A master of inimitable humour. Always hilarious, thought-provoking, and immensely moving

A biting and humane novel of stunning concision... Bleakly funny, incisive, stinging and – in its most destabilising passages – gut-wrenching

A savage satire of Chinese authoritarianism and censorship... Believable and brutal, this is Ma Jian’s boldest…most elegiac work’

Mr Ma's critique of the totalitarian mindset recalls that of Soviet-era dissidents...tragic and elegiac...garnished with both horror and tenderness... A hand-grenade of a book

This must be one of the liveliest novels about brainwashing ever written… For all the horror, Ma sees freedom in confronting the true nightmare of the past, perceiving that it is the only way to liberate our futures

Creepily Orwellian... makes Mao’s Cultural Revolution look like minor tinkering

Crackles with bruising satire …China Dream may be the purest distillation yet of Mr. Ma’s talent for probing the country’s darkest corners

[An] intriguing book … What gives Furious Hours its frisson is that the author who hoped to follow in Capote’s footsteps was his old friend, Harper Lee … Cep ably takes on the task that Lee may or may not have abandoned … Ms Cep paints a portrait of a hermetic society still riven by prejudice … Then she pieces together Lee’s struggle not only with Maxwell’s tale but with the legacy of her overwhelming success … Furious Hours is a well-told, ingeniously structured double mystery – one an unsolved serial killing, the other an elusive book – rich in droll humour and deep but lightly worn research.

Accomplished and compelling ... All this is gold-dust for a writer, and Cep has used it well ... She draws a vivid portrait of the characters embroiled in these dreadful crimes, the community they affected, and the rekindling of Lee’s writing they promised.

The makings of a fascination tale are certainly present, and Cep writes with wonderful evocation and intelligence about the racial, political and cultural backgrounds against which this drama too place … Casey Cep has elegantly filled in the gaps.

Lee spent many years working on the project, but it never saw the light of day. Instead, more than four decades later, we have Cep’s absorbing new volume, which succeeds in telling the story that Nelle Harper Lee could not and offers an affecting account of Lee’s attempt to give meaning to a startling series of events … It’s a rich, ambitious, beautifully written book … A gifted journalist who has written frequently for the New Yorker, Cep has imposed order here by providing biographical portraits of three figures: Maxwell, Radney and Lee. Each section moves the intrigue forward while rendering the lives of these real people, and the forces at work within them, as fully and fairly as possible … The result is a revealing triptych, one that tells a crime story but also says a great deal about the racial, cultural and political history of the South. As a portrayal of the life of a writer, the section on Lee is by itself worth the price of admission.

A brilliant account of Harper Lee’s failed attempt to write a true crime book … Along the way, Cep relates the history of courthouses, voodoo, and everything one needs to know about the insanity defence … Meticulously researched, this is essential reading for anyone interested in [Harper] Lee and American literary history.

[A] stunning tale

Casey Cep’s painstakingly researched book is a gripping account of both the trial and Lee’s obsession with it.

Casey Cep has created a book that’s totally astounding and deeply moving.

Astounding

Superb, sparklingly intelligent

In Furious Hours, her brilliant and gripping account, Casey Cep details and analyses [Harper] Lee’s increasingly desperate efforts to write that second book … Furious Hours is probably the nearest we will get to the book Harper Lee tried so hard to complete. It is a tacit tribute to Harper Lee but even more, an attempt, largely successful, to bring her abandoned project to final fruition … A book of compelling portraits … Cep’s narrative swarms with other characters, all credibly realised in their often cantankerous and eccentric ways … Painstakingly researched and beautifully written.

It’s as gripping as a thriller and as coolly dissected as a forensics report.

The inside scoop on Harper Lee’s long, post-Mockingbird silence. After working with Truman Capote on his true-crime book In Cold Blood, Lee attempted something similar, taking a murderous preacher, the Rev Willie Maxwell, as her subject. Despite years of research, Lee never produced a book – but Cep’s beautifully written offering goes a long way to making up for that. Utterly gripping, this is the ideal Christmas treat for anyone who loves Harper Lee.

An ingeniously structured, beautifully written double mystery

Fascinating true story

The astonishing account of murders in Alabama and Harper Lee's attempt to unravel the story.

Fascinating ... Riveting.

Wolitzer’s prose is direct and engaging… her characters feel alive and individual

My favourite book of the year… Wolitzer deserves more recognition: she is as talented a storyteller as Donna Tartt, as funny as Jonathan Franzen, but she has her own distinct brilliance

Wolitzer is an empathy delivery system

The end will leave you simmering with impotent rage, which sounds about right for 2018

There’s lots to enjoy here – the plot is pacy and you’ll come to care and deeply invest in these characters through Wolitzer’s brilliantly sharp prose

- Meg Wolitzer captures the zeitgeist like no one else

[W]arm and witty, and necessary… With affection and generosity, Wolitzer exposes the limits of power

Rich and vivid

Joseph O'Connor has written an entertaining novel that combines narrative with transcripts of recordings, diary entries and other notes. It steeps viewers in the theatre of Irving and Terry in the late 1870s and beyond, providing much informative colour at the same time as delving deeply and frankly into a series of relationships that are generally convincing.

O’Connor tells his story in rich and stylish prose

A rousing story about a remarkable woman

Joseph O’Connor’s vivid descriptive writing evokes Stoker’s memories of the post-famine Ireland of his youth and of Irving’s company’s fraught tours of America… [his] fine writing, his wit and sympathy create a richly enjoyable backdrop for some familiar characters

Enthralling… Brings to teeming life the London of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras

Brilliant... alternately deeply moving and laugh-aloud funny

O'Connor's gift is to weave whimsical moments in between the complexity of relationships and people... a beautiful story

An ambitious celebration of friendship, theatre and the power of darkness, Shadowplay is chilling and dramatic in equal measure

A wonderfully evocative tale within a tale

A thrilling novel, exquisitely contrived to show the characters whose loves and lives inspired Dracula. A great tribute, and a work of art. Deeply affecting.