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.
Most of these books can be personally recommended!
The Unbroken Beauty of Rosalind Bone, Alex McCarthy ( hardback June 2023)
£12.99
The Welsh village of Cwmcysgod may appear a quiet, sleepy sort of place. But beneath the surface, tensions simmer, hearts ache, and painful truths threaten to emerge. Sixteen-year-old Catrin Bone knows only what she has been told.
Now, she is beginning to question her small world, and a version of the past that seems to entrap and embitter her reclusive mother, Mary. Mary had a sister once, a girl of unparalleled beauty. Why did she disappear from the village in a shroud of shame all those years ago - and where is she now? Meanwhile the Clements brothers, skint and all out of hope, run rampant across the hills and lanes.
And old Dai Bevel, whose frailty masks a dark history, dreams of a girl he used to know... The sins of the past are approaching, for it takes a village: to raise a child, to bring down a woman, to hide something monstrous and to look the other way. In this tender, sly, exquisitely wrought novella, a unique cast of characters give voice to their versions of the truth.
But it is the story of Rosalind Bone, of her strength and of all that she has endured, that rises above the rest, shimmering with hope and possibility...
A quietly devastating read which lingers long after the final page' JAN CARSON, author of THE RAPTURES
The Queen of Dirt Island, Donal Ryan (paperback June 23)
£9.99
A number one bestseller from the prizewinning author; a soaring novel about four generations of strong women and fierce love. From the award-winning, Booker longlisted author of the number one bestseller, STRANGE FLOWERS, a searing, jubilant novel about four generations of women and the love and stories that bind them.The Aylward women are mad about each other, but you wouldn't always think it. You'd have to know them to know - in spite of what the neighbours might say about raised voices and dramatic scenes - that their house is a place of peace, filled with love, a refuge from the sadness and cruelty of the world.Their story begins at an end and ends at a beginning. It's a story of terrible betrayals and fierce loyalties, of isolation and togetherness, of transgression, forgiveness, desire, and love. About all the things family can be and all the things it sometimes isn't.
'One of the finest novelists writing today...a haunting, exquisite masterpiece.' RACHEL JOYCE'A generous mosaic of a novel about the staying power of love and pride and history and family' COLUM McCANN' Beautiful, compassionate ... Donal Ryan at his inimitable best.' MAGGIE O'FARRELL
Go As A River, Shelley Read ( hardback April 2023)Preorder PB 25 April 2024
£16.99
On a cool autumn day in 1948, Victoria Nash delivers late-season peaches from her family's farm set amid the wild beauty of Colorado. As she heads into her village, a dishevelled stranger stops to ask her the way. How she chooses to answer will unknowingly alter the course of both their young lives.So begins the mesmerising story of split-second choices and courageous acts that propel Victoria away from the only home she has ever known and towards a reckoning with loss, hope and her own untapped strength. Gathering all the pieces of her small and extraordinary existence, spinning through the eddies of desire, heartbreak and betrayal, she will arrive at a single rocky decision that will change her life for ever. GO AS A RIVER is a heart-wrenching coming-of-age story and a drama of enthralling power.
Act of Oblivion, Robert Harris ( paperback June 2023)
£9.99
'From what is it they flee?'He took a while to reply. By the time he spoke the men had gone inside. He said quietly, 'They killed the King.'1660.Colonel Edward Whalley and his son-in-law, Colonel William Goffe, cross the Atlantic. Having been found guilty of high treason for the murder of Charles the I, they are wanted and on the run. A reward hangs over their heads - for their capture, dead or alive.
In London, Richard Nayler, secretary of the regicide committee of the Privy Council, is tasked with tracking down the fugitives. He'll stop at nothing until the two men are brought to justice. Act of Oblivion is an epic journey across continents, and a chase like no other.
