Hilary Mary Mantel CBE, née Thompson, was an English novelist, short story writer and critic. Her work, ranging in subject from personal memoir to historical fiction, has been short-listed for major literary awards. In 2009, she won the Man Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall.
The Painter's Daughters (2024) Emily Howes "The Painter's Daughters is beautifully written...I raced through it. Howes's research is filtered through contemporary consciousness and deployed with skill. It's a polished performance."
Joan (2022) Katherine J Chen "It is as if the author has crept inside a statue and breathed a soul into it, re-creating Joan of Arc as a woman for our time."
Daisy & Woolf (2022) Michelle Cahill "Her deftness and linguistic grace masks her purpose, till she reveals a shocking glimpse of the price that art can exact."
The Chosen (2022) Elizabeth Lowry "Does art enhance life, or negate it? The painful question runs through Lowry's portrait of Thomas Hardy, and produces a sombre, delicate novel, finely judged and full of insight."
These Days (2022) Lucy Caldwell "Adroit, precise storytelling, atmospheric and satisfying: this is a novel of real substance."
Stewkey Blues (2022) D J Taylor "In his solid, grounded, entertaining collection of stories, DJ Taylor draws out the mythical qualities of East Anglia's terrain, urban or rural somewhere marginal in between."
Sell Us the Rope (2022) Stephen May "Original, adept and confident... What can I say, except that I wish I had written it myself?"
The Great Passion (2022) James Runcie "A wise, refreshing novel, and a touching human story ... Runcie has an expert imagination."
Exactly What You Mean (2022) Ben Hinshaw "Sentence by sentence, Ben Hinshaw offers wit, sensitivity and sharp observation. Then slowly the reader sees the grand design - the intricate, braided storylines, sustained with energy and relish. It is entertaining, and something more - truly involving, like a whole novel sequence cleverly condensed."
Free Love (2022) Tessa Hadley "Tessa Hadley recruits admirers with each book. She writes with authority, and with delicacy: she explores nuance, but speaks plainly; she is one of those writers a reader trusts."
Small Things Like These (2021) Claire Keegan "Small Things Like These is not just about Ireland, it’s about the world, and it asks profound questions about complicity, about the hope and difficulty of change, and the complex nature of restitution… A single one of Keegan’s grounded, powerful sentences can contain volumes of social history. Every word is the right word in the right place, and the effect is resonant and deeply moving."
Something Wonderful (2021) Jo Lloyd "Jo Lloyd has drawn out all the intensity and latent power of short fiction... A major talent."
Lean Fall Stand (2021) Jon McGregor "Lean Fall Stand is a beautiful piece of work and should win a roomful of prizes. Jon McGregor writes plainly and exactly, like a poet, and the precision of his writing makes every heart-beat register. The quality of his attention is a flicker of light around the fragile human condition, and it leaves the reader moved and subtly changed, as if she had become part of the story."
Summerwater (2020) Sarah Moss "Sharp, searching, thoroughly imagined, utterly of the moment . . . it throws much contemporary writing into the shade."
Body Tourists (2019) Jane Rogers "Her observation of our species is tender, precise, illuminating."
To Calais, In Ordinary Time (2019) James Meek "Fans of intelligent historical fiction will be enthralled by a story so original and so fully imagined. Meek shows the era as alien, which it is, and doesn't falsify it by assimilating it to ours. But his characters are recognisably warm and human."
Four Soldiers (2018) Hubert Mingarelli "I am astonished by Four Soldiers. I have never read anything like it, yet it is one of those books you feel must always have existed, a classic of writing about the human condition. Short and deceptively simple, it reads like a message from the unheard, news from unwitnessed lives, building letter by letter to its crushing final page. A small miracle of a book, perfectly imagined and perfectly achieved."
Kingdom Come (2017) (Kingmaker, book 4) Toby Clements "An enthralling, honest and powerful re-imagining of the Wars of the Roses."
Missing Fay (2017) Adam Thorpe "If you believe that English fiction is jaded, you must read Adam Thorpe."
Rotherweird (2017) (Rotherweird, book 1) Andrew Caldecott "Intricate and crisp, witty and solemn: a book with special and dangerous properties."
How to Be Human (2017) Paula Cocozza "An intriguing and subversive debut, an eerie tale that acts on the reader like a ghost story."
The Evening Road (2017) Laird Hunt "The Evening Road is a vivid, disturbing book, able to subvert itself in half a line, constantly challenging the reader's expectations. Its ghost map is quickly established in the reader's head, and as the characters fade into the margin of the final page, it is as if an inner landscape has altered. It is mature, accomplished, impressive."
(Svartasen, book 2) Cecilia Ekbäck "Visually acute, skillfully written, it won't easily erase its tracks in the reader's mind."
The Offering (2015) Grace McCleen "She is a finished artist, but performs on the page with the aerial grace of someone who senses no limits to what she can do."
The Quick (2014) Lauren Owen "A sly and glittering addition to the literature of the macabre . . . As soon as you have breathed with relief, much worse horrors begin. It's a skilled, assured performance, and it's hard to believe it is a first novel."
The Stories (2012) Jane Gardam "Sharp, humane, generous and wonderfully funny, she is one of our finest writers."
The Lifeboat (2012) Charlotte Rogan "What a splendid book. It rivets the reader's attention, and at the same time it seethes with layered ambiguity."
Obedience (2011) Jacqueline Yallop "An intensely imagined novel about one of the defining questions of the century just past: where and how we choose to draw the line between innocence and guilt, ignorance and complicity. Obedience also asks us to consider what ghastly harm is committed in the name of love. It's rare to find a book that is seemingly so simple, but is really ambiguous and thought-provoking."
The Champion (2011) Tim Binding "A chilling portrait of provincial egos on the loose. Shamefully entertaining."
Savage Lands (2010) Clare Clark "Vigorous and intense, energetic and absorbing... An extraordinary feat of imagination."
The Golden Mean (2009) Annabel Lyon "One of the most convincing historical novels I have ever read. Lyon makes her reader avid for every detail of this strange world."
Touching Distance (2008) Rebecca Abrams "Evokes beautifully a revolutionary world - science and politics in upheaval, the casualties strewn around."
Blackmoor (2008) Edward Hogan "Ed's voice is utterly distinctive: strong, emotive, haunting. His powers of observation seem almost supernatural. I am struck by the careful, line-by-line craftsmanship of the writing, as well as the bold design of the whole. What I notice is how he sets the tone and keeps to it - it's quite rare to find such resolution and clarity of purpose in a first novel."
(1952 - 2022)
