book reviews

New York Times Best Selling author Karen Robards’ latest novel, The Black Swan of Paris, is full of intrigue and heart-pulsing suspense, while taking place in Nazi Germany. It’s both heartbreaking and touching, and will stay with you long after you finish.

Daughter of the Reich is author Louise Fein’s first novel, but if you hadn’t been told that beforehand you wouldn’t be able to tell. Her novel is like a beautifully painted masterpiece that explores how people blindly followed their leaders without asking questions, and how even during those tumultuous times love could still be found. 

Award-winning novelist Sheena Kamal’s latest continues the story of her protagonist Nora Watts, and like her previous work it’s hard-hitting, action-packed and a genuine entry into the world of noir fiction.

Thanks to Parasite making history this year at the Oscars, the spotlight on Korean films and other works of art is stronger than ever. The most recent of these is the new novel by best-selling Korean author and screenwriter Seo Mi-ae called The Only Child.

Just before the start of the New Year a new novel by best-selling author Tarryn Fisher hits the shelves, and it very well could be the most talked about novel of 2020. It’s called The Wives, and it’s the type of novel that you need to keep reading until you pass judgement on it.

Joe Hill’s one of those authors that might have slipped past you without you noticing. Over the years he’s written some great speculative fiction though, such as Horns, NOS4A2 and Heart Shaped Box, as well as 20th Century Ghosts and Strange Weather. The latter two are collections of his shorter works, and are great examples why short fiction works. For his latest novel, he once again turns to short fiction, collecting stories he’s published elsewhere over the last 15 years or so.

When you finished reading Rene Denfeld’s last novel, The Child Finder, you were left wanting more.  After all, the story’s lead character Naomi, the child finder herself, may have found the missing child she had been looking for, but she herself was far from complete. You wanted to know more about her story, and wanted her to find out not only who she was, but what had happened to her sister. Denfeld’s latest novel comes out two years after The Child Finder, and with it you get to delve deeper into Naomi’s story.

Sometimes new authors come in like the tide, slow and steady and eventually overwhelming. In Kassandra Montag’s case however it might be appropriate to say she’s coming in like a flood. The author’s first novel is due out in September, and to say it’s a riveting page turner would be doing it far less justice than it deserves.

To say Daisy Johnson’s debut novel Everything Under (her first published work, Fen, was a collection of stories) is confusing at times would be an understatement. Yet, there is something compelling about it that makes you keep reading it, and wanting to find out what exactly is going on.