Translated from the French by Nick Caistor I don’t read much war fiction, and tend to shy away in general from more modern military stuff (unless it’s part of a spy novel etc.). But there was something about Olivier Norek’s new novel that caught my attention. Having read more Nordic fiction including quite a few Read More
Category: Blog Tour
A Lethal Legacy by Guðrún Guðlaugsdóttir – blog tour
Translated by Quentin Bates It’s always a delight to read the new titles from Corylus Books, and, using their own tag line ‘to discover new voices’. Icelander, Guðrún Guðlaugsdóttir is not, however, a new author. She’s a journalist with a prodigious output including plenty of interviews and biographies as well as a series of novels Read More
Lay Your Armour Down by Michael Farris Smith – blogtour (belatedly)
Argh – I would have posted this days ago, but I’ve had no internet – the idea of trying to do WP on my phone terrifies me. Sadly, there’s a major fault in the cabinet my wifi goes to – and the engineer couldn’t give me a time for when it would be fixed properly Read More
The Serial Killer’s Party by Amy Cunningham – blog tour
A new to me author, but what a fun sounding thriller! You can’t beat a book about rich people being naughty and profligate with added bodies for a summer thriller read – and on that score The Serial Killer’s Party certainly didn’t disappoint. I loved how Amy’s bio at the beginning says, “Amy has previous Read More
Divinity Games by Lou Gilmond – blog tour
Two years ago, I read Lou Gilmond’s first novel – a near future set political thriller called Dirty Geese, and enjoyed it a lot. It featured Harry Colbey and Esme Kanha, both Tory MPs, Kanha being Chief Whip, and backbencher Colbey was touted as the replacement Minister at the Department for Personal Information when the incumbent Read More
A Sting in her Tail by Mark Ezra – blog tour
What do old spies do after they’ve retired? If you’re Richard Osman’s Elizabeth, decamped to a retirement village with her husband who has dementia, you keep your hand in, recruiting a band of retirees to form The Thursday Murder Club – looking at cold cases, helping the local constabulary out, making the most of contacts, Read More
Murder Tide by Stella Blómkvist – blog tour
Translated by Quentin Bates This series of crime thrillers by the anonymous author Stella Blómkvist, who shares their pseudonym with the main character has been a big success in Iceland, with over twenty books in the series so far. Thanks for Corylus Books and translator Quentin Bates for bringing them to the English-speaking world, with Read More
Broken by Jón Atli Jónasson – blog tour
Translated by Quentin Bates A first novel in translation by an award-winning Icelandic screenwriter, Broken is a police procedural that’s the beginning of a trilogy – translated by Quentin Bates for Corylus Books: it sounds like a winner… It begins with a teenager going missing on a school trip. There’s no-one else available, so Dóra Read More
Red Water by Jurica Pavičić – blog tour
Translated from Croatian by Matt Robinson Earlier this month I read my first novel by a Bulgarian author, now I can add Croatia too to my European lit list with this multi European prize-winning novel. Pavičić’s bio says he is ‘known for hjs unorthodox thrillers and crime novels which mix social analysis with deep insights Read More
Heatwave, The Summer of 1976, Britain at Boiling Point by John L Williams – blog tour
The 1970s was the decade during which I was a teenager, from start to finish – encompassing the whole of my time at senior school and my first years at university. Regardless of all the politics and scandals which largely passed me by, my life outside school was coloured by pop music, some classic sitcoms, Read More
Hattie Steals the Show by Patrick Gleeson – blog tour
Last May I had the pleasure of reading Gleeson’s first Theatreland Mystery, Hattie Brings the House Down, It introduced us to Harriet ‘Hattie’ Cocker, a theatre stage manager with decades of experience, who works primarily as a tutor on a stage management course at a minor acting college these days, whilst hoping to find theatre Read More
Bowieland by Peter Carpenter – blog tour
It’s a little over nine years since David Bowie died in January 2016, but his memory lives on. Although I had Ziggy on my bedroom walls as a young teen, it was Bolan I was more obsessed with at the time. Later I grew to really love Bowie’s music and creativity, and now I hoover Read More
The Cure by Eve Smith – blog tour
My first encounter with Eve Smith was with her second novel, Off Target, in which genetic engineering of children is normal. I very much enjoyed it – spec fiction being my favourite type of genre fiction these days. Two years later and her fourth novel The Cure is here, and this time she’s tackling the Read More
Luminous by Silvia Park – blog tour
I am absolutely delighted to be leading off the blog tour for this fabulous novel on its UK publication day. I do love SF, although I read little of it these days. However, waft a spec fiction novel under my nose and I will grab it. I love the familiarity of a world I know, Read More
Mrs Matisse by Sophie Haydock – blog tour
A novel about art, Paris and the South of France – and I’m sold! Mrs Matisse is Haydock’ second novel, after her first The Flames, (which I now have to read) took the lives of Austrian artist Egon Schiele’s women as its subject. As you might guess, Mrs Matisse is a novel about the French Read More
