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 in a separate collection.
Levitation for Beginners, Suzannah Dunn ( paperback Jan 2025)
£9.99
A sharp eye and keen wit are brought to bear on the secrets and lies of a small rural community - secrets and lies that may prove deadly. It's 1972 and ten-year-old Deborah is living a ten-year-old life: butterscotch angel delight and Raleigh chopper bikes, and Clunk Click, and Crackajack and Jackanory, Layla and the Bee Gees, flares and ponchos. But new girl Sarah-Jayne breezes into school, pretty as a picture and full of gossip and speculation, as well as unlikely but thrilling stories about levitation.
The other girls are dazzled but Deborah is wary and keeps her distance. That same week, eighteen-year-old brickie Sonny turns up on her doorstep with a stray tortoise and begins an unlikely friendship with her young widowed mum. That's bad enough, Deborah thinks, but then Sonny starts work on a site opposite the school and Sarah-Jayne decides he's the latest love of her life.
Nothing escapes Sarah-Jayne, and Deborah fears what she'll make of her mum. It's good to be different, her mum often says; but not, Deborah knows, too different. So, Deborah changes tactics, keeping her friends close and her enemy closer, even stepping up for some of Sarah-Jayne's levitation sessions.
Then she's invited to Sarah-Jayne's lovely house, where she meets her charming family and encounters Sarah-Jayne's big sister's fiance, Max, which is when she senses that all isn't quite as it seems.
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.
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 !
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.
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.
Madame Matisse, Sophie Haydock ( hardback April 2025)
£18.99
This is the story of three women - one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years.
The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her mother and a father she adores. Amelie is first drawn to Henri Matisse as a way of escaping the conventional life expected of her. A free spirit, she sees in this budding young artist a glorious future for them both.
Ambitious and driven, she gives everything for her husband's art, ploughing her own desires, her time, her money into sustaining them both, even through years of struggle and disappointment. Lydia Delectorskaya is a young Russian emigree, who fled her homeland following the death of her mother. After a fractured childhood, she is trying to make a place for herself on France's golden Riviera, amid the artists, film stars and dazzling elite.
Eventually she finds employment with the Matisse family. From this point on, their lives are set on a collision course.... Marguerite is Matisse's eldest daughter.
When the life of her family implodes, she must find her own way to make her mark and to navigate divided loyalties. Based on a true story, Madame Matisse is a stunning novel about drama and betrayal; emotion and sex; glamour and tragedy, all set in the hotbed of the 1930s art movement in France. In art, as in life, this a time when the rules were made to be broken...
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
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.
Morgan Is My Name, Sophie Keetch ( paperback July 2024)
£9.99
An atmospheric, feminist retelling of the early life of famed villainess Morgan le Fay, set against the colourful chivalric backdrop of Arthurian legend. 'The start of what will be a classic trilogy.' The TimesMy name is Morgan... And there aren’t enough words for all that I am.
When King Uther Pendragon murders her father and tricks her mother into marriage, Morgan refuses to be crushed. Trapped amid the machinations of men in a world of isolated castles and gossiping courts, she discovers secret powers. Vengeful and brilliant, it's not long before Morgan becomes a worthy adversary to Merlin, influential sorcerer to the king.
But fighting for her freedom, she risks losing everything – her reputation, her loved ones and her life. 'Beautifully written...with fabulous, nuanced characters!' Elodie Harper, bestselling author of The Wolf Den trilogy'Evocative, haunting and utterly addictive, this is a book to lose yourself in.' Tracy Borman, author of The King's Witch
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
Oh Sister, Jodie Chapman ( paperback March 2024)
£9.99
Meet Isobel, Jen and Zelda. Three women whose bodies and minds are not their own.They belong to the Church. Life and death decisions are taken by others on their behalf. Who they might marry.
Whether they start a family. Isobel and Jen know nothing of the world. But when Isobel's husband leaves her and Jen challenges those in charge, the Church turns its back on them.
Zelda - never one for doing what is expected - dares to find hope on the outside. Meet Isobel, Jen and Zelda. Three women desperate to find a life to call their own .
. . This is a novel about what it is like to live inside a prison of the mind and how to break out of it - if you can.
