In my last post, I listed many of the books released on September 3rd. Also out that day are some fantastic books that are already available in Hardback. I didn’t want them to be lost in the other post, so I have created a separate post for the books I found in that category.
The Foundling by Stacey Halls
The new Sunday Times bestseller from the author of The Familiars Two women, bound by a child, and a secret that will change everything . . . London, 1754. Six years after leaving her illegitimate daughter Clara at London’s Foundling Hospital, Bess Bright returns to reclaim the child she has never known. Dreading the worst, that Clara has died in care, Bess is astonished to be told she has already claimed her. Her life is turned upside down as she tries to find out who has taken her little girl – and why. Less than a mile from Bess’s lodgings in the city, in a quiet, gloomy townhouse on the edge of London, a young widow has not left the house in a decade. When her close friend – an ambitious young doctor at the Foundling Hospital – persuades her to hire a nursemaid for her daughter, she is hesitant to welcome someone new into her home and her life. But her past is threatening to catch up with her and tear her carefully constructed world apart. From the bestselling author of The Familiars comes this captivating story of mothers and daughters, class and power, and love against the greatest of odds . . .
‘The new Hilary Mantel’ Cosmopolitan Another gripping, immersive, intelligent work of historical fiction from the bestselling author of The Familiars’ Kiran Millwood Hargrave, author of The Mercies ‘A gripping and moving read’ Libby Page, bestselling author of The Lido ‘Fantastic storytelling that grabbed me from the off’ Good Housekeeping
Published by Zaffre. Buy here. You can read my review here.
The Confession by Jessie Burton
The sensational Sunday Times bestseller from Jessie Burton, the million-copy bestselling author of The Miniaturist and The Muse . When Elise Morceau meets the writer Constance Holden, she quickly falls under her spell. Connie is sophisticated, bold and alluring – everything Elise feels she is not. She follows Connie to LA, but in this city of strange dreams and razzle-dazzle, Elise feels even more out of her depth and makes an impulsive decision that will change her life forever. Three decades later, Rose Simmons is trying to uncover the story of her mother, who disappeared when she was a baby. Having learned that the last person to see her was a now reclusive novelist, Rose finds herself at the door of Constance Holden’s house in search of a confession . . .
Waterstones Thriller of the Month for September 2020
A REMOTE ISLAND. AN INVITATION TO DIE FOR.
On an island off the windswept Irish coast, guests gather for the wedding of the year – the marriage of Jules Keegan and Will Slater. Old friends. Past grudges. Happy families. Hidden jealousies. Thirteen guests. One body. The wedding cake has barely been cut when one of the guests is found dead. And as a storm unleashes its fury on the island, everyone is trapped. All have a secret. All have a motive. One guest won’t leave this wedding alive…
A gripping, twisty murder mystery thriller from the No.1 bestselling author of The Hunting Party .
Published by Harper Collins. Buy here. You can read my review here.
The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben
Thirty years ago, a child was found in the New Jersey backwoods. He had been living a feral existence, with no memory of how he got there or even who he is. Everyone just calls him Wilde. Now a former soldier and security expert, he lives off the grid, shunned by the community – until they need him. A child has gone missing. With her family suspecting she’s just playing a disappearing game, nobody seems concerned except for criminal attorney Hester Crimstein. She contacts Wilde, asking him to use his unique skills to find the girl. But even he can find no trace of her. One day passes, then a second, then a third. On the fourth, a human finger shows up in the mail. And now Wilde knows this is no game. It’s a race against time to save the girl’s life – and expose the town’s dark trove of secrets…
Jealousy. Desire. Twenty-five years ago, a sixteen-year-old schoolgirl and her charismatic teacher disappeared without trace… When Louisa arrives at Temple House, an elite catholic boarding school, she quickly finds herself drawn to sophisticated fellow pupil Victoria and their young bohemian art teacher, Mr Lavelle. The three of them form a bond that seems to offer an escape from the repressive regime of the nuns who run the cloistered school. Until Louisa and Mr Lavelle suddenly vanish. Years later, a journalist with a childhood connection to Louisa determines to resolve the mystery. Her search for the truth will uncover a tragic, mercurial tale of suppressed desire and long-buried secrets. It will shatter lives and lay a lost soul to rest. The Temple House Vanishing is a stunning, intensely atmospheric novel of unrequited longing, dark obsession and unintended consequences.
