Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season, ed. Simon Thomas
Reviewed by Harriet ‘These stories are to fortify you over the Christmas period’, says the blurb on the back of this new collection from the British Library Women Writers Series….
Madly, Deeply: The Alan Rickman Diaries, edited by Alan Taylor
Reviewed by Annabel Sadly, I missed seeing Alan Rickman in Les Liaisons Dangereuses by a few weeks; Greg Hicks had recently taken over the role of the Vicomte de Valmont…
Something in the Air by Peter Gill
Reviewed by Harriet Peter Gill’s most recent play finished a relatively short run at the Jermyn Street Theatre on 12 November. I would have loved to go and see it,…
Shiny Archive Reading List #2: Character Duos
Compiled by Annabel In its ninth year, Shiny New Books has passed the 2000 mark in published posts. We thought it would be good to go back through our archives…
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
Reviewed by Harriet ‘There was evil in the air of London’, thinks Detective Inspector Frobisher, recently put in charge of Bow Street Police Station. A Devon man, often homesick for…
The Coming Darkness by Greg Mosse
Review by Annabel The publicist’s pitch of ‘Bladerunner meets John Le Carré’ was totally irresistible. While I’m not sure that the former is particularly applicable to this novel, Le Carré…
Urgent Matters by Paula Rodriguez, translated by Sarah Moses
Reviewed by Harriet Dust raised by the impact falls slowly on the bodies. The thickest particles are struck by a shaft of light, and amid the sparkling dust, a St…
The Book of the Most Precious Substance, by Sara Gran
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies ‘And then at last I began to realise how terrible a thing it was, the dream that you make come true.’ confesses the eponymous heroine of…
The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin
Reviewed by Lory Widmer Hess In our upside-down world of reversed values, where what is most lasting and important is given the least amount of attention, while superficial, transitory things…
War Among Ladies by Eleanor Scott
Reviewed by Harriet First published in 1928, War Among Ladies is the latest offering from the British Library Women Writers series. I’ve read all of them, and reviewed almost all,…
Lucy By the Sea by Elizabeth Strout
Reviewed by Harriet It’s less than a year since I wrote my review of Elizabeth Strout’s Booker shortlisted Oh William! here on Shiny. It was the third of her books…
Psalms for the End of the World by Cole Haddon
Review by Annabel It took mere seconds to say yes please to a review copy of this book – I read the words ‘1962’ and ‘physics’ on the publicity blurb…
The Ink Black Heart by Robert Galbraith
Reviewed by Harriet I was initially quite surprised to discover, early on in the latest and biggest novel about the exploits of private investigators Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott, that…
Courtiers by Valentine Low
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long What is a courtier? According to dictionaries I have checked it seems there are two definitions: A person who is often in attendance at the court of…
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Reviewed by Harriet I came to The Marriage Portrait primed, in a sense, as I was already familiar with the story of the marriage between Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara and…
Diplomatic Baggage: Adventures of a Trailing Spouse, by Brigid Keenan
Review by Elaine Simpson-Long Bridget Keenan worked as an editor on Nova magazine, and on the newspapers The Observer and The Sunday Times. I remember reading her pieces and thinking that…
Orwell and Empire by Douglas Kerr
Review by Karen Langley George Orwell is still regarded as one of the 20th Century’s towering literary figures. Best known for his novels Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty Four, he…
The Secret Life of Fungi: Discoveries from a Hidden World by Aliya Whiteley
Review by Liz Dexter Aliya Whiteley writes about the natural world in essays and fiction, grew up in North Devon and now lives in West Sussex, both rural areas replete…
Seven for a Secret by Mary Webb
Review by Rob Spence If you know Mary Webb’s work at all, it’s likely that you do so through her most successful novel, Precious Bane, published in 1926, and later…
The House with the Golden Door by Elodie Harper
Review by Lory Widmer-Hess The House with the Golden Door returns to the world of Elodie Harper’s acclaimed novel, The Wolf Den, set in first century CE Pompeii. If you…
The Book of Phobias & Manias: A History of Obsession, by Kate Summerscale
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies This book coaxed me onside before I had begun reading it, for its design and artwork. Its appearance is bold, charming and slightly creepy. On the…
Clouds over Paris: The Wartime Notebooks of Felix Hartlaub
Translated by Simon Beattie Review by Karen Langley Felix Hartlaub is a name relatively unknown in the English-speaking world: the son of an art historian/museum director who fell foul of…
Tell Me About it by Sacha Naspini
Translated by Clarissa Botsford Review by Annabel This novella, first published in Italian in 2020, has a mere 120 pages, yet there is a full life between its covers. On…
Reviewer’s Choice: Liar by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Translated by Sondra Silverston Reviewed by Harriet ‘One lie can have a thousand consequences in this page-turning psychological suspense’, says the blurb. This is a fair description of what happens,…