Old Babes in The Wood, Margaret Atwood ( March 2023)
£9.99
'Gripping... a writer in full possession of her powers' Financial Times'
Our London Lives, Christine Dwyer Hickey ( Sept 24, hardback)
£20.00
A profound love story...Like Barbara Kingsolver, Hickey captures the pulse of the living moment' COLUM McCANN'
A London novel that captures the living moment of the city across decades' PAUL LYNCH
1979. In the vast and often unforgiving city of London, two Irish outsiders seeking refuge find one another: Milly, a teenage runaway, and Pip, a young boxer full of anger and potential who is beginning to drink it all away. Over the decades their lives follow different paths, interweaving from time to time, often in one another's sight, always on one another's mind, yet rarely together.
Forty years on, Milly is clinging onto the only home she's ever really known while Pip, haunted by T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, traipses the streets of London and wrestles with the life of the recovering alcoholic. And between them, perhaps uncrossable, lies the unspoken span of their lives.
Dark and brave, this epic novel offers a rich and moving portrait of an ever-changing city, and a profound inquiry into character, loneliness and the nature of love.
Piglet, Lottie Hazel ( paperback Jan 2025)
£9.99
For Piglet (an unshakable childhood nickname ) getting married is her opportunity to reinvent. Together, Kit and Piglet are the picture of domestic bliss - effortless hosts, planning a covetable wedding ...
But if a life looks too good to be true, it probably is. Thirteen days before they are due to be married, Kit reveals an awful truth, cracking the facade Piglet has created. It has the power to strip her of the life she has so carefully built, so smugly shared.
To do something about it would be to self-destruct. But what will it cost her to do nothing?As the hours count down to their wedding, Piglet is torn between a growing appetite and the desire to follow the recipe, follow the rules. Surely, with her husband, she could be herself again.
Wouldn't it be a waste for everything to curdle now?Piglet is the searing, unforgettable and original debut which is set to take readers by storm in 2024. - The prose is rich, you will feel hungry and satisfied with this entertaining novel!
Placeholders, James Roseman ( Paperback Sept 2024)
£10.99
An unflinching and emotionally insightful debut about cultural identity, homesickness, love and loss. In the five years following his brother's death, Aaron has built himself a life of solitary routines. After moving from Dublin to Boston, and illegally overstaying her visa, Róisín has done the same.
When the two meet on a night out, they each find in the other something missing in their lives. A semblance of home. Their relationship is complicated by their disparate religious backgrounds - Aaron is Jewish; Roísín is atheist - and by the harsh realities of everyday life.
Just as they're pushed to their breaking point, Roísín realises she is pregnant. Placeholders is a poignant story of loneliness corrected and the transformative power of love.
Roman Stories, Jhumpa Lahiri ( paperback June 2024)
£9.99
From the internationally bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Interpreter of Maladies comes an exquisitely crafted work of fiction. In these short stories Jhumpa Lahiri sets her gaze on the eternally beautiful city of Rome, illuminating the frailties of the human condition and dissecting lives lived on the margins. A man recalls a summer party that awakens an alternative version of himself.
A couple haunted by a tragic loss return to seek consolation. An outsider family is pushed out of the block in which they hoped to settle. A set of steps in a Roman neighbourhood connects the daily lives of the city’s myriad inhabitants.
This is an evocative fresco of Rome, the most alluring character of all: contradictory, in constant transformation and a home to those who know they can’t fully belong but choose it anyway. Rich with Lahiri’s signature gifts, Roman Stories is a masterful work from one of the finest writers of our time. Translated from the Italian by Jhumpa Lahiri and Todd Portnowitz
Shark Heart, Emily Habeck ( paperback June 2024)
£10.99
For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He's turning into a great white shark, and has less than a year left to live as a human.
At first, Wren resists her husband's fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms?But as Lewis changes, day by day, Wren begins to make peace with the inevitable. After all, this isn't the first time she's lost a loved one.
An extraordinary novel of love, loss, hope and happiness, Shark Heart explores the shapes that love takes, in all its many forms, and asks us to ask ourselves: what makes us human?
'Every page bursts with heart' Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See'Compelling, moving, lyrical' - Claire North, author of Ithaca
Shark Heart, Emily Habeck ( paperback June 2024)
£10.99
For Lewis and Wren, their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He's turning into a great white shark, and has less than a year left to live as a human.
