FANTASTIC FICTION – Escapes to other places and other times

Marilynne Robinson (Appreciation: Marilynne Robinson, Novelist and Essayist, is an American Original — The National Book Review) is an American novelist and essayist. She has received numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2005, National Humanities Medal in 2012, and the 2016 Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction. Robinson began teaching at the Iowa […]

Kevin Barry is an Irish writer born in 1969. He is the author of three collections of short stories and three novels. City of Bohane was the winner of the 2013 International Dublin Literary Award. Beatlebone won the 2015 Goldsmiths Prize. This 2019 novel, Night Boat to Tangier, was longlisted for the 2019 Booker Prize. Barry is also an editor of Winter Papers, an arts and culture annual.

Robin Robertson (Robin Robertson – Poet) was brought up on the north-east coast of Scotland. After taking degrees in Scotland and Canada he moved to London to work in publishing, for Penguin, Secker & Warburg and Jonathan Cape. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Robertson’s books of poetry are A Painted Field (1997), Slow Air (2002), Swithering (2006), The Wrecking

15th January 2024. American warships are in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Arabian Sea and in The Red Sea. The world looks on in horror at the suffering in Gaza as The Israeli Defence Force retaliates for the 07 October 2023 attacks on Israel. American and British jets have attacked targets in Yemen. Speculation rages

Paul Murray (Paul Murray: Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 | The Booker Prizes) is an Irish writer from Dublin. He has written four novels, the second of which is Skippy Dies (2010). The summary is as follows: We find ourselves in the grand old Dublin institution that is Seabrook College for Boys. Ruprecht Van

Mick Herron (Mick Herron – Homepage | Hachette UK) has been writing thriller novels for 20 years now. His first was Down Cemetery Road, published in 2003. This formed the first of the four part Zoë Boehm series. There followed the twelve part ‘Slough House’ spy series (2010-2022) featuring Jackson Lamb. Herron is pleased to

06 May 2021. This legal detective novel by Angie Kim ( Angie Kim – Author of Miracle Creek, Previously Miracle Submarine (angiekimbooks.com) ) unfolds over four days of trial testimony, and each chapter follows different characters who were present on the night of a fatal explosion at a medical facility in rural Virginia. These are

It looks like we’re headed for a long series of mini lockdowns and complex restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Combine that with the joys of the Scottish winter, and many will seek an escape into fiction. Any other world might seem preferable to this. Diane Cook (https://dianemariecook.com/) offers such an escape. Cook’s writing has appeared

American novelist Dan Mallory (a.k.a. A. J. Finn) (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/feb/15/unreliable-narrators-questions-the-truth-leo-benedictus) has a complex relationship with the truth according to recent reports. This notoriety has not prevented his 2018 thriller ‘The Woman in the Window’ becoming a bestseller. Thrillers have the capacity to absorb our attention, allowing us to forget, temporarily, the grim details of everyday life.

Nell Freudenberger (https://nellfreudenberger.net/about/) is a young novelist from New York, living in Brooklyn. Her fiction has been receiving much praise recently. You may wish to see if the Lanark cognoscenti think it’s justified.   Her 2019 novel Lost and Wanted is a thoughtful and entertaining tale about friendship, and the forces which both bind and

Josephine Cox (http://www.josephinecox.com/) has a lot to smile about. Having sold over 15 million copies of her heartwarming fiction, this saga author has made a fortune and brought joy to countless readers.(https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/fameandfortune/5131523/Josephine-Cox-fameand-fortune.html)   Many believe the acme of her artistic achievement to have been Jessica’s Girl (1993), a novel of such staggeringly formulaic conformity as

Familiar genres of fiction such as historical, adventure, romance, and crime are being supplemented by new categories. This is presumably because there is no escape from the marketing drive towards ‘product development’, nor an end to the ceaseless human desire for novelty. Recent examples have been ‘chick lit’ to satisfy young female interest, and ‘misery

Sometimes a modern fiction title emerges which generates more than the standard publisher hype. Some alchemy is at work in the application of critical appraisal upon popular taste and word-of-mouth recommendation. With the title’s reputation established, literary types suffer unease, if not shame, for having not read these acclaimed works. Examples are: Orlando (1928) by

Jane Harper (http://janeharper.com.au/Books) has followed up the success of her first two novels The Dry (2017), and Force of Nature (2018) with this crime thriller published in February 2019. A summary of The Lost Man is as follows. Two brothers meet at the remote border of their vast cattle properties under the scorching sun of the Australian