It is a novel of memory, satisfying on every imaginable level, but truly astonishing in its recreation of a time and place through minute detail ... The only way you could know more about flying a P-51 Mustang, after reading this book, is to have flown one.

He writes, as usual, with authority and a superb sense of period.

The sheer charge of the writing swept me into another world all the while I was reading, and now that piece of the past is a piece in my mind.

Characteristically ambitious, brilliant...Combining all the pleasure of a period romp with vital questions about our shared origin stories...a triumph

A propulsive 'counter-factual' romp...both dizzying and fun

Civilisations provides a whole series of what-ifs, concertinaing known facts in new and surprising ways

Imagine that Christopher Columbus never made it back to Spain - and that the Incas weren't conquered by Spain but instead invaded Europe, replacing Christianity with sun worship....the distant tone enables some enjoyably tart humour about European mores as seen through Incan eyes

Binet's best book yet: the work of a major writer just hitting his stride. A delightful counterfactual novel. *****

Tremendous fun.

One of the most successful French writers of his generation... a wild romp of a book that turns history on its head

[A] hugely entertaining counterfactual history of the making of the modern world... Binet has riotous, brainy fun in a rollicking story of the urge to power, which delights in turning received ideas upside down

Wonderfully inventive

[A] glorious counterfactual novel... Funny and profound, this is Binet's best novel yet

The writing is elegant, the dialogue razor sharp, the characters drawn economically but effectively, and the action is unrelenting

The superior spy thriller of the year. Le Carré fans will be delighted

A compulsive and supremely intelligent thriller from a master stylist

An intriguing thriller

Mesmerising, surefooted, vividly realised . . . something special in the arena of international thrillers

Even better than Child 44 . . . A blizzard of exciting set pieces, superbly realized

An extraordinarily atmospheric and immersive read ... escapism at its best

So atmospheric, so elegantly written . . . like Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, or like early le Carre. I really recommend it. I just disappeared into it totally

The thriller of the summer ... Grimwood raises the stakes in this dark, twisty tale

Fact and fiction merge in what they used to call a rip-roaring yarn that is totally credible. Excellent.

Ambitious, intricately detailed, rich and considered

A WOMAN'S WEEKLY BOOK CLUB READ

Daringly ambitious... a novel that invites the reader to immerse themselves in the sweep of history, the rich and detailed research... breathtaking

Great Circle is an epic trip-through Prohibition and World War II, from Montana to London to present-day Hollywood-and you'll relish every minute

Glitz and guts square off in Great Circle: a tale of two women set apart by a century, fighting to retain control of their own lives in a society that demands subservience. Shipstead is adept at writing so vividly, the reader can feel the thrill and pain of her characters. Cunningly crafted. . . richly layered, a joy to read . . . riveting

Mesmerizing

An enthralling epic about aviation and adventure. A big, baggy blast of a book bulging with sex and drugs, taking in Prohibition-era Montana, wartime London, present-day Hollywood, painting and physics. I loved it

A generous, escapist treat

A soaring epic of female adventure and wanderlust

Bestselling novelist Maggie Shipstead was struggling to depict a female adventurer. So she became one. The stakes of GREAT CIRCLE are high-for its heroine, literally life or death. Though Shipstead never learned to fly herself, she aligned with her main character Marian Graves in more important ways . . . She is interested in testing her limits

Relentlessly exciting . . . My top recommendation for this summer. Shipstead's sweeping new female-centered epic intertwines the story of Marian, an aviator who wants to circumnavigate the globe with that of actor Hadley Baxter, cast a century later to play Marian in a film. What can Marian's life tell Hadley about her own?

Dazzling prose in the service of an expansive story that covers more than a century and seems to encapsulate the whole wide world. With detailed brilliance, she lavishes heart and empathy on every character. She never wavers, pulls out a twist or two that feel fully earned, and then sticks the landing

Swinging from one century to the next, from the moneyed splendor of cities to the shifting Antarctic ice, Shipstead's prose overflows with meticulous detail

Enthralling. Moving and surprising at every turn

Sweepingly panoramic and immersive. An audacious epic

In a moment when our quarantined worlds have become so small, GREAT CIRCLE offers more than just wanderlust; it feels like a liberation.

Maggie Shipstead combines cinematic scope with a poet's eye for detail

The beginning of Maggie Shipstead's astounding novel, a Booker finalist, includes a series of endings: two plane crashes, a sunken ship and several people dead. The bad luck continues when one of the ship's young survivors, Marian, grows up to become a pilot-only to disappear on the job. Shipstead unravels parallel narratives, Marian's and that of another woman whose life is changed by Marian's story, in glorious detail. Every character, whether mentioned once or 50 times, has a specific, necessary presence. It's a narrative made to be devoured, one that is both timeless and satisfying.

Absolutely dazzling

Thrilling

GREAT CIRCLE flew us to a different world. A book to devour

A sweeping saga that alternates between the life of a tenacious female aviator in the 1930s and that of a millennial film star cast to play her in a biopic. In death, 'each of us destroys the world,' the author observes - but her engrossing novel is a moving reflection on the will to survive

Artfully constructed and exhuberantly entertaining

Shipstead soars in this expansive, beautiful novel about women and flight

Engrossing, ambitious, beautifully written

Completely engrossing from the very first page. You won't be able to put this down