Crooked Heart by Lissa Evans
Reviewed by Eric Karl Anderson Sometimes it seems like so such WWII fiction has been published that even stories set during the London Blitz all start to feel too familiar….
Reviewed by Eric Karl Anderson Sometimes it seems like so such WWII fiction has been published that even stories set during the London Blitz all start to feel too familiar….
Reviewed by Eric Karl Anderson Catherine Hall has a skilful power for building a story around people hampered by emotionally turbulent pasts in her novels. She did this with beautiful…
Reviewed by Victoria Best I wonder if not being able to see ourselves is one of the great paradoxes of being alive – knowing oneself intimately and also not at…
Reviewed by Karen Langley In his time, E.F. Benson was a prolific writer of many different types of fiction, but nowadays he is best remember for his much-loved stories about…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I’d never read anything by Peter May when this book was sent me for review. The first thing that struck me was that Peter May must…
Reviewed by Simon Thomas It’s fun occasionally to read a book that doesn’t take itself remotely seriously. And it would be impossible for Love Insurance (1914) by Earl Derr Biggers to take…
Reviewed by Danielle Simpson In PI Lee Arnold and his assistant Mumtaz Hakim Barbara Nadel has created two of the most unusual and intriguing characters to populate a crime novel…
Reviewed by Ann Little Dorrit has always been amongst my favourite Dickens’ novels and so I approached Antonia Hodgson’s first novel, The Devil in the Marshalsea, with a mixture of caution and anticipation. I didn’t…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine When I started reading Fall From Grace, I hadn’t realised it was part of a series – the fifth part, to be exact. This is always risky…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Phew! Well, the term unputdownable is often bandied around – I’ve done some bandying myself – but there were times when Sarah Waters’ latest novel actually…
Reviewed by Jenny. Mary Renault has a genius for the past. It’s in all her historical books: the stony, fated world of the Greeks, rushed forward to our softer and…
Reviewed by Harriet Devine The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there. So, famously, wrote LP Hartley at the beginning of his most famous novel, The Go Between. But what…
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite A hotel is a confluence of stories: a mixture of public and private space; a places where chance encounters are routine; somewhere that plays host to…
Reviewed by Victoria Best. Lying in bed, 14-year-old Sylvie Mason hears a telephone call summoning her parents out into the middle of a snowy Baltimore night. This isn’t unusual; her…
Reviewed by Harriet I had not heard of Ariana Franklin until a few months ago, when I was given her Mistress of the Art of Death as an early birthday present. Seeing…
Reviewed by Victoria Best What do they do to writers down in Mississippi? Is there a school, I wonder, where prospective writers go in order to be marinaded in a bath of…
Reviewed by Andrew Blackman Pick up a book set in World War Two, and you have certain expectations. These expectations are largely frustrated by First Time Solo, and that’s a good…
Reviewed by Victoria Best. Ever since Snow Falling on Cedars came out, I’ve had David Guterson marked as an author I was curious to try. Great to know, then, that it’s only…
Translated by David Carter Review by Annabel Gaskell While Desperate Games is not a great work of literature, it is a book that is BIG on ideas. This philosophical satire on science,…
Reviewed by Ali Hope. Alison Moore’s debut novel The Lighthouse was a wonderful success for independent publishers Salt, being short-listed for the Man Booker prize; it was a deserved big hit with…
Reviewed by Eric Karl Anderson Towards the end of Linda Grant’s new novel, the narrator Adele asks her friend “How do we get people so wrong… when we are so…
Reviewed by Annabel Neil Bartlett came to my attention a few years ago when I read his decidedly tense 2008 novel Skin Lane set in London’s fur trade during the…
Translated by Steven Rendall and Lisa Neal Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a complex murder mystery set in Perpignan, but its essential Frenchness is augmented and challenged by the…
Reviewed by Ann NYPD detective, Ellie Hatcher and her partner, JJ Rogan, are not best pleased when Ellie’s boyfriend, Assistant District Attorney Max Donovan, arranges that they should be ‘lent…