"Crackling with energy, assured and authoritative." So says Val McDermid about Manda Scott's debut suspense novel, Hen's Teeth, the first novel to feature Dr Kellen Stewart. But she might well have been discussing Kellen herself. Indeed, she is the draw to the series, in this reader's opinion; it's Kellen's sharp
Ten-year-old Judith isn't very concerned that Armageddon is coming. In fact, she's not sorry that soon "nothing of this old world will be left". "[I]t’s good because polar bears are starving and trees are dying and if you put a plastic bag in the earth it will never
"Baseball – what a boring game! One player threw the ball, another caught it, a third held a bat. Everyone else stood around." Chad Harbach's debut novel shares its title with a guide to playing baseball, which includes meditative observations on the art of life itself. It's a
Alexi Zentner's Touch Knopf, 2011 It seems like stating the obvious, but Touch is all about storytelling. Sure, all novels are fiction. They all contain stories. But they aren't all about storytelling. However, Alexi Zentner's novel is just that. "I felt like I knew him already. I'd heard so many
Nicholas Ruddock's The Parabolist Doubleday, 2010 It's ironic. One of the women in Nicholas Ruddock's novel is thinking about the heroines of Emma Bovary and Anna Karenina. "Look at all those passionate women, the ones in novels, the ones who wore their hearts on their sleeves," she says. "They all
