In James Alistair Henry’s debut novel, Britain is divided into ancient tribes; but this is also a Britain of office blocks, mobile phone apps, and vapes. In short, ‘Pagans’ is a high-concept alternate history thriller in which the Norman Conquest of 1066 …
During the pandemic, when life stopped, and nature continued, author of ‘Hark’, Alice Vincent, asked women online why they garden. What followed was an influx of stories from women across the world. In ‘Why Women Grow’, Vincent travels to meet these women…
The premise of Ali Smith’s brilliant, dystopic novel Gliff doesn’t seem that far-fetched in a world where, currently, the forces of evil are riding high on the hog. In Ali Smith’s fictional England a few years down the political road, the sibling protagon…
Erin Somers, author of ‘Stay Up with Hugo Best’, brilliantly plays with timelines in her second novel, ‘The Ten Year Affair’. It follows Cora, who lives in a small town with a husband she doesn’t desire, two young children, and a strange mushroom that int…
This US set horror-thriller takes place in Nowhere, a verdant valley that is fairly inaccessible to most unless they know the lie of the land. Years ago, a famous movie star, Leaf Winham, lived in the valley – in Nowhere House – which he had built as a re…
Caroline Hulse has found favour with readers through her first four books, but – writing under the C.E. Hulse moniker – ‘Vivian Dies Again’ is her first crime novel. The titular, mid-30s protagonist, is something of a black sheep, certainly to her family,…
England. 1976. Jean – a teenage boy – is getting a mild dressing down in the headmaster’s study at Compton Manor. The headmaster is David Larkin, although he insists that the boys – and they’re all boys at his school – call him Davey. (It’s that type of s…
To write ‘False Calm’, María Sonia Cristoff returned to her birthplace, Patagonia, two decades after she left it. She wanted to understand why it has a global reputation for being a place of isolation, so she visited the people living in the ‘ghost towns’…
Larissa Pham is an artist and writer based in Brooklyn. She’s previously had success with her non-fiction book ‘Pop Song: Adventures in Art and Intimacy’, but ‘Discipline’ is her first novel. It concerns Christine, a young author who is criss-crossing the…
Partly about America’s forgotten people and the economic and ecological disaster foisted on them by capitalist fundamentalism, Joanna Pocock’s Greyhound is also a compelling, brilliantly written (and photographed) personal journey in the slipstream of Sim…
Erin White scored a hit with her non-fiction work ‘Memoir of Love, Belonging, and Belief’ in which she discussed reconciling faith and sexuality as she grappled with her desire for both divine love and romantic love (she spent time with her girlfriend whi…
Neil Rollinson has previously published four well-received volumes of poetry, but ‘The Dead Don’t Bleed’ is his first novel. It begins in 2003 in the city of Córdoba in southern Spain. Frank is visiting the grave of his wife, Lucía, who had died a number …
My first thoughts on looking through this sumptuous coffee-table book was “Wow!” Mark Savage’s photographs are awesome (in the truest sense of the word) and capture the almost fearsome beauty of the Northumberland landscape, as well as the hardy climbers …
The premise of John Tottenham’s debut novel, ‘Service’, is ironic. It’s about Sean, a failed writer and self-proclaimed misanthrope who works in a bookstore, surrounded by customers and the work of successful writers. For Sean, everything is moving on wit…
How do you make ordinary life sound interesting? That’s a question that the author of ‘Walking on the Ceiling’ and ‘White on White’, Ayşegül Savaş, beautifully answers in ‘The Anthropologists’, a novel about married couple Asya and Manu navigating love, f…
Tess Gerritsen is a crime and thriller writer known for her exceptional technical elements – informed by her work as a physician – and she always conjures up a harrowing narrative. ‘The Killing Place’ is no exception. It has a gripping twist, which left m…
Benjamin Myers’ book Jesus Christ Kinski takes a particularly eccentric slice of Klaus Kinski’s acting life (a one-man performance about Jesus Christ!) and tries to make sense of the absurdity. A narcissistic, sex obsessed abuser, life constantly lived at…
It was originally published in 1947, but anyone coming to ‘The Inn Closes For Christmas’ for the first time, and expecting a dark Christmassy tale, will be disappointed – certainly when it comes to the Christmassy bit. Apart from the first page, and the l…
