Amanda Craig was born in 1959, and brought up in Italy and Britain. Educated at Bedales and Clare College Cambridge, she worked in advertising and journalism before becoming a full-time novelist. She is currently working on a children's novel, The Witch King. She has two children, lives in London and contributes regularly to the Times, The Sunday Times, The Independent on Sunday and The New Statesman.
The Matchbox Girl (2025) Alice Jolly "Alice Jolly is a writer of originality, passion and insight into the suffering of the most vulnerable ... This will join classics like Plath's The Bell Jar and Toni Morrison's Beloved as an extraordinary novel about resilience."
The Paris Muse (2024) Louisa Treger "Captures Dora Maar's passionate, angry voice, and the agony and ecstasy of a love affair with Picasso's monstrous genius with energy and insight. It also asks good questions about the way too many women who are artists in their own right get shoved into second place by men, and demeaned as 'muses'."
Bonjour, Sophie (2024) Elizabeth Buchan "A poignant, charming and cheering story of a girl's growth into womanhood in 1960s Paris."
The Square of Sevens (2023) Laura Shepherd-Robinson "A gorgeously written and plotted Georgian thriller with elements of Moll Flanders, theatre, cartomancy, and Bath. It's as absorbing as Charles Palliser's The Quincunx."
Speak to Me (2023) Paula Cocozza "There are three of us in this - you, me and your mobile. How many couples have said this to each other? Paula Cocozza's witty, wry new novel is sharp as a skewer about the devices and desires in many modern marriages. I loved it."
The Choice (2023) Michael Arditti "At a time when British fiction has never been more timorous about tackling novels of ideas, Michael Arditti has produced one worthy of Iris Murdoch and Graham Greene . . . Brilliantly ambiguous, waspishly witty and thoroughly enjoyable, this is Michael Arditti's own masterpiece to date."
The Wolf-Girl, the Greeks and the Gods (2023) Tom Holland "Tom Holland's masterly interweaving of myth, imagination and deep classical learning makes this an extraordinary treat ... Jason's illustrations are also magnificent, packed with talent and sensitivity ... It reminded me of my own favourite childhood books of Greek myth and The Iliad."
Friends Like These (2022) Meg Rosoff "An irresistible account of female friendship - Nobody describes the strength, pain and comedy of being young as elegantly and eloquently as Meg Rosoff."
Winchelsea (2022) Alex Preston "Winchelsea and its fierce young heroine swept me away on an irresistible tide of adventure, revenge, horror, love, smuggling and high drama on land and sea. What a brilliant idea to rework Moonfleet, but add some contemporary touches to the mix. Huge fun, superbly atmospheric and thoroughly enjoyable."
Love Marriage (2022) Monica Ali "I loved Love Marriage, and looked forward to reading it every night. Funny, compassionate, sexy, romantic, beautifully plotted and richly peopled, it is both highly original and working within a literary tradition of novels about love and marriage. Above all it is about the way that individuals are a mystery to each other, and themselves, wounding and misunderstanding each other, yet also about how, with patience and kindness, we can change for the better."
The Impossible Truths of Love (2021) Hannah Beckerman "A bold and moving story of tangled family lives, the awful things that parents do to compensate for grief, and the way, despite all efforts, the truth comes out. Poignant, dark, and horrifyingly plausible."
Widowland (2021) (Widowland, book 1) C J Carey "Widowland is a triumph. One of the best counter-factual dystopias ever written about what a Nazi Britain might be like, it not only equals Fatherland and The Handmaid's Tale but, by placing literary heroines at its heart, supersedes them. As witty as it is withering, as thrilling as it is consummately imagined, this deserves to be the bestseller of 2021."
I Couldn't Love You More (2021) Esther Freud "I love this book. It feels like the novel Esther Freud has been waiting to write her whole life. The tenderness of the mother-daughter bond, the cruelties and prejudice of old Ireland, the vitality of 1960s London all beautifully realised."
On Hampstead Heath (2021) Marika Cobbold "With On Hampstead Heath, Marika Cobbold has rebooted the Hampstead Novel for the 21st century. Instead of focussing on its usual topics of middle-class adultery and delusions of grandeur, she has written about unexpected love, work and how truth can change even the most unprepossessing of situations. Like the heroine of a screwball comedy, her heroine Thorne is prickly, witty and memorably bonkers. A delightful novel."
The Windsor Knot (2020) (Her Majesty The Queen Investigates, book 1) S J Bennett "Gently hilarious, discreetly compelling and utterly charming, The Windsor Knot adds detection to the mystique of monarchy. It's The Queen meets Miss Marple."
Liberation (2020) Imogen Kealey "The White Mouse is a Resistance heroine of legendary courage, daring, and cleverness. Imogen Kealey conjures her rebellious, passionate character with conviction, insight, and gritty detail."
The Snakes (2019) Sadie Jones "I was absolutely gripped by this original and beautifully-told story of a couple enmeshed in a nest of vipers -- a rich family of criminals. Its evocation of a sinister French house, the corruption of love and the powerlessness of good is both haunting and chilling. Nobody contemporary writes about unhappy families as well as Sadie Jones."
In the Full Light of the Sun (2019) Clare Clark "I loved In the Full Light Of The Sun, a novel about deception, self-deception, truth, love and lies that will enthral anyone fascinated by Van Gogh, the art world and Berlin in the 1920s. Written with verve and assurance it is both engaging and humane."
The Skylarks' War (2018) Hilary McKay "The Skylarks' War is bloody brilliant, the kind of classic that rings with beauty and conviction and heart-stopping emotion. Not read a novel this good since Eva Ibbotson died."
Rainsongs (2018) Sue Hubbard "A beautifully-written and evocative novel about grief and greed, art and life, isolation and emotion."
Sugar Money (2017) Jane Harris "A vivid, perfectly paced tale of slavery and freedom, innocence and experience, love and despair, Sugar Money is told in an unforgettably beautiful language. What a stunning writer Jane Harris is, mastering an extremely harrowing and complex subject and making it into art."
Mussolini's Island (2017) Sarah Day "Sarah Day's debut novel is striking: a fascinating evocation of a cruel time in Italian history."
The Speed of Darkness (2016) (Chronoptika Quartet, book 4) Catherine Fisher "Brilliantly disconcerting, scary and superbly written by the leading lady of British fantasy."
Basilisk (2004) N M Browne "She blends history, myth, archaeology and psychology like no writer I've read since Rosemary Sutcliff."
Before the Knife (2002) Carolyn Slaughter "Written with such beauty, courage and truthfulness that it will rank with other masterpieces about life in Africa."
Getting Over Edgar (1999) Joan Barfoot "A delightful novel - wise, tender, and perhaps the funniest ever written about the difference between the male and female response to the mid-life crisis."
Pig (1994) Andrew Cowan "Beautifully evoked ... Cowan writes with a deceptive simplicity."
(b.1959)
