NEWEST IN
We are constantly scouring the new publications for the best, the most interesting and the innovative. Here is a brief selection of what's noteworthy and just out.
Please note that we don't have a comprehensive list of everything new on our website, but if you send us an email to linda@bookspaperscissors.co.uk, we can source (almost) anything!
Ravelling, Estelle Birdy ( new paperback Oct 2025 )
£10.99
Estelle Birdy’s explosively original debut Ravelling channels the energies and agonies of young men let loose in the city, their city, navigating the tumultuous trajectory of youth and young manhood, where they balance their hopes with the harsh realities of their present. Hurtling between friendships, feuds, drug-deals, family and brushes with the law, this is modern Dublin as never before portrayed. Ravelling follows Deano, a weed-smoking hurling star, living with his aunt in an about-to-be-demolished flat; Hamza, a Pakistani Muslim atheist and precocious academic, who sells his ADHD drugs to the kids in a private school; Oisín, empathetic and iron-willed, who has begun to see his dead brother at the end of his bed; Congolese nature lover, Benit, who just wants to relax and hurl with the lads; Karl, a maybe-gay fashionista, dreaming of something better while immersing himself in his art.
Bound by friendship, place and the memories of those who’ve died too soon, these young men grapple with race, class, sex, parties, poverty, violence and Garda harassment, all while wondering what it means to be a man in twenty-first century Ireland. ‘Ravelling masterfully evokes the fragility and beauty of human relationships. It’s funny, bold and bursting with love.
There’s no moral here, just an ode to community, a burning sense of youth and a plea for a society pushed to the margins.’ KARL GEARY
Earth Shapers, Maxim Samson ( hardback August 2025)
£22.00
Mountains, meridians, rivers and borders; these are some of the features that carve up the world on our maps and in our minds. But geography is far less set in stone than we might believe and, over time, we have become experts at reshaping our surroundings. From the Qhapaq Ñan, South America's 'Great Road', and the Panama Canal to Mozambique's railways and Korea's sacred Baekdu-daegan mountain range, Samson explores how we mould the world around us.
And how, as we etch our needs onto the natural landscape, we alter the course of history. An immense work of cultural geography touching on ecology, sociology, history and politics, Earth Shapers argues that, far from being constrained by geography, we are instead its creators. Readable and fascinating.
The Wild HooBoo, Barry Falls (hardback August 2025)
£12.99
When the selfish King captures the wish-granting wild HooBoo, he is taught a lesson he won't forget!The wild HooBoo sings a magical song – coo, chit churp churee! – that can grant you anything you wish for, if your heart is good and true. But the King’s only desire is selfish and cruel, so when he captures the HooBoo and starts making demands, things don’t quite go as he’d planned . .
. Stunningly illustrated and bursting with colour and kindness, this is a new cautionary tale with a classic feel from award-winning Irish children's author Barry Falls.
Night Swimming : How to swim through the darkness by Al Mennie ( paperback August 2025)
£14.99
Al grew up in Castlerock in Northern Ireland after moving there as a child. He became a fearless surfer and swimmer, with an emotional connection to the sea which he shares here in this hugely informative and original book.
Discover the unmatched beauty of wild swimming by night. Combining motivational writing with evocative storytelling, international big wave surfer and night swimmer Al Mennie gives readers the tools to discover their own methods of navigating through darkness to find clarity and focus. Weaving together swim stories with the practicalities of how and when he swims at night, along with the benefits that connecting with nature has on the mind, this book is perfect for wild swimmers who want to experience their favourite waterhole after sundown. Discover what drew Al into the waters of the North Atlantic, how he found community after initially seeking isolation, his pre-swim rituals, and everything he has learnt along the way, including how he "found his moon" – something that shines brightly in his life.
The book will feature:Tides, currents, weather and seasonsHow the senses adaptNavigating by landscape, moon and starsPreparation, what to wear, pre-swim rituals Route planning, back-up plans and support teamsThe importance of community With illustrations of landscapes, moon phases, constellations and tidal patterns, and templates for planning routes and logging swims, this book will help readers find a new perspective on life, opening their mind to a deeper connection with themselves and with their local environment.
Our Beautiful Mess, Adele Parks ( hardback August 2025)
£16.99
Connie can’t wait to have all her daughters back home for the holidays.
It’s not just the excitement of the girls being together under one roof; uni student Fran is bringing a new boyfriend to stay. The empty nest will once again be full of friends, family and young love. Yet from the moment she sees Zac, Connie feels a deep unease.
