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…
Reviewed by Victoria Diana Dodsworth is an enigma to the reader, a complicated, prickly person in her 40s who seems imperfectly stitched together over a festering mass of secrets and…
Reviewed by Shoshi Ish Horowicz Outline is about a woman teaching on a creative writing course in Greece. That sentence doesn’t do any justice to the novel, but I feel a…
Reviewed by Linda Boa Margaret Benson is 57 years old. She lives alone, bar her dog Buster, in her own house in a comfortable, middle class area of London. She…
Reviewed by Victoria There’s a strong tradition of episodic narrative in the books that clamour for the title of Great American Novel – Faulkner, Kerouac, Salinger, Twain, Henry Miller and…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton Waverley has been on my ‘ought to read’ list for longer than I care to remember, so when Shiny New Books asked me to read a new…
Reviewed by Karen Langley The blurring of the lines between fiction and fact is an artistic trope which is very much in vogue in current writing. Novels abound featuring real…
Reviewed by Annabel To many, Sheers is primarily known as a Welsh poet. His 2005 collection Skirrid Hill was acclaimed, and he has presented some poetry programmes on the television, and wrote…
Reviewed by Victoria Illness and the various challenges it poses have become hot topics in contemporary fiction. Cancer narratives abound in fiction and non-fiction, as do stories of mental and…
Reviewed by Paul Fishman Gorsky is an enigmatic, much-gossiped-about billionaire who is rarely seen at his own famously gorgeous parties; there is a suggestion of some enormous unresolved romance in…
