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. 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!
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.
That Glimpse of Truth : 100 Finest Short Stories (softback)
£18.99
A fabulous collection of all time short story greats - including Dickens, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, Roald Dahl, Kate Atkinson and so much more. One to enjoy.
Due to be reissued in an updated format from 09 Dec 2021. Profound, lyrical, shocking, wise: the short story is capable of almost anything. This collection of 100 of the finest stories ever written ranges from the essential to the unexpected, the traditional to the surreal.
Wide in scope, both beautiful and vast, this is the perfect companion for any fiction lover. Here are childhood favourites and neglected masters, twenty-first century wits and national treasures, Man Booker Prize winners and Nobel Laureates. Featuring an all-star cast of authors, including Kate Atkinson, Julian Barnes, Angela Carter, Anton Chekhov, Richmal Crompton, Charles Dickens, Roald Dahl, Penelope Fitzgerald, Gustave Flaubert, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, Ian McEwan, Alice Munro, V.S.
Pritchett, Thomas Pynchon, Muriel Spark and Colm Toibin, That Glimpse of Truth is the biggest, most handsome collection of short fiction in print today.
Milkman, by Anna Burns (paperback, 2018)
£9.99
The Booker prize winning book of 2018, now available as paperback.
In an unnamed city, where to be interesting is dangerous, an eighteen-year-old woman has attracted the unwanted and unavoidable attention of a powerful and frightening older man, 'Milkman'. In this community, where suggestions quickly become fact, where gossip and hearsay can lead to terrible consequences, what can she do to stop a rumour once it has started? Milkman is persistent, the word is spreading, and she is no longer in control . .
. Winner of the International Dublin Literary Award 2020 and the Man Booker Prize 2018Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize, the Women's Prize for Fiction, and the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction
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 !
An American Marriage, Tayari Jones ( paperback 2019)
£9.99
'A moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.' - Barack Obama
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of the American Dream. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. Until one day they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined.
Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn't commit. Devastated and unmoored, Celestial finds herself struggling to hold on to the love that has been her centre, taking comfort in Andre, their closest friend. When Roy's conviction is suddenly overturned, he returns home ready to resume their life together.
A masterpiece of storytelling, An American Marriage offers a profoundly insightful look into the hearts and minds of three unforgettable characters who are at once bound together and separated by forces beyond their control.
American Dirt, by Jeanine Cummins ( paperback 2021)
£9.99
Vivid and utterly compelling, AMERICAN DIRT is the first novel to explore the humanity in the experience of attempting to illegally cross the US-Mexico border. Described as 'impossible to put down' (Saturday Review) and 'essential reading' (Tracy Chevalier), it is one of my books of 2020.
Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop.
Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world. Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left.
For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg. For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernadine Evaristo
£9.99
***WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019****SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2020*
From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years. They're each looking for something - a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . .
.A choral love song to black womanhood in modern Great Britain' Elle 'Ambitious, flowing and all-encompassing, an offbeat narrative that'll leave your mind in an invigorated whirl... [It] unites poetry, social history, women's voices and beyond.'
Recently featured in our BooksPaperScissors bookclub, see BLOG for review.
Little Fires Everywhere, by Celeste Ng ( paperback)
£8.99
As dramatised by Reese Witherspoon on Amazon Prime...
In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned - from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren - an enigmatic artist and single mother- who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
My Dark Vanessa, Kate Elizabeth Russell (PB, 21 Jan 2021)
£8.99
An instant New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller
An era-defining novel about the relationship between a fifteen-year-old girl and her teacher
Vanessa Wye was fifteen years old when she first had sex with her English teacher. She is now thirty-two and in the storm of allegations against powerful men in 2017, the teacher, Jacob Strane, has just been accused of sexual abuse by another former student. Vanessa is horrified by this news, because she is quite certain that the relationship she had with Strane wasn't abuse.
Now she must deal with the possibility that she might be a victim, and just one of many. Nuanced, uncomfortable, bold and powerful, My Dark Vanessa goes straight to the heart of some of the most complex issues of our age.
The Vanishing Half, Brit Bennett ( Paperback, 29 April 2021)
£9.99
* Longlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 *
'The Vanishing Half is an utterly mesmerising novel. It seduces with its literary flair, surprises with its breath-taking plot twists, delights with its psychological insights, and challenges us to consider the corrupting consequences of racism on different communities and individual lives. I absolutely loved this book' Bernardine Evaristo, winner of the Booker Prize 2019
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical.
