FICTION
In the ever changing world of fiction publishing we try to keep abreast of the best in Ireland, the UK, Europe ( and the USA - in a separate collection now) . The curated collection here is simply ' the best of' that we have come across in our recent years of running this shop. Consequently, we stand behind these in that most of these books are personally recommended and will not disappoint!
Note, we have the Irish fiction, and American fiction, in a separate collection.
Stay With Me, by Ayobami Adebayo ( paperback, 2018)
£9.99
Previous BPS Book Club choice
An emotional read, a story of one woman in Nigeria and her extended family, where personal tragedy unfolds against the backdrop of turbulent 1980’s Nigeria.
Yejide is hoping for a miracle, for a child. It is all her husband wants, all her mother-in-law wants, and she has tried everything. But when her relatives insist upon a new wife, it is too much for Yejide to bear.
Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of 1980s Nigeria, Stay With Me is a story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the power of grief, and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood. It is a tale about the desperate attempts we make to save ourselves, and those we love, from heartbreak.
Very readable, her prose is a pleasure but packs a tremendous punch.
Love is Blind, by William Boyd (paperback May 2019)
£9.99
A real treat for the many fans of William Boyd. A rich story of the talented piano tuner Brodie Moncur, who escapes a suffocating family life in the Scottish Borders and heads off to Paris for adventure in the late 19th century.
Around the turn of the twentieth century young pianist Brodie Moncur quits Edinburgh's slate skies for the lights of Paris, his preacher father's words of denunciation ringing in his ears. There he joins forces with the fiery Irish virtuoso John Kilbarron and together the pair take Europe by storm. But when he falls for Kilbarron's lover - the mesmerizing Russian soprano Lika Blum - Brodie quickly realizes that the tide has turned and he must flee across a continent, haunted by his love for Lika, and pursued by the vengeful wrath of his rival.
A perfect mix of historical context, immersive narrative and engaging prose. William Boyd is a master !
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo (paperback, 2020)
£9.99
***WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019****SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020*
From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . .
.A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond.'
Recently featured in our BooksPaperScissors bookclub, see BLOG for review.
Shuggie Bain, by Douglas Stuart (paperback from April , 2021)
£9.99
Winner of the Booker Prize 2020. Paperback cover as hardback.
'Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty.' - Observer
It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life.
She dreams of greater things: a house with its own front door and a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect, but false, teeth). But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and soon she and her three children find themselves trapped in a decimated mining town. As she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves.
It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different. Fastidious and fussy, he shares his mother's sense of snobbish propriety.
The miners' children pick on him and adults condemn him as no' right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place. Douglas Stuart's Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride.
A counterpart to the privileged Thatcher-era London of Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty, it also recalls the work of Edouard Louis, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, a blistering debut by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell. 'We were bowled over by this first novel, which creates an amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.' - The judges of the Booker Prize
A Net For Small Fishes, Lucy Jago ( paperback April 2022)
£8.99
This is a very sharp, witty and enjoyable book - historical fiction absolutely made contemporary and empowering! Linda
Frances Howard has beauty and a powerful family - and is the most unhappy creature in the world. Anne Turner has wit and talent - but no stage on which to display them. Little stands between her and the abyss of destitution. When these two very different women meet in the strangest of circumstances, a powerful friendship is sparked.
Frankie sweeps Anne into a world of splendour that exceeds all she imagined: a Court whose foreign king is a stranger to his own subjects; where ancient families fight for power, and where the sovereign's favourite may rise and rise - so long as he remains in favour. With the marriage of their talents, Anne and Frankie enter this extravagant, savage hunting ground, seeking a little happiness for themselves. But as they gain notice, they also gain enemies; what began as a search for love and safety leads to desperate acts that could cost them everything.
Based on the true scandal that rocked the court of James I, A Net for Small Fishes is the most gripping novel you'll read this year: an exhilarating dive into the pitch-dark waters of the Jacobean court.