'A ripping page-turner' FINANCIAL TIMES'You could not do better than this' DAILY TELEGRAPH
How Far We’ve Come, Joyce Efia Harmer ( hardback May 2023)
£14.99
From debut author, Joyce Efia Harmer, comes a ground-breaking YA story of friendship and freedom that crosses continents and centuries, in a timeslip novel exploring the legacy of slavery.
Sometime, me love to dream that me is a human, a proper one, like them white folks is. Enslaved on a plantation in Barbados, Obah dreams of freedom.
As talk of rebellion bubbles up around her in the Big House, she imagines escape. Meeting a strange boy who's not quite of this world, she decides to put her trust in him. But Jacob is from the twenty-first century.
Desperate to give Obah a better life, he takes her back with him. At first it seems like dreams really do come true - until the cracks begin to show and Obah sees that freedom comes at an unimaginable cost . .
. Both hopeful and devastating, this powerful novel about equality, how far we've come, and how far we still have to go introduces an extraordinary new literary voice.
It All Comes Down to This, Terese Anne Fowler ( paperback June 2023)
£9.99
How differently the Geller sisters' lives would have turned out had C. J. Reynolds not been released from prison that February. .'Marti Geller is going to die soon, and she's hoping to take her secrets with her. To do this, Marti has stipulated in her will that the family's summer home on Mount Desert Island, Maine, must be sold as soon as possible.This request comes as a shock to her three daughters, a trio of strong-minded women who are each hiding a secret of their own. For the eldest daughter, Beck, the Maine cottage is essential to her secret wish to write a novel, and selling is the last thing she wants to do. But recently divorced Claire is privately too preoccupied with an unrequited love to be concerned about the sale, while the youngest daughter, Sophie, would never admit to her sisters that she desperately needs the sale in order to survive.
While the sisters argue over the fate of their late mother's property, enigmatic southerner C.J. Reynolds, with his own troubled past, is released from prison and begins to travel to Mount Desert Island. As this seemingly unconnected group all head for the coast of Maine, nothing is as it seems.
And everything is about to change. . .
The new novel from New York Times bestselling author Therese Anne Fowler ( A Good Neighbourhood ) follows three sisters in the aftermath of the death of their matriarch, whose last request might change everything... Perfect for fans of Celeste Ng, Mary Beth Keane and Jodi Picoult.
The Fire, Daniela Krien ( hardback June 2023)
£16.99
THE FIRE
How can two lovers find a way back to each other, when the pain of the past stands between them?With plans adrift after a fire burns down their rented holiday cabin, Rahel and Peter find themselves unexpectedly on an isolated farm where Rahel spent many a happy childhood summer. Suddenly, after years of navigating careers, demanding children and the monotony of the daily routine, they find themselves unable to escape each other's company.
With three weeks stretching ahead, they must come to an understanding on whether they have a future together. "A stylish, subtle read" Woman & Home BOOK OF THE MONTHWhat happens when love grows older and passion has faded? When what divides us is greater than what brought us together? And how easy is it to ask the fundamental questions about our relationships?
Both Translated from German.
LOVE IN FIVE ACTS
Daniela's previous novel has been very popular in our shop - Praise for LOVE IN FIVE ACTS:"Highly recommended" The Times - also available now as paperback
Bookseller Paula has lost a child, and a husband. Where will she find her happiness? Fiercely independent Judith thinks more of horses than men, but that doesn't stop her looking for love online. Brida is a writer with no time to write, until she faces a choice between her work and her family.
Abandoned by the "perfect" man, Malika struggles for recognition from her parents. Her sister Jorinde, an actor, is pregnant for a third time, but how can she provide for her family alone? Love in Five Acts explores what is left to five women when they have fulfilled their roles as wives, mothers, friends, lovers, sisters and daughters. As teenagers they experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall, but freedom brings with it another form of pressure: the pressure of choice.
Fairy Tale, Stephen King ( paperback June 2023)
£9.99
WELCOME TO THE DARK SIDE OF HAPPILY EVER AFTER...
