The Future of Fraud by Becky Holmes
Review by Annabel I’ve reviewed three of Melville House’s ‘Futures’ series previously for Shiny, (Gardens, Energy and Trust). They are punchy little flapped paperbacks of under 200 pages, each written…
Wild Fictions: Essays by Amitav Ghosh
Review by Peter Reason I am a great fan of Amitav Ghosh both for his fiction and his non-fiction. I was introduced to his writing when The Hungry Tide was…
Tom Chesshyre, Slow Trains Around Britain: Notes from a 4,088-Mile Adventure on 143 Rides, by Tom Chesshyre
Review by Liz Dexter Having had the great fortune to have travelled on many exciting railways to many exiting places elsewhere in the world, from the wide-open plains of America…
The Beginning Comes After the End: Notes on a World of Change by Rebecca Solnit
Review by Rob Spence The world of 2026 is a world in turmoil. The relentless 24-hour barrage of news brings daily accounts of war, massacres, invasions, extraordinary political manoeuvres, the…
What’s in a Name: How Historians Know Shakespeare was Shakespeare, by Susan Dwyer Amussen
Reviewed by Harriet Plenty of people will be thinking about Shakespeare at the moment, following the release of the wonderful film Hamnet. It’s taken from the novel of the same…
Possessions: A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity by Davina Quinlivan
Review by Liz Dexter In the world of academia, no one knew my mother could barely write, her handwriting not much better than my paternal grandmother’s stroke-afflicted scrawls, and my…
Bowieland: Walking in the Footsteps of David, by Peter Carpenter
Review by Annabel Last week it was ten years since David Bowie died in January 2016, and as the hours given to this anniversary in the media bore out, his…
Dirtbag Dreams: A History of Mountain, Ultra and Trail Running, by Carl Morris
I want to understand why people have subjected themselves to feats of endurance that are so challenging and often gruellingly painful. I want to explore how the values and practices…
Motherland, by Julia Ioffe
Review by Karen Langley Russia is a county which has had innumerable books written about its history, whether from its earliest times, or more particularly from the period of its…
The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective by Sara Lodge
Reviewed by Harriet As an erstwhile recipient of review copies of the British Library Crime Classics series, I was aware that two novels were published in 1864 featuring female detectives:…
Three new books for autumn from Lonely Planet
Lonely Planet, Epic Runs of the World Review by Liz Dexter Here we have an attractive and informative book which is an ideal gift for the runner in your life….
Wild for Austen by Devoney Looser
Reviewed by Harriet ‘A Rebellious, Subversive and Untamed Jane’ promises the subtitle of this new book by Austen scholar Looser. I wonder how many people still think of Austen as…
Folklore: A Journey Through the Past and Present, by Owen Davies and Ceri Houlbrook
Review by Helen Parry Are you looking for a comprehensive introduction to British folklore by any chance? Then I have just the book for you. Folklore: A Journey through the…
Biography & Memoir, Diaries
Ecology & Environment, Natural World
History & Politics, Feminism, Sociology
Non Fiction
Love, Anger & Betrayal: Just Stop Oil’s young climate campaigners, by Jonathan Porritt
Review by Peter Reason Sir Jonathon Espie Porritt, 2nd Baronet, CBE, Eton and Oxford; one might imagine him as a pillar of the British Establishment. Then you remember he was…
The Stories Old Towns Tell by Marek Kohn
Review by Rob Spence Decades ago, on holiday in the south of France, we came by chance across a beautiful baroque chateau in the countryside. We decided to get a…
Electric Spark: The Enigma of Muriel Spark by Frances Wilson
Reviewed by Harriet It has always been my intention to practice the arts of pretence and counterfeit on the reader. So wrote Muriel Spark in an unpublished Author’s Note to…
Fair: The Life-Art of Translation by Jen Calleja
Review by Liz Dexter When we talk about women’s safety, it’s health and safety; when we talk about activist translation, we’re really talking about good translation. Jen Calleja is a…
Thirst: In search of freshwater – Wellcome Collection 2025, ed. Ellen Johl
Review by Peter Reason This slender collection of writing around the theme of freshwater is published by the Wellcome Collection to accompany its current exhibition of the same name, which…
The Place of Tides by James Rebanks
Review by Liz Dexter The last humans will, like many of the first, hold to the coast, scratching a living from the sea and the shore. I imagine the last…
Cloistered: My Years as a Nun by Catherine Coldstream
Reviewed by Harriet In my mind I am still running. Running towards the road. Running, running, running. The darkness is fresh around me, the air slicing across my face in…
Conversations with Rilke by Maurice Betz
Translated by Will Stone Review by Karen Langley Aside from his verses, Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke is probably best known to the English-speaking world for his prose work, The…
Bird School: A beginner in the wood by Adam Nicolson
Review by Peter Reason ‘The first time I met a bird close-up, it was dead. A raven.’ From this grab-your-attention first line and the evocative description of this encounter, I…
The Alienation Effect: How Central European Émigrés Transformed the British Twentieth Century by Owen Hatherley
Review by Karen Langley The interwar period of the early 20th century saw a massive amount of emigration from Central Europe, as those vulnerable to the extremist governments of a…
Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
Review by Peter Reason It is very unlikely that many readers of Shiny New Books have missed Robert Macfarlane’s new book. It has been reviewed in most of the major…