Books

Mark E Smith with Austin Collings - Renegade: The Lives and Tales of Mark E Smith

8 May 2008

MUSIC BIOGRAPHY (Viking) The real joy of Mark E Smith and The Fall has always been expecting the unexpected. His music has always stuck to a rigid formula but is somehow never formulaic, and he’s survived every British musical subculture since punk…

Festival Books - Mark Watson

Eco-friendly, my dear Watson

21 Aug 2008

According to Mark Watson, saving the planet would, at the very least, ‘look pretty smart on all our CVs’. With an already sterling comedy résumé, Watson takes on environmentalism in his latest book, Crap at the Environment, which through the author’s…

Horrid Henry Day

27 Mar 2008

The naughtiest boy in children’s fiction has his very own day – 1 April, but Borders is getting in early to capture the weekend crowd. Help celebrate the tomfoolery of Francesca Simon’s most famous character at this fun session of Horrid Henry stories…

Found Magazine

2 Oct 2008

We’re a curious bunch us humans. We seem compelled to concern ourselves with the business of others, be it people-watching in bars or gazing into strangers’ front rooms. Now, there is a quiet phenomenon coming to our shores from America, offering a…

Jason - I Killed Adolf Hitler

29 Nov 2007

IDIOSYNCRATIC SCI-FI I Killed Adolf Hitler (Fantagraphics) Having re-imagined heavyweight modernist writing icons Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Ezra Pound as criminals involved in a heist in The Left Bank Gang, and plundered George Romeo’s zombie…

Lucy Hawking

19 Jul 2007

What do you do when your father is one of the world’s most respected theoretical physicists, author of the bestseller A Brief History of Time and you want to be a writer? The answer was obvious to Lucy Hawking, daughter of Stephen: write a book…

No Mean City: A Story of the Glasgow Slums - Alexander McArthur and H. Kingsley Long (1935)

1 Jan 2005

This cutting edge portrait of working-class life in the worst laid scheme in Scotland sticks out like a sore face. Rarely referred to by its subtitle or complimented for its subtlety, when it was first published Glasgow libraries refused to stock it…

Simon Schama - The American Future: A History

2 Oct 2008

With its military overstretched, natural resources running dry and markets fluctuating wildly, America faces the biggest presidential election in generations this November. You might scoff that a country which gave George ‘Dubya’ Bush two terms in…

Found Magazine - Tales from the unexpected

2 Oct 2008

What’s the best thing you’ve found? There’s a note I found in our hometown, I think I just found it next to my bike one day. It’s a pretty handsome looking flyer, and it says, ‘Please Lock This Door. It will prevent unauthorised people from entering…

Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - interview with Alan Grant and Cam Kennedy

14 Feb 2008

Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde has spawned countless adaptations since its publication in 1885. The stage play ran for 20 years and there have been numerous film versions, with stars as diverse as Fredric March, Spencer Tracy and…

Charles M Schulz - Small world

15 Nov 2007

It’s the little things that make the difference. In the case of the Charles M Schulz cartoon strips, that could mean the smallest of pen strokes for a raised eyebrow, an extra crease on a forehead, the downward bend on the ends of a mouth. Schulz…

CHEETA - Me Cheeta: The Autobiography

2 Oct 2008

SHOWBIZ SATIRE At first glance it might sound as daft as a bag of monkey nuts. But this ‘autobiography’ of the septuagenarian chimpanzee who became world famous as the companion of Johnny Weissmuller’s Tarzan is actually a brilliantly conceived and…

In England - interview with Don McCullin

1 Nov 2007

Don McCullin might seem like some kind of anachronistic beast among the top photographers today. Not for him the simpering vanities of celebrityhood; he has always been far more interested in the real problems that face ordinary people on a daily basis.