Charlie Reade looks like a regular high school kid, great at baseball and football, a decent student. But when Charlie is seventeen, he meets a dog named Radar and her aging master, Howard Bowditch, a recluse in a big house at the top of a big hill, with a locked shed in the backyard. When Bowditch dies, he leaves Charlie a cassette tape telling a story no one would believe - inside the shed is a portal to another world.
Legendary storyteller Stephen King goes into the deepest well of his imagination in this spellbinding novel about a seventeen-year-old boy who inherits the keys to a parallel world where good and evil are at war, and the stakes could not be higher - for their world or ours.
The Dance Tree, Kiran Millwood Hargrave ( paperback May 2023)
£9.99
The gripping historical novel from Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Sunday Times bestselling author of The Mercies. The Dance Tree is the perfect book club read, as seen on BBC Two's Between the Covers.
Lisbet is pregnant, and frightened she will lose this child, too, when the arrival of a stranger upends her world, and promises to change her understanding of love forever.
Ida's life seems simple - she is married, her family fully formed - but a buried secret threatens to destroy her peaceful existence. Nethe has just returned from years in exile, punishment for a crime no one will name. As a mysterious dance plague takes hold of the city of Strasbourg, all three women become entangled in a web of deceit and clandestine passion that has them dancing to a dangerous tune.
The Club, Ellery LLoyd ( paperback May 2023)
£8.99
The Home Group is a collection of ultra-exclusive private members' clubs and a global phenomenon, and the opening of its most ambitious project yet - Island Home, a forgotten island transformed into the height of luxury - is billed as the celebrity event of the decade. But as the first guests arrive, the weekend soon proves deadly - because it turns out that even the most beautiful people can keep the ugliest secrets and, in a world where reputation is everything, they'll do anything to keep it.If your name's on the list, you're not getting out . . .
**********************************For fans of The White Lotus and Big Little Lies, Ellery Lloyd's The Club is an exhilarating, addictive read, telling a story of ambition, excess, and what happens when people who have everything - or nothing - to lose are pushed to their limit.
The Measure, Nikki Erlick ( paperback May 2023)
£9.99
Eight ordinary people. One extraordinary choice. It seems like just another morning.Around the world, people wake up, check the news, open the front door. On every doorstop is a box. Inside that box is the exact number of years that person has left to live.
Whether they open it or hide it under their bed, each person must learn to live in this new world: a couple who thought they didn't have to rush their life together, a doctor who cannot save himself from his own fate, best friends whose dreams are forever entwined, and a politician whose box becomes the powder keg that ultimately changes everything... Enchanting and deeply uplifting, The Measure is a sweeping, ambitious and invigorating story about family, friendship, hope and destiny that encourages us to live life to the fullest.
Falling Animals, Sheila Armstrong ( hardback May 2023)
£14.99
'Lush, lyrical and cleverly-constructed. A beautiful book.' Louise Kennedy, author of Trespasses The disquieting story of an unidentified man as told by those who crossed paths with him on the last day of his life, Sheila Armstrong's debut novel is haunting, lyrical and darkly suspensefulOn an isolated beach set against a lonely, windswept coastline, a pale figure sits serenely against a sand dune staring out to sea. His hands are folded neatly in his lap, his ankles are crossed and there is a faint smile on his otherwise lifeless face.
Months later, after a fruitless investigation, the nameless stranger is buried in an unmarked grave. But the mystery of his life and death lingers on, drawing the nearby villagers into its wake. From strandings to shipwrecks, it is not the first time that strangeness has washed up on their shores.
Told through a chorus of voices, Falling Animals follows the crosshatching threads of lives both true and imagined, real and surreal, past and present. Slowly, over great time and distance, the story of one man, alone on a beach, begins to unravel. Elegiac and atmospheric, dark and disquieting, Sheila Armstrong's debut novel marks her arrival as one of the most uniquely gifted writers at work in literary fiction today.
