Peaces by Helen Oyeyemi
Review by Simon Thomas As a place to be trapped, a train has a good precedent. Whether Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lady Vanishes, or…
Happy Half-Hours: Selected Writings of A.A. Milne
Review by Simon Thomas You might be familiar with the beautiful little hardbacks from Notting Hill Editions, where they select essays and other writings from across the range of an…
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 agonising decision about whether to shelve…
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 at the excellent Furrowed Middlebrow blog….
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 Diary of a Bookseller was a…
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 by Oliver Sacks is nil. Until…
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 heard of before. Elizabeth Eliot certainly…
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, and visited the waxwork museum that…
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 Ackland, and Elizabeth Wade White. These…
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 secondhand bookshop. There is an aura…
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 (from the Furrowed Middlebrow blog) who…
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 of Furrowed Middlebrow, is an occasion…
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 of new books – most of…
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 Ngozi Adichie has recently had all…
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 Age detective fiction coming back into…
Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Translated by David Carter Reviewed by Simon If the name Antoine de Saint-Exupéry means anything to you, it probably only means one thing: The Little Prince. It was this contrast…
Sword of Bone by Anthony Rhodes
Reviewed by Simon They’ve done it again! Slightly Foxed have brought out yet another fascinating, entertaining, and well-written memoir – and another one that I would never have heard of…
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 to Portrait of Elmbury, also published by…
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 going to wager – but, then,…
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 two that come to mind, as…
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 is the first time this Turkish…
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 the teachers he employed was a…
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 an object, I mean, though the…
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 up to the Second World War….