C.K. McDonnell ★★★★★ ‘Publication seeks desperate human being with capability to form sentences using the English language. No imbeciles, optimists or Simons need apply.’ Hannah Willis is struggling. It turns out that throwing parties for her wealthy businessman husband doesn’t count as work experience. When she discovers that he’s been sleeping with basically every…… Continue reading The Stranger Times
Tag: Set in UK
The Taking of Annie Thorne
C.J. Tudor ★★★★ Going back is never easy. Joe returns to Arnhill to take up a teaching post at his old school, a post that became available in the most awful circumstances. Tragedy is nothing new to the old mining town, which is something Joe knows all too well. When he was a child, his…… Continue reading The Taking of Annie Thorne
Stoker’s Wilde
Steven Hopstaken & Melissa Prusi ★★★★★ Before I start, I have a confession to make. Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of my favourite books of all time. Having read the premise, I was rather dubious about Stoker’s Wilde, and was half expecting to hate it, but I needn’t have worried – it was excellent. A…… Continue reading Stoker’s Wilde
The History of Bees
Maja Lunde (Translated by Diane Oatley) ★★★★ I’m always rather dubious of translated books, but this story has flowed seamlessly from the original Norwegian text, published in 2015, into this English version. It follows the lives of three people, spread over a period of 250 years. The accounts are intermingled, but instead being jarring that…… Continue reading The History of Bees
The Thursday Murder Club
Richard Osman ★★★★★ The Thursday Murder Club is the debut novel from Richard Osman, he of Pointless and House of Games fame. He’s always come across as an intelligent guy with a way with words, so giving it a go was a no-brainer. I’m so glad that I did – I absolutely adored it. Set…… Continue reading The Thursday Murder Club
Gone
Leona Deakin ★★★ I don’t often read crime thrillers set in the UK, as I find that they tend to be pretty tame in comparison to their American counterparts, or they go overboard with the gore in order to try and stand out. I was pleasantly surprised that this novel fit neither of those stereotypes.…… Continue reading Gone
The Doors of Eden
Adrian Tchaikovsky ★★★★ The Doors of Eden isn’t so much genre spanning as genre destroying. It begins with a pair of cryptozoologists hunting for birdmen on Bodmin Moor, and ends with… well, that would be spoiling it. Along the way, it flits through virtually every fiction genre going, with so many twists and turns that…… Continue reading The Doors of Eden
Ghost Virus
Graham Masterton ★ A series of bizarre murders and suicides in London bring together two disparate police officers, who must work together to solve the increasingly unexplainable deaths. I’m not sure that I’ve ever read a Graham Masterton novel before, but if you’d told me that Guy N. Smith or Shaun Hutson had written this…… Continue reading Ghost Virus
The Constant Rabbit
Jasper Fforde ★★★★ Nobody knows why or how The Event occurred, but in 1965, 18 rabbits were transformed into human-sized and vaguely human-shaped versions of themselves overnight. Since then, they have done what rabbits do, and Britain has divided into those who are happy with or ambivalent about our new lagomorphic citizens. When Constance Rabbit…… Continue reading The Constant Rabbit
Bone Harvest
James Brogden ★★★★ On the killing fields of World War One, a British soldier abandons his regiment to join the Grey Brigade – a company of deserters who pledge allegiance to no country and fight for no army. Amongst this motley group he meets Bill, an adherent of an old Celtic religion, who makes outlandish…… Continue reading Bone Harvest
