The main image on the cover of this slim volume of short stories from Cullercoats’ IRON Press is that of your classic alien: grey, wizened, big eyes – you get the picture. But this collection uses the word ‘Aliens’ as a springboard to explore all kinds of…
In this graphic novel we are first introduced to Maggie Hill when she is ensconced in the stall of a toilet block, situated inside a university. She is trying her best to gee herself up (“Okay… Okay… You can do this.”). Maggie is an astronomer and is due …
Difficult to beat a paragraph like this: “And she was halfway across the checked linoleum floor of her nice safe kitchen when the screen door opened and a gigantic six-foot-seven-inch frog-like creature shouldered its way into the house and stood stock-st…
When I think of Japan I think of shiny new buildings, spectacular shops overflowing with the latest consumer durables and a standard of living that befits a country with the third largest economy in the world. A generalisation Japanese politicians are alw…
Alice Hattrick’s Ill Feelings ranges widely and rigorously through, in Susan Sontag’s words, “the night side of life” particularly as it concerns ME/CFS, an illness, “without any known cause”. Affecting both Alice Hattrick (and her mother), rage and frust…
Electric Wizards is a superbly written book about what JR Moores calls ‘heavy music’. Not heavy metal, heavy music, which he persuasively and wittily argues includes musical artists as diverse as, for instance, Black Sabbath, Babes in Toyland, Funkadelic …
Vaguely reminiscent of some of the otherworldly sci-fi books my dad used to borrow from the local library in the 1970s, Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi centres her fantastical world within a building (the House) the internal structure of which is a labyrinth of…
If Sally Rooney’s Normal People was written with Hemingway’s iceberg theory in mind, omitting as much as possible so the reader finds meaning implicitly, then Beautiful World, Where Are You is more volcano theory (if such exists) as much is made explicit.…
Look, I can’t lie, there used to be a time when the latest book by Martin Amis was bought, consumed and boosted. There then followed many bleak years when I approached anything he wrote (and even said) with caution especially during, what I call his ‘I fe…
When I heard that Michael Bracewell had written a new book it was almost like a time machine wrecked friend had suddenly reappeared and, boy, did he have a story to tell. But was this really the case, or had Michael been here all along and I’d merely turn…
My heroes in 1978 were Debbie Harry, Poison Ivy, Fay Fife, and Tina Weymouth so it wouldn’t have entered my head that it was unusual for a woman to present OGWT in 1978. And as that woman was the cooler than cool Anne Nightingale – tinted hair, smoky voic…
What struck me about Jenni Fagan’s Edinburgh based modern gothic masterpiece, Luckenbooth, among other things, is the radical intent that underlies it. Like an outsider call to arms there’s quotes a plenty stating what side of the line these characters ar…
The Hard Crowd is Rachel Kushner’s recently published collection of essays some of whose themes provide context to her three novels, and showcase her interest in among other things motorbikes, New York artists, classic muscle cars, prison reform and Itali…
Tamsin Calidas moved from London to a small island in the Scottish Hebrides and this is the memoir of the fifteen years she’s spent there. Reading the endorsement quotes/blurbs on the outside and inside of the front cover you’d be fooled into thinking it …
Joan Didion is an American journalist and writer. After winning a competition in 1956, she landed a place at Vogue and went from copywriter to feature editor over just 7 years. From there, she became the critically acclaimed author of 15 books including e…
What did you do in the great Covid pandemic, Daddy? Well, I didn’t write The Paper Lantern, Will Burns’ wonderfully written lockdown classic, that’s for sure. Like most of us the narrator of The Paper Lantern doesn’t do much. He mooches around his parent’…
Set in the 1990s, in Northumberland and Northern Ireland, The Monarch, is a potrayal of life in a heavily industrial culture, forced to reinvent itself as its once beloved industries find themselves in decline. The story gives an intimate picture of the C…
Simon R. Green is the sort of author I want to call “redoubtable”, a major player in the fantasy fiction scene since the 1990s but curiously much better known in America than in Britain. Moving from the space-opera sagas that characterised his early caree…
Impossible to categorise, this latest book from journalist/author Olivia Laing weaves together biographical studies of several notable twentieth century thinkers and activists to create an open-ended document about the body – our bodies, everybody’s bodie…
The good thing about Elena Ferrante is that she examines a relationship from every conceivable angle. Nothing is left unexamined. Sometimes this results in numerous interpretations of the way people have spoken or behaved. In Elena Ferrante’s latest, book…
To those of us who haven’t been to public school, public school seems to be an institution which well off parents send their kids to to keep them from disturbing their busy and privileged lives during term time. They also seem to be as close to the concep…
We may not need another book about the assumed dystopia we all face due to climate change. But this is a good one, and it’s good because part of what happens in the book is happening already. We can see the well-off creating their bunkers of safety in sub…
You may wonder how someone could write an entire book of “sugar is bad”, but the multitude of surprising contexts in which it is explored in Gary Taube’s The Case Against Sugar transforms a trivial teaspoon of everyday life into something much more seriou…
In his 2015 book, Prisoners of Geography, foreign affairs and international diplomacy journalist, Tim Marshall, revolutionised the way we looked at Geopolitics, associating nations’ geography with their political choices. The Power of Geography exceeds th…
