When she's writing about her beloved Venice, Donna Leon can do no wrong. And Earthly Remains, her new mystery featuring Commissario Guido Brunetti, is one of her best. It's also one of her saddest, dealing as it does with the seemingly unstoppable polluting of the great lagoon . . . Leon dares to try, once again earning the gratitude of her devoted readers.

Donna Leon’s recreation of Venice and her depiction of the series’ core characters … is, as always in this long-running series, a triumph.

Leon has done for Venice what Morse did for Oxford, or Aurelio Zen for Rome … Leon is a wonderful writer, the sentences as beautifully crafted as the puparin Casati’s father had long ago built.

The latest - and 26th - instalment in the best-selling Commissario Brunetti series will not need any recommendation for those familiar with Leon’s accomplished detective series.

I sometimes find it difficult to review Donna Leon's books with any original comment as they are consistently good. However, this is an excellent example and as with all her other books I have read, comes highly recommended.

Donna Leon’s novels reflect the true nature of life.

The huge number of readers who are devoted to the work of the late Henning Mankell will find in this, his last novel, all the characteristics they value: the observant descriptions of the minutiae of daily life, the gentle melancholy, the careful analysis of relationships (especially between fathers and daughters) and, above all, the inevitability of loneliness and loss

This profoundly gloomy yet ultimately hopeful novel – the last from the late grand master of Scandinavian noir – revolves around discovering who could have been responsible for this senseless crime

This final novel from Mankell (the Kurt Wallander series), posthumously published in a stunning English translation, questions what happens to a person who has lost everything—and who considers himself too old to rebuild... It’s a skillfully told, exquisitely structured story filled with sharp insights into human nature and unflinching examinations of the complex relationships to which people bind themselves in order to feel a little bit less alone.

A bracing look at a twilight year in the life of an old man who, when confronted daily by perfectly good reasons for giving up altogether, doesn’t so much rise above as plow stoically through them.

Lovely… Elegiac and steeped in the emptiness of the Swedish landscape

Elegiac and melancholic.

We are back in the more interesting territory of moral uncertainty and failure. What, Smiley asks, was he fighting for?

The literary event of the Autumn

I have re-read The Spy Who Came In From The Cold over and over again since I first encountered it in my teens, just to remind myself how extraordinary a work of fiction can be

He can communicate emotion, from sweating fear to despairing love, with terse and compassionate conviction. Above all, he can tell a tale. Formidable equipment for a rare and disturbing writer

The best spy story I have ever read

A literary master for a generation

George Smiley is our favourite fictional spy

le Carré has made and peopled a myth. Myths do not age

Deeply moving in its portrait of a man adrift in a climate he no longer understands

[As] labyrinthine as you'd expect ... le Carré has always been a master

Razor-sharp insight from the battle-weary Guillam and fascinating glimpses into the murky spycraft at the height of the Cold War only add to the joy of this sublimely accomplished thriller

This is a truly wonderful, morally complex, politically astute novel written with elegance and panache . . . the visceral thrill of its twists and its complexities, its edge-of-the-seat qualities

[Le Carré's] writing has lost none of its pith or potency . . . his powers of invention have kept up with the pace of an ever-changing and complex world'

Thrilling and fascinating - a satisfying close to the saga

This sublime thriller

This really is vintage le Carré

It's brilliantly done and very enjoyable

[A] late-career triumph

A splendid novel

An immensely clever piece of novelistic engineering

Ali Land's Good Me Bad Me is an intensely compelling exploration of nature versus nurture wrapped up in a page-turning psychological thriller. Darkly disturbing and beautifully written. What more could any reader want?

Good Me Bad Me is an astonishing debut - technically sophisticated and emotionally heart wrenching. So many things are done well - the status jungle of girls school, the psychological dissonance of a dysfunctional family, the internal machinery of damaged children. I thought it was wonderful

One word: Wow. What a brilliant book - believable, shocking, thought-provoking and utterly compelling. The writing, as well as being so pacey, is beautiful. This feels such a current and original book

Good Me Bad Me is a compelling page-turner. Chilling and dark, it grips you and won't let go

Ten pages into Good Me Bad Me, I became an Ali Land fan. Her beautiful, intimate voice immediately tugged me into the heart and mind of a serial killer's daughter and then wouldn't let go. Is there hope for this teenager's new life outside of her mother's horror? Original, intense, and utterly compelling, Good Me Bad Me is not just a terrific thriller but a psychological dive into a young girl's soul. It takes subtlety and perfect balance to maintain a dark tale like this, and Land never once stutters or makes you look away

2017's most hotly anticipated psychological thriller

A creepy, compulsive thriller I read in one breathless gulp... Good Me Bad Me reveals its shocking secrets slowly while reeling in the reader with all the intricate skill of a spider spinning a web. One not to be missed

Dark, claustrophobic and thought-provoking. You'll read this outstanding debut while holding your breath!

An incredible narrative voice . . . Very special and different

Terrifyingly good. The terror of Liz Nugent mixed with the teen angst of Louise O'Neill

Frightening and enthralling

Gripping from the first page

Even the twists have twists

Chirovici has written a very clever book. The plot twists and turns, backtracks and goes round in circles, so you can never be quite sure where it’s going to go next.

The Book of Mirrors will keep you up until you’ve finished it

Twisty novel full of unexpected developments and untrustworthy characters

Chilling

a must read

An intriguing whydunit underpinned by a treatise on memory, as a number of witnesses create a cat’s cradle of conflicting testimony designed to keep the reader guessing to the very end

The Book of Mirrorsengages on a number of levels. Chirovici delights in leading the reader down various blind alleys and keeps us turning the pages