Book of the Month March 2025
Quizlit’s Book of the Month March 2025 is the hugely enjoyable Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd. A masterly spy tale from one of Britain’s Best Authors.
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Book of the Month March 2025
Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd
A compelling, deeply rich Cold War mystery from one of Britain’s greatest ever storytellers, William Boyd Gabriel Drax is a young man haunted by the memories of his youth- every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames.
His days are spent on the move as a travel writer, capturing the changing, intriguing landscapes of a world in the grip of the Cold War, and very occasionally couriering packages and obscure messages for his brother, whom he quietly suspects of being a spy. A tap on the shoulder, though, pulls Gabriel further into the shadows of his life, and into the orbit of Faith Green, a beguiling and persuasive MI6 handler.
She soon makes Gabriel a seemingly irresistible offer- he must simply make a trip to Cadiz, Spain, and buy a painting, and in turn will receive a life-changing sum. But in that sun-drenched, suspicious sea town he will find more than just a paycheck and spy craft- in the rolling waves of Mediterranean, life-changing choices and consequences beckon.
“A spy story to rival Restless . . . A masterly tale . . . Sure-footed, comfortably managing at once to deliver all the pleasures of the genre while also subtly undercutting and questioning them . . . Boyd takes such obvious, infectious pleasure in telling his story, bounding along just in front of the reader, scattering clues and red herrings. I’m not sure that there’s a more reliably entertaining novelist working today.”—Alex Preston, The Guardian
“A retro-thriller . . . A portrait of a vanished world . . . A new William Boyd novel is always a pleasure, and this is a read that will keep you completely hooked to the very last page.”—Erica Wagner, Financial Times
“Hugely enjoyable . . . Skillfully performs double duty: working as a satisfying standalone story and setting Gabriel up for further escapades . . . A vivid re-creation of the early 1960s, and one of the pleasures it offers is a feeling of agreeable time travel to fascinating corners of a vanished world. These are conveyed with a filmic vibrancy.”—Marcel Theroux, The Guardian, “Book of the Day”
“A cracking read . . . Deliberately and satisfyingly stuffed with incident, Cold War history, romance and any number of mysteries.”—James Walton, The Spectator (UK)
“Boyd is a pro: the pages turn easily and his imagination never lets us stop before dragging Gabriel to his next locus of drama and confusion.”—John Self, The Times (UK)
Best William Boyd Books to Read
Any Human Heart
Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart’s – lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century – contains more than its fair share of both.
As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in ’60s New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shakers of his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness.
Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full – and a journey deep into a very human heart.
Born in 1799, Cashel Greville Ross experiences myriad lives: joyous and devastating, years of luck and unexpected loss.
Moving from County Cork to London, from Waterloo to Zanzibar, Cashel seeks his fortune across continents in war and in peace. He faces a terrible moral choice in a village in Sri Lanka as part of the East Indian Army. He enters the world of the Romantic Poets in Pisa.
In Ravenna he meets a woman who will live in his heart for the rest of his days. As he travels the world as a soldier, a farmer, a felon, a writer, a father, a lover, he experiences all the vicissitudes of life and, through the accelerating turbulence of the nineteenth century, he discovers who he truly is. This is the romance of life itself, and the beating heart of The Romantic.
Brazzaville Beach
On Brazzaville Beach, on the edge of Africa, Hope Clearwater ponders the strange circumstances that led her to leave her husband John, and his mathematical obsessions, in England and venture to Africa to help world-renowned scientist Eugene Mallabar with his studies of wild chimps.
But the more Hope studies Mallabar, the more she comes to believe that something isn’t right. That behind Mallabar, and his obsessive work, there lies another, more sinister truth: one that might also help explain Hope’s reasons for leaving England . . .
Buy Now: Amazon | AbeBooks
If you enjoyed Book of the Month March 2025. check out 5 Stunning New Books for March 2025