At first, Wren resists her husband's fate. Is there a way for them to be together after Lewis fully transforms?But as Lewis changes, day by day, Wren begins to make peace with the inevitable. After all, this isn't the first time she's lost a loved one.
An extraordinary novel of love, loss, hope and happiness, Shark Heart explores the shapes that love takes, in all its many forms, and asks us to ask ourselves: what makes us human?
Every page bursts with heart' Anthony Doerr, author of All The Light We Cannot See'Compelling, moving, lyrical' - Claire North, author of Ithaca and The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
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
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.
So Thrilled For You - Holly Bourne ( hardback Jan 2025)
£16.99
*THE BOOK FOR EVERY WOMAN YOU KNOW*
An intense heatwave. A high-stakes baby shower. Will it all end in tears?Nicki, Lauren, Charlotte and Steffi have been friends since university.
Now in their thirties, life is pulling them in different directions - but when Charlotte organises the baby shower of hell for pregnant Nicki, the girls are reunited. Under a sweltering hot summer day, tensions rise - and by the end of the day, nothing will ever be the same. Someone started a fire at the house - and everyone's a suspect...
Is it Steffi, happily child-free but feeling judged by her friends? Is it Charlotte, desperate to conceive and jealous of those who have? Is it Lauren, who is finding motherhood far, far harder than she imagined? Or is it Nicki herself, who never wanted a baby shower anyway?In the aftermath, the police put together the facts - but the truth will shock everyone. Even you. BIG LITTLE LIES meets EXPECTATION in the incredible new novel from Holly Bourne - it's the book you'll want to read three times, then give to every woman in your life.
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.
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
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.
Sword of the War God, Tim Hodkinson ( hardback and paperback 2024)
£20.00
Featuring breathtaking battles, fearsome foes, and vehement vows of vengeance, SWORD OF THE WAR GOD is an epic historical adventure adventure set amongst the blood and tumult of fifth-century Europe, where the dying Roman Empire, the mighty Huns, and heroes from Norse mythology vie for power. 'Epic, violent storytelling and great fun to read' The Times'Tim Hodkinson has created a fascinating and undeniably epic tale... Highly recommended!' Theodore Brun'A relentless tale from start to finish that will leave you breathless for more.' Richard CullenIn a world of war and ruin, men and gods collide.
436 AD. The Burgundars are confident of destroying Rome's legions, for the Empire is weak. Their forces are strong and they have beaten the Romans in battle before.
But they are annihilated, their king killed, his people scattered. Their fabled treasure is lost. For Rome has new allies: the Huns, whose taste for bloodshed knows no bounds.
Many years later, the Huns, led by the fearsome Attila, have become the deadliest enemies of Rome. Attila seeks the Burgundars’ treasure, for it includes the legendary Sword of the War God, said to make the bearer unbeatable. No alliance can defeat Attila by conventional means.
With Rome desperate for help, a one-eyed old warlord from distant lands and his strange band of warriors may have the answers... but oaths will be broken and the plains of Europe will run with blood before the end. Drawing on Norse mythology and European history, Sword of the War God is an epic historical adventure perfect for fans of Bernard Cornwell, Joanne Harris, Neil Gaiman and Christian Cameron.
Talking At Night, Claire Daverley (paperback June 2024)
£8.99
Will and Rosie meet as teenagers. They're opposites in every way.
She overthinks everything; he is her twin brother's wild and unpredictable friend. But over secret walks home and late-night phone calls, they become closer - destined to be one another's great love story. Until, one day, tragedy strikes, and their future together is shattered.
But as the years roll on, Will and Rosie can't help but find their way back to each other. Time and again, they come close to rekindling what might have been. What do you do when the one person you should forget is the one you just can't let go
'Spellbinding, beautiful, lyrical and tender...a dazzling debut.
I loved every word and was left longing for more' ROSIE WALSH, author of THE MAN WHO DIDN'T CALL
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.
The Artist, Lucy Steeds ( hardback Jan 2025)
£16.99
PROVENCE, 1920 ; Ettie moves through the remote farmhouse, silently creating the conditions that make her uncle's artistic genius possible. Joseph, an aspiring journalist, has been invited to the house.
