Our Picks
Show Don’t Tell, Curtis Sittenfeld ( hardback Feb 2025)
£16.99
Razor-sharp, glittering tales exploring marriage, fame and female friendship, from the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of Romantic Comedy and American Wife. In this compulsive collection of twelve witty stories, Sittenfeld shows why she’s as beloved for her short fiction as she is for her novels, as she conjures up characters so real that they seem like old friends. In ‘The Patron Saints of Middle Age,’ a woman visits two friends she hasn’t seen since her divorce.
In ‘A for Alone,’ a married artist embarks on a project intended to disprove the so-called Mike Pence Rule, which suggests that women and men can’t spend time alone together without lusting after each other. And in ‘Lost but Not Forgotten,’ Sittenfeld gives readers of her novel Prep a new window into the world of her beloved character Lee Fiora, decades later, when Lee attends an awkward school reunion. Witty, confronting and full of tenderness, Sittenfeld peels back layer after layer of our inner lives, keeping us riveted to the page with her utterly distinctive voice.
Twist, Colum McCann ( hardback Feb 2025)
£18.99
Fennell, a journalist, is in pursuit of a story buried at the bottom of the sea: the network of tiny fibre-optic tubes that carry the world’s information across the ocean floor - and what happens when they break. So he has travelled to Cape Town to board the George Lecointe, a cable repair vessel captained by Chief of Mission John Conway. Conway is a talented engineer and fearless freediver - and Fennell is quickly captivated by this mysterious, unnerving man and his beautiful partner, Zanele.
As the boat embarks along the west coast of Africa, Fennell learns the rhythms of life at sea, and finds his place among the band of drifters who make up the crew. But as the mission falters, tensions simmer - and Conway is thrown into crisis. A terrible, violent tragedy is unfolding in the life he has left behind on land; and, trapped out at sea, it seems as if the vast expanse of the ocean is closing in.
Then Conway disappears; and Fennell must set out to find him. As taut and propulsive as a thriller, and a timeless exploration of narrative and truth, Twist is the work of a master storyteller at the height of his powers.
Named a 2025 book to look out for by the Observer, Financial Times, Irish Times and New European**‘Urgent and utterly compelling’ KEVIN BARRY
Giant, Judith McQuoid ( paperback, March 2025)
£7.99
Thrilling historical fiction on the childhoodof beloved author CS Lewis. Davy, a working-class boy living in East Belfast in 1908, is sent to work at the wealthy Lewis household. When he meets Jacks – the name by which CS Lewis was known to friends and family – Davy is captivated by his friend’s world of books and stories.
Together the boys plunge into imagining and adventuring, and Davy discovers his own artistic talent. But when Davy is offered a job at the shipyard, and Jacks’s mother falls gravely ill, their wondrous days of make-believe seem numbered. Will they lose their extraordinary shared world forever?