In the present day, Roma works for Electric Dreams, a shop selling all manner of geekish stuff and retro goodies. The shop intermittently receives boxes from house clearances that usually contain CDs, DVDs and the odd videogame. But one day Roma comes acr…
“All women are born and remain daughters” is how novelist, journalist, historian, and member of the well-known Sackville-West family, Juliet Nicolson, opens ‘A House Full of Daughters’. It’s a study of the lives of seven generations of women in her family…
This Judge Dredd graphic novel is an absolute classic. In the future – in Mega City One – Judge Maitland comes to realise that more Judges on the streets means more crime. As she tells the Justice Department: “Force is our primary tool… The main target of…
The debut novel from Zoë Rankin – who grew up in Scotland, but now lives in New Zealand – is a propulsive thriller that opens in a remote New Zealand town. Anya, an eight-year-old girl, stumbles out of the dense bush. She’s disorientated and hungry and ma…
This debut novel from Korean author Kim Jee Hye (recently translated by Shanna Tan) welcomes the reader into Soyangri Book Kitchen, a remote bookshop, cafe, and hotel deep in the countryside of Seoul that restores its visitors through the escape of readin…
After swapping an apartment in the city for an isolated woodshed in the countryside, a writer reflects on the complex relationships she’s had with the men of her past. There’s Xavier, her elderly ex-partner, with whom she shares a long-standing romantic c…
There’s a certain amount of mystery surrounding the author Liadan Ní Chuinn. Apparently, the name is a pseudonym. All we know is that they were born in 1998 in Northern Ireland. Well, that and the fact that their first short story collection is a bravura …
Anthony Gardner won much acclaim for his previous novel ‘Fox’ – a farcical thriller concerning a virulent disease carried by foxes – and ‘All God’s Creatures’ balances a similar madcap sense of intrigue with added satirical laughs galore. The whole caper …
The debut novel from this Albanian born author was longlisted for this year’s Booker Prize and it concerns an unnamed narrator who lives in a plush Manhattan apartment with her husband. He teaches a film course at university and spends much of his time wa…
The debut novel from this South Korean author (translated by Sarah Lyo) concerns Jimin, a young woman working in Seoul. Her life takes a dramatic turn when, trying to play the long-game in a breath-taking act of revenge, she secures a position that brings…
Tart was born out of ‘sluttycheff’, an Instagram account through which an anonymous chef punctuates steamy sexual anecdotes with photos of food. I’d followed her for a while before discovering she was releasing a memoir. Despite my apprehension about the …
One of the few writers in the forties and fifties to venture into and write about that ‘other America’, Jack Kerouac was a literary trailblazer who, arguably, turned from that other America and became the kind of aged right-wing American the younger versi…
If you’re into local geology, ancient history, stunning photos of landscapes and objects that carry echoes of human activity across the centuries, or if you just fancy learning about some northern sites worth rambling to, then this book should feed your …
The electrifying debut novel from Colwill Brown puts the lives of three working class girls from Doncaster centre stage as they try to negotiate school, sex and the trials and tribulations of getting their hands on booze and drugs. Kel and Shaz both come …
I picked up Goodlord because I was intrigued by the format; an email inspired by poet Ella Frears’ own experience receiving an email from her estate agent asking her to sign up to property handling service ‘Goodlord’. At first the lack of chapters and a c…
The German actor Klaus Kinski (1926-1991) is best known today for a clutch of films he made with Wernor Herzog including ‘Aguirre, the Wrath of God’, ‘Nosferatu the Vampyre’ and ‘Fitzcarraldo’. All are utterly engrossing and feature grandstanding performa…
I’m always amazed by the stories that are forgotten when writing history, which is why I loved reading Matt Houlbrook’s latest ‘Songs of Seven Dials’. It’s a brilliant re-telling of the Seven Dials neighbourhood in London during the 1920s and 1930s and a …
1843 and the badly mutilated body of a miner turns up on a hilltop. Some say he’s been killed by a fearsome wolf that’s said to stalk the pit villages of Northalbion (think: Northumberland). Meanwhile, Caleb, a former colleague of the dead man, has been b…
