top of page
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...
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...
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...
The Search Warrant - Patrick Modiano (Harvill Press 2000)
They are the sort of people who leave few traces. Virtually anonymous. Inseparable from those Paris streets, those suburban landscapes...
A Brief History of Seven Killings - Marlon James (Oneworld 2014)
If it no go so, it go near so. As the title suggests, this book is about killing, but the ‘seven’ on the cover hugely underplays the body...
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee (Heinemann Ltd 1960)
Before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself. What is it about this book? Over 30,000,000 copies sold, a Pulitzer...
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver (HarperCollins 1998)
History holds all things in the balance, including large hopes and short lives. Set about 70 years after Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, this...
Follow TTLS
Featured Reviews
What I'm Reading
Book of the Year (so far)
bottom of page