Blogs about Fiction books

Book cover of Incredible Doom Vol 1, created by Matthew Bogart and Jesse Holden. Incredible Doom is a serialised comic strip about two American teenage proto-bloggers, Dougie and Anna, in 1999, by Matthew Bogart and …

Elitism, at what cost? (Upper East Side, Manhattan, present-day): New York City is a state of mind. It’s the state of minds of seven Mommy characters (professionals, singles, SAHMs/stay-at-homes) that drive Elizabeth Topp’s acutely perceptive …

[I'm actually not even sure now when I drafted this review. It might be a few years ago now. Initially, I wanted to sample more of Pakington's books before raving about this one, and then …

Even more off-topic than usual, but I thought I’d share here the fact that I’ve co-authored an article that is printed in the new edition of the Byron Journal. Here’s how it happened: My friend …

The British Library Women Writers series keeps bringing out real gems for readers to discover. One Year’s Time was certainly not a novel I had heard of before, written by the niece of A A …

Happy weekend! Saturdays are when we round up all the sapphic book news from the previous week into one convenient location. Think of it as your personal queer reading directory! After all, we know the …

It was inevitable, really, that September would be less of a bumper reading month than August was; after all, going back to work was always going to mean less hours for reading, and although I …

You might have noticed that one of the tabs on this website holds notes about the fiction I’ve written and published. My novel, The Shetland Witch, is beaming out to the world right now on …

I have touched on this briefly during the nascent days of this blog, but my fascination with long form works continues unabated. A bit ago, I took a look at what are considered the longest …

Now that tax season and a multitude of other annoyances are out of the way, it’s time to get to that book backlog I mentioned in my last post. I’m not quite sure how to …

A short time ago, I spent a most enjoyable time talking to Jenny, for a Joys of Binge Reading Podcast. She was in New Zealand. I was in the U.S., in Massachusetts. As an ancient …

The Black Spectacles by John Dickson-Carr So much of this book works on illusion – while it is not a locked room mystery as such, it is so contrived that there is a tiny pool …

I picked up For Steam and Country recently. It’s the first in a series of young-adult (YA) novels, “The Adventures of Baron von Monocle” by Jon Del Arroz. It’s actually a popular YA/steampunk series, which …

Book review by George S: This novel begins brilliantly, with a virtuoso description of a young man stalking babirusa, the wild pig of Borneo. He is at one with the jungle: ‘the lithe brown body …

The Bullet That Missed – Richard Osman Another fab audiobook outing with The Thursday Murder Club, this time in the company of Fiona Shaw rather than Lesley Manville. VAT fraud, regional TV stars, investigative journalists, …

In 1942, the literary critic and Princeton graduate, Edmund Wilson, then forty-seven, made friends with a scholar of Russian literature slightly younger than himself, Helen Muchnic. Born in Baku in 1902, Helen emigrated to the …

The September prompt for Read Christie 2023 is a motive: hatred. This is obviously a common motive for murder and there are plenty of Christie novels to fit this month’s theme, but the suggested title …

Discover over 100+ new Fantasy & Sci-fi Vella stories!C.L. Cannon’s Vella FairYou can also enter a giveaway, for a chance to win a Kindle Fire, a $25 Visa gift card, and a reading journal!

First things first – your reminder that the 1962 Club is coming up around the corner! Join in a week of reading books published in 1962 and share your thoughts wherever you share bookish thoughts …

Modernity is supposed to be the moment when religious claims and systems of authority reveal themselves to be human-all-too-human fictions that lack divine legitimation. Religion is supposed to wither away. But this itself...can be understood …