Modesty Blaise: Ripper Jax by Peter O’Donnell and Enric Badia Romero
Reviewed by Annabel When offered a review copy of Titan Books latest addition to their ongoing reprints of the Modesty Blaise cartoon strips series, I couldn’t say no, firstly as…
The Flight by Gaito Gazdanov
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Reviewed by Karen Langley As well as being the driving force behind the Stefan Zweig revival, Pushkin Press has also done fans of Russian authors a…
Nod by Adrian Barnes
Reviewed by David Harris At first sight this book is (post)apocalyptic fiction in the classic vein, meaning, of course, John Wyndham. We are introduced to the world as it is…
The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths
Reviewed by Ann As far as I am concerned there are few pleasures greater than a new novel from Elly Griffiths in her series featuring forensic archeologist Ruth Galloway and…
Sweetgirl by Travis Mulhauser
Reviewed by Annabel Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell has long been one of my favourite novels. Woodrell’s books which are mostly set in the Missouri Ozarks tend to feature poor folk…
After You Die by Eva Dolan
Reviewed by Gill Davies After You Die is when the police arrive, and crime fiction begins. An explosion in a house in a village outside Peterborough leads to the discovery of…
Hush Hush by Laura Lippman
Paperback review by Gill Davies Laura Lippman is a very accomplished crime writer. She began her writing career as a journalist on the Baltimore Sun and has written a number of successful…
Citizens by Kevin Curran
Reviewed by Laura Marriott As Ireland commemorates the events surrounding the 1916 Easter Rising this timely novel teases out what this event means to the youth of today. Citizens is set…
The Trees by Ali Shaw
Reviewed by Annabel Thank goodness that Ali Shaw’s novels are impossible to categorise. They are contemporary dramas with transformation at their heart, not out and out fantasies, but full of…
The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
Reviewed by Simon While Vita Sackville-West is today best remembered as having (probably) been the lover of Virginia Woolf, and as the mind behind the garden at Sissinghurst, she was…
For Two Thousand Years by Mihail Sebastian
Translated by Philip Ó Ceallaigh Reviewed by Sakura Gooneratne I’ve been beaten and the world doesn’t stand still for such things. Published in 1934 when he was only 27, Mihail…
The Good Liar by Nicholas Searle
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is Nicholas Searle’s first novel. He apparently began it while a student of the on-line Curtis Brown Creative Writing School, and they rushed to buy…
Katherine Carlyle by Rupert Thomson
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Are there ghosts at either end of life? It’s not uncommon, from time to time, to feel as though everything about your life is being orchestrated…
Sophia by Michael Bible
Reviewed by Annabel There are only 105 pages to this short novel, making it a novella really, but it sure does pack a punch. It has a cast of characters…
Jezebel’s Daughter by Wilkie Collins
Reviewed by Karen Langley Victorian author Wilkie Collins is probably best known nowadays for The Woman in White, The Moonstone, and being best buddies with Dickens. However, a quick glance at his Wikipedia…
Us Conductors by Sean Michaels
Reviewed by Susan Osborne Curiously, Us, Conductors is not the only novel published in January to feature the theremin, the musical instrument whose strange haunting sound once heard is hard to forget….
The American by Nadia Dalbuono
Reviewed by Linda Boa Following The Few, the first in this series, The American sees our lone wolf detective, Leone Scamarcio, take on a case which leads him deeper into the political arena, where conspiracies…
His Monkey Wife by John Collier
Reviewed by Simon When I told people that I was writing about bestiality during my DPhil, they were a little surprised that it got a look-in amongst the charming middlebrow…
Death on the Riviera by John Bude
Reviewed by Simon I’ve got all the John Bude reprints that have appeared in the British Library Crime Classics series, and have given several to other people, but Death on the…
Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
Reviewed by Annabel The anticipation of re-reading a book first read and enjoyed as a child always gives me a feeling of mild discomfort. Can it work on an adult…
The Last of the Bowmans by J. Paul Henderson
Reviewed by Annabel Do you remember how the wonderful TV series Six Feet Under began? In the opening scene, one of the key characters, Nathaniel Fisher Sr., is run over by a…
The Roar of Morning by Tip Marugg
Translated by Paul Vincent Reviewed by Karen Langley Silvio Alberto ‘Tip’ Marugg is an author new to me, and one who has quite a small body of work. Of Dutch-Antillean…
The Quality of Silence by Rosamund Lupton
Paperback review by Judith Wilson This book arrived with impeccable timing: I was tired of unseasonably warm UK temperatures and longing for a December frost. From its snowy jacket design…
The Little Red Chairs by Edna O’Brien
Reviewed by Karen Heenan-Davies When Edna O’Brien released her memoir Country Girl in 2012, there was intense speculation that this would be her swansong. She is after all in her eighties. But those pundits…