Shouting at the Window
A man takes a train journey between two (unnamed) cities. Haynes - we only ever get to know his surname - is on the margins of society: a petty criminal, living from day-to-day, who has had to flee from his usual territory to somewhere more secure...
On the Carousel
On the Carousel is the story of a young man’s journey through the decade – against the background of Thatcherism and Madonna and Cabbage Patch Dolls – as he enjoys the benefits of success, but then starts to re-assess his values and priorities...
Latest from the Blog
NW by Zadie Smith (2012)
9th August 2026 This novel is firmly set in Willesden and its environs – inner north-west London – where the author was born in 1975. From its opening pages, we are brought straight into the heart of the locale: its houses, streets, shops and ethnic complexity, its uneasy (and imbalanced) combination of aspiration and desperation…
The Valley of Fear by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1915)
15th July 2026 The Valley of Fear was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s fourth and final “long” Sherlock Holmes novel, appearing roughly two-thirds of the way through the canon of 56 short stories that ran from A Scandal in Bohemia in 1891 to The Adventure of Shoscombe Old Place in 1927. The book is in two…
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford (1986)
31st March 2026 In Richard Ford’s novel, Frank Bascombe is a sportswriter approaching his 39th birthday and living in the fictional town of Haddam, New Jersey. Having had an amicable divorce from his wife – whom we only ever know as “X” – he is attempting to establish a relationship with a nurse, Vicki Arcenault,…
JR Alexander 