The Perfect Wife by J P Delaney
Review by Annabel I recently read J P Delaney’s first psychological thriller, The Girl Before, (which Harriet reviewed here) in advance of a crime panel event he was speaking at. The event…
Bitter Orange by Claire Fuller
Reviewed by Annabel I’ve followed Fuller’s writing career since her marvellous debut, Our Endless Numbered Days, through her second totally different novel Swimming Lessons (reviewed here and here). Her third novel is different again. On first…
Five Fascinating Facts About… Daphne du Maurier
Compiled by Annabel Ali at her blog, Heavenali, is hosting Daphne du Maurier reading week from May 13-19, so we’re joining in. One: Jamaica Inn, the setting for her famous novel of…
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 TV series with Reese Witherspoon producing….
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 was a literary thriller telling the…
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 – for a start, it’s a…
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 for some years, as she hails…
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 highlights of a strong shortlist. Although…
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 being an indie original that went…
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, The Dry and Force of Nature…
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 (and his publisher Penguin Viking) could…
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 Moon of Gomrath in the 1960s. I…
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. She began with the small genus…
‘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 does, and I enjoy an occasional…
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 characters are full of banter, ‘Nudge…
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 years later, Edugyan’s second novel, The…
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 around some of the most important…
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 on holiday to Somerset with me….
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’. Tell us a little about Myriad…
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 standalone and marks her out as…
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 travel was invented by a quartet…
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 rock, (I know!). So, I never…
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 would have to get the flowers…
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 novels, I mis-read the author’s forename,…