Blogs

We all know who James Patterson is. A reminder is on the flyleaf on the inside back cover. He’s ‘one of the best-known and biggest selling writers of all time. His books have sold in excess of 400 million copies.’ You’re probably wondering what that’s got to do with American cops. Do a little detective work. You might not know (like me) who Matt Eversmann and Chris Mooney are, but it doesn’t really matter, their association with James Patterson...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convoy_HG_76 We know Britain wins the war. In the same way we can’t know that Ukraine will win its war. Hindsight blinds us. Angus Constam takes the reader back to a period in winter 1941 when it was all bad news. Nazi Germany had occupied most of Europe and Channel Islands. Britain was next on the Hitler’s list. The Royal Navy had been brought home to defend British shores. Despite Germany’s mass investment in a...

Vintage Classics has republished Babi Yar. A.Anotoli (Kuznetsov) describes Babi Yar as ‘a document in the form of a novel’. What the author means by that is in the first line of the first chapter, Ashes (after the Preface): ‘This book contains nothing but the truth.’ Kuznetzov was born in 1929 in Kyiv. His mother was Ukrainian. His father a Soviet who was relocated when the Germans invaded, 21 st September 1941. As a twelve-year old, he lived in...

I wasn’t sure I’d finish this book. I’m snobbish enough to continue reading because the author’s previous novel had been shortlisted for the Booker Prize. There’s more than one way to being wrong. At the end of The House of Doors , I felt that flush of acknowledgment of being in such fine company. I’d need to look out for Tan Twan Eng’s other books. Let me explain my foolishness as the class hatred of the lies and propaganda of Downton Abbey and...

I hope no-one's suffering too much from the heat, choking on wildfire smoke or getting too soggy from the great British rain we're having in my part of the world. Story of the Week is another installment in the life of Mark Burrow's heatbreakingly wonderful young protagonist Jason. This chapter gives him a rare moment of triumph and exhileration, along with - as usual - some killer one liners and observations on the world. One day this is going...

The Journey Home is a short book, self-published by Debbie Fanning. In subscript at the bottom of the cover is the message she wants to convey after being raped by two men on Burns Night, 25 th January 2003, when she was twenty-one: ‘Finding my voice and taking my power back after a devastating assault’. ‘ I’m OK. You’re OK .’ That’s the name of a philosophy and a way of listening and doing. It’s one of those convenient lies. Rape and brutality...

Where the Crawdads Sing is Delia Owens’ debut novel. A New York Times Bestseller and a Reece’s Book Club pick. Although this is Owen’s first novel, she is also a bestselling author of non-fiction as a ‘wildlife scientist’ in Africa. She lives in Idaho. Write what you know. It’s no great leap to imagine the young Kya, ‘the Marshgirl’. Her brutal coming-of-age marked by oneness and appreciation of the natural world not being far from what Owens’...