Paint it Black
Janet Fitch's Paint It Black is aptly named. Josie's is one of the hardest drinking and drugging women I've met in fiction in a while.
A Judgement in Stone
A Judgement in Stone is at heart about the tension between reality, or experience, and fiction, or illusion
The Secret History
The Secret History really is, a mystery - not so much of whodunit but a whydunit. The novel explores the idea of how absolute ambition corrupts absolutely.
The Night Watch
By choosing WWII as a setting, Waters sets up dramatic symbolism in The Night Watch, as the physical destruction that's wreaked on London
84 Charing Cross Road Review
84 Charing Cross Road will resonate with anyone who relishes the tactile beauty of regally bound, hand press books
What Was She Thinking?
What Was She Thinking? is narrated by a spinster history teacher who befriends a new colleague who winds up shagging one of her students
A Few Frightening Tales
I can’t let Halloween slip by without recommending a few stories that might make you check the recesses of your closet before going to bed
A Series of Unfortunate Events
In a coup of numerological (and bibliographic) symmetry, Lemony Snicket delivered the final instalment in the A Series of Unfortunate Events
The Prime of Miss Jean Brody
The Prime of Miss Jane Brody is a story about five girls and their unconventional teacher, Miss Jean Brodie, who is just entering her prime
The Oxford Murders
In The Oxford Murders, an unnamed narrator from Buenos Aires wins a scholarship to study algebraic topology at Oxford.
The Fairy Tales
The Fairy Tales are also appropriate, despite their darker elements, for children who have perhaps overindulged on the sugar-coated Disney versions
The Adventures of Frog and Toad
Arnold Lobel's Frog and Toad Are Friends, published in 1970, is the first in a series of four books about these two famous friends
The Moonstone
The Moonstone is a very long tale about a precious gem stolen from the brow of a Hindu deity that wreaks havoc on an English family
Blaming
Blaming by Elizabeth Taylor is the story of an unlikely friendship that forms between Amy, an Englishwoman, and Martha, an American