Death is a Welcome Guest by Louise Welsh
Paperback review by Annabel Most trilogies are strictly sequential, one volume carrying on from another. Louise Welsh’s ‘Plague Times’ trilogy is slightly different (so far) in that the first two…
Paperback review by Annabel Most trilogies are strictly sequential, one volume carrying on from another. Louise Welsh’s ‘Plague Times’ trilogy is slightly different (so far) in that the first two…
Reviewed by Annabel O’Neill’s first novel, Only Ever Yours, published in 2014, won a host of prizes in her native Ireland. Aimed at older teenagers upwards, it was a futuristic…
After our announcement yesterday of the winning poem in our competition, we are delighted to share the runners-up with you today. We’re sorry we can’t offer any prizes for our…
Reviewed by Harriet The role of King Lear is seen today as the ultimate challenge for the classical actor, the one that provides the supreme test of his abilities in…
Introduced by Chair of the Judges, Rob Spence The inaugural Shiny Poetry Competition, on the theme, naturally enough, of ‘Reading’, attracted a small, but high-quality group of poems. The range…
Reviewed by Harriet Christmas is a mysterious, as well as magical, time of year. Strange things can happen, and this helps to explain the hallowed tradition of telling ghost stories…
There is a famous (and sometimes overused) piece of advice that writers like to give each other. It comes from Chekhov, in the form of a quote: “If in the…
Reviewed by Annabel Tess’s mother died giving birth to her brother Axel. They live with their father in a cabin at the edge of a town in the middle of…
Reviewed by Stefanie Hollmichel Aside from The Death of Socrates and a few other pieces forced on me in school, I can’t say I have ever been interested in reading Plato. That Jo…
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton I discovered Gavin Maxwell’s books when newly exiled from a rural Scottish childhood. The first of his books that I found was Harpoon at a Venture. Drawn…
Reviewed by Karen Langley There’s always the danger that when an author becomes more famous than his works, those works will become so eclipsed that we’ll end up with an…
Reviewed by Harriet Golden Age crime has always been popular, and each of the so-called queens – Sayers, Christie, Allingham, March, Tey – has her loyal followers. But in the…
Translated by Nick Caistor and Amanda Hopkinson Reviewed by Alice Farrant The Japanese Lover by Isabel Allende is a tender love story, traversing from the 1930s through to the present day,…
Reviewed by Victoria Pushkin Vertigo, the new crime imprint from Pushkin Press has got off to a flying start with its first batch of releases. Not surprisingly, perhaps, when you…
Reviewed by Julie B “Barbara Pym…Elizabeth Taylor…” exalted company for any author’s novel, and when I noticed these names on the front of this book I must admit I was…
Reviewed by David Harris Made to Kill is the first volume of a projected trilogy featuring a PI (ostensibly) who is also the last robot on Earth. While being another book…
Reviewed by Karen Langley You can’t rush the building of a new house. You’ve got to get the whole thing clear in the mind’s eye. We all know the fable…
Translated by Alexander O Smith with Joseph Reeder. Reviewed by Gill Davies This is the first novel I’ve read by Keigo Higashino – indeed, my first Japanese crime novel –…
Reviewed by Noreen Masud What a city was Glasgow! It was really more into vaudeville than it was into violence, a fact seldom appreciated. There’s a wealth of Scottish fiction…
Reviewed by Lyn Baines It struck me while I was reading this book that one of the differences between the Golden Age murder mystery and a lot of modern detective novels…
Reviewed by Linda Boa This isn’t a Bernie Gunther book, nor is it a standalone. It’s a new thriller series by Philip Kerr about a man called Scott Manson, who…
Reviewed by Harriet I suppose most people who know about Edith Wharton think of her as a writer whose subject was the social elite – think of The House of Mirth,…
Reviewed by Simon This marks the third biography I’ve reviewed in Shiny New Books that is about a major figure in my doctoral thesis – three out of three of…
Reviewed by Linda Boa Dust And Desire is the first in a trilogy (the other two are out next year) featuring London-based Private Investigator Joel Sorrell. Joel is an ex-policeman whose…