But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past.
Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines intersect? Weaving together multiple strands and generations of this family, from the Deep South to California, from the 1950s to the 1990s, Brit Bennett produces a story that is at once a riveting, emotional family story and a brilliant exploration of the American history of passing. Looking well beyond issues of race, The Vanishing Half considers the lasting influence of the past as it shapes a person's decisions, desires, and expectations, and explores some of the multiple reasons and realms in which people sometimes feel pulled to live as something other than their origins.
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
Long Bright River by Liz Moore ( paperback 31 Dec 2020)
£8.99
SELECTED BY BARACK OBAMA AS ONE OF HIS BEST BOOKS OF 2020
Once inseparable, sisters Mickey and Kacey are on different paths, but they walk the same streets. Mickey on her police beat and Kacey in the shadows of the city's darkest corners where the drug addicts and sex workers preside.
When a string of murders coincides with Kacey's disappearance, Mickey is terrified her sister could be next. But in a community where death and murder is rife, will Mickey be able to save her sister before it's too late?
A remarkable, profoundly moving novel about the ties that bind and the irrevocable wounds of childhood. It's also a riveting mystery, perfectly paced.
Such a Fun Age ( paperback 29 Dec 2020) by Kiley Reid
£8.99
When Emira is apprehended at a supermarket for 'kidnapping' the white child she's actually babysitting, it sets off an explosive chain of events. Her employer Alix, a feminist blogger with the best of intentions, resolves to make things right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix's desire to help.
When a surprising connection emerges between the two women, it sends them on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know - about themselves, each other, and the messy dynamics of privilege.
'Essential. This year's hit debut' Guardian'
'A biting tale of race and class' Sunday Times
This would be a great bookclub pick, there are characters to love, hate, dissect and a timeless and prescient theme of bias and racism.
Red at The Bone, Jacqueline Woodson (pb, 21 Jan 2021)
£8.99
An unexpected teenage pregnancy brings together two families from different social classes, and exposes the private hopes, disappointments and longings that can bind or divide us. From the New York Times-bestselling and National Book Award-winning author of Another Brooklyn and Brown Girl Dreaming. Brooklyn, 2001.It is the evening of sixteen-year-old Melody's coming of age ceremony in her grandparents' brownstone. Watched lovingly by her relatives and friends, making her entrance to the music of Prince, she wears a special custom-made dress - the very same dress that was sewn for a different wearer, Melody's mother, for a celebration that ultimately never took place. Unfurling the history of Melody's family - from the 1921 Tulsa race massacre to post 9/11 New York - Red at the Bone explores sexual desire, identity, class, and the life-altering facts of parenthood, as it looks at the ways in which young people must so often make fateful decisions about their lives before they have even begun to figure out who they are and what they want to be.
Agency, William Gibson ( paperback, Jan 2021 )
£9.99
San Francisco, 2017. Clinton's in the White House, Brexit never happened - and Verity Jane's got herself a new job. They call Verity 'the app-whisperer,' and she's just been hired by a shadowy start-up to evaluate a pair-of-glasses-cum-digital-assistant called Eunice.Only Eunice has other ideas. Pretty soon, Verity knows that Eunice is smarter than anyone she's ever met, conceals some serious capabilities and is profoundly paranoid - which is just as well since suddenly some bad people are after Verity. Meanwhile, in a post-apocalyptic London a century from now, PR fixer Wilf Netherton is tasked by all-seeing policewoman Ainsley Lowbeer with interfering in the alternative past in which Verity and Eunice exist.
It appears something nasty is about to happen there - and fixing it will require not only Eunice's unique human-AI skillset but also a little help from the future. A future which Verity soon fears may never be . .
'One of the most influential writers around...with Gibson's trademark panache, the story rattles along with great pace and suspense' Sunday Times'One of our greatest science-fiction writers' New York Times'
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!
No One Is Talking About This, Patricia Lockwood( paperback 2022)
£8.99
Are we in hell? the people of the portal ask themselves. Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: 'Something has gone wrong,' and 'How soon can you get here?' As real life and its stakes collide with the increasing absurdity of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary. Irreverent and sincere, poignant and delightfully profane, No One Is Talking About This is at once a love letter to the infinite scroll and a meditation on love, language and human connection from one of the most original voices of our time.
Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi (paperback March 2022)
£8.99
*From the bestselling author of Homegoing * Longlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 *
As a child Gifty would ask her parents to tell the story of their journey from Ghana to Alabama, seeking escape in myths of heroism and romance. When her father and brother succumb to the hard reality of immigrant life in the American South, their family of four becomes two - and the life Gifty dreamed of slips away. Years later, desperate to understand the opioid addiction that destroyed her brother's life, she turns to science for answers.
But when her mother comes to stay, Gifty soon learns that the roots of their tangled traumas reach farther than she ever thought. Tracing her family's story through continents and generations will take her deep into the dark heart of modern America. Transcendent Kingdom is a searing story story of love, loss and redemption, and the myriad ways we try to rebuild our lives from the rubble of our collective pasts.
"I would say that Transcendent Kingdom is a novel for our time (and it is) but it is so much more than that. It is a novel for all times. The splendor and heart and insight and brilliance contained in the pages holds up a light the rest of us can follow"
Ann Patchett
Yaa Gyasi is one of the most enlightening novelists writing today' Washington Post
A Net For Small Fishes, Lucy Jago ( paperback April 2022)
£8.99
Frances Howard has beauty and a powerful family - and is the most unhappy creature in the world.
Anne Turner has wit and talent - but no stage on which to display them. Little stands between her and the abyss of destitution. When these two very different women meet in the strangest of circumstances, a powerful friendship is sparked.
Frankie sweeps Anne into a world of splendour that exceeds all she imagined: a Court whose foreign king is a stranger to his own subjects; where ancient families fight for power, and where the sovereign's favourite may rise and rise - so long as he remains in favour. With the marriage of their talents, Anne and Frankie enter this extravagant, savage hunting ground, seeking a little happiness for themselves. But as they gain notice, they also gain enemies; what began as a search for love and safety leads to desperate acts that could cost them everything.
Based on the true scandal that rocked the court of James I, A Net for Small Fishes is the most gripping novel you'll read this year: an exhilarating dive into the pitch-dark waters of the Jacobean court.
Terrific, rich in colour, character, place and time' Sarah Dunant
paperback from April 2022
The Long Long Afternoon, Inga Vesper (Paperback Sept 2021)
£8.99
'A remarkably assured debut. A tale of inequality, broken dreams and quiet desperation behind a picture-perfect facade' Guardian. . It's the summer of 1959, and the well-trimmed lawns of Sunnylakes, California, wilt under the sun. At some point during the long, long afternoon, Joyce Haney, wife, mother, vanishes from her home, leaving behind two terrified children and a bloodstain on the kitchen floor. While the Haney's neighbours get busy organising search parties, it is Ruby Wright, the family's 'help', who may hold the key to this unsettling mystery. Ruby knows more about the secrets behind Sunnylakes' starched curtains than anyone, and it isn't long before the detective in charge of the case wants her help.
But what might it cost her to get involved? In these long hot summer afternoons, simmering with lies, mistrust and prejudice, it could only take one spark for this whole 'perfect' world to set alight . . . A great read!
The Good The Bad - and the Little Bit Stupid. Marina Lewycka, ( pb, March )
£9.99
A LAUGH-OUT-LOUD NOVEL FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF A SHORT HISTORY OF TRACTORS IN UKRAINIAN
After walking out on his wife to shack up with 'Brexit Brenda' next door, George Pantis thinks he's got it made - especially when he wins millions on a Kosovan lottery he barely remembers entering. Unfortunately, he can't access the money because he's forgotten his password. What is he meant to tell all the forceful people who keep appearing at his doorstep desperate to know his mother's maiden name?The situation is shadier than he thinks, and George is need of rescue.
But will his dysfunctional family be able to save him, and in the process, can they save each other?
Saving Missy, Beth Morrey ( paperback, March 2021)
£8.99
Seventy-nine is too late for a second chance. Isn't it? Missy Carmichael is prickly, stubborn - and terribly lonely. Until a chance encounter in the park with two very different women opens the door to something new.
Something wonderful. Missy was used to her small, solitary existence, listening to her footsteps echoing around the empty house, the tick-tick-tick of the watching clock. After all, she had made her life her way.
Now another life is beckoning to Missy - if she's brave enough... 'A touching, deftly written debut that celebrates community and kindness' Sunday Times 'Moving and optimistic... will delight readers right up to the very last page' Stylist 'Bittersweet, tender, thoughtful and uplifting .
