It is 1922 and a man is in a psychiatric asylum in Flanders. He was found wearing a soldier’s uniform on a battlefield at the close of the First World War, but has no memory of who he is. Known as …

I first came across The Amateur in a crime and thrillers roundup in the Guardian which said that Chris Bohjalian deserves to be better known in the UK, and on the basis o…

Cool Machine, the third book in the Harlem Trilogy, begins in 1981 when Ray Carney is doing better than ever. His furniture store is thriving and he is about to be featured in a respected tr…

The Flynns are a family in crisis. The parents are embarking on an open relationship, and their children are acting out. From their Catholic high school to the small town where they live, everyone …

This Is Where the Serpent Lives offers a powerful and insightful account of life in Pakistan from the 1950s the noughts. The four point-of-view characters span different classes but are all connect…

In The Last of Earth it is 1869. Tibet is closed to Europeans, but British travellers in two separate parties are trying to gain admission illegally. Balram is a surveyor working for a British capt…

I used to be an avid reader of Philippa Gregory’s novels but at some point I went off them. I felt like the novels had become a bit soapy and samey, more about who’s swiving who than the more profo…

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If you follow this blog you’ll be aware I haven’t been posting so much recently. I’m still reading as much as ever but not feeling moved to write about it like I used to. So I&#82…

Penniless and homeless, the Winns found fame and fortune with the story of their 630-mile walk to salvation. We can reveal that the truth behind it is ve...

It is 1979. Vincent and his fellow triplets Lawrence and William live in the New Forest in a Sycamore Home, one of a network of government-funded children’s homes. They have a comfortingly monotono…

It is 1979. Vincent and his fellow triplets Lawrence and William live in the New Forest in a Sycamore Home, one of a network of government-funded children’s homes. They have a comfortingly monotono…

Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.

It is 1979. Vincent and his fellow triplets Lawrence and William live in the New Forest in a Sycamore Home, one of a network of government-funded children’s homes. They have a comfortingly monotono…

In this reissued classic, a tragicomic East End gambler makes his play I do love an unreliable narrator. Of course, all first-person narrators should be approached with scepticism, because they are…

Jo Harkin has turned from speculative to historical fiction to explore memory and identity through the story of Lambert Simnel, a pretender to the throne of Henry VII.

Jo Harkin has turned from speculative to historical fiction to explore memory and identity through the story of Lambert Simnel, a usurper to the throne of Henry VII.

Anecdotal evidence suggests a rise in requests to take books off shelves, particularly LGBTQ+ titles

On Thursday 20 March, The Atlantic broke the story of how Meta has used the Library Genesis (LIbGen) dataset, which is full of pirated material, to develop their AI systems.

LibGuides: Archives and Special Collections: Ronald Duncan Stipend for Southwest Writing

Source: Review copyPublication: 27 February 2025 from Orenda BooksPP: 300ISBN-13: 978-1916788305 My thanks to Orenda Books for an advance copy for review Glasgow, 1966: Stevie ‘Minto’ Milloy, former star footballer-turned-rookie reporter, finds himself trailing the story of a young Eastern European student whose body has been found on remote moorland outside the city. How did she get there from her hostel at the Sovereign Grace Mission, and why does Stevie find obstacles at every turn?

The Borrowed Hills is narrated by Steve Elliman, looking back on his life and his complicated relationship with his home in the sheep farms of Cumbria. In his youth he is desperate to escape his fa…

For over a century the world has celebrated International Women's Day to honor women's movements around the globe and to bring attention to the battles still being fought to achieve equality. We're ce...

Vincenzo Latrino: Perfection (Le perfezioni in the original), transl. Sophie Hughes, Fitzcarraldo, 2025 Using the Italian cover, because of course the English edition is just the blue Fitzcarraldo …

The author of Curtain Call offers a fictional resolution to the real-life mystery of the Julia Wallace murder in 1930s Liverpool.

Christopher Brookmyre takes questions from a BBC Bookclub audience about his first novel.

I am delighted to share my review today for Donate by Emma Ellis. This is the first book in the Eyes Forward series and I discovered it on Kindle Unlimited. It is a dark, unsettling dystopian novel…

Adrian Tchaikovsky writes so interestingly about life and what it means. In Shroud, the crew of a commercial expedition to a distant star system discover a moon with commercial potential, bewilderi…

Charity calls for move after poll finds ‘crisis’ levels of reading for pleasure and rise in 8- to 18-year-olds enjoying audio

John Stoltenberg, Dworkin’s partner for three decades, is thrilled by the reissue of three of her books as Penguin Modern Classics, and how a new generation is finding inspiration from her work

As immigration has increased, GDP has surged and unemployment has fallen to lowest level since 2008

Last year I went to Rome for the first time. It’s hard to write about the experience – the art, the sights, the culture – without lapsing into cliché, but I became particularly intrigue…

Software engineer and developer Nadia Odunayo created the social media readers’ platform StoryGraph and its popularity has rocketed

It’s some years since I read Presumed Innocent, and was blown away by its clever use of the unreliable narrator. For those unfamiliar with the book, or the film and TV adaptations, Rusty Sabich is …