SNAPSHOTWinter is drawing thick in 1932 Shanghai, as is the ever-nearing threat of a Japanese invasion. Rosalind Lang has suffered the worst possible fate for a national spy: she’s been exposed. With the media storm camped outside her apartment for the infamous Lady Fortune, she’s barely left her bedroom in Continue Reading
Books
Book review: Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
Some people do not like or get people. If you’re an extrovert like this reviewer, that likely seems like an alien idea; sure, people can be annoying and trying at times but gosh, isn’t it good to have them around you? Emily Wilde does not think so, and while she Continue Reading
Book review: The Vintage Shop of Second Chances by Libby Page
There are a great many times in life when things feel so limited and finite, and defiantly, unhealingly one way. No matter how much we yearn for a something new to life us from a too well-carved rut or for life to bring us meaningful connection or for closure to Continue Reading
Book review: A Man and His Pride by Luke Rutledge
As a gay man, you commonly come across the idea that the life you lead must be one of endless partying, unremitting casual sex and a fabulousness wrapped in feather boas, soaked in glitter and strung about with rainbow-hued neon. That’s understandable in one sense since it is the popular Continue Reading
Book review: The Last Love Note by Emma Grey
If you were to believe popular culture, and it’s chock full of alluringly escapist ideas about how life should be so why the hell wouldn’t you, you can experience the most resoundingly destructive romantic grief, and then not much later, by dint of a meet-cute, the exchange of a few Continue Reading
Book review: A Country of Eternal Light by Paul Dalgarno
Death, to our never-ending despair and ever-present grief, is a very final thing. That’s not necessarily a commentary on life-after-death or any of the philosophical or religious beliefs that evoke ideas of what happens to our supposedly incorruptible souls; it’s more a resigned acknowledgement that when somebody passes away, that’s Continue Reading
Valentine’s Day book review: Nobody Puts Romcom in the Corner by Kathryn Freeman
Who of us, at least those with a love for watching films about people falling in love, hasn’t wished they could step into the frames of their favourite romantic comedy? They are usually so perfectly put together, so wonderfully alive with romantic possibility and eventually, after many twists and turns, Continue Reading
Book review: The Whispering by Veronica Lando
The corrosive power of secrets is on full, ever tense, slowly building display in Veronica Lando’s debut novel The Whispering, a story which understands how the past can come crashing into the present and throw the future, in its all troubled and glorious possibility, into doubt. Set in Far North Continue Reading
Book review: Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree
High fantasy is not usually the stuff of warm and cosy feels nor do second-chance stories of found family and hopeful new starts feature all kinds of mythical creatures. These two genres do not normally share a narrative bed since one, the former, is usually all high stakes and intense Continue Reading
Book review: The Exiled Fleet (A novel of the Divide #2) by J. S. Dewes
Finding intimate character moments in the midst of a sprawling space opera may seem like a strange anomaly, but the truth is that the two go together in ways many people not familiar with genre may not fully expect. Much like movie blockbusters which neatly characters with real, fully-rounded humanity Continue Reading