Hannah Tinti’s The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley reminds me of adventure books I read as a child, but is the modern-day, grown-up version of them. It’s exactly the kind of book I search for on bookshop shelves. Which probably explains why I loved it. After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley moves with his teenage daughter Loo…
Curated by book squirrels
Last Thursday, I reviewed A Life Between Us. Today I’m delighted to welcome Louise Walters to the Nut Press to talk about her second novel. Louise, I’m interested in where A Life Between Us began for you. I started with one character, Tina (called Nell initially), and I knew she was missing somebody important. Everything else followed on from that. Do…
If, as I did, you really enjoyed Mrs Sinclair’s Suitcase, you’ll be happy to know that Louise Walters’ second book is out now. (And if you’ve yet to discover her, I’ll happily add to your TBR.) Here’s what the so very aptly-titled A Life Between Us is about: Tina’s sister Meg died in a childhood accident, but for almost forty years Tina…
The lawyer in me was attracted to the title and striking cover of Summary Justice, which led me to expect this to be about a legal battle against all the odds, even though unfamiliar with the author’s name. (Which as it turns out is a pen name.) Once I read the following blurb, I knew I had to read it. The…
If you’re looking for a strong central character and are tired of female characters being portrayed as helpless, always waiting on a man to save or rescue them rather than doing the job themselves, then Shannon Kirk’s The Method might be the book for you. You’re sixteen, you’re pregnant and you’ve been kidnapped. If you’re anyone else you give in,…
Cursed is the fourth book in Thomas Enger’s Henning Juul series but my first introduction to both the author and his investigative journalist protagonist and it works well as a stand-alone. What secret would you kill to protect? When Hedda Hellberg fails to return from a retreat in Italy, where she has been grieving for her recently dead father, her…
Denise Mina’s The Long Drop is a stunning standalone novel which uses as its inspiration the case of one of Scotland’s worst serial killers. I was lucky enough to read the first chapter almost a year ago. Happily, I not only managed to resist googling the real-life people and crimes but didn’t have to wait until today’s publication date to satisfy…
I was at a St David’s Day lunch today with about 30 Welsh people, one Scot and an Englishman. Nothing so unusual about that, I hear you say. It is St David’s Day, after all, Kath. But I’m not currently at home in Wales. I left there on Sunday, crossed the border, wound my way through a spa town, past…
I discovered Kevin MacNeil’s The Beautiful & Forever on a particularly successful bookshop browse. The title and cover drew me in and the Scottish island setting and the blurb on the back cover ensured that it came home with me. On an island like no other, the annual Brilliant & Forever festival is a much anticipated event; its participants a story away…
An artist’s retreat with a difference in Sara Baume’s A Line Made By Walking becomes a beautiful meditation on our own fragility and how art and nature can both anchor and heal us. Struggling to cope with urban life – and with life in general – Frankie, a twenty-something artist, retreats to the rural bungalow on ‘turbine hill’ that has…