Andrew Marr

16 Aug 2007

Andrew Marr has always used his vast intellect with such wit and verve that he has always come across as a political pundit real people could enjoy. It’s hard to imagine David Frost interviewing Gordon Brown on a Sunday morning, as Marr did last month…

Beano Annual 2007

(DC Thompson)

11 Dec 2006

COMIC ANNUAL It’s pretty much business as usual in Beano-land, you’ll be glad to hear: we open at the ‘Softies Fashion and Fabric Show’ where Walter and a couple of equally flamboyant chums vie for the lead in The Naked Civil Servant. Inside…

Ali Smith - The First Person and Other Stories

2 Oct 2008

SHORT STORIES In this, her fourth collection of short stories, Ali Smith sets out her philosophical stall as quickly as she can. Her opening tale, ‘True Short Story’, ponders the very nature of the form itself as two men debate the merits of the…

Also Published - 5 Humour Books

2 Oct 2008

Benrik Ltd - A Book for People Who Want to Become Stinking Rich But Aren’t Quite Sure How The folk who annually bring us This Diary Will Change Your Life offer tips on overhauling airport security and getting really close to the mega-famous. Boxtree…

Alice Munro

Canadian legend in LongPen revolution

9 Aug 2007

A standard piece of advice given to budding fiction writers eager for publication is to forget airy fairy, uncommercial notions of publishing short stories and dive headfirst into the novel.

A Sense of Freedom - Jimmy Boyle (1977)

1 Jan 2005

This is one of the most important books ever published about crime and punishment in Britain. A Sense of Freedom is the autobiographical account of how a boy from the Gorbals grew up in the gang culture of the 60s to become 'Scotland's Most Violent…

Kids' events

23 Aug 2007

The last few days of the kids programme takes a walk on the dark side with scary-sounding events such as Night of the Living Horror (25 Aug, 6pm) which opens up a world of gothic terror for those aged ten plus, though Justin Somper and his Vampirates…

American Literature

Born fighting

24 Apr 2007

At the exact moment Chuck Palahniuk greets me with a hushed ‘Hello?’ his home in south-western Washington State is being invaded by a group of unfamiliar men who are chanting in unison at the author: ‘His name is Robert Paulson!’

Tibor Fischer - Good to be God

4 Sep 2008

Tyndale Corbett is worried that 'do-gooding, over-forgiving softies' have given religion a bad name. After stealing a friend's identity and fleeing to Miami to escape his dead-end existence, he wants to con a congregation into believing he's God.

No more heroes - graphic novels

Edinburgh International Book Festival

22 Jul 2008

The Book Festival is once again acknowledging the rapid expansion in graphic novels. Henry Northmore chats to a number of comic book guys (and girl) to ask what the future may hold for the superhero While graphic novels may be still be a minority…

Charlie Higson - Young Bond 3

Charlie Higson

6 Dec 2006

ADVENTURE TALE Although his previous two Young Bond adventures have been successes in their own right, the franchise’s revival thanks to Casino Royale should ensure that this third adventure by Charlie Fast Show Higson eclipses those predecessors.

Harry Hill

Horsing around

28 Sep 2006

Ricky Gervais, Charlie Higson, Nigel Planer: many a British comedian has deviated into the world of children’s literature. Yet none of them seemed quite so born to it as Harry Hill. The question wasn’t so much if the man who created the ‘Badger Parade…

Harry Hill - Tim the Tiny Horse at Large

18 Sep 2008

KIDS STORY You can virtually smell Harry Hill at his keyboard, big collar tickling his neck, tongue flicking in and out (‘hmm, hmm, yeah, hmm?’), eyes blinking maniacally as the ideas bristle through his cranium. There is a chance, of course, that he…

All the world’s a stage

15 Sep 2008

Merchant City Festival (25-28 Sep) www.merchantcityfestival.com Located in the heart of old Glasgow, this event locates a programme of film, theatre, comedy, visual arts, street theatre, live music, food and fashion within an area of real…

Frank Miller & Jim Lee - All Star Batman and Robin

14 Aug 2008

COMIC (DC/Titan) Frank Miller and Jim Lee tackle the world’s greatest detective and the boy wonder in this sister title to Grant Morrison and Frank Quietly’s All Star Superman. The first nine issues of the ongoing series are collected here, and like…

Bidisha - Venetian Masters: Under the Skin of the City of Love

28 Feb 2008

TRAVELOGUE (Summersdale) Bidisha probably had good reason to feel jaded with her pressured life of academia and media in London. After signing her first book deal at 16, the precocious novelist and arts journo spent the next decade writing for…

