Top Ten Tuesday: Book covers with unusual typography

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: “Book Covers Featuring Cool/Pretty/Unique/etc Typography“.

I thought I would struggle with this, but actually the only difficulty was narrowing the options down to ten. I think all of the books below have interesting typography – I hope you agree! My reviews are linked if you want to find out more about any of these titles.

1. Swamplandia! by Karen Russell

2. Florence & Giles by John Harding

3. When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

4. Roseblood by Paul Doherty

5. Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? by Agatha Christie

6. Stormbird by Conn Iggulden

7. The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson

8. Secrecy by Rupert Thomson

9. Grace Williams Says It Loud by Emma Henderson

10. The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

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Have you read any of these books? Which of these covers do you think has the best typography?

Brigid by Kim Curran

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I enjoyed Kim Curran’s previous book, The Morrigan, which told the story of the Irish goddess of war and fate, one of the supernatural race known as the Tuatha Dé Danann. Her new novel, Brigid, takes as its subject another figure from Ireland’s distant past: Saint Brigid of Kildare, a semi-mythical woman who may or may not have existed. The current thinking seems to be that she was a real person, an abbess who founded the abbey of Kildare, but has been given many of the attributes of the Celtic goddess, Brigid, who shares her name. Curran’s approach is to include both Brigids in the novel, with the goddess guiding and watching over her human namesake.

The human Brigid, born in the 5th century, is the daughter of an Irish chieftain and one of his slaves, whom he sells to a druid when she becomes pregnant. Brigid grows up in slavery in the druid’s household before being returned to her father, who attempts to arrange a marriage for her. When she gives away her father’s best sword to a beggar, the king hears about her kindness and grants Brigid her freedom. Determined not to be forced into marriage or to live a life controlled by men, Brigid sets off alone on a journey to find her mother. Along the way she makes several new friends, including Lommán the leper and Darlughdach the bard, with whom she later founds a small sanctuary for women, which expands over time into the large and powerful abbey of Kildare.

I had no prior knowledge of Brigid’s life before beginning this book, but it seems that Curran has incorporated many of the key events and characters traditionally associated with Brigid’s story. One of these characters is St Patrick, with whom Brigid clashes several times throughout the book. She resents Patrick because he has all the advantages of being a man in a male-dominated society and because his approach to converting people to Christianity is more forceful than hers. Brigid is happy to allow people to continue celebrating pagan gods and festivals alongside the new Christian religion rather than expecting an immediate conversion.

For a while, it seemed that the message of the book was “all men bad, all women good”, which is something that tends to annoy me because I think there are better, fairer ways to promote feminism. However, it turned out to be slightly more nuanced than that, as eventually some of Brigid’s own friends and followers become frustrated by her hatred of men and even Brigid herself has to accept that a life entirely without men is not possible and she’s going to have to learn to work with them whether she wants to or not. She can also be cruel, punishing people harshly for the smallest of things. As someone who would become a saint, I certainly didn’t find her very saintly in this depiction, but despite that she’s clearly someone who inspires love and loyalty from the women around her and that’s what makes her an interesting, if not always likeable, character to read about.

Whereas The Morrigan was a mythological retelling, with strong fantasy elements, this book is more grounded in reality. There’s still a small amount of magic, though, such as when Brigid performs her miracles – healing lepers, for example, or turning milk into butter. She’s assisted in this by the goddess Brigid, who occasionally appears to her in human form. However, I would describe this as much more of a historical fiction novel than a fantasy one, while The Morrigan was the other way round. They are both interesting books and it’s good to see an author tackling subjects that aren’t written about very often.

Thanks to Michael Joseph for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

My Commonplace Book: January 2026

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A selection of quotes and pictures to represent January’s reading:

commonplace book
noun
a book into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use.

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I love the cycle of it, the repetition. Whatever changes in life, wherever I end up, the patterns of the garden will always be the same.

A Slow and Secret Poison by Carmella Lowkis (2026)

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Round and round they run in that long-ago, and in the now Angie realizes her face is wet with tears, tears as silent as the space between her and that other life. Nostalgia is nothing more than a trick of the mind, she tells herself. A way to turn plain memories into great ones.

Penitence by Kristin Koval (2025)

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Richard II and Henry IV

They both loved the excitement of the chase, learning to ride with hawks on their wrists and greyhounds at their heels. Otherwise, the two boys were finding that they had little in common, even apart from the suspicions Richard had already begun to harbour about the political intentions of Henry’s father. On both sides, greater familiarity bred, if not contempt, then at least a profoundly wary distance.

