editor’s choice

  In a year of extraordinarily good crime fiction, much of which has been published by small or independent presses, Orenda does it again, hitting the mark with Johana Gustawsson’s excellent novel, Keeper. Canadian profiler Emily Roy and French writer Alexis Castells, introduced to audiences in the critically acclaimed Block 46, get a second outing … Continue readings →

  I ALMOST WEPT WHEN THE CHARLIE RESNICK BOOKS CAME TO AN END. They were brilliant – not just crime fiction at its best, but also insightful political and social commentaries on the state of Britain at the time, set to a lot of great music. I didn’t read any John Harvey after that, so, … Continue readings →

  Cyrille said the sea was like a patchwork quilt. Fragments of waves joined together by strands of sunlight. He said the sea would swallow the stories of the world and digest them at its leisure in its cobalt belly before regurgitating only distorted reflections. He said the events of the last few weeks would … Continue readings →

  International Women’s Day 2018 marks great change – women standing up everywhere and saying, ‘we are not invisible … we are present … we are here.’ As women march, strike, shout for equal rights, we hope that this year really does signify the beginnings of a better world, not just based on gender, but … Continue readings →

  LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE, Celeste Ng’s new novel, builds on the extraordinary success of her debut Everything I Never Told You. It opens with a momentous event: a house fire in the seemingly idyllic Cleveland suburb of Shaker Heights where everything runs to order. The house in question belongs to Mr and Mrs Richardson, model … Continue readings →

  PIER OF THE YEAR AND NOW the prestigious Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Stirling Award 2017 – the accolades just keep coming for Hastings Pier. A community-led project, designed and restored by London-based architects dRMM (Alex de Rijke, Philip Marsh and Sadie Morgan), the pier is, in RIBA president Ben Derbyshire’s words, a … Continue readings →

  SET IN THE WILDS OF WESTERN MONTANA, COME SUNDOWN, like many of the best novels by Nora Roberts, focuses on family – blood or otherwise – spiced up with just enough murder, madness and, of course, romance to sustain our interest. At the heart of the story lies the relationship between protagonists Bodine Longbow, … Continue readings →

  It’s a pressure cooker round here, mate. Little things become big things faster than you expect. You’d know that though. –Scott Whitlam to Aaron Falk, The Dry   JANE HARPER’S STYLISH DEBUT, THE DRY, is one of the best crime novels we’ve read in a very long time. Set in Kiewarra, a small town … Continue readings →

  ALL OF US HAVE A FIRST FORBIDDEN BOOK – the one that we never forget, the one that sat so enticingly on the top shelf far out of the reach of small hands. In my case, it was Jacqueline Susann’s Valley of the Dolls, a big fat white elephant of a book that called … Continue readings →

  STEPHEN KING ONCE WROTE that an opening line should scream: ‘Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.’ ‘[I]t is a little like trying to catch moonbeams in a jar.’ Well, Chris Whitaker in his first novel, Tall Oaks, certainly does all that: we’re gripped right from the start. From the very … Continue readings →

  WE, WHO ARE FORTUNATE ENOUGH to live in democracies, accept freedom of speech and the civil liberties that we enjoy as our natural and inherent rights. But we are lucky: these rights are, in fact, privileges. Raif Badawi: The Voice of Freedom, Ensaf Haidar’s moving love letter to her activist husband, brings this point … Continue readings →

  I LIKE LISA KLEYPAS. She’s become a favourite author in the last few years since I was first introduced to her historicals by The Literary Cat, who, to get my attention, purposefully knocked a copy of Seduce Me At Sunrise (Hathaways #2) on to my keyboard from the bookshelf above my desk. It’s thus … Continue readings →