Back in 2017, I had the pleasure of being on the Shadow Judges Panel for the PFD Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year with Dane. (More here and here). Dane’s own website can be found here. He writes mainly in horror/thriller/mystery genres, but has written non-fiction, poetry and is a musician too. He kindly Read More
Tag: Pandemic
A novel of the next pandemic…
Phase Six by Jim Shepard Over Christmas I re-read Miss Smila’s Feeling for Snow as the leading title for my Nordic FINDS Project. *SLIGHT SMILA SPOILER ALERT* During the climax of the novel up in the Arctic, it is revealed that a deadly parasitic worm was thawed by events, causing the deaths that earlier set Read More
Review Round-up – Thompson, Bythell & Cowen / Hayes
Beeswing by Richard Thompson In the mid-80s I discovered British folk music, thanks to friends Jon and Jan. An essential part of my education was Fairport Convention and Richard Thompson, although it’s fair to say that Thompson’s solo work really took off for me a little later with his wonderful 1991 song 1952 Vincent Black Read More
Together – Luke Adam Hawker – Blog Tour
Today, it’s my turn on the blog tour for a deeply lovely book that’s not easy to write about! The lazy way to describe Together would be ‘This year’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse‘ for the combination of pictures and words with an ultimately inspirational message has a sort of similar Read More
My August Shiny posts…
This month I wrote quite a few posts for Shiny New Books, here’s a summary of those I haven’t already mentioned: The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce Although a more conventionally plotted ‘will they ever get together’ type of romance than the bestselling The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, (see my review of that here), Read More
The #1947Club
The third week of reading from a particular year with hosts Simon and Karen. After 1924 and 1938, we’ve reached 1947. Checking my master spreadsheet, I have only previously read one book published in this year.That was Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada – which I blogged about at my old blog here. Back to what to Read More
A case of the ‘sweats’ …
A Lovely Way to Burn by Louise Welsh I don’t know why it took me so long to get around to reading this, the first volume in Louise Welsh’s planned Plague Times trilogy (the second was published earlier this month), for it turned out to be a taut suspense thriller combining a murder mystery with Read More
My new reviews at Shiny New Books
The third issue of Shiny New Books came out on Monday. Now it’s time for me to highlight some of my reviews that appear therein and point you in their direction. As it ended up, I didn’t write as many reviews for this edition, but I shall still split them into a few posts in Read More
Stephen King’s Dark Tower #4
The Dark Tower Book 4: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King. It’s the fourth month of the Dark Tower Readalong hosted by Teresa and Jenny at Shelf Love. The fourth book was the longest yet at a massive 845 pages (I’ve been able to say that each month!), but it was also very enjoyable and the Read More