I don't recommend Maureen N. McLane as much as proselytize for her. She's my favourite living poet . . . [Her work] bristles with life, feeling, argument

Breezy and inviting, but also rich and far-reaching . . . Many of the poems are so lovely that one notices their phrasing and pacing first, and then their deeper layers . . . McLane . . . knows when to dazzle and when to disrupt the reader's expectations with a risqué or cheeky observation

These are poems that keep you on your toes . . . McLane renders each phrase with the precise and steady hand of an ice sculptor. Her consummate finesse can be a source of delight

Her mix of the humorous and the cerebral is at once exuberant and rinsed with melancholy . . . It is possible to be carried so far by McLane - by her knowledge, wit, generosity, and musical ear - that one is carried away

The unstoppable, riverish fever of her enjambed, short-lined poems quickly draws one down through her mind, which is as good a prism as any I know of to encounter the external "effects" of nature, beauty, body . . . she makes memory, inside poetry, a downright erotic activity. It's not just the sex of her thought, but the sex of thought itself that breathes through these gorgeous poems

This is the work of a master story-teller...a book to buy, read and read again

In language strikingly lucid and scenes fired by a spare, aching passion, Reading in the Dark combines the intimacy of a memoir with the suspense of a detective story

Intense and powerful . . . written with deep expression and enormous feeling. It is a marvellous historical adventure.

Kristian is a writer with rare power to grab you at the opening of the story and to keep the pace going. Lancelot is a powerful reworking of the King Arthur myths. The pages turn by themselves.

My impression as I was reading Lancelot was of a flare being held up in the gloom of this peculiarly dark passage of history. Every detail illuminated, every motive believable, every heart laid bare. A bright intensity but passing away, guttering, about to go out. And, by the time his tale comes to its conclusion, that seems to be his point. A gentle lament at the onrushing of a dark and inexorable tide which comes to extinguish a bright and golden age of Britain forever. Lancelot is a gem of a book. If there were six stars, it could have them all. Or, to use the words of Spinal Tap, “This one goes to eleven.” Loved it.

Truly magical . . . reads with the authority and gravitas of Manda Scott's Boudica books, such that I found it utterly believable throughout . . . it was a stroke of genius to retell this legend through Lancelot's POV, the betrayer rather than the betrayed.

Giles Kristian’s brilliant take on the Arthurian love-triangle is impressively fresh and original . . . the language is arrestingly beautiful, poetic and poignant; the fights are satisfyingly bloody; the background is a believably muddy, pagan and benighted post-Roman Britain, against which Giles unfolds a tender and tragic love story. We know it will end badly, but reading this enchanting and elegiac novel, you can’t help rooting for Lancelot and his love and hoping it will all work out somehow by the final page.

Authentic, epic, and wonderfully Arthurian.

Kristian is one of the finest storytellers in the genre . . . this is a novel that you feel as much as you read. What we end up with is utterly staggering . . . Giles has surpassed the Cornwell trilogy in a single title.

Fiercely beautiful and gripping.

It’s difficult to think of any author more gifted to retell Lancelot’s story than Giles Kristian . . . [he] writes so beautifully. He brings these post-Roman years so vividly to life. I love the way in which the recent Roman past haunts this landscape. There is myth here, there is the Druid Merlin, and we’re reminded of many of the famous Arthurian legends, such as Excalibur, but Giles Kristian evokes a time rooted in history and in the land around us even now . . . his writing comes closest to the feeling, mood and beauty of the Old and Middle English verse that I love so much . . . there is power here, deep expression and enormous feeling. I cried and cried as the story ended in the only way it could.

This is a story that is packed full of imagery and meaning. Kristian’s prose is unique – stunningly beautiful without ever feeling overdone . . . a wonderfully textured story from a perspective I had never encountered before. Truly masterful storytelling.

[A] gem of a novel. With a sure sense of place, and a convincing portrayal of life lived at the edgy margins, it vividly plots the landscape of the heart en route to a gripping and ultimately redemptive finale.

Raw and redemptive.

Gripping and beautiful.

Ryan's third novel is an elegant, unflinching, entirely brilliant look at the waywardness of desire. . . . searing honesty that is raw but utterly riveting.

A powerful story that will pull you into a whirlwind of emotion and pain, but also the faintest glimmer of hope.

Shines through its female characters.

A stunning story that deserves great success.

All We Shall Know blew me away, left me blubbering on my commute and wide awake at 2 a.m. . . . He excels at first-person narrative, and it's this that makes All We Shall Know unforgettable.

An intense, dramatic story . . . rather touching.

His best yet . . . I kept re-reading paragraphs and whole pages to savour Ryan's remarkable prose. The book imbues profanity with poetry, and the characters, for all their flaws, are beautifully and sympathetically drawn.

Unflinching.

A wonderful novel.

In a word, this book is stunning.

McEwan muses on love, empathy and the morality and ethics of artificial intelligence… very good.

An important literary contribution to the AI debate, one of the great questions of our time.

Precisely rendered and well observed… [McEwan] neatly delineates humanity’s remorseless self-demotion from the centre of the universe to flotsam.

[An] undeniably another excellent novel from McEwan, who demonstrates that he can conjure up challenging characters, witty dialogue and moral ambiguity when dealing with sex robots just as brilliantly as he does on literary turf.

Dexterous, utterly gripping and intensely thought-provoking.

Deeply unnerving… What starts out as a darkly funny ménage à trois becomes an unsettling examination of the human condition. Bold, clever.

The latest novel from my favourite author tackles the subjects of artificial intelligence and what it is to be human. He does this in a surprising, original way, and Adam, the strong, seductive “robot”, is a character that will haunt me for a long time.

[This] new, gripping, beautifully written and constructed, disturbing, and provocative novel…is a thrilling read… the chilling conclusions that hyper-rationalism can come to are brilliantly described.

McEwan maintains his status as a master of fiction.

A new collection of stories that explores the complex - and often darkly funny - connections between gender, sex, and power across genres.

Ian McEwan’s sublimely playful new novel transports you back to the Eighties but with some major changes, including eerily life-like robots… Dark and slyly funny, it’ll also give your brain a workout.