"There’s no backstitching in stories. Nothing can be locked in place." So says a character in Studio Saint-Ex, but readers of Ania Szado's second novel might disagree; she seems to have no trouble locking a good story in place. She began where all good stories begin, with a fascination. In
Nathacha Appanah's The Last Brother Translator Geoffrey Strachan (French) Graywolf Press, 2011 A Graywolf Press publication, a contender for The Tournament of Books, with a gorgeous and haunting cover image: all excellent reasons for picking up a copy of The Last Brother without reading a single word. And then you meet
The Time In Between is essential reading for those who thought that reading about the Spanish Civil War meant Hemingway and Orwell. In her lush and sprawling novel, María Dueñas presents the era via the perspective of "an independent woman in difficult times". There was no room for a seamstress like
Dan Vyleta's The Quiet Twin Harper Collins, 2011 Dan Vyleta's The Quiet Twin is like Hitchcock's "Rear Window" gone wrong-er. There's no Technicolor; imagine everyone is dressed in black, and that some individuals conceal an over-sized pocket-knife. Instead of the director cameo, there is a little blonde girl with pigtails
Mary Horlock's The Book of Lies HarperCollins, 2011 Did you know that there were Nazi concentration camps on British soil during the Second World War? I didn’t, but having read The Book of Lies, I now know. There were four of them actually. And it’s highly appropriate that Cat be
