With its beautiful storytelling and fiercely independent heroine fighting to be in charge of her own story, Katherine Arden's series finally fills a gap long left empty by Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials. Full of snowy Russian legends come to life, the lights and political intrigue of medieval Moscow, beautiful princes and monks with swords, Arden's writing is striking in its loveliness and impressive in its storytelling instincts.

A captivating folktale-inspired adventure laden in mystery, magic and myth, it's the story of Vasya, one of the punchiest heroines I've encountered this year

This is a sumptuous and beautiful literary fairytale taking inspiration from Russian myths and fairytales, about a woman challenging expected gender norms in her world.

A stunning sequel to the darkly magical The Bear and the Nightingale. The fierce, free-spirited heroine of this fabulous fable, Vasya, rejects the usual choices of marriage or the convent and, following accusations of witchcraft, flees her small village of Lesnaya Zemlya in northernmost Russia with the intention of seeing the world. Entirely enthralling

An enthralling sequel...this twist on a classic fairytale overflows with rich language. The perfect wintry read. 5 Stars

Katherine Arden's Winternight Trilogy isn't just good - it's hug-to-your-chest, straight-to-the-favourites-shelf, reread-immediately good, and each book just gets better

A historical fantasy perfect for those who love ancient stories and tradition

A beguiling, confident debut

Both funny and moving, Music Love Drugs War is a poignant coming-of-age novel ... pitches tender depictions of friendship and love against the stark backdrop of war, hunger strikes, rioting and plastic bullets

If you happened to like Derry Girls, you're in for a treat with Music Love Drugs War

In this subtle and delicate novel, Gill Hornby has created a clever, warm hearted character in Cassandra, Jane Austen’s sister.

Miss Austen is both complicit in and a sly comment on our obsession with the novelist’s life and contested mental state, and it burns, too, with sympathy for the women forced to carve out different sorts of lives at a time when marriage was considered the only index of their worth.

Jane Austen’s sister Cassandra takes centre stage in this engrossing novel that portrays what 19th Century life was like for an unmarried woman of limited means.

Gill Hornby ingeniously imagines what Cassandra Austen's own life might have been like, both before and after Jane’s untimely death, casting a different light on the familiar biographical picture without in any way distorting it.

Miss Austen is affecting, thought-provoking, and makes you think about both the Jane and Cassandra Austen in a new light.

A charming novel… capturing the spirit of the brilliant sardonic Jane, and reminding the reader of how brutal life was for women in Austen’s era, it’s an ingenious and affecting embroidery on the fact of the author’s life.

A pitch perfect novel, fond and atmospheric. It reads as if Gill Hornby was born to write Cassandra’s story, and she brings her whole witty and sympathetic self to the task.

Utterly absorbing. The lives of the Austen sisters are recreated with a brilliant sureness of touch that can only be achieved by deep study of the period.

Gill Hornby weaves a magnificent work of the imagination, a pastiche of Regency style and manners, fabricating a solution to a problem that has long mystified scholar . . . Hornby’s portrayals of Cassandra and Jane are tantalising . . . All devotees of Austen’s novels will want to join Hornby, and Cassandra, in this enjoyable act of piety to Jane.

Austen aficionados have looked askance at Cassandra’s wilful destruction of her famous sibling’s letters, but here, in a tender and touching recreation of their relationship, the (imagined) correspondence is the key that unlocks the plot... Hornby deftly describes the psychological toll that such uncertainly took on Jane, and movingly celebrates the fortitude of Cassandra whose greatest love was her sister.

A wonderfully original, emotionally complex novel that delves into why Cassandra burned a treasure trove of letters written by her sister, Jane Austen – an act of destruction that has troubled academics for centuries.

A beguilingly persuasive book that no Austen fan will want to miss.

A beautifully wrought drama that find Cassandra, now an elderly spinster, looking back on the life they shared. Utterly charming.

Fans will delight in this new novelby Gill Hornby, which ingeniouslyimagines what Jane’s sister Cassandra Austen’s own life might have been like.

This complex story reveals a clever and warm-hearted character in Cassandra, and brings us closer to one of the greatest of all English writers.

A novel that will delight Pride and Prejudice fans.

This is an engaging story about love, loss, and finding one's place in the world. A must-read for Jane Austen fans.

Through her spry, witty portrait of Jane Austen’s sister, Hornby mounts a lively defence of single women’s liberty.

Fans of Pride and Prejudice and Emma will enjoy this touching story[…] In her meticulously researchedthird novel, Gill Hornby skilfully imagines the correspondence between the sisters.

Hornby does amazingly well in the riskiest area of all, the invention of letters ostensibly written by Jane […] The television rights to this novel were sold at birth. No surprise: the dialogue is ready to roll […] People are going to love it, but I wonder if any screen adaptation will be able to convey the hidden treasure within this thoughtful story.

‘It won’t surprise me if this is one of the books of the year, it’s a delight, one of those that you don’t want to end.’

Many of the themes familiar from Austen’s novels are deftly revisited by Hornby, and the letters that are reimagined are pitch-perfect, with deeply touching confidences shared in family correspondences. You can tell this book by its cover – it’s quite lovely.

Beautiful novel[…] light hearted historical fiction which resembles Austen’s novels, a really lovely read very suitable for incoming spring’

Gill Hornby unfolds it all in her imagination.

Hornby combines a moving portrait of sisterly devotion with a comic depiction of the provincial life so brilliantly evoked in Austen's own novels

[A]t the heart of it all there's a romantic twist..."Hornby is at her best describing the complex bonds between the excellent women of her story. She describes the horrors, but also the pleasures of spinsterhood"

I've just started reading Anne Enright's Actress. I very much enjoyed her previous novel, The Green Road. This one has glorious lines even in the opening pages.

I would definitely recommend Actress by Anne Enright, it is her at her very best.

Few reviews said how absolutely hilarious [Actress] is. Enright skewers beautifully those creepy provincial aesthetes of Dublin of the sixties and seventies.

Enright is formidable in combining the concrete detail of lives – think of the extraordinary array of sibling portraits in her last novel, The Green Road – with an acute understanding of the inchoate lives of families: the push and pull of loyalty; the projection of desires; the smothering of disappointment and unhappiness. Here she conjures [a] rollicking story.

A rich, impressively imagined work about a stage and screen star who may never have existed but seems considerably more human than many real-life figures as seen through their own eyes or those of any but the finest biographers.

This story is about mothers and daughters, but also secrets in families and women in Ireland. It's an easy read, with a quintessentially Irish tone... It's brilliant.

Anne Enright's brilliant novel is a darkly glittering account of the cost to both the mother and her daughter of Katherine's complicated fame.

A gem from a former Booker winner.

Anne Enright['s]...writing is simply glorious. Comedy and tragedy in one.