MEMOIR Dinner with Edward by Isabel Vincent (One £12.99, 240pp) You’ll be familiar with the magic of the ageless friendship if you’ve ever treasured a close attachment to someone 30 or 40 years older or younger. It’s a magic tinged with poignancy, because you both know that the older one will probably die first, leaving … Read more
HISTORICAL By Eithne Farry For The Daily Mail Published: 22:00 BST, 6 February 2020 | Updated: 22:00 BST, 6 February 2020 THE MERCIES by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Picador £14.99, 352 pp) THE MERCIES by Kiran Millwood Hargrave (Picador £14.99, 352 pp) In starkly beautiful sentences Kiran Millwood Hargrave, up until now a bestselling children’s author, … Read more
THRILLERS By Geoffrey Wansell for the Daily Mail Published: 22:00 BST, 6 February 2020 | Updated: 22:00 BST, 6 February 2020 THE MEMORY WOOD by Sam Lloyd (Bantam Press £12.99, 384 pp) THE MEMORY WOOD by Sam Lloyd (Bantam Press £12.99, 384 pp) This taut, spooky debut charts the fate of Elissa, a stunningly bright … Read more
CLASSIC CRIME By Barry Turner for the Daily Mail Published: 22:01 BST, 30 January 2020 | Updated: 11:44 BST, 31 January 2020 THE BODY ON THE TRAIN by Frances Brody (Piatkus £8.99, 384 pp) THE BODY ON THE TRAIN by Frances Brody (Piatkus £8.99, 384 pp) It’s 1929. A freight train arriving at Kings’ Cross … Read more
YOUNG FICTION By Sally Morris for the Daily Mail Published: 22:01 BST, 30 January 2020 | Updated: 11:41 BST, 31 January 2020 EVERNIGHT by Ross Mackenzie (Andersen Press £7.99, 352 pp) EVERNIGHT by Ross Mackenzie (Andersen Press £7.99, 352 pp) There was a man made of midnight and his name was Shadow Jack . . … Read more
HISTORY BLACK WAVE by Kim Ghattas (Wildfire £20, 400 pp) For most people, the story of the Middle East in recent years has felt like a bloody, brutal sequence of murder and carnage. But the rubble-strewn bloodletting of today was not always the norm. Now Kim Ghattas, who was born and bred in Beirut and … Read more
WHAT BOOK would Val McDermid take to a desert island? Val McDermid is currently reading Emma Smith’s This Is Shakespeare She would take The Collected Works of Robert Louis Stevenson to a desert island Crime writer revealed The Wind In The Willows gave her the reading bug By Daily Mail Reporter Published: 22:01 BST, 30 … Read more
BOOK OF THE WEEK RAISING AN EYEBROW: MY LIFE WITH SIR ROGER MOORE by Gareth Owen (History Press £20, 224 pp) Sir Roger Moore, the sleekest and most humorous of 007s, was similarly pampered and jokey off-screen, his dulcet tones never wavering. Grinning broadly, he thoroughly enjoyed the film-star trappings and never forgot ‘the wonderful … Read more
MEMOIR DEAR LIFE by Rachel Clarke (Little Brown £16.99, 336 pp) Growing up in the 1970s, Rachel Clarke loved hearing her father’s tales of his career in medicine. But one story, — from his days as a naval anaesthetist — lingered uncomfortably in her mind. He was only a young man himself when an explosion … Read more
In the titular tale, retired serial killer Kim Byeongsu is forgetting everything – words, days, events, the last person he murdered.