Our latest reviews
Liberator by Richard Harland
Richard Harland’s Worldshaker introduced a world that had been torn apart. In this retelling of history, the Napoleonic wars rendered Europe uninhabitable, and the Imperial houses now traverse the globe in the marauding juggernauts. These steampunk behemoths are strictly divided…
Tales from the Tower Volume 1: The Wilful Eye, edited by Isobelle Carmody and Nan McNab
I always think it’s a sad moment in our lives when we stop reading fairytales. Fairytales always seem to belong first and foremost to the very young, and the dark themes that once existed in them have become sanitized so…
Abandon by Meg Cabot
Meg Cabot fans will be thrilled to hear there is a new series on the way, with the first title, Abandon, just released. It’s all about Pierce, who is definitely not your average seventeen-year-old. She doesn’t quite fit in…
Unearthly by Cynthia Hand
Clara is part angel, a Quatarius and has only known this since she turned fourteen two years ago. Angels are on earth for a special reason, and that is to complete their purpose. Clara has started to see visions, of…
The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler
Lars Kepler is the new Swedish sensation, not least because it’s the pseudonym for writers and lovers Alexander Ahndoril and Alexandra Coelho Ahndoril, who have hit on the right chemistry in this beautifullywritten and engaging book.
When a family is…
Beautiful Thing: Portrait Of A Bombay Bar Dancer by Sonia Faleiro
Sonia Faleiro’s background as both a novelist and a journalist come together in this remarkable story about 19-year-old ‘Leela’, who lives and works in a Bombay suburb with a notorious dance bar scene. Faleiro spent five years getting to know…
My Sister Lives On The Mantlepiece by Annabel Pitcher
Oh, how your heart aches for young Jamie. He has lost a sister to a bombing, his mother has abandoned her living children and his father is lost in alcoholic grief. His remaining sister has developed a rebellious disdain for…
I’ll Never Get Out Of This World Alive by Steve Earle
This highly anticipated new album from Grammy award-winning country star Earle is his first album of original material since 2007. While lyrically, it’s not the most cheerful record you’ll ever hear, Earle’s songwriting continues to impress and there are some…
Paper Airplane by Alison Krauss & Union Station
In her first outing with Union Station in seven years, Alison Krauss leaves behind her high profile collaborations and returns to her bluegrass (albeit twenty-first century bluegrass) roots. Union Station are, as musicians, unparalleled and the music on offer here…
Apocalypse by Bill Callahan
Though often unfairly miscast as a depressive, Texan troubadour Bill Callahan’s fourteenth studio album, Apocalypse, is not a vision of the end of days so much as a revelation of new frontiers. The spare poetry and seemingly simplistic motifs…