If you’ve seen the movies ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ you’ve got the plot of Replay. The novel begins with the death of 43-year-old Jeff Winston — who immediately re-awakens a quarter century…

Mark Billingham was taking a real risk writing this book. After two decades of turning one excellent crime novel after another featuring North London’s Tom Thorne, he’s now put that series aside (he says temporarily)…

Melvyn Dubofsky wrote one of the great books about the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and followed it up with this short biography of the IWW’s most famous leader, ‘Big Bill’ Haywood. It’s a…

I was not aware when I purchased this book that it was the most recent in a series featuring American-born Cambridge professor (and spy) Tom Wilde. The good news is that knowing that, I’ve saved…

I admit that it’s a great title. And the opening few pages are kind of cute. And then — nothing. The book has absolutely nothing to say. And it’s based on nothing, other than Mark…

The opening pages of this book by one of America’s greatest writers were a shock both to Richard Wright’s agent and publisher. They were so violent and painful to read that the book could not…

I must be the last person in England to have never read anything by “national treasure” Stephen Fry, but this book came up in conversation recently, so I have now done so. The book had…

This short book feels like a much longer one, as it covers some of the long history of Georgian culture, focussing on the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It’s a book about poets and…

Thomas Mullen is an author I’d never come across before, but his other books have gotten rave reviews. And this one had an intriguing premise: imagine a world where in the course of a few…

This is a very good and important book, and it deserves a wide audience. I read a lot about this subject and I still managed to learn things I didn’t know before. (I didn’t know,…