Snapshot, by Craig Robertson
Craig Robertson’s debut, Random, turned the traditional mystery novel on its side, seducing his readers with a main character that walked a careful line between revenge and remorse. Snapshot is a fitting second novel, full of people for whom the job is more than just a day’s work, and the world around them, Glasgow in particular, filled with the sort of shadows that can blind those less determined to see.
Snapshot begins in the dim mist of a rainy Glaswegian evening with a sudden, if not unexpected, death. Lying dead on the floor is a minor player in the tumultuous drug scene, a man who courted death each day, with each deal. He is one of many, another stabbing victim in a city where they blend into the every day. But this time it is not the body that is the focus, but the photographer, Tony Winter. Read more
Ghastly Business, by Louise Levene
Ghastly Business is the second novel from journalist and ballet critic Louise Levene. While her debut offering, A Vision of Loveliness, covered the heady days of the 1960s, with Ghastly Business Levene turns her eyes towards the year 1929, and the office of an eminent London pathologist.
That pathologist is the gifted but caddish Dr Alfred Kemble, and the heroine of the piece is Dora Strang, young, willful and with a keen interest in medicine. The story itself shepherds us through Dora’s coming of age, involving attempted seductions by the menfolk of the cast, low-level harassment by an eccentric landlady, and the calculated indifference of her father, himself a doctor (albeit concerned more with the living than the dead). Read more
WWW: Wonder, by Robert J. Sawyer
The previous two books in this trilogy have chronicled Caitlin Decter’s pioneering treatment, allowing her – blind since birth – to see through the use of a tiny webcam. She comes into contact with an emerging consciousness called Webmind as it arises from the chaos of the World Wide Web.
In WWW: Wonder, the President of the United States has concerns about Webmind’s access to the whole of the world’s computers. Despite Webmind’s attempts at endearing itself to the government by providing cures for most types of cancer, it is seen as a threat and attacks are staged in order to attempt to rid the world of Webmind. Soon, the hackers enlisted to help eradicate it begin vanishing, and Webmind falls under grave suspicion. It’s up to Caitlin to find a way of protecting her digital friend. Read more
I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive, by Steve Earle
Steve Earle is probably best known as a musician, but he stakes a claim for being a decent writer too with his first novel I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive. Confusingly, the book shares the title with his recent album, though the only obvious link is perhaps a haunting presence of Hank Williams.
It tells the tale of Doc Ebersole, a morphine junkie whose addiction led to the loss of his medical license and the downward spiral that followed. In 1963 he finds himself living in the red light district of San Antonio, carrying out illegal abortions and minor surgeries to support his addiction. To make his troubles worse, he lives with the ghost of Hank Williams – punishment perhaps for the fact that Doc is rumoured to have given the country singer the final morphine dose that killed him out on a lonesome highway in West Virginia. But then he meets Graciela, a seemingly fragile Mexican girl who finds herself delivered to Doc by her wayward boyfriend. This night is a turning point for Doc and those around him: slowly Graciela’s influence affects the whole neighborhood and an aura of hope permeates San Antonio. Helping Doc with his surgeries, she is seen as a miracle worker, calming and healing those who even Doc believed were beyond hope. Read more
A Little Aloud, edited by Angela Macmillan
A Little Aloud is an anthology put together by The Reader Organisation, a national charity which holds reading groups for people in disadvantaged positions, such as prison inmates, young mothers, and old folks homes. In these reading groups, they promote a sort of ‘bibliotherapy’ helping to build people up through reading aloud and to help bring people together over books.
Each section contains a piece of prose and a piece of poetry relating to the titled theme of the section, “Love and Marriage”, “In the Eye of the Beholder”, “Little Acts of Kindness”, “Ghastly Children.” The excerpts were selected to create an atmosphere between the two pieces, whether it is a cozy Christmas warmth or a shuddery spine-tingler. Many of the selections here are from classic works such as Silas Marner or The Pickwick Papers, with the intent of bringing them to the reader in bite-size unintimidating chunks. The prose lists an estimated reading time. Read more
Derby Day by D.J. Taylor
D.J. Taylor’s latest novel Derby Day is what one would expect from the biographer of Thackeray, and expert on the Victorian novel and society. The novel as a form found its home in the Victorian world: plot driven and some what scandalous, it gathered a mass readership from the expanding middle classes, with writers such as Charles Dickens finding exposure in weekly newspaper periodicals. Taylor’s novel draws on the all encompassing nature of a Dickens novel; the complex web of characters and incident, the mystery of Wilkie Collins and the melodrama and scandal of Thackeray. Derby Day is as much an homage to the Victorian novel as a work in its own right. Read more
Divergent, by Veronica Roth
Divergent is the author’s debut novel, set in an alternate universe of the near future where humans have been devastated by war and have chosen to try and prevent such a recurrence by radically altering the society in which they live. At 16 every member of their city (recognisably Chicago) is tested to determine their predominant personality traits, and then, based on their character, they must decide which one of five factions they wish to join; Erudite, Candour, Amity, Dauntless and Abnegation. Each faction values a different belief above all others (which are suggested by their names), and each functions in a different role within the city. One 16-year old being tested is Beatrice, who rebels from her Abnegation upbringing but discovers during her test that she has dominant aspects of more than one faction within her personality. For this she is labelled Divergent, and she is dangerous to the current status quo. Read more
Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray
Paul Murray’s Skippy Dies is a rare combination of light and dark: a novel that makes the reader smile with affection and recognition while unpicking unpalatable truths. The novel focuses on a group of fourteen-year-old boarders at a Dublin school for boys, who are teetering on the precipice of adulthood. At its centre are roommates Daniel ‘Skippy’ Juster and Ruprecht Van Doren, whose clumsy efforts to find a place for themselves and impress the opposite sex are mirrored by those of their teacher, Howard, who is a decade older and reminds us that adulthood does not necessarily bring wisdom or clarity. Read more
Turn of Mind, by Alice LaPlante
Turn of Mind is the debut novel from Stanford University creative writing instructor Alice LaPlante. No relation to the UK’s Lynda, LaPlante has worked as a journalist and editorial consultant, and has turned her hand to the examination of Alzheimer’s for her first piece of full-length fiction.
