editor’s choice

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  Gosh, hats off to the Imperial War Museum for great publishing with the wartime classics series. We’ve already reviewed two of the four novels being republished by the IWM this month. Now, with great pleasure, we’ve become acquainted with Anthony Quayle’s very fine and highly entertaining adventure Eight Hours to England. Based on Quayle’s … Continue readings

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  There’s a lovely moment In the Absence of Miracles, when Michael J. Malone’s protagonist is catching up with a childhood friend whom he hasn’t seen in an age, and the residual awkwardness that one quite often feels in such circumstances just falls away. ‘There we sat, with legs kicking the side. The years fell … Continue readings

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  When I was reading Laura Thompson’s beautifully penned The Last Landlady, I was trying to think about why I love memoir and biography so much. What it is about these genres that so enthralls. And when they’re done well, they are enthralling, the writers weaving us into the subjects’ worlds so tightly that we’re … Continue readings

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  We learn about war from an early age. We’re taught about it in our classrooms, read about it in the beautiful, haunting poetry of the war poets – Sassoon, Owen, Jarrell. Yet now social media and our global village world mean our access to war is pretty much immediate and, we are, in many … Continue readings

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  ‘There are people who think they understand a book just because they know how to read. I already told you that books are like mirrors: every person finds in them what they have in their own head. The problem is that you only discover what you have inside you when you read the right … Continue readings

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  Have you heard of kintsugi? Sydney says. Ila shakes her head. It’s the old Japanese art of repairing broken or chipped pottery. They use layers of lacquer, often with powdered gold. Instead of hiding the damage, it’s embraced. It’s treated as part of an object’s ongoing beauty. I love that, Ila says.”   Rachel … Continue readings

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    ‘Very ancient buildings have a way of talking to you … So many secrets waiting to be uncovered.’ ‘I’ve always thought that, too,’ I say. ‘Actually, I’ve always talked to Ponden since I was little; it seems impolite not to.’ ” – Tru Heaton Jones discussing Ponden Hall with Marcus Ellis   Rowan … Continue readings

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    We’re utterly delighted to welcome wonderful Welsh–Canadian romantic-historical fiction writer Mary Balogh to The Literary Lounge. Described as the ‘superstar heir’ to the legacy of late, great Georgette Heyer, Mary is the recipient of numerous awards and has graced the New York Times bestseller list thirty-six times in her career thus far. Her … Continue readings

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  I love it when I’m introduced to writers I’ve never read before, especially when I know they’re going to be new friends. That’s the case with Joseph Knox. The Sleepwalker, which is published this month by Doubleday, is the third outing for Detective Aidan Waits and yet it’s my introduction to him. I really … Continue readings

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    Longlisted for the Women’s Prize 2019, Yvonne Battle-Felton’s novel Remembered is a book of many stories. In 1910 Philadelphia, central character Spring sits by the hospital bed of her dying son. Edmund is accused of driving a streetcar into a ‘no coloreds’ department store. As Spring watches him, the ghost of her dead … Continue readings

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  We’re huge fans of JD Robb’s Eve Dallas–Roarke futuristic crime series, especially as they just get better over time. Connections in Death builds on Dallas’ ever-growing family, seeing familiar and beloved characters go through extremely challenging and bloody times only to rise stronger than before. As always, Robb creates a fast-paced, detailed and carefully … Continue readings

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  Rough Magic is the kind of book I devoured as a child, a rip-roaring, triumph-against-adversity adventure, set in a faraway, exotic locale, told by the real-life hero, who usually, 99 per cent of the time, was male. In this case, the hero of the story is actually a heroine … and, God, ain’t that … Continue readings

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  I recently reread Elizabeth Smart’s classic By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, which I first devoured as an eager teen and have come back to many times since. It resonated then, the language so beautiful, the emotion so raw. It still rates as one of my top books about love – … Continue readings

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  Jodie Jackson’s You Are What You Read: Why Changing Your Media Diet Can Change the World is what all good non-fiction should be – exciting, challenging and perceptive. That said, we are Jackson’s readership. The people who’ve stopped reading newspapers, watching the news, even watching terrestrial television because we’re irritated with the way in … Continue readings

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  ‘Let him be an example. My Frank. Of how to live best, and to stop all this death. Let them put down their knives, stop being ruled by fear. They are all so fearful, that’s why my boy died. Not because another kid was showing off, as the papers said, not muscles being flexed. … Continue readings

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