Preview of the year 2007

2007 is about the future. And about the past. It’

3 Jan 2007

THE FUTURE Cyberspace invaders We may not be flying around in hover cars or wearing spangly all-silver outfits, but thanks to the internet the future has truly arrived. And the revolution will continue apace in 2007, argues Suzanne Black. A…

Annie Proulx - Fine Just the Way It Is

4 Sep 2008

Fine Just the Way It Is marks Annie Proulx's return to Wyoming, the setting of two previous collections of short stories. The cast is, at once, familiar and fantastic. The devil refurbishes hell, adding to the décor centuries of portraits by mortals…

Judge Anderson: Shamballa

4 Sep 2008

One of the distinct classes amongst the Judges is the 'PSI Division' a group who use their psychic abilities (mind reading, precognition, telekinesis, etc) to uphold Mega City One's draconian laws, and blonde bombshell Judge Anderson is the most gifted…

Helen Walsh

13 Mar 2008

Helen Walsh has lived a little. At 13, while her classmates in Warrington were flicking through Smash Hits, she was swept up in the early 90s euphoria of acid house and ecstasy. At 16, as most girls her age sat their GCSEs, she was hooked on cocaine and…

Alistair Findlay (ED) - 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems

29 Nov 2007

POETRY 100 Favourite Scottish Football Poems (Luath) When it comes to transferring the beautiful game into the arts sphere, all we can see is a litany of own goals. Can you remember a half-decent football film? No, Escape to Victory doesn’t count…

Slam

Nick Hornby

20 Sep 2007

Sam is 15. He skates, chases girls and narrates his own coming-of-age novel. Things are going well until he gets one of those girls pregnant and is introduced to the world of adult responsibility. Plus, his father figure is a poster of pro-skater Tony…

Consider the Lilies - Iain Crichton Smith (1968)

1 Jan 2005

Iain Crichton Smith was, and is, lovingly acknowledged as one of modern Scotland’s foremost writers, wits and all-round ‘characters’. Generations of readers have grown up holding close to their hearts (and exam cram sheets) one or other of his terse…

SMITH Magazine - One Life, Six Words, What’s Yours?

2 Oct 2008

MINIMALIST MEMOIRS Ernest Hemingway, challenged to write a six-word story, came up with ‘For sale: baby shoes, never worn’. Inspired by that, literary website SMITH Magazine accumulated six-word memoirs from everyday punters and authors alike. This…

Curt Sibling - Total Fear: Collection 2

2 Oct 2008

CARTOON SATIRE It’s obvious right away that pseudonymous Scots comic creator Curt Sibling is taking the mickey, but the way in which he does it really has to be spot-on in its execution to succeed. This self-published, black and white anthology takes…

Various - Superman: Emperor Joker

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN (DC) Despite an impressive writing team – including Jeph Loeb, JM DeMatteis and Ed McGuinness – Emperor Joker is a mess. This time, Superman takes on the harlequin of hate in a reality-warping tale as the Joker takes on God-like…

Alexander Terekhov - The Rat Killer

5 Jun 2008

ALLEGORICAL DRAMA (Alma Books) Alexander Terekhov wrote this political allegory when he was 27. Bad timing meant it failed to make waves outside Russia, as critics were busy unearthing older, established writers suppressed under the communist regime.

Alan Grant, Jamie Grant & Various - Wasted No.1

22 May 2008

ANTHOLOGY (Bad Press) Devised by sometime 2000AD writer Alan Grant, and the artists at Glasgow’s Hope Street Studios (which includes the All-Star Superman team of Jamie Grant – no relation to Alan – and cover artist Frank Quitely), Wasted is the…

Patience Agbabi - Bloodshot Monochrome

10 Apr 2008

POETRY ANTHOLOGY (Canongate) There’s definitely something about the label ‘radical feminist bisexual performance poet’ that conjures up images of a woman with multiple axes to grind. Luckily, Patience Agbabi, a former Eton writer-in-residence and…

The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency

13 Mar 2008

If there is still such a thing as ‘appointment television’ in this multi-channel age, The No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency is it. The adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s much- loved novel arrives on the small screen this fortnight thanks to a wealth of…

Scottish crime writing

1 Nov 2007

‘Ah, well. If you’re Scottish, and you’re writing crime fiction, at some point someone is going to hail you as “the new Ian Rankin” until they remember, no, actually Ian Rankin is still there. Alex Gray has been described as the Glaswegian Ian Rankin.

