Cheever's debut novel is skittish, mercurial and ringing with life

The best introduction to Cheever's work...richly inventive and vividly told

A tapestry woven from the threads of emotion, tragedy, comedy...and the irony so wonderfully evident in the author's short stories...a literary mosaic...Cheever is a pleasure to read

A brilliantly written novel, vastly and sometimes sadly, amusing

Jilly Cooper’s writing is hilarious, witty, wise, astute, flawlessly entertaining and a celebration of all that is the most fun about being British

Exhilarating, irresistible and one of our nation’s most beloved novels. If you’re about to read Riders for the first time, you’re in for a joyous experience!

It's all here: swooning romance, skulduggery in the stables and, yes, bonking; all set in the Cotswold countryside. Tally ho!

Blockbusting fiction at its best

I defy anyone not to enjoy her book. It is a delight from start to finish

Has any book of the past 70 years given as much pleasure as Cooper's rumpy-pumpy, show-jumping classis?

A miniaturised family saga...Harding's writing has many virtues. His descriptions of spring flowers...have something of Thoreau about them. There are echoes, too, of Whitman's celebratory catalogues and of Robert Frost's scrupulously bleak verse narratives. A fine passage about an abandoned house brings its long dead builders with their "catastrophic voices" and its current ruin into the span of a single sentence...A sense of mutability is beautifully realised in the phrase "the iron in my blood was once the blade of a Roman plow".

A dense, short meditation on memory, time and legacies passed on from generation to generation...A collage of fragmented histories across three...Poetic language is the driving force in this story...Harding is particularly strong on the natural world as he picks apart a relationship between father and son; in this oddly uplifting book, the time and space they occupy is merely a small part of a vividly described pastoral landscape in which nature endures where man will not.

Immaculate, clever, clinical and alarmingly precise...The book is packed with the kind of imagery that fuels serious American fiction.

The Lollipop Shoes is a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair.

...the magic still enchants

...a sumptuous treat.

...a sensory fantasy, Harris writes with an original and satisfying poetic flair. Harris is a delicious treat.

This novel has the richness of the best quality dark chocolate.

Sparkling black comedy

Pearson is a hilarious author who captures the guilt and the exhaustion of the working mother's life perfectly

It's the incisive details and Pearson's vivid writing that propel the story

Smart book...great fun

Pearson is insightful, witty and full of fun

Wonderfully warm, witty and intelligent

A Bible for the working woman

Her social observation is unerringly accurate...so beautifully written that it brought tears to my eyes, as well as a wry smile

Pearson...to write a novel...that has already sold a gazillion copies and is going to become a film. Hats off to you, madam!

She will...make you laugh

Pearson...has made it all fresh again

Entertaining, compulsively readable, and brilliantly written

Hilarious and...poignant

This terrific novel is alternately hilarious and sad

It may change your life

Pearson is a very witty and moving writer. Her prose is spare and skilful...waspish truisms and spot-on social observations

Intelligent, witty and of-the-moment, it mixes sassy, brittle perceptions with barefaced sentimentality

Brilliantly captures and defines the mood of the moment...sparkling wit and razor sharp insights

Sharply observed and frequently funny