Shipwreck, survival... a spirited battle... a splendid yarn

One of our foremost writers of naval fiction

Jane Feaver has proved an expert at creating a sense of place ... tender, imaginative prose

The neatness and power of Feaver's writing is a spartan pleasure: when shafts of poetical insight or tenderness break through its restraint they are genuinely luminous and moving

Confirms her considerable talents

Feaver's Spartan sentences are taut and neat and utterly undermine any romantic notions of love and sex. In her descriptions of the town and its weather, however, Feaver allows a quietly poetic and pastoral voice to peek through,; a thoughtful pause in the otherwise dark emotional interiors of the characters in these stories.

Gripping

Witty, exciting and evocative. Restoration is a wonderful book

Headstrong, ambitious and lustful...Tremain reinvents the historical novel with flamboyant wit and vivid energy

A book that will linger in your consciousness long after you put it down

A poignant and absorbing novel

Ludo is a fascinatingly flawed narrator, and the language is alive with livid, unsettling imagery

James Scudamore again achieves something magical

Slinkily assured... a steamlined fantasy summons up a teeming citadel where the wealthy take to their helicopters "like fat flies", leaving migrant workers to swarm below

There is so much... brilliantly at work in James Scudamore's Heliopolis that it seems arbitrary to praise one element over another

It would be a hard heart indeed that remained unmoved . . . the tender feelings that Noble engenders in her readers are to be cherished

Warner navigates the comic, the philosophical and the socially acute like no other writer we have

Played refreshingly uncliched games with the device of the unreliable narrator

Blake Morrison's examination of the dark heart of male rivalry makes foe a gripping read

Pacy and gripping...wonderfully atmospheric

Morrison's compelling study of male competitiveness offers a discomforting account of the amoral excuses and self-deception of the compulsive gambler: "I don't have a problem. I could stop tomorrow"; "gambling is the basis of our whole economy". You reckon you could put it down at any point - though you'd be kidding yourself

The Bank Holiday weekend from hell is the subject of Blake Morrison's entertaining new novel - a dark little tale about middle-class rivalry and midsummer meltdown. With an ear attuned to metropolitan pretension - modern parenting skills are sent up with gusto - Morrison succeeds in weaving a murderous melodrama that is grounded in the most recognizable of human impulses and desires

A tense chamber piece about a twisted friendship...the author's skilful choreography of unsympathetic characters and a menacing tone make for a sharply intelligent novel that is both unnerving and enjoyable

The Last Weekend isn't really a thriller though its well-paced, tight and gripping narrative has you reaching for the same adjectives that you would use to describe one

For those holidaying with old friends…the book tells the chilling story ofa rivalrousfriendship…leaving Alex Clark to conclude that Morrison “keeps the reader constantly intrigued