Thursday’s Children by Nicci French
Reviewed by Harriet Devine People who know and love Nicci French will know at once that this is the fourth outing into the world of Frieda Klein, that troubled, insomniac…
The Stillman by Tom McCulloch
Reviewed by Andrew Blackman Follow your dreams. It’s a phrase beloved of self-help authors and motivational speakers, but what if you can only follow your dreams by hurting those closest…
The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neill
Reviewed by Victoria Best I firmly believe you can never dismiss any genre of book or any particular fictional setting as not your cup of tea, because written the right…
The Fifty Year Sword by Mark Z. Danielewski
Reviewed by Max Dunbar I first read House of Leaves as a teenager and fell in love with it: a grunge-emocore memory palace of a novel, about a suburban home, that gets…
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North
Reviewed by Harriet Devine. “The world is ending,” she said. “The message has come from child to adult, child to adult, passed back down the generations from a thousand years…
Mother Island by Bethan Roberts
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Bethan Roberts’s fourth novel takes on one of the primal fears of all parents – that of someone abducting your child. Mother Island is not, however,…
The Signature of All Things by Elizabeth Gilbert
Reviewed by Harriet Devine She was her father’s daughter. It was said of her from the beginning. For one thing, Alma Whittaker looked precisely like Henry: ginger of hair, florid…
The Unknown Bridesmaid by Margaret Forster
Reviewed by Victoria Best Margaret Forster is one of those authors who have been steadily producing first class fiction for decades without ever getting much in the way of recognition…
The Gospel of Loki by Joanne M. Harris
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I knew that Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat, had other literary strings to her bow, for a few years ago she published two volumes of fantasy for…
Black Lake by Johanna Lane
Reviewed by Danielle Simpson Johanna Lane’s debut novel, Black Lake, is the sort of story that creeps up on you. You don’t realize just how good it is until halfway through…
The Good Luck of Right Now by Matthew Quick
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Mom liked to celebrate the little things. Like finding a forgotten wrinkled dollar in a lint-ridden coat pocket, or when there was no line in the…
The Dead Beat by Doug Johnstone
Reviewed by Harriet Devine At the beginning of the The Dead Beat, Martha Fluke is visiting her father’s grave in an Edinburgh cemetery. There was a bunch of yellow carnations at…
Tristano: A Novel by Nanni Balestrini
Translated by Mike Harakis Reviewed by Helen Parry The philosophy that a text is created by the reader as well as the writer is well known and widely shared these…
The Telling Error by Sophie Hannah
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Well, Sophie Hannah has done it again. Did anyone ever have such a fiendishly fertile and convoluted imagination? This is her ninth crime novel, and she…
Longbourn by Jo Baker
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Jo Baker has had the brilliant idea of writing, not a sequel, but an account of what goes on below stairs in Pride and Prejudice. All the…
The ‘Fairley Family Trilogy’ by Mary Hocking
Reviewed by Ali Hope The Fairley family trilogy by Mary Hocking has remained among her most popular novels. They were among a small number of Hockings published by Virago in…
The Tell-Tale Heart by Jill Dawson
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Jill Dawson’s eighth novel is certainly a tale with heart. At the centre of it is Professor and professional reprobate Patrick who, at fifty, is diagnosed…
The Smoke is Rising by Mahesh Rao
Reviewed by Sakura Gooneratne Mahesh Rao’s debut novel, The Smoke is Rising, chronicles the daily lives of Susheela, Mala and Uma in Mysore, India; three women from very different backgrounds caught…
The One Plus One by Jojo Moyes
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Commercial women’s fiction, you know – what we used to call ‘Chick-lit’, some still do, is alive and well, and the top titles are still selling…
Mrs. Hemingway by Naomi Wood
Written by Victoria Best Gertrude Stein said rather pithily of Hemingway, ‘Anyone who marries three girls from St Louis hasn’t learned much.’ In Naomi Wood’s brilliant account of all four of…
The Runaways by Elizabeth Goudge
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn Hesperus Press, known for their very attractive reprints of minor works by major authors, has recently launched a new arm of their business called Hesperus Minor,…
Queen’s Gambit by Elizabeth Fremantle
Written by Victoria Best It’s a brave woman who steps into Hilary Mantel’s territory these days. Comparisons are bound to be rife, but Queen’s Gambit can stand up to them. The one…
The Cornish Coast Murder and The Lake District Murder by John Bude
Reviewed by Harriet Devine ‘That’s just where I must part company with you, Inspector’, said the Vicar with a gentle smile. ‘I’m rather a voracious reader of mystery stories, and…
The Quarry by Iain Banks
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When Iain Banks’ last novel The Quarry was published posthumously, a couple of weeks after his death from gall bladder cancer last year, as a fan of his…