Title: Escape Routes Writer: Naomi Ishiguro Publishing House: Tinder Press Date of Publication: February 6th 2020 Rating: 5 stars ‘’I can climb out on to the roof from the windows and see the whole metropolis stretched out before me, those hundreds of buildings – white, or grey, or black, depending on how filthy they are…
Tag: Book Reviews
How to Make Paper When the World is Ending
Title: How to Make Paper When the World Is Ending Writer: Dallas Woodburn Publishing House: Koehler Books Date of Publication: June 28th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’But sometimes stories are all we have.’’ Story to Tell Around a Campfire: The narrator instructs us how to tell the tale of Hannah and Mark, a couple who…
O Caledonia
Title: O Caledonia Writer: Elspeth Barker Publishing House: Weidenfeld Nicolson Date of Publication: March 29th 2022 (first published August 19th 1991) Rating: 5 stars ‘’At night, when the moon is high it beams through the dying cockatoo and casts his blood drops in a chain of rubies on to the flagstones of the hall. Here…
How to Gut a Fish
Title: How to Gut a Fish Writer: Sheila Armstrong Publishing House: Bloomsbury Date of Publication: February 17th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’The weakness in the soil first appears at dusk in the centre of a ring of stones in a field. A small copse of trees weave around banks of raised earth, and the exposed…
The Mapmakers (Cordelia Hatmaker#2)
Title: The Mapmakers (Cordelia Hatmaker#2) Writer: Tamzin Merchant Publishing House: Puffin Date of Publication: February 17th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Our hats are a bit like books,’’ Cordelia began. ‘’They contain magic, but it’s up to the person reading the book to bring the magic to life. Without the reader, the magic just sits there….
Black Narcissus
Title: Black Narcissus Writer: Rumer Godden Publishing House: Virago Press (UK) Date of Publication: February 1st 2013 (first published 1939) Ratings: 5 stars ‘’Look at the eagles,’ he said. In the gulf eagles were flying, circling round one small spot in the air. Higher and higher they flew, but still they could not reach the…
Tales of the Sea: Traditional Stories of Magic and Adventure from around the World
Title: Tales of the Sea: Traditional Stories of Magic and Adventure from around the World Writer: Traditional, illustrated by Maggie Chiang Publishing House: Chronicle Books Date of Publication: March 22nd 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Come, sit beside me, Walter, and let us talk of love.’’ The Betrothed of Destiny (Armenia): The people of Armenia know…
Serpents in Eden : Countryside Crimes
Title: Serpents in Eden Writer: Various, edited by Martin Edwards Publishing House: British Library Crime Classics Date of Publication: March 1st 2016 Rating: 5 stars ‘’It was a day of cloud, and the very air over the moors was grey, and the long waves of heather were dark as the black earth, the distant woodland…
Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars
Title: Miss Treadway and the Field of Stars Writer: Miranda Emmerson Publishing House: 4th Estate GB Date of Publication: August 2nd 2017 (first published February 28th 2017) Rating: 5 stars ‘’Everything can be given a price if someone chooses’, her mother said. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense to us, Anna. So little of the…
Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain
Title: Weird Woods: Tales from the Haunted Forests of Britain Writer: Various edited by John Miller Publishing House: British Library Publishing Date of Publication: August 27th 2020 Rating: 5 stars ‘’These are the aspects of our experience of nature that cannot be offset; the history of a place cannot be traded off against the history…
The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers: And Other Gruesome Tales
Title: The Sister Who Ate Her Brothers: And Other Gruesome Tales Writer: Jen Campbell (illustrated by Adam de Souza) Publishing House: Thames & Hudson Date of Publication: November 23rd 2021 Rating: 5 stars “It just so happened that the gardener did know of a house with a thousand rooms. It sat on the top of…
The First Person and Other Stories
Title: The First Person and Other Stories Writer: Ali Smith Publishing House: Hamish Hamilton Ltd Date of Publication: January 2nd 2008 Rating: 5 stars ‘’Williams Carlos Williams says that the short story, which acts like the flare of a match struck in the dark, is the only real form for describing the briefness, the brokenness…
The Ghost Factory
Title: The Ghost Factory Writer: Jenny McCartney Publishing House: Fourth Estate Date of Publication: March 21st 2019 Rating: 5 stars ‘’We called our situation the Troubles, and the longer it had dragged on the more fitting that genteel euphemism became. The murdering was sporadic but fully expected, like some recurrent, rumbling agony in your unmentionables….
Western Isles Folk Tales
Title: Western Isles Folk Tales Writer: Ian Stephen Publishing House: The History Press Date of Publication: February 1st 2015 (first published October 15th 2014) Rating: 5 stars “Where the Northern Ocean, in vast whirls, Boils round the naked, melancholy isles Of farthest Thule; and the Atlantic surge Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.” Charlotte Bronté…
Out There:Stories
Title: Out There: Stories Writer: Kate Folk Publishing House: Random House Date of Publication: March 29th 2022 Rating: 5 stars ‘’By night our bones dissolve into our blood like sugar in tea. We sleep in anti-gravity pods with slick outer shells and vinyl interiors, our limbs held by Velcro straps, our torsos bound by cuirasses…
Ceredigion Folk Tales
Title: Ceredigion Folk Tales Writer: Peter Stevenson Publishing House: The History Press Date of Publication: May 1st 2014 Rating: 5 stars ‘’These stories are of another world, an Otherworld so familiar to the folk of Ceredigion 100 years ago; exotic and enticing, dark and dangerous, curious and comical, a world of the marginalised and misunderstood,…
Water Shall Refuse Them
Title: Water Shall Refuse Them Writer: Lucie McKnight Hardy Publishing House: Dead Ink Date of Publication: July 4th 2019 Rating: 5 stars ‘’There’s a special time of day, when light is caught in limbo. Dusk: that time when the twilight dips to a level where light and dark start to merge, and everything takes on…
Panics
Title: Panics (original title: Viens Writer: Barbara Molinard (translated by Emma Ramadan) Publishing House: The Feminist Press Date of Publication: August 9th 2022 (first published 1969) Rating: 5 stars ‘’EVERYTHING BARBARA MOLLINARD HAS WRITTEN HAS BEEN TORN TO SHREDS. The texts that follow were also torn to shreds. They were put back together, torn up…
Τhe Shape of Darkness
Title:The Shape of Darkness Writer: Laura Purcell Publishing House: Raven Books Date of Publication: January 21st 2021 Rate: 5 stars ‘’Shadows flee across the cobbles and climb up walls. Agnes has spent her life studying them, but she has not appreciated their sheer number until tonight. She sees shadows thrown by a dancing flame, the…
Offshore
Title: Offshore Writer: Penelope Fitzgerald Publishing House: Fourth Estate Date of Publication: March 28th 2013 (first published 1979) Rating: 5 stars ‘’I can’t do the things that women can’t do,’ she said. ‘I can’t turn over The Times so that the pages lie flat, I can’t fold up a map in the right creases, I…
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