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Snow – John Banville (Hanover Square Press 2020)
There was always the danger, in his job, of seeing things that weren’t there, of making a pattern where there wasn’t one. The policeman...
Reservoir 13 – Jon McGregor (4th Estate 2017)
The river ran empty and clear, turning beneath the bridge. There were clouds and the evening was dark and people moved through the...
Behind the Scenes at the Museum – Kate Atkinson (Doubleday 1995)
I am about to retrace my journey.... I have a life to go back to. I have been away long enough. This is the first Atkinson novel I’ve...
Skios – Michael Frayn (Faber & Faber 2012)
There was nothing that made you relish every moment of being alive so much as knowing that at the very next you might be dead. I gave...
And Then There Were None – Agatha Christie (William Collins Sons & Co. 1939)
Don’t you feel – all the time – that there’s someone. Someone watching and waiting? Agatha Christie loved a ‘locked-room’ (or train, boat...
Shame – Salman Rushdie (Jonathan Cape 1983)
You can get anywhere in Pakistan if you know people, even into jail. As its title implies, this book is filled with disgrace. It is also...
An Officer and a Spy – Robert Harris (Hutchinson Random House 2013)
The sufferings that you endured on that terrible day will be graven into the memory of mankind. This book really grew on me, to the point...
The Western Wind – Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape 2018)
How unknowable men are, full of corners. If you want to know what it felt like to live in rural Somerset in 1491, this is the book for...
Tribe – Sebastian Junger (4th Estate 2016)
The ultimate betrayal of tribe isn’t acting competitively…it is predicating your power on the excommunication of others from the group....
Othello – William Shakespeare (Arden Shakespeare 2006)
When you shall these unlucky deeds relate/Speak of me as I am…. A well-known poet, Daljit Nagra, once told me that Othello is the best...
Red Harvest – Dasheill Hammett (Alfred A. Knopf 1929)
Anybody that brings any ethics to Poisonville is going to get them all rusty. I hadn’t heard of Hammett until I looked into the literary...
A View from the Bridge – Arthur Miller (Viking Press 1955)
Sometimes you talk like I was a crazy man or sump’m. This is an excellent play which I recommend reading (as well as watching) because so...
The New Confessions – William Boyd (Hamish Hamilton 1987)
I ponder all the possibilities that come with being human. Boyd’s ability to convey a sweep of 20th-century history, as seen through the...
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck (Pascal Covici 1937)
Because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you! During the Great Depression, Steinbeck reported for the San...
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters (Virago 2002)
When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it...
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