1+ week, 4+ day ago   (273+ words) Sophie Pattison, 37, is not in a good place: heartbroken, childless, mid-divorce from ‘arsehole’ Paul, with her self-esteem and bank balance low. As her best friend Emma says: ‘You have a lot of love and nobody to take it out on....

3+ week, 4+ day ago   (318+ words) In 1957, Russell Ryan, an American is holidaying alone in Austria. There he meets a young woman called Hermine Braunsteiner. They fall in love and Russell takes Hermine back to America where they marry and set up home in the suburbs....

1+ mon, 1+ day ago   (159+ words) He could quote Eliot with an expert familiarity but he could also produce an easy effect of high seriousness when he turned to the later Neil Young. We will not see his like again. They will look back on Rod…...

1+ mon, 1+ day ago   (369+ words) The Spectator Australia Edie Greenlaw, model, actress and socialite in 1920s London, is drawn into a case of homosexual blackmail after trying to help a friend Anthony Quinn’s deliciously dark, theatrical-set murder mystery Curtain Call announced the former film critic as…...

1+ mon, 1+ week ago   (450+ words) The Spectator Australia When his mother’s suicide and father’s insanity leave young Jack effectively orphaned, other family members take him in. But will he always be haunted by whispers of scandal and ‘bad blood’? A typical adolescent, Jack Fristensky is…...

1+ mon, 4+ week ago   (485+ words) The Spectator Australia The dark power of an Irish peat bog lies at the heart of Armstrong’s story, with ancient bones revealing a mysterious, violent history Sheila Armstrong’s strange and beautiful novel has 12 chapters, each named for a month of…...

2+ mon, 2+ week ago   (476+ words) The Spectator Australia In a luxurious French villa, a man lies dead, shot with his own gun – and his wife and son become suspects. But new information emerges every time the scene is reviewed One critic memorably described Waiting for…...

3+ mon, 1+ week ago   (571+ words) The Spectator Australia When the cuckoo is no longer heard and even the last badger shuffles off, the inhabitants of Lower Eodham, a village mentioned in Domesday, sense that change can no longer be resisted Melissa Harrison’s bestselling 2018 novel All…...

3+ mon, 1+ week ago   (503+ words) The Spectator Australia Two lonely residents of east London, well-matched in their attachment to idle dreams, make an awkward stab at a relationship Two people make an awkward stab at a relationship, even as both flounder under the realities of…...