( I really enjoyed this! Linda )
Exciting Times, Naoise Dolan ( paperback, March 2021)
£8.99
Likely to fill the Sally-Rooney-shaped hole in many readers' lives' IRISH TIMES
'Droll, shrewd and unafraid - a winning debut' Hilary Mantel
* Longlisted for Women's Prize for Fiction 2021 * NOW IN PAPERBACK ( cover as hardback)
When you leave Ireland aged 22 to spend your parents' money, it's called a gap year. When Ava leaves Ireland aged 22 to make her own money, she's not sure what to call it, but it involves: - a badly-paid job in Hong Kong, teaching English grammar to rich children; - Julian, who likes to spend money on Ava and lets her move into his guest room; - Edith, who Ava meets while Julian is out of town and actually listens to her when she talks; - money, love, cynicism, unspoken feelings and unlikely connections.
This is an acutely self conscious and clever tale.
A Good Neighbourhood, Therese Anne Fowler ( pb March 2021)
£9.99
In Oak Knoll, a tight-knit North Carolina neighbourhood, professor of forestry and ecology Valerie Alston-Holt is raising her bright and talented biracial son. All is well until the Whitmans move in next door - an apparently traditional family with new money, ambition, and a secretly troubled teenage daughter.
With little in common except a property line, these two very different families quickly find themselves at odds over an historic oak tree in Valerie's yard.
But as they fight, they fail to notice that there is a romance blossoming between their two teenagers. A romance that will challenge the carefully constructed concepts of class and race in this small community. A romance that might cause everything to shatter...
'Compelling, complicated, timely, and smart . . . hard to put down and hard to forget'
A Town Called Solace, Mary Lawson ( paperback March 2022)
£9.99
Mary Lawson is an overlooked writer in the UK, but since Graham Norton's approval on a recent BBC bookclub TV show, perhaps this is the year to discover her. This is her new book.
Clara's sister is missing. Angry, rebellious Rose, had a row with their mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Eight-year-old Clara, isolated by her distraught parents' efforts to protect her from the truth, is grief-stricken and bewildered.
Liam Kane, newly divorced, newly unemployed, newly arrived in this small northern town, moves into the house next door, a house left to him by an old woman he can barely remember and within hours gets a visit from the police. It seems he's suspected of a crime. At the end of her life Elizabeth Orchard is thinking about a crime too, one committed thirty years ago that had tragic consequences for two families and in particular for one small child.
She desperately wants to make amends before she dies. Set in Northern Ontario in 1972, A Town Called Solace explores the relationships of these three people brought together by fate and the mistakes of the past. By turns gripping and darkly funny, it uncovers the layers of grief and remorse and love that connect us, but shows that sometimes a new life is possible.
'Poised, elegant prose, paired with quiet drama that will break your heart. The sort of book that seems as if it has always existed because of its timeless perfection' GRAHAM NORTON
( note image is of hardback, now only available as paperback)
Valentine, Elizabeth Wetmore ( paperback March 2021)
£8.99
A top ten New York Times bestseller : a compulsive debut novel that explores the aftershock of a brutal crime on the women of a small Texas oil town. 'The very definition of a stunning debut' Ann Patchett 'Brilliant, sharp, tightly wound, and devastating' Elizabeth Gilbert
It's February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom.
While the town's men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems to follow. When a fourteen-year-old girl shows up at Mary Rose Whitehead's door, bleeding and desperate for shelter, she has to make a choice. To choose to aim her rifle at the man pursuing Gloria Ramirez.
To choose to acknowledge that the town she calls home is small-minded and brutal and built for those who have the money to control it. To choose to see the damage men do and hold her nerve. When justice is as slippery as oil, and kindness becomes a hazardous act, sometimes the courage to choose is all we have to keep us alive.
Hamnet , Maggie O’Farrell ( paperback Apr 2021)
£9.99
WINNER OF THE 2020 WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION - THE NO. 1 BESTSELLER 2021'Richly sensuous... something special' The Sunday Times'A thing of shimmering wonder' David MitchellTWO EXTRAORDINARY PEOPLE.A LOVE THAT DRAWS THEM TOGETHER. A LOSS THAT THREATENS TO TEAR THEM APART. On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever.
Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.
Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week. Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.
The Fountains Of Silence, Ruth Sepetys ( paperback, March 2021)
£7.99
A haunting and romantic novel set in post-war Spain by Ruta Sepetys - winner of the Carnegie Medal 2017.
Madrid, 1957. Daniel, young, wealthy and unsure of his place in the world, views the city through the lens of his camera.
Ana, a hotel maid whose family is suffering under the fascist dictatorship of General Franco. Lives and hearts collide as they unite to uncover the hidden darkness within the city. A darkness that could engulf them all .
