There is something irresistible about the novels of Alice Hoffman. Her themes of love, marriage, family and friendship are reassuringly familiar and her style agreeably evocative...Her stories have a quality of mystery and even darkness that puts a fresh spin on the commonplace, and at its very best can make the reader look at life from a fresh angle. If I could see things through Hoffman's eyes, I'm convinced life would be richer and more interesting... Here On Earth is a wonderful piece of storytelling

Hoffman is shrewd and witty about the networks of gossip and affection in town, and she evokes place superbly... spellbinding

Imagine Wuthering Heights set in a small New England town during the last 30 years. The characters escape not to wild moors but marshes haunted by foxes and souls of drowned men-compelling

Wuthering Heights meets The Horse Whisperer... riveting and memorable

A gripping novel that evokes the tensions of small-town life

It is a tribute to Kennedy’s skill that he can take such a hackneyed situation and make the protagonists richly three-dimensional… As love fizzles out, Kennedy finds something redemptive in the triumph of hope over experience.

Moore’s characters are lovingly drawn . . . A truly original voice.

Liz Moore has a light touch… she never takes her characters too seriously, letting their drama and sadness trickle through slowly rather than undamming any torrent of emotion or sentimentality. This knack is largely down to her seemingly effortless, economic prose as well as her appreciation of the notion of loneliness.

A book to be devoured

Selasi's ambition - to show her readers not "Africa" but one African family, authors of their own achievements and failures - is one that can be applauded no matter what accent you give the word

The first line of Taiye Selasi's buoyant first novel, Ghana Must Go, captures the book in miniature: "Kweku dies barefoot on a Sunday before sunrise, his slippers by the doorway to the bedroom like dogs." The springy dactylic meter of the prose (KWEku dies BAREfoot on a . . .), the sly internal rhymes (Sunday, sunrise, doorway), the surprising twist on a cliché (to die like a dog), the invigorating mixture of darkness and drollery are a big part of what makes this book such a joy... It's an auspicious how-do-you-do to the world, and nearly every page of the novel displays the same bounce and animation... rapturous.

A terse and subtle tour-de-force

A slim but sure tale of love, death and imperialism

A quietly compelling and provocative work

A dark and sinewy novel, written with sparse clarity and affecting subtlety

In a year marked by epics, it's a relief to delve into this quiet, surprisingly tense debut novel - small enough to stuff in a stocking but packing a huge emotional punch

A novel of subtle beauty and quiet grace; I found myself hanging on every simple word, as tense about the consequences of a man finding an apartment as if I were reading about a man defusing a bomb. ... It is one of the best novels I have read in a long time. ... With elegant restraint, Baxter layers the narratives, anecdotes and experiences in the manner of life as continuous essay, the topic of which might be stated as, "What is a right way to be in the world?" ... It is very much to Baxter's credit that he presents this struggle as if it were thriller, love story, philosophical novel and dark comedy combined, in a novel not liek a bullet but like an arrow flying straight to the heart of the matter.

A quiet and powerful read through and through. Baxter's clean and direct prose generates its own momentum. He chooses not to create a tidy drama where characters are explained by their pasts. Rather, he creates something bigger and more true.

Compelling ... captures the mood of the current moment and what seems to be a new "lost generation", one formed not so much by exposure to violence, as immunity to and alienation from it. Once upon a time, there was no place like home; in Mr. Baxter's world, home, it seems, is no place.

Absorbing, atmospheric and enigmatic ... With its disorienting juxtaposition of the absolutely ordinary and the strange and vaguely threatening, the novel evokes the work of Franz Kafka and Haruki Murakami, while its oblique explorations of memory suggest a debt to W.G. Sebald

A thrilling follow-up to Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island...Silver is a novel that will appeal to readers of all ages. Beautifully written and genuinely exciting...Best of all, Motion’s novel stays true to Stevenson’s original tale while adding an extra dimension.

Elegant, thrilling sequel...The plot is gripping, a mixture of high adventure, low cunning and desperation...Motion’s prose vivid and glowingly poetic, is a brilliant counterpoint to the fascinating action.

This is a pacey tale with an appropriately feisty young heroine for modern readers

Andrew Motion brings lyricism but, more importantly, rollicking adventure to this sequel to Treasure Island