April 9, 2020 A Bite of the Apple by Lennie Goodings Review by Simon There’s a certain variety of person who can always spot a bottle-green spine at a hundred paces, and has faced the…
February 18, 2020 My Caravaggio Style by Doris Langley Moore Review by Simon It’s always exciting when Dean Street Press announce the next batch of novels in their Furrowed Middlebrow series, chosen by Scott…
October 1, 2019 Confessions of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell Review by Simon As the cover of Confessions of a Bookseller tells us, Bythell is an international bestseller. A couple of years ago, The…
September 5, 2019 The Remarkable Life of the Skin by Monty Lyman Review by Simon. The number of science books I’ve read can be numbered on my fingers, and number of science books I’ve read that weren’t written…
March 7, 2019 Alice by Elizabeth Eliot Reviewed by Simon Hurrah to Dean Street Press and their continued Furrowed Middlebrow series, bringing back underrated women writers that most of us haven’t…
December 13, 2018 Little by Edward Carey Reviewed by Simon The name Madame Tussaud is familiar to most of us – particularly to anybody who has been a tourist in London,…
May 17, 2018 Review of The Akeing Heart by Peter Haring Judd Review by Simon How you approach The Akeing Heart will depend largely on how familiar you are with the names Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine…
October 6, 2017 The Diary of a Bookseller by Shaun Bythell Reviewed by Simon Thomas Many book lovers have fantasies about what it would be like to work in a bookshop – perhaps particularly a…
April 25, 2017 Tom Tiddler’s Ground by Ursula Orange Reviewed by Simon One of the authors I’ve been on the look-out for, for years, is Ursula Orange – entirely the responsibility of Scott…
December 13, 2016 Evenfield by Rachel Ferguson Review by Simon The launch of the Furrowed Middlebrow series from Dean Street Press, under the editorial eye of blogger and middlebrow expert Scott…
December 9, 2016 Terms and Conditions by Ysenda Maxtone Graham Review by Simon Slightly Foxed are beloved for their reprints of memoirs from across the twentieth century, but they also have published a handful…
October 25, 2016 Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Reviewed by Simon It might seem strange to include a novel in the reprints section that is only 13 years old – but Chimamanda…
October 18, 2016 The Men’s Club by Leonard Michaels Reviewed by Simon There have been quite a few reprints, in recent years, from the interwar period and thereabouts. We are familiar with Golden…
August 30, 2016 Brensham Village by John Moore Reviewed by Simon Brensham Village, the latest volume from the Slightly Foxed Editions series that I love so dearly, is a sort of sequel…
August 22, 2016 But What If We’re Wrong? by Chuck Klosterman Reviewed by Simon How many non-fiction books do you come across which combine literature, music, television, sports, science, and aliens? Not that many, I’m…
August 18, 2016 Fell by Jenn Ashworth Reviewed by Simon The title of Jenn Ashworth’s fourth novel could mean any number of things – or, indeed, all of them. The first…
August 10, 2016 Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali Translated by Maureen Freely and Alexander Dawe Reviewed by Simon Madonna in a Fur Coat, was first published in Turkish in 1943. This translation…
July 14, 2016 Five Fascinating Facts About… A.A. Milne Written by Simon Thomas 1.) A.A. Milne had a famous schoolteacher. A.A. Milne’s father John ran a small boys’ school, Henley House, and one of…
June 28, 2016 Delta Wedding by Eudora Welty Reviewed by Simon Delta Wedding might win the award for the most beautiful book I’ve read for this issue of Shiny New Books – as…
June 21, 2016 More Was Lost by Eleanor Perényi Reviewed by Simon If you’re anything like me, you might be unfamiliar with the political dynamics of Hungary and Czechoslovakia in the years leading…
June 16, 2016 The Lost Europeans by Emanuel Litvinoff Reviewed by Simon Have you ever had the experience of starting a novel and, before you’ve got to the end of the second page,…
June 9, 2016 Death in Profile by Guy Fraser-Sampson Reviewed by Simon Full disclosure from the off: I am longstanding blogging friends with the author of this book, and also an admirer of…
June 8, 2016 Poems by Katherine Mansfield Reviewed by Simon Katherine Mansfield is, of course, best known for her short stories – and rightly so; for my money, she is the…
June 2, 2016 The White Cottage Mystery by Margery Allingham Reviewed by Simon Bloomsbury Reader has done an excellent job in bringing back many neglected authors (including some of my favourites, such as E.M….
April 25, 2016 The Story of Alice by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst Reviewed by Simon There are few children’s literary characters who are as well known as Alice et al. From Alice bands to Mad Hatters,…
