Iain Banks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Banks and http://www.iain-banks.net/) died on 9 June 2013. Diagnosed with terminal cancer of the gallbladder he wittily asked his long term partner Adele if she would do him the honour of becoming his widow (http://www.iain-banks.net/2013/04/03/a-personal-statement-from-iain-banks/). He has left multitudes of grieving fans. In the fifth book in the ‘Culture’ series, published 1996, he offers us […]
Burial Rites (2013) is the work of an Australian who visited Iceland on a cultural exchange. Based on a true 19th-century story, this powerful book has the stark and tragic tone of the sagas, where a veneer of Christianity cannot conceal a bleak and stoic belief in the workings of fate. Old superstitions are rife, and
Alan Warner (http://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/may/25/life-in-writing-alan-warner and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Warner) gives us this peculiarly Scottish tale of purposelessness and amorality set in the 1980s. For it he won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1996 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somerset_Maugham_Award). Morvern Callar, a low-paid young woman in the local supermarket of a desolate and beautiful port town (Oban??) in the west of Scotland, wakes one morning in late December to find
Meticulously observed, agonizing and funny, this unconventional account of clinical depression was the novelistic debut of the author of the praised short-story collection Blood (1991). Drama teacher Joy Stone has become severely depressed following the death of her married lover. Surrounded by his effects in the house they briefly shared, she can’t summon the will
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The Bad Sister (1978) is a tale of witches in contemporary life. Drawing from and reinterpreting James Hogg’s classic Gothic tale Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which focused on an evil alter ego, the novel is itself rather schizophrenic, alternating between a documentary account of the murder of Michael Dalzell and his daughter, tracked down
Denise Mina (http://www.denisemina.co.uk/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denise_Mina) treats us to a grisly Glasgow crime novel in Garnethill. Maureen O’Donnell wasn’t born lucky. A psychiatric patient and survivor of sexual abuse, she’s stuck in a dead-end job and a secretive relationship with Douglas, a shady therapist. Her few comforts are making up stories to tell her psychiatrist, the company of
Gavin is creating a unique ‘holiday experience’; every horrid facility hated by tourists who dislaike being abroad will be available on a converted North Sea oil rig. To test the facilities he’s hosting a reunion for his old school (none of his ex-classmates can remember him, but what the heck, it’s free). He is so busy showing
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Nelson DeMille (www.nelsondemille.net) was born in New York City in 1943. He grew up on Long Island and graduated from Hofstra University with a degree of Political Science and History. After serving as an infantry officer in Vietnam, where he was decorated three times, DeMille worked as a journalist and short story writer. He wrote his
Eighty year old Wilbur Smith (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilbur_Smith and http://www.wilbursmithbooks.com/) has won fans the world over for his heart-racing novels that span continents and centuries. Incredibly, he has been publishing books for nearly fifty years. His novels have hit bestseller lists in the United States – and everywhere else – and sold 120 million copies. As a writer of action-adventure
