Before Lunch & Northbridge Rectory by Angela Thirkell
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton My first brush with Thirkell was at least a decade ago, courtesy of an old Penguin edition of The Brandons picked up in a second hand bookshop because…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton My first brush with Thirkell was at least a decade ago, courtesy of an old Penguin edition of The Brandons picked up in a second hand bookshop because…
Reviewed by Harriet One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, the lives of five people collide – a flower-seller, a…
Reviewed by Victoria There are some novels that are all about the language, and Girl in Profile is one of them. How much you enjoy it will depend to a certain extent…
Reviewed by Harriet He was in the room. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but she’d been dreaming. In the dark someone padded between the furniture, and loose…
Reviewed by Annabel Francis Spufford is known for his five non-fiction books, the subjects of which are varied in the extreme, notably his delightful memoir of childhood reading The Child…
Reviewed by Simon Full disclosure from the off: I am longstanding blogging friends with the author of this book, and also an admirer of his earlier fiction (sequels to E.F….
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve read and enjoyed all three of the prizewinning Belfast writer Lucy Caldwell’s full-length novels, so, though short stories are not usually my genre of choice, I…
Reviewed by Harriet Here at Shiny we love our reprints, and are always delighted to include reviews of one or more of the British Library’s Crime Classics series. So when…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster This is the second gem I’ve read from Head of Zeus’s new imprint, Apollo. Like Josephine Johnson’s Now in November, which won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize, this…
Reviewed by Annabel Debut novelist P.K. Lynch trained as an actor before having a family and turning to writing plays. Her first professional acting job was playing Lizzy in Trainspotting, (in…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Twenty-two-year-old Tess arrives in New York City by car in June 2006. Feeling like a Midwestern bumpkin, she has no money for tolls and has to…
Translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies Reviewed by Gill Davies What an odd novel! It is Yokoyama’s sixth, his first to be translated into English, and was an immediate best-seller in Japan….
Translated by Alison Anderson Reviewed by Annabel If like me, you read and loved Muriel Barbery’s bestselling novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which blended romance, philosophy and a teenaged genius…
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a tough book, about Nigerian politics, Islam, and a young boy growing up without guidance – and his journey from nothing to nothing by…
Reviewed by Chelsea McGill Dr. Morayo Da Silva is a retired English professor living in San Francisco. As she goes about her daily life, she comes into contact with other…
Reviewed by Victoria To add to a long list of lines I wish I’d written, I read somewhere that Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann was ‘Harlequin romance meets…
Reviewed by Harriet Nobody who’s a fan of Sophie Hannah’s crime fiction will be surprised to learn that The Narrow Bed features an inexplicable set of crimes, enough twists to make you…
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth There was going to be a novel about Portugal much earlier. In Life of Pi, the author within the story tells the reader how he had gone…
Reviewed by Karen Langley Despite there being fewer outlets for the format nowadays, the short story just keeps on going as a valid art form; and luckily we’re blessed with…
Reviewed by Marina Sofia Julian Barnes is an avowed Francophile, as we have learnt from previous works such as Flaubert’s Parrot, Cross Channel and his book of essays Something to Declare. In fact, his…
Reviewed by Ann How well does one human being ever really know another? This is the question that criminal defence lawyer Olivia Randall is forced to ask as she attempts…
Reviewed by Annabel Ambler was one of the great British thriller writers and his works are ripe for reappraisal. They had gradually become out of print until Penguin brought out…
Reviewed by Simon Anybody who keeps an eye on book news, or the stands in WH Smith at Christmastime, will probably have observed the sensation of the YouTube Book. The…
Reviewed by Harriet If I tell you that this book takes the concept of reincarnation as its central premise, will you stop reading straight away? You’d be missing out if…