Books, Round-up

Top 5 circus books, inspired by Rosie Garland's The Palace of Curiosities

Geek Love, Death-Defying Acts and Something Wicked This Way Comes among our favourite big top tales

Rosie Garland’s debut The Palace of Curiosities is a luminous, gritty novel set in a Victorian circus. Try our favourite circus books to bring some glitter and greasepaint into your life. Geek Love – Katherine Dunn Art and Lily Binewski create their…

Top 5 watery thrillers, inspired by Doug Johnstone's Gone Again

John Burnside, Jules Verne and Nicci French have all taken inspiration from the sea

In Doug Johnstone’s latest thriller Gone Again, Mark Douglas is photographing whales stranded in the waters off Edinburgh’s Portobello Beach when he discovers that his wife has disappeared. Like Johnstone, these authors all found their inspiration from…

Anne Holt, PJ Tracy Quintin Jardine - spring 2013 crime fiction round-up

Shuichi Yoshida, Elly Griffiths and Anna Smith are also among releasing novels in coming months

Anne Holt certainly has an intriguing background for a prominent career in crime writing. A law graduate and anchor woman on a TV news programme, she worked in the Oslo police department before setting up her own legal practice and then taking on the…

Also published: self-improvement books

Gok Wan, Paul McKenna and more release self-improvement books for the new year

It’s a time of year we both love and dread. Naturally, it’s only polite to stuff as much food and drink into your system as humanly possible (and beyond) but there will be an inevitable payback somewhere down the line. Little wonder that publishers pick…

Books round-up winter 2012: new music books

Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen and Kylie Minogue are among the subjects of newly-released books

If music be the food of love, then play on, they say. Or, in this case, read on, as a flood of books about various areas of the music industry are upon us in the run-up to festive time. For fans of the dour and droll songwriting legend Leonard Cohen…

Books round-up winter 2012: new paperbacks

Aimee Bender and Joanne Harris among the authors releasing paperback editions this winter

With the recession still biting hard, a hardback option is still not open to everyone, so thank the heavens that some quality softer reads (in form rather than content) are about to hit the shelves. Aimee Bender (pictured) certainly knows how to name a…

Autumn books round-up: celebrity memoirs

Salman Rushdie, Paul Auster, Danny Baker and Jack Straw pen biographical tales

Why has Salman Rushdie penned an autobiography entitled Joseph Anton: A Memoir (Jonathan Cape), you’re definitely thinking? Well, because that was the moniker he chose for the police to call him during the time under the Ayatollah’s fatwa and this book…

August 2012 books round-up: travel

Travel books from Dom Joly, Tom Feiling, Guy Delisle, Cathy Birchall & Bernard Smith and Dan Smith

In Trigger Happy TV, Dom Joly filmed people dressing up as animals and upsetting or confusing the public at large. Whether this has any link whatsoever to his new book is wholly unclear. Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (Simon & Schuster) is not the…

August 2012 books round-up: debut fiction

First time authors this month include Paolo Sorrentino, Ariel S Winter and Sabina Berman

Whether you’re lazing on a beach or stuck indoors from the rain, there’s a host of exciting new debut fictions out in August for you to tear through. Film buffs will know Paolo Sorrentino from his directorial work on the likes of Il Divo and This Must…

New historical books round-up

Kate Summerscale, Paul French, Andrew Martin, Sarah Fraser and John Romer all to release new works

How do you follow up a mind-blowing success like The Suspicions of Mr Whicher? Well, if you’re Kate Summerscale, you understandably get right back onto that period saddle with Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace: The Private Diary of a Victorian Lady (Bloomsbury).

Crime books round-up – March 2012

Doug Johnstone, Alex Gray and Mari Jungstedt deliver new crime novels this month

As if to show that fiction readers love a good bit of murder and mystery, death and deceit, blood and booze, there’s acres of it about to be scattered around the nation’s book shelves. Doug Johnstone (of this parish) parks his Hit and Run (Faber) at our…

Rules of Civility, Queen of Kings, Spartan, The Submission and America Pacifica

Debut novels round-up

Described by David Nicholls as ‘a smart, witty, charming Dry Martini of a novel’, Rules of Civility (Sceptre) veers from a photographic exhibit in 1966 to a jazz bar on the last night of 1937. In this fizzing debut by Amor Towles (pictured), both places…

New music books: Luke Haines - Post Everything, Andy Kershaw - No Off Switch,

Simon Reynold - Retromania, Scott Weiland - Not Dead & Not for Sale

Semi-absent fans of former Auteur and Black Box Recorder man Luke Haines might have received something of a jolt on suddenly Googling him. The words on the second entry would have immediately caught the eye: ‘It is with deep regret that we have to…

Books from Mark Thomas, Emma Kennedy, Jon Richardson, Andy Riley and Paul Barker

Comedy books round-up March 2011

With the annual Glasgow comedy beanfeast having its last laughs, there are a bunch of opportunities to seek solace in book form. Extreme Rambling (Ebury) by Mark Thomas is the paper version of his current touring show in which he walks the entire length…

TV personalities make their way to the Book Festival

A set of small screen heroes gather up to chew some telly fat

Stephen Poliakoff, Nicholas Parsons, Elaine C Smith, Niall Ferguson, and John Simpson are coming to the Edinburgh Book Festival to talk about their life experiences in the world of television.

Festival Briefing 2010

Some things we think might help you at this year's festivals

Here's a short briefing about some things to look forward to during the Book Festival, the Fringe, in Music events, and Shopping opportunities in Edinburgh

5 Debut Novels for July 2010

Deborah Kay Davies - True Things About Me Welsh poet and short story writer with a debut novel about an unnamed woman whose life is unravelling through a tale of lust, obsession and violence. (Canongate) Jean Kwok - Girl in Translation Based…

Five paperback memoirs published in July 2010

Buzz Aldrin Magnificent Desolation The never-dull story of the moon landing and Buzz’s subsequent struggle to cope. Bloomsbury. Alex Marsh Sex & Bowls & Rock and Roll A terribly witty blog-to-book affair about a disillusioned househusband who finds…

Also Published: Short-story paperbacks

Keeping it brief

Janice Galloway - Collected Stories, Sarah Waters - Dancing With Mr Darcy, Annie Proulx - Fine Just the Way It Is, Catherine O'Flynn - Roads Ahead, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - The Thing Around Your Neck

Also published: Books

It'd be criminal to miss out on these

Stieg Larsson The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest The third volume of the bestselling Millenium Trilogy has Lisbeth Salander fighting corruption as she is set to face trial for three murders. Maclehose Press. Ruth Rendell The Monster in the…

Also published: 5 Unit-Shifters

Dan Brown The Lost Symbol You may have heard of his last book, The Finchley Coat or something. Bob Langdon is back with more ‘history, codes and intrigue’. Some copies are expected to be sold. Bantam Press. James Patterson Alex Cross’s Trial…

Glasgow homegrown events round-up

So, apparently there’s this … festival thing, happening in Edinburgh? Whatever. While the gallons of international acts pouring into the Capital at the beginning of August do traditionally tend to hog the headlines at this time of year, with loads of…

Film Book round up

Former stand-up comedian Robert Sellers hops across the pond to detail wild and fast times of Hollywood’s original bad boys with Bad Boy Drive (Preface) ●●●. Following on from his previous opus Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard…