Like a piece of finely wrought ironwork, uncommonly delicate but at the same time astonishingly strong and tensile . . . a novel of staggering elegance and beauty

MacLeod's range - spanning the movingly real to the mysteriously surreal - is excitingly, imaginatively realised and unified in awareness of the dark menace of love's uncertainty

An exploration of the xenophobia and neurosis unleashed in times of national crisis . . . MacLeod remains one of the most astute chaoticians writing today

Compelling, fast-paced, powerful. The descriptions of wartime Brighton are pin-sharp . . . the denouement is as heartrending as it is unexpected

Unexploded is an unforgettable book. With exquisitely researched and rendered detail, the author plunges us into the panic and paranoia of war, fusing international politics, national politics and family politics in her powerful study of hypocrisy, oppression, cultural misunderstanding and desire

Love, fear and prejudice are all skilfully anatomised in this compellingly intimate exploration of life in war time Brighton

MacLeod has an engaged delight in the stuff of life

'MacLeod's fictions are evocations of desire and its mysteries . . . [Her] characters are strong, and they are worth listening to

Finely wrought, moving and haunting. What a wonderful novel this is. Bravo Alison MacLeod

A persuasive period setting, an intricate plot, sumptuous prose

An intelligent, perceptive novel by a writer of great descriptive power . . . Like her modernist forebears, MacLeod knows that life and death, the terrible and the mundane always co-exist - her genius lies in illustrating these truths while simultaneously spinning a bona fide pageturner

A bleak and enjoyable account of someone who, perhaps through unacknowledged guilt, finds bitter solace in losing and in driving himself towards extinction.

Just as Doyle’s game of choice, Baccarat, urges him to keep turning over one hand after another, Osborne’s sharp, compelling prose is equally addictive – just one more page, one more page

Osborne shows an impeccable facility for capturing the sweat-soaked suspense of the high-stakes card table

This is a good, fast read about what it is to win, and what it is to lose

This is a thought-provoking and chilling thriller

A pure treat from the cover to the very last page

Mutli-layered and absorbing... Kushner's style is sure and sharp, studded with illuminating images... Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume

Fresh and compelling. Kushner takes us to a place and time we've seldom visited before

A stunner of a novel... A fluid, eye-opening symphony of a book

With its sharp detail and precisely drawn characters, Telex from Cuba offers a compelling look at a paradise corrupted

Telex from Cuba elegantly weaves together a gripping story of individuals and their lives leading up to one of the most notorious revolutions of the twentieth century

A dazzling debut… Wickedly funny.

This dazzling firework of a debut novel is a reminder of how inventive and original historical fiction can be.

Eyre pulls off a notable trick in Viper Wine, not just by reconstructing her chosen period but rendering it permeable to intrusions from other ages… Playful moments…are made all the more striking by being woven unannounced into a meticulously luscious fantasia on a theme of English high life in the 1630s.

The horrors of the beauty industry are taken apart with feline wit and the book will make you purr with pleasure.

The most richly fruited post-modern novel since Jeanette Winterson’s Sexing the Cherrys

A bold, impressive debut

As a debut novel, it is truly dazzling and Hermione Eyre has proved herself an author well worth watching out for

Profoundly moving