Paperback from May 2024
The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak ( paperback May 2023)
£8.99
The Forty Rules of Love is part of our Penguin Essentials series which spotlights the very best of our modern classics*One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped the World'*"Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough..."Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled.Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.
It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored. . .
'The past and present fit together beautifully in a passionate defence of passion itself' The Times'
When I Sing Mountains Dance, Irene Sola ( May 2023)
£8.99
When Domenec - mountain-dweller, father, poet, dreamer - dies suddenly, struck by lightning, he leaves behind two small children, Mia and Hilari, to grow up wild among the looming summits of the Pyrenees and the ghosts of the Spanish civil war. But then Hilari dies too, and his sister is forced to face life's struggles and joys alone. As the years tumble by, the inhabitants of the mountain - human, animal and other - come together in a chorus of voices to bear witness to the sorrows of one family, and to the savage beauty of the landscape.This remarkable debut is lyrical, mythical, elemental, and ferociously imaginative.
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 .
Honeybees and Distant Thunder, Riku Onda ( paperback May 2023)
£12.99
In a small coastal town just a stone's throw from Tokyo, a prestigious piano competition is underway. Over the course of two feverish weeks, three friends will experience some of the most joyous - and painful - moments of their lives.Though they don't know it yet, each will profoundly and unpredictably change the others, for ever. Aya was a piano genius, until she ran away from the stage and vanished; will the tall and talented Makun bring her back? Or will it be child of nature, Jin, a pianist without a piano, who carries the sound of his father's bees wherever he goes? Each of them will break the rules, awe their fans and push themselves to the brink. But at what cost?Tender, cruel, compelling, HONEYBEES AND DISTANT THUNDER is the unflinching story of love, courage and rivalry.
The Island of Longing, Anne Griffin ( paperback Feb 2024)
£9.99
One unremarkable afternoon, Rosie watched her daughter Saoirse cycle into town, expecting to hear the slam of the door when she returned a few hours later. But the slam never came. Eight years on, after an extensive investigation into her disappearance, Rosie is the only person who stubbornly believes that her child might still be alive.When Rosie receives a call from her father, asking her to return home for the summer, she is forced out of her limbo. Life on the island of Roaring Bay revives old rivalries, but it also brings new friendships and unexpected solace. Yet, when a sudden glimmer of hope appears, Rosie is forced to face an impossible question: is she right to think that Saoirse is still alive? Or will her belief that her daughter will one day return to her come at the cost of everything she has left?
Hotel 21, Senta Rich ( hardback June 2023)
£14.99
'I have a first-day rule. Any sign of trouble, even a whiff of a problem, and I walk.'Noelle is an efficient and friendly hotel cleaner, a model employee.Or so she'd have you think. The trouble is that she can't help taking little 'souvenirs' as she cleans. Nothing of value, just tokens of happy, normal lives: a lipstick, a hair clip, some tweezers.
And by the time the guest has noticed, she's long gone. As she starts at her 21st hotel, she's determined to beat her record of one month in a five star hotel before suspicion falls on her. But when she meets her new colleagues, her plans are complicated.
These women aren't just hands pushing carts down lonely hotel corridors: they are women with lives full of happiness and worry, pain and joy. The kind of lives Noelle has never known how to live. They make her wonder what it might be like to have real friends, people to stick around for...
Will the women at Hotel 21 give her the courage to claim the life she deserves, or will her old habits come back to haunt her?Cosmopolitan's Best Books to Read this April. 'A fresh, funny and touching read about friendship, survival and the power of human connection. Beautifully drawn and wonderfully satisfying.
Demon Copperhead, Barbara Kingsolver ( paperback May 2023)
£9.99
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise. In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends.
'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he's willing to travel to try and get there.
Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.
Barbara Kingsolver is an astounding writer (The Poisonwood Bible, Flight Behaviour, The Lacuna) and this contemporary retelling of David Copperfield is both a tribute to Dickens and an insightful reworking.
