2021 Year In Review: SMSA’s Top 10 Mysteries
Sections Top 10 Books Honourable Mentions Top 10 Books Click the title to see the book in the Library Catalogue 10 The Night Gate…
Book Reviews
2021 Year In Review: Award Winners
Discover the year’s best books and award winners for 2021, focusing on the major literary and crime writing awards.
The Labyrinth by Amanda Lohrey
The Labyrinth is a meditation on mother-love, guilt, grief and healing. We accompany Erica on her journey, both emotional and physical, as she retreats to…
The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis
Belatedly I have just discovered the wonderful literature of this deceased author Walter Tevis. Having ignored the recent Netflix series made of the novel (though…
The Man Who Died Twice (The Thursday Murder Club Mysteries #2) by Richard Osmond
What a delight to again spend time with the indomitable Septuagenarians Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron who reside in Coopers Chase Retirement village, and just…
I’d Kill For That by Marcia Talley
I was astonished that only 5 people have read this book so I was compelled to write a review. This is a collaborative serial novel….
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce #1) by Alan Bradley
Whether you are going to like this novel or not is totally reliant on how you respond to the narrator: the titular Flavia de Luce,…
Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe
Jonathan Coe mixes reality with fiction in this book which is an unapologetic love-letter to the titular Billy Wilder, one of the greatest film directors…
Midnight at Malabar House by Vaseem Khan
What makes a great crime book? A book that is about so much more than the crime itself. Midnight at Malabar House is that sort…
Still Life by Sarah Winman
Do not be deterred by the lack of punctuation (Winman uses no quotation marks for dialogue) or by the strangely truncated sentences. Because once you’ve…
Over My Dead Body by Dave Warner
For many of us, the name Dave Warner evokes memories of our misspent youth, with ‘Just a Suburban Boy’ playing (loudly) in the background. However,…
A Thousand Ships by Natalie Haynes
The twenty-year voyage of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, is an archetypal tale of bravery, cleverness and cunning, the saga of a wily hero among a…