By Diana Cheng In recent months, several actresses at different occasions had spoken out about the lack of female lead characters in movies. Seeing the dearth of significant female roles, actress Reese…
Reviewed by Victoria It’s been ages since I read a good, old-fashioned family story, and although Kat Gordon’s debut novel wears the veneer of contemporary culture, set partly in a…
Having really loved Alan Melville’s Quick Curtain, it didn’t take much to convince me that I wanted to try another of his detective novels, also published in the British Library Crime…
Reviewed by Victoria Since I last reviewed a volume of Sidney Chambers stories, the first television series of the clerical detective’s cases has aired. This has undoubtedly brought Grantchester and its inmates…
Reviewed by David Harris The first thing to say about this book – and it’s the first thing you will notice – is that it’s long. Massive. An 861 page…
Reviewed by Alice Farrant Orient, murder mystery come introspective character novel, is Christopher Bollen’s second literary offering. Set on the North Fork of Long Island in the town of Orient,…
Reviewed by Anna Barber Now they would be able to afford a big house, a swimming pool, maids, a car….“I hope he didn’t have any pain,” she said. In Vain Shadow,…
Reviewed by Harriet Published in 1929, this is the first of only two crime novels written by Ianthe Jerrold. The descendent of a celebrated literary family, she became a member…
Reviewed by Rebecca Hussey Maggie Nelson has had what one might call a cult following ever since the 2009 publication of her genre-bending essayistic prose-poem Bluets. While many readers, even…
Reviewed by Annabel There are large numbers of popular science books written about particle physics, space and the periodic table, ditto for medicine and the mind. There are fewer books about…
Reviewed by Eleanor Franzén Caitlin Doughty was a twenty-three-year-old with a degree in medieval history when she decided to become a mortician. The decision wasn’t spontaneous; she had been obsessed…
Reviewed by Annabel Can you believe that it is thirty years since Jilly Cooper introduced us to Rutshire and her best-selling doorstop of sex and showjumping? Her publishers, Corgi, have…
Reviewed by Victoria Sorting through her mother’s things after her death in 2002, Kate Grenville came across an exercise book with her mother’s handwriting in it: ‘I have often thought…
Reviewed by Victoria Between 1943 and 1964, journalist for The New Yorker, Joseph Mitchell, regularly wrote pieces about people who lived on the margins of the city, eccentrics and originals and people…
Reviewed by Harriet I’ve been a fan of Laura Wilson since I discovered her first DI Ted Stratton novel, Stratton’s War, published in 2008. Four more in this intelligent and beautifully researched series…
Reviewed by Jodie A pretty cover, a pickpocket heroine and a quest for a Firebird? ‘Sounds cute,’ I thought as I paid for The Girl at Midnight. I was sure it…
Reviewed by Max Dunbar Lish’s novel is mostly about institutions. He writes about armies, prisons, service-level workplaces – his characters sleep in hostels and on the benches of bus terminals. Most…
Reviewed by Rob Spence Josephine Tey was a writer of unusual detective fiction in the so-called Golden Age of the genre. Her best-known, and most unusual novel was The Daughter of…
Interview by Harriet It’s seven years since your first ‘Josephine Tey’ novel, An Expert in Murder, was published by Faber, and this year sees London Rain, the sixth in this highly successful series…
Reviewed by Victoria The narration of Elizabeth Day’s third novel is woven together from four different perspectives that, when we are first introduced to them, seem utterly disparate. What do…
Reviewed by Harriet He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the…
Reviewed by Simon I already knew that I loved Shirley Jackson – I did from the time I was about a chapter into We Have Always Lived in the Castle back in…
Reviewed by Gill Davies Pleasantville is the third novel by Attica Locke. I remember that the reviews for her first novel, Black Water Rising, were very good but regrettably I didn’t get round…
Article by Anne Goodwin We all have secrets, things we’ve done or aspects of ourselves that we can reveal only to our nearest and dearest, and sometimes not even to…