Night Wherever We Go, Tracey Rose Peyton ( Preorder paperback March 2024)
£16.99
On a struggling Texas plantation, six enslaved women slip from their sleeping quarters and gather in the woods under the cover of night. The Lucys-as they call the plantation owners, after Lucifer himself-have decided to turn around the farm's bleak financial prospects by making the women bear children. They have hired a "stockman" to impregnate them.
But the women are determined to protect themselves. Now, each of the six faces a choice. Nan, the doctoring woman, has brought a sack of cotton root clippings that can stave off children when chewed daily.
If they all take part, the Lucys may give up and send the stockman away. But a pregnancy for any of them will only encourage the Lucys further. And should their plan be discovered, the consequences will be severe.
Visceral and illuminating, Night Wherever We Go marks the arrival of a bold, lyrical and powerful new voice in fiction.
Paperback March 2024 £9.99
The Red Bird Sings, Aoife Fitzpatrick ( paperback Feb 2024)
£9.99
West Virginia, 1897. When young Zona Heaster Shue dies only a few months after her wedding, her mother Mary Jane becomes convinced that Zona was murdered - and by none other than her husband, Trout, the handsome blacksmith beloved in their small Southern town. But when Trout is put on trial, no one believes he could have done it, apart from Mary Jane and Zona's best friend Lucy, who was always suspicious of Trout.
As the trial raises to fever pitch and the men of Greenbrier County stand aligned against them, Mary Jane and Lucy must decide whether to reveal Zona's greatest secret in the service of justice. But it's Zona herself, from beyond the grave, who still has one last revelation to make.
'Keeps you turning pages right until the end.
Based on a real-life murder trial in 1897 West Virginia, this dazzling debut arrives with a Southern Gothic slant and a feminist spirit' DAILY MAIL
Things I wanted to Say, Monica Murphy ( paperback March 2023)
£9.99
Whit Lancaster is the cold, heartless and devastatingly handsome bad boy at Lancaster Prep.
Beautiful Summer Savage has no time for Whit. But his intense gaze traps her under a spell. Fills her with a longing she doesn't understand.
When Whit gets into trouble one night, Summer invites him in. Tends to his wounds. Lets her guard down, just for a moment .
. . Which is when Whit takes off in the dead of night.
Taking her journal with him. Now he holds all her darkest secrets, threatening to expose her to the entire school. So Summer strikes a deal with Whit.
A deal that leaves her at his mercy behind closed doors . . .
But what if he's at hers?
# booktok romance # not for kids !
How to Build a Boat, Elaine Feeney ( preorder paperback April 2024)
£16.99
A gorgeous gift of a novel, hopeful and full of humanity'- Douglas Stuart, Booker-Prize winning author of SHUGGIE BAIN
Jamie O'Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that comes with wind, the curvature of many objects, books with dust jackets, cats, rivers and Edgar Allan Poe. At age 13 there are two things he especially wants in life: to build a Perpetual Motion Machine, and to connect with his mother Noelle, who died when he was born.
In his mind these things are intimately linked. And at his new school, where all else is disorientating and overwhelming, he finds two people who might just be able to help him. How to Build a Boat is the story of how one boy and his mission transforms the lives of his teachers, Tess and Tadhg, and brings together a community.
Written with tenderness and verve, it's about love, family and connection, the power of imagination, and how our greatest adventures never happen alone
Pineapple Street, Jenny Jackson ( Paperback Feb 2024)
£8.99
Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights is one of New York City's most desirable residences, and home to the glamorous and well-connected Stockton family . . .
Darley, the eldest daughter, has never had to worry about money. She followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood - but ended up sacrificing more of herself than she ever intended. Sasha is marrying into the wealthy Stockton family, who are worlds apart from her own.
