We are great fans of a good island-set crime-fiction novel. Scandinavian writer Maria Adolfsson’s Fatal Isles, translated into English by Agnes Broome, is set on the fictional Doggerland, a cluster of islands which lie between Denmark and the UK, and a melting pot of cultures. Recently returned to Doggerland after many years in … Continue readings
Tags : Doggerland, Fatal Isles, Maria Adolfsson, Scandinavian crime fiction, Scandinavian fiction in translation, Scandinavian noir, Swedish crime fiction, Zaffre
Acclaimed Scottish writer Ewan Morrison sets his latest book, How To Survive Everything, in a pandemic world. Sound familiar? Here though, we witness it through the eyes of young Haley, fifteen years old when she and brother Ben are first spirited away to a secret hideaway carefully prepared by their seemingly paranoid … Continue readings
Tags : Contraband books, COVID novels, dystopian novels, Ewan Morrison, How to survive everything, pandemic novels, Saraband books
Stop worrying about your heart and try and have a better brain.” —Elizabeth Bowen If you’re a fan of Elizabeth Bowen, The Shadowy Third by Julia Parry is totally unmissable. Drawing on the letters that Bowen and Parry’s grandfather, Humphry House, exchanged from 1933 onwards, the book is a lyrical … Continue readings
Tags : Elizabeth Bowen, Humphry House, Julia Parry, literary biography, The Shadowy Third, The Shadowy Third Love Letters and Elizabeth Bowen
It’s always a joy to be introduced to a new character by a writer one’s never read before. Even, with that in mind, Joe Ide’s LA-based private eye Isaiah Quintabe, also known as IQ, is a revelation, a brilliant, twenty-first century African American Sherlock Holmes. In Smoke, published this month by W&N, he … Continue readings
Tags : IQ #5, Isaiah Quintabe, Joe Ide, LA crime-fiction, La detectives, Orion crime club, Smoke, W&N crime fiction, Weidenfeld & Nicolson crime fiction
Matt Wesolowski’s Six Stories series is smart, contemporary and sinister. Using the format of Scott King’s much-watched podcasts to explore a particular crime, he mixes folklore, crime-fiction and elements of horror and the supernatural to play on his characters’ and the reader’s paranoia and fear. It’s a masterclass in audience manipulation, but the … Continue readings
Tags : Cairngorms-set crime fiction, Matt Wesolowski, Orenda Books, Orenda Books crime fiction, Scott King podcasts, Scottish set crime fiction, Six Stories Matt Wesolowski, Six Stories series
My grandmother, a wise woman and some would say witch, used to say, treat the plants with the most beautiful flowers with respect and care, as they hide the best and worst of secrets. Of course, as a child, I ignored her – to my detriment, in fact, when I stupidly consumed a … Continue readings
Tags : Botanical curses and poisons, datura, deadly lovely plants, editor's choice The Literary Shed, Fez Inkwright, folklore, goddess, Limenal 11, Mike Medaglia, mythology poisons, poisons herbs and plants, shadow-lives of plants, Socrates, The Literary Lounge, The Literary Shed, witches
From it’s beautiful cover to its beautiful writing, The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot is a joy to read. The one hundred years referenced in the title are the collective ages of 17-year-old Lenni and 83-year-old Margot, the protagonists of writer Marianne Cronin’s debut novel. Margot has lived a full and … Continue readings
Tags : Doubleday debuts, Doubleday literature, friendship novels, literary fiction, Marianne Cronin, Marianne Cronin's debut novel, The One Hundred Years o Lenni and Margot, women's fiction
Close Your Eyes, the latest novel from best-selling author Rachel Abbott, is a tightly written, well-paced crime novel. It welcomes back DCI Tom Douglas and his team, who are called in to investigate the murder of Genevieve Strachan, the wife of local businessman Niall. The case quickly focuses in on one of his … Continue readings
Tags : Close Your Eyes, DCI Tom Douglas, police procedural, psychological thriller, Rachel Abbott, Tom Douglas no 10, Tom Douglas series
The premise of Helen Fisher’s novel, Space Hopper, is wonderful. What would you do if you could go back in time and be with a loved one? That’s the dilemma of thirty-something, happily married Faye, who still grieves for the mother she lost at a very young age, more so as her … Continue readings
Tags : Helen Fisher, literary fiction Simon & Schuster, Simon & Schuster Fisher 2021, Space Hopper, time traveller fiction
Inga Vesper’s debut novel, The Long, Long Afternoon, opens in the claustrophobic heat of the summer of 1959, against the background of an America experiencing great change, socially, politically and racially. Sunnylakes, where the book’s set, is a wealthy, white enclave of Santa Monica, where the women and men adhere to gender-stereotypes, the … Continue readings
Tags : 1950s' California books, California crime, Inga Vesper, Inga Vesper journalist, race and misogyny 1950s' America, The Long Long Afternoon
We do like a good Nordic Noir and we do like Orenda Books, so Smoke Screen, the latest collaboration of best-selling crime writers Thomas Enger and Jørn Lier Horst, is a win–win. The second in the series featuring policeman Alexander Blix and journalist Emma Ramm, it starts with a bang, literally, when … Continue readings
Tags : Blix and Ramm, Blix and Ramm 2, Jorn Lier Horst, Nordic Noir, Norwegian crime writers, Orenda Books, Orenda crime fiction 2021, Oslo-based crime, Scandi crime, Smoke Screen, Thomas Enger
We love books. Love reading. Love stepping into and exploring the worlds other people have created. How far one can do so really depends on how successful the authors are in creating authentic environments for their characters to walk in. MA Carrick’s Nadežra, as experienced in The Mask of Mirrors, is one such … Continue readings
Tags : Alye Helms, Compulsive Readers, fantasy books 2021, MA Carrick, Marie Brenna, Orbit, Rook & Rose, Rook & Rose 1, The Mask of Mirrors
Dr Cassandra Coburn is an impressive character. A scientist, editor and now author of her first book, Enough: How Your Food Choices Will Save the Planet, she has a doctorate in genetics and is associated with The Lancet; all great credentials. The danger though that sometimes occurs when academics write books on … Continue readings
Tags : Dr Cassandra Coburn, Enough, food and the planet, food production systems, Gaia, global food production systems, saving the planet, The Lancet
The wonderful game of chess is getting its moment in the sun, quite rightly in our humble opinion as we adore it, and it’s not just through beautifully executed series like The Queen’s Gambit but also through books like Paolo Maurensig’s Game of the Gods. Translated into English by Anne Milano Appel, … Continue readings
Tags : book reviews, British Empire, chaturanga, chess, chess masters, Game of the Gods, Indian independence, Indo-Pakistan conflict, Malik Mir Sultan Khan, Paolo Maurensig, Sultan Khan, The Queen's Gambit, World Editions
Eating was as close to heaven as my mother ever came … And almost as heavenly as the eating was the making – how she gloried in it. Every last body on this earth has a particular notion of paradise, and this was hers, standing in the murderously hot back kitchen of her … Continue readings
Tags : Canadian women writers, Carol Shields, Margaret Atwood, North American women writers, The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, the ordinary woman novel, The Pulitzer Prize, The Stone Diaries, World Editions Carol Shields