Terrific, rich in colour, character, place and time' Sarah Dunant
paperback from April 2022
A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson ( paperback March 2022)
£9.99
Mary Lawson is an overlooked writer in the UK, but since Graham Norton's approval on a recent BBC bookclub TV show, perhaps this is the year to discover her. This is her new book.
Clara's sister is missing. Angry, rebellious Rose, had a row with their mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Eight-year-old Clara, isolated by her distraught parents' efforts to protect her from the truth, is grief-stricken and bewildered.
Liam Kane, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, moves into the house next door, a house left to him by an old woman he can barely remember and within hours gets a visit from the police. It seems he's suspected of a crime. At the end of her life Elizabeth Orchard is thinking about a crime too, one committed thirty years ago that had tragic consequences for two families and in particular for one small child.
She desperately wants to make amends before she dies. Set in Northern Ontario in 1972, A Town Called Solace explores the relationships of these three people brought together by fate and the mistakes of the past. By turns gripping and darkly funny, it uncovers the layers of grief and remorse and love that connect us, but shows that sometimes a new life is possible.
'Poised, elegant prose, paired with quiet drama that will break your heart. The sort of book that seems as if it has always existed because of its timeless perfection' GRAHAM NORTON
( note image is of hardback, now only available as paperback)
Hamnet , Maggie O’Farrell ( paperback Apr 2021)
£9.99
WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times'A thing of shimmering wonder' David MitchellTWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE.A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever.
Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.
The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson ( pb, 2007)
£9.99
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE**
A powerful, heart-breaking story about tempting fate and living with the consequences. Arthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart. Arthur is older, shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father's farm. Jake is younger, handsome and reckless, a dangerous man to know.
When Laura arrives in their rural community, the fragile balance of the brothers' rivalry is pushed to the edge of catastrophe... 'An enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate' Guardian'
Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town' The Times
Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri ( paperback March 2022)
£9.99
'If the antidote to a year of solitude and trauma is art, then this novel is the answer. It is superb' SUNDAY TIMES'
The new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author: a haunting portrait of a woman, her decisions, her conversations, her solitariness, in a beautiful and lonely Italian city The woman moves through the city, her city, on her own. She moves along its bright pavements; she passes over its bridges, through its shops and pools and bars.
She slows her pace to watch a couple fighting, to take in the sight of an old woman in a waiting room; pauses to drink her coffee in a shaded square. Sometimes her steps take her to her grieving mother, sealed off in her own solitude. Sometimes they take her to the station, where the trains can spirit her away for a short while.
But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun's vital heat, her perspective will change forever. A rare work of fiction, Whereabouts - first written in Italian and then translated by the author herself - brims with the impulse to cross barriers.
Love After Love, Ingrid Persaud (paperback, Jan 2021)
£9.99
WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2020
Meet the Ramdin-Chetan family: forged through loneliness, broken by secrets, saved by love. Irrepressible Betty Ramdin, her shy son Solo and their marvellous lodger, Mr Chetan, form an unconventional household.
Happy in their differences, they build a home together. Home: the place keeping these three safe from an increasingly dangerous world - until the night when a glass of rum, a heart to heart and a terrible truth explodes the family unit, driving them apart. Brave and brilliant, steeped in affection, Love After Love offers hope to anyone who has loved and lost and has yet to find their way back.
Assembly, by Natasha Brown ( paperback May 2022)
£9.99
Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment.Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things.
Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness.
But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.
The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself.
As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart? Assembly is a story about the stories we live within - those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers. And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. 'One of the most talked-about debuts of the year .
'Bold and original, with a cool intelligence, and so very truthful about the colonialist structure of British society' Diana Evans
The Mission House, Carys Davies (paperback, June 2021)
£8.99
Fleeing his demons and the dark undercurrents of life in Britain, Hilary Byrd takes refuge in a south Indian mission house next door to the presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter, Priscilla, live. As Hilary's friendship with Priscilla grows, so too do the religious and nationalist tensions around them, and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems. Meticulously crafted and tenderly subversive, The Mission House is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a modern world.
