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

One of our foremost writers of naval fiction

'With all the puns, strange names and quick-fire jokes about captive letters demanding to be delivered, it's easy to miss how cross about injustice Terry Pratchett can be. This darkness and concrete morality sets his work apart from imitators of his English Absurd school of comic fantasy.'

'Terry Pratchett is one of the great makers of what Auden called 'secondary worlds'. His inventiveness - with people with plots, with things - is seemingly inexhaustible ... Pratchett can make you giggle helplessly and then grin grimly at the sharpness of his wit. Twelve-year old boys love him, but he himself is grown up. He knows that terrible things exist and happen, and he invents a benign otherworld in which we can face them, and laugh.'

'Pratchett ... is the missing link between Douglas Adams and J.K. Rowling. To non-initiates his work is gobbledygook, but dig deeper and you find the wit and imaginationthat have gained him a fanatical readership - among them is A.S. Byatt.'

Vivid and exciting . . . Dunmore creates a beautiful sense of stillness . . . she conveys a passion for Finland's icy landscape

Beautifully written . . . a story about us all

A very human and profoundly moving introduction to one of the darkest moments in history.

Seven Lies...has a way of enlarging the spirit and refreshing the mind far more comprehensively than many books with twice its 200 pages

[T]his seems to be an artful evocation of the effect of totalitarianism on the individual. But if this sounds drably psychological, I am doing the novel a disservice: it is short, intense, powerful and superbly crafted

Intricately plotted and structured, its prose both elegant and poised, Seven Lies could be read as a fable about the political and spiritual corruption endemic in a totalitarian state. It is, however, very much concerned with the human cost of deception and betrayal

A brilliant and darkly funny tale of politics and paranoia

A must-read for empty nesters ... this is Trollope at her most poignant