Barcelona by Mary Costello is a captivating short story collection from award-winning novelist exploring love, loss and the turbulent lives of ordinary people. The stories in this collection were written over ten years. My first collection of stories, The China Factory, was published in 2012, followed by two novels, Academy Street (2014) and The River Capture (2019). Some of these stories have their origins in places I visited, or in something someone told me. I was in Barcelona only once, at Easter. Certain street sights—the …
Category: Character
We are delighted to have a piece by Anna Fitzgerald for Girl in the Making. This coming-of-age tale is about a gentle girl called Jean Kennedy growing up in suburban …
Sometime in the late 1990s, I read Herman Hesse’s 1927 novel Steppenwolf and was awed by a passage that prophesied the great destruction coming to Europe. Harry Haller, that book’s …
My new novel, The Witches of Vardø is inspired by the true events of a series of witch trials on the arctic island of Vardø in Northern Norway in 1662, …
When Jane Austen wrote Emma, she described her eponymous character as ‘a heroine whom no one but myself will much like’. Booktok sensation Taylor Jenkins Reid is known for her …
It’s quite difficult to believe a quarter of a century has passed since the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (published in the U.S. as The Sorcerer’s Stone). …
I’m not alone in being hugely excited by news that we can expect yet another Lucy Barton book. Coming late to My Name is Lucy Barton, I remember being immediately …
It has taken the world by storm. Whether you are a long-time ‘before-the-Heartstopper-Netflix-adaptation’ fan or a newbie to the world of Alice Oseman, her writing is bringing joy to so …
The Trial of Lotta Rae is the tale of a woman who believes in justice. Who becomes notorious as she seeks that justice at an Old Bailey trial. It is set against …
In my debut novel, 28 Questions, the narrator is a wannabe opera singer who tells a stranger on the tube, “I need to marry a writer”. I can attest to …
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