Lanny by Max Porter #BookerPrize2019

I love this time of year – the announcement of the Booker Longlist signals the onset of Autumn and gives me just the sort of challenge I like. Admittedly, I haven’t actually got round to reading last year’s winner yet, and I can never call it in terms of who should be shortlisted, but I …

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Secrets of a Highland Warrior – Nicole Locke #BlogTour #LochmoreLegacy

‘… Rory’s eyes locked with hers and she knew he understood a fraction of a moment before she did how Lochmores could gain more without a fight. ‘All you need to is marry my daughter.’’ Locke’s Secrets of a Highland Warrior is a very satisfying conclusion to an excellent series. Locke has pulled together the …

Lissa Evans’ Old Baggage – simply marvellous.

Mattie Simpkin is a brilliant character. There’s been so much written on the fight for female emancipation, both in fiction and elsewhere, but Evans’ novel, set in 1928, is a moving and often very funny account of what a woman like Mattie, an ardent suffragette and unflagging campaigner for equality, does next. ‘Mattie wore her …

‘There She Blows’ – Herman Melville’s Moby Dick

Well, that was some read. I read quickly (it’s my only useful skill) and this has taken me weeks. It’s on a par with Richardson’s Clarissa in terms of the stamina required, but I’m glad I’ve read it - and unlike my experience with Richardson’s epic tome, I wasn’t being whipped along by the demands …

A Right Royal Face-Off by Simon Edge #BlogTour

Previous centuries, in my head at least, have very distinct identities. The 13th Century is bloody and muddy, the 16th Century is a rip-roaring adventure in all sorts of ways, and the 19th Century is earnestly tedious and a bit worthy. The ‘long’ 18th Century feels like the witty, clever century, and it is in …

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 …

Charlie Laidlaw’s The Space Between Time

As in his previous novel, The Things We Learn When We're Dead, Charlie Laidlaw has taken on both the intensely personal and big sweeping ideas about time and space, examining what it is to be human, and situating his narrator’s existence in North Berwick within a much wider cosmic scale. I very much enjoyed The …

Gordon Kerr’s The Partisan Heart #BlogTour

Following his wife’s tragic death, Michael Keats’ grief is compounded by the discovery that she had been having an affair. This revelation leads Michael to Italy, his wife’s home country, where he becomes embroiled in tensions which date back to the 1940s. The violence and loyalties of the past reverberate down the years, and Michael …

What’s Left Unsaid – Deborah Stone

Deborah Stone’s novel begins with Joe telling us, from beyond the grave it quickly transpires, that he and his wife, Annie, have much to regret, that they hid the truth at many points in their lives. The consequences of what has been left unsaid are played out in this story, often to devastating effect. Annie …

A Runaway Bride for the Highlander – Elisabeth Hobbes #Lochmore Legacy

In Elisabeth Hobbes' A Runaway Bride for the Highlander, the third part of Mills and Boons' Lochmore Legacy, we’ve jumped back 300 years to 1513 – King James IV has just been killed in battle at Flodden, and the Scottish clans have suffered huge personal losses. Ewan, the second son of Lord Lochmore, now finds …