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Book reviews – February 2024 – Sallie Eden – A Spy Among Friends

Published by Bloomsbury 2014 You might have seen the outstanding TV series but, like me, you may not (until now) have read the book on which it was based. Aptly subtitled ‘Philby...

Book reviews – January 2024 – Sallie Eden – The Girl in the Photo

The Girl in the Photo by Sam Carrington Published by Avon, 2023 Mercy visits the same supermarket every Friday, looking for her daughter who went missing...

Book reviews – January 2024 – Sallie Eden – All The Broken Places

All The Broken Places by John Boyne. Published in paperback by Penguin, 2023 Written by the author of ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’, and reflecting on the horrors of that period and its aftermath. Shockingly realistic,...

Book reviews – December 2023 – Sallie Eden – The Church Mice at Christmas

The Church Mice at Christmas by Graham Oakley Published by Templar books Reissued to mark 40 years since it was first published, this book remains one of my favourite children’s Christmas stories...

Book reviews – December 2023 – Sallie Eden – The Drowned

The Drowned by David Arrowsmith and Christina Gustavson Published, October 2023 I’m hooked on the sort of Scandi noir dramas that are so popular these days and, having really enjoyed David Arrowsmith’s debut novel (Corona, reviewed...

Book reviews – November 2023 – Sallie Eden – Murder in the Family

Murder in the Family by Cara Hunter Published by Harper Collins, 2023 A highly original format coupled with a clever plot, this book is more complex than anything I’ve read since I...

Book reviews – November 2023 – Sallie Eden – A Little Life

A Little Life By Hanya Yanagihara Published by Picador Shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and called ‘brilliant’, ‘magical’, ‘absorbing’ and ‘engrossing’ by various critics, this is the story of four ambitious and, frankly,...

Book reviews – October 2023 – Sallie Eden – The Twist of a Knife

The Twist of a Knife by Anthony Horowitz Published in paperback by Penguin, 2023 The author writes of his experience of being accused of killing a theatre critic who didn’t like a...

Book reviews – September 2023 – Sallie Eden – I Need That Friend

I Need That Friend by Peter Hargreaves Available on Kindle Scribe Some things don’t change; in my Writers Talking column back in June 2019, I wrote that the character in one...

Writers Talking – September 2023 – Sallie Eden

Writers Talking is back after a bit of a break. In the new series our book reviewer Sallie Eden talks to Peter Graystone, whose book ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’ was reviewed...