Roy Peter Clark has been teaching writing to journalists and others (including schoolchildren) for several decades — and now he has taught me. I’ve read a number of writing books over the years and this…
This is the story of Casablanca — where the story came from, how the film was made, and its “afterlife” right up until a Facebook post by Elizabeth Warren on a recent New Year’s Eve,…
M.R. Carey has done it again. The Girl With All the Gifts was a terrific example of post-apocalyptic zombie fiction and this book is (mostly) the prequel. The problem with prequels is that you know…
To be clear, this is not a book about Martians, or even girls. The central character is a woman in her late thirties, Jean Beckett, a writer who lives in today’s London. She is writing…
I love time travel stories. And I love history. This book had a lot of promise. The main character, Max (who’s female), is witty and loveable. The book is full of action. There are lots…
This is one of those books that I started to read, put aside, and then picked up much later and decided to give it a second chance. And it’s a good thing that I did….
This week marks the 100th anniversary of the murder of the Russian imperial family by the Bolsheviks. Among those killed were not only the hated Tsar Nicholas and his wife Alexandra, but also their five…
It’s not a total mystery why I rate Mark Billingham as the best crime writer in Britain today. He’s created a wonderful lead character, Tom Thorne, with a great supporting cast who you actually grow…
No, not that candidate. In spite of making every effort to keep up with today’s headlines (references to the Russian seizure of Crimea, North Korea’s nuclear programme and so on), author Jason Matthews never imagines…
This, the second of the Red Sparrow books, continues where the previous one left off, and offers more of the same. It’s written by a former CIA officer, so much of it has the ring…