Louis’s greatest strength as a writer is that he feels things so passionately, sometimes to the point of obsession, but that he also has a philosophical turn of mind that explores, rather than neutralises, his feelings.

[B]oth brave and ambitious in its determination never to let its reader, or its author, escape lightly the damaging realities it describes.

[A] harrowing piece of autofiction… History of Violence is a slim but densely layered novel that begins with raw urgency.

[A] heartbreaking novel… I find myself captivated by Édouard Louis's books and his raw honesty.

An intense and uncomfortably thrilling book, which uses the harrowing events of that Christmas Eve as a basis for a wider exploration of class, race and individualism... a novel that is unflinching in its examination of class and discrimination.

[Louis] writes with this amazing honesty and fantastically uncensored, brutal, beautiful clarity.

A painful and astonishing book, it tells the story of that night and its aftermath with ruthless poise and clinical precision… With almost superhuman compassion and moral courage, Louis traces the origins of Reda’s suffering by reconstructing his father’s story.

History of Violence…pack[s] total immersion and cool detachment into a single page. As translator, Lorin Stein keeps faith with its rawness — and its refinement.

[A] provocative, incendiary and stunning second book.

Once more, Édouard Louis has given us something unique; a book so direct, shocking and moving it is like holding live fire in one's hands as the pages turn. Like all great writers, he shows us something of the self so that we might better understand something of the world.

In this moving autobiographical novel . . . Louis's visceral story captures the overwhelming emotional impact and complicated shame of surviving sexual assault.

A sharp, lucid meditation on how violence perpetuates itself in communities—by engendering fear, and then cruelty.

[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.