Meg and her daughter Grace are the most beloved family in Ashford, the lynchpin that holds the community together. So when Meg is found brutally murdered and her daughter missing, the town is rocked by the crime. Not least because Grace has been sick for years – and may only have days to live. Who would murder a mother who sacrificed everything, and take a teenager away from the medication that could save her life? Everyone is searching for an answer, but sometimes the truth can kill you . . .
Published by Little Brown Book Group Ltd. Buy here.
Silver Chris Hammer
A HOMECOMING MARRED BY BLOOD Journalist Martin Scarsden returns to Port Silver to make a fresh start with his partner Mandy. But he arrives to find his childhood friend murdered – and Mandy is the prime suspect. Desperate to clear her name, Martin goes searching for the truth. A TERRIBLE CRIME The media descends on Port Silver, compelled by a story that has it all: sex, drugs, celebrity, and religion. Martin is chasing the biggest scoop of his career, and the most personal. A PAST HE CAN’T ESCAPE As Martin draws closer to a killer, the secrets of his traumatic childhood come to the surface, and he must decide what is more important – the story or his family…
‘A blistering mystery’ Erin Kelly. ‘Supremely atmospheric’ Daily Mail. ‘Gripping and original’ Clare Empson.
Two years ago, Ben Fenton went camping for the night with his brother Leo. When Ben woke up, he was covered in blood, and his brother had gone. Days later, Ben was facing a charge of murder.
Ben’s girlfriend, Ana Seabrook, has always sworn he was innocent. And now, on the hottest day of a sweltering heat wave, a body has been unearthed in Ana’s village. A body that might be connected to what really happened between Ben and Leo that fateful night.
DCI Jansen, of St Albans police, is sure that Ana has something to hide. But until the police track down the identity of the body, he can’t work out how everything’s connected. Will Ana’s secrets stay buried forever? Or can Jansen bring them to light?
Bound as one, to love, honor, or burn. Book one of a stunning fantasy duology, this tale of witchcraft and forbidden love is perfect for fans of Kendare Blake and Sara Holland. Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned. As a huntsman of the Church, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. But when Lou pulls a wicked stunt, the two are forced into an impossible situation-marriage. Lou, unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, must make a choice. And love makes fools of us all. Set in a world of powerful women, dark magic, and off-the-charts romance, book one of this stunning fantasy trilogy will leave readers burning for more.
Bundook . Gun. A common word, but one which turns Deen Datta’s world upside down. A dealer of rare books, Deen is used to a quiet life spent indoors, but as his once-solid beliefs begin to shift, he is forced to set out on an extraordinary journey; one that takes him from India to Los Angeles and Venice via a tangled route through the memories and experiences of those he meets along the way. There is Piya, a fellow Bengali-American who sets his journey in motion; Tipu, an entrepreneurial young man who opens Deen’s eyes to the realities of growing up in today’s world; Rafi, with his desperate attempt to help someone in need; and Cinta, an old friend who provides the missing link in the story they are all a part of. It is a journey which will upend everything he thought he knew about himself, about the Bengali legends of his childhood and about the world around him. Gun Island is a beautifully realised novel which effortlessly spans space and time. It is the story of a world on the brink, of increasing displacement and unstoppable transition. But it is also a story of hope, of a man whose faith in the world and the future is restored by two remarkable women.
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Your Life in My Hands comes this vibrant, tender and deeply personal memoir that finds light and love in the darkest of places.
As a specialist in palliative medicine, Dr Rachel Clarke chooses to inhabit a place many people would find too tragic to contemplate. Every day she tries to bring care and comfort to those reaching the end of their lives and to help make dying more bearable. Rachel’s training was put to the test in 2017 when her beloved GP father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. She learned that nothing – even the best palliative care – can sugar-coat the pain of losing someone you love. And yet, she argues, in a hospice there is more of what matters in life – more love, more strength, more kindness, more joy, more tenderness, more grace, more compassion – than you could ever imagine. For if there is a difference between people who know they are dying and the rest of us, it is simply this: that the terminally ill know their time is running out, while we live as though we have all the time in the world.
