Winterman by Alex Walters
Review by Rob Spence East Anglia has quite a lot of previous when it comes to crime fiction: Colin Watson’s chronicles of Flaxborough, James Runcie’s Grantchester mysteries, and Nicola Upson’s…
Graceland by Bethan Roberts
Reviewed by Annabel When I saw that Bethan Roberts’s new book had Elvis on the cover, I was instantly intrigued. Having followed Bethan’s career for some years, as she hails…
The Death of Murat Idrissi by Tommy Weiringa
Translated by Sam Garrett Review by Alice Farrant Two venturesome women on a journey through the land of their fathers and mothers. A wrong turn. A bad decision.[1] The Death…
To Kill the Truth by Sam Bourne
Review by Rob Spence We live in an age of fake news, propagated by politicians, celebrities and media organisations. Perhaps we always have – from the tricks of Elizabethan propaganda…
Europe: A Natural History by Tim Flannery
Review by Peter Reason A natural history, Tim Flannery tells us, encompasses both the natural and the human worlds. This book attends to three big questions: How was Europe formed?…
With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix
Reviewed by Annabel Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2018 this book, which is full of wisdom and compassion, was one of the highlights of a strong shortlist. Although…
The Photographer at Sixteen by George Szirtes
Review by Rob Spence This remarkably compelling memoir is, surprisingly, the first prose publication of George Szirtes, one of our most distinguished poets. At its centre is the disquieting life…
I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche by Sue Prideaux
Review by Max Dunbar Alpha males in print tend to be omega males in real life. Friedrich Nietzsche was not rich during his lifetime. He had one job, at the…
Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis by Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky
Review by Peter Reason I am not sure how I came across this book; I think I followed a link on Twitter. It appealed to me immediately appealed and ordered…
Slow Motion Ghosts by Jeff Noon
Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered Jeff Noon’s weird take on our world when his debut novel Vurt was picked up by a major publisher after being an indie original that went…
The Lost Man by Jane Harper
Reviewed by Annabel I’ll say it up front, Jane Harper’s third novel, The Lost Man, was totally unputdownable! Not having read her first two, The Dry and Force of Nature…
The Real Enid Blyton by Nadia Cohen
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long When I was a little girl I used to receive the latest Famous Five book by Enid Blyton every Christmas. I am pretty sure my mum…
No Place to Lay One’s Head by Francoise Frenkel
Translated by Stephanie Smee Reviewed by Harriet When I was first offered this book for review, I turned it down, for reasons that are now not clear to me. Then…
Melmoth by Sarah Perry
Review by Alice Farrant Helen Franklin is self-repressed, restricting herself from all that is pleasurable or happy. She merely exists alongside Prague, parallel to its beauty. When suddenly, she is…
Things We Nearly Knew by Jim Powell
Reviewed by Susan Osborne Jim Powell’s Things We Nearly Knew is a slice of American smalltown life seen through the eyes of an unnamed bartender. I enjoyed Powell’s second novel,…
Save Me the Waltz by Zelda Fitzgerald
Reviewed by Harriet Written in just two months while its author was a patient in a psychiatric clinic, Zelda Fitzgerald’s first and only novel found a publisher in 1932. Three…
Dark Water by Elizabeth Lowry
Reviewed by Anne Goodwin Twenty-one-year-old Hiram Carver, assistant surgeon on the USS Orbis in 1833, senses something special about William Borden when he first sees him on board. The sailor…
Middle England by Jonathan Coe
Reviewed by Annabel By the time I’d finished reading Coe’s latest novel, it was about a fortnight after publication and by this time he (and his publisher Penguin Viking) could…
The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space by Owen Hatherley
Review by Karen Langley Author Owen Hatherley has carved out a niche for himself as one of the UK’s foremost commentators on matters architectural and political; his work exists at…
Berta Isla by Javier Marías
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa Review by Anna Hollingsworth I’m not one for classic spy stories: I don’t care if the martinis come shaken or stirred, and as much as…
Dramatic Exchanges, selected & edited by Daniel Rosenthal
Reviewed by Harriet When we think of London’s National Theatre, most of us will envisage the great concrete complex on the South Bank of the Thames, designed by Denis Lasdun…
Where Shall We Run To? by Alan Garner
Reviewed by Annabel I’ve been a fan of Alan Garner’s novels ever since my childhood when I first encountered The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel The Moon of Gomrath in the 1960s. I…
The Infinite Blacktop by Sara Gran
Review by Basil Ransome-Davies At times crime fiction seems a genre so powerful that it sucks in and revitalises other forms. At others, literary fiction appears to piggyback expediently on…
Little by Edward Carey
Reviewed by Simon The name Madame Tussaud is familiar to most of us – particularly to anybody who has been a tourist in London, and visited the waxwork museum that…