Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Review by Annabel Sometimes the hype is true, and a publisher’s lead-title for the season really is worth the advance praise heaped on it. This is the case with Lessons…
Strange Journey by Maud Cairnes
Reviewed by Harriet This is a body-swap novel – one of the first ever to be published. It’s very entertaining but also quite thought provoking. The swappers here are Polly…
The Rabbit Factor by Antti Tuomainen
Translated from the Finnish by David Hackston Review by Annabel I’m always interested in adding new Nordic authors to my reading list, which is increasingly expanding beyond the traditional home…
The Trouble with Happiness and Other Stories by Tove Ditlevsen
Translated by Michael Favala Goldman Review by Karen Langley The last few years have seen Danish author Tove Ditlevsen’s star in the ascendant following the translation of her autofictional Copenhagen…
French Braid by Anne Tyler
Reviewed by Harriet ‘That’s how families work. You think you’re free of them, but you’re never really free; the ripples are crimped in forever’. Here, not many pages before the…
Whatever Gets You Through the Night by Charlie Higson
Review by Annabel Back in the 1990s, Higson wrote four thrillers for adults, they were dark, nasty and funny. But after them he got sidetracked onto writing for Harry Enfield…
Latchkey Ladies by Marjorie Grant
Reviewed by Harriet These girls, buffeting with the world as they did war-work, or any work that would support them, were apt to have moments when independence seemed the most…
Mother Mother by Annie Macmanus
Review by Annabel You may know Annie Macmanus as ‘Annie Mac’, the fomer Radio 1 DJ. She left the station last year to pursue other avenues, which have included publishing…
Nine Lives by Peter Swanson
Reviewed by Harriet Peter Swanson is a prolific author, averaging one book a year since his debut, The Girl with a Clock for a Heart in 2014. I’ve reviewed two…
The Former Boy Wonder by Robert Graham
Review by Rob Spence Pete Duffy is having a mid-life crisis. His fiftieth birthday is on the horizon, and his career as a freelance rock music journalist is in freefall….
The Twyford Code by Janice Hallett
Review by Terence Hallett This is an intriguing but also frustrating book. I did wonder if the Shiny editors would allow me to write two alternative reviews. The first would…
Two short, watery novels: Tides by Sara Freeman & The Swimmers by Julie Otsuka
By Rebecca Foster Short novels can convey much truth in a low page count, ramping up the psychological intensity through pared-back scenes and a focus on one character or a…
Into Egypt by Rosalind Brackenbury
Review by Rob Spence This novel, first published nearly half a century ago, deals with matters which still, sadly, resonate today. Our protagonist is an idealistic young English woman, Jo…
Two debut novels: Brown Girls, & Black Cake
Review by Liz Dexter I’d like to introduce you to two astoundingly accomplished debut novels, so well done that you would not think they were first novels; two voices we’d…
little scratch by Rebecca Watson
Review by Anna Hollingsworth When a novel comes with praise like ”daringly experimental” and “dazzlingly original”, my eyebrow tends to go up. Really? “Original” sounds better on the blurb than…
Out of the Dark by David Gaffney
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies The title echoes that of Out of the Past, a canonical film noir that ends uncompromisingly in a double catastrophe and leaves the future of a…
Jane’s Country Year by Malcolm Saville
Reviewed by Harriet Jane woke slowly. For a long minute she lay drowsing with her eyes shut, wondering why the bed felt so different. She loved her own little bed…
Longing and Other Stories by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
Translated by Anthony H Chambers and Paul McCarthy Review by Anna Hollingsworth In the UK, readers know their Murakamis and convenience store women. Jun’ichiro Tanizaki is much less known to…
My Monticello by Jocelyn Nicole Johnson
Review by Max Dunbar The House of Tradition The grand houses of American history attract plenty of visitors wanting to learn about the Civil War, slavery and the founding fathers….
The Second Cut by Louise Welsh
Review by Gill Davies Louise Welsh has published eight novels. The only one I had read prior to this was The Cutting Room (2002), to which her latest novel is…
The Village of Eight Graves by Seishi Yokomizo
Translated by Bryan Karetnyk Reviewed by Harriet Seishi Yozomizo (1902-1991), whose works are hugely celebrated in Japan, has been described as ‘the Japanese Agatha Christie’, or alternatively ‘the Japanese John…
A Fatal Crossing by Tom Hindle
Review by Terence Jagger This is a modern murder mystery, but is set in 1924 and is explicitly in the grand manner of the “golden age”, with all that implies…
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
Review by Annabel Over recent years, I have been much enjoying the current vogue for the retelling of ancient myths and ancient history, especially those told from different perspectives, primarily…
To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
Reviewed by Anna Hollingsworth We like to see history as going forward, progressing towards something better; it’s comforting to think that humankind is improving itself and societies grow fairer. It…