"Astonishing... a landmark epic..."

"(a) darkly transcendent novel filled with phantasmagoric visions, body horror and tortured beings traversing a blasted desert hellscape..."

"As with her previous novels, Vickers has a keen ear for dialogue and there are moments of wry humour..."

"The pot-shots are bitingly funny. ..."

"There are many things in The Topeka School that are more eloquent than words..."

"feels at once more real – because less cartoony – and more sentimental than her earlier books..."

"The strength of O’Brien’s work, apart from lyricism, has always been its reliable specificity...."

" a shrewd, skilful tale of loneliness, the search for meaning and a place in the world, and the problems of truly relating to another human being..."

"Here really is a world, thrillingly imagined and under the surface entirely like our own..."

"Intriguing debut about life as a Ghanaian immigrant..."

"The narrator of Suncatcher comes of age in Colombo in 1964, against a backdrop of political chaos and whispers of revolution..."

"Wartime Paris is lovingly depicted: the smell of wet leaves, the taste of chicory coffee, the flics in their rain capes, a loaded glance across a café. Most of all, the sense of menace...."

"Intensely human characters, a cracking storyline and vivid scene-setting make The Last Hunt one of Meyer’s best...."

"Cruz Smith at his best: ace storytelling with dry, laconic dialogue and a crumpled but courageous hero...."

"there is a warmth and a humanity in Aciman’s prose that enraptures with its slow, easy embrace..."

"Buenos Aires in the 1960s, home to remnants of the Third Reich in exile, is brought chillingly to life..."

"Andrew Michael Hurley returns to a strange but familiar terrain..."

" the attempts to modernise the series with subtle nods to modern popular culture are intriguing..."

"a clear-eyed and frequently very funny satire on psychogeography’s false solaces..."

"these are books that journey deep into the darkest reaches of human experience and return, fatally wounded, but still eloquent..."

"much of the joy of The Tenth Muse derives from Chung’s writing, which is unadorned but expressive, shot through with moments of sparse lyricism..."

"A story can do and be whatever it wants, this collection seems to be saying..."

"Through her powerful command of language, she eases the reader into her nightmarish fairytale..."

"a stunning conclusion to a trilogy that expands our understanding of what science fiction can do...."

"This is up there with the best contemporary Christmas novels ..."

"...her most personal and beautiful work yet..."

"Saskia Vogel’s prose has an ease to it, though at times Permission can feel too metronomic..."

"The overall effect is of being in the unpleasantly insistent confidences of someone who, erroneously, fancies himself a tremendously slick yarn-spinner...."

"Despite the novel’s wit and sharpness, there is a fundamentally serious point to it, and not just about body dysmorphia and unrealistic expectations..."

"a variety of authors have created marvellous and menacing new monsters..."

"This is a spectacular debut...."

"stories of financial misfortune and emotional misunderstandings..."

"Gripping, twisty and immensely satisfying, this confirms Blok’s talent...."

"A surprising, gripping experiment that works..."

"wonderful twists and turns which single out Upson as a talented author of historical crime..."

"Now and again a joke lands – but these jokes are saturation-bombed in the manner of a boss-fight in Ikaruga...."

"The pot-shots are bitingly funny. ..."

"A story can do and be whatever it wants, this collection seems to be saying..."

"it envelops the reader in a warm cosy glow, in which the shadows are always lengthening on a late afternoon in high summer..."

"much, much better than it needed to be..."

"(an) eclectic, wide-ranging anthology..."

"The text of Romanifesto is demotic, full of slang, reliably jocular...."

"Patchett gracefully captures the strange, egotistical logic of childhood...."

"Connolly’s comedy is all about performance, not the printed word..."

"Certainly Kington produced a lot in his insufficiently long life (1941-2008)...."

"an entertaining and superbly well-informed guide to the often mysterious workings behind electoral outcomes..."

"Sharp, action-packed short stories..."

"This powerful, occasionally astonishing story about materialism, status and manipulation is written in Singlish — a Singaporean English patois — which takes some getting used to but adds extra authenticity..."

"An unmissable, multi-layered read..."

"A fascinating guide and a celebration of linguistic diversity and bilingualism..."

"a spoof too far..."

"a no-holds-barred attack on the Establishment’s blocking of Brexit..."

"the market will always be open for books like this one..."

"Bad men and bad sex work up an appetite for tastier dishes..."

"Curated with valuable context by Janet Somerville, a literature teacher in Toronto, it’s her own love letter of sorts to a woman she calls “a wonder”...."

"Now and again a joke lands – but these jokes are saturation-bombed in the manner of a boss-fight in Ikaruga...."

"A weary, regretful deja vu pervades Crime in Progress..."

"The book is packed with offbeat, startling anecdotes...."

"offers disappointingly few glimpses of the gaiety and charm so abundantly evident in the songs..."

"This devastatingly scrupulous account of Jack the Ripper’s victims exposes the misogyny at the heart of the myth..."

"Longerich’s imposing volume (first published in German in 2015) is the third but perhaps not final step in a prodigious project in the prosopography of Nazi power. ..."

"Chang uses a gripping and emotional personal story to draw Western readers into the history of China..."

"Me ends up, in every sense, fabulous..."

"the story of the family’s rise from simple artisans to originators, creators, super salesmen and friends to the rich and famous is extraordinary..."

"these essays can only be defined by what they lack..."

"The writer’s genius for nailing a subject in a sentence lives on in his stinging reviews and defensive interviews..."

"paint(s) a rich portrait of the enduring friendship between four of them...."

"Simms is mesmerized by his own reading of Hitler’s ideology..."

"Some of his best poetry was in his journalism, and some of his best journalism is in this poem...."

"You can dip into this book anywhere and will find delights: all football fans aged from nine to 90 will love it...."

"Wilson, however, argues persuasively that Albert's many talents helped reshape the monarchy..."

"His gifts of leadership and organisation are clearly remarkable: this is a man you would follow into the jungle. Or anywhere . . ...."

"Read this book, which is wise, brave and often funny..."

"a well-worth-struggling-for drugalogue..."

"This is a novel that demands much of its readers, and gives much in return...."

"This book is brave and moving..."

"She writes short stories or texts of unsettling wit and invention..."

"Buy it as a Christmas present to inspire nieces and nephews with an ambition to be a force for good in a world that is still ripe with adventure...."

"painstakingly researched, hugely digressive, wildly overwritten but ultimately moving..."

"a record, funny and sometimes dazzling, of a way of life now almost disappeared..."

"Her reporting proves why an independent free press is so vital for democracy..."

"the writing is so sharp it doesn’t matter much that we may be unfamiliar with many of the baseball, American football and basketball stars under Thompson’s microscope..."

"full of passion and candour and takes the reader right into the dressing room..."

"a worthwhile addition to the pugilistic library...."

"hilarious and shocking... I thought my opinion of the 45th president could not get any lower. I was wrong. ..."