Tregian’s Ground by Anne Cuneo
Translated from the French by Roland Glasser and Louise Rogers Lalaurie. Reviewed by Jean Morris The year is 1649 or thereabouts. In a verdant Swiss valley, a tall, bearded old…
Translated from the French by Roland Glasser and Louise Rogers Lalaurie. Reviewed by Jean Morris The year is 1649 or thereabouts. In a verdant Swiss valley, a tall, bearded old…
Reviewed by Helen Parry It is 1872 and Max Duncker, handsome, young and irresponsible, is blessed with a not-too-onerous role in the publishing company he shares with his elder brother…
Reviewed by Victoria Moses Sweetland is an ornery, tough-skinned, self-sufficient, stubborn old man and he’s also a remarkably tenacious and vital force of life in Michael Crummey’s Robinson Crusoe-esque novel….
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton No matter how many classics I read it never fails to surprise me how little people, or even society, seem to change. The realism of The Whirlpool reminded…
Reviewed by Harriet I was strong and he was not so it was me went to war to defend the Republic. I stepped across the border out of Indiana into…
Reviewed by Bookgazing Holly Black is one of the reigning queens of modern gothic. Her novel The Coldest Girl in Coldtown presented an original, nightmarish vampire world that mixed garish tourist stops,…
Reviewed by Judith Wilson I began reading Weathering whilst staying on a Cornish estuary within sight of the sea, on a cold, damp day. This was fortuitous as the book is set…
Reviewed by Kate Gardner This novel (novella really – even bulked out with short stories, an introduction and a preface it’s still barely 200 pages) explores childhood, and specifically that…
Reviewed by Gill Davies This is a very enjoyable novel, in the American crime genre but with lots of other things going on too. It has a lively style, some…
Translated from Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah Reviewed by Kate Gardner I’ll warn you from the start: this is not the book to read if you’re feeling a…
Reviewed by Victoria Some of the most powerful stories about children and adolescents are the ones, like Lord of the Flies, that send chills down your spine. Make the children high…
Review by Eleanor Franzén Imagine: you’re a woman in England in 1255. With a little bit of flexibility, depending on your father’s annual income, you have two life choices. One is…
Translated by Euan Cameron Reviewed by Karen Langley The modern world is very much based on speed, with gadgets and technology conspiring to deliver all kinds of information and media…
Reviewed by Victoria. Quentin Castle, lanky, short-sighted and newly-married, has recently been promoted to junior partner at his father’s literary agency. Everyone knows this is nepotism, especially his father’s other…
Reviewed by Harriet Cecilia Ekbäck’s impressive debut novel has been described as Nordic noir, but I think that’s a bit too neat a pigeonhole. Nordic it certainly is, being set…
Reviewed by Simon It is probably no longer news to you that the British Library are reprinting a series of Crime Classics; some of their choices have hit the bestseller…
Reviewed by Alice Farrant Mercy Seat is a beautifully stirring novel, set in a remote seaside town in west Wales. Luke, our protagonist and narrator, is an aimless young man on…
Reviewed by Annabel. The publisher Europa Editions is primarily known in the UK for bringing translated fiction, mainly from Europe, to English-speaking readers. However, eight months ago they signed their…
Reviewed by Denise Kong Don’t Let Him Know is a multi-stranded tale, whose protagonists struggle to find their social, sexual and familial identities against the cultural backdrops of India and USA….
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long In Mara Kay’s first book, Masha, we followed the adventures of Masha Fredericks as she travelled to St Petersburg from her home in the country to attend…
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long This is the third in a series of books featuring Clara Vine, a film actress in pre-war Berlin. If you have not read the earlier titles Black…
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Speculative fiction often works best when it takes one element of our everyday lives and tweaks it, showing us how much we rely on a certain…
Review by Susan Osborne I hope you’ll excuse me if this review reads more like a pean of praise – or even a gush – than a hard-nosed critque: Nickolas…
Review by Susan Osborne It’s nearly thirty years since the publication of Patrick Gale’s first novel, The Aerodynamics of Pork, and for much of that time he was relatively unknown. Richard…