Naked At The Albert Hall By Tracey Thorn: Book Review Why do we love someone's singing voice? What assumptions do we make about someone because of how they sing? In her new book, Tracey Thorn explores the "mixed blessing" that is singing, from stage fright to stage presence, and from the magic of Dusty Springfield to the politics of The X Factor. Interviews with Alison Moyet and Romy from The XX, and musings on Elvis Costello, Adele and The Streets, are woven into Tracey's own singing jou

Girls On Fire By Robin Wasserman: Book Review Female friendship, adolescent or otherwise, has always been fertile ground for fiction. The intensity. The jealousy. The passion. The mirroring. The neediness. All these and more are present in YA author Robin Wasserman's "adult" (Old Adult?) debut, Girls on Fire. Hannah Dexter is the uncool girl at school, mocked and isolated by queen bee Nikki Drummond. Until life takes a bleakly unexpected turn for Nikki, and Hannah finds herself befriende

Saint Mazie By Jami Attenberg: Book Review Jami Attenberg’s follow-up to her New York Times bestseller, The Middlesteins (not read it? It’s a gem), is a bold departure into historical fiction – but with a difference. This is history told through people, not prose, meaning character comes first – always Attenberg’s strong point. Mazie Gordon-Phillips ran The Venice movie theatre in the rundown Bowery district of New York City, and was famed for her brassy looks and boozing, but also her big h

The Murder Of Harriet Monckton By Elizabeth Haynes: Book Review Bestselling crime writer Elizabeth Haynes (Into The Darkest Corner) has turned her attention to an unsolved true Victorian crime: the discovery of the body of 23-year-old Harriet Monckton behind a chapel in Bromley, Kent. She was five or six months pregnant at the time and a number of people would have had motive for killing her: her closest friend, her would-be fiancé, her seducer and her former lover. Haynes tells the story fr

The Last Days Of Leda Grey By Essie Fox: Book Review Leda Grey is a glamorous silent movie actress with the power to make people fall under her spell. Journalist Ed Barnes is no exception. Happening across an old photo of her in a junk shop and captivated by her beguiling looks and haunting presence, Ed sets off to meet her and finds himself drawn into a mystical, hedonistic world full of dark secrets. All is not what it seems and the ending makes you stop, think, then read the last chapte

An Unremarkable Body By Elisa Lodato: Book Review How well do you know your mother? I mean really know. The ins and outs of her life outside “mum”. That’s the question that confronts Laura, when her mother, Katherine, is found dead at the foot of her stairs. How she died only an autopsy can say. How she lived is another matter. As the pathologist puts what he regards as Katherine’s “unremarkable body” under the knife, Laura becomes determined to prove there was more to this woman who

The Wonder By Emma Donoghue: Book Review This is Emma Donoghue’s next book after her hit novel, Room. Set in Victorian Ireland, news is spreading of a “manna from heaven” – a pious 11-year-old girl called Anna O’Donnell, who has been starving herself for four months, yet appears to be healthy. The local priest and her family – farmworkers and devout Catholics – desperately want Anna declared a saint. English nurse Lib Wright is summoned. Fresh from the bloody battlefields of the Crimean Wa

The One Who Wrote Destiny By Nikesh Shukla: Book Review When Mukesh arrives in 1960s England from Kenya, he expects to be met with sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. Instead, he is met by cold and racism – and the woman who turns out to be the love of his life. Nikesh Shukla’s third novel, The One Who Wrote Destiny, follows three generations from the 60s to present-day England, as they move from Kenya to Keighley to London, Edinburgh and New York and back to Kenya again. We’re introduced to Neh

This Must Be The Place By Maggie O'Farrell: Book Review The seventh novel from Costa-award-winning Maggie O'Farrell, This Must Be The Place is the story of linguist Daniel Sullivan, his second wife, Claudette, their children from both marriages, and what happens when he makes an unwelcome discovery about his first love. Along the way, it takes in modern celebrity, alcoholism, our obsession with personal journeys, chronic eczma and speech problems. It's always bemused me that O'Farrell doesn'

A Fortunate Age By Joanna Rakoff: Book Review Fans of the classic novel The Group have a treat in store in this debut novel by Joanna Rakoff - whose memoir, My Salinger Year, was a cult hit last year. A faithful reworking of Mary McCarthy's classic, A Fortunate Age transports six young, privileged female graduates from 1930s New York to a spoilt, self-indulgent pre-9/11, pre-hipster Manhattan; one where the notion of checking your privilege wasn't even a gleam in twitter's eye. You don't hav

Montpelier Parade By Karl Geary: Book Review Sonny Knolls is a 16-year-old in 1980s Dublin with the odds stacked against him: the youngest, self-described “runt” of seven brothers, with a gambler father and a mother at her wits’ end, targeted by school prefects, dismissed by the teaching staff and left with petty crime and alcohol for amusement. And then his eyes are opened to a world of literature and love, and life beyond an impoverished council estate, by Vera, a woman old enough to be his

The Strawberry Girl By Lisa Stromme: Book Review There are probably few people on the planet who don’t know Edvard Munch’s painting, The Scream, but I’ll hold my hand up to knowing nothing about the story behind it. Enter Lisa Stromme and her bewitching debut novel about the love affair that inspired what is now one of the most famous images of all time. It’s summer 1893 in the Norwegian fishing village of Asgardstrand and local girl Johanne Lien becomes a maid for the Ihlen family. As the