Zac reminds her of the worst mistake she has ever made: a man whose charm and good looks nearly destroyed her marriage. Then, Fran announces she’s pregnant. Reeling from Fran’s news and terrified that her past might threaten her family’s future, Connie desperately tries to navigate a path forward.
But there’s a much greater menace looming, because she’s not the only one who has something to hide. Someone in the house has another devastating secret. A deception which will put everyone Connie loves in shocking danger, and one of them will pay the ultimate price.
Number One bestseller Adele Parks returns with an explosive and deeply emotional family drama which explores the lengths a parent will go to protect a child; for there’s nothing stronger than a woman whose family is under threat.
The Cut Throat Trial, by The Secret Barrister writing as SJ Fleet (hardback August 2025)
£20.00
It is one of the biggest trials of the year. Three seventeen-year-old boys are accused of the brutal murder of an elderly teacher on New Year's Eve. Each boy denies it.
Each points the finger at the other two. But they can’t all be innocent. The three defence barristers have only one job: to persuade the jury that their client is not guilty.
But they’re up against a prosecutor who needs to win the case, no matter the cost. Because when the game is murder, the competition is deadly. Launching a brilliant new voice in crime fiction, a criminal barrister with an incomparable insider’s knowledge, The Cut Throat Trial is the most gripping thriller of the year.
A Long Winter, Colm Toibin ( hardback Aug 2025)
£12.99
An unforgettable story about loss and new love from the bestselling author of Brooklyn and Long Island. 'The most striking example of Tóibín's emotional control . .
[An] eloquent expression of the bond between a mother and a son' – Guardian.
One snowy morning, after arguing with her husband, Miquel’s mother walks out from their home high up in the Pyrenees and does not return. With his younger brother stationed far away on military service and his father cast out by the people of the town, Miquel and his father are left to fend for themselves.
Together they will be forced to battle the elements, and their resentment of each other, through the long winter. Miquel’s desperate searching for his mother is only interrupted when Manolo, an orphaned servant boy from the next village, arrives to help out in the house. As Miquel is forced to confront the reality of his mother's absence, Manolo, with his silences and longing gaze, offers the promise of new love, and another kind of life.
'A Long Winter evokes loss, loneliness, guilt and survival in a few masterly strokes' – Independent
Buckeye, Patrick Ryan (hardback Sept 2025)
£16.99
As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, a woman named Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever. While the country reconstructs in the post-war boom, a secret grows in Bonhomie – and nothing can remain hidden in a small town.
The consequences of that long-ago encounter will intertwine the fates of two families, rippling through the next generation and compelling them to re-examine who they thought they were and what the future might hold. Full of compassion, humour and charm, Buckeye is a dazzling portrait of the human spirit by way of one unforgettable community; the twisted roads we take to achieve forgiveness and redemption; and above all a universal longing for love and connection.
Omniscient, sweeping, almost defiantly sentimental’ New York Times‘
It’s not just a great Midwestern novel, it’s a great novel, period’ Financial Times
The Country Girls, Edna O’Brien ( hardback August 2025)
£12.99
A beautiful hardback re-issue of the first volume in Edna O'Brien's iconic book of the 60's - which caused huge controversy in Ireland at the time.
We want to live. Drink gin. Squeeze into the front of big cars and drive up outside big hotels.
We want to go places. Caithleen is a romantic: she dreams of finding a handsome man who will sweep her away and look after her. Her friend Baba thinks this makes her a right-looking eejit.
What she wants is money and glamour. Life. As much of it as she can get.
But neither love nor excitement seem possible in their small village, or their convent school. And when they finally make it to Dublin, they find that home isn't as easy to escape as they thought.
The City and Its uncertain Walls, Murakami ( Paperback Sept 25 )
£10.99
A love story, a quest, an ode to books and to the libraries that house them, a breathtaking new novel about the boundaries between worlds and individuals, from the Sunday Times bestseller. When a young man’s girlfriend mysteriously vanishes, he sets his heart on finding the imaginary city where her true self lives. His search will lead him to take a job in a remote library with mysteries of its own.
When he finally makes it to the walled city, a shadowless place of horned beasts and willow trees, he finds his beloved working in a different library – a dream library. But she has no memory of their life together in the other world and, as the lines between reality and fantasy start to blur, he must decide what he’s willing to lose.
Moscow Underground, Catherine Merridale ( hardback Aug 2025)
£16.99
Moscow, 1934. Moscow's glittering new subway is under construction at last. The first line will run through the centre of the city, cutting deep through Moscow soil.
But futures cannot be created without digging up the past. Though Russia's leaders want to build a glorious Soviet capital, what holds them in a fatal grip is history: old mud and bones. Anton Belkin is an Investigator at the Procuracy, a sensitive job at a dangerous moment on the road to the Show Trials.