The Manningtree Witches, AK Blakemore ( paperback 2022)
£9.99
Fear and destruction take root in a community of women when the Witchfinder General comes to town, in this dark and thrilling debut. England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages.Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers - the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued.
Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes. But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge.
The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust and betrayal ran amok as the power of men went unchecked and the integrity of women went undefended. It is a visceral, thrilling book that announces a bold new talent.
The End of Men, Christina Baird-Sweeney ( paperback May 2022)
£8.99
GLASGOW, 2025.
Dr Amanda Maclean is called to treat a young man with a mild fever. Within three hours he dies. The mysterious illness sweeps through the hospital with deadly speed.
This is how it begins. The victims are all men. Dr Maclean raises the alarm, but the sickness spreads to every corner of the globe.
Threatening families. Governments. Countries.
Can they find a cure before it's too late? Will this be the story of the end of the world - or its salvation? Compelling, confronting and devastating.
Linda - I enjoyed this way more than I expected to, it's very readable and ultimately positive about the resilience of humankind. Would be a great bookclub read to discuss.
'
Summerwater, Sarah Moss ( paperback, 24 June 2021)
£8.99
The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2021
It is the summer solstice, but in a faded Scottish cabin park the rain is unrelenting. Twelve people on holiday with their families look on as the skies remain resolutely grey. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a teenage boy chances the dark waters of the loch in his kayak; a retired couple head out despite the downpour, driving too fast on the familiar bends.
But there are newcomers too, and one particular family, a mother and daughter with the wrong clothes and the wrong manners, start to draw the attention of the others. Who are they? Where are they from? Should they be here at all? As darkness finally falls, something is unravelling . .
From the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss' Summerwater is a devastating story told over twenty-four hours in the Scottish highlands, and a searing exploration of our capacity for both kinship and cruelty in these divided times.
The Passenger, Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz (paperback Sept 2021)
£10.99
Berlin, November 1938. With storm troopers battering against his door, Otto Silberman must flee out the back of his own home. He emerges onto streets thrumming with violence: it is Kristallnacht, and synagogues are being burnt, Jews rounded up and their businesses destroyed.Turned away from establishments he had long patronised, betrayed by friends and colleagues, Otto finds his life as a respected businessman has dissolved overnight. Desperately trying to conceal his Jewish identity, he takes train after train across Germany in a race to escape this homeland that is no longer home. Twenty-three-year-old Ulrich Boschwitz wrote The Passenger at breakneck speed in 1938, fresh in the wake of the Kristallnacht pogroms, and his prose flies at the same pace.
Shot through with Hitchcockian tension, The Passenger is a blisteringly immediate story of flight and survival in Nazi Germany.
The Promise, Damon Galgut ( Paperback 3 March 2022)
£9.99
Booker Winner !
Astonishing' Colm Toibin'
The Promise charts the crash and burn of a white South African family, living on a farm outside Pretoria. The Swarts are gathering for Ma's funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for -- not least the failed promise to the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life.
After years of service, Salome was promised her own house, her own land... yet somehow, as each decade passes, that promise remains unfulfilled. The narrator's eye shifts and blinks: moving fluidly between characters, flying into their dreams; deliciously lethal in its observation.
And as the country moves from old deep divisions to its new so-called fairer society, the lost promise of more than just one family hovers behind the novel's title. In this story of a diminished family, sharp and tender emotional truths hit home. Confident, deft and quietly powerful, The Promise is literary fiction at its finest.
The most important book of the last ten years' Edmund White.
Loved and Missed, Susie Boyt ( Paperback August 2022)
£9.99
Susie Boyt writes with a mordant wit and vivid style, which are at their best in Loved and Missed.
When your beloved daughter is lost in the fog of addiction and you make off with her baby in order to save the day, can willpower and a daring creative zeal carry you through?
