Having loved everything I’ve ever read by Liz Nugent, I cannot thank Rosie Safety enough at Penguin Random House for sending me a surprise copy of The Truth About Ruby Cooper. I was thrilled to receive it and it is my pleasure to share my review today.

If you click on the titles, you’ll find my reviews of other books by Liz Nugent too; Unravelling Oliver, Lying in Wait, Strange Sally Diamond, and an interview with Liz here. 

The Truth About Ruby Cooper was published on 12th March 2026 and is available for purchase through the links here.

The Truth About Ruby Cooper

If my sister hadn’t been beautiful, none of it would have happened.

Ruby Cooper and her sister, Erin, live an idyllic life in their close-knit church community in Boston. But when Ruby is sixteen, she is involved in an incident that causes her family’s world to implode.

Across decades, the fallout leaves a wake of destruction behind Ruby in Dublin and Erin in Boston.

Not that Ruby wants to think about the past.

But it can’t stay a secret forever.

My Review of The Truth About Ruby Cooper

Ruby Cooper is envious of her beautiful older sister Erin. 

I am at a total loss to know how to review The Truth About Ruby Cooper. It’s an outrageously brilliant book that delivers blow after blow to the reader as Liz Nugent lays bare the machinations of family, of addiction and of delusion. I’m sure it will be an affecting, possibly painful read for some. I thought it was superb.

The style and structure of the novel cleverly draw in the reader. The different first person accounts ranging over many years feel as if the narrator and the reader are in an intimate confessional with the character speaking directly to the reader, making that reader part of the narrative – not always willingly. The impact is to instil a raw and visceral response that leaves the mind reeling. My reactions to the characters, especially Ruby, were completely controlled by the author. 

Ruby is a deliciously oxymoronic creation. She deserves our pity and our wrath, our support and our rage. She raised so many questions in my mind about the effect of nature versus nurture and left me wondering just why she truly behaves as she does. I wanted to hold her and comfort her. I wanted to slap her hard and I wanted every aspect of her life to achieve the right outcome. It’s so hard to explain further for fear of spoilers, but I don’t think a book has ever enraged me quite as much as The Truth About Ruby Cooper and the people I met there. And what people they are. They are vivid, flawed and human. Liz Nugent KNOWS humanity and displays the knowledge unflinchingly and brilliantly here. 

And the themes of The Truth About Ruby Cooper are equally like a punch to the solar plexus. Truth and deceit ripple under aspects of sexual, emotional and familial support and abuse. Individuals’ perceptions, delusions and addictions are uncovered with consummate skill so that whilst we may rail against some of the characters (with the odd exception but I’m not going to spoil the story for others) we can understand them too. Equally, Liz Nugent does not shy away from the impact of mental health or societal expectations, so that this is a multi-layered and totally engrossing story.  

The Truth About Ruby Cooper is an absolute triumph. Readers may well be divided over whether they love it or loathe it, but I defy any reader not to have a deep and lasting response. I have a feeling it is going to take me some time to get over meeting Ruby Cooper. She has thrown me off balance completely and left me feeling as if I’ve been hit by a truck. If you are familiar with Liz Nugent’s writing you’ll understand what an impactful, ensnaring and affecting story this is. The Truth About Ruby Cooper is not to be missed, but be warned – you might not be the same after reading it… 

About Liz Nugent

Apologies to Liz but I couldn’t resist this photo!

Liz was born in Dublin in 1967, where she now lives. She has written successfully for soap opera, radio drama, television plays, short stories and animation for children.

Liz’s first novel Unravelling Oliver was published to critical and popular acclaim in March 2014. It quickly became a firm favourite with book clubs and reader’s groups. In November of that year, it went on to win the Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year at the Bord Gais Energy Book Awards and was long listed for the International Dublin Literature Prize 2016. She was also the winner of the inaugural Jack Harte Bursary provided by the Irish Writers Centre and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Dec 2014. Her second novel, Lying in Wait, was published in July 2016 and went straight to number 1 where it remained for seven weeks. Liz won the Monaco Bursary from the Ireland Funds and was Writer in Residence at the Princess Grace Irish Library in Monaco in Sept/Oct 2016. In Nov 2016, Lying in Wait won the prestigious RTE Ryan Tubridy Listener’s Choice prize at the Irish Book Awards.

Aside from writing, Liz has led workshops in writing drama for broadcast, she has produced and managed literary salons and curated literary strands of Arts Festivals. She regularly does public interviews and panel discussions on all aspects of her writing.

For further information about Liz, visit her website . You’ll also find Liz on Bluesky, Instagram and Facebook.

My enormous thanks to Helena Towers at Headline for sending me a copy of The Lottery Winner Widows Club by Elly Vine. It’s my pleasure to share my review of the book today. 

The Lottery Winner Widows Club is published by Wildfire on 26th March 2026 and is available for pre-order here.  

The Lottery Winner Widows Club

Meet The Lottery Winner Widows Club – a fabulous, filthy-rich sisterhood whose husbands all hit the jackpot . . . and then mysteriously dropped dead.

