An Interview with … Jackie Baldwin

Jackie Baldwin's debut novel, Dead Man's Prayer was published in 2016. Her second novel, Perfect Dead, will be published by Killer Reads, Harper Collins, on 15th June, 2018. Today we're talking about researching criminal investigations, creative inspiration, and surviving on a desert island. Hi Jackie, tell us a little about your writing to date. I started writing when …

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H. A. Leuschel’s Manipulated Lives

Manipulated Lives, Leuschel’s collection of long short stories, explores the many angles the manipulation of power can take within relationships. Leuschel establishes unnerving narratives which make for compulsive reading. Her research has evidently been thorough and she explores the psychological impact of emotional manipulation on those caught up in damaging relationships. In most of the …

An Interview with … Jeannie Wycherley

Today's guest at Books and Wine Gums is the wonderful Jeannie Wycherley, author of Crone (published by Bark at the Moon Books). Tell us a little about your debut novel, Crone. Crone centres on two very different women. Heather Keynes is a bereaved mother. Her teenage son was killed when the car he was travelling in hit …

An Interview with … Carmen Radtke

Carmen Radtke, also writing as Caron Albright, is my guest on Books and Wine Gums today. Her latest novel, A Matter of Love and Death, is published by Bombshell Books. Hi, Carmen. Tell us a little about your novels to date. I didn’t set out to specifically write historical mysteries, but it somehow happened. Maybe because …

Helen Dunmore’s Birdcage Walk

When I read a book in order to review it, and it is a physical copy, I use slips of paper, torn from whatever junk mail I have to hand, to mark pages which contain something noteworthy, something striking. By page 50 of Helen Dunmore’s final novel, I had realised the pointlessness of this strategy …

An Interview with … Stephanie C. Lyons-Keeley and Wayne J. Keeley

Today I'm talking to writing duo Stephanie C. Lyons-Keeley and Wayne J. Keeley, authors of Going All In, published by Melange Books. Tell us a little about your writing to date. Wayne: I am the published author of the legal thriller “Mahogany Row,” but honestly began writing short stories, poetry, and other works in childhood. Pursuing …

An interview with … Charlie Laidlaw

Today, I'm welcoming Charlie Laidlaw to Books and Wine Gums to talk about writing and his literary heroes. You can read my review of his novel, The Things We Learn When We're Dead here Hi Charlie, tell us a little about your writing to date. I’m also the author of The Herbal Detective, written as …

An interview with … Clare Swatman

Clare Swatman's first novel, Before You Go, was published by Pan Macmillan in 2017 and her new novel, The Mother’s Secret, will be out on 22 February 2018. Today we're chatting about writing, literary heroes, and wine gums. Hi Clare, tell us a little about your writing to date. I’ve always been a writer, and have …

The Beauties by Anton Chekhov

Pushkin Press have published a new edition of thirteen of Chekhov’s short stories, translated by Nicolas Pasternak Slater, and it makes for a fascinating read. The Beauties, the first in the collection, is perhaps typical of his style – a boy, out visiting with his uncle, is much taken with a beautiful young woman. Years …

Kevin Powers’ Letter Composed During a Lull in the Fighting: A War Poet of our Times

As long as war exists, it will perhaps be in our natures to try to capture it, perhaps to understand it, perhaps in some desperate way to learn something about it and about ourselves. In Last Post, her final poem of 1914 Poetry Remembers, Carol Ann Duffy imagines a world in which poetry can reverse …