The Eagle and the Hart by Helen Castor (2024)

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‘I wish only to paint well. To please those who employ me, and to create something beautiful to offset the darkness in the world.’

The House of Barbary by Isabelle Schuler (2025)

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The obvious tactic would be to make a good impression in the courtroom. If she’s deliberately doing the opposite, I think that must be because she really is sure of her innocence. After all, the defendant knows better than anyone else whether they committed the crime.

Suspicion by Seichō Matsumoto (1982)

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The winter of 1962/63
Photo by Richard Johnson, CC BY-SA 2.0, Link

“And though he was not much given to thinking about love, did not much care for the word, thought it had been worn to a kind of uselessness, gutted by the advertising men and the crooners, and even by politicians, some of whom seemed, recently, to have discovered it, it struck him that in the end it might just mean a willingness to imagine another’s life. To do that. To make the effort.”

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller (2024)

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Is it that they reinforce each other’s strengths and compensate for each other’s weaknesses? Or is it the reluctance to be alone that bonds them? It doesn’t apply only to romantic couples either, but to friends, relatives, colleagues. How many good things, and how many crimes, have been the work of a bonded pair?

The Killer Question by Janice Hallett (2025)

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His profession was strangely intimate: selling an apartment or a house was a big deal. It was selling a piece of your life, a piece of your memories – sometimes even a whole life. It was closing a door that you would never open again.

An Astronomer in Love by Antoine Laurain (2023)

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Saint Brigid of Kildare
By Octave 444 – CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

But it is an easy thing to be angry with someone you do not care about. To be angry with one you love, that has weight to it.

Brigid by Kim Curran (2026)

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What makes you sad about the thought of dying? had been one of the questions. The team had debated whether to ask it. But they had posed the question and none of the interviewees had seemed to mind. She remembered the most poignant of the answers: ‘There will always be unread books.’

Room 706 by Ellie Levenson (2026)

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That night I really grasped the fact that most of the time we have no notion of what we really want, or we lose sight of it. And the even more important fact that what we really want, just doesn’t fit in with life as a whole, or very seldom. Most folk learn slowly, and never altogether learn at all. I seemed to learn all at once.

All the Fear of the Fair by various authors (2025) – quote from The Swords by Robert Aickman

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My favourite books read in January:

The Killer Question

Authors read for the first time in January:

Kristin Koval, Seichō Matsumoto, Antoine Laurain, Ellie Levenson, Eleanor Smith, L.P. Hartley, Tod Robbins, W.L. George, Charles Birkin, Robert Silverberg, Richard Middleton, Charles Davy, J.D. Beresford, Gerald Kersh

Places visited in my January reading:

England, US, Switzerland, Japan, Ireland, France, India, Madagascar, Isle de France (Mauritius)

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Reading notes: January was a good month for me in terms of reading. You’ll have noticed that I tried lots of new authors, which I’m pleased about, although most of them appeared in the short story collection All the Fear of the Fair, a book I’m hoping to review soon. I read Seichō Matsumoto’s Suspicion for the Japanese Literature Challenge and as that particular challenge continues to run throughout February, I’ll see if I can fit in something by another Japanese author as well.

Also in February, Karen of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings is hosting another #ReadIndies month, highlighting books published by independent publishers, and I’m sure I’ll have at least a few reviews to post that will count towards that event. I didn’t take part in the Read Christie challenge in January because I’d already read all of the suggested titles, but I’m planning to join in with Mrs McGinty’s Dead in February.

How was your January? Do you have any plans for your February reading?

Room 706 by Ellie Levenson

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When Kate goes to meet her lover in a London hotel one morning, she has no idea what the day has in store for her. She expects it to be just like all the other times: an hour or two with James, then back home to pick up the kids from school and pretend to her husband, Vic, that nothing has happened. Switching on the television in the hotel room, however, she is horrified to discover that terrorists have taken control of their hotel and it’s not safe to leave the room. She doesn’t know how she’s going to explain this to Vic – that’s if she and James even make it out alive.

As the afternoon unfolds and they remain trapped in their room, afraid to even turn on a light or run water in case it alerts the gunmen to their presence, Kate begins to reflect on her life, her marriage and the choices she has made that have led her to be in the hotel on this fateful day.