Paula is having a surreal week. Having just lost her husband, John, in a freak car accident, she’s utterly gobsmacked when, two days later, she wins the lottery – with the ticket he bought.

Just as she thinks things can’t get crazier, Paula is approached by a tight-knit trio of glamorous women – also jackpot winners – with dead husbands, suspiciously large bank accounts . . . and a very specific interest in Paula.

They tell her that they’ve been where she is now. That grief looks good on her. That freedom does, too. There’s just one problem: Paula didn’t kill her husband. She loved him, of course.

But something about their world – lavish, secretive, thrilling – is hard to resist. And when word of Paula’s jackpot win spreads and others come sniffing around for a share, she’s faced with the ultimate choice: hold onto her old life, or accept help from her new friends, whose methods are a little more . . . unconventional.

Twisty, mischievous, and deliciously dark, The Lottery Winner Widows Club is a story of luck, lies, and the dangerous appeal of starting over, from a fresh new voice in the crime world.

My Review of The Lottery Winner Widows Club

It’s all happening for Paula. Her husband has been killed in a car crash and she’s just won millions of pounds in the lottery. 

The Lottery Winner Widows Club is a cracking narrative. It is packed with intrigue, surprisingly twisty and, with weightier elements making it more than mere entertainment, incredibly satisfying to read. I found myself wrong footed and surprised by the plot on more than one occasion. 

If I’m honest, I was a bit frustrated by Paula initially and I wasn’t convinced I was going to love the book. Although the stultifying effects of losing her husband in a car crash are understandable, Paula seemed somewhat ineffectual, allowing her daughter Tilly to control events far too readily. However, as the book progressed and Elly Vine revealed more and more about her, I realised that I was at fault in judging Paula too quickly. Indeed, I went from wanting to crawl between the pages of the book and shake her into action, to cheering her on and delighting in her development. Why she is as she is becomes a central and perfect theme of the narrative. I loved the other women too. They are devious, feisty and vulnerable so that they truly spring to life. It’s also fascinating to discover how easily and skilfully Elly Vine manages to make her readers fully on the side of women with murderous intent!  

But aside from the fun and engaging story, where there are often funny moments, it was the darker themes of the The Lottery Winner Widows Club that captured me the most. Elly Vine provides so much to think about that the reader questions their own morality. As the background stories of Teddy, Audrey and Ivy are uncovered, aspects of coercive control, and physical and emotional abuse are balanced by strong female friendship, the ability to reinvent ourselves and the resilience of human spirit. Each of these aspects is brilliantly handled because the author explores them with wit, humour and understanding, so that I found The Lottery Winner Widows Club utterly captivating.

Knowing Elly Vine’s romantic comedies as Lucy Vine, I was expecting a highly entertaining, funny read with added crime. What I found in The Lottery Winner Widows Club most certainly had humour and was extremely diverting to read, with a fresh tone and a lively pace, but underpinning this super read are darker and important themes as Paula finds herself friends with other women in similar situations. Should you choose to read this one, you’ll be given much to think about even as you’re enjoying the story. I cannot recommend it highly enough. 

About Elly Vine

Elly Vine is the pseudonym of bestselling author, Lucy Vine. Lucy Vine is the author of novels Hot Mess, What Fresh Hell, Are We Nearly There Yet?, Bad Choices, Seven Exes, Date with Destiny and Book Boyfriend. Her eighth novel is Good For You. Her books have been published in seventeen territories, with Hot Mess optioned for a TV series in America.

In a previous life, Lucy was a journalist, writing for publications including Grazia, Stylist, Heat, Fabulous, Marie Claire, Sugar and Cosmopolitan. For further information, visit Elly/Lucy’s website, and find her on Instagram. 

I’m incredibly grateful to Becky Short of Penguin Random House for sending me a surprise copy of A Bad, Bad Place by Frances Crawford. It’s my pleasure to share my review of A Bad, Bad Place today. 

Published by Bantam on 12th February 2026, A Bad, Bad Place is available for purchase through the publisher links here.

A Bad, Bad Place

What happened to the dog walker who found the body?

Glasgow, 1979.

Twelve-year-old Janey won’t take her dog, Sid Vicious, for a walk. Not anymore. It’s Sid’s fault she found the murdered woman.

Janey claims she can’t remember what she saw at the abandoned railway, but the police think she’s hiding something. And they’re not the only ones interested.

Fear and rumour rip through the tight-knit community of Possilpark. Janey and her nana, Maggie, are dragged into the hunt for a murderer. And Maggie’s struggle to keep her beloved granddaughter safe becomes ever more desperate.

Because Janey’s memories can’t stay hidden forever.

And neither can the killer…

My Review of A Bad, Bad Place

Janey has found a body.

I thought A Bad, Bad Place was brilliant. Firstly, the title is incredibly apt. It covers so many aspects of a bad, bad place; that might be the social, economic and living conditions of the people of Possilpark where the story is set, the actual location where Sid Vicious the dog and Janey find Samantha’s body, or the internal workings of many of the minds of those in the narrative. Because, whilst A Bad Bad Place is an intriguing murder mystery, it is so much more besides and a stunner of a story that considers community and many layers of guilt.

