This is a very atmospheric debut novel from Rachel Donohue, set in the claustrophobic location of an exclusive girls’ Catholic boarding school in the 1990s. The school is staffed mainly by nuns in a decaying country house, once belonging to an avid collector of curiosities who finished by hanging himself in the woods nearby. The grisly legend remains, as does his cabinet of curiosities.

Louisa, one of the two narrators has won a fourth-year scholarship to Temple House School as part of a push to include the wider community. It is clear that some members of the school’s population see the new

This documentary brings us to rural Macedonia where we meet Hatidze Muratova, a woman who has dedicated her life to wild beekeeping. The documentary originally started out as an environmental film about the river running through the centre of Macedonia, but plans changed when the film team discovered the beehives Hatidze tends in remote areas.

This immersive and visual documentary follows Hatidze as we watch her traditional methods of beekeeping, and follow her day to day where we see her relationship with her elderly mother in their remote village, and her trips to the market 4 hours away to

Fiction with a sense of place

Elif Shafak, as an author of both literary fiction and political/social commentary, has managed to create in her work, The Island of Missing Trees, a novel of great lyrical prose and beautiful imagery in her evocation of Cyprus, its history, landscape and culture.

The story packs a punch in covering a lot of ground in terms of combining personal and political themes with descriptions of nature and the interconnectedness between humans and the natural world. From the outset, the reader is introduced to the young lovers, Kostas, who is Greek Christian and Defne, of

This is the 8th instalment of the Slough House series so Herron could be forgiven for resting on his laurels somewhat, but instead he continues to refine his art, seamlessly blending the sublime with the ridiculous, the poetic with the utterly base. His hero, Jackson Lamb, is as revolting as ever, and the motley collection of disgraced spies who make up this remedial branch of MI5 as variously psychotic and inept as in past episodes. In fact it feels like the Falstaffian Lamb has taken on a life of his own, with Herron admitting he’s become unstoppable, saying “I look back at some of those

Not your average mermaid tale.

Our story begins in March 1976 in St Constance, a tiny Caribbean village on the island of Black Conch. David, a fisherman who likes to sing on his boat while at sea, attracts the attention of Aycayia, a beautiful young woman cursed to live as a mermaid. One day, Aycayia mistakes another fishing boat for David’s and is captured by fishermen with less good intentions.

However this is not The Little Mermaid or Splash. Aycayia’s capture scene is incredibly uncomfortable to read and after she’s captured and subsequently tied up on a shipping dock, the descriptions of

Reading this was an odd experience. On the one hand I found the exhaustive description, lack of propulsion and proliferation of characters (and red herrings) irksome, but on the other I couldn’t put the daft thing down.

The problem is Rowling starts off well and has a knack of establishing characters and atmosphere that quickly suck you in, but seems to feel obliged to give her fans ever more of a good thing as her series progress - Harry Potter, anyone? The result is, in the case of this 5th book in the Cormoran Strike series, a ridiculously overlong book which would have benefitted from the

On my recent trip to visit my sister in the USA, she recommended a book to me called "The Light Pirate" by Lily Brooks-Dalton. My sister had discovered the book by attending an author event in Books & Books of Key West. Books & Books store founder Judy Blume (yes!!) was in attendance and gave glowing praise for the book, saying she doesn't normally read post apocalyptical novels but that she really enjoyed this book.

So that brings me to the subject matter of the book, which is, in essence, what happens when the power goes out. Specifically in Florida where the central character is based. The

This novel is the second in the Perveen Mistry detective series, set in 1920s pre-independence India. Perveen is a female solicitor, still a rare thing in the early days of the twentieth century. Having obtained her law degree at Oxford she works for Mistry Law, her family’s legal practice in Bombay (now Mumbai) with her father and grandfather.

Her latest assignment comes about because of her involvement in a previous case where a family of ladies in purdah required legal advice (The Widows of Malabar Hill). In Perveen’s latest case she is again asked to act for purdah ladies, this time for the

Right from the first page you know this is no run-of-the-mill murder mystery and, having finished it, I’m still not quite sure what it is. Influenced not so much by Agatha Christie as by Dan Brown with a sprinkling of Le Carre, there are shades of Lynda La Plante in the scenes set in London’s gangsterland. More surprisingly Enid Blyton features big, her oeuvre hilariously sent up by Hallett. Also in the mix is Kit Williams’s Masquerade, a fantasy book that sparked a quest for a golden hare buried somewhere in the British countryside in the 70s (this really happened, I kid you not). But what