First published a year after Billy Mackenzie’s suicide in 1997, the 2011 edition of The Glamour Chase contains a Foreword written by Björk (described as Mackenzie’s ‘twin musical spirit’), which...
In 2001 Nick Holdstock travelled to Yining, a city in China’s largest province – the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region – to ‘teach English’ (a benevolent ruse he used to indulge...
Turf is Jonathan Ross’s debut as writer of a comic series, and this collection of the first five issues, which form a complete story, is a winner. It’s set...
The good doctor, Mark Kermode, entertains his devoted fans at the launch of his new book, The Good, The Bad and The Multiplex, at the closing weekend of Edinburgh Book...
This earthy tale is set at a 1970s Virginia racetrack, in the deeply unglamorous, chancy world of claiming races. A ragtag band of characters survive on the fringes of...
On face value, The Borrower is a story about a librarian, a small boy and the primacy of the written word; on second thought it is a political satire,...
Not to be confused with Mark Billingham’s last book, From The Dead, this latest offering is a solid police procedural. In fact, there’s really quite a lot of procedure...
Tim Key’s quirky, humorous, poems were very enjoyable. In fact, I had to share them. I shared them with my cat, Charlie. Charlie bloody loved them! He started bringing all...
This is a genial collection of essays by an esteemed critic, including a foreword by one of his friends, Andrew O’Hagan, and pieces on his friends too, including Seamus...
This book, his second published work, is something of a leap forward for Andrew Raymond Drennan, with his prose in particular significantly more confident than in his debut novel, Cancer...
John Burnside's eighth novel is both an evolution of his previous work and an entirely self-contained fable. It is set in the Norwegian Arctic Circle; a place where extreme...
Aaron and Ahmed is subtitled ‘A Love Story’, but it’s not that simple. It’s the story of Aaron, who becomes a soldier in Guantanamo Bay after his girlfriend dies in...
Following on from Haynes, the Car Manual publisher who branched out into novelty books – The Star Trek based U.S.S Enterprise Manual, Dad Manual, Baby Manual etc – Top...
There have been too many hand-wringing discussions on the future of the book. This is not one of them. Author and academic Umberto Eco and his friend, screenwriter Jean-Claude...
Gomorrah, journalist Roberto Saviano’s exposé of the Neapolitan Camorra crime organisation, quickly became an international bestseller, and subsequently an award-winning film. But the downside of this was that Saviano became...
Christopher Brookmyre’s latest novel is something of a departure from his previous work – the ‘satirical crime’ genre – into something a little more serious. Before getting into why...
Chris Adrian has reworked A Midsummer Night's Dream into a novel that is beautifully written and acutely observed. He says this story, only his third novel, can be summarised...
After the events in the last collected edition of The Boys comic, our sort-of hero, Simon Pegg lookalike Hughie, retreats to his home town for a break. Since he’s...
There’s a long tradition of put-upon underdogs being guided towards success and self-enlightenment by an older, more experienced mentor, but Mark MacNicol successfully reconfigures the traditional template over the inhabitants...
A Rose Loupt Oot is a collection of songs and poems associated with the work-in at the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, now nearly 40 years ago. The bulk of the work...