Examining the limits, disappointments and excesses of love in all its forms, this marvellously absorbing novel, full of insight and compassion, delights as much as it disturbs. ~'She takes the study of love into uncharted territory and every sentence has its depth and pleasure' Linda Grant 'I am so moved: it carries a huge emotional power... I ache for them all'
If you enjoy an emotional read such as A Little Life, you will enjoy this.
A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles ( paperback)
£9.99
A supremely uplifting novel ... It's elegant, witty and delightful - much like the Count himself.' - Mail on Sunday,
_On 21 June 1922, Count Alexander Rostov - recipient of the Order of Saint Andrew, member of the Jockey Club, Master of the Hunt - is escorted out of the Kremlin, across Red Square and through the elegant revolving doors of the Hotel Metropol. Deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, the Count has been sentenced to house arrest indefinitely. But instead of his usual suite, he must now live in an attic room while Russia undergoes decades of tumultuous upheaval.
Can a life without luxury be the richest of all?
Small Pleasures Clare Chambers ( paperback)
£8.99
Chambers' eye for undemonstrative details achieves a Larkin-esque lucidity' Guardian'
An almost flawlessly written tale of genuine, grown-up romantic anguish' The Sunday Times 1957, the suburbs of South East London.
Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness.
The Paris Bookseller, Kerri Maher ( Paperback Dec 2022)
£9.99
A vivid evocation of the famous female-owned Parisian bookshop... Kerri Maher writes a love letter to books, bookstores and booklovers everywhere' Kate Quinn, author of The Alice Network'PARIS, 1919. Young, bookish Sylvia Beach knows there is no greater city in the world than Paris. But when she opens an English-language bookshop on the bohemian Left Bank, Sylvia can't yet know she is making history.
Many leading writers of the day, from Ernest Hemingway to Gertrude Stein, consider Shakespeare and Company a second home. Here some of the most profound literary friendships blossom - and none more so than between James Joyce and Sylvia herself. When Joyce's controversial novel Ulysses is banned, Sylvia determines to publish it through Shakespeare and Company.
But the success and notoriety of publishing the most infamous book of the century comes at deep personal cost as Sylvia risks ruin, reputation and her heart in the name of the life-changing power of books... -
Love Marriage, Monica Ali ( paperback 2 Feb 2023)
£9.99
TWO CULTURES. TWO FAMILIES. TWO PEOPLE.
The new novel from the bestselling, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of BRICK LANE
Yasmin Ghorami has a lot to be grateful for: a loving family, a fledgling career in medicine, and a charming, handsome fiancee, fellow doctor Joe Sangster. But as the wedding day draws closer and Yasmin's parents get to know Joe's firebrand feminist mother, both families must confront the unravelling of long-held secrets, lies and betrayals. As Yasmin dismantles her own assumptions about the people she holds most dear, she's also forced to ask herself what she really wants in a relationship and what a 'love marriage' actually means.
Love Marriage is a story about who we are and how we love in today's Britain - with all the complications and contradictions of life, desire, marriage and family. What starts as a captivating social comedy develops into a heart-breaking and gripping story of two cultures, two families and two people trying to understand one another. 'Ali's wit and insight illuminate the complications of modern love in Britain today.
The Premonitions Bureau, Sam Knight ( paperback May 23)
£9.99
The story of a strange experiment - a journey into the oddest corners of 60s Britain and the outer edges of science and reason. Premonitions are impossible. But they come true all the time.You think of a forgotten friend. Out of the blue, they call. But what if you knew that something terrible was going to happen? A sudden flash, the words CHARING CROSS.
Four days later, a packed express train comes off the rails outside the station. What if you could share your vision, and stop that train? Could these forebodings help the world to prevent disasters?In 1966, John Barker, a dynamic psychiatrist working in an outdated British mental hospital, established the Premonitions Bureau to investigate these questions. He would find a network of hundreds of correspondents, from bank clerks to ballet teachers.