He believes he'll make his name by interviewing the reclusive painter, the great Edouard Tartuffe. But everyone has their secrets. And, under the cover of darkness, Ettie has spent years cultivating hers. Over this sweltering summer, everyone's true colours will be revealed. Because Ettie is ready to be seen. Even if it means setting her world on fire.
Steeped in the heat and atmosphere of 1920s Provence, this novel brims with intrigue, hope and yearning' Elizabeth Macneal, author of The Doll Factory
Dextrous and powerful . . .a hugely accomplished portrait of ambition and self-fulfilment' Guardian
The Covenant of Water, Abraham Verghese ( paperback March 2024)
£10.99
Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere.
At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch - known as Big Ammachi - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.
OPRAH'S BOOK CLUB PICK
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
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.
'
The End of Nightwork, Aidan Cottrell-Boyce, (paperback Jan 2024)
£9.99
Pol suffers from a very rare hormonal disorder that ages him erratically: when he was thirteen, his body aged ten years overnight, and now in his early thirties, he still has the outward appearance of a twenty-three-year-old. But with his condition dormant, Pol and his wife Caroline manage to live an ordinary life in London. They're happy enough, even if having a young child has put something of a strain on their marriage.
That and Pol's obsessive interest in the writings of an obscure seventeenth-century Puritan prophet, Bartholomew Playfere, and his premonitions of ecological disaster and the end of the world. But while Pol is failing to complete his research on Playfere, he encounters a radical new movement that argues that all economic and political events are part of an aeon-long struggle between the old and the young - that the 'hoarist' habit of violence, their need to conquer, has also affected how they treat the planet. The leader of this popular movement predicts an imminent inter-generational conflict - father against son, mother against daughter - that echoes Playfere's own prophecies.
paperback Jan 2024 cover TBC
The Fraud, Zadie Smith ( paperback June 2024)
£9.99
Zadie Smith returns with her first historical novel.Kilburn, 1873. The 'Tichborne Trial' has captivated the widowed Scottish housekeeper Mrs Eliza Touchet and all of England. Readers are at odds over whether the defendant is who he claims to be - or an imposter.
Mrs Touchet is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her novelist cousin and his wives, this life and the next. But she is also sceptical. She suspects England of being a land of facades, in which nothing is quite what it seems.
Andrew Bogle meanwhile finds himself the star witness, his future depending on telling the right story. Growing up enslaved on the Hope Plantation, Jamaica, he knows every lump of sugar comes at a human cost. That the rich deceive the poor.
And that people are more easily manipulated than they realise. Based on real historical events, The Fraud is a dazzling novel about how in a world of hypocrisy and self-deception, deciding what's true can prove a complicated task. 'As always it is a pleasure to be in Zadie Smith's mind, which, as time goes on, is becoming contiguous with London itself.
The Future, Naomi Alderman ( paperback August 2024)
£20.00
A page-turner of a book.
'A little Atwood, a little Gibson, all Alderman, it's brilliant and I loved it' LAUREN BEUKES
The new novel from the Women's Prize-winning, bestselling author of The Power, The Future is a white-knuckle tour de force and dazzling exploration of the world we have made and where we are going. The Future is where the money is.
The Future is a few billionaires leading the world to destruction. The Future is a handful of friends hatching a daring plan. The Future is the greatest heist ever? Or the cataclysmic end of civilisation...
The Future is here. 'A rollicking, fun-packed thriller with juicy stakes, constantly escalating twists, and a cast of characters who feel like they already exist somewhere out there in our fragile, free-wheeling present' Alastair Reynolds, author of Eversion
The Glassmaker, Tracy Chevalier ( hardback September 2024)
£20.00
Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano.
Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives learning to handle. Women are not meant to work with glass, but Orsola Rosso flouts convention to save her family from ruin. She works in secret, knowing her creations must be perfect to be accepted by men.
But perfection may take a lifetime. Skipping like a stone through the centuries, we follow Orsola as she hones her craft through war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss. The beads she creates will adorn the necks of empresses and courtesans from Paris to Vienna – but will she ever earn the respect of those closest to her? Tracy Chevalier is a master of her own craft, and The Glassmaker is vivid, inventive, spellbinding: a virtuoso portrait of a woman, a family and a city that are as everlasting as their glass.
