Both impossible to put down and beautifully written: a great combo

An astute, unsentimental critique of the contemporary world in crisis... Osborne handles surface and depth with immense skill, as only great writers can do. Beautiful Animals is his most accomplished book so far -- a big, clever, crazed beast of a novel

Often almost literally bristling with menace… his Hydra is rugged with physical immediacy. Silhouetted against it, emotions fluctuate, sexual frissons flicker back and forth, destinies tremble in the balance… It’s the brilliance with which Osborne conjures all this up that leaves you eager to see where his nomadic imagination will take him next

Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice

Osborne is a startlingly good observer of privilege, noting the rites and rituals of the upper classes with unerring precision and an undercurrent of malice… The novel takes on the tone of an existential noir, evoking writers like Jean-Patrick Manchette and Georges Simenon... An heir to Graham Greene... he shares with Greene an interest in what might be called the moral thriller

Complex and thrilling, Beautiful Animals confirms Osborne as one of Britain’s very best novelists

Beautiful Animals is terrifically well constructed, written with mean authority, brilliantly evocative about place … A masterpiece of disaffection

Spare, subtle… brilliantly achieved

Osborne is interested in what his characters do when events are wrested out of their control, his narratives unfurling like a set of carefully lined-up dominoes… It’s exciting for sure, but cuts closer to the bone than Osborne’s previous novels and is all the more distressing and depressing for it

Superlatively gripping… Osborne plunges his characters far from the luminescent surface and into the darkest depths

Cracking Greek noir

A thriller that is full of dazzling sunshine

Osborne crafts a rich, nourishing mood in his sun-drenched tale, while offering astute observations of privilege and obscene wealth ... a perfect read to devour in one go on a white-hot, breezeless day

A stylish, slow-burn novel… Atmospheric and well observed, with Osborne’s sinuous prose exerting its own fascination

A taut and provocative psychological thriller with a topical twist… His enthralling Greek tragedy is a deft examination of unchecked greed, twisted loyalties and the corrupted mind

Lawrence Osborne is an enigmatic, unpindownable writer

Beautiful Animals supplies two satisfying, but contradictory, feelings. On the one hand, you are immersed in the languid atmosphere of Hydra... But slipping through the charm with all the page-turning excitement of a beautifully written literary thriller is the nagging dread that something is about to go horribly wrong...

Osborne is both a consummate stylist and an acute observer of moral ambivalence and this quietly simmering, intoxicatingly good book lingers uneasily in the air, like a hangover

Tense, fateful

A cold-eyed look at bourgeois ennui and the parasitic nature of privilege… compulsive reading

An absorbing psychological study of greed, loyalty and cultural conflict

The bastard child of Graham Greene and Patricia Highsmith

A masterful and sophisticated psychological thriller that explores moral ambiguity from multiple perspectives

Taut psychological thriller that’s as sinister as it is thrilling. A real unputdownable effort that examines morality and privilege

Smart, seductive… A sophisticated page-turner

Osborne is a literary writer – and a brilliant one – and this sumptuously written superbly observed study of misplaced idealism and moral expediency reads a bit like a thriller penned by F Scott Fitzgerald

Malevolent, gripping… A compelling read, acutely observed and beautifully written. For all the character defects of the principal protagonists, the reader wants to find out what happens to them. It matters. And there can be no higher praise than that

This complex, thrilling novel focuses on Naomi Codrington, a young lawyer who befriends Samantha, a malleable American teenager, while summering with her father and stepmother on the Greek island of Hydra. When they find a Syrian refugee washed up on the shore, calamity comes rushes in.

Thrilling, chilling and contains the following subtext: best stay at home

Birdcage Walk offers a persuasively grimy period evocation of contemporary domestic peril facing women, not least in an agonising childbirth scene that has traumatic consequences

Gripping historical drama

A story of idealism and possessive love, with strong and memorable characters

Helen definitely has a deft touch when it comes to history but the vividness of Lizzie and Diner's relationship is what stands out in glorious literary 3D. Speaking as someone raised in Bristol, I'll never be able to gaze down into the Gorge again without seeing that rowing boat. Bleak can be hauntingly beautiful and between these covers Helen demonstrates how

She vividly brings to live the struggle of women’s lives in late 18th century Bristol, and I recommend the book for an insight into Bristol in another time

From the swish of a silk dress, to the whoosh of the guillotine, Dunmore uses words with economic precision to build up the detail and suspense of this novel. Which haunts the reader just as the characters in it are haunted by the dead.

Flawless final historical novel from the late, great Helen Dunmore

A lively and inventive voice … by all account as brilliant as her other books

Early feminism and a hint of Grand Designs: a great mix’