M. R. James

The trouble with coming to “acknowledged” classics is that you can expect too much. For years I’ve heard that the ghost stories by M. R. James are the Rolls Royces of the field, exercises in unease and outright fright unequalled by other authors. I wish I could agree. I read them all, and I do …

Apache

This is the tale of an Apache warrior, a young woman, on the border between Arizona and Mexico in the late 19th century. It’s filled with battles, death, torture and mutilation as the Apache tribes fight to defend their land against the Mexicans and the ever-encroaching white Americans. Yet this isn’t a battle book, offering …

Where the Crawdads Sing

I can understand why this has become such a massive bestseller. It has a sympathetic heroine, a vividly realised setting in the coastal marshes of North Carolina, and a murder mystery to tie two different timelines together. It’s beautifully written and Delia Owens structures it carefully to keep you reading. For want of a better …

Zulu

I’d always thought that Future Noir – Paul Sammon’s book about Blade Runner – was the most thorough account of the making of a film available. I was wrong. This weighty tome from Sheldon Hall offers interviews with surviving cast members, brief biographies of those deceased, and the original magazine article – edited and unedited …