Street Food: Hawkers and the History of London by Charlie Taverner
Reviewed by Harriet Nowadays, when most people hear the term street food, they will be thinking about the emergence in the past ten or so years of a wonderful range…
Reviewed by Harriet Nowadays, when most people hear the term street food, they will be thinking about the emergence in the past ten or so years of a wonderful range…
Reviewed by Harriet As I was reading this book, with great enjoyment and amazement, I was saying to myself – how am I ever going to review this? The story…
Reviewed by Harriet Bertha – Mrs Percy Kellynch – was known as a beauty. She was indeed improbably pretty, small, plump and very fair, with soft golden hair that was…
Reviewed by Harriet You never know what you’re going to get with a Peter Swanson novel, though you can be sure of intelligent, challenging mysteries, interesting and almost invariably warped…
Reviewed by Harriet Back in 2015 I reviewed Anthony Bale’s translation of The Book of Margery Kempe. Said to be the first autobiography written in the English language (though it…
Questions by Harriet Harriet: Hi Charlotte. Thanks for agreeing to answer some questions. I have to tell you that The Other Half was one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve…
Reviewed by Harriet Charlotte Vassell’s brilliant debut thriller begins with a dying girl on Hampstead Heath. This, as we discover later, is Clemmie, and she is, or was, an influencer….
Translated by Sam Taylor Reviewed by Harriet You know me. Just think, and you’ll remember. The old man who plays those public pianos that you see in various transport hubs….
Reviewed by Harriet True crime is normally not a genre that attracts me in the least, so why am I reviewing this book? Well, because it tells a fascinating, moving,…
Reviewed by Harriet Seven hundred and fifty pages sounds like a lot until you realise this book covers the entire history of Hollywood from its very beginnings to almost the…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘These stories are to fortify you over the Christmas period’, says the blurb on the back of this new collection from the British Library Women Writers Series….
Reviewed by Harriet Peter Gill’s most recent play finished a relatively short run at the Jermyn Street Theatre on 12 November. I would have loved to go and see it,…
Reviewed by Harriet ‘There was evil in the air of London’, thinks Detective Inspector Frobisher, recently put in charge of Bow Street Police Station. A Devon man, often homesick for…
Reviewed by Harriet Dust raised by the impact falls slowly on the bodies. The thickest particles are struck by a shaft of light, and amid the sparkling dust, a St…
Reviewed by Harriet First published in 1928, War Among Ladies is the latest offering from the British Library Women Writers series. I’ve read all of them, and reviewed almost all,…
Reviewed by Harriet It’s less than a year since I wrote my review of Elizabeth Strout’s Booker shortlisted Oh William! here on Shiny. It was the third of her books…
Reviewed by Harriet I was initially quite surprised to discover, early on in the latest and biggest novel about the exploits of private investigators Cormoran Strike and Robin Ellacott, that…
Reviewed by Harriet I came to The Marriage Portrait primed, in a sense, as I was already familiar with the story of the marriage between Alfonso, Duke of Ferrara and…
Translated by Sondra Silverston Reviewed by Harriet ‘One lie can have a thousand consequences in this page-turning psychological suspense’, says the blurb. This is a fair description of what happens,…
Reviewed by Harriet This has been my first book by Susan Scarlett, but not my first book by its author. Because, if you didn’t already know, Susan Scarlett was a…
Reviewed by Harriet Born in 1908, Elizabeth Fair published six successful novels between 1953 and 1960. But when she submitted her seventh, The Marble Staircase, to her agent, she was…
Reviewed by Harriet Set in the early 2000s, this is the story of three middle-class couples who have decided to abandon city life in Bristol and make an attempt to…
Reviewed by Harriet I’m not sure what attracted me to Rachel Bowlby’s book when I spotted it in the OUP catalogue. But I’m very glad something did, as it’s proved…
Reviewed by Harriet Geraldine Brooks specialises in historical fiction. I read and hugely enjoyed her first two novels: the international bestseller Year of Wonders (2002), based on the true story…