SPIKE MAGAZINE

Reviewed by Declan Tan Not every book looks and feels like an artefact when you pick it up. Oftentimes it is just words printed across cheap paper, the literal form of it separated from its content, cased in a merely functional cover with some gluey

Set in the harsh forests of the Canadian wilderness, Alexi Zentner’s debut novel, Touch, draws upon mythology as well as literary convention. Dan Coxon finds that its author is rooted in the power of traditional storytelling. Portrait by Laurie Willick. For

Reviewed by Declan Tan Until recently, the promise of Steve Aylett’s £750 foray into feature-length film productions had seemingly been wandering desultorily around the Internet for quite some time, indulging in some shallow vanishing since 2009, popping

Jill McGivering is a BBC foreign correspondent and has reported from all over the world, including some of its poorest and most conflict scarred countries. In Far from my Father’s House, her second novel, she employs her wealth of experience in the

Set against the backdrop of South America’s poorest economy, Peter Mountford’s first novel is a smart read on the human side of economic, political and ethical dramas. For the author it was also a long road to publication, as Dan Coxon learns.

Five Wounds is something of a contemporary classic: a manuscript crossed with Kit Williams’ playful imagination, informed by the language of graphic novels. Although very much a book, in the tactile sense, it has half an eye on what a book might

Reviewed by Declan Tan Charlie Hill’s debut novel seems already to have been pigeonholed as a love-story, a certainly tragic one, between its narrator, Arch (a character who has already made appearances on the independent literary scene) and Vee, the

Declan Tan’s second ‘Letter from La Paz’ is a fictional account of a visit to Bolivia’s San Pedro prison “A pint a-Carling yeah and whatever you’re havin’,” a white-spit mouth, mine, chums out familiar to the bar girl. I’m pointing

Titan books have released their second omnibus of the Daily Express comic strips based on Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Francis J. Okolo gives the debrief A cursory flick through the illustrations in this wonderful collection sends you hurtling

Published a few years before the works that made him a posthumous literary superstar, Roberto Bolaño’s Nazi Literature in the Americas is an evasive, hybrid beast. Ben Granger gets to grips with it This arcane curiosity of a book – first published

Nigerian author Sade Adeniran self-published her first novel, Imagine This, and went on to win the Commonwealth Prize for Best First Novel. She took time out from working on her second book to tell Mary-Claire Wilson how she did it, what inspires her

Jeanette Hewitt Is the author of Freedom First Peace Later, a novel about life in Crossmaglen, Northern Ireland, against the backdrop of Republican activity. The book was first published in December by BlueWood. and has been submitted for The Orwell Prize

From New Model Army to award-winning novels, Joolz Denby has created an impressive body of work. Now, with poet Steve Pottinger, she launches Ignite Books Poet, author, artist, vocalist, and all-round force of nature Joolz Denby recently published her

Dolly Delightly is granted an audience with New York performer, artist and ‘downright dirty’ author Stephen C. Bird Writer, performer and artist Stephen C. Bird was born in Ontario, Canada, but has spent most of his life in New York City.

Kevin Fitzgerald gathers together the narrative fragments of Didion’s novels and finds that identity is a collaborative process In her essay ‘Facing Reality’, Marilynne Robinson likens our present model of the world to so much ‘floorsweep’

Nigerian writer E.C Osondu won the 2009 Caine Prize, otherwise known as the African Booker, for his short story Waiting. An anthology of his stories, Voice of America, has been published to widespread critical acclaim. Here, he speaks to Mary-Claire Wilson

Take a ride on the wild side with Esotouric’s tours of LA’s underbelly “We’re not your ordinary tour company,” suggests the website of Los Angeles-based Esotouric. Indeed. Rather than curb crawling around Laurel Canyon squinting at George Clooney’s

Stinson Carter, journalist and author of Southern Gothic novel False River, offers a personal introduction to the genre Tennessee Williams called it “Romanticized Melancholy”. William Faulkner called it “the problems of the human heart in conflict

Russian fiction is on the rise. Spike profiles some of the key authors in translation At the London Book Fair 2011, the Market Focus will be on contemporary writing from Russia. Fifty writers and 60 publishers will present new books, representative of

Ben Granger Borges is that rare writer, one who can truly change your outlook forever. To read Labyrinths or Ficciones is to experience the universe anew, to find a poetry in mathematics, a mysticism in reason. In tales like “Funes the Memorious”,

Tom Wootton The Terror & Other Tales – Arthur Machen See all books by Arthur Machen at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com A sinister experiment in the Welsh hills. A daughter born of an unholy communion. A peasant boy terrified witless by

Jayne Margetts Headhunters – John King See all books by John King at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com By nature, the female of the species should NOT enjoy the works of British writer, John King. Why? Because he is everything