The Hiding Game, Naomi Wood (paperback, 4 Feb 2021)
£8.99
The Hiding Game is an intoxicating story of love and betrayal, set in the Bauhaus art school. Heady, gripping and unforgettable, Naomi Wood's third novel explores the perils of secrecy in a changing and increasingly dangerous world. In Roaring Twenties Germany, Paul, Charlotte and Walter meet at the Bauhaus art school.The trio form a close-knit group, in which passions and rivalries collide. But when Walter is betrayed, he makes a terrible mistake- a secret he will keep from Paul and Charlottefor as long as he can. As political tensions escalate and the Nazis gain power, Walter's secret - hidden in notebooks, paintings and blueprints - ultimately threatens the very lives of his friends, with devastating consequences.
Shortlisted for The Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown Award. Longlisted for The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.
The House of Broken Bricks, Fiona WIlliams (paperback Jan 2025)
£9.99
A clever, heartbreaking, heartwarming depiction of family love, grief and the possibility of hope.'JO BROWNING WROE, author of A Terrible Kindness'
Ain't nothing wrong with being broken. Nothing at all. You're like these houses, not a whole brick in em and look how strong they are. As Tess traces the sunrise over the floodplains, light that paints the house a startling crimson, she yearns for the comforting chaos of life as it once was. Instead of Max and Sonny tracking dirt through the kitchen - Tess and Richard's 'rainbow twins' - Tess absorbs the quiet.
The nights draw in, the soil cools and Richard fights to get his winter crops planted rather than deal with the discussion he cannot bear to have. Secrets and vines clamber over the broken red bricks and although its inhabitants seem to be withering, in the damp, crumbling soil Sonny knows that something is stirring . .
As the seasons change, and the cracks let in more light, the family might just be able to start to heal. This is the story of a broken family, what they see and what they cannot say laid bare in their overlapping perspectives.
Fiona Williams' stunning nature-writing and poetic prose, turns a relatively simple story into a hauntingly beautiful experience. ( Paperback from January 2025)
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...
The Life Impossible, Matt Haig ( 29 August 2024)
£20.00
The remarkable new novel from the author of the multimillion-selling international sensation The Midnight Library'A beautiful novel full of life-affirming wonder and imagination' BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH'What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don't understand yet . . .'When retired Maths teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her.
She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan. Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the Balearics Grace searches for answers about her friend's life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed.
But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past. Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.
The Lost Love Songs of Boysie Singh, Ingrid Persaud ( hardback May 2024)
£18.99
From the award-winning author of Love After Love ( an award winning and popular first novel) comes an epic of wonder, danger and risk. This is the tale of four women. Popo: brilliant, vulnerable and stuck.
She's determined to free herself from the traps of her past. Mana Lala: a devoted mother - her only connection to her man is their little boy, and she will do anything to keep them both close. For Doris, well, he's glorious and once she's licked him into shape, her husband presents an opportunity to climb the social ladder.
She's heard the awful stories, but she's sure they won't be hers. Rosie just wants to mind her business, her lover, Etty, and her store. Four lives, connected and controlled by one man: the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh.
Pull up a chair and let these women tell of the man they believed could love, help or free them, and how some of them survived to tell a tale at all.
The Love of my Life, Rosie Walsh ( paperback July 2023)
£8.99
Who are you?Emma loves her husband Leo and their young daughter Ruby: she'd do anything for them. But almost everything she's told them about herself is a lie. And she might just have got away with it, if it weren't for her husband's job.Leo is an obituary writer and Emma is a well-known marine biologist, so, when she suffers a serious illness, Leo copes by doing what he knows best - reading and writing about her life. But as he starts to unravel her past, he discovers the woman he loves doesn't really exist. Even her name is fictitious.
When the very darkest moments of Emma's past life finally emerge, she must somehow prove to Leo that she really is the woman he always thought she was . . .
But first, she must tell him about the love of her other life. 'Stunning' Daily Mail'A winning combination of big emotions and didn't-see-that-coming twist' Good Housekeeping
