Crooked Heart – Lissa Evans

As regular followers may remember, I absolutely loved Old Baggage’s Mattie Simpkin. Published as a prequel after Crooked Heart, it provided readers with Mattie’s story in 1928. Crooked Heart, although the first of the two novels, moves forward a decade and Mattie, very sadly, is now suffering with dementia and ‘looking after’ a godson, Noel. …

Advent – Jane Fraser

There's a special sort of joy in reading a novel set in a landscape you love and know well. Better yet if the novel is beautifully written by an exciting new voice in literature. And Jane Fraser's debut novel, published by Honno Press, is just that. Even if you don't know the Gower before you …

Small Pleasures – Clare Chambers

The beautiful cover aside, and I did buy it purely because of that cover, this is such a good read. Based, initially at least, on a real story from 1955, in which a woman comes forward to claim a virgin birth, Chambers has given us a compelling and warm-hearted story that is both a mystery …

The Secret Agent – Elisabeth Hobbes

Elisabeth Hobbes is charting new territory here, and the result is superb. A seasoned writer of Medieval and Victorian historical romances for Harlequin, she is now striking out with a new publisher, One More Chapter, and she's jumped forward into the heady and terrifying world of occupied France. Sylvie, or Sylvia, as the more restrained …

In Darkling Wood – Emma Carroll

To be honest, Carroll had me at ‘darkling’. As Alice, her teenage heroine, says, there’s something spooky about it, ‘It’s a funny word. Old-sounding.’ And then it was the marvellous cover. Fortunately for my high expectations, the rest of the book was brilliant. Alice has come to stay with her spiky and solitary grandmother at …

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden

I’m divided on this one, I have to confess. He’s one of my favourite writers, I was fairly gripped by the plot… but there’s also much about this novel I didn’t like. Beginning in the 1860s, the story follows two families new to the Salinas Valley, the Trasks and the Hamiltons. The latter have been …

The Mirror and The Light – Hilary Mantel

I waited a long time to witness Thomas Cromwell’s death – after all, Mantel’s trilogy concerns a period in which such deaths were public spectacles – and when it finally came to it (that is surely not a spoiler), it was heart-wrenchingly tragic. I’m still experiencing that sense of loss that follows the end of …

Children of Fire – Paul CW Beatty #BlogTour #Review

Josiah ran flat out over the lip of the dell and off along the path weaving in and out of the trees to make the marksman’s aim harder. It was nearly forty seconds before the next shot came, this time well off target but the time between hearing the ball and the report was reduced. …

West by Carys Davies

This is a perfect gem of a novel. Like some of the very best American tales (I guess I'm thinking Of Mice and Men here) less is certainly more, and Davies has packed a beautifully-told tale in 149 pages. Every sentence manages to be both spare and purposeful. Her quixotic protagonist, Cy Bellman, follows a …