village life
A season of strangeness: The Hounding, by Xenobe Purvis, reviewed
Little Nettlebed is in the grip of serious drought, and the angry villagers are looking for scapegoats in this irresistible page-turner set in 18th-century Oxfordshire
Mounting suspicion: The Fate of Mary Rose, by Caroline Blackwood, reviewed
Terror and distrust build in the Anderson family after a six-year-old girl is found murdered in a quiet Kent village
A sea of troubles: The Coast Road, by Alan Murrin, reviewed
The sudden return of the liberated Colette Crowley to the Donegal fishing village of Ardglas stirs fear and resentment in the closed community
Real life
‘You certainly gave us a run for our money,’ said the village elder, serving us with what appeared to be…
Real life
The streetlighting engineer walked up and down outside my house trying to work out who was right: me, or my…
Less than angelic
Vicars, tea parties and village fetes were a far cry from Barbara Pym’s early enthusiasms, Philip Hensher reveals
Drawing a blank
It needs authorial guts to write a novel in which details are shrouded, meaning is concealed and little is certain.…
Village of the damned peculiar
I doubt whether any book would entice me more than a horrible hybrid of crimefiction, speculative fantasy, weird religion and…
Professional villagers won’t rest until they have eliminated mud from the countryside
‘Don’t touch anything sharp. Don’t saw anything or drill anything or sand anything,’ said the builder boyfriend as he left…
How can I prevent my husband from burning all my post?
If you don’t yet watch Gogglebox on Channel 4, start doing so now. Far from making you despise our couch-potato…
There’s no escape
Patricia Highsmith was an accretion of oddities — a woman who doted on her pet snails and carried a selection…