Room 706 is Ellie Levenson’s debut novel. I enjoyed it overall, but it wasn’t really the exciting thriller I thought it would be. Every chapter set in the hotel alternates with one describing the early days of Kate and Vic’s marriage and another explaining how she came to be having an affair with James. This means only a third of the book is set during the terrorist attack and the rest is Kate’s backstory. Some of the hotel chapters are genuinely tense and suspenseful, for example when Kate and James hear other guests in the corridor, unaware of what’s going on, and are unable to warn them, but I would have liked more of this, more information on the terrorist group, what they wanted and what was being done to stop them.

The thoughts that go through Kate’s head during the hostage situation are both fascinating and believable. Thinking she may only have hours left to live, she makes a note of the online shopping password for her husband, empties her inbox in case someone finds her phone, writes on a piece of paper because her children might want to see her handwriting in years to come. In contrast, James makes no provision for his death at all, spending what could be his final moments working on a report for work on his laptop.

I loved Vic, although we only meet him through flashbacks and the texts he sends Kate while she’s under siege in the hotel. He seems to be the perfect husband and father and I couldn’t understand why Kate was cheating on him with James, who comes across as cold, aloof and completely unlikeable. We do get an answer to that, but it’s not one that made me feel sympathetic towards Kate! We don’t get answers to much else, though, so be prepared for that. I was frustrated by the way the book ended, although I think I understand what the author was trying to do.

Although this book wasn’t quite what I had expected, I did like it and as it’s Ellie Levenson’s debut novel, it will be interesting to see what she writes next.

Thanks to Headline for sending me a copy of this book for review.

The Inn at Penglas Cove by Lauren Westwood

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I loved this! Lauren Westwood is a new author for me, but before I was even halfway through this one I was looking to see which other books she had written and mentally adding them to my wishlist.

When Juno Cartwright discovers that her husband is cheating on her, she takes her two children – seventeen-year-old Bridget and her younger brother, Connor – and heads for Cornwall, where she has conveniently just inherited a cottage from a distant relative. At least, she thinks it’s a cottage…until they arrive at the Cross Keys, a crumbling old inn on the Cornish coast. Discovering that the inn is actually her inheritance, Juno intends to put it up for sale, but the longer she spends there the more she begins to feel at home. Connor is having fun exploring the cliffs, caves and beaches of Penglas Cove, but Bridget is disgusted with the whole situation – the inn has no internet connection, no showers, and she just wants to go back to London.

Two centuries earlier, in 1820, Bess Trevelyan arrived in Cornwall to marry Lord Robert Penhelion. It was an unhappy marriage and, according to legend, Bess had a lover – Penhelion’s brother, a sea captain – and had taken refuge in the Cross Keys Inn to wait for the return of his ship. When Penhelion learned of the affair, he paid the innkeeper, Old John Dog, to murder her. Juno is fascinated by this legend, particularly as she and Bridget seem to bear a striking resemblance to the portrait of Bess Trevelyan hanging on the wall in the inn. As Juno tries to find out more about Bess and her tragic story, it seems that history is beginning to repeat itself.

This is such an atmospheric novel! Penglas Cove and the Cross Keys Inn – complete with an adjoining smugglers’ museum and pirate cave with waxwork figures playing out the story of Bess Trevelyan – are so vividly described they feel like real places. In her author’s note, Westwood acknowledges Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn and Frenchman’s Creek and Winston Graham’s Poldark series, as well as her own visits to Cornwall, and you can see the influence of all of these on her writing.

I loved our narrator, Juno, but she also has a strong cast of supporting characters around her; my favourites were Cliff and Elspeth, two elderly people who run the museum and pirate cave and who become almost like family to Juno and her children. And then there’s Bess, whose story unfolds in the form of a dual narrative. We don’t spend as long with Bess as we do with Juno, but it’s long enough to get to know her and to discover that there’s more to her story than anyone in the present day knows. Both threads of the novel were fascinating and it was all so readable that I finished it in two days, which could have been less if I’d had nothing else to do!

Although smuggling and piracy are things we tend to associate with times gone by, they do of course still exist today and in the modern day storyline Westwood explores the forms smuggling and trafficking can take in the 21st century. This gives the novel more relevancy and a more serious tone, but I personally would have preferred just to focus on the Bess mystery and Juno’s efforts to renovate the inn and build a new life for herself and the children. Still, I found The Inn at Penglas Cove a very entertaining and enjoyable read and just need to decide which Lauren Westwood book I should read next.

