The author, Nils Schou, a television writer and novelist from Copenhagan, engaged in correspondence with J.D. Salinger, and this was the inspiration for his distinctly Danish feeling novel Salinger’s Letters. The book follows Dan Moller, a writer and trained dentist. Moller has suffered from depression since childhood, a condition that has shaped and defined Read More
This is the first novel by Robyn Cadwallader, an Australian Medieval Scholar who has won several prizes and awards for poetry, short stories and reviews. She has also published a non-fiction book, based on her PhD. The novel is set in the thirteenth century, in an English village. In the Middle Ages, an Anchoress was Read More
The Secret Chord in the title of Geraldine Brooks’s latest publication about the life of David is the same Secret Chord celebrated in songwriter Leonard Cohen’s very successful song, Hallelujah, the first lines of which read: “I heard there was a Secret Chord That David played and it pleased the Lord” In tackling the telling Read More
Australian Shirley Barrett is predominantly known for her screenwriting and directing, with her first film Love Serenade winning Best First Feature at Cannes Film Festival in 1996 and her script for South Solitary winning the Queensland Premier’s Prize in 2010. Rush OH! is Barrett’s first novel, chronicling the whaling industry in a small community in Read More
Shocking, harrowing, deeply disturbing, but beautifully imagined and described, Cynthia Bond’s novel Ruby will haunt you long after you put it down. It is essentially a love story set in small town America with many twists and turns, but it is in no way conventional. The love isn’t only between a man and a woman, Read More
As the burning of the byre dies down it is “[a]s if the black gates of hell have been cast open.” The byre belonged to Barnabas Kane, his wife Eskra and their teenage son Billy, in this powerful, sad and unrelentingly dark novel by Paul Lynch, author of the much lauded Red Sky in Morning. Read More
A graduate of Northwestern University, Attica Locke was a Fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab. She has been a scriptwriter for Paramount, Warner Bros, Twentieth Century Fox, HBO and Dreamworks, and is currently a writer and producer on the Fox drama Empire. Locke’s focus is African-American cultural and political history and her 2010 Read More
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