Wellcome Book Prize #2 – The Butchering Art

The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris This is the second of my reviews of books shortlisted for the 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, read as part of the shadow panel. Lindsey Fitzharris is an American with a doctorate from Oxford in the History of Science, Medicine and Technology, and a post-doc Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust Read More

20 Books of Summer: Book the 1st

Equilateral by Ken Kalfus Before I get to Equilateral, I’d like to tell you about my previous experience reading Ken Kalfus, pre-blog. Back in 2006, friend Mark lent me a copy of Kalfus’s second novel, A Disorder Peculiar to the Country.  I remember being quite shocked by it – although I soon got over that – for Read More

Annabel’s Shelves: C

This post was republished into my blog’s original timeline from my lost post archive. We’re up to the letter ‘C’ on my Annabel’s Shelves Project – and it was a case of if at first you don’t succeed, try again…. C is NOT for: Italo Calvino – DNF Oh dear, I tried and tried to Read More

The game’s afoot once again…

The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz The vogue for new writers keeping others’ literary characters alive has never been stronger. I would wager that no one character has continued to be written more about than Sherlock Holmes, although James Bond must be getting close. Most of the non-Fleming Bond novels are, however, officially commissioned Read More

The Glass Books Trilogy – an awfully fun adventure!

The Glass Books Trilogy by G W Dahlquist Bantam in the USA, reputedly paid début novelist Dahlquist an advance of $2,000,000 for the first two installments in this series. Although the first was well received, apparently they lost shedloads of money on the deal. Penguin, the books’ publisher in the UK, also published the first volume with a Read More

Aaarrr! Here be Pirates, Aaarrr, me hearties!

This Easter, I shall be hotfooting it to the multiplex to see the latest film from the ever-wonderful Aardman (or should that be Aaarrr-dman, sic) Animations which is called The Pirates – Band of Misfits (Trailer here). With an all star cast of voices including Hugh Grant as the Pirate Captain and Salma Hayek as Read More

Book Group Report – In search of dragons …

Jamrach’s Menagerie by Carol Birch This story of young Jaffy Brown and his adventures, starting with an encounter with an escaped tiger, was another really good book group choice.  We all throroughly enjoyed this impeccably researched and ultimately rather gory tale of exploration and shipwreck in Victorian times. The Guardian’s review of the book tells Read More

Lizard Kings, Pirates & the Mechanical Turk

The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar Steampunk is a difficult category to get to grips with sometimes with its spec fiction take on Victorian England with added fantasy elements. Tidhar’s The Bookman has a great premise – a terrorist is setting off bombs in London hidden in books and unfortunately one of them blows up Lucy, the Read More

The Truman Show meets Dickensian melodrama

Pastworld by Ian Beck Welcome to Pastworld.  Imagine that London has been reinvented as a theme park; that Dickensian London has been recreated in every detail. Rich tourists undergo immersion training, get costumed and are then brought in by airship to become ‘gawkers’ in this new, old world. Caleb, son of Lucius Brown, one of Read More