DeBooks

Departure(s) by Julian Barnes At university we read Great Expectations and The Mill on the Floss, but only afterwards did I discover Julian Barnes—along with other British writers such as John Fowles, Hilary Mantel, Martin Amis, Zadie Smith and others. Barnes’s Flaubert’s Parrot impressed me immensely;

Last One Out by Jane Harper Few writers can depict small towns in Australia better than Jane Harper - the eucalyptus trees, the wind, the heat and boredom. Patrick White, an Australian author who received the Nobel Prize for Literature. also wrote about small-town Oz, and about people's

Crux by Gabriel Tallent In rock climbing, “crux” refers to the most difficult part of a climb—the crux of the matter. This is the exceptionally talented Gabriel Tallent’s second novel. His first, My Absolute Darling, drew considerable attention. I didn’t expect to enjoy a novel about teenagers

It’s holiday and we’re at the coast. In the shade, on the warm sand, I like reading pitch-black noirs as a delicious contrast to the bright sky and blue sea. The Inmate by Freida McFadden If Freida writes a domestic noir, I know I’m going to read

Lee Child lives in England’s Lake District. It is said that one of his Jack Reacher novels is sold somewhere in the world every nine seconds. He has already sold more than a hundred million books and has received many awards. He received an OBE from the Queen. These

Books 2025 I started with a much longer list of favourite books and wanted to say something brief about each. But “brief” doesn’t come easily to me. In the end, I said far too much about just a few books. Here are the books: The Queen of the Sky

Today I tell you about ten English novels that delighted my heart this year. Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy Like everyone, I’m a devout admirer of Arundhati Roy after The God of Small Things. Mother Mary Comes to Me, with its striking title, is a kind

David Szalay's novel Flesh won the 2025 Booker Prize. He is Canadian-Hungarian. A while back Mercia S. Burger discussed the novel here. It doesn't exactly sound like a page turner. She had the following to say about Szalay's protagonist: "István is written as

The wonder of reading should not be underestimated or undervalued. In a year that, like every year, becomes too long, when everything drags its feet and looks tired, there are always books, new books appearing every day. Let me tell you about two books that launched me out of the

Every now and then you open a book that is completely unlike anything you've read before. Blood Book is one such book. It is translated from German; the original title is Blutbuch. It has won German and Swiss prizes, although readers on Amazon seem to have given it