. . Master storyteller Ruta Sepetys once again shines light into one of history's darkest corners in this epic, heart-wrenching novel about identity, unforgettable love and the hidden violence of silence.
Longlisted for the Carnegie Medal 2021
Ruta Sepetys is the finest writer of historical fiction working today' The Wall Street Journal'
Crow Lake, Mary Lawson ( pb)
£9.99
'I've been trying to tell everyone I know about Mary Lawson' . . . Graham Norton recently recommended this writer on a BBC bookclub show and she has enjoyed a revival in the UK as a result.
Orphaned young, Kate Morrison was her older brother Matt's protege, her curious fascination for pond-life fed by his passionate interest in the natural world. Now a zoologist, she can identify organisms under a microscope, but seems blind to the tragedy of her own emotional life. She thinks she's outgrown her family, who were once her entire world - but she can't seem to outgrow her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.
'A remarkable novel, utterly gripping...I read it at a single sitting, then I read it again, just for the pleasure of it' Joanne Harris, author of Chocolat'
Full of blossoming insights and emotional acuity...a compelling and serious page-turner' Observer
The Other Side of the Bridge, Mary Lawson ( pb, 2007)
£9.99
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE**
A powerful, heart-breaking story about tempting fate and living with the consequences. Arthur and Jake are brothers yet worlds apart. Arthur is older, shy, dutiful and set to inherit his father's farm. Jake is younger, handsome and reckless, a dangerous man to know.
When Laura arrives in their rural community, the fragile balance of the brothers' rivalry is pushed to the edge of catastrophe... 'An enthralling read, both straightforward and wonderfully intricate' Guardian'
Evokes beautifully the big joys and sorrows of most people, no matter how small their town' The Times
How Do You Live ? by Genzaburo Yoshino, hardback (April 2021)
£15.99
Publishing in English for the very first time, Japan's beloved coming-of-age classic on what really matters in lifeThe streets of Tokyo swarm below fifteen year-old Copper as he gazes out into the city of his childhood. Struck by the thought of the infinite people whose lives play out alongside his own, he begins to wonder, how do you live?
Considering life's biggest questions for the first time, Copper turns to his dear uncle for heart-warming wisdom. As the old man guides the boy on a journey of philosophical discovery, a timeless tale unfolds, offering a poignant reflection on what it means to be human.
The favourite childhood book of anime master Hayao Miyazaki, How Do You Live? is the basis for a highly anticipated film from Studio Ghibli.
Boys Don’t Cry, Fiona Scarlett ( paperback Feb 2022)
£9.99
What readers are saying:'Fiona Scarlett is certainly up there with the likes of Roddy Doyle . . . A beautifully written, authentic novel, that will make you both laugh and cry, I just want to recommend this book to everyone.'
'This is a heartbreaking and very emotional novel that is exquisitely written. Fíona's writing style helps to bring such raw emotion to the text that it was impossible to not shed a tear!'
'I cried so much reading this book . . . A stunning read that I'll be thinking about for a long time.'
'There is a lot of humour to balance the heartache . . . All humanity is here, in all its shades, and that's what stays with you long after you finish reading. A brilliant debut.'
Whereabouts, Jhumpa Lahiri ( paperback March 2022)
£9.99
'If the antidote to a year of solitude and trauma is art, then this novel is the answer. It is superb' SUNDAY TIMES'
The new novel from the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Man Booker Prize-shortlisted author: a haunting portrait of a woman, her decisions, her conversations, her solitariness, in a beautiful and lonely Italian city The woman moves through the city, her city, on her own. She moves along its bright pavements; she passes over its bridges, through its shops and pools and bars.
She slows her pace to watch a couple fighting, to take in the sight of an old woman in a waiting room; pauses to drink her coffee in a shaded square. Sometimes her steps take her to her grieving mother, sealed off in her own solitude. Sometimes they take her to the station, where the trains can spirit her away for a short while.
But in the arc of a year, as one season gives way to the next, transformation awaits. One day at the sea, both overwhelmed and replenished by the sun's vital heat, her perspective will change forever. A rare work of fiction, Whereabouts - first written in Italian and then translated by the author herself - brims with the impulse to cross barriers.
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.
Snowflake, Louise Nealon ( Paperback April 2022)
£9.99
Tender, laugh-out-loud funny, and deeply moving' Louise O'Neill, author of After the Silence
Eighteen-year-old Debbie White lives on a dairy farm with her mother, Maeve, and her uncle, Billy. Billy sleeps out in a caravan in the garden with a bottle of whiskey and the stars overhead for company. Maeve spends her days recording her dreams, which she believes to be prophecies.
