Patricia Cornwell is a very good writer of crime fiction. I have enjoyed several of her novels featuring Dr Kay Scarpetta. But I think she should have stuck to the fiction. This 365-page tome is…
Barely eight years after the end of the Second World War, and with much of Berlin in ruins, workers in the Soviet Zone launched an extraordinary uprising. The trigger was an increase in the demands…
A very short (52 pp) collection of the wit and wisdom of the witty and wise Oscar Wilde. Much of what he wrote here is nonsense, but much of it is the opposite — and…
This is a brilliant book. Owen Matthews, a veteran journalist covering Russia, tells the story of the run-up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and the months that followed. The book was…
Ben Macintyre is a great story-teller. But to see him at his best, he needs a great story to start with. Having watched the recent BBC series based on this book, I was keen to…
Three weeks ago I read the first of the Travis Chase novels (The Breach) and in my review, I said that I would not be continuing with the series. But I lied. I’ve now completed…
This book, shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize, is very hard to categorise. It begins as a kind of police procedural, though one that is at times laugh-out-loud funny. It has elements of horror. And…
This is the first of a series of sci-fi thrillers starring Travis Chase, ex-con and ex-cop. It is unimaginably silly, with a death count to rival actual wars, and yet … I was somewhat intrigued….
I grew up with bialys in New York City. Places that sold bagels sold bialys. When you got bored of bagels, you had a bialy. But fast forward several decades, and I can barely remember…
Peter Hollins has written a good, short, clear book explaining how all us can learn to be more self-disciplined (and get things done). He’s not the first to have done so, but I liked his…