Lauren Davis' novel, Our Daily Bread, opens with an excerpt from a sermon, delivered in Gideon in 1794, which directs the righteous in attendance to cast out the wicked. Wordcraft of Oregon (US); HarperCollins (CAN) Send them to the mountains, "the wild places of their wickedness", the reverend
These stories turn on moments in which their characters are yanked from their everyday existences. That ordinary, day-to-day life? It's there, and the reader understands its dimensions, but the focus is elsewhere. "Hard, steady work, and no money in it either. When there was fish, there was no price for
Each of us has experienced those moments, when passing noise and bustle, of feeling removed from what really matters. You know, those moments of startling clarity, when you are surrounded by stillness, observing the action but separated from it? Like this, in Frances' words, in Harriet Lane's debut
No need to wonder whether you fit in this novel: Harriet Baxter is speaking directly to you, Reader. Even before the novel has properly begun, she is saying "Reader, if you wonder -- as I suspect you may..." Even though you weren't wondering yet. And, on the next page, she
Of course there are readers who gravitate towards fiction set in ancient times, with their battered Mary Renault and Robert Graves paperbacks, their beloved Rosemary Sutcliffe childhood favourites still lining their shelves. Harper Collins, 2012 But just as there were many readers who would never pick up a western but
