Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani
Review by Terence Jagger This is a tricky book to read, though I enjoyed much of it. It is funny and observant, but painful too. Kitani has a strong view…
Almost Love by Louise O’Neill
Reviewed by Annabel After the searing, taboo-breaking storyline of O’Neil’s second novel, Asking For It (reviewed here), a young adult story about consent, teenage sex-shaming and the fallout from it,…
Ghosts of the Tsunami Richard Lloyd Parry
Review by Terence Jagger Japan suffers multitudes of earthquakes every year and is among the best prepared countries in the world. Tsunami, too, are common, and both are planned for…
The Earlie King & the Kid in Yellow by Danny Denton
Reviewed by Basil Ransome-Davies At the close of James Joyce’s moving and magisterial story ‘The Dead’ the reader learns that ‘snow was general all over Ireland… falling faintly through the…
Rise Up, Women! The Remarkable Lives of the Suffragettes by Diane Atkinson
Review by Liz Dexter This is a huge book in many senses of the word. It’s physically impressive enough to have arrived in a slightly alarmingly large box (thank you…
Sunburn by Laura Lippman
Reviewed by Harriet We’ve reviewed two of Laura Lippman’s novels in Shiny, here and here. One was a police procedural and the other a standalone – Lippman’s output is fairly…
Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading by Lucy Mangan
Review by Liz Dexter This is a truly delightful book which is a MUST if you’re a 35-55 year old British person and a great read for everyone else, too….
The Good Mothers by Alex Perry
Review by Max Dunbar Operation Shame Nowadays, when we think of the mafia, it’s with a sense of nostalgia. David Chase captured the feel in classic mob drama The Sopranos….
The Extremist by Nadia Dalbuono
Review by Marina Sofia You might be forgiven for expecting this book set in Italy to be translated from Italian, given the Italian sounding name of the author. In fact,…
Daphne by Will Boast
Reviewed by Annabel The vogue for using ancient myth to inspire contemporary novels continues unabated. Last year, Kamila Shamsie updated the story of Antigone in Home Fire, in which a…
Elisabeth’s Lists: A Family Story by Lulah Ellender
Reviewed by Gill Davies Lulah Ellender’s book – subtitled “A Family Story” – is part biography, part family history, and it includes reflections on her own family which gradually emerge from the…
Owl Sense by Miriam Darlington
Review by Peter Reason Miriam Darlington’s first book, Otter Country, recounted her search and study of otters in Britain. I reviewed this book with enthusiasm in Resurgence & Ecologist, noting…
The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Command the Mermaid Speak Last year a monster emerged from London’s sewers. The ‘fatberg’ – as the city’s waste disposal experts called it – was a…
From Here to Eternity: Travelling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster If you’ve read thirtysomething California funeral director Caitlin Doughty’s previous book, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, you’ll remember her account of training at a traditional San…
Felix Culpa by Jeremy Gavron
Review by Rob Spence The German artist Kurt Schwitters developed a method , which he called “Merz” by which his canvases would be constructed using hundreds of fragments of material…
Savages: The Wedding by Sabri Louatah
Translated by Gavin Bowd Reviewed by Annabel This debut novel is the first volume of Louatah’s planned Saint-Étienne quartet named after the French city in which its protagonists reside. Saint-Étienne…
Idaho by Emily Ruskovich
Reviewed by Susan Osborne Emily Ruskovich’s Idaho is an impressive debut, both in its writing and its treatment of a difficult subject: the murder of a young child in the…
Dawn of the New Everything: A Journey Through Virtual Reality by Jaron Lanier
Review by Liz Dexter Jaron Lanier has been called the “Father of Virtual Reality” and he’s been involved with many of the main companies in this area of technology for…
Rainsongs by Sue Hubbard
Reviewed by Jean Morris Rainsongs will take you to remote vistas in the west of Ireland. It’s a lovely, vividly transporting novel. “Apart from the wind and waves, it’s completely…
The World Broke in Two by Bill Goldstein
Reviewed by Harriet This enthralling multiple biography is subtitled ‘Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, E.M. Forster, and the year that changed literature’. The year is 1922, and the claim…
The Lion and the Unicorn by George Orwell
Review by Karen Langley Although George Orwell’s name resonates most strongly with us nowadays because of his great novels – in particular “Nineteen Eighty Four”, which seems to become more…
Force of Nature by Jane Harper
Reviewed by Gill Davies Following on from her highly-acclaimed first novel, The Dry, Jane Harper has written a second gripping story featuring the harsh Australian outback and a detective called…
The Last Ballad by Wiley Cash
Reviewed by Harriet I have certain reservations about novels in which the central character is someone who really existed. Sometimes it works really well, as for example in the case…
Edith and Oliver by Michèle Forbes
Reviewed by Annabel I managed to miss Forbes’s debut, Ghost Moth, which received rave reviews – something I should remedy having read her second novel. Edith and Oliver is set in the…