Runaway Horses by Carlo Fruttero & Franco Lucentini – blog tour
Translated by Gregory Dowling The late Italian writing partners, Fruttero and Lucentini, worked together for decades, along the way writing five novels. Last year, Bitter Lemon Press published the first English translation of The Lover of No Fixed Abode. First published in Italy in 1986, it is a mystery and a romance, but it turned Read More
Black Woods Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey – blog tour
I’m delighted to one of those leading off the blog tour for Eowyn Ivey’s new novel. She isn’t the most prolific of authors, with just three novels now in 13 years. However, I fell in love with her 2012 debut, The Snow Child, set in 1920s Alaska about a childless couple who find a little Read More
Into Thin Air by Ørjan Karlsson – blogtour
Translated by Ian Giles The start of a new series of Scandi-crime novels written by a seasoned hand augurs well. Norwegian, Ørjan Karlsson, has written a host of other crime novels and thrillers and obviously decided it was time for a change for his 16th novel. Karlsson grew up in the town of Bødo, which Read More
The Less Unkind by Rosaria Giorgi
I am delighted to be leading off the blog tour for Rosaria Giorgi’s debut novel – a thriller set in Italy in Denmark involving art theft! Italy and art are two of my favourite things, and I love thrillers, so I sat down to read the book with great anticipation, especially having received a lovely Read More
Review of the Year #1 – 2024, A Year of Reading and Blogging
As always, I’m saving my books of the year for the 31st, and you’ll get my book stats (my favourite post) on the 29th, but today as in previous years I’m sharing my blogging highlights, including all those reading weeks, months and challenges I took part in over the year. You’ll also find a book Read More
The After-Life of Brian by Julian Doyle – blogtour
Before I tell you about what is inside this book, take a look at its cover above. See the irreverent humour in the tagline at the top ‘Spoil Christmas for someone special’, the homage to the title graphics of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, the fact it is by that film’s editor. Factor in some Read More
Black Storms by Teresa Solana – blog tour
Translated from Catalan by Peter Bush I’m delighted to be today’s stop on the blog tour for another new to me crime author, now published by Corylus books in translation. It’s the third crime novel by Teresa Solana, and the first to feature her detective Norma Forester. Now I know you’re thinking that doesn’t sound Read More
My Rude Awakening by E C Featherstone
It’s hard to know where to start with this memoir! I’ll be totally up front – I wasn’t sure it was a book for me. The cover suggests a polo-playing toff who pursues a woman and flies helicopters in the RAF. Now I’m not averse to a bit of Jilly Cooper and well-done smut, nor Read More
The Burning Stones by Antti Tuomainen – blog tour
Translated by David Hackston I’m delighted to be helping to lead off the blog tour for Antti Tuomainen’s latest novel, a standalone murder mystery set in the world of saunas, all done with his surefire comic touch. Once again, in 53-year-old Anni Korpinen, as with Henri Koskinen in Tuomainen’s wonderful Rabbit Factor Trilogy, he has Read More
Blood Debt by M.K. Murphy – blogtour
Imagine the scene: you’re a hitman, hired to take out property developer Jason Florens before he can ruin someone else’s nefarious plans. But you reach the site where he is and someone has been there before you, he’s gagged and cable tied to the bath taps, you remove the gag. ‘Oh, God,’ Floren wails, his Read More
The Torments by Michael J Malone – blogtour
I’m delighted to be one of those leading off the blogtour for The Torments – Michael J Malone’s sequel to The Murmurs which introduced us to Annie Jackson and her twin brother Lewis. I’ll say straight off that you don’t necessarily need to have read the prior instalment, you could jump straight in with The Read More
Prey by Vanda Symon #SamShephard6, blogtour
This is the first novel I’ve read by New Zealander Symons. It’s the sixth in a series, and whilst I like, where possible, to start a series from the beginning, this sixth volume is like a new start as Detective Sam Shephard returns to work in the Dunedin police after maternity leave. In the Prologue, Read More
Imposter Syndrome by Joseph Knox, blog tour
The moment I read Knox’s first book, Sirens, the first in his excellent Manc-noir Aidan Waits trilogy, I knew I’d want to keep on reading this author. After the three Aidan Waits books, he did something else with his fourth novel True Crime Story (I have the hardback with shocking pink spredges!), and now three Read More
Kalmann and the Sleeping Mountain by Joachim B Schmidt – blog tour
Translated from the German by Jamie Lee Searle I’m delighted to be leading off the blog tour for this novel by Swiss author Schmidt, who has lived in Iceland since 2007. I hadn’t realised that this novel is a sequel to his first book, just titled Kalmann, which one reviewer has likened to an ‘Icelandic Read More
Husbands by Mo Fanning, blogtour
I can’t resist a road trip novel, and one taking in Route 66 even more so. But we’re not there yet… In the prologue, a British guy gets married in a Vegas chapel – or is he married? His date, ‘a craggy daddy-bear’ type promises to get it annulled the next day, as our chap Read More