Peter York & Olivia Stewart-Liberty

18 Oct 2007

SOCIAL HANDBOOK Cooler, Faster, More Expensive: The Return of the Sloane Ranger (Atlantic) Conspicuous for their vast, inherited wealth, public school education and cushy jobs in the City, Sloanes (aka ‘rahs’, ‘yahs’ or ‘upper class twats’…

Captain America: The Chosen No 1

David Morrell & Mitch Breitweiser

20 Sep 2007

In the current Marvel universe, Captain America is dead. Still, that doesn’t stop him being reincarnated when David Morrell – the novelist who created Rambo – comes calling for a scripting job. The majority of this first issue of six is about as…

Ewan Morrison

23 Aug 2007

For any writer who spends most of their time away all on their own in a darkened corner, it’s essential to have a release and to get some thoughts on their work from people they know and trust. For an author such as Ewan Morrison, dubbed notoriously as…

Batman Black & White Volume 3

(DC/Titan)

9 Aug 2007

Usually at home as a simple back-up slot in the monthly Batman: Gotham Knights, Batman Black & White has taken on a life of its own and has quickly become a jewel in the crown of DC’s myriad caped crusader titles. A creative playground for various…

Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross - Marvels

2 Oct 2008

SUPERHERO Comics are often repackaged and reprinted, sometimes seemingly ad infinitum, but when it’s as gorgeous a package as 1994’s Marvels it’s hard to argue with another opportunity for new readers to discover such a wonderfully rounded work of…

Andrew Davidson - The Gargoyle

18 Sep 2008

GOTHIC TALE With so many books on all our to-read lists, brevity is a virtue. The Gargoyle flouts this with great success. Framed by the sceptical voice of a severely burned car crash victim, events swing from medieval times to the present, from…

John Dolmayan

18 Sep 2008

There are plenty of famous faces who love comics: Jonathan Ross, Edward Norton, Sam Raimi, Jon Bon Jovi, Simon Pegg, Jerry Seinfeld, Quentin Tarantino and Nicolas Cage. Even Anthrax wrote ‘I am the Law’ about Judge Dredd. But not many are as passionate…

Marilynne Robinson - Home

18 Sep 2008

FAMILY DRAMA With its groaningly slow pace and scriptural debate-heavy prose, labouring through Marilynne Robinson’s thick-set third novel – a companion piece of sorts to 2005’s Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead – is an experience recommended only to the…

Various (Ed: Paul Gravett) - The Mammoth Book of Best Crime Comics

18 Sep 2008

ANTHOLOGY Lead by Frank Miller’s nightmare-noir Sin City series, crime comics are enjoying a resurgence in creativity and popularity the like of which hasn’t been seen since the genre dominated the American newspaper ‘funnies’ in the 1930s. Which…

Sean Connery & Murray Grigor - Being a Scot

4 Sep 2008

Many Scots cynics, upon seeing the title of this new coffee table volume by our most famous actor, might be inspired to enquire just how much research on the subject can be done by an ex-pat who hasn't lived in the country for decades. It's an…

Alan Moore & Brian Bolland - Batman: The Killing Joke

17 Jul 2008

SUPER VILLAIN (DC) New blockbuster Dark Knight is all about the Joker. At first glance he’s almost a comedy character, but in the right hands he can be genuinely terrifying. As a character, The Joker represents insanity at it’s worst; a gibbering…

Batman: Gotham Knight

DVD Review

17 Jul 2008

Intended to fill the gaps between Batman Begins and Dark Knight, Gotham Knights offers us six animated shorts, much in the same way as The Animatrix did for The Matrix. Each story is self-contained and created by a different writer (including Greg…

Glen Neath - The Fat Plan

17 Jul 2008

FICTION (Portobello) The trouble with writing a novel satirising the mundanity of life and the mind numbing tedium of bureaucracy is, well, it risks being mundane and tedious. This second minimalist novel from Neath aims at the likes of Beckett…

Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale - Hulk: Gray

5 Jun 2008

SUPERHERO (Marvel) He’s probably as famous for his tough green hide as his anger-management problems but the Hulk has spent several years as a grey goliath (in fact he was grey in his first ever appearance in 1962). Some creative teams work…

HarperCollins to launch social networking site for authors

9 May 2008

HarperCollins UK has released its new social networking site Authonomy in private beta. The book publisher first announced the initiative in October 2007, and the site was expected to launch in early 2008. Authonomy aims to connect aspiring authors…

Richard Cowdry & Various - The Bedsit Journal No 2

8 May 2008

COMPILATION (Bedsit Journal) Marshalled together by the artist and writer Richard Cowdry whose previous comic seed bombs include Kartoon Cuts and Knucklehead, this funny, bitter and vulgar collection of new comic book talent proves what can be done…

Mark Millar

14 Feb 2008

Despite being one of the most successful writers of comics ever, Mark Millar still resides in Coatbridge. Like most UK writers he earned his stripes on 2000AD. ‘The older guys like Grant Morrison, Pete Milligan, Alan Grant and John Wagner had all…

Allan Guthrie - Savage Night

14 Feb 2008

CRIME THRILLER (Polygon) As the winner of last year’s Theakston’s Old Peculiar Crime Novel of the Year, Edinburgh’s Allan Guthrie is right at the forefront of the expanding sub-genre known as Tartan Noir. That Ian Rankin, the godfather of the style…

Crime Scene: Edinburgh - the Ian Rankin exhibition

1 Nov 2007

There’s a pleasing circularity to this exhibition at the National Library. Ian Rankin wrote much of Knots and Crosses, the first Rebus book, in the reading room here, thanks to a PhD thesis on Muriel Spark that fell by the wayside. With Rankin’s famed…

Helen Mirren - In the Frame: My Life in Words and Pictures

Memoir

4 Oct 2007

‘I have a blissfully forgetful brain,’ Helen Mirren informs us in the opening paragraph of her autobiography, which hardly bodes well for a book which demands total recall. But Mirren has dredged the past up from somewhere, or someone, because In the…

Ian Rankin interview

6 Sep 2007

So this is the end, then. Well, perhaps not quite. Exit Music, the much trumpeted latest work from Ian Rankin sees his world famous cynical copper Detective Inspector Rebus handing in his warrant card for the last time and retiring permanently to the…

Roddy Doyle

(Jonathan Cape)

23 Aug 2007

In light of the lucrative offers put his way over the years to pen a full sequel to his 1987 classic The Commitments, it’s so very Roddy Doyle that he instead gave one of the book’s major characters – manager Jimmy Rabbite – a rebirth in the pages of a…

No One Belongs Here More Than You

21 May 2007

SHORT STORIES I’ll admit, I feared this book. A debut collection of short stories from an LA-based performance artist and indie filmmaker? Surely it’s going to be all pointlessly quirky characters, self-obsessed existential ennui and vacuous…

Walk the Blue Fields

7 May 2007

SHORT STORIES

The Coral Island - R. M. Ballantyne (1858)

1 Jan 2005

Reading The Coral Island after a 40-year gap, I found I knew whole passages almost by heart. Had I read it that often? Ballantyne's stories, which began with his own adventures as an employee of the Hudson's Bay Company, successfully nourished…

The House with the Green Shutters - George Douglas Brown (1901)

1 Jan 2005

Oh God, what was I thinking? Why did I sign up to review a book that has a boring title, is more than 100 years old, was a one-hit wonder, and is beloved of crusty old academics who boff on about its model of classical Greek tragedy? It’s got to be…

The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde - Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

1 Jan 2005

It’s the book everybody thinks they know, but may never have actually read, the iconic Scottish story. One man downs his own slightly unconvincing chemical experiment and becomes two: the good guy and the bad guy. As the bad guy, he wallows in vices and…

Mark Doty - Theories and Apparitions

2 Oct 2008

POETRY COLLECTION Mark Doty’s talent has always been in bringing elegance to simple, normally very recognisable, snapshots from everyday life. The American poet starts out with a plain observation – some rude truck driver tearing up the NYC streets…

