With 24 hours to go until her daughter Agustina’s wedding, Constanza finds a spot of mildew like substance on her inner thigh. She does an internet search to try and discover what it is and the apparent normality of this reaction belies the truth of the mildew, which, like many aspects of this novel, may Read More
Somerset-born Avril Joy has chosen Depression-era Arkansas as a setting for this her second novel. Joy’s previous work includes the 2007 novel, The Sweet Track, and several short stories, some of which have been shortlisted for awards such as the Bridport and the Raymond Carver Short Story prize. She won the inaugural Costa Short Story Read More
The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet is a science-fiction novel set in a distant future where humans have reached out beyond our solar system and joined the larger galactic community. It follows the interspecies crew of the industrial ship Wayfarer as they seek their fortune building a wormhole highway to a mysterious and Read More
“Then using the dead as step-stools, I climbed out of the ground.” The protagonist of Sara Nović’s debut novel Girl at War is the beautifully-drawn tomboy narrator, Ana, who would be six years older than Nović herself. Unquestionably, this book’s research has not all been done from a library seat. In a search for more Read More
With Storms Gertrude and Imogen raging outside, Kim Leine’s The Prophets of Eternal Fjord has kept me going all winter. The biblical proportions of the book itself make it unwieldy, and trying to read it in bed feels suitably like an act of penance. Physical and mental hardship defines life in colonial Greenland in the Read More
With his first collection of short stories, Christos Tsiolkas is successful in looking with a new perspective at subjects which have often been considered to be taboo. The protagonists in Merciless Gods are misfits and junkies exploring their sexual identity. Almost all of the stories are set in Australia, where Tsiolkas himself grew up, and Read More
This is Lynn Michell’s second novel, following on from White Lies, which was published in 2011. Michell has also published non-fiction and children’s educational books. Alice Green is finding that hitting 50 is much the same as becoming invisible. In an attempt to turn this observation to her advantage, she goes on a shop-lifting spree. Read More
Alastair Bruce’s Boy on the Wire follows the efforts of John Hyde to revive his past; specifically the moment of his brother Paul’s death. With the use of a prologue, Bruce throws his readers straight into the deep end: “He is a man who lied, who told a story, a wild, fanciful story, about the death of a child, Read More
A debut novel which illustrates the tribulations and triumphs of raising an autistic child, Truestory by Catherine Simpson is simultaneously captivating, poignant and vivid. Living on a remote farm, Alice is forced to deal with Sam, her autistic son, Duncan, an emotionally estranged husband whose ventures plunge the family into chaos, and Larry, a travelling Read More
Andrew Nicoll is well-known for his novels If You’re Reading This I’m Already Dead and The Good Mayor, the latter of which won the Saltire Prize for the First Book of the Year in 2009. His latest book is a murder mystery titled The Secret Life and Curious Death of Miss Jean Milne. The cover, Read More