Editorial reviews

I have read many time-slip novels, and most of them have been merely mediocre. A Summer Without Autumn, unfortunately, wasn't much better.

I found your use of the Norse gods fresh and new, and enough to make me want more. Given that I am a long time reader of yours, I will continue with the series in the hopes that the next book will work better for me. Embrace of the Damned gets a C- from me.

This book is fun. Don’t let the darker tone of the title sway you. You will be laughing out loud at points! There are a few serious and dangerous moments, don’t get me wrong it’s not all fun and games. But it’s mostly just a fun ride!

The question at the center of his nonfiction treatise: Do cars shape the culture, or does culture shape the cars? It's an intriguing idea explored with in-depth investigations of 15 passenger vehicles

“I Am Forbidden,” her first novel in English, centers on two Hasidic sisters: one who leaves, and one who stays, shunning modernity. Given the author’s background, you might assume that this is a story about how one of them is wrecked by her choice.

These stories do not end, but spin away from one another, each on its own course." In other words, they momentarily collide and separate to form the kind of narrative at which Lively excels: the untidy, unpredictable one in which everyone lives ambivalently ever after.

Clear introductions to each young person provide historical, legal and social context. This nuanced portrayal of adolescence in a struggling nation refrains, refreshingly, from wallowing in tragedy tourism and overwrought handwringing.

A vivid, disturbing and all-too-real topical story.

A six-month journey in search of the secrets behind the world's fastest runners.

A substantive, sobering historical read, with just a few heaving bodices.

A testament to the strength and goodness within the human spirit.

A rewarding glimpse behind the Alaska oil headlines.

Think of Nicolas Cage tearing up the scenery as Tom Sagan to the background beat of popping corn, and you’re halfway there.

An authoritative, moving retelling of an enduring episode of sacrifice and courage.

Despite the high mortality rate, the procedural work is more grueling than fascinating, and the criminals are mostly as nondescript as their monikers. But the climactic gunfight is deeply satisfying, and the very last line of dialogue is perfect.

Unflinchingly honest account of an ex-Marine's struggle to re-acclimate to civilian life after returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Kaplan's account of Frank Sinatra's well-documented first four decades is an attempt to bring the singer to life on the page.

In this ambitious and wonderfully expansive study, he weaves together the parallel histories of personal, lived time with cosmic time – the cosmologies that we have been fashioning to explain the universe since the dawn of human civilisation.

Most of the nine stories here date from before or during the first world war. It's all rather like La Bohème, but more realistic, with penniless artists and a lot of smoking and talking and drinking of Dutch gin late into the night.

Don't underestimate the power of this book to get under your skin. Its genuinely disturbing plot lurks behind the homely story of Judy, a forty-something kindergarten teacher in a Steiner school in small-town America.