Book reviews, new books, publishing news, book giveaways, and author interviews

Review: Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

Review: Stormbreaker by Anthony Horowitz

If you're new here, why not subscribe to our email updates or follow us on Facebook? You can also add us to your Google Reader. Thanks for visiting! When the doorbell rings at three in the morning, its never good news, begins Stormbreaker, the first in Anthony Horowitzs bestselling Alex Rider series. I would definitely concur. The...

Review: The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford

Review: The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford

Back when I was in uni I had a bit of an affair with the short fiction of Jeffrey Ford. Though not the most elegant writer out there, his work is famously strange, wide-reaching and wide-ranging. Of his long-form work Id only read bizarre and eerie'The Portrait of Mrs Charbuque, which I remember quite enjoying, particularly as I read it around the same...

Review: Welcome to the Great Mysterious by Lorna Landvik

Review: Welcome to the Great Mysterious by Lorna Landvik

  Well, hello there, deja vu. It was only a few weeks ago that I was reviewing Louise Limericks'Lucindas Whirlwind, a novel about a career-minded aunt called in as a last-minute caretaker after her sister has jet-set off overseas, and here I am reviewing a book that covers some very similar ground. Mysterious how these things work,...

Settling Dust and Lucindas Whirlwind by Louise Limerick

Settling Dust and Lucinda's Whirlwind by Louise Limerick

Ah, here I am once again feeling a touch embittered about the fact that Ive been misled entirely by a books cover. I know, I know, dont judge a book and all that, but honestly, if we werent supposed to do so, then we wouldnt have covers, would we? Ive had'Lucindas Whirlwind'sitting in my to-read pile for a...

Nameless narrators and Sarah Brills Glory

Nameless narrators and Sarah Brill's Glory

Im always surprised to read that readers find it easier to get into the head of a first person narrator. For me, theres something about an essentially nameless character that is immensely disorienting and distancing. Second person is even worse, bringing with it the weird double-think that it does, and unnamed thirds are a lesson in nominative...

Romance on the ward: Lilys Scandal by Marion Lennox and Zoes Baby by Alison Roberts

Romance on the ward: Lily's Scandal by Marion Lennox and Zoe's Baby by Alison Roberts

I have to say that on the whole I dont associate hospitals with romance, perhaps because generally the time Ive spent in hospitals has been visiting the ill, the infirm and the gratuitously sillythe last largely being that subset of the world that is my husbands family, a group who manage to get themselves into all sorts of bizarre...