the literary lounge

  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 →

Tags : biography, editor's choice, history, Laura Thompson, memoir, The Last Landlady, Unbound

  There’s a reason why the phrase ‘stranger than fiction’ exists: that reality is often far more baffling than anything any writer could dream up. The premise for Lara Prescott’s much-lauded debut novel, The Secrets We Kept, underlines this, detailing real events involving the CIA, Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago and a plot to undermine the … Continue readings →

Tags : #TheSecretsWeKept, banned literature, Boris Pasternak, censorship and literature, CIA, CIA 1950s' Cold War campaign, CIA Pasternak, Doctor Zhivago, Lara, Lara Prescott, Olga Ivinskaya, Reese Witherspoon, Reese Witherspoon Hello Sunshine, secret American history, The Secrets We Kept

  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 →

Tags : 80th anniversary Second World War, Alexander Baron, Anthony Quayle, D-Day, David Piper, Eight Hours from England, From the City From the Plough, IWM, Kathleen Hewitt, Plenty Under the Counter, Trial by Battle, war poets

  Bestselling author Kathryn Hughes’ latest offering, Her Latest Promise, follows one woman’s quest to discover what happened to the mother who disappeared 40 years ago. Moving between England and Spain, it is set in dual timelines, a very popular literary device at the moment, and is told from multiple viewpoints. In the late 1970s, … Continue readings →

Tags : bestsellers 2019, books set in Spain, dual timeline novels, first time in paperback 2019, Headline Review fiction, Her last promise, holiday reads 2019, Kathryn Hughes, Kathryn Hughes The Letter

  THERE’S NOTHING LIKE A ROLLICKING GREAT ADVENTURE, particularly one with rich historical and global context. The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan, veteran author Cynthia Jefferies’ first foray into adult fiction, is one such tale. Set just after the end of the English Civil War, the story opens with Christopher Morgan returning from exile in … Continue readings →

Tags : adventure tales, Cynthia Jefferies, historical fiction, reading on location, The Outrageous Fortune of Abel Morgan

  ‘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 →

Tags : El libro savage, HopeRoad Publications, Juan Villoro, Lawrence Schimel, magic realism, Mexican authors, Mexican Updike, The Wild One, Villoro, YA

  Perhaps Richard was right. Perhaps this was a mistake. Not a starting over, nor a moving on, after all. He had called it a pilgrimage. More a hopeless, poisonous return, than a soul-saving reclamation. Like that elephant revisiting my loss until it overwhelms me, saps the life and energy from me.… The elephant returns … Continue readings →

Tags : Adrian Harvey, Adrian Harvey author, Annayya, Being Someone, blog tour, book reviews, Urbane Publications, virtual book tour

  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 →

Tags : Do Not Feed the Bear, editor's choice, Headline books, Rachel Elliott, Tinder Press

  A fast-paced psychological thriller, Gone marks Leona Deakin’s thriller debut and introduces Dr Augusta Bloom and Marcus Jameson to audiences.   People are disappearing and, in each case, a birthday card is left behind stating: ‘YOUR GIFT IS THE GAME. CARE TO PLAY’ – posing the question are the victims really victims or have … Continue readings →

Tags : Augusta Bloom, Black Swan, Bloom and Jameson 1, Dr Augusta Bloom, Gone, Leona Deakin, psychological crime

    ‘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 →

Tags : Brontes, Gothic literature, the Gytrash, the Heaton family, Wuthering Heights, Yorkshire moors

  Erin Kinsley’s Found centres on every parent’s nightmare, the abduction of an eleven-year-old boy from a bus stop on his way back home from school. The book details the devastating impact on Evan’s immediate family and the best friend who had just been with him and the reality of an over-subscribed police force, crying … Continue readings →

Tags : anne cater, book reviews, chiild abduction, chiildren abducted found, child abduction, child abuse, crime fiction, DI Naylor, Erin Kinsley, Found, Headline books, missing children, paedophiles, police procedurals, The Literary Lounge, The Literary Shed

  We’re great lovers of reading books with strong locations. London has particular resonance for us as it’s our home, and so we probably would have liked Phoebe Locke’s The July Girls for its setting alone. The city informs the book, the locations – Brixton, north London or elsewhere – used to frame the plot. … Continue readings →

Tags : 7 July 2005, 7/7, 9/11, book reviews, criminology, London bombings 7 Juy 2005, London-based novels, Magpie, Phoebe Locke, serial killlers, The July Girls, The Literary Lounge, women crime-fiction novelists

  Performance room, featuring Marcelle van Caillie’s work © Morokoth Fournier de Carots   The arts are littered with beautiful works based on lost love letters. The House of Marcelle, Explore the Arch’s latest offering, joins them, drawing on the missives of Marcelle van Caillie and lover-later-husband Henry Sanford. A multi-sensory work, it brings the … Continue readings →

Tags : domestic theatre space, Explore the Arch, Henry Sanford, intimate theatre, Marcelle van Caillie, Marcelle van Caillie art, Marcelle van Caillie letters, migrant experience, Strindberg, The House of Marcelle

    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 →

Tags : Bedwyns, Canadian writer Mary Balogh, Frederica, Georgette Heyer, historical romantic fiction, Little Brown authors, Mary Balogh, Mary Balogh 2019, New York Times bestselling writers, Piatkus romantic fiction, Regency, Regency writer Mary Balogh, RNA, romantic fiction, RWA, Simply series, superstar heir to Georgette Heyer, The Literary Lounge, The Literary Lounge Q&As, Welsh-Canadian authors, Westcott series

  There’s a point early on in Paul Burston’s The Closer I Get when protagonist Tom goes to the police to report that he’s being harassed. The female detective who interviews him is astonished to hear that he’s been stalked for about a year and not reported it. Why?, she asks. I was embarrassed, he … Continue readings →