Published in the Sunday Times: 20/10/2019
Laura Purcell knows how to write melodramatic gothic horror and in Bone China (Raven Books) she again sends chills down the spine.
Instead of finding the tranquility she is seeking, Hester Why arrives at Morvoren House in Cornwall to nurse the mute Miss Pinecroft, only to find herself surrounded by superstitious staff, bizarre rituals and "strange things on the moor".
Practical Magic's Alice Hoffman uses her knowledge of magic realism to tell a Holocaust story in The World That We Knew (Simon & Schuster). Set in Berlin in 1941, Hanni Kohn seeks a renowned rabbi to save her 12-year-old daughter Lea from the Nazis, but it is the rabbi's daughter, Ettie, who tries to help them by creating a golem.
In the wonderfully named Born Free-Loaders (Picador Africa), Phumlani Pikoli's first novel explores the disaffection of a group of friends who were born on the cusp of democracy.
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