Bridget Collins’ The Binding is one book you’ll lust after for your collection with its beautifully finished dust jacket and intricately designed book boards, holding within them the promise that this young man’s story is no ordinary apprentice’s tale. Imagine you could erase your grief. Imagine you could forget your pain. Imagine you could hide a secret. Forever. Emmett Farmer…
After spending time in 1950s Tangier with Tangerine (see previous review), I decided to head further east and go back another thirty years to explore 1920s Istanbul with Lucy’s Foley’s third novel, Last Letter from Istanbul. 1921. Each day Nur gazes across the waters of the Bosphorus to her childhood home, a grand white house, nestled on the opposite bank. Memories float on…
Tyler Keevil was first published by the Welsh publisher, Parthian, which is how I discovered him. Having enjoyed all his previous books, including The Drive published by Myriad rather than Parthian, I was keen to read his latest novel. No Good Brother is the picaresque tale of two brothers partly set in and around Vancouver, another reason for wanting to read this one….
Devastating and deliciously dark, The Cliff House is less wish-fulfilment and more of a clever and disturbing reminder that things are rarely (if ever) how they appear on the surface. Some friendships are made to be broken Cornwall, summer of 1986. The Davenports, with their fast cars and glamorous clothes, living the dream in a breathtaking house overlooking the sea….
When a secret from the past resurfaces, Florence’s friends help her unlock the mystery in this gentle, moving novel about ageing, kindness, memory, identity… and the ripples our lives make. There are three things you should know about Elsie. The first thing is that she’s my best friend. The second is that she always knows what to say to make…
Eligible is the fourth retelling of a Jane Austen novel in the Austen Project series and arguably the hardest to do because of how well known and loved Pride and Prejudice, the source novel, is but I think Curtis Sittenfeld has pulled it off with aplomb. The Bennet sisters have been summoned from New York City. Liz and Jane are good…
A darker, more addictive read, Susie Steiner’s brilliantly written Manon Bradshaw series gets personal when a murder case threatens characters and relationships so well established in Missing, Presumed, which I reviewed here. As dusk falls a young man staggers through a park, far from home, bleeding heavily from a stab wound. He dies where he falls; cradled by a stranger,…
Having read and enjoyed Susie Steiner’s debut novel Homecoming, I was excited to read her second, Missing, Presumed, and the first in a new crime series introducing police detective Manon Bradshaw. Mid-December, and Cambridgeshire is blanketed with snow. Detective Sergeant Manon Bradshaw tries to sleep after yet another soul-destroying Internet date – the low murmuring of her police radio her only solace….
If, like me, you’ve ever longed for a romantic heroine who didn’t have perfect skin, an exciting job in the city, hardly any flaws and was totally lovely but inexplicably couldn’t find anyone to love her, then it might be time to download Five Go Glamping and escape to the countryside for a few hours. Festival tickets Double check best Instagram…
This time last year when I was still flailing around trying to figure out how Twitter worked, one of the first authors I started following was Miranda Dickinson. Her debut novel, Fairytale of New York, had just been published. For an aspiring author, it was fantastic to follow someone whose dream of publication had so recently come true and who was excited enough about that, let alone people’s positive reaction to her book and how incredibly well it was doing. (It was a Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller and shortlisted for the RNA Romantic Novel of the Year Award 2010.)