Gorsky by Vesna Goldsworthy
Reviewed by Paul Fishman Gorsky is an enigmatic, much-gossiped-about billionaire who is rarely seen at his own famously gorgeous parties; there is a suggestion of some enormous unresolved romance in…
Quick Curtain by Alan Melville
Reviewed by Simon Shiny New Books has been a consistent and delighted fan of the British Library Crime Classics series, which has been rather a phenomenon in the publishing industry…
Flight by Isabel Ashdown
Reviewed by Victoria I’m not the biggest fan of prologues but I have to hand it to Isabel Ashdown for making pretty good use of hers. It’s November 1994 and…
Ruth Rendell (1930-2015)
By Harriet Devine Ruth Rendell’s death on 2 May this year has brought to an end a career spanning an astonishing fifty years. By the time you are reading this,…
The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall
Reviewed by Victoria Sarah Hall’s reputation preceeded her into this, my first excursion into her writing (though it’s her fifth novel). Usually this is not a good thing; I have…
Song of the Sea Maid, Science and Setting by Rebecca Mascull
Song of the Sea Maid, my second novel for Hodder and Stoughton, comes out on June 18th this year. Yet as with many novels, the work started a long, long…
Death in the Rainy Season by Anna Jacquiery
Reviewed by Linda Boa I didn’t know much about Cambodia before I read Anna Jacquiery’s second Inspector Morel novel, Death In The Rainy Season. In this book, though, we don’t see a great deal…
Introducing the Shiny Book Club
We hope that some of you have managed to read our first Shiny Book Club choice – Laline Paull’s The Bees. We left you with some questions below to think about…
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
Reviewed by Jane Carter I have a very clear memory of visiting a bookshop, a good few years ago. I had a birthday book token, and I wasn’t too sure…
The Goddess of Buttercups and Daisies by Martin Millar
Reviewed by Max Dunbar The Altar of Pity: Martin Millar’s Athens ‘I’ve tried setting a novel in ancient Athens before,’ writes Martin Millar, in the afterword to his new book,…
Victorian Fairy Tales, edited by Michael Newton
Reviewed by Helen Parry The sun was now set, and the darkness coming on, but the child thought of no danger but the bears behind her. If she had looked…
The Writing of Our Endless Numbered Days
By Claire Fuller In 2011 a teenage boy turned up in Berlin claiming that he had been living in the German forests with his father for the previous five years…
Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
Reviewed by Annabel They say that every picture tells a story – or sometimes more. When seventeen year old Peggy finds an old photograph of her family and Oliver, the…
The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch by Lewis Dartnell
Paperback review by Annabel A large part of the novel Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel (which I reviewed here) was set twenty years after a global flu pandemic had wiped out…
The Black-Eyed Blonde by Benjamin Black
Reviewed by Harriet I thought there wasn’t much more damage that could be done to me that hadn’t already been done. You get hardened by life knocking away at you…
Geek Love by Katherine Dunn
Reviewed by Claire Boyle Geek Love by Katherine Dunn is like nothing you have ever read before. Literally. Hyperbole or not, it is one of those cult classics that those who…
The Door That Led to Where by Sally Gardner
YA review by Annabel Once Sally Gardner gained enough confidence to start writing novels for older children and teens, already being a fabulous illustrator and author of some great stories…
The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr
Reviewed by Linda Boa Well, after a short break, during which the ubiquitous Philip Kerr wrote Research and Prayer, Bernie Gunther has returned by popular demand for his tenth outing. To be honest, I think this…
Gretel and the Dark by Eliza Granville
Review by Hayley Anderton When I started reading this book I was a little ambivalent about it. I was attracted by the promise of a fairy tale but also wary…
Hotel Arcadia by Sunny Singh
Reviewed by Annabel Sam thought that the first shots were in her nightmares. … No, she never thought of bullets, except in her dreams. Perhaps that is why she felt…
Etta and Otto and Russell and James by Emma Hooper
Reviewed by Annabel To those of us living in the UK, it probably seems inconceivable that you can live a whole life without ever seeing the sea. It is this…
Science in Wonderland: The Scientific Fairy Tales of Victorian Britain by Melanie Keene
Reviewed by Helen Parry Thomas Gradgrind is the famously awful teacher from Hard Times. His philosophy: ‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Compiled by the Shiny editors. We join in the celebrations of the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland with our own little tribute: 1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland started off…
Celebrating the Centenary of Ladybird Books
Written by Steerforth The reading public is usually fairly indifferent to publishing centenaries, but the 100th anniversary of Ladybird has been a phenomenal success, celebrated with books, merchandise, a popular…