Paperbacks to Look Out For in October 2025 - A life in books
Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.| A life in books
This is my second post on the theme of long relationships, offering a rather more negative view than the first apart from the last novel which takes an unusual approach along the lines of roads not travelled. All have links to longer reviews on my blog. We know from the start of Philip Teir’s novel […] The post Five More Novels About Long Relationships I’ve Read appeared first on A life in books.| A life in books
I was delighted to spot what I thought was a new novel from Miriam Toews on NetGalley which turned out to be a brief memoir but I decided to put up my hand for it anyway. A Truce That is Not Peace is dedicated to Toews’s sister Marjorie who took her own life in 2010. […] The post A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews: ‘Why do I write? Because she asked me to’ appeared first on A life in books.| A life in books
It was Ann Patchett’s glowing puff that swung it for me with acclaimed short story writer Patrick Ryan’s, Buckeye. I liked the sound of its premise but thought I might find the spiritualism mentioned in the blurb a bit too much to swallow. Ryan’s first novel follows two families, linked by a devastating secret, over […] The post Buckeye by Patrick Ryan: If you like Ann Patchett… appeared first on A life in books.| A life in books
Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.| A life in books
Six Degrees of Separation is a meme hosted by Kate over at Books Are My Favourite and Best. It works like this: each month a book is chosen as a starting point and linked to six others to form a chain. A book doesn’t need to be connected to all the titles on the list, […] The post Six Degrees of Separation – Ghost Cities to The Hound of the Baskervilles appeared first on A life in books.| A life in books
This is the latest in a series of occasional posts featuring books I read years ago about which I was wildly enthusiastic at the time, wanting to press a copy in as many hands as I could. I’ve had a patchy reading history with Richard Russo but Straight Man is a standout for me, perhaps […] The post Blasts from the Past: Straight Man by Richard Russo (1997) appeared first on A life in books.| A life in books
I’d taken on too many titles for review when Andrew Porter’s The Imagined Life popped up on NetGalley but I couldn’t resist both its premise and that cover so jumped in. Porter’s novel sees a middle-aged man who’s been carrying the burden of his father’s disappearance since he was twelve years old, determined to get […] The post The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter: ‘In the imagined life, so much is different’ appeared first on A life in books.| A life in books
Book reviews, snippets of book news, and alerts about books outside the glare of the publicity spotlight.| A life in books
