When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed by Bradley Greenburg
Reviewed by Victoria Best One of the best experiences in reviewing books is when a book for which you have no particular expectations turns out to be both engrossing and…
To Come Back Increased: Hild by Nicola Griffith
Written by Nicola Griffith For me a good novel is one that draws me in and puts me right there, right then, with the characters: I walk where they walk,…
Nick Rennison talks about the Victorians…
By Nick Rennison What is it about us and the Victorians? Here we are in 2014, in a world of smart phones, Twitter and Facebook, and yet, everywhere you look…
Tigerman by Nick Harkaway
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell At the time of writing, I have the pleasure of telling you that Tigerman, with its stunning cover artwork, is the best novel I’ve read this year. My…
Travels with Epicurus by Daniel Klein
Reviewed by Victoria Best Cultural theorist Giorgio Agamben has some very interesting things to say on the topic of old age – the subject of Daniel Klein’s gentle, ruminative trundle…
The Day of the Dead by Maurizio de Giovanni
Translated by Antony Shugaar Reviewed by Falaise On a miserable morning in 1930, a small, undernourished child is found dead at the foot of the Tondo di Capodimonte steps in Naples,…
Glow by Ned Beauman
Reviewed by Simon Thomas When you’ve established yourself as a (Booker longlisted) quirky historical novelist – if such a title can be given to an author whose first two novels…
Eyrie by Tim Winton
Reviewed by Kim Forrester If you’ve ever spoken your mind, or stood up for something you believe in when it might have been easier — and safer — to keep…
An Interview with Tim Winton
Tim Winton is arguably Australia’s greatest living writer. Born in Perth in 1960, he has written novels, short story collections, non-fiction, books for children, plays and television scripts. He has…
Q&A with Ned Beauman
Questions by Simon Thomas Simon: How did you get the idea for Glow? Ned: There were two subjects I had been wanting to write about for a long time. One was…
The Death of the Poet by N. Quentin Woolf
Reviewed by Harriet Devine How can I best describe to you this wonderful, powerful book? If I tell you that it’s about a man who falls desperately in love with…
The Way Inn by Will Wiles
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell “You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.” Never has a quotation been as appropriate to a book as that above…
The Skeleton Cupboard by Tanya Byron
Reviewed by Victoria Best When my son was still a child, he used to be transfixed by The House of Tiny Tearaways, a BBC programme in which families experiencing some nightmare…
Return to Mandalay by Rosanna Ley
Reviewed by Elaine Simpson-Long Round about this time of year publishers, publicists and bookshops turn their attention to Holiday Reading or Beach Reads. Both these terms are somewhat pejorative and…
The True & Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters by Michelle Lovric
Reviewed by Helen Parry We Swineys were the hairiest girls in Harristown, Kildare, and the hairiest you’d find anywhere in Ireland from Priesthaggard to Sluggery. That is, our limbs were…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Robert Aickman
Winkled out by Annabel Gaskell 1. Although we’ve come to know Aickman as an author, he was a prominent conservationist. In 1946, he was a co-founder of the Inland Waterways Association….
The New Sylva, A Discourse of Forest and Orchard Trees for the Twenty-First Century, by Gabriel Hemery and Sarah Simblet
Reviewed by Hayley Anderton When Shiny New Books asked me if I’d like to review The New Sylva I thought it sounded interesting. When it arrived I thought it looked interesting and…
Sidney Chambers and the Problem of Evil by James Runcie
Reviewed by Victoria Best Readers of this delightful series are probably aware that the ITV adaptation will soon be on our screens, with James Norton playing the priest-turned-detective, Sidney Chambers…
The Silkworm by Robert Galbraith
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Strike hated paddling on the periphery of a case, forced to watch as others dived for clues, leads and information. He sat up late with the…
‘The Night Watchman’ and the Dilemma of Living in Portugal by Richard Zimler
Imagine a country with the lowest salaries in Western Europe, where about 40 percent of young people are unemployed, and where 50,000 shops went out of business in 2011 and…
To War With Whitaker by Hermione Ranfurly
Reviewed by Claire If I were knowingly heading into an active theatre of war, I like to think I would go armed with the necessary information, wardrobe, and exit plan…
The Night Watchman by Richard Zimler
Reviewed by T.V. LoCicero The Mysterious Worlds of Henrique Monroe This is the ninth novel by Richard Zimler, an American-born writer who spent his first thirty-four years in the U.S.,…
The Most Dangerous Book; The Battle for James Joyce’s Ulysses by Kevin Birmingham
Reviewed by Max Dunbar This study of how James Joyce’s Ulysses came to be published and set in type is almost as essential as the book itself. The odds were against it,…
Decompression by Juli Zeh
Translated by John Cullen Reviewed by David Hebblethwaite In diving, decompression is the gradual reduction of ambient pressure as a diver returns to the surface, which allows the inert gases…