Thanks to Boldwood Books for providing a copy of this book for review via NetGalley.

Top Ten Tuesday: Authors I discovered in 2025

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This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is: Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2025

There were lots of authors I tried for the first time last year, but the ten I’m listing below are all authors whose work I enjoyed and would like to explore further (or in some cases, already have).

1. Caroline Blackwood – The Stepdaughter was a very dark and unsettling novella but I was gripped by it and will be looking for more of her books.

2. Kim Curran – I read The Morrigan for Reading Ireland Month last year and have just finished her new book, Brigid, which I’ll be reviewing soon.

3. Carys Davies – This time, an author I read for Reading Wales Month! Clear was a beautifully written book and I would be happy to try her previous ones.

4. Beth Lewis – The Rush, set in Canada during the Gold Rush, was one of my books of the year in 2025. Her previous books all sound interesting, but very different.

5. Graham Greene – I liked, though didn’t love, The End of the Affair, my first Greene novel. I’m definitely planning to read more of his books and have put Brighton Rock on my new Classics Club list.

6. Hannah Dolby – I loved No Life for a Lady and will be reading How to Solve Murders Like a Lady soon. I can’t wait to meet our heroine Violet Hamilton again!

7. Patrick Ryan – Ryan’s family saga Buckeye was possibly my favourite of all the books I read last year. It’s his first adult novel, although he has previously written young adult novels and short stories.

8. Benjamin Wood – Seascraper was another of my books of the year for 2025. I read it for Novellas in November and thought it was beautiful.

9. Moray Dalton – I read The Art School Murders for Dean Street December and was very impressed. Luckily, there are lots of other books in the series for me to look forward to!

10. Tarjei Vesaas – I read two books by this Norwegian author last year – The Birds and The Ice Palace – and enjoyed both. He has a few other books also available in English.

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Have you read any of these authors? Which new-to-you authors did you try for the first time in 2025?

The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

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Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter had a lot of success last year, being shortlisted for the Booker Prize and winning the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction. It also appeared on a lot of people’s end of year ‘best of’ lists so I had high hopes for it, particularly as I’ve previously enjoyed two of his other books, Pure and Now We Shall Be Entirely Free.

The novel is set in the winter of 1963, one of the coldest winters on record in the UK. Beginning in late December 1962 and lasting until March, temperatures plummeted, blizzards blanketed most of the country in deep snow and rivers and lakes froze over. Against this backdrop, we see the stories of two married couples play out. Dr Eric Parry has recently moved to rural Somerset with his wife, Irene, who is pregnant. Eric is enjoying being a country doctor, but Irene is finding it hard to adapt; it’s so different from her life in London and she misses her sister, who has gone to live in America. Despite her pregnancy, she feels that she and Eric are growing apart – and she’s right to feel that way because, unknown to Irene, Eric is having an affair with one of his patients.

Bill and Rita Simmons, who live at a nearby farm, are also newly arrived in the countryside. To the disappointment of his wealthy father, who wanted him to join the family business, Bill has chosen to follow a very different path and become a dairy farmer. It’s proving to be more difficult than he expected, but he’s sure that with new ideas and investment, he’ll be able to turn things around. He just needs to convince the bank to lend him the money! His wife Rita, like Irene, is pregnant and, also like Irene, she feels lonely and out of place, so it’s probably not surprising that the two women quickly form a bond and a friendship begins to develop.

Apart from a long chapter in the middle of the book in which Irene hosts a Boxing Day party and several other key characters converge on the Parrys’ house, the main focus is on the two couples, their daily lives and the relationships between them. All four characters are believable and strongly drawn, but I think Rita is the one I found most interesting. Before marrying Bill, she had been a dancer in a Bristol nightclub, so the transition to life as a farmer’s wife in a small, quiet community is particularly difficult for her. She has started hearing voices in her head, a sign of her vulnerable, fragile mental state, but Bill isn’t able to give her the support she needs, feeling that he doesn’t truly know who his wife is and preferring to ignore her past.

Although I did enjoy following the stories of Eric and Irene, Rita and Bill, I felt that I was held at a distance for most of the book and never quite connected with the characters on an emotional level as much as I would have liked to. Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was a result of the bleak, frozen setting reflecting their troubled, isolated lives and the coldness of their marriages. Still, this is an impressive novel overall and despite not quite managing to love it I can see why it’s so highly regarded.