MJ Cross - This psychological thriller begins with shades of The Lady Vanishes. Jenny Bowen gets on the Caledonian sleeper from London to Scotland. While boarding she sees a woman with a young girl getting into the cabin that is the next but one to hers. …
A. S. Hatch - This debut novel is told in the form of an extended letter, which has been written by Daniel from a place of incarceration. He tells Lucy – we don’t find out who she is until the end – that he’s sure she has read a lot of reports about his c…
Nathan Blackwell - Matt Buchanan – the detective in Nathan Blackwell’s New Zealand set novel – tells us on more than one occasion over the course of this book that real life police work is nothing like you see on TV or in the movies. Blackwell (not actual…
Michelle Tea - Michelle Tea is an American author, poet and literary arts organiser whose best-known works are in fiction and memoir with particular emphasis on queer culture, feminism and race. This is the first collected volume of her journalism, and, r…
Margaret Atwood - First up: Margaret Atwood’s sequel to ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ does not sully the memory of the original. Praise be! It’s set around 15 years after the events of that grimly compelling account, but instead of having Offred act as our guide …
Ambrose Parry - Young doctor Will Raven is a man with a past, some of it shady. But when he leaves Berlin to return to his hometown of Edinburgh, circa 1849, he manages to find a position with the esteemed Dr James Simpson, who regards Raven as his protég…
Tayari Jones - The winner of the 2019 Women’s Prize for Fiction is now out in paperback. The titular marriage is between African Americans Celestial and Roy, who have been wed for around 18 months. One day they visit Roy’s parents in small-town Louisiana …
Mary & Bryan Talbot - The Costa award-winning team behind ‘Dotter of Her Father’s Eyes’ turn their attentions to eco matters in their latest graphic novel. It chronicles the long-distance and developing relationship between two young women and is set agai…
Justin Humphreys - ‘The Abominable Dr. Phibes’ (1971) is one of the best, and certainly one of the most idiosyncratic, horror films of the 1970s. Set in the 1920s it stars Vincent Price as the titular Phibes who, upset that a bunch of surgeons couldn’t sa…
Joseph O’Connor - Set in Victorian London, the latest novel from Joseph O’Connor is a fictionalised account of the relationship between the two leading theatrical lights of the era – Henry Irving and Ellen Terry – and Bram Stoker. Stoker, of course, is th…
Attica Locke - Following the election of Donald Trump, racist crimes have been on the rise in Texas. Feeling particularly empowered are the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. But when the nine-year-old son of one of their leaders – who is currently serving time …
Daniel Cole - If you’re going to have a maverick detective then Wolf is a good a name as any (real name: William Oliver Layton-Fawkes). And the redoubtable Wolf is back in the third book in this trilogy, which began with the best-seller ‘Ragdoll’ and cont…
Adrian McKinley - The United States. Modern day. Rachel receives a phone call informing her that her young daughter, Kylie, has been kidnapped. She is told that she must deposit $25,000 into an account number she is given. But, in order to get her daughte…
Benjamin Myers - Set in austerity Britain, just after the Second World War, ‘The Offing’ concerns 16-year-old Robert Appleyard who, on leaving school, decides that he wants to see something of the world beyond the Durham pit village where he has lived all…
David Nicholls - It might sound like an unnecessarily hackneyed device to write a novel about first love, and have your two protagonists starring in an amateur production of ‘Romeo and Juliet’, but David Nicholls pulls it off with his usual dash. It’s sum…
Howard Jacobson - Howard Jacobson is noted for his comic novels (very noted, he won the Booker Prize with ‘The Finkler Question’ back in 2010) but as well as being able to conjure up funny set pieces from the most unlikely of subject matters, he’s also a …
Ocean Vuong - Ocean Vuong won the T.S. Eliot Prize in 2017 for his poetry collection ‘Night Sky with Exit Wounds’ in which he drew on his family history: his grandfather was a US soldier posted to Vietnam during the war; his mother gave birth to him when …
Various authors - Launched at the recent IRON OR festival in Cullercoats, this excellent anthology contains poetry, prose and mythology from six writers who live in the seaside village. Novelist Carole Clewlow comes at climate change from an oblique angle…
