Seacrow Island, and Mio, My Son by Astrid Lindgren
Reviewed by Lory Widmer Hess If you’ve been lucky enough to spend summers as a child in a special place, you know that they carry a most particular magic. The…
Reviewed by Lory Widmer Hess If you’ve been lucky enough to spend summers as a child in a special place, you know that they carry a most particular magic. The…
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Believe the hype from America, where Hanya Yanagihara’s second novel was released in March: this is sure to be one of the books of the year,…
Reviewed by Linda Boa Ahh! Just look at that cover of a beautiful French country town in the sunset; small enough so everyone knows everyone else who matters. That’s where…
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite Janice Galloway’s new short story collection takes as its starting point an observation by David Lodge: “Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about…
Reviewed by Victoria Hands up who remembers Jeremy Bamber, the White House Farm murderer? This was back in 1985, when I was 16 and the case made a notable impact…
Translated by Anthea Bell Reviewed by Karen Langley Polish-Jewish author and artist Bruno Schulz lived a short and strange life, culminating in a tragic and pointless death at the hands…
Reviewed by Claire Hayes From its opening sentence, Peking Picnic evokes an exquisite sense of time and place – or rather of two places. For Laura Leroy, wife of a British attaché…
Reviewed by Victoria It’s been ages since I read a good, old-fashioned family story, and although Kat Gordon’s debut novel wears the veneer of contemporary culture, set partly in a…
Having really loved Alan Melville’s Quick Curtain, it didn’t take much to convince me that I wanted to try another of his detective novels, also published in the British Library Crime…
Reviewed by Victoria Since I last reviewed a volume of Sidney Chambers stories, the first television series of the clerical detective’s cases has aired. This has undoubtedly brought Grantchester and its inmates…
Reviewed by David Harris The first thing to say about this book – and it’s the first thing you will notice – is that it’s long. Massive. An 861 page…
Reviewed by Alice Farrant Orient, murder mystery come introspective character novel, is Christopher Bollen’s second literary offering. Set on the North Fork of Long Island in the town of Orient,…
Reviewed by Anna Barber Now they would be able to afford a big house, a swimming pool, maids, a car….“I hope he didn’t have any pain,” she said. In Vain Shadow,…
Reviewed by Harriet Published in 1929, this is the first of only two crime novels written by Ianthe Jerrold. The descendent of a celebrated literary family, she became a member…
Reviewed by Annabel Can you believe that it is thirty years since Jilly Cooper introduced us to Rutshire and her best-selling doorstop of sex and showjumping? Her publishers, Corgi, have…
Reviewed by Victoria Between 1943 and 1964, journalist for The New Yorker, Joseph Mitchell, regularly wrote pieces about people who lived on the margins of the city, eccentrics and originals and people…
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve been a fan of Laura Wilson since I discovered her first DI Ted Stratton novel, Stratton’s War, published in 2008. Four more in this intelligent and beautifully researched series…
Reviewed by Jodie A pretty cover, a pickpocket heroine and a quest for a Firebird? ‘Sounds cute,’ I thought as I paid for The Girl at Midnight. I was sure it…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Lish’s novel is mostly about institutions. He writes about armies, prisons, service-level workplaces – his characters sleep in hostels and on the benches of bus terminals. Most…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Josephine Tey was a writer of unusual detective fiction in the so-called Golden Age of the genre. Her best-known, and most unusual novel was The Daughter of…
Reviewed by Victoria The narration of Elizabeth Day’s third novel is woven together from four different perspectives that, when we are first introduced to them, seem utterly disparate. What do…
Reviewed by Harriet He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Pleasantville is the third novel by Attica Locke. I remember that the reviews for her first novel, Black Water Rising, were very good but regrettably I didn’t get round…
Translated by Adriana Hunter Reviewed by Simon Peirene are well-known across the blogsphere for their programme of publishing translated novellas, and grouping them into trios under different series titles. Reader For…