Alison Flood

The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes - review

Lauren Beukes's time-travelling thriller is a wild, brutal ride through 20th-century Chicago Harper is not your average serial killer. "How old are you?" he asks Kirby Mazrachi, a grubby six-year-old with crazy hair who grows up to become the kickass sta

Under Your Skin by Sabine Durrant - review

Sabine Durrant's first thriller is a flawless picture of a perfect life unravelling At first glance, Gaby Mortimer could almost be a character from Having It and Eating It , the mum-lit novel with which Sabine Durrant made her name. A morning televi

William Sutcliffe: 'It was so much more brutal than I thought it could be'

William Sutcliffe, best known for his satirical take on gap year travel, Are You Experienced?, is moving into writing for young adults with The Wall – and he isn't expecting it to go unnoticed.

Alex by Pierre Lemaitre - review

If Winston Smith's Room 101 nightmare in Nineteen Eighty-Four proved too disturbing an image for you, then it's probably best to steer clear of Alex by Pierre Lemaitre, the first thriller by this popular French author to be translated into English. The ep

Carlos Acosta leaps into Waterstones' spotlight as debut novelist

Revered dancer's Cuban saga joins 10 other first books picked by bookseller as 'debut literary stars of 2013' After enthralling audiences around the world with his dancing, Carlos Acosta is making his entrance on to a different stage with a debut novel,

The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter by Malcolm Mackay - review

Malcolm Mackay's remarkably original thriller shines a light on Glasgow's criminal underworld "It's easy to kill a man," you're told by your omniscient narrator (more on the second person later). "It's hard to kill a man well. People who do it well know