Fiction - paperback; Quercus; 181 pages; 2009. (Translated from the German by Anthea Bell) There were four things going for Andrea Maria Schenkel's The Murder Farm even before I started reading it: it's a crime novel; the author's won several awards for it; it's foreign; and it's from Quercus,...

Fiction – paperback; Sort Of Books; 372 pages; 2008. REVIEW COPY. Last year Bad Traffic was named as one of 50 books that publishers felt deserved a wider audience. This week, mid-way through the book, I discovered that that list had been whittled down to 10 books to talk about and Bad Traffic had...

Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 464 pages; 2002. Nuala O'Faolain was an Irish journalist, who died of cancer last year, aged 68. My Dream of You was her critically acclaimed debut novel about a middle-aged woman coming to terms with her past in order to embrace her future. It's one of those ...

Non fiction - paperback; Penguin Classics; 208 pages; 1992. At the turn of the 19th century, Irish poet and playwright John Millington Synge made numerous visits to the Aran Islands, off the west coast of Ireland. He had been encouraged to make his first visit in 1897 by his friend, William Butler Y...

Fiction - paperback; Headline Review ; 312 pages; 2007. If I had my wits about me I'd be reading Jennifer Johnston's back catalog in the order in which the books were written, so that I could appreciate her development as a writer. However, I'm not that well organised, and when I saw thi...

Fiction - paperback; William Heinemann Australia ; 346 pages; 2008. REVIEW COPY. It seems somehow appropriate to review Susan Johnson's new novel, Life in Seven Mistakes, on Christmas Eve given that the book is set at Christmas -- although this is not how I planned it. I read this book in Octobe...

Fiction - paperback; Back Bay Books ; 264 pages; 2003. This is a truly original, off-beat story by first-time novelist Carolyn Parkhurst. Published in the UK under the title Lorelei's Secret, I mooched this on a whim from a reader in Switzerland. "I really liked this book," she wrote i...

Fiction - paperback; Penguin ; 181 pages; 1991. Irish novelist Jennifer Johnston has, in recent times, become one of my favourite writers. This book, her ninth, was first published in 1991. The cover* of my Penguin edition (which I acquired at no cost from BookMooch) is deceptive, because this is no...

  Fiction - paperback; Flamingo; 160 pages; 2001. Doris Lessing is one of those authors you know you ought to read but never do. A case in point: I've had both The Golden Notebook and The Good Terrorist in my possession for more than three years and never once cracked them open. The sheer size ...

  Fiction - paperback; Vintage; 365 pages; 2008. Rose Tremain is one of those British authors who has been on the periphery of my reading existence for about 10 years. She's been hard at work crafting novels -- 11 at last count -- and the odd short story collection, but I have only ever read Mu...