He is also someone who needs to keep his head down. His artist father was once the darling of the revolutionary avant-garde, a painter whose work could inspire devotion and great sacrifice. But now his dreams are out of place, too loud and red in Stalin's world of sterile rules and rubber stamps.
Anton is dragged into a murder case. A prominent archaeologist, working alongside the subway dig, has been killed in a deserted mansion. Though Anton doesn't want the job, his former lover, Vika, who is now a powerful member of the secret police, browbeats him into paying a visit to the site with her.
Against his better judgement he is drawn to follow though, embarking on investigations that will almost certainly get him killed. Deep underground, he finds a priceless secret that could genuinely unlock the future but links him to a vicious internecine fight for power in the young Soviet state. In the process, he is forced to reconsider the history he shares with Vika and the bonds that bind them both.
Aphrodite by Phoenicia Rogerson ( hardback August 2025)
£16.99
I’m a liar, to begin with.' I wasn’t always a goddess, you see.
My only real power was my beauty – you’ll have heard. It’s legendary. But that was never going to be enough for me.
It took a web of lies to convince the gods of Olympus I was one of them. But I did. I was that good.
Zeus gave me a title and riches and loved me. And all he wanted in return was for me to love him back. But of course, Zeus was a tyrant.
(Not entirely surprising when you’re ninety per cent insecurities and ten per cent raw power.) I couldn’t live at someone’s mercy. Really, I had no choice. I had to take on the mightiest Olympian of all. And this bit’s not a lie… I intended to win.
Authors and readers LOVE Aphrodite: 'Expect multiple POV's, humour (duh), strong female energy, love, action, war, all packaged in a beautifully crafted, comprehensive story' R
What We Can Know, Ian McEwan ( hardback Sept 2025)
£22.00
A literary thriller and a love story, What We Can Know spans the past, present and future to ask profound questions about who we are and where we are going. 2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.
2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.
When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately. What We Can Know is a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
The Blazing Sea, Tim Hodkinson ( paperback Sept 2025)
£9.99
The thrilling new Whale Road Chronicles Viking adventure. Einar and the Wolf Coats venture south, but danger and bloodshed is never far away. Einar and the Wolf Coats have angered most of the kings of Northern Europe.
With England no refuge, their only solution is to set sail across the Whale Road. A chance encounter with a slave trader leads them to Muslim Spain, but what starts as a joyous homecoming for one of the crew ends in the Caliph's infamous dungeons. The Mediterranean proves a perilous sea.
Byzantine warships roam, armed with liquid fire that can torch man and ship alike. Viking mercenaries and pirate lords alike spill blood for gold or glory. With a chance to retake his stolen kingdom of Orkney, Einar must first save an innocent life...
and risk his own and those of his crew once more. Reviews for Tim Hodkinson'Epic, violent storytelling and great fun to read' The Times'A fascinating and undeniably epic tale... Highly recommended!' Theodore Brun'
This Might Surprise You, Hayley Gullen ( HB, Sept 2025)
£14.99
Hilarious, complex, honest and profound. Every page made me laugh. Most of them also made me cry.’Ian Dunt, political journalist and broadcasterThis is a cancer story you'll actually want to read.
With humour and honesty, it details Hayley Gullen's fight for individuality during the toughest time of her life. But this is no ordinary account. Hayley takes you on her journey with an uplifting, quirky graphic memoir which outlines her breast cancer diagnosis at the age of 37.
She illustrates her experiences navigating the NHS and the importance of maintaining her sense of self throughout the dehumanising process of cancer treatment. The storytelling and cartoons are perfectly paired to show the emotional ups and downs of living with cancer. This book is a companion for anyone facing treatment, helping them to feel less alone, as well as for their loved ones.
David Trimble: Peacemaker by Stephen Walker (hardback Sept 2025)
£26.99
David Trimble was one of the most influential figures in modern British and Irish history. A Nobel Laureate, he negotiated the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 that helped to secure peace in Northern Ireland. In this first biography to chart Trimble’s life and death, award-winning journalist Stephen Walker vividly details how this shy Belfast academic changed the political landscape of Northern Ireland.
With the cooperation of the Trimble family, Peacemaker offers unparalleled insights into the life of a history maker: the first person to be elected First Minister of Northern Ireland and the last Ulster unionist to hold that title. Using interviews with his widow Lady Trimble and their grown-up children, the book colourfully charts Trimble’s story from the County Down city of Bangor, through the divisive world of unionist politics, to his crowning moment at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. It is a tale of how the leaders of unionism and nationalism worked together to end decades of violence to compromise and share power.