Dear Life is a book about the vital importance of human connection, by the doctor we would all want by our sides at a time of crisis. It is a love letter – to a father, to a profession, to life itself.
Published by Little Brown Book Group Ltd. Buy here.
Inheritance by Jenny Eclair
Beginnings, middles and ends; Peggy, Serena, Natasha and Bel. This is the room that binds them, this is how consequences work . . . In deepest Cornwall, the mansion Kittiwake has seen many pass through its doors since it was bought by American heiress Peggy Carmichael seventy years ago. Over the decades, the keys have been handed down through the family, and now it belongs to Bel’s adoptive brother, Lance. It’s where he’ll be celebrating his fiftieth birthday, and Bel is invited. But Bel barely feels like she’s holding it together as it is, and in going back to Kittiwake, she will be returning to the place where it all began – where, following the death of a child, a sequence of events was set in motion, the consequences of which are still rippling down through the generations . . .
From Sunday Times bestselling author Jenny Eclair comes an utterly compelling new novel of family secrets that will stay with you long after you’ve turned the last page.
Published by Little Brown Book Group Ltd. Buy here.
The Heights by Parker Bilal
What starts with the gruesome discovery of a severed head on the Tube soon becomes personal for former DI Cal Drake. After one betrayal too many, Drake has abandoned the police force to become a private detective. He’s teamed up with enigmatic forensic pathologist Dr Rayhana Crane and it’s not long before the case leads them to the darkest corners of the nation’s capital and in dangerously close contact with an international crime circuit, a brutal local rivalry and a very personal quest for retribution. With the murder victim tied to Drake’s past, his new future is about to come under threat.
Bury Them Deep (Inspector McLean 10) by James Oswald
When a member of the Police Scotland team fails to clock-in for work, concern for her whereabouts is immediate… and the discovery of her burnt-out car in remote woodland to the south of Edinburgh sets off a desperate search for the missing woman. Meanwhile, DCI Tony McLean and the team are preparing for a major anti-corruption operation – one which may raise the ire of more than a few powerful people in the city. Is Anya Renfrew’s disappearance a co-incidence or related to the case? McLean’s investigations suggest that perhaps that Anya isn’t the first woman to have mysteriously vanished in these ancient hills. Once again, McLean can’t shake the feeling that there is a far greater evil at work here…
It started with a splash. Jimmy, a homeless veteran grappling with PTSD, did his best to pretend he hadn’t heard it – the sound of something heavy falling into the Tyne at the height of an argument between two men on the riverbank. Not his fight.
Then he sees the headline: GIRL IN MISSING DAD PLEA. The girl, Carrie, reminds him of someone he lost, and this makes his mind up: it’s time to stop hiding from his past. But telling Carrie, what he heard – or thought he heard – turns out to be just the beginning of the story.
The police don’t believe him, but Carrie is adamant that something awful has happened to her dad and Jimmy agrees to help her, putting himself at risk from enemies old and new.
But Jimmy has one big advantage: when you’ve got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.
An essential collection of seven explosive Alex Rider stories by number one bestselling author, Anthony Horowitz. Ever since MI6 recognized his potential, Alex Rider has constantly been thrust into the line of danger. From a routine visit to the dentist that turns into a chase through the streets of London, to a school trip with a deadly twist, no day has ever been ordinary for the teenage super-spy. This collection of thrilling adventures features familiar and new assailants from the best-loved world of Alex Rider, and also includes three never-before-seen stories.
Fresh off the boat from England, Vita Marlowe has a job to do. Her beloved grandfather Jack has been cheated out of his home and possessions by a notorious conman with Mafia connections. Seeing Jack’s spirit is broken, Vita is desperate to make him happy again, so she devises a plan to outwit his enemies and recover his home. She finds a young pickpocket, working the streets of the city. And, nearby, two boys with highly unusual skills and secrets of their own are about to be pulled into her lawless, death-defying plan. Katherine Rundell’s fifth novel is a heist as never seen before – the story of a group of children who will do anything to right a wrong.
