Baumgartner by Paul Auster
Paul Auster, the highly acclaimed laureate of hip New York, author of The New York Trilogy and a lauded list of novels and memoirs (with…
Book Reviews
The Library at Night by Alberto Manguel
Alberto Manguel’s The Library at Night, first published in 2006, is a collection of fifteen essay-like chapters, each celebrating a particular library-related theme and, in…
The Nature of the Beast (Three Pines #11) by Louise Penny
Armand Gamache, the former head of homicide for the Surete du Quebec and his wife Reine-Marie are revelling in their retirement, living in their beloved…
Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
Anne Tyler has done it again. Her books can appear to be simple tellings of domestic lives. But don’t you be fooled, Tyler’s characters, particularly…
Wild Dark Shores by Charlotte McConaghy
Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater…
Precipice by Robert Harris
This is the latest historical novel by Robert Harris. The principal characters and plot, is the love affair carried out through their correspondence, between the…
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
This year’s Booker Prize winner (2024). It’s slim volume, with no plot in sight. Over 24 hours we travel with six astronauts as their spacecraft…
Bitter Greens by Kate Forsyth
Another stunning historic romance from the talented pen of Kate Forsyth. We follow three women as they struggle to find love and security in times…
A Psalm for the Wild-Built (Monk and Robot #1) by Becky Chambers
Reading this book brought to mind The Little Prince. A seemingly simple story, that addresses existential questions such as: ‘what gives a life purpose’; ‘do…
Guilty by Definition by Susie Dent
This book is set in Oxford (tick); the characters work for the Clarendon English Dictionary which is a thinly disguised Oxford English Dictionary (tick) and…
The Oxenbridge King by Christine Paice
King Richard the Third is dead – the last English king to be slain in battle. And yet, he finds himself in conversation with a…
The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
This is the fifth instalment in the All Souls Trilogy (A Discovery of Witches, Shadow of Night and The Book of Life, followed by Time’s…