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The Quickening, by Julie Myerson — review

The plot of The Quickening (Arrow/ Hammer, £9.99) by Julie Myerson (pictured) revolves around pregnant, newlywed Rachel and her sinister husband, Dan. Rachel’s ghostly journey begins when Dan suggests a holiday in Antigua. Even though Rachel has a creepy premonition when she sees a photograph of her Caribbean destination, she’s not deterred. Of course, strange

The Real Great Escape, by Simon Read — review

The scene is chilling. Four men stand in the snow, all in uniform. The men are in pairs, one in each pair holds a pistol to the head of the man in front. Behind them two parked cars, 1940s models; in front a snow-filled ditch. What happens next? The right answer depends on which scene

Self-portrait as a Young Man, by Roy Strong — review

Eventually, all of Sir Roy Strong’s voluminous personal archive is going — like Alan Bennett’s — to the Bodleian Library in Oxford. Riffling through it, he realised there was something missing: he had not adequately covered the years between 1935, when he was born, and 1967, when he became director of the National Portrait Gallery

search party

the worst night coming the bloody dark covers our traces fanning across the grid worked out in the Ops Room section by section any place my heart is gone any direction beginning in the house and loosed off in mid air in some canal or building site or park the hinterlands behind are coded as

A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki — review

About halfway through A Tale for the Time Being I had the uncomfortable feeling that this was going to be a reincarnation story and that I would soon discover one of the main characters (Jiko, nun, novelist, anarchist, feminist and importantly great-grandmother) to have been reborn as Ruth Ozeki, author of this — this what?