Garth Ennis & Gary Erskine - Dan Dare

2 Oct 2008

SCI-FI ADVENTURE Following cold on the heels of Grant Morrison and Rian Hughes’ controversial, and some might say ugly, early 90s update of Britain’s noblest comics hero, this seven-part revival from Richard Branson’s comics line, now repackaged in…

Also Published - 5 Celebrity Memoirs

18 Sep 2008

Roger Moore - My Word is My Bond Seems like it’s 007 memoir season as Alan Partridge’s favourite Bond suavely knocks out his story, an all-true tale of a childhood in WW2 London and hanging out with the stars in Tinseltown. Michael O’Mara . Julie…

Janice Galloway - A Selfless Act

Interview

4 Sep 2008

After an absence of six years, Janice Galloway has returned with a memoir rather than a novel. Her fans won't be disappointed, though. Kirstin Innes meets her

Arnaldur Indridason - Arctic Chill

4 Sep 2008

Crime fiction is routinely disregarded by literary types, but at its best it can provide the kind of sharp commentary on society that a million Oxbridge dinner party novels could only dream of. Arnaldur Indridason's Icelandic crime procedurals are…

Great expectations

Programme announced at Wigtown Book Festival

4 Sep 2008

Book lovers have little reason to be disappointed following the launch of this year's sizeable Wigtown Book Festival programme. Taking place over ten days, the event will boast over 130 talks, debates, theatre, film and activities, organiser's revealed…

Janice Galloway interview: full transcript

4 Sep 2008

Transcript of an interview that took place in the residence drawing room of the Scotsman Hotel in Edinburgh on Friday the 22nd of August. Janice Galloway is interviewed about the first volume of her memoirs, This Is Not About Me, which covers her life…

Judge Death: Young Death Boyhood of a Super-fiend

4 Sep 2008

Every hero needs an arch-nemesis. For Dredd that nemesis is Judge Death. In many ways he's taken Dredd's morality to the ultimate extreme with the idea that all crime is caused by the living, so life itself should be a crime. Unfortunately there has…

Judge Dredd: The Complete Case Files 10

4 Sep 2008

Judge Dredd is surely the greatest British comic character. He's graced the pages of 2000AD since in 1977, and in 2008 his maxim 'I Am the Law' still rings true. The ultimate judge, jury and executioner. It's a distopian future where the radioactive…

Dave McKean

The comics guy who connects with rock stars and chefs

14 Aug 2008

An illustration masterclass from Dave McKean is a very special thing indeed. As one of the most innovative illustrators in Britain, his association with Neil Gaiman has raised him to a near-deity among comic fans and goths, providing the covers for all…

Edinburgh Book Festival 2008

edfest.tv - video

5 Aug 2008

25 years young and growing bigger and better… Catch up on this year's contents via the enthusiasm of EBF Director Catherine Lockerbie.

Andy Diggle & Jock - Green Arrow: Year One

31 Jul 2008

SUPERHERO (DC/Titan) Former 2000AD editor Andy Diggle is another Brit making a name for himself in the world of US comics with stints on ‘Batman’, ‘Hellblazer’ and ‘Swamp Thing’ under his belt. Once again teaming up with frequent collaborator Jock…

Stona Fitch - Senseless

31 Jul 2008

THRILLER (Two Ravens) Both deeply thought-provoking and often truly stomach-turning, Senseless is an existential thriller told with brutal clarity and dealing with cruelty, voyeurism, consumerism and globalisation. Elliott Gast is a wealthy American…

Stranger in a strange land

17 Jul 2008

Amazingly, Strange & Stranger is the first critical retrospective of the life and work of legendary American comic book artist Steve Ditko. The shy son of Eastern European immigrants who was born in Pennsylvania in 1927 may have languished in relative…

Stephen McGinty - Fire in the Night: The Piper Alpha Disaster

3 Jul 2008

SCOTTISH HISTORY (Macmillan) The Scotsman journalist Stephen McGinty’s Fire in the Night is a moment-by-hideous-moment account of the Piper Alpha oil platform disaster in which 167 men died, and published to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the…

