Author: Susan Brice

  • November 2025

    This immediately appears to be an oxymoron. How can crime be cosy? A contradiction in terms surely but actually this has long been a recognised moniker in the publishing world. As so often happens it is fairly easy to identify but rather tricky to actually explain. Sometimes this is written with a z as Cozy […]

  • October 2025

    I wonder how many of you reading this remember devouring Labyrinth in 2005? For most people this was our introduction to Kate Mosse and for me it was one of the only books where I reached the end and immediately turned back to the beginning and read it again. In time this was followed by […]

  • A God in Ruins / Life after Life / Transcription – Kate Atkinson

    Like most people I met Kate Atkinson through her early books: Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Human Croquet. These books were award winners and much lauded. Later, much later, I found the Jackson Brodie stories and devoured as many as I could find, loving them all. Recently I picked up a fairly old […]

  • Getting Hooked

    My granddaughter says that she knows within 2 pages of a book whether she will like it and want to read it … or not. Some people may feel they decide even sooner than that. If we could clearly put into words what it is that hooks us into a book then authors would be […]

  • The Land in Winter – Andrew Miller

    When we were in Boston a couple of years ago, we went out of the city to Concord to see the house of Louisa May Alcott. In the little high street was a lovely bookshop and inevitably we browsed and bought. At the time of paying I must have given my email address because ever […]

  • What’s In A Name?

    Depending where you look, pseudonyms and nom de plumes are synonymous…or not. If you want to be pedantic then nom de plume is obviously a name for writing whilst a pseudonym would be simply a name to hide your identity. However, most websites seem to use them interchangeably. This subject came to my mind because […]

  • Impossible Creatures – Katherine Rundell

    My granddaughter and I worked our way through Narnia, Harry Potter and the Hobbit during lockdown times and then she swiftly moved onto Katherine Rundell and I felt I ought to follow. I loved ‘The Rooftoppers’ but ‘Impossible Creatures’ is really something else. I would never say that fantasy is my favourite genre but if […]

  • The Odd Woman and the City – Vivian Gornick

    I wonder if you remember 84 Charing Cross Road? It was a delightful film with Anthony Hopkins in his London bookshop during the stringent times of the Second World War and Anne Bancroft as a jobbing writer sitting for the most part alone at her typewriter in her small New York City apartment. The book […]

  • Slow Horses – Mick Herron

    I was enjoying my U3A literature session where we had been asked to bring prose on the theme of doors. I was as usual enjoying the variety and the obscure tangents that lead people to new discoveries. Interestingly, everyone had avoided going through the wardrobe door to Narnia but we did go down the rabbit […]

  • Children and Reading

    The Sunday Times is starting a campaign to get children reading for pleasure once again. Teachers would offer many reasons why this has become a national crisis, largely because of the intense pressure put on the curriculum  and lessons that have to be taught to the test but as always it is complicated and as […]