One of those friends has since become Tory MP for the very Durham constituency in which he grew up. On the hard right of his party, Gary Watson is a toxic, Union flag-waving populist
Esther Rutter was in Japan when it happened. At 21 years old, she had gone to teach English in a rural part of the country and found herself isolated, alienated by the complex pictograms and multiple registers of the Japanese language.
Although it opens ominously enough – its protagonist appearing from nowhere, sweating and dazed, hands outstretched in front of a police car – there’s a lot of fun to be found in Martin Stewart’s appealing and comedic detective novel.
In September 1939, Poland falls before the might of the German war machine, Warsaw being absorbed into a larger bureaucratic entity called the General Government.
Crow Moon meets the definition of “eagerly-awaited” more than most debuts. First-time author Suzy Aspley’s original idea won Pitch Perfect at the 2019 Bloody Scotland crime-writing festival in Stirling, so those who were there will no doubt be delighted to see it finally in print.
Eighteen-sixteen has been called “the year without a summer”. Following the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia, sheets of rain swept across Europe and crops failed. Over this failed summer, Percy and Mary Shelley were famously ensconced in the Villa Diodati on the shores of Lake Geneva with Lord Byron and his friend John Polidori, their extended stay resulting in Mary Shelley’s landmark Gothic novel Frankenstein and Polidori’s The Vampyre. One crucial member of their party, however, has been more or less written out of the story: Mary Shelley’s step-sister, Claire Clairmont.
To say that John Martyn has got the biography he deserved may sound like a backhanded compliment. But Graeme Thomson’s 2020 book, finally available in paperback, does justice to a complex, mercurial and visionary musician, dealing unflinchingly with his tempestuous nature without ever losing sight of the sublime brilliance of his best work.
Despite hailing from Edinburgh, Skelton’s compelling anti-hero Jonas Flynt seems perfectly adapted for life in the pungent, perilous streets of London in the early 18th Century, where a man must always have his wits about him.
“Gentlemen and their desires? Don’t you know it’s the stuff of the world?” asks Grace Sutherland, star of the Victorian stage, of aspiring photographer Ellory Mann as they discuss a racy photo session which might net them both a tidy sum. The eroticisation of women’s bodies, and the denunciation of those enterprising, desperate or bold enough to cater to it, are among the burdens borne by the two central characters of Sara Sheridan’s captivating new novel, along with an oppressive church that polices the morals of its congregation but refuses to be held accountable for its own lapses.
Juggling livestock farming with crime writing sounds so exhausting that it’s hard to imagine how James Oswald finds the time and energy, but he’s somehow reached the thirteenth volume of his acclaimed Inspector McLean series.
