Author: Susan Brice

  • A Line To Kill – Anthony Horowitz

    I have bought several paperbacks lately and I can’t quite remember where I picked up this one. I think it caught my eye because I had just written an article about ‘cosy crime.’ Was Anthony Horowitz jumping on the bandwagon I wondered. I associated this writer with children’s books, specifically aimed at boys, the most […]

  • A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham

    I don’t always follow through when people recommend books to me. The older I get, the more I want to make my own choices. However, I’m very glad I picked this one up. I had recently read ‘The Hours’ by Michael Cunningham and loved it (and the film) so I had high expectations of this […]

  • Gabriel’s Moon – William Boyd

    I am a longtime fan of William Boyd, so I was pleased and intrigued to find this new paperback, not quite so hefty as most of his other volumes. There is a new hero, if that is the right word for him, Gabriel Dax and I found him both interesting and appealing. Chelsea, London, is […]

  • September 2025

    On a Saturday morning there is a decision to be made. There will be an email from Daunts Bookshop wanting to share with me their five book choices for the week. Will I open the email or just leave it? If I open it then the chances are I will buy one of those books. […]

  • A Long Winter – Colm Toibin

    Smallish, hardback books are just too tempting for words, especially when they are written by an author that I truly revere. So, finding this book displayed face up on the front table of Waterstones, well, I just knew I was going to buy it. This is planets away from lengthy, family stories such as Brooklyn […]

  • The Ends Of Books

    Of lately, I seem to have a habit of looking at the end of a book before I start reading it. I hasten to add that I don’t mean that I read the very end of the story, although I do know people who (very strangely) do that. Instead what I’m after are those strange […]

  • Ronald Blythe

    There are times, not often I admit, when I put the stories, the fiction and the make believe down and pick up something real instead. It might be lyrical landscape writing by Horatio Clare or Robert MacFarland, something more practical and pragmatic by James Rebanks or maybe a  memoir or biography. This time it was […]

  • August 2025

    Joanne Harris is an interesting writer. She is half French, lives near Barnsley in Yorkshire, has played in a rock band for decades and was a teacher before becoming a full-time writer. She is the chair of the SOA, the Society of Authors, and has had many quite public, strong disagreements with JK Rowling, mainly […]

  • Three Daughters Of Eve – Elif Shafak

    I nearly went to Turkey. Once in the late sixties I was on a schools’ cruise ship in the Med. Turkey was on the itinerary but there were tensions about Cyprus between Turkey and Greece, and the captain decided to play safe and refused to dock there. I still haven’t visited and have to admit […]

  • Tell Me Everything – Elizabeth Strout

    If you like the minutiae of an Anne Tyler book then you would enjoy reading Elizabeth Strout. There are now several stories about the characters Olive Kitteridge and Lucy Barton and in ‘Tell Me Everything’ they are together in the small town of Crosby in Maine. Lucy and Olive meet every so often and tell […]