Elizabeth Baines

Jenny's suggestion, this very short novel has been a runaway hit in its author's native Japan, and in translation worldwide. It...

I'm very pleased to say that my story, 'Kiss', which was longlisted in the Short Fiction Journal Prize in the Spring, has be...

Looks like I am going to manage to achieve my aim and finish reading the shortlisted books before the announcement of the winner on ...

Well, here's another quite amazing debut novel - a dazzling almost-500-pager set in the eighteenth century, the story of a widowed m...

Next Thursday, a week today, the winner of the Sunday Times/Peters Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award will be announced. I...

I had a very good time yesterday at an event for bloggers, meeting the four authors shortlisted for the Sunday Times/Peters Fraser and Du...

Warning: some plot spoilers. I suggested this French novella which all of us (apart from John) had not read but were glad to do so, unde...

One reason I haven't blogged since I supposedly started again is that I came down with a horrendous fluey-type cold. (There have been ...

Doug suggested this book - all 400-and-something packed and small-print pages of it - since we were having a long summer break, and becaus...

So, picking up on the thoughts of A L Kennedy referred to in my last post , and the question of 'writing what you know' and research...

* I recently came across writing advice from A L Kennedy (I'm sorry, I can't find it on the web just now to provide a link) in which...

Well - if anyone is out there reading this - I can't tell you how strange it is to be writing this blog again today. Apart from the mont...

Some plot spoilers. Clare suggested this historical novel about a rural English community that has been peaceably conducting subsistence...

Neither John nor I had ever had any inclination to read this famous book - voted one of the 'All-Time 100 Novels' by Time magazine -...

Mark is the member of our group who has always been the most adamant about resisting hype when considering novels, and I might have expecte...

Well, here was a novel that everyone present thought 'wonderful' - that was the word people used. It opens at New Year when the pe...