Some titles are designed to be opaque. To tease you slightly. Perhaps to hint at myriad thematic concerns. Others are less subtle and reveal an awful lot about the story within. Take ‘You Are Next’, for instance. There’s a strong implied threat, but it also feels rather cliched and a reader might justifiably anticipate that […]
Sarah Beresford has forgotten everything: who she is, what happened to her and – crucially – why. Worse than that, Sarah is immersed in a coma, leaving her unable to communicate with those around her. She can hear, and what she hears is deeply disturbing. As her family bicker at her bedside, hinting at old […]
There are certain facts almost everyone remembers from school. Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. (Or did he?) The Dark Ages were a period of intellectual, well, darkness. (But were they?) The Magna Carta was a revolutionary document that forms the basis of our modern democracy. (So why did Oliver Cromwell call it ‘Magna Farta’?) […]
Are you ready to go on an adventure? 69 year old Yorkshireman Arthur Pepper isn’t. Since his wife died exactly one year ago, he’s clung to his routines and his house plant like life rafts and gradually lost meaningful contact with his children and the outside world. Then a chance discovery awakens a questing spirit […]
What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done to another person? If your actions resulted in catastrophe, could you bear to face the consequences? Journalist Rebecca Thornton’s debut novel, ‘The Exclusives’, explores the consequences when best friends Josephine and Freya betray one another in their final year at boarding school. What’s it about? Archaeologist Josephine Grey […]
Samuel Pepys is one of England’s most famous diarists. Those who know much about him might know that he wrote ten years of diary entries (from 1660-’69) until his eyesight became too poor to continue. He contemplated getting someone else to write for him, but never did. ‘Camille’ explores what might have happened if he […]
Last year I read and LOVED ‘Gooseberry: The Case of The Thieving Maharajah’. Since then, I have been waiting as patiently as possible for author Michael Gallagher to release the next in the series. Today, it is finally published in full (the first few chapters have been steadily made available over the last few weeks […]
If you were going to kill someone, would you choose to do it in front of witnesses, and inside a locked room? I don’t feel like I’m going out on a limb here when I say that, no, I don’t think you would. But then, if you were going to kill someone and even confess […]
‘Nine days before her daughter disappeared, Morgan Vine paid her twenty-third visit to HMP Dungness.’ Now tell me that opening hasn’t got you hooked. Why is Morgan there? Why does her daughter disappear? How are the two connected? (Since the construction of that sentence tells you they are.) Of course, if you’re reading the opening […]
I like to watch TV series in installments: ideally no more than one episode a night so I can savour each one, digesting the ideas and developments before moving on to the next. Gary A. Braunbeck’s collection of short stories requires the same approach. There are 40 stories in total but to gorge yourself on […]