Christopher Fitz-Simon's writing is a delicious mix of gentle and sharp, vividly bringing to life the rhythms of speech and social interaction in this Irish village setting.

A work of vivid social reportage

A harrowing read about the narcowars in Mexico, economic exploitation and the horrors of the globalised drug trade

Previously, to understand the ruthlessness, ambition and impact of today's global criminals, you needed to read Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah and Misha Glenny's McMafia. Now, you also need to read Vulliamy's Amexica

The most vivid book so far published in English on the bloody calamity that has been visited on Mexico's northern border lands

Vulliamy is the ideal foreign correspondent to analyse the phenomenon. He knows the border well and was one of the first to report on the murdered women of Ciudad Juárez. He also refuses to find easy answers to difficult questions. While some commentators have made glib assumptions about the Mexican propensity for brutality, Amexica shows that the crushing power of the multinationals in a low-wage economy is a key factor

Ed Vulliamy provides a brilliant, rigorous analysis

With a great sense of timing, Vulliamy now comes out with the most vivid book so far published in English on the bloody calamity that has been visited on Mexico's northern border lands... The author has done a great deal of painstaking work in investigating and describing the blood-soaked frontier and the political cross-currants in both regions... it stands that this is a fascinating introduction to the bloody last act of the "war on drugs", which must surely soon pass unlamented into history

This absorbing odyssey along the Mexican-American border gives pause for thought to anyone who ignores the side-effects of cocaine...Vulliamy's reporting is faultlessly brave ...the scenery and characters he meets are brought alive with vividness and intensity'

An engrossing meditation on the theme of migration…reads like a collaboration between Dorothy Wordsworth and Darwin.

Naomi Novik reinvents the magical school story by working a strange, funny, wild, dark magic all her own. This is not just your next great read - it's your new obsession.

Novik is a master at setting up a plot to unfurl in a series of staggeringly well-thought out bursts of action, weaving together into an imaginative climax.

A Deadly Education is a book that lives up to its gob smacker of an opening sentence and follows right through to its shocker of an ending that promises more to come. Naomi Novik is relentlessly innovative and entertaining

Fresh, smart, and delightfully unique. It's Hogwarts with higher stakes and sharper claws, and I absolutely loved it.

The author's most entertaining novel to date

Fun and beautifully written

A story that never stops moving while always remaining focused on developing the characters of both the people and the school itself

A wonderful book ... done with a gorgeous twist of humour and great emotional insight ... One of my books of the year

Exquisite ... One of the funniest writers in Ireland

Immensely readable, warm, human and very, very funny

Pixies were loud-quiet-loud. Patrick Freyne is funny-sad-funny. I really loved his new book

Readers are sure to find themselves touched by Freyne's writing ... Delightful

Freyne's thoroughly entertaining debut is a flash of warmth and wit in the darkness

Genuinely moving ... [It] will evoke warmth in anyone who isn't totally sociopathic

A delightful insight into the mind of the hilarious Patrick Freyne

So honest, so funny, and most importantly, 11/10 for self-deprecation

Brilliant ... An absolute mind hug

Freyne's radar is precision-honed to find the madness within the mundane

More moving that I ever expected and somehow funnier than I assumed

Captivating and moving.

Moving... Beneath the attention-seeking is a well-loved author who has gone through his cupboards, giving us all that he has.

A defiant and witty testimony to mortality and a tender remembrance of his friends and literary heroes… I’ve been reading and re-reading it this year

Continues in the same superior vein as Restoration… The fusion of such an engrossing character, and the minutiae of another time, remains a marvel

In this evocative and beautifully drawn novel of family and loyalty in the face of an uncertain future Tremain continues the story of a wonderfully unique character

Hugely enjoyable

Merivel’s hapless charm remains intact in this tour de force of literary technique

A sequel that looks back to the earlier novel without ever quite recapturing its spirit is the perfect form in which to evoke that feeling of having to carry on, and of trying to make yourself have fun even with it eventually begins to hurt

A marvelllously rollicking good read, and it is such a pleasure to meet Robert Merivel again. Rose Tremain brings the character to life in a way that makes you want to find out even more about the period. Enormously skilled and deft