Under Currents
Beautiful lakeside setting ✅A rich family tapestry ✅A dark and tragic past ✅Triumph over adversity ✅Intrigue and romance ✅ Under Currents has it all! I have yet to read a Nora Roberts book that disappoints. They are definitely my guilty pleasure. From the outside, it appears Zane and Britt belong to the perfect family, living…
Where The Crawdads Sing
This is hands-down one of the best stories I have read in recent years. It is original, evocative, and unexpectedly moving. I can’t recommend it highly enough. Sometime in the early 1950s, Kya Clark was born in the marshland bordering Barkley Cove on the North Carolina coastline. Her tiny home was cramped with siblings who…
The Tilted World
TENSION IN THE DEEP SOUTH, GREAT 1927 MISSISSIPPI FLOOD. Poet Beth Ann directs the MFA Creative Writing programme at the University of Mississippi and her husband Tom Franklin, teaches on the programme. Together they have written a cracking thriller set in the Deep South during 1927, the year of the Great Flood. Fictional town Hobnob…
Corrag
I’ve added this one to my ‘all-time favourites’ shelf. Flecther’s haunting third novel is inspired by the infamous 1692 Massacre of Glencoe in the Scottish Highlands. Narrated in turns by the protagonist Corrag – based on the legend of a white witch with of the same name – and Irishman Charles Leslie, the story begins…
Stop Press!
The youngest ever ManBooker Prize winner is a woman! Yippee! I am delighted that Eleanor Catton has won the 2013 Man Booker Prize. Such youth! Such talent! Bring on the new generation of literary greats! Here’s what I wrote about her in my shortlist round-up a little while back: The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta): What…
My Name is Mary Sutter
Published back in January 2011, a proof of Robin Oliveira’s My Name Is Mary Sutter has been knocking about my house for a long time now. Several times I went to clear out books and it cropped up. I hung onto it each time. I’m sorry now that it took me so long to get around to reading…
Here is New York
If the name rings a bell it may be because White is the author of the hugely successful children’s title Charlotte’s Web. Plus he contributed to The New Yorker magazine for quite some time and publishing peeps will recognise him as one of the co-authors of The Elements of Style, a manual for writing and editing. Recently though, I…
The Cutting Season
I loved Locke’s debut novel, Black Water Rising. I had the pleasure of chatting with her when it was published back in 2010; Locke was shortlisted for the Orange Prize that year. When we spoke she told me she was already working on her second novel, set in contemporary Louisiana. So I was pretty excited…
The Human Part
Dammit Maclehose are so good! They’ve just published another cracker of a story. The Human Part by Finnish writer Kari Hotakainen, is translated into English by Owen F. Witesman. Elderly woman Salme Sinikka Malmikunnas agrees to share her life story with a writer she meets at a book festival. The writer, who is suffering a…
A Monster Calls
A Monster Calls was published this year, in both Europe and the US, and really merits a mention. It was an unusual project in that the story is based on an idea by the late author Siobhan Dowd, but written by author Patrick Ness. Dowd was the author of several children’s novels and passed away in 2009, aged…
Peace
A title I’m surprised hasn’t shown up more often of the “Best of 09” lists is Peace by Richard Bausch. It was published quietly last August but deserves serious recognition. Perhaps it’s a slow burner. It’s the first title from Tuskar Rock, a new imprint of Atlantic, run by Colm Tóibín and publisher/editor/agent Peter Straus.…
The Lady Loves Books 