Here's the opening of my novel, Once Upon a Thousand Hills - a bizarre love story about a feisty sex shop worker seeking more meaning in her life, and an aloof director of a London refugee centre hiding from his tortured Rwandan past. Although the backdrop is dark, the punchy romance that unfolds - 20 [...]
Naomi Lieberman has flown the nest of her hometown in Liverpool to seek the bright lights of London. Despite having a degree in forensic science, Naomi finds herself working as a sales assistant at a sex shop in Soho. This is just one of many shameful secrets she has to hide from her Orthodox Jewish [...]
What makes a book a bloody good read ? Of course that’s a subjective question, but in the main I reckon it’s the result of a whole host of literary aspects that align in the right place at the right time for the right reader. It might be the tightly-knit thriller element that keeps you [...]
It’s New Year’s Eve in Kraków, 1992. Club-footed photocopyist Leo has allowed his homeless friend Ania to share the evening with him in the warmth of his post-communist bachelor pad. But what he longs to do, once Ania finally goes, is to continue reading the diary of the mysterious Tamara, who left her book in his [...]
The other day I found myself on a Ryanair plane to London, with two and a half blissful hours of peace in front of me. Yippee! - I thought giddily to myself. No internet to interrupt the long, imminent reading session that lay ahead! I snuggled down in my seat (‘snuggling’ is something that’s pretty [...]
I thought I’d have a blog-chat about something completely different this week. Namely, about a novel that everyone in the bookish world appears to be talking about of late: The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelikes. I’ve read a lot of books this summer holiday, but The Silent Patient is one that I have found almost impossible [...]
I’ve been thinking lately, as we all do. But I’ve been thinking specifically about what makes a great book, as opposed to merely a mediocre book. I won’t bother conjecturing about what makes a bad book, even though lots of those get published as well and sometimes even acclaimed as bestsellers. In my opinion, the [...]
Wendy Skorupski 