Mathis traces the fates of Hattie's 12 children and grandchildren over the course of the 20th century, simultaneously capturing the voices and daily minutiae of every one of her characters ... A complex and engrossing work that has huge commercial hit written all over ... Remarkable.

This fresh, powerful first novel turns the lives of Hattie's children into an epic of America in the 20th century. Tough, truthful, wonderfully controlled writing.

Ms. Mathis has a gift for imbuing her characters' stories with an epic dimension that recalls Toni Morrison's writing, and her sense of time and place and family will remind some of Louise Erdrich, but her elastic voice is thoroughly her own - both lyrical and unsparing, meditative and visceral, and capable of giving the reader nearly complete access to her characters' minds and hearts.

A vibrant and compassionate portrait of a family hardened and scattered by circumstance and yet deeply a family. Its language is elegant in its purity and rigor. The characters are full of life, mingled thing that it is, and dignified by the writer's judicious tenderness towards them. This first novel is a work of rare maturity.

Beautiful and necessary from the very first sentence. The human lives it renders are on every page lowdown and glorious, fallen and redeemed, and all at the same time. They would be too heartbreaking to follow, in fact, were they not observed in such a generous and artful spirit of hope, in a spirit of mercy, in the spirit of love. A treasure of a novel.

I can't remember when I read anything that moved me quite this way, besides the work of Toni Morrison.

This is a bold debut that sets out to address the huge themes of motherhood and US history through the tale of one dysfunctional family, and succeeds.

The opening chapter is a cracker, exquisitely written, full of vividly evoked tension and searing emotion. It is painful - relentlessly so - with a devastating coup de grace.

An unexpectedly uplifting reminder of the resilience of the human spirit.

As unremittingly bleak as her characters' lives are, Mathis has not produced a grim novel: it is as much about our need for joy as it is about our struggles against bitterness. Written with elegance and remarkable poise ... memorable and with the hint of something formidable glinting under the surface.

This is an impressive debut: tender, tough and unflinching.

This rich debut couldn't be further from the straightforward 20th-century American family saga it appears at first to be . . . Spanning many decades, it is an intricate portrait not only of complex family ties, but also of one quietly strong woman who heads this complicated tribe of siblings, children and friends. With each chapter narrated by one of Hattie's children, the power of Brooklyn author Ayana Mathis' novel is in its ability to create distinctive yet precise characters brimming with recognisable humanity.

Hopelessly romantic and hopelessly moving. A mix of lovestory thriller and historical fiction. Engrossing.

A novel full of passion, conspiracy, hope, despair, suffering and redemption... transcends the boundaries of genre, being at once thriller and political drama, horror and romance. His ability to paint the tyrannical Stalin in such a way as to make the reader quake with fear is matched by his talent for creating truly heartbreaking characters: the children who innocently find themselves...behind the dank walls of the dreaded Lubyanka prison; their parents, torn between the need to be seen as loyal Bolsheviks and the love they have for their families ... One Night in Winter is a gripping read and must surely be one of the best novels of 2013.

Delicately plotted and buried within a layered, elliptical narrative, One Night in Winter is also a fidgety page-turner which adroitly weaves a huge cast of characters into an arcane world.

Engrossing novel… based on similar real events and certainly his ease with the setting and historical characters is masterly…the invented characters are well-drawn too.

Sebag's new novel draws in the reader and renders time meaningless. Brilliantly depicted.

One Night in Winter entertains and disturbs and seethes with moral complexities: how far would we go to preserve a secret or protect a loved one? All aspects of this “intensified life” are captured in this intricate, at times sobering, but always absorbing novel.

A novel of passion, fear, bravery, suffering and survival ... novel mostly about love ... predictably terrifying — but the novel’s romantic soul tempers the terror and makes for a gripping read ... pitch-perfect.

Engrossing

This gripping novel is a chilling reminder of the darkest days of Communist Russian, and the power one man can wield over a nation’s lives.

A gripping thriller about private life and poetic dreams in Stalin’s Russia… A gripping page-turner… Whether its subject is power or love, a darkly enjoyable read.

A compelling and uplifting story of love and endurance.

A compelling read.

This is one of those rare and thrilling books that you devour hungrily but hope will never end.... If there is one book you must read this year, let it be this one. One Night In Winter is one of the most engaging, gripping and heartbreakingly tragic novels of 2013.

A compelling, cleverly plotted novel.

This moving novel from Simon Sebag Montefiore will have you gripped to the end.

This bone-chilling story; with lashings of snow and sec, offers us a vividly engrossing portrait of Soviet Russia.

A bleak and well-plotted thriller.

Simon Sebag Montefiore uses all his deep knowledge of Russia’s history to build a bleak and well- plotted thriller

Mixing real figures with fictional creations is a challenge for any historical novelist, but the vivid cameos here, particularly of Stalin and his dissolute son, Vasily, give this page-turner the grim stamp of authenticity.

One Night in Winter is compulsively involving and readers do not need to bring much previous knowledge of Russian 20th-century history, or the ambience of the time. The author meticulously supplies both.

This is a gripping and cleverly plotted read

A seriously enjoyable romp

This gripping novel – a combination of political thriller, love story and historical fiction – is a chilling reminder of how totalitarian regimes corrupt everything they touch, especially human relationships.

It is an eminently readable tunic-ripper, and strangely affecting.

A masterpiece of historic fiction

This is a tale of passion, power and politics that I simply couldn’t put down.

The author draws nuanced people about who the reader cares and villains who repel with their casual disregard for human life. He gives an insight into the machinations of the Stalinist state and provides little details that lift the book out of the ordinary

There aren’t many writers as confident and competent in fiction as in non-fiction but Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of them. A gripping yarn and a good history at the same time.

A political novel captures the nightmarish world of post-World War II Russia. As Stalin twists the Childrens Case to his own ends, the truly magnetic power of ONE NIGHT IN WINTER becomes clear. The stirring of our deepest fears and their unexpected resolution - at this, Montefiore is the master. In the hands of the right author, Stalin, endangered children and Moscow 1945 are enough to make a novel.

Enthralling.Mr Montefiore is masterly at sketching scenes (passionate, melancholy or menacing) and limning characters. Not until the book's epilogue are the ultimate secrets revealed: the calculated or heedless acts of young and old who cast their fates with love.