Among them were two unnervingly gifted "percipients". Together, the pair predicted plane crashes, assassinations and international incidents, with uncanny accuracy. And then, they informed Barker of their most disturbing premonition: that he was about to die.
The Premonitions Bureau is an enthralling true story, of madness and wonder, science and the supernatural - a journey to the most powerful and unsettling reaches of the human mind.
The Museum of Ordinary People, Mike Gayle ( paperback March 2023)
£9.99
The superb new novel from the bestselling author of Half A World Away and All the Lonely People. Filled with warmth, tenderness and character. It really made me think, too - I love that it encourages us to see the extraordinary in the ordinary.Still reeling from the sudden death of her mother, Jess is about to do the hardest thing she's ever done: empty her childhood home so that it can be sold. But when in the process Jess stumbles across the mysterious Alex, together they become custodians of a strange archive of letters, photographs, curios and collections known as The Museum of Ordinary People. As they begin to delve into the history of the objects in their care, Alex and Jess not only unravel heart-breaking stories that span generations and continents, but also unearth long buried secrets that lie much closer to home.
A thought-provoking and poignant story of memory, grief, loss and the things we leave behind.
A Little Unsteadily into Light : New Dementia-Inspired Fiction ( 2 Sept 2022)
£14.99
To live with dementia is to develop extraordinary and various new ways of being – linguistically, cognitively and practically. The storyteller operates similarly, using words and ideas creatively to reveal a slightly different perspective of the world.
In this anthology of fourteen new short stories, commissioned by Jan Carson and Jane Lugea, some of the best contemporary writers from Ireland and the UK powerfully and poignantly explore the depths and breadth of the real dementia experience, traversing age, ethnicity, class and gender, sex and consent.
Each writer’s story is drawn from their own personal experience of dementia and told with outrageous and dark humour, empathy and startling insight. Here are heroes and villains, tricksters and saints, mothers, fathers, lovers, friends, characters whose past has overshadowed their present and characters who are making a huge impact on the world they currently find themselves in. They might have dementia, but dementia is only a small part of who they are. They will challenge, frustrate, inspire and humble you.
Above all, these brilliant pieces of short fiction disrupt the perceived notions of what dementia is and, in their diversity, honesty and authenticity begin to normalise an illness that affects so many and break down the stigma endured by those living with it every day.
Marriage Portrait, Maggie O’Farrell ( paperback JULY 2023)
£9.99
Marriage was her destiny. Now she must survive it. The breathtaking new novel from the bestselling author of Hamnet, winner of the Women's Prize for Fiction 2020.
The Marriage Portrait is a dazzling evocation of the Italian Renaissance in all its beauty and brutality.
Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso. As they sit down to dinner it occurs to Lucrezia that Alfonso has a sinister purpose in bringing her here.
He intends to kill her. Lucrezia is sixteen years old, and has led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence's grandest palazzo. Here, in this remote villa, she is entirely at the mercy of her increasingly erratic husband.
What is Lucrezia to do with this sudden knowledge? What chance does she have against Alfonso, ruler of a province, and a trained soldier? How can she ensure her survival. The Marriage Portrait is an unforgettable reimagining of the life of a young woman whose proximity to power places her in mortal danger.
Lessons, Ian McEwan (paperback July 2023)
£9.99
The mesmerising new novel from Ian McEwan, the bestselling author of Atonement. The world is forever changing. But for so many of us, old wounds run deep.
Lessons is an intimate yet universal story of love, regret and a restless search for answers. 'Lessons is deep and wide, ambitious and humble, wise and substantial... McEwan's best novel in 20 years' New Statesman
While the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has descended, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts his piano teacher, Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Twenty-five years later, as the radiation from the Chernobyl disaster spreads across Europe, Roland's wife mysteriously vanishes and he is forced to confront the reality of his rootless existence and look for answers in his family history.
From the fall of the Berlin Wall to the Covid pandemic and climate change, Roland sometimes rides with the tide of history but more often struggles against it. Haunted by lost opportunities, he seeks solace through every possible means - literature, travel, friendship, drugs, politics, sex and love. His journey raises important questions.
Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape us and our memories? What role do chance and contingency play in our existence? And what can we learn from the traumas of the past?
Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes ( paperback March 2023)
£9.99
Medusa is the sole mortal in a family of gods.Growing up with her Gorgon sisters, she begins to realize that she is the only one who experiences change, the only one who can be hurt. And her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know. When the sea god Poseidon commits an unforgivable act in the temple of Athene, the goddess takes her revenge where she can - and Medusa is changed forever.
Writhing snakes replace her hair, and her gaze now turns any living creature to stone. The power cannot be controlled: Medusa can look at nothing without destroying it. She is condemned to a life of shadows and darkness.
Until Perseus embarks upon a quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .
In Stone Blind, Natalie Haynes - the Women's Prize-shortlisted author of A Thousand Ships - brings the infamous Medusa to life as you have never seen her before . . .
PRAISE FOR NATALIE HAYNES:'With her trademark passion, wit, and fierce feminism... her thoughtful portraits will linger with you long after the book is finished' - Madeline Miller
The Winners, Fredrik Backman ( paperback June 2023)
£10.99
'It's often said that winners write history, but there are no winners here 'This is a small story about big questions. It's a story about family, community, life. It starts with a storm - and a death.
But how does it end? Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there's something about this place that prevents it. The residents continue to grapple with life's big questions: What is a family? What is a community? And what, if anything, are we willing to sacrifice in order to protect them?As the locals of Beartown struggle to overcome the past, great change is on the horizon.
Someone is coming home after a long time away. Someone will be laid to rest. Someone will fall in love, someone will try to fix their marriage, and someone will do anything to save their children. Someone will submit to hate, someone will fight, and someone will grab a gun and walk towards the ice rink. So what are the residents of Beartown willing to sacrifice for their home? Everything. Praise for the Beartown books:'I utterly believed in the residents of Beartown, and felt ripped apart by the events in the book' Jojo Moyes 'Surrounded by impenetrable forests, Beartown recreates the stifling atmosphere of a dying community.
Backman can tickle the funny bone and tug on the heart strings when he needs to, and is a clever enough storyteller to not overindulge in either' Independent'
Best Of Friends, Kamila Shamsie ( paperback June 2023)
£8.99
'The spirit of Elena Ferrante haunts this tale of a friendship forged in Karachi' - Sunday Times'A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces' - Madeline Miller'
Sometimes it was as though the forty years of friendship between them was just a lesson in the unknowability of other people... Maryam and Zahra.
In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan's dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party.
That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome. Zahra and Maryam. In present-day London, two influential women remain bound together by loyalties, disloyalties, and the memory of that night, which echoes through the present in unexpected ways.
Now both have power; and both have very different ideas of how to wield it... Their friendship has always felt unbreakable; can it be undone by one decision?
Darling, by India Knight ( paperback May 2023)
£9.99
Marooned in a sprawling farmhouse in Norfolk, teenage Linda Radlett feels herself destined for greater things.She longs for love, but how will she ever find it? She can't even get a signal on her mobile phone. Linda's strict, former rock star father terrifies any potential suitors away, while her bohemian mother, wafting around in silver jewellery, answers Linda's urgent questions about love with upsettingly vivid allusions to animal husbandry. Eventually Linda does find her way out from the bosom of her deeply eccentric extended family, and she escapes to London.
She knows she doesn't want to marry 'a man who looks like a pudding', as her good and dull sister Louisa has done, and marries the flashy, handsome son of a UKIP peer instead. But this is only the beginning of Linda's pursuit of love, a journey that will be wilder, more surprising and more complicated than she could ever have imagined. A razor-sharp, laugh-out-loud novel that re-imagines the cast of Nancy Mitford's The Pursuit of Love.
The Romantic, William Boyd (paperback July 2023)
£9.99
Soldier. Farmer. Felon.Writer. Father. Lover.
