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There’s a murder-mystery or at least a suspicious death to be investigated in Sanctuary , but Sanctuary – the town – is no ordinary town and the methods of investigation are somewhat unconventional. That’s because Harper Fenn is being accused of using witchcraft to murder popular student Daniel Whitman at a teen party. Witchcraft, it has to be said, is accepted as a normal part of life in the United States of V.V. James’s Sanctuary , or if not exactly normal it’s an accepted talent that selected individuals are allowed to practice under strict guidelines to help people out with everyday problems. One of those strict guidelines however is evidently that you don’t go around throwing curses on people or killing them (or reviving them from the dead for that matter) and in Sanctuary’s state of Connecticut there’s an ancient law that is still on the statute books that calls for the death penalty in cases of murder by ‘unnatural practices’. While Sarah is a well-respected witch within the ver...

You would expect a science-fiction work about a manned mission to explore the variety of life on four exoplanets to be longer than a novella, and yet Becky Chambers – who is known previously for her work on the Wayfarers trilogy that began with the successful (and insipid) The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet – has managed to condense all the excitement, imagination and wonder of such an event down into 132 pages in To Be Taught, If Fortunate . How does she do it? Well, mainly because the hard science work has already been done for her in many previous, much longer works. That’s not a criticism, it’s smart as it means the reader doesn’t have to waste time going through issues that other authors have covered extensively and in realistic detail. That doesn’t mean that Chambers glosses over the hows and whys. On the contrary, she covers the major issues in a few precise and considered details. How to find a mission, how to get a crew to survive such a long journey, how to adapt to their ...

The latest book from the Pulitzer Prize award-winning author Colson Whitehead tackles what could be seen as a difficult subject; the question of historical abuse directed against youths in ‘correctional institutions’, but The Nickel Boys is by no means as grim and horrific as it sounds, and it takes in so much more than that. It also deals with historical race inequality but there are a few other qualities that make this a rather more inspiring and powerful piece of writing than it might sound. It helps that Whitehead chooses a strong central character to carry us through those times of racial segregation and inequality, which it is shocking to realise is not so long ago but still being practiced in the 60s and 70s. A young 14 year old boy in Frenchtown, Tallahassee, Elwood Curtis however has been inspired by a recording of speeches made by Martin Luther King, and he can see that a change is coming for black folk. That’s part of the reason why he decides he won’t get stuck like his pa...

It seems natural to categorise The Ten Thousand Doors of January as a young-adult book, but the truth is that it’s likely to appeal to readers of any age who remember what it was once like to have the ability to imagine a wide world of endless possibilities. Even if it’s just as a reminder of classic adventure books you might have read as a child, Alix E. Harrow manages to recapture the excitement and wonder of those days brilliantly, the kind of possibilities offered by The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , by Enid Blyton’s Magic Faraway Tree books. Prepare to undertake a thrilling new journey into other worlds. The setting of The Ten Thousand Doors of January is a classic period for adventure, the turn of the twentieth century, a time of change opening up exotic new worlds of invention and discovery. Those exciting new worlds seems to be tantalisingly out of reach for the ‘odd coloured’ 9 year-old January Scaller in Vermont, New England, her adventures confined to the stuff of co...

Ambrose Parry’s first book, The Way of All Flesh , introduced a terrific crime investigation team with a lot of potential, creating or recreating a successful and somewhat original blend of Victorian Gothic crime thriller and historical medical drama. Its depiction of crime on the backstreets of Edinburgh in the mid-19th century was consequently a little dark and grim, but there was a glimmer of light breaking through in the medical developments around anesthetics and hygiene, two things that were badly needed in Edinburgh, progressed by the real-life eminent physician Professor Simpson and his colleagues around this time. Also progressing around this time, but perhaps not quite so rapidly, was the question of the treatment and attitudes towards women and women’s rights. Dr Simpson’s maid Sarah Fisher’s knowledge of the issues faced by women, her own observations working with Dr Simpson in an unofficial nursing capacity gaining medical experience, would prove instrumental in helping Dr...

What is wonderful about the novella format is that it has a distinct character of its own. If the focus of a short story is on an impression, an idea or a sketch and a novel is all about elaborating a plot, a novella enjoys the benefits of both, having the precision of a short story, but being able to dwell on a particular sentiment and explore it more deeply than any of the other ways of writing. Often the sentiment explored is a difficult, complex one and in a story called The Therapist , you can imagine that’s the case here. In fact, Nial Giacomelli’s beautiful debut novella uses both the deep exploration of a sentiment or impression as well as plot to make The Therapist also a form of therapy; whether that’s for the protagonist, the writer or for the reader that’s up to the individual, but the possibilities are all there. The subject, as you might expect from someone seeing a therapist, is indeed a difficult one dealing with the death of a child, coming to terms with loss, grief, ...

Uh-oh. You don’t need to have seen Westworld to know that the idea of human-like robots with the ability to think and act autonomously can have unforeseen consequences, or rather all too foreseeable consequences. It’s generally not considered as a good idea in most SF, and yet this is the direction that technology and robotics seems to be heading in. The idea of creating ‘the perfect wife’ then definitely seems to be just asking for trouble. From personal assistants like Siri and Alexa, it’s not too much of a leap however to imagine the next stage being chatbots for customer service (I’m not assured that we aren’t already there) to shopbots as sales assistants (likewise). That’s already the stage that Scott Robotics have arrived at in J.P. Delaney’s The Perfect Wife when their chief executive Tim Scott takes the leap to the next stage and creates a ‘replica’ of his wife, Abbie. What has driven this technological advancement is personal tragedy. Tim’s wife has died and he has turned al...

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare – only doubled; a school is under attack by one or more armed killers and the fear is that it’s part of a terror attack, even if there’s unlikely to be any difference in the resulting carnage. What is worse in the case that Rosamund Lupton develops in Three Hours is that this attack on Cliff Heights School in Somerset doesn’t appear to be following the expected pattern of such attacks, but rather seems to have a plan of its own that is difficult to identify. Worst of all, the attack is taking place in real-time, with the teachers and pupils holed-up under siege. Rosamund Lupton handles the growing tension and horrifying progression of the terror attack well. There’s the initial confusion, a bomb going off in the woods, the head teacher shot by a masked gunman, the implementation of the emergency drill eventually put into practice. Some pupils are able to retreat to the security of the school theatre where they are rehearsing a production of Macbeth,...