When I was a younger reader, I avoided stories about boys. A friend of mine sought them out because the boys had all the best adventures and the girls were always learning how to be 'good'; I kept reading stories about girls in search of the ones who were 'bad'
Striking cover, no? Alice Sebold's novel was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2003, the year that Valerie Martin's Property won the prize. A friend of mine was so excited about The Lovely Bones, that she bought it as soon as it was available in paperback, and I've
Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry Suzette Mayr's Monoceros Coach House Books, 2011 Nowadays, it's been Disney-fied, but once-upon-a-time the unicorn wasn't about pink glitter and rainbows, but about raw passions, about what cannot be tamed. In one of Da Vinci's notebooks is this note: "The unicorn, through its
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
Vendela Vida’s The Lovers (2010) Harper Collins, 2011 Yvonne has travelled to Datça, Turkey twenty-eight years after she first visited it. Her first visit was with her husband, on their honeymoon. On her second visit, she travels there alone: her husband has died. She used to tell people that Peter
