editor’s choice
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
We’re huge Michael Connelly fans’ and came to him via The Concrete Blonde, oh so many years ago, in Murder One. It’s thus with complete delight we read his new book, The Law of Innocence, the latest outing for wildly popular protagonist Mickey Haller. From the first pages we’re thrown into the action, … Continue readings
Tags : CWA, Harry Bosch, matthew mcconaughey Mickey Haller, Michael Connelly, Mickey Haller, Orion Crime, The Law of Innocence, The Lincoln Lawyer, The Lincoln Lawyer films
When I was asked if I wanted to review The Archers: Ambridge at War, penned by novelist Catherine Miller, it was a no-brainer. Like so many, growing up, Sunday mornings were given over to listening to The Archers’ omnibus on Radio 4. As soon as the iconic music came on, everyone would fall silent: … Continue readings
Tags : Ambridge, BBC Sounds The Archers, Catherine Miller author, Catherine Miller novelist, Catherine Miller The Archers, Lower Loxley, Radio 4 The Archers, The Archers, The Archers Ambridge at War, The Archers at 70, The Literary Lounge, The Literary Shed editor's choice
We know and very much admire Anita Nair’s literary fiction and yet, despite being huge crime-fiction lovers, we hadn’t read any of her writing in the genre. Until now. And it’s astounding. Beautifully realised, authentic, truly great crime. Just pleasing in every way. A Cut-Like Wound introduces fallen hero Borei Gowda, a police inspector … Continue readings
Tags : Anita Nair, Anita Nair Indian novelist, Bangalore novels, Bangalore-set novels, Bitter Lemon Press, Bitter Lemon Press backlist titles crime, Bitter Lemon Press crime fiction, Borei Gowda, Indian crime fiction, Inspector Gowda novels
It’s wonderful when writers, particularly women writers, get their moment in the sun again – and it’s especially so when the writer is someone as talented as Kamala Markandaya. In her day, she was a well-respected, best-selling author, her name known globally, and yet, despite this, for some twenty years, her novels were … Continue readings
Tags : Hope Road Publishers, Indian novelists, Indian women writers, Kamala Markandaya, post-colonial writers, Small Axes, southern Indian writers, The Coffer Dams
Happy national poetry day 2020. How wonderful that we have a day to celebrate a medium that we all love in one shape or form. I know many of you reading this will have penned a poem at some time, or written a lyric. The former is certainly how I first started writing – … Continue readings
Tags : 1 October, Alice Walker, National Poetry Day, Virago
It’s a year ago since we reviewed the first of the Imperial War Museum Wartime Classics, a series of previously out-of-print fiction by the valiant men and women who wrote so poignantly about the Second World War from first-hand experience. It’s with great pleasure that we’ve just finished the latest book, Barbara Whitton’s … Continue readings
Tags : Barbara Whitton, Eight Hours from England, faction, From the City to the Plough, Green Lands, Imperial War Museum Classics, Imperial War Museum publishing, IWM, IWM Classics, Land Girls, Second World War, Trial by Battle, war fiction, war literature, Women's Land Army
Most people will recognise Kate Humble from telly. She’s a well-known face; honest, appealing, the kind of person you’d like to sit down and have a cuppa with and chat, knowing you’ll come away enriched by the experience. It’s thus a joy that Humble’s new book, A Year of Living Simply, reflects her … Continue readings
Tags : A Year of Living Simply, Aster, book review, COVID reading, Kate Humble, Kate Humble broadcaster, mindfulness books, Octopus Books, Springwatch
If you like comedy, Andy Hamilton will be a familiar name and face. A regular panellist on game shows and an accomplished screenwriter, with such highly rated series as Outnumbered and Drop the Dead Donkey under his belt, Hamilton publishes his novel, Longhand, this month with Unbound. Both a love letter to the lost … Continue readings
Tags : Andy Hamilton, Drop the Dead Donkey, great British comedy writers, Longhand, Outnumbered, Shelley, Unbound
We’ve said on several occasions how much we like a good historical novel, and ones paying a nod to the Gothic tradition are of particular interest: Rhiannon Ward (aka crime writer Sarah Ward) ticks both these boxes in the beautifully produced The Quickening. Set in 1925, in a post-World War I world, … Continue readings
Tags : Clewer House, Gothic fiction, Gothic historical fiction, Gothic mystery, historical fiction, Rhiannon Ward, Sarah Ward, seances, The Quickening
Newfoundland is one of those places that captures the imagination – if, indeed, you are aware of it at all. We love books like Michael Crummey’s The Innocents, which evoke its haunting, savage, challenging, sometimes extremely strange landscape, which really is like nowhere else on earth. That alone would make us like this … Continue readings
Tags : award-winning fiction, Canadian literature, literary fiction, Michael Crummey, Newfoundland, novels set in Newfoundland, The Innocents
Eva Mozes Kor’s The Twins of Auschwitz is an extraordinary piece of memoir. Aged ten, Romanian Jews Eva and her sister, Miriam, survived the gas chambers because of one small genetic factor: they were twins. Selected to be part of Dr Josef Mengele’s scientific experiments, Eva and Miriam were ripped from their mother’s … Continue readings
Tags : angel of death, Auschwitz, Dr Josef Mengele, Eva Mozes Kor, forgiveness, Jewish studies, Mengele's twins, Montoray, Nazi concentration camps, The Twins of Auschwitz, war memoir
‘In a world that is increasingly dark and aggressive, I think making beauty is an act of rebellion and that’s what I’m trying to do really,’ says author and illustrator Jackie Morris of The Unwindings. And she does it most successfully in this gorgeously produced book. A pillow book, compact enough to be … Continue readings
Tags : Jackie Morris illustration, Jackie Morris The Lost Words, Jackie Norris, Robert Macfarlane Jackie Morris, The Unwinding, Unbound Books
When I first heard the premise for Amanda Craig’s new novel, The Golden Rule, I was intrigued. Two women meet on a train, talk and agree to kill each other’s husbands. It’s Strangers on the Train revisited surely? As a huge Hitchcock and Highsmith fan that’s wonderful. It’s even more so to discover the … Continue readings
Tags : Amanda Craig, books set in Cornwall, Hitchcock, literary crime, Little Brown, Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train, The Golden Rule
I was looking at the book jacket of Damian Barr’s You Will Be Safe Here a few days back, when I reread it, and was struck by how many adjectives have been applied to it by so many great writers, so you’ll forgive me if I repeat some of them in the course of … Continue readings
Tags : Bloomsbury, Boer War, British concentration camps, Damian Barr, military schools, modern literature, Scottish writing, South Africa, South African Boer War, You Will Be Safe Here