Three Daughters of Eve by Elif Shafak
Paperback Review by Eric Karl Anderson It’s deeply frightening and upsetting how politically divided society is at the moment. When different factions are so convinced about the certitude of their…
Autumn by Ali Smith
Paperback review by Clare Rowland Autumn is the first of four books in a planned series of novels by Ali Smith named after the seasons and which focus on how we experience time….
The Tryst by Monique Roffey
Reviewed by Harriet This is a remarkable book by any standard. It’s marketed by the publisher, Dodo Ink, as a literary erotic novella, which sounds about right, as long as…
The Easy Way Out by Steven Amsterdam
Paperback reviewed by Susan Osborne This novel is unlikely to appeal to everyone although we should all read it. It’s about assisted suicide, one of the great moral dilemmas of…
The Brazilian by Rosie Millard
Reviewed by Laura Marriott The Brazilian opens in a London beauty salon where the middle class and nearly middle aged (although she would be furious if you suggested so!) Jane is…
Testimony by Scott Turow
Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies The ‘international theme’ – Old World/New World – was a foreground concern of Henry James. It typically featured the experience in Europe of an American…
The Ready Made Thief by Augustus Rose
Reviewed by Harriet ‘A kickass debut from start to finish’ screams the cover of this highly readable, somewhat bizarre, debut novel. It’s a book that defies categorisation – perhaps best…
Elmet by Fiona Mozley
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite When the 2017 Man Booker Prize longlist was announced last month, it included a number of familiar names (including Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13, which I’ve reviewed for…
The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter, by Theodora Goss
Reviewed by Helen Parry I’m very fond of Theodora Goss’s short stories, so when I saw that she was publishing a novel I was excited and ordered a copy straight…
The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley
Reviewed by Annabel Natasha Pulley’s debut novel, The Watchmaker of Filigree Street (which I reviewed here in 2015), was a wonderful discovery. A period thriller with hints of steampunk fantasy,…
Patchinko by Min Jin Lee
Review by Gill Davies Patchinko is a very different novel from Min Jin Lee’s earlier Free Food for Millionaires, which I reviewed here. It is a historical novel covering nearly…
The Sixteen Trees of the Somme by Lars Mytting
Translated by Paul Russell Garrett Reviewed by Harriet For me my mother was a scent, she was a warmth. A leg I clung to. A breath of something blue; a…
The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce
Review by Annabel This certainly is the year for novels about popular music, of the vinyl persuasion and the power of picking just the right song. We’ve had Magnus Mills’…
What it Means When a Man Falls from the Sky by Lesley Nneka Arimah
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Born in the UK, raised largely in Nigeria, and now resident in Minneapolis, USA – Africa and the West are blended in debut author Lesley Nneka…
The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes
Reviewed by Annabel Natalie Haynes may be most familiar to you as a journalist and broadcaster, popping up on various shows and with her own series Natalie Haynes Stands Up…
The Zoo by Christopher Wilson
Reviewed by Basil Ransome Davies Christopher Wilson’s new novel takes us back in time while signalling contemporary concerns. It recalls the Cold War epoch, focussing on the ‘court’ of Josef…
Listening In by Jenny Eclair
Review by Laura Marriott Listening In is a collection of 24 short stories from comedian and writer Jenny Eclair. Her last literary outing was the well-received novel Moving, reviewed on Shiny New…
Can You Hear Me? by Elena Varvello
Translated by Alex Valente Review by Annabel Can you hear me? is no ordinary psychological thriller – to pigeonhole it into that sub-genre would be to ignore large parts of…
No Dominion by Louise Welsh
Reviewed by Annabel No Dominion is the concluding part of Louise Welsh’s Plague Times Trilogy – a dystopian tale of a pandemic and its aftermath. Although Welsh asserts in the…
Holding by Graham Norton
Paperback review by Laura Marriott The first thing one does after finishing Holding is breathe a sigh of relief. When a well-known personality branches into fiction there is always the fear that…
The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Paperback review by Lucy Unwin This is not a historical novel. Not just because the facts of slavery in pre-Civil War America are strained through the wonderful, allegorical, imagination of…
Austen-ish – A Reading List of Austen-inspired fiction
Compiled by Annabel and Elaine Perhaps more than any other author, including Dickens and the Brontës, Jane Austen has inspired other writers to use her characters and settings to write…
The Portrait by Antoine Laurain
Translated by Jane Aitken and Emily Boyce Review by Annabel French author Antoine Laurain has already got himself an army of fans (or should that be ‘armée’!) thanks to Gallic…
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy
Reviewed by Lucy Unwin Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize winning debut The God Of Small Things was a sensuous, atmospheric, emotionally powerful book. India’s caste system was the motivator of the plot, and…