Source: Review copy sent by the publisher – thank you. Then I joined the Random Things blog tour. Given that I have a minor obsession with books about the Space Race – we’re talking from the 1960s to the present day here, not the realms of SF – I was always going to want to Read More
Category: Blog Tour
Lucien by J R Thornton – blogtour
Source: Review copy sent by the publisher, Magpie for the Random Things Blog Tour – thank you. I always enjoy a good campus novel, and I also love novels with art as a driver. Lucien has both – so this book gets a double tick for starters! Christopher Novotny is late arriving on his first Read More
The Murder Pool – Stella Blómkvist 4 – blogtour
Review copy courtesy of the publisher, Corylus Books – thank you. Translated by Quentin Bates The arrival of each newly translated novel in the self-titled Stella Blómkvist series is cause for celebration! Although they could be read individually, this fourth one does feature some of the Reykjavik underground’s baddies who cropped up in the third Read More
Sycorax by Nydia Hetherington – blogtour
Random Tours blog tour – but reading my own personal bought copy of the book! Shakespeare retellings are one thing – I’ve read a few, below (links in titles) – and I still have most of the Hogarth Press series (now reissued by Vintage in paperback) to read. What Nydia Hetherington has done is rather Read More
Saoirse by Charleen Hurtubise – blogtour
A timely blogtour post for the beginning of 12th Reading Ireland month, hosted by Cathy at 746 Books. Although Hurtubise is American, she has lived in Ireland for 25 years, and her second novel is set in Dublin and Donegal. The story begins with recognition, in the form of being awarded a prestigious art prize Read More
Sharks by Simone Buchholz – blogtour
Translated by Rachel Ward A new Chastity Riley book is always welcome. She is the most brilliant character – a police prosecutor in Hamburg. She is smart, sassy as they come, earthy and no-nonsense, but prone to dodgy romances, and she also gets far too involved in her cases for a prosecutor really. She works Read More
The Cut Up by Louise Welsh – blog tour
A new book by Louise Welsh is always a must read – she’s possibly my favourite living Scottish author. The Cut Up is her third crime novel to feature Rilke, valuer for Bowery Auctions in Glasgow. The first Rilke novel, Welsh’s debut, The Cutting Room from 2002 was superb, followed by The Second Cut some Read More
Blackwater by Sarah Sultoon – blog tour
A few years ago, I very much enjoyed Dirt by Sarah Sultoon, which was set in an Israeli kibbutz near the Lebanese border, a multi-stranded thriller that was full of tension. Sultoon is an award-winning journalist who worked for CNN and Channel 4, and has extensive knowledge of world situations. Interestingly, she set that novel Read More
The Author’s Guide to Murder by Beatriz Williams, Lauren Willig and Karen White
When three prolific and bestselling authors get together to write a novel, you can imagine potential fallings out as easily as you can them getting on and enjoying the process. Williams, Willig and White, “Team W” as they’re known, have already written four novels together, and this, their fifth is a locked room murder mystery, Read More
The Winter Job by Antti Tuomainen – blog tour
Translated by David Hackston For me, Antti Tuomainen is the new Antoine Laurain! When Gallic Books (now part of Pushkin Press) introduced Laurain via his novel The President’s Hat it was a big word of mouth hit, and most years, they added another of his novels to their lists building up a devoted following. I’ve Read More
Rainforest by Michelle Paver – blog tour
I’ve really enjoyed all three of Michelle Paver’s previous supernatural novels for adults; Dark Matter, Thin Air and the Gothic Wakenhyrst, Thin Air – the one I read first being my favourite, so I was really looking forward to reading Rainforest, and it didn’t disappoint with its gorgeous cover, and also fits in with #RIPXX Read More
The Winter Warriers by Olivier Norek – blog tour
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
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
Madame 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