Jessica Andrews - There are a lot of sweets in ‘Saltwater’. Fruit Polos, Caramacs and fizzy cola bottles all make an appearance in Jessica Andrews’ coming of age debut novel and I put this down to the fact that sweets awaken and enliven our memories like …
Mark Haddon - Mark Haddon, of ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ fame, has pulled several rabbits out of several hats with his latest novel. It begins with a plane crash. The only survivor is a baby, Angelica, who we follow as she is brou…
Alex Nathan - 1793. Herbert Powyss lives on a small estate in the Welsh Marches. He longs to make his mark with the Royal Society in London and dreams of one day presenting a science paper of real consequence. He hits on the idea of studying the effects o…
Taylor Jenkins Reid - There has been a lot of hype surrounding Taylor Jenkins Reid’s new novel, which purports to be a biography of the (fictional) band Daisy Jones & The Six. Sadly, rather like that difficult second album, it’s very patchy. It’s written …
Elizabeth Gilbert - The latest novel from the author of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ is the very definition of a page-turning romp. It’s largely set in the early 1940s and tells the story of Vivian Morris, a teenager who has dropped out of school and is packed off t…
Kate Atkinson - Jackson Brodie fans! Rejoice! Yep, Kate Atkinson’s world-weary private detective is back for his fifth adventure. This time he’s hitting the mean streets of Bridlington, Scarborough and Whitby and embroiled in all manner of criminal activi…
Sam Lipsyte - I loved American author Sam Lipsyte’s last novel ‘The Ask’, which detailed the travails of a third-tier university fund-raiser, and while ‘Hark’ doesn’t quite match its sustained barrage of hilarity, there is still plenty to recommend it. Ha…
Linda Grant - Linda Grant won the Orange Prize in 2000 and was shortlisted for the Booker in 2008. Strange then that she should publish a book as shoddy as this. The story begins with the body of an unknown woman who has been fished out of the Thames and …
Georges Rodenbach - This novel by Belgian author Georges Rodenbach was first published in 1892 and has been reissued by Dedalus with a translation by Mike Mitchell and introduction by Alan Hollinghurst. It begins with Hugues Viane mooching around Bruges. …
Candice Carty-Williams - Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old black woman living in London and working on the cultural desk of a national newspaper. She has a loyal bunch of friends (‘The Corgis’) but feels lonely because she’s currently in the middle of a tr…
Ian McEwan - Ian McEwan’s latest is set in an alternate 1980s. Margaret Thatcher is still Prime Minister (and sending troops to the Falklands, although with a rather different outcome), but the Labour Party is being fronted up by Tony Benn. More significa…
Harriet Tyce - This debut novel has been billed as the ‘most heart-pounding thriller of 2019’ but, alas, it’s anything but. It concerns Alison, a forty-something barrister living in London with her husband and young daughter. Her career is on the up and u…
Nicole Flattery - The debut collection of short stories from this 29-year-old Irish woman is almost frighteningly assured. Her female protagonists are often in asymmetric, unfulfilling relationships and their tales are told in a crisp style that is often …
Ruth is the head of a psychological trauma unit in London who works to help people who have undergone serious mental stress, including children who have witnessed a family member being killed or people who have been raped. She is highly respected by her c…
You can always rely on Peter Swanson to hit you up with a big dollop of crime thriller goodness and he’s on sparkling form with his latest. It begins with Hen and Lloyd who have just moved to a new neighbourhood in Massachusetts. At their first block part…
Sara Collins has said of her debut novel that she wanted to put a Jamaican woman in Jane Austen territory: “I wanted to see what would happen to someone like Frannie making her presence felt in these sophisticated Georgian drawing rooms”. The tale begins …
“This chapter is a poorly fleshed-out fictional pretense to write about something that isn’t fictitious”. If an entire book could be summed up in one of its sentences then here it is, right there on page 130 of Jarett Kobek’s latest novel. The chapter is …
The Ivy House is the affectionate name bestowed on a grand familial home in a well to do part of Dublin. The only person residing there is Hugo, who, despite living on borrowed time due to a brain tumour, still plays host when the extended family arrive f…
