Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healey
Reviewed by Harriet Four years after Emma Healey’s best selling Elizabeth is Missing comes her second novel, Whistle in the Dark. It’s a psychological thriller of sorts, but don’t expect…
Edgar & Lucy by Victor Lodato
Reviewed by Alice Farrant For seven years Florence, Lucy and Edgar have lived in the wake of Frank’s death. No one mentions Frank’s passing and so Grandmother, Daughter-in-law and Son…
The Trick To Time by Kit de Waal
Reviewed by Alice Farrant Mona lives a quiet life as a dollmaker, at face value she appears to be an ordinary woman, however, in private she runs a side-service helping…
Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday
Reviewed by Harriet Asymmetry is defined as ‘lack of equality or equivalence between parts’, a definition that applies both to a theme of this brilliant debut novel and to its…
Souvenir (Object Lessons) by Rolf Potts
Review by Liz Dexter This book is part of the Object Lessons series, which exists to highlight the hidden lives of ordinary things. This one is about travel souvenirs brought…
Tangerine by Christine Mangan
Reviewed by Annabel They say that in Tangier, the local hustlers have clocked all the new arrivals within hours – this is what I was told when I visited Tangier…
Happiness by Aminatta Forna
Review by Lucy Unwin “You know how it is with white people. You say it’s race, they tell you you are mistaken. Then they say it’s because of your race…
Our Place: Can we save Britain’s wildlife before it is too late? by Mark Cocker
Review by Peter Reason When I was a small boy, back in the 1950s, we were taken on Sunday School outings to the seaside. I remember seeing great flocks of…
A Long Way from Home by Peter Carey
Reviewed by Harriet A Long Way from Home, as the title implies, is a novel of a journey in more than one sense. An actual physical journey takes up the…
All the Beautiful Girls by Elizabeth J Church
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Elizabeth J. Church’s debut novel, The Atomic Weight of Love, was about an 87-year-old amateur ornithologist whose husband was one of the creators of the atomic…
Rex V. Edith Thompson: A Tale of Two Murders by Laura Thompson
Review by Karen Langley The Thompson-Bywaters murder case (also known as “The Ilford Murder”) is notorious, but I think most of my previous knowledge of it comes from two sources:…
The Vintage Shetland Project by Susan Crawford
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton The Vintage Shetland Project has had quite a journey into print, one that I’ve followed with interest for the last 3 years from when I first…
Rosie by Rose Tremain
Reviewed by Harriet I’m a huge admirer of Rose Tremain’s brilliant novels, and very fond of childhood memoirs as a genre, so this one was a must for me. It’s…
The Unbeliever by Oggy Boytchev
Reviewed by Annabel Oggy (Ognian) Boytchev grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria. He developed an interest in spies and spy novels as a child, after hearing propaganda on…
Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce
Reviewed by Helen Skinner It’s 1941 and Britain is at war. Emmeline Lake has always wanted to be a journalist and is thrilled when she sees an advertisement in the…
A Chill in the Air by Iris Origo
Review by Terence Jagger This is a fascinating book, written during the year or so preceding Italy’s entry in to the 1939-45 war, when whether she would join – and…
How Shostakovich Changed My Mind by Stephen Johnson
Review by Karen Langley Readers of Shiny New Books will know of my love for Notting Hill Editions books; I’ve reviewed their “Beautiful and Impossible Things” and “The Russian Soul”…
The Golovlevs by M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin
Translated by I.P. Foote Review by Karen Langley Back in SNB #13 I reviewed “The History of a Town” by Saltykov-Shchedrin, one of the great Russian satirists of the 19th…
To Be a Machine by Mark O’Connell
Review by Annabel I loved this book from the front cover to the back, starting with its title – that capital ‘B’ is crucial to the book’s premise. Subtitled ‘Adventures…
The Ropewalker and A People Without a Past by Jaan Kross
Translated by Merike Lepasaar Beecher Reviewed by Gill Davies Thanks to the wonderful Maclehose Press I have discovered another writer in translation who deserves to be much better known. Up…
What She Ate by Laura Shapiro
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton What She Ate looks at ‘six remarkable women and the food that tells their stories’. It comes at a time when food centred biographies, or food…
Moonrise & Lost Mars, ed. Mike Ashley
Reviewed by Karen Langley There can’t be many readers of Shiny New Books who aren’t aware of the lovely British Library Crime Classics series: long out-of-print and forgotten novels and…
Diary of a Bipolar Explorer by Lucy Newlyn
Reviewed by Jean Morris This is both useful and beautiful. Lucy Newlyn, recently retired Oxford professor of English literature, author of a lovely book, among others, about Dorothy and William…
The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton
Reviewed by Harriet I forget everything between footsteps. ‘Anna!’ I finish shouting, snapping my mouth shut in surprise. My mind has gone blank. I don’t know who Anna is or…