The Best of Roy of the Rovers: The 1980s

22 May 2008

Forget Teddy Sheringham or Craig Brewster. Each would have to play on for almost another 20 years to match the footballing career of Roy Race, who turned out for and then player-managed the famous Melchester Rovers from 1954 to 1993 (with a brief…

Garth Ennis & Darick Robertson - The Boys II

8 May 2008

SUPERHERO SATIRE (Titan) Some 20 years ago Alan Moore asked the question: ‘Who watches The Watchmen?’ Garth Ennis answers the question with this anarchic superhero satire about a gang of super-powered, CIA-backed thugs who police – with extreme…

Andrew Drummond - Elephantina

24 Apr 2008

HISTORICAL TALE (Polygon) Scottish author Andrew Drummond has a strong reputation for writing comedic historical novels, and while this third book covers similar territory, it seems thinner on substance than his previous outings. Purporting to be the…

Film Books Round-Up

10 Apr 2008

The debate about US cinema from the late 1960s continues with Yale graduate Mark Harris’ Scenes from a Revolution (Canongate ••••). It starts with the fairly flaky premise that the 1967 Academy Award ceremony was the night that the new Hollywood was…

Controversial British writer denied entry to America

20 Mar 2008

Author Sebastian Horsley was refused entry to the United States yesterday as he arrived to promote Dandy in the Underworld, his controversial memoir of drug addiction, sex and his dysfunctional family, his publisher confirmed. Seale Ballenger…

Also Published - 5 Unit Shifters

28 Feb 2008

Jeffrey Archer - A Prisoner of Birth He just can’t get free of that prison cell, can he? Belmarsh is the setting for a revenge drama where an innocent man has been sent down at HM’s pleasure. Macmillan . Louis de Bernières - A Partisan’s Daughter A…

Mark Everett interview

Family plot

31 Jan 2008

When Mark Oliver Everett was nine years old and home alone, a plane crashed in his neighbourhood. Stumbling outside, he wandered through the carnage of burning wreckage and body parts before returning to his house. ‘Just another day in my weird life,…

Bernhard Schlink - Homecoming

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

31 Jan 2008

A scrap of pulp fiction marks the beginning of a life-long journey for Peter Debauer in this personal account of a fatherless boy in postwar Germany. The fiction, which describes a soldier’s return, has mysterious parallels with Debauer’s own life and…

Edge presents: The 100 Best Videogames - book review

13 Dec 2007

If you really appreciate the art of videogames there’s only one magazine that matters: Edge, the serious gamer’s magazine that takes a genuinely adult and considered look at gaming culture. So when they produce a top 100 you know it’s likely to be an…

Also Published - 5 US Crime Dramas

29 Nov 2007

Otto Penzler (ed) Dead Man’s Hand A collection of newly written poker-based tales from crime writers such as Jeffrey Deaver, Michael Connelly and Walter Mosley. Quercus. James Lee Burke The Tin Roof Blowdown A cache of stolen diamonds has floated…

Robin Ramsay - Who Shot JFK?

29 Nov 2007

TRUE CRIME Who Shot JFK? (Pocket Essentials) Early on in this pacy dissection of the current state of the JFK assassination industry, Robin Ramsay asks why we should still be bothered about the slaying of an American president in downtown Dallas…

Loung Ung

Edinburgh International Book Festival

19 Jul 2007

Edinburgh International Book Festival Surviving the peace Author, campaigner and victim of Pol Pot’s regime in Cambodia, bestselling writer Loung Ung talks to Allan Radcliffe about how she managed to carry on after the hell of the killing fields

A Concussed History of Scotland - Frank Kuppner (1990)

1 Jan 2005

The kind of exercise in post-modernity that makes traditionalists drop their monocles in disbelief at the self-indulgence of it all, A Concussed History of Scotland earned Kuppner huge critical acclaim but, perhaps understandably, didn’t trouble any…

The Magic Flute - Alan Spence (1990)

1 Jan 2005

For over 25 years, Alan Spence's uncanny talent for cosmically transforming the seemingly everyday in city life has been showcased in poetry, drama, short stories and novels. In just three deceptively simple lines in the poem 'ah', Spence perfectly…