In some unspecified period in the near future the water levels around the world have risen catastrophically. All beaches have disappeared and the UK is “protected” by the Wall, which has been built around the entire coastline. It has been designed not jus…
The Flower Girls were the tabloid nicknames given to two young sisters who were involved in the kidnapping and killing of a toddler nineteen years ago. The eldest of them was convicted of the murder and is still incarcerated. The youngest meanwhile attemp…
The first novel from this young Nigerian author has been pushed under the “hotly anticipated” banner and she doesn’t disappoint. It concerns two sisters living with their mother in Lagos. Korede works as a nurse in the local hospital and she thinks hersel…
After making his name writing Science Fiction novels such as ‘Vurt’ and ‘Pollen’, Jeff Noon’s first foray into the police procedural is lifted out of the ordinary by dint of the unusualness of the case. It’s 1981 and Detective Inspector Hobbes gets caught…
This is the third book in the IQ series, IQ being the nickname of Isaiah Quintabe, a young black man living in LA who earns a crust by solving crimes. The Watson to his Holmes is Dodson, a former drug-dealer who is trying to get their fledgling business o…
Tom Rachman - Bear Bavinsky is a (fictional) American artist in the mould of the great expressionists of the 1950s, feted alongside the likes of Jackson Pollock. And like Pollock he lives a life of oppressive masculinity in which everything is sacrificed …
Leïla Sliming - On the face of it, you may think that Adèle has it all. A journalist living in Paris, her surgeon husband, Richard, is devoted to her and they have a young son. A move to an idyllic spot in the countryside has been tentatively mooted. Ther…
Matthew Sturgis - Even if Oscar Wilde had led a mundane existence he would still be remembered today because of his sparklingly modern plays and iconoclastic essays. But it’s because his life reads like a Victorian melodrama (or a Greek tragedy, as I’m su…
Daniel James - Ezra Maas is one of the most significant artists of the 20thcentury, winning a whole raft of awards and critical acclaim. An enigmatic figure he is often likened to JD Salinger due to his reclusive nature. He is also entirely fictional. Thi…
John Robert Brown - The redoubtable local publishers IRON Press continue to provide a platform for poets who might otherwise have fallen down the back of the settee and in John Robert Brown they have a real gem. As the subheading of this collection indica…
Elly Griffiths, Quercus - Clare Cassidy is an English teacher who has a love for Victorian ghost stories, an especial favourite being ‘The Stranger’, a chiller written by (the fictional) RM Holland. She is particularly drawn to his life and works because …
Stormzy, Merky Books - The author of this book of recent pop history is billed as Stormzy, but it has mostly been pulled together by Jude Yawson. He’s a young writer who has secured a place for himself in the burgeoning array of talents that have found th…
Laurence Cane-Honeysett - 2018 marked the fiftieth anniversary of Trojan Records, a record label and real British success story. They played a key role in making reggae globally popular with many of the genre’s major stars being connected to Trojan includ…
Barry Fox - I don’t usually go a bundle for self-published curios, but in this case I’m going to make an exception. As far as I can gather Barry Fox is a local fellow who makes bizarro art and artefacts in the manner of Jean-Michel Basquiat having a fever…
Patrick deWitt - The Canadian author Patrick deWitt scored a huge hit with his 2011 novel ‘The Sisters Brothers’ (which has just been made into a film) and ‘French Exit’, his latest, is every bit as good. It begins in modern day Manhattan where we’re intr…
Angela Steidele - The story of Anne Lister’s life (1791-1840) may have slipped down the back of Time’s settee if it were not for a remarkable series of extensive diaries she kept. A self-absorbed woman she recorded great spools of her life, but much of it…
Pariah O’Donnell - The second novel from this Irish author begins with a deliciously dark chapter. We’re in Victorian London and a young seamstress arrives at a grand house in Mayfair. She is shown to the top floor where she ensconces herself alone in a r…
William Boyd - Towards the back end of the 19thcentury Brodie Moncur is working as a piano-tuner in Edinburgh. The firm he is working for have a piano showroom in Paris, but business is slow, and Brodie is offered the opportunity to relocate to the French…
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