April 15, 2014 I Was A Stranger by John Hackett Reviewed by Simon Thomas In a year where we almost certainly going to be inundated with books about World War One, it seems a…
April 15, 2014 The Ruby Slippers by Keir Alexander Reviewed by Harriet Devine She stinks. It has to be said. Stinks to high heaven. No, worse, stinks like death. This is not just…
April 15, 2014 Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses by Helen Rappaport Reviewed by Harriet Devine On 17 July 1918, four young women walked down twenty-three steps into the cellar of a house in Ekaterinburg. The…
April 15, 2014 History of the Rain by Niall Williams Reviewed by Karen Howlett Plain Ruth Swain is bed-bound in her attic room beneath the skylight and the ever-present rain, for this is the…
April 15, 2014 Spotlight on Publishers: Slightly Foxed Independent to the core: the story of Slightly Foxed, by Hazel Wood The idea for Slightly Foxed: The Real Reader’s Quarterly took shape round a north…
April 14, 2014 The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths Reviewed by Harriet Devine I’ve been a fan of Elly Griffiths’ Ruth Galloway series since the first novel, Crossing Places, appeared in 2009. The Outcast Dead is…
April 14, 2014 The Madness by Alison Rattle (YA) Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Set in a seaside village in Victorian Somerset, The Madness is the story of fourteen-year-old Marnie, who is biding her time until…
April 14, 2014 Jawbone Lake by Ray Robinson Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite The North Yorkshire writer Ray Robinson is not one to stand still. His first novel, 2006’s Electricity (which has been adapted into a…
April 11, 2014 Hangsaman, The Bird’s Nest, and The Sundial by Shirley Jackson Reviewed by Simon Thomas You can more or less divide readers’ familiarity with Shirley Jackson’s works into separate levels. Of course, the broadest (particularly…
April 11, 2014 Far From the Tree by Andrew Solomon Reviewed by Jackie Bailey Five words from the blurb: parents, exceptional, children, difference, acceptance. Far From the Tree is the most important book I’ve ever…
April 10, 2014 Zola – An Introduction To His Books By Victoria Best The OUP’s decision to publish some of the novels of Émile Zola that have not been in translation for more than…
April 10, 2014 The Museum of Extraordinary Things by Alice Hoffman Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell New York is a melting pot, nearly everyone has come from somewhere else to be there, and Hoffman’s new novel…
April 10, 2014 American Sycamore by Karen Fielding Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell It is lovely to be able to heartily recommend a début novel published by a smaller independent publisher – American Sycamore is…
April 10, 2014 Money by Émile Zola Translated by Valerie Minogue Reviewed by Harriet Devine ‘It’s very difficult to write a novel about money. It’s cold, icy, lacking in interest’. So…
April 10, 2014 Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell When I read that Val McDermid, writer of many a gory crime novel, was penning the second book in ‘The…
April 10, 2014 Picture Me Gone by Meg Rosoff Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I have always fiercely maintained that good writing transcends genre; it also transcends age. Meg Rosoff’s latest novel for young…
April 10, 2014 Combining Fact and Fiction in the Writing of ‘The Dance of Love’ by Angela Young The Dance of Love is my second novel, so I’m a novice. I’ve written since I was a child but it’s one thing to write…
April 10, 2014 Autobiography of a Corpse by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky Translated by Joanne Turnbull Reviewed by Karen Langley Soviet Russia’s Best-Kept Literary Secret Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky could accurately be described as the lost writer of…
April 10, 2014 Bedsit Disco Queen by Tracey Thorn Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell I wish Tracey Thorn was my cousin, sister even. I can say that – for we share not only a…
April 10, 2014 The Road to Reckoning by Robert Lautner Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Having grown up loving all those cowboy TV series from the 1960s and ‘70s like The Virginian and Alias Smith and Jones, maybe…
April 10, 2014 Into the Trees by Robert Williams Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Imagine a house in the middle of the forest, somewhere you feel safe, at home; somewhere to hide away perhaps? …
April 10, 2014 Q&A with Helen Oyeyemi, author of Boy, Snow, Bird Questions by Simon 1) Firstly, congrats on Boy, Snow, Bird, it’s fantastic! Could you say a bit about the genesis of the novel and…
April 10, 2014 Boy, Snow, Bird by Helen Oyeyemi Reviewed by Simon Thomas At some point, Helen Oyeyemi will stop being notable for her youth – but, at 29 and with five novels…
April 10, 2014 Still Life with Breadcrumbs by Anna Quindlen Reviewed by Adèle Geras Every so often, you come across a novel whose qualities appeal to you in a way that you can’t quite explain. Still…
April 10, 2014 The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri Reviewed by Rachel Fenn The Lowland is the story of two brothers, Udayan and Subhash, and the woman they both marry, Gauri. The novel opens…
