A story that is both moving and magical

[An] addictive tale of intrigue.

A powerful portrait of the Deep South in the year before the civil rights movement and of a society in which black and white lead lives that are segregated yet deeply intertwined.

[Johnson's] an astute observer of the social nuances of segregated America and Mississippi itself.

Breakout Title: Add Deborah Johnson's addictive The Secret of Magic to your bookshelf.

Written with such charm that it is a beguiling read...A wonderful and clever read. Four stars.

Quirky and sweetly funny, you will want to join the Don Tillman fan club all over again

Genuinely heartwarming, truly endearing, plenty of LOLs. You may end up a blubbing wreck

There is much to love in this comedy of errors

If you loved The Rosie Project, I don't see how you could fail to love this funny, poignant sparkler of a novel too

Equally heart-warming and hilarious

The hilarious follow-up to The Rosie Project, one of the best novels I've read in ages. There's no sophomore slump here . . . It's a funny novel that also made me think about relationships. A sweet, entertaining, and thought-provoking book

Prime deck-chair material

An impressive novel . . . In unadorned prose, Bezmozgis explores the dynamics of mercy, guilt and repentence

Absolutely gripping. Bezmozgis deftly explores themes of fidelity and morality

The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry ... dramatically changed the shape of Russian poetry. As you read on, the landscape becomes stranger and more unfamiliar, especially as you come to the late twentieth century. Almost 150 pages of post-war poetry, nearly thirty poets, most of them unfamiliar to many English­speaking readers. New names. A new poetic world. Our sense of Russian literature has changed dramatically in recent years

Sumell’s compulsively readable novel in stories introduces a restless underachiever as irresistible as he is detestable, surely one of the most morally, violently, socially complex personalities in recent literature…. Sumell’s debut is humbly macho, provoking outrage, pity, and finally tenderness. Perhaps this is a book readers will hate to love, but only because it feels, like Alby, all too real

There's a special alchemy here that you are going to want to witness...offhand and funny, and then the tender heart emerges from the shadows, so tender, and comes at us with a knife. Every story here is two: one the fun, the other the blade

Focusing on the single reality that human beings die, Sumell wakes up, and boy oh boy is he ever pissed off... Sumell, on Alby's behalf, fights back, and he fights dirty. Using cunning, reckless rage, and bravura comic timing, he kicks death's ass... Bystanders get hurt, the reader got hurt, but at least I was reminded that I was part of this whole shitty deal. You'd like to believe that there are consolations, and there are. Being sentient, for example. Being able to read, for instance. Having read Making Nice

The self-destructive narrator lashes out with reckless intimacy, random violence, and an often hilarious misplaced rage that shoots to wound rather than kill. What saves its victims and the reader is a naked rendering of a heart sorting through its broken pieces to survive. The result is an eloquent empathy, an uplift of hope-filled grace

Making Nice will grab you by the throat, raise your blood pressure, and cause you to chortle in a crowd. It will also break your heart. When they're writing the history of the best characters of our time, Alby will be there, telling the others to get in line

Making Nice is a little bit special. A truly original portrayal of grief

Making Nice has an anarchic humour and a goofy, ingenuous humanity that makes every page feel new… Some jokes…aren’t just funny, they are insightful, unexpected and hilarious. In its rampage to nowhere, Making Nice achieves the remarkable feat of making it feel better to travel hopelessly than to arrive.