Gloucester Crescent by William Miller
Review by Annabel Nestled between Primrose Hill and Camden Town in NW1, it’s hard to believe that Gloucester Crescent (and Regents Park Terrace which joins its ends) was ever considered…
Surfacing by Kathleen Jamie
Review by Peter Reason Kathleen Jamie is primarily known as a poet, but her prose writing is eagerly anticipated and widely acclaimed. Surfacing is the third in a loose trilogy…
Art Essentials: Street Art by Simon Armstrong
Review by Liz Dexter The Art Essentials series aims to be engaging, accessible, authoritative, richly illustrated and expertly written and conceived, and with a bookseller and book collector who has…
Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell
Review by Simon As the cover of Confessions of a Bookseller tells us, Bythell is an international bestseller. A couple of years ago, The Diary of a Bookseller was a…
The Pursuit of Art: Travels, Encounters and Revelations by Martin Gayford
Review by Liz Dexter “The pursuit of art is a journey that never stops: the more you see, the more you want to see.” First of all much kudos to…
Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Wildest Horse Race by Lara Prior-Palmer
Review by Liz Dexter Lara is by her own account a bit scatter-brained. She’s been described as away with the fairies, didn’t see the point of school past a certain…
Moonlighting: Beethoven and Literary Modernism, by Nathan Waddell
Review by Rob Spence When the newly-elected Brexit party MEPs took their place at the European Parliament in June, they used the opening ceremony as a stunt, turning their backs…
Futurekind: Design by and for the People by Robert Phillips
Review by Liz Dexter Robert Phillips is a senior tutor on the Design Products course at the Royal College of Art, as well as being an award-winning product designer in…
The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman
Review by Simon. The number of science books I’ve read can be numbered on my fingers, and number of science books I’ve read that weren’t written by Oliver Sacks is nil. Until…
Anna of Kleve – Queen of Secrets by Alison Weir
Review by Julie Barham It is well known that Henry VIII had six wives – and none more mysterious than the one that he married virtually unseen, and parted from…
Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places by Julian Hoffman
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster More so than ever, I’m convinced that the purpose of literature is to educate us about the most pressing issues that we face as a species….
The Seafarers: A Journey Among Birds by Stephen Rutt
Review by Liz Dexter This charming and perceptive book opens with a gut-wrenching account of taking off in a Very Small Plane from Kirkwall in Orkney, travelling to North Ronaldsay….
Necropolis by Vladislav Khodasevich
Translated by Sarah Vitali Review by Karen Langley, The Russian Library series from Columbia University Press has thrown up some marvellous treasures of literature from Russia, several of which I’ve…
This Really Isn’t About You by Jean Hannah Edelstein
Review by Max Dunbar There’s a common British anecdote that goes: ‘We had some American friends here on holiday, and on the third day they drove to Stonehenge!’ The idea…
The Dinosaurs Rediscovered: How a Scientific Revolution is Rewriting History by Michael J Benton
Reviewed by Liz Dexter Michael J. Benton is Professor of Vertebrate Palaeontology and head of the Palaeontology Research Group at the University of Bristol, so you can be sure he…
The Frayed Atlantic Edge by David Gange
Reviewed by Peter Reason David Gange is historian at the University of Birmingham and a passion for mountains and wild water. Well before The Frayed Atlantic Edge was published, I…
This Is Not a Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook
Edited by: Farrell, Clare, Alison Green, Sam Knights, and William Skeaping Review by Peter Reason There cannot be many followers of Shiny New Books who are not aware of the…
CHAOS:Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties by Tom O’Neill
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies In Stephen Dobyns’ murder mystery Saratoga Swimmer Charlie Bradshaw, unlicensed private eye and true-crime addict, recounts the story of New York gangster Dutch Schultz’s 1935 assassination…
Selfies by Sylvie Weil
Translated by Ros Schwartz Review by Karen Langley The selfie might seem to be a very modern phenomenon; the sight of people constantly stretching their arms out and craning to…
Birds in the Ancient World by Jeremy Mynott
Review by Liz Dexter Jeremy Mynott is both a classical scholar and a writer on birds, and his love and deep knowledge of both areas shine through in this fascinating…
Chromatopia: An Illustrated History of Colour by David Coles
Review by Liz Dexter This truly spectacular book would grace any coffee table with ease, but it’s more than just a pretty face, with fascinating facts in abundance and offers…
The Way Home: Tales from a life without technology by Mark Boyle
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster It’s common practice nowadays, when publicizing a book review published in an online venue, to tag the author on social media. Provided I’ve been able to…
Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
Review by Liz Dexter I felt a little overwhelmed facing up to reviewing this book, as there have been many reviews published since it came out in March this year….
Little Boy by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Review by Karen Langley American poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti is perhaps more regularly acknowledged nowadays for his pivotal role in pioneering the Beat Generation; from founding the famous City Lights bookshop…