The Headmaster’s Wife by Thomas Christopher Greene
Reviewed by Victoria Best I do love a book with a really good jaw-dropping twist, and goodness me does The Headmaster’s Wife have one of those. But a device that’s great to…
The Cemetery of Swallows by Mallock
Translated by Stephen Rendall Reviewed by Falaise The Cemetery of Swallows is a recent addition to Europa Editions’ excellent World Noir imprint, which, as you may guess from its name, features…
The Accidental Universe by Alan Lightman
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell My first encounter with Alan Lightman was through his 1992 novel Einstein’s Dreams, a fictional account of the scientist during the period he was working on the…
The Legs of Izolda Morgan by Bruno Jasieński
Translated by Soren A. Gauger and Guy Torr Reviewed by Karen Langley The boundaries and allegiances in Europe moved and blurred continually during the early 20th century, and many writers…
Shakespeare & Me, edited by Susannah Carson
Reviewed by Simon Thomas A few years ago, I very much enjoyed A Truth Universally Acknowledged, an anthology of writers and readers celebrating Jane Austen, which was also edited by Susannah…
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman
Reviewed by Terence Jagger This is a famous and fascinating book, and I think anyone interested in the Great War, or the wider question of how wars begin, would find…
The Unwitting by Ellen Feldman
Reviewed by Victoria Best It is November 1963 and Nell Benjamin is annoyed with her husband, Charlie. The previous evening, they had guests round, and the boorish drunk, Frank Tucker,…
Q&A with Mike Ripley
Questions by Harriet Devine Harriet: I really enjoyed reading Mr Campion’s Farewell, and, as a lifetime fan of Allingham, I wasn’t sure if I would. But I’m full of curiosity as…
Mr Campion’s Farewell by Mike Ripley
Reviewed by Harriet Devine I think I was about eleven when my mother, responding to my cry that I had nothing to read, gave me a copy of Margery Allingham’s Sweet…
Over the Ocean by Erica Fischer
Translated by Andrew Brown Reviewed by Jean Morris The media were full of the D-Day commemorations as I read this book – stories of wartime fear and bravery that I’d…
In the Light of What We Know by Zia Haider Rahman
Reviewed by Victoria Best Many years ago, when I was teaching literature at Cambridge University, my good friend Kathryn and I used to laugh together about a certain category of…
The Path Through The Trees by Christopher Milne
Reviewed by Claire When you are the inspiration for one of the most famous and best-loved children’s books of all time, how do you grow up? How do you set…
Expo 58 by Jonathan Coe
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell The Festival of Britain back in 1951 and subsequent World Expos were before my time but I am finding that the 1950s are an attractive era…
One Summer: America 1927 by Bill Bryson
Reviewed by Harriet Devine If I were to make a list of things I probably wouldn’t want to read a book about, aeroplanes, cars, baseball and finance would be somewhere near…
Pleasures and Landscapes by Sybille Bedford
Reviewed by Simon Thomas Are you ready to be transported back to postwar Europe? Although this collection of essays was first published as Pleasures and Landscapes as recently as 2003, they are…
Jonathan Smith on his book Wilfred and Eileen
Written by Jonathan Smith Wilfred and Eileen was well received in the literary pages in 1976. The novel was dramatized on Radio 4 in 1983 and then serialized on BBC TV…
Wilfred and Eileen by Jonathan Smith
Reviewed by Rachel Fenn Wilfred and Eileen, one of Persephone’s new books for the Spring, is also one of their most modern, having been first published in the 1970s. It…
The Broken Landscape of Berlin by Ben Fergusson
Written by Ben Fergusson Berlin is full of holes. Literally. The moment you notice them, you begin to see them everywhere. Deep starbursts in stonework, plaster and brick. They are…
A Bright Moon for Fools by Jasper Gibson
Reviewed by Annabel Gaskell Harry Christmas strode out of Caracas airport with little more than a wallet full of stolen money and the dried-up brain of a long-haul drinker. Beyond…
Our Readers’ Ideal Libraries
Back when Shiny New Books was a quarterly, in early editions we had a competition to win ‘The Editors’ Picks’ – four books that caught the four editors’ attention that…
The Lie by Helen Dunmore
Reviewed by Susan Osborne. If you spend any time at all perusing reviews, on the internet or otherwise, you can’t have failed to notice the plethora of novels about the…
My Salinger Year by Joanna Rakoff
Reviewed by Victoria Best When this memoir begins, Joanna Rakoff is 23 and has just dropped out of her graduate literary program in London and returned to New York, declaring…
Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy
Reviewed by Victoria Best Several years ago, I read a short story collection by an author whose name was buzzing around the blogosphere as a talent to watch. The book…
Murder Underground and Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay
Reviewed by Harriet Devine Mavis Doriel Hay (1894-1979) wrote only three crime novels, all published in the 1930s. They slipped completely under the radar until the British Library decided to…