This Time Next Year We’ll be Laughing by Jacqueline Winspear
Reviewed by Harriet Jacqueline Winspear was born in 1955. Her debut novel – the first of her award-winning Maisie Dobbs mysteries – was published in 2003. Counting on my fingers…
Mr Cadmus by Peter Ackroyd
Reviewed by Annabel Owning most of Ackroyd’s fiction output and a good chunk of his non-fiction (even if I haven’t quite read it all), I thought I had a grip…
We Are All Birds of Uganda by Hafsa Zayyan
Review by Pete Freeth As the British publishing industry continues to strive for greater diversity and cultural representation, initiatives like the #Merky Books New Writer’s Prize are incredibly valuable steps…
The Death of Francis Bacon by Max Porter
Reviewed by Annabel Max Porter emerged on the British literary scene in the mid-2010s as an author to be watched. His debut 2015 novella Grief is the Thing With Feathers…
Unfinished Business: The Fight for Women’s Rights, edited by Polly Russell and Margaretta Jolly
Reviewed by Liz Dexter It used to be that we attended exhibitions and treated ourselves to the catalogue in the shop on the way out. Now, it’s more a case…
Reviewer’s Choice: A New Sublime – Ten Timeless Lessons on the Classics by Piero Boitani
While Shiny New Books concentrates on the new, occasionally, we give our reviewers room to share previously published – ie: ‘not Shiny New Books’ – they have been reading. A…
Right After the Weather by Carol Anshaw
Paperback review by Susan Osborne Set in Carol Anshaw’s home town of Chicago in the months before and after the 2016 election, Right After the Weather explores both the state…
The Fresh and the Salt: The Story of the Solway by Ann Lingard
Reviewed by Peter Reason When I was a small boy—and this memory must reach back to around 1950—I played with a wooden puzzle made up of the historic counties of…
Rhododendron Pie by Margery Sharp
Reviewed by Harriet Ever since I started reading book review blogs, some years ago now, I have often encountered Margery Sharp’s name, generally accompanied by a heartfelt regret that many…
The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by Katie Mack
Reviewed by Terence Jagger Katie Mack is an American astrophysicist, but her writing is very informal and almost journalistic or chatty – which is great for a subject like this,…
The Searcher by Tana French
Reviewed by Annabel A new novel from Tana French, Irish author of the acclaimed Dublin Murders series is always worth waiting for. Her latest, The Searcher, a standalone, is that…
The Passenger: Japan
Reviewed by Terence Jagger Early last year, Europa launched a new imprint “for explorers of the world”: The Passenger. Now, the list includes Berlin, India, Turkey, Brazil and Greece. But…
The Frozen River: Seeking Silence in the Himalaya by James Crowden
Reviewed by Peter Reason Opening this book, I am immediately drawn in: ‘Silence, snow and solitude have got hold of me and will not let me go. I am possessed…
A Shiny Merry Christmas
By Annabel and Harriet It’s been quite a year, hasn’t it? As if the pandemic lockdown wasn’t enough, in early April, Annabel managed to accidentally delete Shiny New Books –…
Mr Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe
Reviewed by Annabel Jonathan Coe’s latest novel couldn’t be further from his Costa-winning Middle England (which I reviewed for Shiny here), which examined 21st century Englishness as we went about…
The Stubborn Light of Things by Melissa Harrison & The Consolation of Nature by Michael McCarthy, Jeremy Mynott & Peter Marren
By Rebecca Foster The Stubborn Light of Things collects five and a half years’ worth of Melissa Harrison’s monthly Nature Notebook columns for The Times. The book falls into two…
Spotlight on Publishers: Renard Press
Questions by Karen Langley 2020 has in many ways been the year of independent publishers; print books have been fighting back against the march of the e-book, and recently any…
I Don’t Want to Go to the Taj Mahal: Stories of a Birmingham Boy by Charlie Hill
Review by Eleanor Updegraff It can be difficult to get other people interested in your life. Many authors have tried, many have failed – often simply by taking themselves too…
The Story of Keth by Blanche Girouard
Reviewed by Rob Spence Blanche Girouard, born in 1898, was a prominent figure in the Anglo-Irish aristocracy of the early twentieth century. Her father was the Marquess of Waterford, and…
Artifact by Arlene Heyman
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Lottie (or Dr Charlotte Kristin Hart Levinson, to give her full name), the protagonist of 77-year-old New York City psychiatrist Arlene Heyman’s debut novel, is determined…
Fifty Words for Snow by Nancy Campbell
Reviewed by Liz Dexter I greatly enjoyed reading Nancy Campbell’s meditation on the icy places of the world, The Library of Ice. last year, so when I was alerted that…
Miss Mole by E H Young
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long I seem to have spent most of my life rummaging around in second hand bookshops and in so doing have come across treasures and titles about…
Dearly by Margaret Atwood & other poetry highlights of 2020
By Rebecca Foster Dearly by Margaret Atwood In her career of more than five decades, Margaret Atwood has produced work in an astounding range of genres: literary fiction, children’s books,…
The Fragments of My Father by Sam Mills
Reviewed by Harriet Sam Mills’ ‘memoir of madness, love, and being a carer’ starts on a Friday night in early 2016. Sam’s father has been locked in a bathroom for two…