McNish dedicates her latest book to “my grandmothers, who’d most likely have disowned me for most of what is written here”. Thus begins a collection of deeply personal observations in poetry and prose, fiction and non-fiction, that come together to reflec…
It's really refreshing to see a modern story set outside of London or New York (Mcfarlane sets this story in her hometown of Nottingham). In her seventh novel, she gives you all you might want from a contemporary romance: pining over “what-could-have-been…
“This book... is a love letter to fat, black womxn,” Yeboah tells us on the first page. And about time. Stephanie Yeboah is a plus-size blogger, a freelance writer, a public speaker, a gorgeous model and a lover of Jason Momoa. Her Instagram and other soc…
Ever wondered how you can find a bargain on eBay, what the most eco-friendly fabrics are, or how to give your wardrobe the makeover it deserves?…
The final book in Hilary Mantel’s ‘Wolf Hall’ trilogy is laden with more goodies than a 16th century Michaelmas feast.…
Claudia Durastanti (translated by Christine Donougher) - Like Cleopatra – the Egyptian one – Caterina is adept at juggling lovers. But whereas Cleopatra’s affairs were all wrapped up in the upper political echelons, Caterina’s are distinctly low rent. Eve…
Ren Richards - Ren Richards is the pen name of Lauren DeStefano, a US writer who has won much acclaim for her dystopian series of YA novels. This is her first stab at adult suspense and she’s stirred plenty of juicy ingredients into the pot boiler. It con…
Joe Ide - This is the fourth in Joe Ide’s ‘IQ’ series of LA-set crime thrillers, and it’s as high-octane as ever and packing plenty of heart. IQ is Isaiah Quintabe, a young black man who is semi-legendary in his hood for his work as a private investigator…
Trevor Wood - 2012. Jimmy is a Falkland’s War veteran who, while serving in the navy, suffered significant psychological damage. His wife has left him, he’s estranged from his daughter and he’s living rough on the streets of his hometown of Newcastle. One…
Edited by William Dalrymple - As the East India Company extended its sway across India in the late eighteenth century, many remarkable artworks were commissioned by Company officials from Indian painters who had previously worked for the Mughals. Publishe…
Kiley Reid - Kiley Reid’s debut novel begins in a well-to-do supermarket in Philadelphia. It’s late. A young black woman, Emira, is there with Briar, a white two-year-old toddler that she babysits three times a week. Due to a family emergency, Briar’s par…
Graham Moore - The United States. When fifteen-year-old schoolgirl Jessica Silver goes missing, presumed dead, suspicion falls on one of her schoolteachers. There is evidence that they had an inappropriate relationship, which includes a series of incrimin…
Luke Brown - The titular “theft” of Luke Brown’s latest novel can said to be related to property, as in: all property is theft. When the story begins Paul is living in an off-grid London flat, which has a much cheaper rent than similar places. He – and hi…
Michelle Paver - Out now in paperback this gothic chiller is the perfect stoke-the-fire-and-lock-all-the-doors winter read. It begins with a reporter calling on Maud at her dilapidated old house in the Suffolk fens. It’s 1966. He’s trying to get her to sh…
Robin Morgan-Bentley - When Alice finds that her husband, Adam, is missing she is thrown into a panic. He has a history of depression and her worst fears are realised when she discovers that he has thrown himself in front of a car. She is distraught as is…
Jo Spain - There’s more than a touch of the Agatha Christies about Jo Spain’s latest thriller in which a well-to-do Irish clan reunite at the family home for a celebration, only for things to turn sour when the father is bludgeoned to death. The reasons f…
Paul Summers - This slim volume from Northumbrian poet Paul Summers is a celebration of the rich cultural heritage of mining communities in the region as well as the resurgence of the progressive, socialist, democratic left in the UK. It takes the form of…
Alison Littlewood - This ghost story has a familiar premise. Leah’s young son dies in an accident (her husband is also dead) and she decides a fresh start is required. Where better to begin anew than in a dilapidated old farmhouse nestled in a bleak Yorks…
Vanessa Furse Jackson - Grief is something that we all suffer from and, unsurprisingly, an emotion that has proved a fertile ground for poets and one of solace for readers. (Witness the enduring popularity of Thomas Hardy’s 1912-13 poems written in respon…
Scarlett Thomas - We don’t come across any oligarchs in Scarlett Thomas’s deliciously dark and funny new novel, but we do meet Natasha, the 15-year-old daughter of a shady Russian who arrives at an English boarding school armed with a black Amex card. She…
Andrew Michael Hurley - Andrew Michael Hurley proved himself a modern master of unnerving folk horror in previous novels ‘The Loney’ and ‘Devil’s Day’, but this is his best work to date. Set in rural Yorkshire, during an unspecified time period – possibly…
Clive James - For a poet that is often praised for being “straight forward” and “easy to understand”, especially when compared to 20th century modernists, there is an awful lot to unpack in the work of Philip Larkin. He had the knack of making the plain s…
A. M. Stirling - The key dynamic in this thriller is between cousins, Richard and Amanda, who share a creepy lust/hate relationship. Amanda, a couple of years older than Richard, took Richard’s virginity when they were in their teens but they haven’t met …
Robert Irwin - 1944. Germany. Despite the promise of “Hitler’s secret weapon” most Germans have come round to the notion that the war is not going their way. Sonja Heda, meanwhile, still has belief and, indeed, is contemplating writing her autobiography, …
Lewis Trondheim & Stéphane Oiry - Oddly enough this graphic novel was put together by two Frenchman (with translation by Emma Watson – not that one) but it couldn’t be more British. The rainy streets of Kilburn are depicted with almost obsessive care and …
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 …
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