancy novels with a past. But that’s…