Saint Mazie by Jami Attenberg
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…
The Wrong Girl by Laura Wilson
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…
The Girl at Midnight by Melissa Grey (YA)
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…
Preparations for the Next Life by Atticus Lish
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…
London Rain by Nicola Upson
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…
Paradise City by Elizabeth Day
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…
A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson
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…
Pleasantville by Attica Locke
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…
Reader for Hire by Raymond Jean
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…
Sugar and Snails by Anne Goodwin
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…
Outline by Rachel Cusk
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…
In My House by Alex Hourston
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…
Early Warning by Jane Smiley
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…
Waverley by Walter Scott
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…
Sylvia by Leonard Michaels
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…
I Saw a Man by Owen Sheers
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…
Hush by Sara Marshall-Ball
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…
Gorsky by Vesna Goldsworthy
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…
Quick Curtain by Alan Melville
Reviewed by Simon Shiny New Books has been a consistent and delighted fan of the British Library Crime Classics series, which has been rather a phenomenon in the publishing industry…
Flight by Isabel Ashdown
Reviewed by Victoria I’m not the biggest fan of prologues but I have to hand it to Isabel Ashdown for making pretty good use of hers. It’s November 1994 and…
The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall
Reviewed by Victoria Sarah Hall’s reputation preceeded her into this, my first excursion into her writing (though it’s her fifth novel). Usually this is not a good thing; I have…
Death in the Rainy Season by Anna Jacquiery
Reviewed by Linda Boa I didn’t know much about Cambodia before I read Anna Jacquiery’s second Inspector Morel novel, Death In The Rainy Season. In this book, though, we don’t see a great deal…
The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies by Martin Millar
Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Altar of Pity: Martin Millar’s Athens ‘I’ve tried setting a novel in ancient Athens before,’ writes Martin Millar, in the afterword to his new book,…
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
Reviewed by Annabel They say that every picture tells a story – or sometimes more. When seventeen year old Peggy finds an old photograph of her family and Oliver, the…