‘I am Ana. I was the wife of Jesus.’ So begins this fascinating tale of a woman who is born into the deeply patriarchal world of first century Galilee and is sold by her father to her husband, but longs to control her own destiny. Along the way she marries Jesus Ben Joseph, more commonly […]
Some events cause ripples. Other events shape lives. When Samuel Darte’s mother disappears one morning, his life doesn’t alter course slightly, it derails and becomes stuck. Stunned by the suddenness of it all, Samuel is disbelieving, determined to uncover the truth at the cost of his own life, which remains immured in a past he […]
‘It was almost like she seriously didn’t care about the exhaust system.’ This is why I enjoy Lianne Moriarty’s books. The third person narration offers a frequently amusing and consistently insightful look into people’s inner thoughts and closest relationships, usually supported by a gradually tightening suspense story. Having previously read and enjoyed several of Moriarty’s […]
‘Dark, disturbing and authentic.’ This was the CWA judging panel’s judgement and I completely agree with this description (whilst noting that I don’t know enough about prisons to comment accurately on the third, but the officers’ attitudes feel plausible). So why did ‘The Woman Before Me’ win the CWA’s debut dagger? What’s it about? Rose […]
Sisters. Love them or hate them, it’s awful to lose them. Lucy Clarke’s debut novel explores the tensions between one set of sisters in a dramatic novel that roams from Cornwall to California, to Maui and Australia, then finally to Bali. Can following Mia’s footsteps help Katie understand what happened to her sister? What’s it […]
‘I thought that love would last forever. I was wrong.’ So wrote Auden in his beautiful and haunting poem, ‘Funeral Blues’. But, what if it could? In these digital days of iPhones, iPads and iWatches, how far away are we from the possibility of an iRachel? Cass Hunter explores longing, loss, love and, erm, the […]
Trust. Love. Honesty. These are all important ingredients in a happy marriage. You might think all those ingredients are present in your marriage, but could you be deceiving yourself? What if you couldn’t trust your favourite person in the world? This is Iris’ dilemma in Kimberley Belle’s suspenseful third novel, ‘The Marriage Lie’. What’s it […]
Grief is a challenging topic for any novelist to explore. This is presumably even more pertinent when the novel involved is your debut and the grief involved was once your own. Mary McCluskey, journalist and short-story writer, tackles this subject with knowledge and care in her subtle portrait of a couple whose marriage is struggling […]
Twins are fascinating. None more so than identical twins. How they relate to each other, how they relate to other people, even how you can tell them apart: these are all rich sources of material for a writer, but S. K. Tremayne’s gothically charged novel starts from the end in a sense by exploring the […]
“I did something terrible, Grace. I hope you can forgive me.”‘ Charlie’s last words to best friend Grace have haunted her since Charlie died four months ago. What can Charlie possibly have done? It can’t be worse than what Grace did…can it? What’s it about? After her best friend dies, Grace feels set adrift. In […]