History of the Rain by Niall Williams
Reviewed by Karen Howlett Plain Ruth Swain is bed-bound in her attic room beneath the skylight and the ever-present rain, for this is the west of Ireland, Faha, County Clare,…
The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I’ve been a fan of Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series since the first novel, Crossing Places, appeared in 2009. The Outcast Dead is the sixth in the series, and…
The Madness by Alison Rattle (YA)
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Set in a seaside village in Victorian Somerset, The Madness is the story of fourteen-year-old Marnie, who is biding her time until she becomes a ‘dipper’, one of…
Jawbone Lake by Ray Robinson
Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite The North Yorkshire writer Ray Robinson is not one to stand still. His first novel, 2006’s Electricity (which has been adapted into a forthcoming film starring Agness Deyn), concerned a…
Hangsaman, The Bird’s Nest, and The Sundial by Shirley Jackson
Reviewed by Simon Thomas You can more or less divide readers’ familiarity with Shirley Jackson’s works into separate levels. Of course, the broadest (particularly here in the UK) are those…
The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell New York is a melting pot, nearly everyone has come from somewhere else to be there, and Hoffman’s new novel is the tale of two young…
American Sycamore by Karen Fielding
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell It is lovely to be able to heartily recommend a début novel published by a smaller independent publisher – American Sycamore is exactly that and it deserves a…
Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When I read that Val McDermid, writer of many a gory crime novel, was penning the second book in ‘The Austen Project’, publisher Harper Collins’s series…
Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I have always fiercely maintained that good writing transcends genre; it also transcends age. Meg Rosoff’s latest novel for young adults, recently out in paperback, is…
Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky
Translated by Joanne Turnbull Reviewed by Karen Langley Soviet Russia’s Best-Kept Literary Secret Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky could accurately be described as the lost writer of Russia’s Soviet era. Born in the…
The Road to Reckoning by Robert Lautner
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Having grown up loving all those cowboy TV series from the 1960s and ‘70s like The Virginian and Alias Smith and Jones, maybe it’s not surprising that I’ve turned…
Into the Trees by Robert Williams
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Imagine a house in the middle of the forest, somewhere you feel safe, at home; somewhere to hide away perhaps? What springs to mind? One such…
Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi
Reviewed by Simon Thomas At some point, Helen Oyeyemi will stop being notable for her youth – but, at 29 and with five novels under her belt, that day has…
Still Life with Breadcrumbs by Anna Quindlen
Reviewed by Adèle Geras Every so often, you come across a novel whose qualities appeal to you in a way that you can’t quite explain. Still Life with Breadcrumbs came to me as…
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn The Lowland is the story of two brothers, Udayan and Subhash, and the woman they both marry, Gauri. The novel opens in the heat drenched suburbs of…
The Dig by Cynan Jones
Reviewed by Victoria Hoyle Cynan Jones’ third novel The Dig was high on my list of anticipated releases in early 2014, bought as soon as it came out in January. It was a…
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton
Reviewed by Victoria Best You have to imagine a big chest in the corner of the attic, containing the inscription: Plot Fireworks: Handle With Care! Then picture Eleanor Catton, that…
A Tangled Web by L.M. Montgomery
Reviewed by Mahathi G A Tangled Web is one of L M Montgomery’s ‘adult’ novels. As such, it is rather different from Montgomery’s usual. There is nothing really ‘adult’ about it…
The Temporary Gentleman by Sebastian Barry
Reviewed by Harriet Devine A lark, a single bird with her dowdy plumage, burst up from her cup of sand just in front of me and like a needle flashing…
Appointment with Yesterday and With No Crying by Celia Fremlin
Reviewed by Harriet Devine. Why on earth have we not heard of Celia Fremlin? Well, I certainly hadn’t until recently, and having discovered her brilliant ‘novels of domestic suspense’ through…
After I’m Gone by Laura Lippman
Reviewed by Ann In 1976, Felix Brewer, unable to face the prospect of fifteen years in jail for illegal gambling offences, arranges to skip bail and cross the US border…