The book follows the mental deterioration of brilliant orthopaedic surgeon, Dr. Jennifer White. Frequently unable to remember details of her daily life, Dr White keeps a journal in order to preserve her memories. It is in such a style she tells the tale of a family riven by dark secrets, and more importantly, the police investigation into the murder of Dr. White’s closest friend Amanda. Detectives are convinced Dr. White is involved; she was an expert surgeon specialising in hands, and Amanda’s body was discovered with four fingers skilfully amputated. Read more
The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile, by Alice Oswald
Alice Oswald has won the Forward Poetry Prize, the TS Eliot Prize, the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize, and the Ted Hughes Award; her first volume of poems (which won the Forward Prize), the slim and powerful The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile, was originally published in 1996. An exquisite collection of beautifully captured moments, it finds power equally in the everyday and the unique, in the quiet breathing of lovers in bed and the efforts of a small village to avoid a visit by the King. It captures the lyricisms in the relationships we travel through each day, the power of the natural world, and the solace to be found in a garden.
There is a sense of the silent moment, of the deeper import behind everyday habits. In Sonnet, which begins with “When I sit up this late, breathing like so”, sitting up late is not merely a quiet time when the rest of the world sleeps, but a moment when the cares of the world sound out clearest. Even in “the growing soap-ball of my silence”, there is a weight there, a question and a doubt, a burden that stretches back before the quiet at the end of the day. Read more
Hit List, by Laurell K. Hamilton
Anita Blake thought she had at least some things in her life figured out; she knows how important her loves are, how much stronger she is than the typical US Marshal, how complicated her powers, both old and new, make her life, and she knows how absolutely, catastrophically, viciously dangerous the Mother of All Darkness is. Dangerous enough to make everything else that feels sure in her life look both more precious and more vulnerable than ever before.
In Hit List, shifters are dying in the Pacific Northwest. The Harlequin, the deadly execution squads of the vampire world, have split in two, and the ones throwing their allegiance in with Mommie Darkest are targeting the were, with bloody and terrifying results. But the were are not the only victims the Harlequin seek, Anita, the Executioner, and Edward, Death, are both in danger. Read more
Out of Range, by C.J. Box
In many ways, crime fiction is the child of urbanisation. With city living came the perfect backdrop for criminality, together with changes in the detection of crime, and above all, anonymity. It was Sherlock Holmes who derided London as “that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained,” an environment where a murderer might commit foul deeds and disappear into the ether of a darkened alley.
With his Joe Pickett series then, CJ Box is bucking over a century of tradition, by taking crime fiction to the vast rural expanses of Wyoming, charting the exploits of a beleaguered game warden. In this outing, the 5th in the Pickett series, a friend’s suicide forces Joe to temporarily transfer from his modest district of Saddlestring to the larger and infinitely more troublesome area of Jackson. Not a man given to leaving stones unturned, Joe begins his own investigation into his friend’s death, and in doing so unearths dark intrigues at the heart of the town. Read more
The King’s English, by Kingsley Amis
The ‘King’ of the title is of course Kingsley Amis, under a nickname which he ‘tolerated’ according to his son Martin Amis in the introduction. This book, published posthumously, is Kingsley’s take on good use of the English language, a sort of updated and more personal version of the Fowler brothers’ 1906 book of the same name. The entries are on the whole shorter than those of the Fowlers’ and at first glance the book may look like a reference work, to be consulted rather than read through. Yet the Amis’s writing style, and sometimes idiosyncratic titling of entries, means that it is far more usefully and enjoyably read cover to cover. Read more
The Prince of Mist, by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Max and his family escape the impending war moving from the city to a sleepy backwater town on the coast. Myth and rumour surround their new house; built by a family ripped apart by tragic accident. From the moment of their arrival, spooky incidents beset them; a garden of statues that won’t stay still, strange dreams of clowns, a sinister cat and a sunken ship belonging to a watery spectre. No one believes their ears and eyes until Max’s friends and family start getting hurt and Max knows that it is time for him to uncover the secret of the lighthouse keeper and the guard he has been keeping for fifty years. Read more
The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still, by Malcolm Pryce
The Day Aberystwyth Stood Still is the latest addition to Malcolm Pryce’s highly acclaimed Louie Knight series. Set in a convincingly surreal version of the mid-Walean seaside town, each of these novels have combined classic noir with a wholly entertaining alternative universe. Previously the main protagonist has had to deal with Druids, a school games teacher, missing monkeys, Nazi hunters, and Soviet museum curators amongst an impressive host of other characters.
