Noah’s Compass by Anne Tyler: almost vintage Tyler

Liam Pennywell has spent most of his life dodging issues and skirting adventure when suddenly, in his sixty-first year, something happens that jolts him out of his certainty and leaves him with a frightening gap in his memory. In trying to piece together what took place on his first night in a new apartment, Liam [...]

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Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

For an orphan girl growing up amid the poverty and criminality of Victorian London’s notorious Lant Street, Susan Trinder has led a remarkably sheltered life, kept safe and protected by her adopted step mother Mrs Sucksby. But when Richard Rivers, or Gentlemen as he is known to them, arrives with a scheme to defraud an [...]

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Amazir by Tom Gamble

Plus a FREE BOOK GIVEAWAY – read (or skip …) to the end for details. Most years, the announcement of the shortlist for the Romantic Novelists’ Association’s Romantic Novel of the Year award generates little more than a sedate ripple of interest in the media. This year, however, when the identities of the six shortlisted [...]

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Love Always (or, more accurately, in praise of Harriet Evans)

We sit and listen to the minister in the small chapel with big glass windows, no adornment, no incense, everything plain.  Outside, the wind whistles across the moors…  At Granny’s request, there is no eulogy.  That’s the only thing that is weird.  No one gets up and speaks over Granny’s body, there in its oak [...]

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Who’s Afraid of Mr Wolfe? by Hazel Osmond

Who’s Afraid of Mr Wolfe begins with the heroine having a brilliant idea, which gets Hazel Osmond’s warm, exuberant and funny debut novel off to a great start. My habit is to try hard not to give away beginnings, so I won’t tell you what that idea is, even if I’m a bad, spoilerific person [...]

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Coming up on Vulpes Libris …

It’s nearly all over: Easter has come and gone, more chocolate has been consumed than is either desirable or even advisable and Catherine Elizabeth Middleton has become Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge. Slowly and uncertainly the Foxes are emerging blinking into the sunlight, scenting the air and trying to work out what day [...]

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