An Enid Blyton Secret Seven story about a jewel thief with, in my eight-year-old eyes, the cleverest twist, marked the beginning of my lifelong fascination with crime. So it is probably no surprise that I became a Scenes of Crime Officer with the police, spent over twenty years as a police and crime journalist and...
The train to Paris, which had been expected at 2:37 p.m., pulled in five minutes behind schedule. Albert Le Prince didn’t see his younger brother, Louis, very often anymore. Louis had moved away from France over twenty years ago – and if that wasn’t enough, lately he had been consumed by his work on a...
Hot on the heels of the release of a 20th anniversary edition of her Orange Prize-shortlisted The White Family, Maggie Gee’s latest novel The Red Children is a sequel of sorts. But the sometimes stark realism of the earlier book, which was motivated by her grief, anger and shame over the murder of Stephen Lawrence,...
Frentista, estalinista, asesina loca. Una palabra detrás de otra, un conjunto de palabras elaboradas en una ecuación implacable. Sílabas sonoras, perfectas, que iban organizando una cadena armónica que resonaba igual que una recurrente letanía. So begins the next chapter, and I know it’s going to cause me trouble. The first sentence is just four words:...
Colm Tóibín’s first collection of poetry Vinegar Hill, written over several decades, explores sexuality, religion and belonging through a modern lens, across themes including politics, queer love, reflections on literary and artistic greats, living through Covid, memory, mortality and a fading past. Here he gives voice to a rueful Eve as she looks back on...
The disappearance of three lighthouse keepers from an island in the Outer Hebrides in 1900, which became known as the Flannan Isles Vanishing, inspired Emma Stonex’ debut novel The Lamplighters. How and why did three men just disappear? The mystery has never been solved, and it’s been great fodder for films and books ever since....
Writing a novel about a vampire wasn’t a conscious decision. Before I knew what Woman, Eating would be about, I knew that I wanted to explore the experience of being of mixed Asian and British descent in England. One day, quite suddenly, Lydia – the protagonist of Woman, Eating – was just there in my...
He kissed my cracked lips. ‘A paternal kiss… you are like a daughter to me.’ I run my tongue over my lips. Oozing, something sticky. Blood… saliva? Who knows. Someone is shining a bright light into my eyes… I’m trying to open them… I can’t. My head is weighed down… I try again… I close...
I’m the author of Living My Best Life, Married at First Swipe and my new novel, The One, about love, loss and learning to live again. I am also Assistant Editor at The Sun on Sunday’s Fabulous magazine, which involves editing copy, managing a team and making sure the magazine goes to press on time...
It can be argued that few gestures in the history of humanity can claim to have had such an impact on societal structures, on cultural evolution, and on civilisational encounters as trade. From the first barter exchanges (you had to be ready to meet someone else, and to acknowledge different, mutually complementary needs, in order...
When her brother Tom died suddenly at the age of 57, it fell to Christina Patterson, as the last surviving member of the immediate family, to clear out his house. She diligently sorted through the papers Tom had gathered, including all manner of diaries, letters and photographs left by their parents and older sister Caroline....
I’m standing alone in the kitchen trying to pour chocolate batter into a cake pan without getting any on the counter. I’m also trying to think of a way into a conversation with my wife about children. It’s still a few hours before I need to pick her up from the airport, so I can...