Venice. Winter 1900. Evelyn Dolman, an English hack writer, is on a belated honeymoon with Laura, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. Things are not, however, going swimmingly. There is a friction between the pair, and this state of affairs is n…
A new housemaid begins to work at a house set in a suburb “like a film set”. She’s the storyteller, “It’s a story born of centuries-old tiredness and questions that presume too much”. She works for the senor and senora. She’s not been encouraged to use th…
I've been desperate to get my hands on a copy of Vincent Delecroix's novella Small Boat since it was shortlisted for the Booker prize earlier this year, so when I saw that Live Theatre were doing a production based on the book, I jumped at the opportunity…
It was a brave/foolish move by Rachel Kushner to centre Creation Lake around the comings and goings of a repugnant spy-cop, Sadie Smith, whose Ayn Rand certainties and judgements get increasingly tedious. In the UK in particular most people think the best…
Dur e Aziz Amna caused a real splash with her debut novel ‘American Fever’ and she’s followed it up with another compelling narrative, this one set in Pakistan in the 1990s/early 2000s. Telling the tale is Tara who draws us into her confidence from the of…
Anthony Quinn – Liverpool fan and one of the UK’s most acclaimed novelists – has scored with an entertaining biography of one of England’s most famous footballers, Kevin Keegan. It’s fairly concise (I read it in two sittings) but the author still finds ro…
Janice Hallett appears to have cornered the market when it comes to epistolary thrillers, with the narratives solely powered by emails, texts, WhatsApp messages etc. Her latest begins with emails sent by Dominic Eastwood to TV production companies, specif…
I loved William Boyd’s cold-war thriller ‘Gabriel’s Moon’, and this, the next in the series, is equally as enthralling. It’s 1963 and Gabriel Dax is still trying to keep many different plates spinning. He’s a travel writer and a journalist (working for a …
A female academic in her late twenties descends into madness amid the news that her husband, John, has been sleeping with students – but she’s not anguished for the reasons you think. In the wake of a petition calling for John’s removal, forty-something V…
In this award-winning self-help book, forensic psychotherapist Jennfier Cox explores how women can learn to let their rage out through a series of case studies, from parentified young girls to wives of emotionally incompetent men. Women’s unspoken rage is…
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Is there anything left to say about Britpop? Well, based on Miranda Sawyer’s Uncommon People (Britpop and Beyond in 20 songs), yes, there is. Smartly it’s not a linear history treading a well-worn path, but a chapter-by-chapter review of a favourite Britp…
What’s Lauren Elkin’s brilliant novel Scaffolding like? Well, it’s arty, like a French film, very involved, kind of angsty, questioning and it’s all about love and sex or variations thereof. “There is so much we will never know about other people, no matt…
It’s the late 1980s and former World War 2 test pilot Peter Thorpe is now in his 70s. In the past he’s written books about the war but now his publishers would like his new tome to take a more personal angle. Due to his failing memory, however, he’s strug…
The title of Virginia Feito’s second novel calls to mind Bret Easton Ellis’ ‘American Psycho’ and, rather like Easton Ellis’s blackest of satires, it also features a protagonist who can’t help but see the world through a mirror that has been warped by all…
It’s 2019, and no one knows that it’s the end of an era. A group of mostly queer friends and acquaintances step into the hottest weekend of the year, each one guarding secrets that threatens to change their lives. The kaleidoscopic structure of ‘Evenings …
US author Danielle Valentine is something of a big name in YA horror circles (writing under the name Danielle Vaga), penning – among other hits – The ‘Merciless’ series. She published her well-received first adult novel in 2023, ‘Delicate Condition’, and …
A depressing facet of heterosexual womanhood is that sometimes you convince yourself to fall in love with someone emotionally unavailable and mediocre, only for that person to end up completely breaking your heart. If you’ve been in that situation, and yo…
The poet, children’s author and political commentator Michael Rosen has proven to be a beacon of moral clarity on the genocide that is currently being wrought in Gaza, and this volume – published by Gateshead based Culture Matters – collects together a se…
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