She feels like the outsider, trying to navigate their impenetrable traditions and please her new mother-in-law - plus her hesitancy to sign a pre-nup has everyone questioning her true intentions. Georgiana, the youngest, is falling in love with someone she can't (and really shouldn't) have - and is forced to confront the kind of person she wants to be. Witty, escapist and full of heart, with an unmissable cast of loveable - if flawed - characters, Pineapple Street is a beautifully observed novel about the complexities of family dynamics, the miles between the haves and the have-notes, and the all-consuming insanity of first love - while also asking the age-old question, can money really buy you happiness?
PreOrder Paperback 18 Feb 2024
The Memory of Animals, Claire Fuller ( hardback April 2023)
£16.99
Neffy is a young woman running away from grief and guilt, and the one big mistake that has derailed her career. When she answers the call to volunteer in a controlled vaccine trial, it offers her a way to pay off her many debts and, perhaps, to make up for the past. But when the London streets below her window fall silent, and all external communications cease, only Neffy and four other volunteers remain in the unit.
With food running out, and a growing sense that the strangers she is with may be holding back secrets, Neffy has questions that no one can answer. Does safety lie inside or beyond the unit? And who, or what is out there?While she weighs up her choices, she is introduced to a pioneering and controversial technology which allows her to revisit memories from her life before: a childhood divided between her enigmatic mother and her father in his small hotel in Greece. Intoxicated by the freedom of the past and the chance to reunite with those she loves, she increasingly turns away from her perilous present.
But in this new world where survival rests on the bonds between strangers, is she jeopardising any chance of a future?The Memory of Animals is a taut and emotionally charged novel about freedom and captivity, survival and sacrifice and whether you can save anyone before you save yourself. 'Another literary page-turner ... Compulsive and thoroughly convincing.
Paperback JULY 2024
The Forty Rules of Love, Elif Shafak ( preorder paperback edition May 18th, 2023)
£9.99
The international bestseller from the author of the Booker-shortlisted novel, 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World, The Forty Rules of Love is part of our Penguin Essentials series which spotlights the very best of our modern classics*
One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped the World'*
"Every true love and friendship is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough..."Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled.
Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.
It is a quest infused with Sufi mysticism and verse, taking Ella and us into an exotic world where faith and love are heartbreakingly explored. . .
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.
I’m Sorry You Feel that Way, Rebecca Wait ( paperback March 2023)
£8.99
For Alice and Hanna, saint and sinner, growing up is a trial.There is their mother, who takes a divide-and-conquer approach to child-rearing, and their father, who takes an absent one. There is also their older brother Michael, whose disapproval is a force to be reckoned with. There is the catastrophe that is never spoken of, but which has shaped everything .
. . As adults, Alice and Hanna must deal with disappointments in work and in love as well as increasingly complicated family tensions, and lives that look dismayingly dissimilar to what they'd intended.
They must look for a way to repair their own fractured relationship, and they must finally choose their own approach to their dominant mother: submit or burn the house down. And they must decide at last whether life is really anything more than (as Hanna would have it) a tragedy with a few hilarious moments. From the author of the Waterstones Book of the Month Our Fathers comes a compelling domestic comedy about complex family dynamics, mental health and the intricacies of sibling relationships.
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.
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.
A Tidy Ending, Joanna Cannon ( paperback March 2023)
£8.99
From the author of The Trouble with Goats and Sheep - she's a clever 'domestic noir' writer with a particularly insightful touch on characters.
Linda lives a nice, normal life, on a nice, normal street with Terry, her perfectly ordinary husband. Linda's not like everyone else, she keeps herself to herself.
But she's good at solving puzzles and there are times she sees things other people might have overlooked. Because nothing on Cavendish Avenue is quite as it seems. People have started to go missing in the neighbourhood and Linda will soon discover that some secrets can't stay buried forever...