Imagine a world where everyone is kind – how can we make that come true? With gorgeous pictures by a host of the world’s top illustrators, Kind is a timely, inspiring picture book about the many ways children can be kind, from sharing their toys and games to helping those from other countries feel welcome. The book is endorsed by The Gruffalo illustrator Axel Scheffler, and fifty pence from the sale of each printed copy will go to the Three Peas charity, which gives vital help to refugees from war-torn countries.
Published: August 20th, 2020 Publisher: Pan Macmillan Format: Paperback, Kindle, Audio Genre: Psychological Thriller, Suspense
I read this book, which was one of Emma’s Anticipated Treasures for March, as part of a readalong with Tandem Collective UK. Thank you to Pan Macmillan for the gifted copy of the book.
SYNOPSIS:
From Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, the authors of the top ten bestseller The Wife Between Us and An Anonymous Girl, comes You Are Not Alone – a gripping novel about a group of women who appear to have the perfect lives, but all is not what it seems . . .
You probably know someone like Shay Miller. She wants to find love, but it eludes her. She wants to be fulfilled, but her job is a dead end. She wants to belong, but her life is becoming increasingly isolated.
You probably don’t know anyone like the Moore sisters. They have an unbreakable circle of friends. They live a life of glamour and perfection. They always get what they desire.
Shay thinks she wants their life.
But what they really want is hers.
MY REVIEW:
This high-octane, page-turning thriller had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. Filled with so many twists and turns I got book whiplash, I was not prepared for the ride I was about to embark on when I first opened this book.
I thought I had this one figured out. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Bravo to the authors for those mind blowing revelations. Exquisitely crafted and tightly plotted, the writing is cohesive and flows well, never feeling disjointed like some books that are co-authored. And after the Zoom Q&A that Tandem arranged with the authors where they talked about their writing process, I understand why. I admit, that meeting left me with a bit of a girl crush. They’re both funny, intelligent women who write fantastic books and have a relationship that is the ultimate in best friend goals. What’s not to crush on?
The authors have a talent for writing strong, complex female characters, and this book is packed with them. I liked Shay. Things aren’t going that well for her when we first met her and I really felt for her, especially having witnessed such a traumatic event. I could understand her loneliness and the need to connect that resulted in her gravitating towards Amanda’s friends, especially Cassandra and Jane Moore, the glamorous, mysterious and luminous sisters who befriend Shay and help her make-over her life. They are everything she wants to be: gorgeous, confident, happy and successful, and being around them makes her feel like she’s doing something right, like her life is finally going in the right direction since meeting them.
As we get further into the book, it becomes clear that the Moore sisters are playing a sinister and twisted game with Shay as their pawn. But she fails to see behind their carefully crafted masks, and I wanted to leap into the book to scream a warning at her so many times. Eventually, she begins to see cracks in their facade and realise things aren’t adding up. But the question is, who will win? Will they continue to be a step or two ahead and keep her tangled in their web? Or will Shay surprise them by outsmarting them and coming out on top? I was rooting for Shay but had a pit in my stomach thinking that the sisters just might prevail.
You Are Not Alone is a riveting, intelligent, tense and twisty thriller that is utterly addictive and completely unputdownable. A perfect read for anyone who enjoys this genre.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
MEET THE AUTHORS:
GREER HENDRICKS is the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of An Anonymous Girl and The Wife Between Us. The Wife Between Us has been optioned for film by Amblin Entertainment, with Greer and her co-author, Sarah Pekkanen, hired to write the screenplay. An Anonymous Girl has been optioned for television, with Greer and Sarah tapped to executive produce. Prior to becoming a novelist, Greer served as Vice President and Senior Editor at Simon & Schuster. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Allure, and Publishers Weekly. She lives in Manhattan with her husband and two children.
Sarah Pekkanen is the internationally-bestselling author of THE WIFE BETWEEN US and AN ANONYMOUS GIRL, cowritten with Greer Hendricks.
THE WIFE BETWEEN US – an instant New York Times bestseller – is a twisty psychological tale that has been optioned for film by Amblin Entertainment. Sarah and Greer are penning the screenplay for Amblin.
