Come and escape from the world in some great books!
I’m hoping it will not be the essay I proposed to Mrs Morgan. I’m hoping it will be the truth. What really happened to Andie Bell on the 20th April 2012? And – as my instincts tell me – if Salil ‘Sal’ Singh is not guilty, then who killed her? How would a community react… Continue reading The Good Girl’s Guide to Murder
“The morning has turned lavishly beautiful. The autumn sun gave the greens of the fields an impossible, mythic radiance and transformed the back roads into light-muddled paths where a goblin with a fiddle, or a pretty maiden with a basket, could be waiting around every game and-bramble bend. Cal is in no mood to appreciate… Continue reading The Searcher, Tana French
“I don't need you to be mad that it happened. I need you to be mad that it just like... happens.” I have been holding fire on reviewing this book for a few weeks because it is a - a difficult, problematic novel in my view. A novel which is almost good, almost dealt with… Continue reading Book Review: Such A Fun Age, Kiley Reid
“Too many words,” said Gideon confidentially. “How about these: One flesh, one end, bitch.” How do you review a book like Gideon the Ninth? It is a book that I loved! But it is also a book that has many flaws, alongside all those elements that rightly deserve praise. A book that gloriously refuses to… Continue reading Book Review: Gideon the Ninth, Tamsyn Muir
“Believe me,” the badshah says, “today or tomorrow, every one of us will lose someone close to us, someone we love. The lucky ones are those who can grow old pretending they have some control over their lives, but even they will realize at some point that everything is uncertain, bound to disappear forever. We… Continue reading Djinn Patrol on the Purple Line, Deepa Anappara
For a novel so deeply deeply contemporary, there is a timelessness about Smith's writing and prose, accentuated by the interplay of ideas and characters between the four novels in the Quartet. These are luminous books that recognise and celebrate the presence of the past in the present.
All it would take - so I believed - was one ruler willing to allow people of different faiths to live alongside one another without persecution, and surely they would begin to recognise that their common humanity superseded the division they had been taught to fear? The Tudor period does hold such a firm and… Continue reading Execution, S. J. Parris
“Anyone, Eliza is thinking, who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices... Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets?
“I'm just a girl.""It is tragic how well you have been taught to say that with sadness rather than triumph.” Patrick Ness... Dragons... The Cold War... yes please! It is no shock to readers of this blog that Patrick Ness is one of my favourite authors: the Chaos Walking Trilogy, A Monster Calls - which… Continue reading Burn, Patrick Ness
Aleja is a dreamer who longs for a life of magic and adventure. So when a mysterious ship arrives in her Spanish harbour city, crewed by a band of ruthless women, Aleja knows it's sailed right out of a legend.And it wants her.But life aboard the Ship of Shadows is more than even she bargained for. It will… Continue reading The Ship of Shadows, Maria Kuzniar
I remember seeing Daisy on the dance floor one night at the Whisky. Everybody saw her. Your eye went right to her. If the rest of the world was silver, Daisy was gold.
Anthony Horowitz... creator of Alex Rider and Christopher Foyle, writer for Midsomer Murders from its inception, trusted with the legacy of Sherlock Holmes and James Bond. If you were ever looking for a safe pair of hands for a light-hearted, entertaining detective novel, Anthony Horowitz is it! His two recent (currently unconnected but very similar)… Continue reading Moonflower Murders, Anthony Horowitz
For the sisters & the sistas & the sistahs & the sistren & the women & the womxn & the wimmin & the womyn & our brethren & our bredrin & our brothers & our bruvs & our men & our mandem & the LGBTQI+ members of the human family
Aeons passed… worlds span and whirled… Time was motionless… It stood still - it passed through a thousand ages… No, it was only a minute or so… Two people were standing looking down on a dead man…
“A hero does not choose her trials. She steps into the darkness, then she faces what comes next.” As we left Skyward, Spensa appeared to have become the hero she wanted to, as courageous as Beowulf and the heroes of the Viking (and other) sagas that Gran-Gran had fed her with: she had saved Alta… Continue reading Starsight, Brandon Sanderson
Opening with that echo of the famous first line of Moby-Dick, Bathsheba is telling her tale as a cautionary warning, a plea, a prophecy. A cautionary tale which, for all the fantastical elements, sounds terribly relevant to and important for the world we are living in.
an extraordinary and breathtaking piece of writing which leaves only one question: why has it not been listed for the Women's Prize for Fiction?
So much more than a "black Bridget Jones"
It does look like this blog has become a Natasha Pulley fanclub recently! Some of that has been catching up with my reviews, amd I have been reading other people - in fact, this is the first of three reviews needing to be written so I had better get on with it - but if… Continue reading The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, Natasha Pulley
Who wouldn't fancy a jaunt out into the wilderness in these days of social isolation and lockdowns? And the jungles and mountains of darkest Peru - I'm sorry, but Peru is forever linked to Paddington Bear and Aunt Lucy for me - retain a mystery and a mystique even today. Imagining ourselves in 1859, heading… Continue reading The Bedlam Stacks, Natasha Pulley
At first glance, this novel appeared to be treading familiar ground: the gaslit streets of a fogbound London, hanson cabs, Fenian plots. One expects to be run down by Sherlock Holmes at any moment whenever Thaniel Steepleton ventures outside. Yet, from the outset, Pulley's novel bursts with a lively prose and wry narrative voice which… Continue reading The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Natasha Pulley
“All you can do, Rosemary — all any of us can do — is work to be something positive instead. That is a choice that every sapient must make every day of their life. The universe is what we make of it. It’s up to you to decide what part you will play. And what I see in you is a woman who has a clear idea of what she wants to be... You’re trying to be someone good.”
“We used to live out there, among the stars,” he whispered. “That’s where we belong, not in those caverns. The kids who make fun of you, they’re trapped on this rock. Their heads are heads of rock, their hearts set upon rock. Set your sights on something higher. Something more grand.”
The Book Lovers' Sanctuary 
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