'Gives Nick Hornby and Helen Fielding a damn good run for their money'

'Sexy, funny, smart.For any woman who has ever been single'

'A modern classic'

Harper...knows her period well, and it shows...often in sure handling of the details of politics, theatre, and daily life, including some harrowing passages featuring childbirth and the plague

The novels chief pleasures derive from the easy interaction of Shakespeare's work, the history of Elizabethan England and the life that the author imagines Shakespeare might have had

Elizabethan history has never been this appealing

In a wonderful, lively, insightful and heartbreaking love story, Harper allows Shakespeare's secret wife, Anne Whateley, to narrate her colorful, lusty story. With her sharp eye for detail and dialogue, Harper delivers a tale that resounds with the colour and atmosphere of life in the theatre, London and the intrigues that ran rampant in England

If Pollock's powerful collection Knockemstiff was a punch to the jaw, his follow-up ... feels closer to a mule's kick

Sticky, violet and exhilarating - Pollock's southern gothic tale of thrill killers, pervy preachers and vengeance is best read on a long road trip or at a seedy model poolside

Riotously high in laughs and glamour. I defy a festive grump not to be cheered by it

Fast-paced and funny

Influenced by magical realism and the cool prose of modernism, first-time author Chloe Aridjis takes the best from each