Hilary Mantel’s interests, apart from the Tudors, include ghosts and the haunted. She also used to be a social worker. This mix is brought together in a weird semi-autobiographical plot involving four characters and their reactions to a haunted house, and [...]
An unnamed female protagonist talks through her journey to find out what has happened to her father, who lives, and has gone missing, in the far northern wilds of Canada. Instead of going alone, she’s made the flippant decision to take [...]
A surprisingly English book. Lanny is the unusual boy who lives with his parents in the village. But Dead Papa Toothwart, a shapeshifting ancient woodland spirit watches the boy, and the village. This book almost shouldn't be reviewed, and I myself [...]
Oyinkan Braithwaite's debut novel is all fizz and pulp in the chick reads section, and yet it also bubbles with a bloody humour that lifts it out into its own hybrid of Nigerian comedy and crime. The perils of sisterhood are [...]
Paradise is the confessional of Hannah, an alcoholic whose time-slips and blackouts have made her job as a fruit box saleswoman impossible. She loses her company car and job, and sets about getting drunk yet again. The book opens with Hannah [...]
It is impossible to know if this book is literally a confessional of someone who then published as fiction, because the author remains unknown. The hype that follows this book is intense, and continues today even after ten years, and will [...]
Written just after 9-11, and as a writer in love with his city, DeLillo continues his ode to New York with this book, based around the life of a young rich businessman Eric Packer as he gets stuck in various traffic [...]
The Ghosts of Gray Fable by Eli Bloom is a chilling and thrilling YA novel. With a bold plot line and an unforgettable protagonist, The Ghosts of Gray Fable instantly stands out as a paranormal classic. Author Eli Bloom captures youth, innocence [...]
When Cassandra Patton Conover, a lone nature writer and conservationist, takes to the Maine wilds with her dog Pock into private grounds for good fishing, she discovers the body of her friend crushed under a tree. Confused by the circumstances of [...]
Eileen relates her young life from fifty years ago. By the fifth page, Eileen is a confidante – but her memories are not trustworthy. Eileen’s story builds a picture towards something terrible, as she describes her suffocating near-sexual co-habitation with her [...]