If you're new here, why not subscribe to our email updates or follow us on Facebook? You can also add us to your Google Reader. Thanks for visiting!   EL Konigsburgs'Silent to the Bone is the third book Ive read recently involving a character who has withdrawn from the spoken world. Im fascinated by the idea of voicelessness,...

Call me a glutton for punishment, or perhaps just a glutton for an Ancient Egypt setting. Even my recent experience involving Paul Dohertys disappointing'The Mask of Ra'couldnt put me off a bit of free time travel. (And given that its the end of the year, and flights are ultra expensive, vicarious travel, particularly when it comes to...

Monsieur Leroux, I have something I want to say to you. Although Im quite suremostlythat you didnt mean it, youve been a terrible influence on the reading public. Lets take a moment to stroll through my bookshelves, shall we? Why yes, its a fact that theyre bristling with books featuring hideous love...

What is it? Tuthmosis asked. An omen, your majesty. A dove flew over the courtyard. In ancient Egypt, doves arent associated with peace and happiness. The opposite in fact: theyre quite the gloomy portent. And rather aptly, in this case, as Tuthmosis drops dead mere moments after. Its an event that causes just a...

Im one of those for whom work never really seems to end: I roam distractedly on the weekends, often coming into the office to kill an hour or two; I spent an embarrassing amount of my honeymoon attending to edits and various bookish bits and pieces. I even read whilst walking to work. But for all that, Im rather glad that the crossover between my...

A couple of years ago, at a wedding (a crazy wedding at that), I was chatting to a couple of Aussies who had relocated to San Francisco in order to seek investment for their tech start-up. Or, more accurately, theyd relocated near'San Francisco, because apparently the rent there is so high that its liable to give you a nose bleed. And I thought...