Brilliantly captures the turbulent years of late 15th-century Italy as seen through the eyes of the bold and beguiling d'Este sisters, whose lives and fates were inextricably woven into the political tapestry of those times...Vibrant and lavish ...

A wild yarn about sexual politics and the struggle for immortality

Privileged sisters compete over men, attention, and the chance to be immortalized on canvas by Leonardo da Vinci, in this instantly absorbing tale

With lush, colorful descriptions, Essex brings to life the Sforza court and the competitive d'Este sisters' complex relationships with each other, their husbands, and Leonardo. Powerful historical fiction

In this gold brocade world, where every gesture echoes in quadruple - as politics, family, sex and art - only the virtuosos survive, and leading the dance is the greatest virtuoso of them all, Da Vinci

Wonderfully nasty...Extraordinarily vicious, deeply cynical and thoroughly depraved, but it's also bed-wettingly funny... American Psycho meets Spinal Tap... except more evil, more shocking and much, much funnier

A rollicking tale of record company excess...Hysterical...Niven worked in the UK music industry for 10 years and his insider knowledge pays off...This is truly an account of a lost era, a brilliant description of the last decadent blow-out.

John Niven's Kill Your Friends might just be the most exciting British novel since Trainspotting...Although the tone - a mixture of breathtakingly black-hearted cynicism, hyperbolically dark comedy and liberal sprinklings of violence - will invite comparisons with American Psycho and Bright Lights Big City, Niven brings a uniquely vibrant tone to the page with take-no-prisoners language that manages to be equal parts comic and shocking.

The fickle music industry is ripe for satire and here former record-label man Niven creates a compelling and hilarious portrait.

Dark, twisted...and also laugh-out-loud funny

Absolutely riveting

One of the evilest, most vicious, despicable characters ever. I couldn't put it down.

Anyone working in or trying to get into the music industry should read this book. Niven grotesquely portrays the short term disposability of this world with a great eye for detail and a stockpile of hilarious insults. Throw in some murder and major brand obsession and you have an indie American Psycho.

Kill Your Friends gladly hammers the final and needed nail into the coffin of self-serving and undignified spin that was "Cool Britannia". It exposes a world that seethes alongside us and in which we all collude but whose nasty little machinery is rarely glimpsed. The novel is furiously, filthily funny, and, I imagine, tragically true.

An amazing piece of work - as powerful as it is ugly

A piece of writing that will be admired by anyone who's interested in the era that made our own and those who read it are unlikely to forget its cool, Updikean temperament

The narrative drive is irresistible. Well done to Niven for a giving voice to the sleazy foot soldiers of rock and roll

A fine novella - as evocative as it is moving

A moving book that succeeds not just in vividly evoking its time and place but in distilling one young man's clichéd and minor destiny into something approaching tragedy

Often stunning, dark and densely imagined...one man's elegy for a bygone age

The funniest writer ever to put words to paper

The greatest comic writer ever

P.G. Wodehouse wrote the best English comic novels of the century

Sublime comic genius

You don't analyse such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendour