Victorian Psycho by Virginia Feito – over at Shiny

Feito’s first novel Mrs March was an absolute blast. An exercise in paranoia on the part of an Upper East Side housewife, who thinks people are talking about her as the model for the not-so-complimentary protagonist of her husband’s new novel – and it escalates from there! After such a strong debut, could she surpass Read More

Reading progress & a review -Eurotrash by Christian Kracht

“O tempora, o mores” as Cicero said. Can you believe the state that a certain orange person and his sidekicks have gotten us into? I’m not going to get into politics here though. My reading has also suffered. I twisted my knee in early Feb, it didn’t feel a bad one, but after a month Read More

Boxes by Pascal Garnier – #ReadingtheMeow2024 #20booksofsummer24

Translated by Melanie Florence It’s a while since I read any Pascal Garnier novellas. Gallic Books have published translations of twelve of his dark tales told with an even darker sense of humour after the prolific author turned towards noir in the 1990s, and Boxes is the fifth I’ve read, so plenty of treats still Read More

Excuse me, but there’s a cockroach crawling up your skirt!

Mrs March by Virginia Feito From the moment I saw the cover, I was always going to read this book. First impression – that ‘Ratched‘ mint green dress, set against a tomato-red background, the woman’s blood-red lipstick and nails, her air of repressed primness. And then there’s the cockroach! Those critters just creep me out! 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

#QuickReads 2021

Quick Reads, developed by the Reading Agency is celebrating 15 years of the scheme today. That’s 15 years of encouraging those who don’t read, or find reading difficult, as well as those who don’t have time to read much, to pick up one of their novella length £1 books, written by some of our best-known Read More