Set in England at the time of King Henry VIII and his dissolution of the monasteries, this murder mystery starts with the sending of lawyer and reformist Matthew Shardlake to a Benedictine monastery where the previous commissioner had been found...

book review - food for free At €17.60 - this ‘life enhancing classic' could nearly buy you a good meal and a glass of fine wine… In the scheme of things it's pricy. But is it well worth it? From revealing the...

So Wimbledon was in progress, I was in my local bookshop and this novel caught my eye. Its the story of Willy, a low ranking tennis professional on the way up when we first encounter her. She's been playing tennis since aged four and is now...

Easy to read, page turner of a novel whose main character is Peter, a bullied teenager, who heads into high school one morning armed and kills ten people. I found many of the characters to be cliched and a bit one dimensional. But despite that the...

T photo credit: houseoftext My 3 primary school going kids got their book lists for next September a week or so ago and having learnt my lesson from previous years of leaving their purchase till August, I decided to get it all done and dusted...

A completely by-the-numbers thriller which leaves you not guessing at all. How many "psycho kidnaps someone and forces people to do things to save them" movies can be made? Awful rubbish which wastes the talent of good actors. I won't waste too much...

Having read and enjoyed “Man and Boy” and “One for my baby”, I was looking forward to reading this latest novel from Tony Parsons. Alas it was a major disappointment. Having just finished it, I am left with a sense of...

Twenty Major 's first book, based on the characters from his blog, pulls no punches from the first page. A twisted story about brainwashing the Irish populace into becoming acoustic loving drips, it's up to Twenty, Jimmy the Bollix,...

My mother in law lent me this book a few weeks ago and it was a good read up to a point. My main gripe is its very disappointing ending which then tarred the whole novel as I wondered “why the hell did I bother reading that?” Its set in...

I always want Danny Boyle movies to be great but his record really is more misses than hits. This snoozefest is yet another miss. Kubrick has a lot to answer for. It's like everyone is trying to out-do him by making the most boring space walk of all...