Reads like a dream, races along and open-heartedly reveals one corrupt road by which boys should not become men.

Choke Chain completely and triumphantly defines its own territory - the novel's restraint concealing its building power and its huge compassion.

His writing is clear and ungilded as he captures the experience of growing up under big African skies, and shows us Alex's world in all its freshness and promise... This is an exceptional debut

An uncompromising piece about the lives of impoverished white South Africans, written in a style which owed something to Raymond Carver’s laconic, chiselled sentences

A WINDING, CREEPY, INSIDIOUSLY DELICIOUS NOVEL. UTTERLY SPECTACULAR

THIS BOOK NEEDS A WARNING LABEL. CAUTION: SINGLE-SITTING READ. Once you start, you cannot stop.

If you like DARKNESS and MURDER, strong family ties and light romance, you should probably get ready for this book to mess you up in the best way possible.

IMAGINE BEING ONE OF THE FIRST PEOPLE TO READ HARRY POTTER . . . That's how it feels to read The Hazel Wood in manuscript form.It's Inception + The Magicians + Alice in Wonderland + Night Film, plus humor and warmth and heart.

With dark fairy tale elements woven into a thrilling story, The Hazel Wood had me under its spell from beginning to end. Magic crackled on every page.

A beautiful, terrifying, astonishing and strange story that reads as though Angela Carter has been sucked into a Grimm fairy tale, this book is a wise and wonderful read for fairy tale fans.

A dark and magical modern take on age-old fairy tales.

A beguiling mix of contemporary thriller and dark fantasy, coupled with stylish, sharp prose, makes this a dangerously addictive debut.

a darkly enchanting debut

Albert is a natural storyteller who writes with the confidence of an old hand

A bewitching, elegant blend of contemporary thriller and dark fantasy

Simultaneously enticing and fearsome, much like the Hazel Wood of the title ... insidiously beautiful

This eerie debut YA novel puts such a terrifying twist on classic bedtime stories, you'll not sleep a wink.

Bewitching

Insightful comic writing that manages to be both tender and biting

A brilliant first novel by a young man of ferocious comic talent

A beautiful, tragic and poignant novel.

In this year’s hottest new releases.

Tender, wise and beautifully written, this is sad and deeply moving stuff from Barnes. Highly recommended.

Affecting.

A brave and expansive work, compellingly told.

A thoroughly rewarding book – a compassionate, touching and funny account… A profound book, it compels one to think about one’s own life.

A brilliant, rueful look at love.

Moving, funny, with ingenious emotional intelligence, it’s one to read and read again.

Barnes’s novel chronicles their romance with an austere tenderness

[Barnes’s] facility for writing artfully conceived and executed novels about unfulfilled, disappointed lives has risen to almost unassailable heights.

Julian Barnes writes shockingly well about emotion… The Only Story is devastating and wonderful.

A solemn-ish meditation on the fallibility of memory… A love story – bitter and sweet in parts – unfurls.

Exquisitely written, flawlessly imagined, The Mermaid & Mrs Hancock's siren song - of courtesans and merchants, shipwrecks and wonders, love and grief, ambition and passion - will echo like the ocean in a seashell long after the last page is turned.

[A] gripping debut… independence, love, class, death and gender stereotypes — are skilfully explored here through a late 18th-century lens

Beautifully written, sinuous, enchanting, brilliantly researched, The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock goes deep into the eighteenth century - its grand front rooms, the secret places, the streets and the ocean that changed everything about Britain and it lays bare the hearts of a cast of unforgettable characters

This story really is spellbinding, an unforgettable jewel of a novel, filled to the brim with intelligence, heart and wit.

Beautifully written… By turns bawdy, witty and moving this is a glorious romp through Georgian London, in “the age of unlikely ascents”. With a truly gorgeous package á la The Essex Serpent, it deserves to be huge

Delightful… A gloriously immersive read, bringing Georgian London vividly to life… The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock impresses with Gowar’s attention to vivid and sensual detail

Its energy, characterisation and great sense of period completely seduced me.

An utterly absorbing read.

A gorgeously immersive novel.

Stunning.

In 2018 [mermaids] are back in vogue.

A terrific debut

The Mermaid And Mrs Hancock is the rare book that actually lives up to its hype and I’d be surprised if it wasn’t this year’s The Essex Serpent. Lush, vivid descriptions of 1780s Soho, proto-feminism, sparkly dialogue and a pleasingly irreverent style, it’s historical fiction even for people who don’t like historical fiction.

A tale of love, family and social status movingly told.

An absorbing tale of curiosity and obsession… Gowar’s prose is marvellous… There’s a beautiful balance of rhythm and intrigue, and an eye for what brings a book alive.

The most anticipated novel of the year.

An accomplished, captivating debut novel.

- The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock is a roistering, swaggering, bawdy novel… [a] confident and accomplished debut

Lush, vivid descriptions of 1780s Soho, proto-feminism, sparkly dialogue and a pleasingly irreverent style.

Prose that’s as effervescent as it is intelligent.

Gowar’s prose shimmers.

Rich and humorous, it’s a heady period whirl with a magic realist twist.

A highly impressing debut… An absorbing tale of sex, money, ambition and the lure of the new.

Gowar’s wonderful novel expertly captures that sense of a more fluid society… An engrossing and well-paced novel, shot through with melancholy, yet filled with wonder and desire. The sort of book you lose yourself in for days.

Imogen Hermes Gowar’s bawdy, picturesque romp through the heady miasma of Georgian London is easily one of the most wonderfully immersive, richly drawn books I’ve read in years… This piece of historical fiction is really something special… Some truly exquisite writing.

All-consuming and spellbinding.

Gowar's writing is energetic, and she has wonderful attention both to physical and emotional detail and to the circumstances that constrain lives

This glittering debut novel examines every rung of 18th-century London’s social ladder with keen wit and in delicious detail

A Dazzling account of dreams and desire in Georgian London