Category: Books
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Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty by Patrick Radden Keefe
If there is one non-fiction title I’ve been looking forward to reading for a while, it is this definitive story of the Sackler family and OxyContin, the drug that swept America, almost single-handidly creating the opioid crisis and creating addicts across America. From a British perspective, while every crime show of the last dozen years…
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The Premonition by Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis’ books are always very readable as he has a knack of navigating you through sometimes very complicated stories. In The Premonition he is tackling the pandemic. In particular, he’s actually tackling it from the perspective of a handful of individuals who had previously been planning for something like this, or who were more…
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Nightshade by Annalena McAfee
Eve Laing is an artist who works in her London studio on works based around very accurate reproductions of flowers. But she is perhaps most famous as the muse of another painter, and for moving in the same circles in the sixties and seventies as a number of other more successful artists. She did find…
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The Chateau by Catherine Cooper
The Chateau is the new thriller from Catherine Cooper, who previously wrote the very popular The Chalet. This is basically more of the same, and it’s a perfect summer read. We open at a fabulous Halloween party that’s taking place in a picture perfect French chateau somewhere in France. But there’s a scream… and a…
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The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
The Absolute Book is a complex and sprawling fantasy novel of a very unusual sort. And it’s all the better for being so. To try to even describe the plot would be foolhardy, but it starts in a contemporary world, mostly in the UK, but with excursions to Canada and New Zealand, and tells the…
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How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
A year or so ago I read The Uninhabitable Earth by David Wallace-Wells, which laid out in often horrific details, the kinds of things that would happen to the planet if we didn’t change our ways. Bill Gates goes for the much more practical, “So what can we do about it now?” approach. This book…
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Earthlings by Sayaka Murata
Having previously read and enjoyed Convenience Store Woman, it wasn’t a hard decision to pick up Earthlings. As with the previous novel, this is a story about someone who finds society quiet alienating. Indeed our protagonist, Nutsuki handles life initially by imagining she has magical powers. Beginning as a girl, we follow Nutsuki’s life as…
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Where Ravens Roost by Karin Nordin
I love a good Scandi-noir, and this doesn’t disappoint with an entertaining tale about a slightly-disgraced Swedish detective who feels compelled to visit his long-estranged father in the rural countryside. He heads to the home where for years his father has kept ravens in a barn, but is now suffering from dementia and is talking…
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Out of Time by David Klass
The Green Man is out there, committing crimes across the US in support of the environment. Tom Smith is a junior FBI analyst – can he help catch this undoubtedly brilliant killer? And does America actually want him caught? That’s the set-up for this page-turning thriller. We join the action as Green Man launches an…
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The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist by Adrian Tomine
I bought this book off the back of an entertaining interview with the author in The Observer a couple of weeks ago, and I’m incredibly glad I did. The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist is a memoir of sorts, with Tomine literally sketching vignettes of his life as he persevered to become a renowned cartoonist.…
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Just Like the Other Girls by Claire Douglas
This is a twisty little tale where you’re never quite sure where the story is heading. Una has just got a job as a live-in companion to the wealthy, but cold Elspeth. But the money is good, and she’s willing to put up with the fact that Elspeth’s daughter Kathryn really doesn’t take to her.…
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The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Richard Osman’s first novel is as delightful as it is unexpected. Writing a crime novel didn’t seem like the obvious next thing for Richard Osman to do, and I always get a little nervous when celebrities turn their hands to something outside their previous career. Are they just being published because they’re famous? Well that’s…