This world is Debbie's normal, but she is about to step into life as a student at Trinity College in Dublin. As she navigates between sophisticated new friends and the family bubble, things begin to unravel. Maeve's eccentricity tilts into something darker, while Billy's drinking gets worse.
Debbie struggles to cope with the weirdest, most difficult parts of herself, her family and her small life. But the fierce love of the White family is never in doubt, and Debbie discovers that even the oddest of families are places of safety. A startling, honest, laugh and cry novel about growing up and leaving home, only to find that you've taken it with you, Snowflake is a novel for a generation, and for everyone who's taken those first, terrifying steps towards adulthood.
Tennis Lessons, Susannah Dickey ( paperback April 2021)
£9.99
For readers who want to laugh and cry: the brave, beautiful, sometimes brutal story of a young misfit and her rocky road to womanhood, stopping at each year along the way. 'I loved Tennis Lessons so much' ELIZABETH DAY
You're strange and wrong. You've known it from the beginning.
This is the voice that rings in your ears. Because you never say the right thing. You're a disappointment to everyone.
You're a far cry from beautiful - and your thoughts are ugly too. You seem bound to fail, bound to break. But you know what it is to laugh with your best friend, to feel the first tentative tingles of attraction, to take exquisite pleasure in the affront of your unruly body.
You just need to find your place. From dead pets and crashed cars to family traumas and misguided love affairs, Susannah Dickey's revitalizing debut novel plunges us into the private world of one young woman as she navigates her rocky way to adulthood. 'Brilliant .
. . stays in the mind long after reading' IRISH TIMES'A beautifully written and psychologically incisive bildungsroman...the arrival of a young writer to watch' OBSERVER
Assembly, by Natasha Brown ( paperback May 2022)
£9.99
Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment.Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things.
Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness.
But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.
The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself.
As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart? Assembly is a story about the stories we live within - those of race and class, safety and freedom, winners and losers. And it is about one woman daring to take control of her own story, even at the cost of her life. 'One of the most talked-about debuts of the year .
'Bold and original, with a cool intelligence, and so very truthful about the colonialist structure of British society' Diana Evans
The Mission House, Carys Davies (paperback, June 2021)
£8.99
Fleeing his demons and the dark undercurrents of life in Britain, Hilary Byrd takes refuge in a south Indian mission house next door to the presbytery where the Padre and his adoptive daughter, Priscilla, live. As Hilary's friendship with Priscilla grows, so too do the religious and nationalist tensions around them, and the mission house may not be the safe haven it seems. Meticulously crafted and tenderly subversive, The Mission House is a deeply human story of the wonders and terrors of connection in a modern world.
The Manningtree Witches, AK Blakemore ( paperback 2022)
£8.99
Fear and destruction take root in a community of women when the Witchfinder General comes to town, in this dark and thrilling debut. England, 1643. Parliament is battling the King; the war between the Roundheads and the Cavaliers rages.Puritanical fervour has gripped the nation, and the hot terror of damnation burns black in every shadow. In Manningtree, depleted of men since the wars began, the women are left to their own devices. At the margins of this diminished community are those who are barely tolerated by the affluent villagers - the old, the poor, the unmarried, the sharp-tongued.
Rebecca West, daughter of the formidable Beldam West, fatherless and husbandless, chafes against the drudgery of her days, livened only by her infatuation with the clerk John Edes. But then newcomer Matthew Hopkins takes over the Thorn Inn and begins to ask questions about the women of the margins. When a child falls ill with a fever and starts to rave about covens and pacts, the questions take on a bladed edge.
The Manningtree Witches plunges its readers into the fever and menace of the English witch trials, where suspicion, mistrust and betrayal ran amok as the power of men went unchecked and the integrity of women went undefended. It is a visceral, thrilling book that announces a bold new talent.
Sorrow and Bliss, Meg Mason (paperback May 2022)
£8.99
Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets.
So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave?
Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe - as she has long believed - there is something wrong with her. Something that broke when a little bomb went off in her brain, at 17, and left her changed in a way that no doctor or therapist has ever been able to explain.
Forced to return to her childhood home to live with her dysfunctional, bohemian parents (but without the help of her devoted, foul-mouthed sister Ingrid), Martha has one last chance to find out whether a life is ever too broken to fix - or whether, maybe, by starting over, she will get to write a better ending for herself.
