Happy New Year! Yes, I know we’re well into January but, here at Nut Press, things are getting off to a gentle and relaxing start. Given how last year turned out, the squirrels are feeling skittish enough as it is and we don’t want to spook 2021 into doing anything silly. And, while I may have taken the Christmas cards…
Curated by book squirrels
Author of award-winning novella The Plankton Collector, Cath Barton, joins me for a #NovellaNovember Q&A to celebrate the publication of her second novella, In the Sweep of the Bay, which comes out later this month. There’s no definitive definition as such, so can you tell me what you understand a novella to be? The simple answer is that it’s a…
Tammye Huf’s debut novel A More Perfect Union is a remarkable love story—one inspired by that of her great great grandparents—between an Irish immigrant and a household slave he encounters on a Virginian plantation, and their attempt to overcome every obstacle and prejudice to be together. Henry O’Toole sails to America in 1848 to escape poverty and famine in Ireland,…
Kate Marshall dives into a new case in Shallow Sands, the second book in this exciting new series from Robert Bryndza, when an initial discovery of hers brings something altogether more disturbing to the surface. When Kate Marshall finds the bloated body of a young man floating in the Shadow Sands reservoir, the authorities label it a tragic accident. But…
A big thank you to Kath – and Squizzey – for inviting me onto the blog today to mark the publication of my fifth book, A Wedding on the Riviera. One of my trademarks as a writer is my fondness for glamorous locations. Kath suggested I might talk about the complexities of researching locations when in lockdown – so that’s…
Sally Magnusson’s The Ninth Child is a winning blend of folklore and historical fiction incorporating real people, places and engineering projects, all brought to the shores of Loch Katrine in 1856, where the boundary between our world and the land of faery is in danger of being disturbed. Loch Katrine, 1856. Isabel Aird is aghast when her husband is appointed doctor…
Tyler Keevil’s novel Your Still Beating Heart begins with a random and unimaginable tragedy, which dramatically alters the trajectory of one woman’s life, and those she’ll now encounter along the way. All it takes to change your life is a single moment. A random stabbing on a London bus leaves a young woman widowed and detached from her previous world. Stripped of a…
In Jennie Fields’ Cold War novel Atomic Love, a once brilliant scientist, who was fired from the Manhattan Project, finds herself wrestling with intense and conflicting emotions when an ex-colleague and former lover suddenly comes back into her life and the FBI pressures her to get close to him again. Chicago, 1950. Rosalind Porter has always defied expectations – in…
Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books is Cathy Rentzenbrink’s love letter to the books in her life, and how they’ve influenced and shaped her, while also providing a source of comfort and connection with others. For as long as she can remember, Cathy Rentzenbrink has lost and found herself in stories. Growing up she was rarely seen without…
Nydia Hetherington’s A Girl Made of Air twirled across my Twitter timeline with its stunning cover earlier this summer and, as soon as I saw it, I knew I had to read it. This is the story of The Greatest Funambulist Who Ever Lived… Born into a post-war circus family, our nameless star was unwanted and forgotten, abandoned in the…