One man, many lives. 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. From one of Britain's best-loved and bestselling writers comes an intimate yet panoramic novel set across the nineteenth century.
The Leviathan, Rosie Andrews ( paperback Jan 2023)
£9.99
A beguiling tale of superstition, myth and murder from a major new voice in historical fiction
Norfolk, 1643. With civil war tearing England apart, reluctant soldier Thomas Treadwater is summoned home by his sister, who accuses a new servant of improper conduct with their widowed father. By the time Thomas returns home, his father is insensible, felled by a stroke, and their new servant is in prison, facing charges of witchcraft.
Thomas prides himself on being a rational, modern man, but as he unravels the mystery of what has happened, he uncovers not a tale of superstition but something dark and ancient, linked to a shipwreck years before. Something has awoken, and now it will not rest. Richly atmospheric and deliciously unsettling, The Leviathan is set in England during a time of political and religious turbulence.
It is a tale of family and loyalty, superstition and sacrifice, but most of all it is a spellbinding mystery and a story of impossible things...
Mothers Boy, Patrick Gale ( paperback Feb 2023)
£10.99
Laura, a laundress, meets her young husband when they are both placed in service in Teignmouth in 1914. They have a baby, Charles, but his father returns home from the trenches a damaged man, already ill with the tuberculosis that will soon leave Laura a widow.
As a new war looms, Charles signs up for the navy as a coder. His escape from the tight, gossipy confines of Launceston to a more colourful life in action sees him blossom, as he experiences the possibility of death, and the excitement - even terror - of a love that is as clandestine as his work.
'Stands with the best queer literary fiction of a historical bent, illuminated as it is by Gale's devilish wit and talent for both social observation and intricacies of character' Sydney Morning Herald
At The Table, Claire Powell ( paperback March 2023)
£9.99
To Nicole and Jamie Maguire, their parents seem the ideal couple - a suburban double act, happily married for more than thirty years. So when Linda and Gerry announce that they've decided to separate, the news sends shockwaves through the siblings' lives, forcing them to confront their own expectations and desires. Hardworking - and hard-drinking - Nicole pursues the ex she unceremoniously dumped six years ago, while people-pleasing Jamie fears he's sleepwalking into a marriage he doesn't actually want.But as the siblings grapple with the pressures of thirtysomething life, their parents struggle to protect the fragile facade of their own relationship, and the secrets they've both been keeping. Set in 2018, Claire Powell's beautifully observed debut novel follows each member of the Maguire family over a tumultuous year of lunches, dinners and drinks, as old conflicts arise and relationships are re-evaluated. A gripping yet tender depiction of family dynamics, love and disillusionment, At the Table is about what it means to grow up - both as an individual, and as a family.
Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies, Maddie Mortimer ( paperback March 2023)
£9.99
Lia has only one child, Iris; her magical, awkward, endlessly creative daughter who has just entered the battleground of her teenage years. Lia and Iris have always been close, but there is a war playing out inside Lia's body, too, and everything is about to change. As she confronts what might be the end, memories of her own childhood and a passionate love affair come rushing into her present, unearthing buried secrets and her family's deepest fears.
But Lia hopes: for more time, for more love, for more Iris. Dancing between voices within Lia's body and without, flitting back and forth in time, this sweeping, dazzling story of a life and what it is to let go marks the arrival of an extraordinary novelist. '
- Longlisted for the Booker Prize
- Winner of the Desmond Elliott Prize
- Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year
- Shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize
- Longlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize
The 'Maybe Not Motherhood' Bundle ( Buy all 3 get 10% discount)
£27.00
At a certain time of your life, the rest of the world, if not you, becomes slightly obsessed with the biological question of whether ( or not) to have children. These books are all loosely concerned with that question and what it means, particularly if your first reaction is no, thanks.
The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano
Nine different lives. Following the butterfly effect of one life-defining choice, nine times over, The Nine Lives of Rose Napolitano winds through all the paths and decisions that shape a life. It cuts to the heart of what it means to be a woman.
