Before Lunch & Northbridge Rectory by Angela Thirkell
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton My first brush with Thirkell was at least a decade ago, courtesy of an old Penguin edition of The Brandons picked up in a second hand bookshop because…
Five Rivers Met on a Wooded Plain by Barney Norris
Reviewed by Harriet One quiet evening in Salisbury, the peace is shattered by a serious car crash. At that moment, the lives of five people collide – a flower-seller, a…
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing
Reviewed by Marina Sofia There are some who crave solitude, others who fear it. There are those who crave some idealized version of solitude, à la Thoreau, absorbing the lessons…
Girl in Profile by Zillah Bethel
Reviewed by Victoria There are some novels that are all about the language, and Girl in Profile is one of them. How much you enjoy it will depend to a certain extent…
The Loving Husband by Christobel Kent
Reviewed by Harriet He was in the room. She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep, but she’d been dreaming. In the dark someone padded between the furniture, and loose…
Shop Girl by Mary Portas
Review by Annabel Mary Portas is one of those TV presenter/gurus you either love or find profoundly irritating. I love her and her championing of the high street and independent…
Down the Rabbit Hole: Curious Adventures and Cautionary Tales of a Former Playboy Bunny by Holly Madison
Reviewed by Laura Marriott “I always thought it would be classy to not kiss and tell … but after a while you just get sick of having other people trying…
Memories: From Moscow to the Black Sea by Teffi
Translated by Robert Chandler, Elizabeth Chandler, Anne Marie Jackson and Irina Steinberg Reviewed by Karen Langley The Russian Revolution and ensuing Civil War were amongst the most brutal conflicts of…
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford
Reviewed by Annabel Francis Spufford is known for his five non-fiction books, the subjects of which are varied in the extreme, notably his delightful memoir of childhood reading The Child…
‘South of the River’: A Reading List
Compiled by Annabel The story goes that London cabbies won’t go ‘South of the River’ after dark – I have no proof of this, but it’s an enduring myth. Asked…
Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson
Reviewed by Simon Full disclosure from the off: I am longstanding blogging friends with the author of this book, and also an admirer of his earlier fiction (sequels to E.F….
Poems by Katherine Mansfield
Reviewed by Simon Katherine Mansfield is, of course, best known for her short stories – and rightly so; for my money, she is the greatest short story writer I’ve ever…
Multitudes by Lucy Caldwell
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve read and enjoyed all three of the prizewinning Belfast writer Lucy Caldwell’s full-length novels, so, though short stories are not usually my genre of choice, I…
Some Questions for Lucy Caldwell
Asked by HarrietLucy, people always like to know how a writer got started. So can you tell us about your beginnings, and when you realised you were going to be…
Murder in the Museum & Calamity in Kent by John Rowland
Reviewed by Harriet Here at Shiny we love our reprints, and are always delighted to include reviews of one or more of the British Library’s Crime Classics series. So when…
My Son, My Son by Howard Spring
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster This is the second gem I’ve read from Head of Zeus’s new imprint, Apollo. Like Josephine Johnson’s Now in November, which won the 1935 Pulitzer Prize, this…
The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge by Rainer Maria Rilke
Translated by Robert Vilain Reviewed by Karen Langley Back in 2013, I read a really lovely book called Rilke in Paris, which focused on the life of the great German poet…
Armadillos by P.K. Lynch
Reviewed by Annabel Debut novelist P.K. Lynch trained as an actor before having a family and turning to writing plays. Her first professional acting job was playing Lizzy in Trainspotting, (in…
Life After Publication, by Lisa Williamson
I recently met up with a bunch of friends from university for the afternoon. ‘You’re very successful now, aren’t you?’ one guy boomed at me before even saying ‘hello’. I…
Shiny New Author: Stephanie Danler
Questions by Rebecca Foster 1. Readers learn so few facts about Tess – even her name and where she’s from are not revealed until a long way into the book,…
Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler
Reviewed by Rebecca Foster Twenty-two-year-old Tess arrives in New York City by car in June 2006. Feeling like a Midwestern bumpkin, she has no money for tolls and has to…
Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama
Translated by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies Reviewed by Gill Davies What an odd novel! It is Yokoyama’s sixth, his first to be translated into English, and was an immediate best-seller in Japan….
The Life of Elves by Muriel Barbery
Translated by Alison Anderson Reviewed by Annabel If like me, you read and loved Muriel Barbery’s bestselling novel The Elegance of the Hedgehog, which blended romance, philosophy and a teenaged genius…
The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham
Reviewed by Simon Bloomsbury Reader has done an excellent job in bringing back many neglected authors (including some of my favourites, such as E.M. Delafield and Ivy Compton-Burnett), but these…