A hidden stash of telegrams and old letters sets Sam Cooper off on a transatlantic journey to see the crumbling family home and meet the infirm grandmother her mother never even mentioned while she was alive, only for her to discover that much darker family skeletons have also been kept hidden away. Winter 1954, and in a dilapidated apartment in…
Curated by book squirrels
Serpent’s Tail
Government clerk and reluctant spy Laurence Jago has good reason to conceal his French language prowess on gaining promotion and leaving the Foreign Office attics for the corridors of power in Leonora Nattrass’s debut novel Black Drop. July 1794, and the streets of London are filled with rumours of revolution. Political radical Thomas Hardy is to go on trial for…
Heaven, My Home, the second book in Attica Locke’s Highway 59 series, uses a child’s disappearance to devastating effect in order to explore displacement, reconciliation and just what home means to people. Nine-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; instead he found himself all alone, adrift on the vastness of Caddo Lake. A sudden noise –…
Despite its title, Rebecca John’s The Haunting of Henry Twist isn’t a ghost story in the traditional sense but it does have an ethereal feel to it, and is likely to haunt you long after finishing it. London, 1926: Henry Twist’s heavily pregnant wife leaves home to meet a friend. On the way, she is hit by a bus and killed,…
In Bluebird, Bluebird, two murders take us to a small town off Highway 59 in East Texas, where we discover what lies behind the racial tensions, which are a part of people’s everyday reality there. When it comes to law and order, East Texas plays by its own rules – a fact that Darren Mathews, a black Texas Ranger working…
Today I’m thrilled to be able to share an extract from Attica Locke’s latest novel, Bluebird, Bluebird, a powerful thriller about the explosive intersection of love, race, and justice and the first in a timely new series about the cost of justice in the American South. This is taken from Chapter One: The tiny brass bell on the cafe’s door rang…
I’m very happy to welcome Alex Christofi today as part of the blog tour for his latest novel, Let Us Be True. Set in post-war Paris, it follows the stories of Ralf and Elsa, who meet there but come from elsewhere, and is a fascinating take on love and loss, home, belonging, and identity, especially that which we choose to conceal and how we present to…
I’m excited to welcome New York Times best-selling author Jami Attenberg today as part of the blog tour for her latest novel, All Grown Up. Here’s who and what it’s all about: Andrea is a single, childless 39-year-old woman who tries to navigate family, sexuality, friendships and a career she never wanted, but battles with thoughts and desires that few…