------------------------------------------------------------- 'Genuinely haunting' THE TIMES, Thrillers of the Year 'A curtain-twitching, darkly funny tale with a gloriously sinister twist' OBSERVER
The Magic Kingdom, Russell Banks ( paperback Feb 2023)
£9.99
A dazzling tapestry of love and faith, memory and imagination, The Magic Kingdom questions what it means to look back and accept one's place in history. With an expert eye and stunning vision, Russell Banks delivers a wholly captivating portrait of a man navigating Americana and the passage of time. In 1971, a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine.Reflecting on his childhood in the early twentieth century, Harley recounts that after his father's sudden death, his family migrated down to Florida's swamplands - mere miles away from what would become Disney World - to join a community of Shakers. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labour, faith, and charity, rejecting all temptations that lay beyond the property. Though this way of life initially saved Harley and his family from complete ruin, when Harley began falling in love with Sadie Pratt, a consumptive patient living on the grounds, his loyalty to the Shakers and their conservative worldview grew strained and, ultimately, broke.
As Harley dictates his story across more than half a century - meditating on youth, Florida's everchanging landscape, and the search for an American utopia - the truth about Sadie, Elder John, and the Shakers comes to light, clarifying the past and present alike.
Hang The Moon, Jeannette Walls (Pre Order paperback 25 April 2024 )
£16.99
From Jeannette Walls, the bestselling author of The Glass Castle, a riveting new novel about an indomitable young woman in Prohibition-era Virginia. Walls writes a really good, fast paced narrative - highly recommended.
Most folk thought Sallie Kincaid was a nobody who'd amount to nothing. Sallie had other plans. Sallie Kincaid is the daughter of the biggest man in a small town, the charismatic Duke Kincaid.
Born at the turn of the twentieth century into a life of comfort and privilege, Sallie remembers little about her mother, who died in a violent argument with the Duke. By the time she is just eight years old, the Duke has remarried and had a son, Eddie. While Sallie is the Duke's daughter, sharp-witted and resourceful, Eddie is his mother's son, timid and cerebral.
When Sallie tries to teach young Eddie to be more like their father, her daredevil coaching leads to an accident, and Sallie is cast out. Nine years later, she returns, determined to reclaim her place in the family. That's a lot more complicated than Sallie expected, and she enters a world of conflict and lawlessness.
Sallie confronts the secrets and scandals that hide in the shadows of the Big House, navigates the factions in the family and town, and finally comes into her own as a bold, sometimes reckless bootlegger.
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 Theory of Not Quite Everything, Kara Gnodde ( hardback March 2023)
£14.99
Like circles of a Venn diagram, Mimi and Art Brotherton have always come as a pair. Devoted siblings, they're bound together in their childhood home by the tragic death of their parents.
Art believes that people - including his sister - are incapable of making sensible decisions when it comes to love. That's what algorithms are for. Mimi knows that her brother is a mathematical genius.
But she believes that maths isn't the answer to everything. Not quite. Especially when it comes to love.
Still, when Mimi begins her search for a soulmate, Art's insistence that she follow a strict mathematical plan seems reasonable. The arrival of Frank, however - a romantic stargazer who is definitely not algorithm-approved - challenges the siblings' relationship to breaking point. As their equilibrium falters, Art's mistrust of Frank grows, but so do Mimi's feelings.
Something about Frank doesn't quite add up, and only Art can see it . . .
The Theory of (Not Quite) Everything by Kara Gnodde is a tender, intelligent and uplifting novel about brothers and sisters, true love in all its forms, and how life is more than just a numbers game . . .
Paperback July 2024
Winter Soldier, or Piano Tuner, Daniel Mason ( paperbacks)
£9.99
Daniel Mason is a doctor by trade, but writes in his spare time. His stories are reminiscent of William Boyd, often including travel, historical context and a gripping tale. Very enjoyable and well written, one of our favourites.
The Piano Tuner
One misty London afternoon in 1886, piano tuner Edgar Drake receives an unusual request from the War Office: he must leave his quiet life and travel to the jungles of Burma to repair a rare grand piano owned by an enigmatic army surgeon.
