When the review titles arrived this month, my kids called me the Book Queen and hugged the pages to their chests, eyes wide, already imagining what was inside. Book Queen? I said, I am the Queen of all the world and they laughed and told me I was right, people who buy books should rule the world. Then they curled up and devoured the stack over a weekend. Digging through the two anthologies and two short translations, we’ve had a blast deciding who are our favourite characters

In the current Anglo-Saxon book market, there is much that is the same. If one book is successful, there’s a flurry to find another one just like it. Sameness can make us all feel safe, but Julia Marshall from Gecko Press reckons sameness isn't enough. A diet of one thing becomes tiring, in the way that cabbage is very good as a vegetable, but not if you are on an all-cabbage diet. Even the books in our bookstores that are not local come mostly from the same place: the UK, ra