Weather, Jenny Offil ( paperback Jan 2021)
£9.99
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION
An obligatory note of hope, in a world going to hell. Lizzie Benson, a part-time librarian, is already overwhelmed with the crises of daily life when an old mentor offers her a job answering mail from the listeners of her apocalyptic podcast, Hell and High Water. Soon questions begin pouring in from left-wingers worried about climate change and right-wingers worried about the decline of Western civilization. Entering this polarized world, Lizzie is forced to consider who she is and what she can do to help: as a mother, as a wife, as a sister, and as a citizen of this doomed planet.
* Linda's note : the blurb for this book is not very encouraging! But it's actually full of hope, humour and just the absurdity of the everyday. I enjoyed it!
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The Peacock and the Sparrow, IS Berry ( paperback Oct 2024)
£9.99
WINNER OF THE 2024 EDGAR AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL
WINNER OF THE 2024 INTERNATIONAL THRILLER WRITERS AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL - WINNER OF THE 2024 BARRY BEST FIRST MYSTERY OR CRIME NOVEL AWARD - WINNER OF THE 2024 MACAVITY BEST FIRST MYSTERY AWARD
‘Gritty, propulsive, dark and twisty’ David McCloskey, author of Damascus Station
‘It’s fantastic, I loved it’ Steve Cavanagh, author of Thirteen
‘..the most impressive debut of the year to date and a spy novel to rank alongside the best of Mick Herron’s Slough House series.’ The Irish Times
‘Sensational…feels like every inch of the real world of espionage’ Alex Gerlis, author of Every Spy a Traitor
‘I.S. Berry is at the vanguard of a new generation of American spy novelists who have electrified the genre.’ Charles Cumming, author of Judas 62
The thrilling debut from author and former CIA officer I.S. Berry, following an American spy’s last dangerous mission.
Shane Collins, a world-weary CIA spy, is ready to come in from the cold. Stationed in Bahrain for his final tour, he’s anxious to dispense with his mission — uncovering Iranian support for the insurgency. But then he meets Almaisa, an enigmatic artist, and his eyes are opened to a side of Bahrain most expats never experience, to questions he never thought to ask.
When his trusted informant becomes embroiled in a murder, Collins finds himself drawn deep into the conflict, his romance and loyalties upended. In an instant, he’s caught in the crosswinds of a revolution. He sets out to learn the truth behind the Arab Spring, win Almaisa’s love, and uncover the murky border where Bahrain’s secrets end and America’s begin.
House of Leaves, Mark Z Danielewski ( hardback)
£40.00
First-ever UK hardback publication* Deluxe edition with foil cover* Complete final FULL-COLOUR text* Special embossed 'maze' case design
Now published in hardback in the UK for the first time, the nightmarish story of a house that is bigger on the inside than the outside - a tale that continues to inspire devotion among its ever-growing army of fans.
"A genuinely scary chiller, a satire on the business of criticism and a meditation on the way we read" Observer newspaper.
A young couple - Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson and his partner Karen Green - move into a small house on Ash Tree Lane. But something is terribly wrong - their new home is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside. Neither Will nor Karen are prepared to face the consequences of this impossibility until the day their two small children wandered off, and their voices eerily began to tell another story - of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams and create nightmares.
What happened next is loosely recorded on videotapes and interviews, and impelled an eccentric old man to compile - on loose sheets of paper, stained napkins, crammed notebooks - a definitive account of what took place at Ash Tree Lane that seems to unveil a thrilling and terrifying history. Because these scraps prove to be far more than the deranged ramblings of a reclusive old man.
Impossible to forget. House of Leaves is thrilling, terrifying and unlike anything you have read before.
Tell Me Everything- Elizabeth Stroud ( hardback Sept 2024)
£14.99
It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been.
Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning.
Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat.
QUEER ROMANCE : Anyone's Ghost, and I Will Greet the Sun Again ( August 2024)
£16.99
Anyone's Ghost: August Thompson
Set over twenty years, August Thompson's debut Anyone’s Ghost will break your heart. It took three car crashes to kill Jake. The lonely life of fifteen-year-old Theron David Alden is transformed when he meets Jake. Older, cooler, more confident and startlingly beautiful, Jake likes the same bands, the same drugs, and has the same drive to oblivion. Over the course of two decades, Theron and Jake get high, drift apart, and are brought hurtling back together, until a final collision tears them apart forever. Theron wants Jake, and he wants to be Jake. But is Jake brave enough to want him back?
I Will Greet the Sun Again, Khashayar J. Khabushani
Three young brothers leave Los Angeles in the dead of night for Iran, taken by their father from their mother to a country and an ancestral home they barely recognize.
They return to the Valley months later, spit back into American life and changed in inexorable ways. Under the dazzling light of the California sun, our protagonist, the youngest brother, begins to piece together a childhood shattered by his father's violence, a queer adolescence marked by a shy, secret love affair with a boy he meets on the basketball court, and his ever-changing status as a Muslim in America at the turn of the new millennium.
