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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …