Nick Rennison

Nov 29, 2024 | thetimes.com | Antonia Senior |Nick Rennison

The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there … That’s also true of historical fiction. In this year’s crop of the best, we’ve included a truly original take on the western — the tale of drunken Irish bad boys galloping across Montana in the 1890s told with punchy and poetic verve. Kevin Barry’s gloriously madcap novel jostles for space with Italian glassblowers, Tudor vagabonds and Christopher Marlowe, ill-starred spy, heretic and wordsmith.

Nov 3, 2024 | dailymail.co.uk | Nick Rennison

In December 1971, two visitors to Pinta Island in the Galapagos came face to face with a creature that wasn’t supposed to exist. It was a species of giant tortoise and it had been declared extinct nearly 70 years earlier. Now it had returned from the dead. Sadly, this story doesn’t have a happy ending. The tortoise, nicknamed ‘Lonesome George’, became a media celebrity but he was the last of his kind. When he died in June 2012, the Pinta Island giant tortoise really did become extinct.

Nov 2, 2024 | thetimes.com | Nick Rennison

Eva Menasse, born in Vienna but a long-standing resident in Berlin, is widely admired in Europe but has not gained the attention she deserves in this country. Her latest novel, a potent exploration of the past’s influence on the present, might and should change that. Darkenbloom (Dunkelblum in the original German) is the name of a small town close to Austria’s border with Hungary. In 1989, as the Iron Curtain is about to collapse, a visitor arrives to ask awkward questions.

Oct 11, 2024 | dailymail.co.uk | Nick Rennison

WHY FISH DON’T EXIST by Lulu Miller (One £16.99, 240pp)Early in the morning of April 18, 1906, San Francisco was struck by a devastating earthquake. In less than a minute, buildings all over the city collapsed. More than 3,000 people were killed. One man described the feeling of having his body tossed about ‘as a rat might be shaken by a dog’. His name was David Starr Jordan and he is at the heart of Lulu Miller’s quirky, fascinating book.

Oct 5, 2024 | thetimes.com | Nick Rennison

In Westminster Abbey, a king’s bones are about to be disturbed. With permission from the reigning monarch, George III, antiquaries prepare to open the tomb of Edward I. All goes according to plan until the ghost of the dead Plantagenet is seen walking the Abbey cloisters and one of the antiquaries is found dead, seemingly murdered. Edward’s bones go missing.