The authorial tone is just perfect. Frances Crawford uses an accessible accent so that the voices of the characters are heard clearly, bringing them to life. She employs just enough dialect to make Glasgow every bit as much a character as setting, and she is unafraid to use quite strong expletives in a manner that feels perfectly natural within the context of the narrative. It’s really quite difficult to accept that this is a debut novel and not a text written by an author who has been refining their craft for decades. I thought the way Samantha was the lynchpin for the action, being the means for the reader to discover the morality of the characters and to understand both era and setting even though she is not actually present, was inspired. 

I loved the plot. I genuinely didn’t know quite how A Bad Bad Place might resolve itself and the fast pace created by alternating chapters between Janey and Nana meant that I was continuously drawn back to the book. I found the ending so thought provoking. As ever with this kind of story, it’s so tricky to say more without spoilers, but I found the exploration of the impact of crime in a community and the way it ripples across the lives of those in the area was handled with empathy, realism and deep understanding.

The characters are vivid, compelling and utterly engaging. Whilst so many are criminal in behaviour and the kind of people we might look down upon or fear, they are also incredibly human so that Frances Crawford looks at the dark underbelly of life and finds glimmers of humanity. Poverty, grief, religion and so on are all shown to shape us and affect our behaviours. I genuinely forgot I was reading a work of fiction because I was so invested in the people. 

The themes of A Bad Bad Place are simply wonderful. Childhood innocence and its loss, corruption across several strata of society, domestic abuse, the impact of gangs, drugs and alcohol and the dismissive way young children and older women are treated should all combine into a bleak or grim read. But they don’t. Instead, A Bad Bad Place is a rich tapestry of life where resilience, courage and hope combine into a book that touches the heart of the reader as well as entertains them. 

A Bad Bad Place is a superb book and one I recommend completely. Don’t miss it. 

About Frances Crawford

As a passionate advocate of lifelong learning, Frances was delighted to graduate age 60 with MLitt (Distinction) Creative Writing from Glasgow University. In 2023, she won Bloody Scotland/ Glencairn Crime Short Story Competition and the first chapters of her debut novel, A Bad, Bad Place,  won Highly Commended in Moniack Mohr Emerging Writer 2024.

Frances grew up in North Glasgow, and credits the people of Possilpark and Milton as her writing inspiration. She still lives in Glasgow with her family and likes libraries and punk rock. 

For further information, follow Frances on X @Franapunk999 and find her on Bluesky. 

I’m not entirely certain who kindly sent a surprise copy of Book of Biscuits by Linda Collister from the National Trust, but it certainly made me smile when I opened it! It’s been years since I made biscuits because I once made a batch of brandy snaps that became one huge biscuit about 4 feet long that was welded to the baking tray, the sides and floor of the oven and which my husband had to use a bolster chisel to remove! Time to try again I think…

The Book of Biscuits will be published by the National Trust in association with Harper Collins on 12th March and is available for pre-order here. 

Book of Biscuits

Biscuits are the ultimate teatime treat. No cup of tea (or coffee) should be without one.

This tempting collection of recipes from expert baker Linda Collister includes all the classics. There are ginger snaps and shortbread petticoat tails, deluxe chocolate chip cookies, Florentines and macarons, tiffin and flapjacks, as well as biscotti and savoury biscuits. And if you’re looking for something a little different, how about Chocolate, Sour Cherry and Pistachio Cookies? Sea Salt Praline Biscotti? Or Black Olive Palmiers? There’s a biscuit for every occasion.

This beautifully illustrated book contains a generous side serving of history and is full of delicious tried-and-tested recipes that you’ll want to make again and again.

My Review of Book of Biscuits

Over seventy biscuits recipes across 7 sweet and savoury themes.

What a super little book! The Book of Biscuits would make a fantastic gift for novice and experienced baker alike. 

Firstly, it’s beautifully presented. It’s compact enough to fit an apron pocket but has a high quality and robust cover that will withstand much handling over the years. This is a book that can be passed down through the family as favourite biscuits are discovered. There are lovely watercolour illustrations and each of the sections has a different coloured traditional gingham edging so that this little book ignites memories of school baking as well being attractive now. 

Alongside the recipes are snippets of information so that we find out, for example, that a type of macaroon can be traced to AD 791, or that Dorothy Wordsworth had more than one recipe for gingerbread. This adds to the attraction of Book of Biscuits as a gift book.

However, it is, of course, the recipes that are the star turn here. Each has an introduction with the kind of detail mentioned above or with tips for cooking, things to look out for with oven variations and advice about storing the finished product. Ingredients and quantities are clearly presented and the methods easy to follow so that a cook of any ability can create a successful biscuit. 

Book of Biscuits is lovely. It’s accessible, gorgeous in presentation and a real treat for the kitchen. I’m off to make some Old-fashioned Double Ginger Snaps. Just don’t tell my husband!

About Linda Collister

Author of many of the Great British Bake Off books, Linda trained at La Varenne in Paris and the Cordon Bleu School in London.