So begins an extraordinary journey across Europe, the Red Sea, India and onwards, accompanied by an enchanting yet elusive woman. Edgar is at first captivated, then unnerved, as he begins to question the true motive behind his summons and whether he will return home unchanged to the wife who awaits him. .
The WInter Soldier
Lucius is a twenty-two-year-old medical student when World War I explodes across Europe. Enraptured by romantic tales of battlefield surgery, he enlists, only to find himself posted to a remote field-hospital ravaged by typhus. Supplies have all but run out, the other doctors have fled, and only a single nurse remains, from whom he must learn a brutal, makeshift medicine.
Then one day, an unconscious soldier is brought in from the snow, his uniform stuffed with strange drawings. He seems beyond rescue, until Lucius makes a fateful decision that will change the course of his life. From the gilded ballrooms of Imperial Vienna to the frozen forests of the Eastern Front, The Winter Soldier is the story of finding love in the sweeping tides of history, and of the mistakes we make and the precious opportunities to atone.
Old Babes in The Wood, Margaret Atwood ( March 2023)
£9.99
'Gripping... a writer in full possession of her powers' Financial Times'
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.
Nothing Special, Nicole Flattery ( hardback Mar 2023, paperback March 2024)
£9.99
A wildly original debut novel about two young women navigating the complex worlds of Andy Warhol's Factory, and coming of age in 1960s New YorkNew York City, 1966. Seventeen-year-old Mae lives in a run-down apartment with her alcoholic mother and her mother's sometimes-boyfriend, Mikey. She is turned off by the petty girls at her high school, and the sleazy men she typically meets.When she drops out, she is presented with a job offer that will remake her world entirely: she is hired as a typist for the artist Andy Warhol. Warhol is composing an unconventional novel by recording the conversations and experiences of his many famous and alluring friends. Tasked with transcribing these tapes alongside several other girls, Mae quickly befriends Shelley and the two of them embark on a surreal adventure at the fringes of the countercultural movement.
Going to parties together, exploring their womanhood and sexuality, this should be the most enlivening experience of Mae's life. But as she grows increasingly obsessed with the tapes and numb to her own reality, Mae must grapple with the thin line between art and voyeurism and determine how she can remain her own person as the tide of the sixties sweeps over her. Nothing Special is a whip-smart coming-of-age story about friendship, independence and the construction of art and identity, bringing to life the experience of young women in this iconic and turbulent moment.
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The Witch in the Well, Camilla Bruce ( paperback October 2023)
£9.99
Over a hundred years ago, the citizens of F- did something rather bad. And local school teacher Catherine Evans has made writing the definitive account of what happened when Ilsbeth Clark drowned in the well her life's work. The town's people may not want their past raked up, but Catherine is determined to shine a light upon that shameful event.For Ilsbeth was an innocent, after all. She was shunned and ostracised by rumour-mongers and ill-wishers and someone has to speak up for her. And who better than Catherine, who has herself felt the sting and hurt of such whisperings? But then a childhood friend returns to F -.
Elena is a successful author whose book, The Whispers Inside: A Reawakening of the Soul, has earned her a certain celebrity. In search of a new subject, she takes an interest in the story of Ilsbeth Clark and announces her intention to write a book about the long-dead woman, focusing on the natural magic she believes she possessed. And Elena has everything Catherine has not, like a platform and connections and no one seems to care that Elena's book will be pure speculation, tainting Ilsbeth's memory rather than preserving it.
Catherine is determined that something must be done and plots to blunt her rival's pen. However she had not allowed for the fact that the past might not be so dead after all - that something is reaching out from the well, disturbing her reality. Before summer's over, one woman will be dead, the other accused of murder .
. . but is she really guilty, or are there other forces at work? And who was Ilsbeth Clark, really? An innocent? A witch? Or something else entirely?