Venetian Vespers, John Banville ( hardback Sept 2025)
£16.99
FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF SNOW AND THE SEAEverything was a puzzle, everything a trap set to mystify and hinder me. . .
Winter 1899, and strange things are afoot. As the new century approaches, English hack writer Evelyn Dolman marries Laura Rensselaer, the daughter of a wealthy American plutocrat. But in the midst of a rift between Laura and her father, Evelyn's plans for a substantial inheritance look to be dashed.
Arriving in Venice for their belated honeymoon at Palazzo Dioscuri - the ancestral home of the charming but treacherous Count Barbarigo - the couple are met by a series of seeminglyotherworldly occurrences, which exacerbate Evelyn's already frayed nerves. Is it just the sea mist blanketing the floating city, or is he really losing his mind?
'A marvellous and rewarding novelist . . He is a magician, really.' THE SCOTSMAN
Nina and the Orange Dog, Jane Clarkson ( paperback March 2025)
£9.99
When Nina finds herself tutting at small children she realises she’s turning into someone she doesn’t like very much: small-minded, impatient and disapproving. She used to have people to care for. But her adored husband died years ago, her son is grown up and friends have long since drifted away.
Nobody needs her. She still finds joy in the changing seasons, walks by the Thames and watching dogs chase squirrels in the park. But at times the emptiness of life overwhelms her.
A chance encounter with a new neighbour brings one of the squirrel hunters to her door. Neville is an irresistible mass of orange fur and chaotic enthusiasm. Soon Nina and Neville are regulars among the friendly world of local dog walkers.
Then her mother has a bad fall. Nina rushes to Cornwall to help. She feels needed again.
Is there still room in her life for her own friends and an excitable orange dog?
Cursed Daughters, Oyinkan Braithwaite ( hardback Sept 2025)
£18.99
CURSES ARE LIKE HEARTS. SOME ARE MORE EASILY BROKEN THAN OTHERS... the twist-filled, spooky heartbreaker from the global-bestselling author of My Sister, the Serial Killer--'A haunting, twisty tale of curses and romance' Ayòbámi Adébáyò'A sweeping love story...
I lost myself within its gorgeous pages' Jennie Godfrey'Funny and fearless, soaked in secrets, spirit, heartbreak, and love... Impossible to put down' Abi DaréNo man will call your house his home. And if they try, they will not have peace...
So goes the family curse, handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts as it goes. And now it's calm, rational Eniiyi's turn - who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, and her family's insistence that she must be a reincarnation, has long been used to some strange familial beliefs. Still, when she falls in love with the handsome boy she saves from drowning, she can no longer run from her family's history.
Is she destined to live out the habitual story of love and heartbreak, or can she escape the family curse and the mysterious fate that befell her aunt?-
So satisfying''Sharp, brilliantly written...and broke my heart on more than one occasion''I cannot express how much I adored this book - like truly, madly, deeply adored it'
Somebody is walking on your grave, Mariana Enriquez ( hardback Sept 2025)
£20.00
In Somebody is Walking on Your Grave, Mariana Enriquez blends journalistic rigour and her fascination with the macabre as we encounter famous graveyards steeped in history, such as Montparnasse in Paris, Highgate in London, and the Jewish cemetery in Prague, as well as more remote, decrepit, hidden, or secretly beautiful ones. These pages are full of the graves of famous figures - Elvis in Memphis, Karl Marx in London - mournful sculptures, traces of voodoo, catacombs, skeletons and an array of legends and stories. Mariana's personal journey weaves through haunting narratives, transforming burial grounds into spaces of reflection, obsession, and emotional discovery between the living and the dead.
From the haunting statues of Staglieno in Genoa to the eerie silence of Rottnest Island's hidden Aboriginal cemetery, Enriquez's narrative shifts effortlessly between travelogue, essay, and memoir. In her unique voice, cemeteries transform into living, breathing places of reflection, obsession and revelation. As she roams, each cemetery becomes a lens through which she examines everything from colonial violence to the strange rituals surrounding death.
Belfast Fairytale, Mel Carroll ( hardback September 2025)
£13.99
In the not-so-faraway land of Belfast city live Fluffy, Duffy and Scruffy, the three kid goats Gruff. One fine day, they decide to go to Botanic Gardens for a picnic. But will they get past the angry troll under the Albert Bridge and make it home in time for dinner?Join the trio on a fun-filled adventure as they visit Belfast’s best-loved locations.
Albert Clock – Titanic Centre – Odyssey Arena – HMS Caroline – City Hall – the Big Fish – Beacon of Hope – St George’s Market
