An epic of blood feuds, murder, betrayal, love, loss, forgiveness and redemption, this is as atmostpheric as sitting on a verandah with a gin and tonic, watching the African sunset. You'll feel a twinge of regret when there are no more pages to turn

It's a good story with a lot of sub-plots... The characters are all well-developed... [but] it is the African landscape and wildlife, which made the book for me

Praise for Blood Sisters: A tremendously accomplished, full-throated saga delivering romance, betrayal, murder and mayhem... the kind of book you have to read by torchlight under the bedclothes after lights out

Like Irvine Welsh, I am a great admirer of Jane Austen

Another question I've been regularly asked over the past year is what models I had in mind when writing Curious Incident. Was it To Kill a Mockingbird? Was it Catcher in the Rye? In fact, the book most often in my mind was Pride and Prejudice

An incredibly funny, very upmarket love story with an enchanting heroine and the perfect romantic hero: a tartar with a heart of gold

The Mozart opera of novels and again a transcendent union of structure and content in which unhappy marriage is the reward for those who show a weakness of character and lifelong happiness is a province reserved only for those "who truly know themselves"

For those of us who suspect all the mysteries of life are contained in the microcosm of the family, that personal relationships prefigure all else, the work of Jane Austen is the Rosetta Stone of literature

How could these novels ever seem remote...the gaiety is unextinguished today, the irony has kept its bite, the reasoning is still sweet, the sparkle undiminished, as comedies they are irresistibly and as nearly flawless as any fiction could be

That young lady has a talent for describing the involvements of feelings and characters of ordinary life which is to me the most wonderful I ever met with

The most perfect, the most characteristic, the most eminently quintessential of its author's works

A delicate meditation on mortality, decay and the fading of beauty

Historical fiction at its best

No novel is perfect, but this small, wonderfully atmospheric and immensely poignant story...comes very close