Expectation
Hannah, Cate and Lissa are young, vibrant and inseparable.Their shared London world is ablaze with art and activism, romance and revelry - and the promise of everything to come. Ten years on, they are not where they hoped to be... each hungers for what the others have. And each wrestles with the same question: what does it take to lead a meaningful life? The most razor-sharp and heartbreaking novel of the year, EXPECTATION is a novel about finding your way: as a mother, a daughter, a wife, a rebel.
Olive
Olive and her friends have shared every milestone. From first loves and first heartbreaks to flatshares and the first scary steps into the real world, they've been through it all - together. But in the maze of life, through the winding paths that lead to different choices and different futures, will the bonds of friendship hold strong when Olive needs them most? Moving, memorable and a mirror for anyone at a crossroads.
Two Nights in Lisbon, Chris Pavone ( paperback April 2023)
£9.99
A woman wakes up to discover her new husband is missing and sets out on a wild race of power, politics, and revenge in this international thriller from New York Times bestselling author Chris Pavone. You think you know a person... Ariel Pryce wakes up in Lisbon, alone.Her husband is gone - no warning, no note, not answering his phone. Something is wrong. She starts with hotel security, then the police, then the US embassy, at each confronting questions she can't fully answer: What exactly is John doing in Lisbon? Why would he drag her along on his business trip? Who would want to harm him? And why does Ariel know so little about her new husband?The clock is ticking.
Ariel is running out of time. But the one person in the world who can help her is the one person she doesn't want to ask... An intelligent, multi-layered thriller, Two Nights in Lisbon is filled with twists, turns, husbands, wives, secrets and lies - and it will linger long after you turn the surprising final page.
Black Butterflies, Priscilla Morris ( paperback April 2023)
£9.99
A moving, compelling, deeply human novel about love, hope and resilience in a city under siege. Everyone should read it' Emma Stonex, bestselling author of The Lamplighters
Sarajevo, spring 1992. Each night, nationalist gangs erect barricades, splitting the diverse city into ethnic enclaves; each morning, the residents - whether Muslim, Croat or Serb - push the makeshift barriers aside.
When violence finally spills over, Zora, an artist and teacher, sends her husband and elderly mother to safety with her daughter in England. Reluctant to believe that hostilities will last more than a handful of weeks, she stays behind while the city falls under siege. As the assault deepens and everything they love is laid to waste, black ashes floating over the rooftops, Zora and her friends are forced to rebuild themselves, over and over.
Theirs is a breathtaking story of disintegration, resilience and hope.
The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudedsey, Sean Lusk ( paperback May 2023)
£9.99
A BBC Between the Covers Book Club pick and Sunday Times Historical Fiction Book of the Month, for fans of PANDORA, THE ESSEX SERPENT and THE NIGHT CIRCUS. Longlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction 2023.
Zachary Cloudesley is gifted in a remarkable way. But not all gifts are a blessing...
Leadenhall Street, London, 1754. Raised amongst the cogs and springs of his father's workshop, Zachary Cloudesley has grown up surrounded by strange and enchanting clockwork automata. He is a happy child, beloved by his father Abel and the workmen who help bring his father's creations to life.
He is also the bearer of an extraordinary gift; at the touch of a hand, Zachary can see into the hearts and minds of the people he meets. But then a near-fatal accident will take Zachary away from the workshop and his family. His father will have to make a journey that he will never return from.
And, years later, only Zachary can find out what happened. A beautifully crafted historical mystery of love and hope, and the adventure of finding your place in the world. ------'Packed with intrigue, vividly drawn characters and heartstopping emotion, this beautifully written, ingeniously crafted debut is absolutely enthralling' - Sunday Express'
. . intricately plotted, and peopled with intriguing characters' - Daily MailWhat readers are saying:'an excellent historical, magical realist novel''beautifully written''full of love and humour''original and rich in historical detail''my best book of 2022''totally engrossing .
