Jo Allen Author

Writes #crime as Jo Allen #historicfiction as Jenny Dent. gardening, cats, countryside and football. Oh, and book. Lots of books!

[Jo Allen Author @JoAllenAuthor]

#1 The Land of Green Plums by Herta Müller. Litfic.
A semi-autobiographical novel from a Nobel laureate about growing up in Ceaușescu’s Romania. Sometimes painful, often chilling and always haunting.
Remarkable.

[Jo Allen Author @JoAllenAuthor]

#38 The Afternoon Tea Murders by Helena Dixon. Costa historical mystery.
I really like this WW2 series in which secret war work inevitably leads to murder. I thought the plot in this one was a bit thin, but that won’t stop me reading more.

[Jo Allen Author @JoAllenAuthor]

Here we go with my reading thread for 2026 when, as always, my resolution is to make more time for reading and to read more widely.

[Jo Allen Author @JoAllenAuthor]

#36 The Waves by Virginia Woolf. Classic fiction.
Regularly included in lists of the best books ever written and I can see why, though I found the characters a little too precious to be engaging. It’s especially haunting as a foreshadowing of Woolf’s untimely end.

[Jo Allen Author @JoAllenAuthor]

#37 The Summer Book by Tove Jansson. Fictionalised memoir?
An odd little book, and I mean that in a good way. The tale of a grandmother and a granddaughter spending a summer on an island in the Gulf of Finland. Wholesome, poignant and thought-provoking.

[Grandma Peartree @ceciliapeartree]

Here's the catch-up from our little group of Edinburgh writers (spoiler - no, I won't be publishing my 3rd novel in 3 months!)
https://t.co/fTZkNlaLyy

[Jo Allen Author @JoAllenAuthor]

#22 Still Waters by ECR Lorac. Classic crime.
Clever, twisty 1949 whodunnit set in rural Lancashire (NOT the Lake District, despite what it says on the cover). An absolutely cracking read.

[Ted Northodox @Ted_Northodox]

Proofreading this beauty for the final print today and it is utterly brilliant. A post-WW1 forbidden gay love story that also deals with class divide and PTSD. An unbelievably good read from an amazing writer 😍