editor’s choice

  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 →

  There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. –Ernest Hemingway   MOST WRITERS WOULD AGREE WITH HEMINGWAY. Although many of us use laptops these days. Writing is job like any other and to be good at it you have to be committed and put the time … Continue readings →

  ROSAMUND LUPTON’S NEW NOVEL, THE QUALITY OF SILENCE, opens in Fairbanks Airport, Alaska, where 10-and-a-half-year-old Ruby and her mother, Yasmin, have just landed, expecting to be met by Matt, Ruby’s wildlife filmmaker father. Instead, they find the police waiting and Yasmin is told the devastating news that Matt has been killed in a ‘catastrophic … Continue readings →

  banter n. the playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks.  v. engage in banter. DERIVATIVES  banterer n.  bantering adj.  banteringly adv.” –Oxford English Dictionary   ‘BANTER‘ is one of our favourite words …   See also: The Literary Lounge’s The Banter sessions #1 – best-selling authors Kate Perry and Ava Miles take twenty

  AS I WAS READING NORA ROBERTS’ NEW NOVEL, THE LIAR, the chorus of Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Homeward bound’ was playing on a loop in my head, so much so that I had to put it on my turntable. And Homeward Bound would actually be an appropriate title for this book, since one of the … Continue readings →

  ‘We are one of three islands, off the coast of Virginia and just south of Maryland, trailing out into the Atlantic Ocean like someone’s dripped paint’, comments 13-year-old Chloe in the opening story of The Shore, Sara Taylor’s exquisite debut book. The isolated stretch of islands, which lie in Chesapeake Bay, provide a stark … Continue readings →

  celebrating that which is noble, wonderful and honourable in all of us   The fact that we need a specific day that celebrates us as women is in itself wrong. That we, in the 21st century, still need some acknowledgement, some recognition, some celebration to say we matter is wrong. And yet, it is … Continue readings →

  Social networking platforms are authors’ new best friends. With global reach and, in most cases, instant and direct access to existing and potential markets, Facebook and Twitter are obvious forums for the publishing industry to go to when promoting and selling books – but what about Pinterest? As social networks go, Pinterest, perhaps surprisingly, … Continue readings →

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