April 18, 2019 Daisy Jones and The Six by Taylor Jenkins Reid Reviewed by Annabel There was a lot of pre-publishing buzz about Daisy Jones and The Six – it was instantly signed up by Amazon for a…
April 16, 2019 Adèle by Leïla Slimani Translated by Sam Taylor Review by Annabel Slimani’s first novel to be translated into English, Lullaby, took the English-speaking publishing world by storm. It…
April 11, 2019 Number One Chinese Restaurant by Lillian Li Reviewed by Annabel For some, this debut novel was a surprise inclusion on the longlist for the Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction this year…
February 28, 2019 Graceland by Bethan Roberts Reviewed by Annabel When I saw that Bethan Roberts’s new book had Elvis on the cover, I was instantly intrigued. Having followed Bethan’s career…
February 19, 2019 With the End in Mind by Kathryn Mannix Reviewed by Annabel Shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize in 2018 this book, which is full of wisdom and compassion, was one of the…
February 12, 2019 Slow Motion Ghosts by Jeff Noon Reviewed by Annabel I first discovered Jeff Noon’s weird take on our world when his debut novel Vurt was picked up by a major publisher after…
February 7, 2019 The Lost Man by Jane Harper Reviewed by Annabel I’ll say it up front, Jane Harper’s third novel, The Lost Man, was totally unputdownable! Not having read her first two,…
January 22, 2019 Middle England by Jonathan Coe Reviewed by Annabel By the time I’d finished reading Coe’s latest novel, it was about a fortnight after publication and by this time he…
January 15, 2019 Where Shall We Run To? by Alan Garner Reviewed by Annabel I’ve been a fan of Alan Garner’s novels ever since my childhood when I first encountered The Weirdstone of Brisingamen and its sequel The…
November 15, 2018 Eye of the Shoal by Helen Scales Reviewed by Annabel In her third book, Helen Scales tuns her attention to another branch of the marine tree of life with each book….
November 13, 2018 ‘Broadsword Calling Danny Boy’: On Where Eagles Dare by Geoff Dyer Reviewed by Annabel Being a child of the ’60s and ’70s, I grew up with thrillers. We read loads of them: my father still…
October 18, 2018 Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sortabiography by Eric Idle Reviewed by Annabel Eric Idle is perhaps the most elusive of the Pythons. He’s the one who wrote on his own, the one whose…
September 25, 2018 Washington Black by Esi Edugyan Reviewed by Annabel Having been Man Booker shortlisted in 2011 for her debut novel, Half Blood Blues, set in Berlin during WWII and fifty…
September 18, 2018 Liquid by Mark Miodownik Reviewed by Annabel In his 2013 book Stuff Matters which I reviewed for Shiny here, materials science professor Miodownik took us on a tour…
September 6, 2018 Take Nothing With You by Patrick Gale Review by Annabel Given that I hadn’t looked at where this novel was set, it was a perfect, if somewhat ironic, fit to take…
September 4, 2018 Spotlight on Publishers: Myriad Editions Annabel asked Myriad Editions’ Publishing Director Candida Lacey some questions… Annabel: Your company website has an intriguing strapline, ‘Publishers of fiction, graphic books and atlases’….
August 28, 2018 Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers Review by Annabel Becky Chambers’ third novel is set in the same galactic milieu as her first two. It can be read as a…
August 21, 2018 The Psychology of Time Travel by Kate Mascarenhas Reviewed by Annabel The first thing you need to do with this sparkling debut novel is to suspend your disbelief. Just accept that time…
August 14, 2018 To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine Reviewed by Annabel When punk happened, although I was the right age – in my later teens, but I’d already diverted off into prog…
July 31, 2018 Release by Patrick Ness Review by Annabel Only the fact that I’d never read Mrs Dalloway blinded me to the power of the first sentence of Ness’s latest novel: Adam…
June 28, 2018 He by John Connolly Paperback review by Annabel When I first started reading this book, I hadn’t appreciated it was by ‘John’ Connolly of the Charlie Parker crime…
June 5, 2018 Star of the North by D B John Reviewed by Annabel Very few westerners get to visit North Korea, and DB John is one of them – he’s seen the public face…
May 29, 2018 Territory of Light by Yuko Tsushima Translated by Geraldine Harcourt Reviewed by Annabel This latest addition to Penguin Classic’s expanding list of new translations in an upmarket paperback format is…
May 3, 2018 Tangerine by Christine Mangan Reviewed by Annabel They say that in Tangier, the local hustlers have clocked all the new arrivals within hours – this is what I…
April 19, 2018 The Unbeliever by Oggy Boytchev Reviewed by Annabel Oggy (Ognian) Boytchev grew up behind the Iron Curtain in Bulgaria. He developed an interest in spies and spy novels as…
