Translated from the Norwegian by Don Bartlett My first encounter with Kjell Ola Dahl was last year when I read one of his standalone historical crime novels set in mid-1920s Norway moving up to WWII, and I very much enjoyed The Assistant. Kjell Ola Dahl is one of Norway’s foremost crime writers, especially known for Read More
Category: Blog Tour
The Octopus Man by Jasper Gibson – blogtour
Back in 2013, Jasper Gibson wrote a comedy thriller called A Bright Moon for Fools (reviewed for Shiny here) in which archetypal old reprobate Harry Christmas runs away from his London life to Caracas and has the time of his life until a nasty reminder of his old life arrives to upset things. This book Read More
Quicksand of Memory by Michael J Malone – Blog Tour
It was Niccolò Machiavelli who said: “Keep your friends close, keep your enemies closer.” But how do you distinguish between the two? And would you really want to keep your enemies closer? What if it happens by accident? What if it’s meticulously planned? These are the sort of questions that ran through my mind as Read More
Off Target by Eve Smith – blog tour
I adore spec fiction set just into the future, and I’ll admit part of that thrill is the scary thought that some of it may come true. It adds a layer of excitement that really gets my brain thinking overtime. I’m so glad to have discovered Eve Smith, and after really enjoying her new novel, Read More
Review of the Year #1 – 2021, A Year of Reading and Blogging
As always, I’m saving my books of the year for the 31st, but today I plan to share some other blogging highlights, discovered authors and the few disappointments of my reading year. (By the way, the cute calendar comes from Asking For Trouble). Let’s go through the year first… JANUARY – saw the start of the Read More
The Moon Almanac by Judith Hurrell – Blog Tour
Given that the Moon is such an everpresent feature in all of our lives, it is no surprise that every culture and many religions have their own Moon mythology. The Moon is often seen as feminine with goddesses like the Greek Selene and Roman equivalent Luna, but we also talk about The Old Man in Read More
Psychopaths Anonymous by Will Carver – Blog Tour
I only discovered Will Carver earlier this year when I read The Beresford for its blog tour in July. Wow! I loved that smart, funny, horror novel and have since acquired several of his earlier ones. Then, not even six months later comes another Will Carver novel! Psychopaths Anonymous is narrated by Maeve, a successful Read More
Dark Things I Adore by Katie Lattari – Blog Tour
There’s something about books set in artist communities that always intrigues me. Not only do I enjoy reading about the creative process, and where you have a group of artists, they will spur each other on to produce exciting work, although this can so easily tip over into being too competitive. These communities are always Read More
Olympus, Texas by Stacey Swann – Blog Tour
There are two ways to read this novel: firstly, you can just dive straight in and enjoy it without thinking about the significance of the placename in its title, or, you can give yourself a knowing smile and keep an eye open as you read for all the resonances in its pages. I did the Read More
The Beresford by Will Carver – blog tour
I do love a horror novel that has a strong sense of dark humour, (cf my love for the books of Grady Hendrix here, here and here). Somehow I’ve not managed to encounter Will Carver before, but after reading The Beresford I’ll be exploring his back catalogue soon, for this novel is genuinely creepy but Read More
Meet Me in Another Life by Catriona Silvey – Blog Tour
I’m going to say it straight up. If you loved Audrey Niffenegger’s The Time Traveller’s Wife or Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life, it’s entirely likely that you’ll also like Meet Me in Another Life. I love all three of them. Silvey’s novel has some similarities to the mechanisms used in both the other aforementioned novels, Read More
Famous last words – Just one more job…
Love and Theft by Stan Parish You know me, I LOVE my thrillers. All of ’em. However there are two types I love more than the rest: the first has spies, the second has a heist. Love and Theft is the latter, and I’m delighted to be taking part in the short blog tour for Read More
Enough. by Dr Cassandra Coburn
‘How Your Food Choices Will Save the Planet’ The blog tour stops here today for a book that turned out to be not what I expected at all really. When offered Enough. (with a full stop.) for review, I didn’t really look beyond the upside-down cow on the cover. From that, I was expecting a Read More
Winterkill (Dark Iceland 6) by Ragnar Jónasson
Today, it’s my turn on the blog tour for Winterkill. Sometimes it’s good to come in at the end of a series of books. If you enjoy that final volume, it makes you want to go back and explore all the others. This was definitely the case with Icelandic police procedural Winterkill for me, although Read More
The Dylan Thomas Prize Longlist Blog Tour
The Swansea University Dylan Thomas Prize has become one of my favourite literary awards. It is awarded for the best published literary work in the English language, written by an author aged 39 or under, named for the Swansea-born author, who died aged 39 in 1953, and the winner will receive £30,000! The longlist for Read More
Mavis Cheek Blog Tour
Dog Days by Mavis Cheek Today I’m delighted to be a stop on Mavis Cheek‘s blog tour celebrating the new Ipso Books e-book editions of some of her backlist titles, of which her 1990 novel Dog Days is the latest (my review below). It has been some years since I’ve read any of Mavis’s novels, but I do remember chuckling my way through Mrs. Fytton’s Read More
Q&A with Jane Thynne, author of ‘Black Roses’
Back in March, I reviewed a fabulous romantic thriller set in pre-WWII Germany. Black Roses by Jane Thynne is the story of Clara Vine, a young actress who goes to Berlin to pursue a film career and ends up as a British spy and confidante of Magda Goebbels, the infamous First Lady of the Third Reich. Read More
