Books, Fiction

Beatrice Colin - The Songwriter

25 Feb 2010

(John Murray) One of the more promising new writers in Scotland returns with a fourth novel which sets its sights far from her home country. In the same manner as Glasgow-based Beatrice Colin’s last book The Luminous Life of Lilly Aphrodite explored…

Pedro Juam Gutierrez - Our GG in Havana

18 Feb 2010

(Faber) To fans of the author behind such classic works as Brighton Rock and The Quiet American, it might come as something of a surprise to read the first 30 pages in this curt novel. Pedro Juan Gutiérrez, himself the scribe of the acclaimed Dirty…

The Still Point - Amy Sackville interview

17 Feb 2010

A married couple is asleep in bed. Back to back, knees bending, and feet touching, ‘they form the uneven outline of an urn’. Bizarrely, they are both dreaming of the same freezing cold place, but it means two very different things to them. To Simon, the…

Henning Mankell - The Man From Beijing

29 Jan 2010

(Harvill Secker) As all Wallander fans will testify, Henning Mankell does a good line in legal professionals. His long-running series about the flawed but eminently likeable detective has sold millions worldwide, not to mention spawned TV adaptations…

Laila Lalami - Secret Son

27 Jan 2010

(Viking) Nineteen-year-old Youssef El Mekki lives with his mother in a Casablanca slum, having grown up believing that his father died when he was young. In fact he’s the illegitimate son of a rich local businessman, and when he makes the connection…

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India - William Dalrymple

17 Dec 2009

(Bloomsbury) William Dalrymple’s publisher describes Nine Lives as his ‘first travel book in a decade’; this is rather misleading. Dalrymple’s own, contradictory phrase, ‘linked non-fiction stories’, is closer to the truth. This collection is, in…

Miss Thing - Nora Chassler

9 Dec 2009

(Two Ravens) Nora Chassler’s debut novel marks the arrival of a distinctive new voice onto the Scottish literary scene. Or perhaps that should be ‘voices’ as her novel is littered with first person accounts, ranging from the narration of the two…

The Coral Thief - Rebecca Stott

9 Dec 2009

(Weidenfeld & Nicolson) Paris 1815. A city in turmoil following the defeat of Napoleon, a city where lowlife scum meets high society, and a city where every conceivable historical novel cliché gets thrown at the wall to see which particularly…

A Single to Rome - Sarah Duncan

4 Dec 2009

(Review) A dumped girl goes speed dating and ends up borrowing a guy’s flat in the Italian capital where she falls in love with more than just the ancient city.

Can I Tell You a Secret? - Evelyn Cosgrave

4 Dec 2009

(Penguin) From the Desperately Seeking author comes this tale of three sisters, each with something to hide, all descending on their gran.

Cathi Unsworth - Bad Penny Blues

4 Dec 2009

(Serpent’s Tail) The raw materials of its storyline may sound well-worn, but there’s something about the textured layers of Cathi Unsworth’s third novel that effortlessly draw the reader into the dark and disturbing environment she creates. Using…

CJ Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

4 Dec 2009

(Corvus) He’s a rising star of crime writing in the States, but it’s only a matter of time before CJ Box explodes onto the UK’s radar, thanks in no small part to this storming British debut. Three Weeks to Say Goodbye is a smart place to start for…

Joe Gores - Spade and Archer

4 Dec 2009

It’s a tall order writing a prequel to one of the greatest American hardboiled crime novels. But if anyone was going to pull off a forerunner to Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon it was Joe Gores, like his predecessor, a war veteran, former private…

More Than Just a Wedding - Nia Pritchard

4 Dec 2009

(Honno Press) In this follow-up to More Than Just a Hairdresser, an undercover sleuth finds it tricky juggling all her balls in the air.

Old School Ties - Kate Harrison

4 Dec 2009

(Orion) A reality TV show about the perfect school reunion gets the green light, but not everything goes according to plan.

Return to Sender - Zoe Barnes

4 Dec 2009

(Piatkus) A woman gets massively broody when she goes to the christening of her sister’s kids, but could time have already run out on Holly Bennett?

Michael Crichton - Pirate Latitudes

19 Nov 2009

(HarperCollins) The first of two books to be published posthumously, Pirate Latitudes was found as a complete manuscript after Michael Crichton’s death in November 2008. Set in the volatile colonial Caribbean in 1665, it details British privateer…

Five unit shifting books

19 Nov 2009

Andy McNab Exit Wound Mr SAS with his latest Nick Stone thriller in which a raid on Saddam Hussein’s gold stash goes horribly awry and a complex conspiracy slowly reveals itself. Bantam. Karin Slaughter Genesis Medical examiner Sara Linton…

Leanne Shapton - Important Artifacts …

19 Nov 2009

In this empty literary age of celebrity autobiographies written by someone else, increasingly desperate misery memoirs and Dan Brown, the notion of an original novel making its way onto our shelves seems a crazy one. Yet, just when you thought there…

Anne Rice - Angel Time

30 Oct 2009

(Chatto & Windus) Occasionally a book comes along that is so mind-bogglingly dreadful that it’s hard to find the words to describe the depths of its naff, cliché-ridden banality. But let’s give it a go. This is the start of a new fictional series…

Ryan David Jahn - Acts of Violence

30 Oct 2009

(Macmillan) Ryan David Jahn’s first novel takes a rusty knife and taps into the same vein that gore fans like Quentin Tarantino or Frank Miller love aiming for. Set on the mean streets of 1960s Queens – which literally run with blood after the…

Sue Townsend - Adrian Mole: The Prostrate Years

30 Oct 2009

(Michael Joseph) Reneging on her statement that 2004’s Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction would be the final Mole book, Sue Townsend has returned to her most enduring creation in his 39th (and a quarter) year. That he’s back at all is…

Requiem Vampire Knight: Resurrection & Danse Macabre/Dracula & The Vampires Ball by Pat Mills and Oliver Ledroit

16 Oct 2009

Veteran British comics writer Pat Mills takes us into hell as Requiem Vampire Knight finally gets printed in English. Originally released in France where, much like the rest of Europe, there’s a burgeoning comics scene that isn’t obsessed with…

Interview: John Irving

Exploring the tragedy and death of the American author's work

15 Oct 2009

In the closing chapter of John Irving’s epic new novel, Last Night in Twisted River, a character struggles to find the opening line for his latest book. He agonises over it for a morning, then puts it to one side – and 24 hours later hits pay…

Jealousy by Catherine Millet

15 Oct 2009

The success of her 2002 memoir, The Sexual Life of Catherine M, propelled French art critic Catherine Millet into the spotlight as one of Europe’s most celebrated contemporary sexual libertines. Indeed, this blisteringly honest dissection of her…