This one was recommended to me by an old friend, and it ended up on my must-read list for the year. It's the first book in a huge epic sci-fi saga called The Commonwealth Saga, and oh my God, it's about a billion pages long, and has a huge list of characters. The book is …
This one may in fact become my favourite Alice Hoffman book, though they're all pretty awesome and unique. In this story, the Sparrow family, a long line of women, have all woken up on their 13th birthday with a gift. Elinor was able to tell if someone was lying, her daughter Jenny can dream other …
Being my birthday recently, I was gifted a stack of wonderful new books. I don't often get to buy books new, I tend to get them "like new" or good on Amazon. But there's something delicious about a new book with the way it smells and that the pages are all perfectly white and pristine. I also don't often …
Continue reading Murder House by James Patterson & David Ellis
Ackroyd is one of those writers who is passionate and knowledgable without ever being dull. Having read his biography of London years ago, I was a fan, and after completing the last few books by Dickens last year that I hadn't already read, I thought it was time to read a biography, and was delighted …
Two intelligent misfits will finds their lives changed when a new tenant moves into their Paris apartment block. One at the end of her life, the intelligent concierge who hides herself in obscurity, and one beginning her life, a bright 12 year old girl who is frustrated with the hypocrisy of the people around her. …
Continue reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Natalie is a social worker whose romance is going nowhere. Her boyfriend Carter is head of a group of activists, and although he's lovely, he frequently gets too caught up in changing the world to have time for her. When she follows him to the small town of Angel Landing, she moves in with her …
I’d actually never heard of this one before, and came across it randomly from a more hard-core fantasy fan than me. It’s a novel from the 1920’s by a contemporary of Virginia Woolf who amusingly referred to the author as “prickly and perverse…rather conspicuously well dressed” and whom Neil Gaiman champions as a lost author …
A novel in letters, the sole novel by Mary Ann Shaffer and completed and published posthumously by her relative, Annie Barrows. In tone, it’s very much like the letters between the Mitford sisters, and is by turns funny, delightful, tragic and touching. It follows protagonist Juliet, a writer, who receives a letter from a man …
Written when the author was just 27, this book about characters in small town Australia contains elements of stream of consciousness and experimental literature that made it famous at the time, and yet White would not allow it’s reprint in his life time. An excellent first time novel, something about the story and characters feels …
I came across this book via a recommendation on Amazon, based on previous purchases of historical fiction, and I loved the cover, but this tale is not like regular historical fiction, really. It is set in Devon in the mid 1300's during a time of plague, and tells the story of three people: a woman …
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