The Christian Science Monitor

3 min read

This clever work of meta-fiction is told by a writer named Anthony Horowitz, who has been asked by a former detective to look into a most unusual murder.

How It Works

1 min read

12-year-old Dickens began working at Warren’s boot-blacking factory. He earned six shillings (equivalent to about £17) a week putting labels on shoe polish jars. Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, on 7 February to parents John and Eliza

How It Works

1 min read

It has been 150 years since Charles Dickens died, 184 years since his first work was released to the public and 156 years since his last completed book came out. In all of this time, these novels have never been out of print. Dickens may have left us

Country Life

1 min read

• Before he found fame as a novelist, Dickens (see page 98) was a journalist and Parliamentary reporter. In the 1830s, his descriptions of London were published in newspapers and re-released collectively in 1836 as Sketches by Boz • The George and V

How It Works

1 min read

In some of his early work, Dickens wrote under the pseudonym Boz. This was a shortened version of a nickname he gave his brother, Moses. Humorously, he always spoke this name as if with a cold, ‘Moses’ becoming ‘Boses’. In desperate poverty, his fath

Writer's Digest

6 min read

The poet Anne Michaels once said in one of her poems that if you live in a country you were not born in, then your life is a story. Another of my favorite writers, Samuel Beckett, spent most of his life outside of his native Ireland, living in France

Chicago Tribune

4 min read

"Knives Out," one of the more interesting and entertaining movies of 2019, attempts something that has never really been done before: adapting the classic murder mystery, an inherently conservative genre, to modern progressive discourse rebuking casu

TIME

2 min read

“WHY IS IT THAT WE HAVE SUCH A NEED FOR murder mystery,” asks Susan Ryeland, the narrator of British author Anthony Horowitz’s new novel, Magpie Murders, “and what is it that attracts us—the crime or the solution? Do we have some primal need of blood

The Threepenny Review

5 min read

The Witch Elm by Tana French. Viking/Penguin, 2018, $28.00 cloth, $17.00 paper. AT THE gates of the Underworld, wrote Virgil, rises an elm “of vast extent,” spreading its “branches and aged arms, around which false dreams cling and attach themselves

Stamp Collector

1 min read

2020 marks 150 years since the death of Charles Dickens (1812-1870), widely regarded as the greatest author of the Victorian era. Appreciated for his vast contribution to English literature, Dickens is particularly well known for his powerful and evo

SFX

1 min read

Tell us about your protagonist. Charley Sutherland is a brilliant, scatterbrained academic who has the ability to bring book characters to life. Unfortunately, though, he can’t always control it… What are the benefits and drawbacks of this ability? I

Chicago Tribune

4 min read

"Knives Out," one of the more interesting and entertaining movies of 2019, attempts something that has never really been done before: adapting the classic murder mystery, an inherently conservative genre, to modern progressive discourse rebuking casu

The Atlantic

8 min read

Over the last decade, female writers have come to dominate crime fiction, a genre traditionally associated with men. But their appeal goes beyond the byline.

The Millions

4 min read

I love stories told by the supposedly innocent bystander; the less charismatic best friend; the hapless fan or scholar whose own life recedes in the shadow of their subject of adoration. The post Observers, Bystanders, and Hangers On: Ten Novels with

The Paris Review

2 min read

Every week, the editors of The Paris Review lift the paywall on a selection of interviews, stories, poems, and more from the magazine’s archive. You can have these unlocked pieces delivered straight to your inbox every Sunday by signing up for the Re

The Paris Review

8 min read

I’ve been tempted to write more directly about my life, but the way I apprehended this book was as a work of imagination.

Chicago Tribune

4 min read

"Knives Out," one of the more interesting and entertaining movies of 2019, attempts something that has never really been done before: adapting the classic murder mystery, an inherently conservative genre, to modern progressive discourse rebuking casu

Stamp Collector

1 min read

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the death of Charles Dickens, one of the world’s most famous and loved writers. To celebrate, the Isle of Man Post Office working closely with the Charles Dickens Museum, London, has created a set of six caref

Literary Hub

7 min read

There’s something reassuring about reading a story in which a heroic detective saves the day. Maybe it’s through tracking down a killer; maybe it’s finding a missing person. There’s that sense of closure, that sense that the protagonist has done the

Chicago Tribune

4 min read

"Knives Out," one of the more interesting and entertaining movies of 2019, attempts something that has never really been done before: adapting the classic murder mystery, an inherently conservative genre, to modern progressive discourse rebuking casu

Chicago Tribune

4 min read

"Knives Out," one of the more interesting and entertaining movies of 2019, attempts something that has never really been done before: adapting the classic murder mystery, an inherently conservative genre, to modern progressive discourse rebuking casu

New Zealand Woman’s Weekly

1 min read

I’m excited to have come across new Kiwi talent H.G. Parry. She’s produced a literary fantasy that is a completely brilliant read for anybody who loves books or magic. It’s quirky, original and unexpected from start to finish. Rob Sutherland is a Wel

NPR

5 min read

A new museum exhibit in London reveals a hidden side of the literary great. It turns out he was prolific not just as a novelist, but also as a promoter of public health and medical discoveries.

Literary Hub

2 min read

The New Books Network is a consortium of author-interview podcast channels dedicated to raising the level of public discourse by introducing serious authors to a wide public via new media. We publish 100 new interviews every month and serve a large,

Chicago Tribune

4 min read

"Knives Out," one of the more interesting and entertaining movies of 2019, attempts something that has never really been done before: adapting the classic murder mystery, an inherently conservative genre, to modern progressive discourse rebuking casu

PC Gamer

1 min read

There are lots of things I want to do in a Sherlock Holmes game. I want to recline indolently in an opioid haze; to steeple my fingers and examine shirt cuffs. What I never want, however, is to stop being Holmes and instead control a reeking urchin t

Writing Magazine

1 min read

The team at The Writer’s Block are looking for short stories for an anthology for YA and NA readers but you’ll have to write fast: the deadline is 10 March. Aesthetic: A Dark Academia Anthology is to be published as an Amazon ebook and print version.

Writing Magazine

4 min read

It will soon be St Valentine’s Day, so I decided to check out the Romantic Novelists’ Association and find out about the state of romantic fiction in 2020. Luckily the current chair, Alison May, was happy to chat to me. ‘The RNA is sixty years old th

Chicago Tribune

4 min read

"Knives Out," one of the more interesting and entertaining movies of 2019, attempts something that has never really been done before: adapting the classic murder mystery, an inherently conservative genre, to modern progressive discourse rebuking casu

New Zealand Woman’s Weekly

1 min read

The mum-of-two lives in Whangaparaoa, near Auckland. She’s a Weekly senior sub-editor who also writes romantic thrillers under the name Brynn Kelly. This novel was inspired by… “A hankering to set a story on a tropical island, to get that trouble-in-