Read more
22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson
Every life contains transformative moments where life is distinctly different afterwards from that before. Marriage, children, home ownership. Illness, death, rape, war. Fallout occurs when people in our lives before these events have to adapt to the version of us that emerges. Sometimes it simply isn’t possible.
22 Britannia Road by Amanda Hodgkinson centers on Janusz and Silvana, lovers who meet while very young and find themselves in a whirlwind romance leading to marriage and the birth of a son, Aurek. When World War II makes its way to their native Poland, the young family is blown apart.
Alternating between the journeys of Janusz and Silvana, Hodgkinson illustrates war and the horrors that go along with it as the life-altering event it truly is. Read more
50 People Who Fouled Up Football, by Michael Henderson
Modern life, as Blur once opined, is rubbish. Worse still, however, is modern football, which has become a grotesque parody of its former self. At least, that is the sentiment of 50 People Who Fouled Up Football, Michael Henderson’s attempt to name and shame those who have had the most deleterious effect on the sport.
Football books are not renowned for quality. Autobiographies by the sport’s leading lights have tended to be premature, tedious and self-serving, booksellers often make the shameful error of including hooligan literature in the Sport section instead of their rightful place in True Crime, and miscellanies and stats books appeal only to Motsonesque train-spotters. Read more
London Calling, by James Craig
London Calling is the debut novel from London-based journalist James Craig. A smash on Kindle when released in June, it introduces Inspector John Carlyle, a jaded but unyielding cop in the classic mould.
Carlyle is a Met man who cut his teeth in the faraway towns of Orgreave and Maltby during the Miners’ Strike, and through the recounting of his experiences there, the character and his milieu are fleshed out. Carlyle is imperfect, taking amphetamines with colleagues in preparation for a ‘ruck,’ and obeying orders to remove all visible forms of ID to escape punishment for violence against striking miners. However, he has enough scruples to report corrupt actions by his colleagues, and his career continues to suffer the consequences nearly three decades on. In this respect he is hardly an original creation, but is distinguished by his reasonably happy life. He has enjoyed a lengthy and successful marriage, and has a well-adjusted young daughter to show for it. Similarly, he eschews alcoholism and hard living in favour of a penchant for fine food, more reminiscent of Montalbano than Marlowe. Overall though, Carlyle’s idiosyncrasies are outnumbered by his similarities to any number of other fictional cops. Read more
Rain, by Don Paterson
When Don Paterson’s Landing Light came out in 2004 it cemented his position in the forefront of British poetry. His work could no longer be labelled as simply laddish and playful, a view that had been understandable though not accurate, following his first two collections, Nil Nil and God’s Gift to Women. This new level of seriousness and maturity found in Landing Light were achieved with no let up in the technical brilliance that he had previously demonstrated. Rain, his latest collection, first released in 2009, marks another development in Paterson’s style. The writing has become more direct and seemingly more personal; some of the strangeness reminiscent of Borges has been lost, but it has been replaced by a quiet thoughtfulness that is equally powerful. Read more
Harry Sidebottom
Harry Sidebottom was brought up in racing stables in Newmarket where his father was a trainer. He had a basket saddle on a donkey before he could walk.
He was educated at various schools and universities, including Oxford, where he took his Doctorate in Ancient History at Corpus Christi College. In similar fashion he has taught at various universities including Oxford, where he is now Fellow and Director of Studies in Ancient History at St Benets Hall, and Lecturer in Ancient History at Lincoln College.
His main scholarly research interests are Greek culture under the Roman empire (thinking about the compromises and contradictions involved when an old and sophisticated culture is conquered and ruled by what it considers a younger and less civilised power) and warfare in classical antiquity (looking at how war was both done and thought about by Greeks and Romans). He has published numerous chapters in books, and articles and reviews in scholarly journals becoming an internationally recognised scholar in these fields.
Since 2006 he has been working on the Warrior of Rome series of novels featuring the Anglo-Saxon nobleman turned Roman army officer Ballista and his Familia which are set in the Roman Empire during the so-called `Great Crisis of the Third Century AD`.
He has travelled widely, especially around the Mediterranean. These trips have varied from the luxury of travelling as a guest speaker on a Cunard liner to a memorable solo journey into Albania not long after the fall of the dictator Enver Hoxha.
NewsNow
Literature News 24/7-
The Bookgeeks Interview
Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
-
Latest Competition
Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
Latest Bookbitz reviews
