‘Time and Place’ by Alan Sheridan

Okay, I’ll admit it – this book had me baffled. It was billed as a fictionalised biography based on the diaries of a real-life actor, Mark Sheridan, as written by his descendant Alan Sheridan, but I have to admit I couldn’t tell if this was the case, or if it was really just a novel [...]

‘Haweswater’ by Sarah Hall

I bought this book just before we went on holiday to the Lake District, because it happens to be set in… the Lake District! There’s a lovely sepia photo of a lakeland scene on the cover, and the story it tells is one of human drama and tragedy in the 1930s, when the Manchester City [...]

‘In the Company of the Courtesan’ by Sarah Dunant

I first came across this author when a friend gave me her first novel, ‘Birth of Venus’, for Christmas. Straight away I loved her style of writing, but in that case found the story a little too tragic. Thankfully, ‘Courtesan’ has none of the same aching sense of sadness and wasted lives, [...]

‘Death of a Monk’ by Alon Hilu

Finding this book at all was something of a happy accident, since I’d never even heard of the author, let alone the title. This isn’t really surprising as Hilu is an Israeli writer and Death of a Monk was translated from Hebrew by an American scholar. Browsing the shelves of an Aladdin’s cave [...]

‘The Facts of Life’ by Patrick Gale

I’m normally a big fan of Gale’s work.  His ‘Rough Music’ has made it onto my all-time favourite book list, so when I saw this book on the shelves of my local Oxfam bookshop, I grabbed it.  It’s a big thick volume, and tells the story of one family, through three generations of trials and [...]

‘The People’s Act of Love’ by James Meek

The quote on the front cover, from Louis de Bernieres, describes this book as ‘…the most original… I have read for years’.  I was a bit dubious about that as virtually every book in the stores these days claims something like that – but boy! was I wrong.
The book is set in 1900s Siberia and [...]

‘The Sleeper in the Sands’ by Tom Holland

Isn’t it amazing where you come across new books and new authors? I found this one while browsing the shelves of an Aladdin’s cave of a second-hand book shop in Yarmouth on the Isle of Wight, where we were staying with relatives. I’d never even heard of Holland before, but was intrigued by [...]