AN ANONMYOUS GIRL is currently in production as a television series by eOne,with Sarah and Greer serving as executive producers.
On September 3rd 2020 almost 600 books will be published in hard back alone! So, I’ve collated a list of ALL the books that are being published that day.
There are too many to fit in one post so I’m turning them into three: Adult Fiction, Non-Fiction and Children/YA Fiction. This first post is what is being released in Adult Fiction. There are a handful of books that have already been released in Hardback but are being released in paperback that will be included in another blog post.
So, here are all the new fiction books I could find that are out on September 3rd, 2020:
A Girl Made of Air by Nydia Hetherington
A lyrical and atmospheric homage to the strange and extraordinary, perfect for fans of Angela Carter and Erin Morgenstern.
This is the story of The Greatest Funambulist Who Ever Lived…
Born into a post-war circus family, our nameless star was unwanted and forgotten, abandoned in the shadows of the big top. Until the bright light of Serendipity Wilson threw her into focus.
Now an adult, haunted by an incident in which a child was lost from the circus, our narrator, a tightrope artiste, weaves together her spellbinding tales of circus legends, earthy magic and folklore, all in the hope of finding the child… But will her story be enough to bring the pair together again?
Beautiful and intoxicating, A Girl Made of Air brings the circus to life in all of its grime and glory; Marina, Manu, Serendipity Wilson, Fausto, Big Gen and Mouse will live long in the hearts of readers. As will this story of loss and reconciliation, of storytelling and truth.
From the acclaimed author of The End We Start From, The Harpy is a fierce tale of love, betrayal and revenge.
Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy works from home but devotes her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, he wants her to know.
The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but in a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage, she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, nor what form it will take.
As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return.
Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy by Megan Hunter is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal.
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved killings.
But when a local property developer shows up dead, ‘The Thursday Murder Club’ find themselves in the middle of their first live case.
The four friends, Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron, might be octogenarians, but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves. Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?
Nessa Crowley’s murderer has been protected by silence for ten years. Until a team of documentary makers decide to find out the truth.
On the day of Henry and Keelin Kinsella’s wild party at their big house a violent storm engulfed the island of Inisrun, cutting it off from the mainland. When morning broke Nessa Crowley’s lifeless body lay in the garden, her last breath silenced by the music and the thunder.
The killer couldn’t have escaped Inisrun, but no-one was charged with the murder. The mystery that surrounded the death of Nessa remained hidden. But the islanders knew who to blame for the crime that changed them forever.
Ten years later a documentary crew arrives, there to lift the lid off the Kinsella’s carefully constructed lives, determined to find evidence that will prove Henry’s guilt and Keelin’s complicity in the murder of beautiful Nessa.
In this bold, brilliant, disturbing new novel Louise O’Neill shows that deadly secrets are devastating to those who hold them close.
Everyone knows she killed Stuart Rees – why else would his dead body be found in her shed? So now Tabitha is in prison, awaiting trial.
Coming back to the remote coastal village where she grew up was a mistake. She didn’t fit in then, and she doesn’t fit in now.
That day is such a blur, she can’t remember clearly what happened. There is something she is missing, something important… She only knows one thing. She is not capable of murder.
And the only one she can trust to help her out of this situation is herself. So she must fight. Against the odds.
An extraordinary debut novel by Natasha Randall, exposing the seam of secrets within an American family, from beneath the plastic surfaces of their new ‘smart’ home. Love Orange charts the gentle absurdities of their lives, and the devastating consequences of casual choices.
While Hank struggles with his lack of professional success, his wife Jenny, feeling stuck and beset by an urge to do good, becomes ensnared in a dangerous correspondence with a prison inmate called John. Letter by letter, John pinches Jenny awake from the “marshmallow numbness” of her life. The children, meanwhile, unwittingly disturb the foundations of their home life with forays into the dark net and strange geological experiments.
Jenny’s bid for freedom takes a sour turn when she becomes the go-between for John and his wife, and develops an unnatural obsession for the orange glue that seals his letters…
Love Orange throws open the blinds of American life, showing a family facing up to the modern age, from the ascendancy of technology, the predicaments of masculinity, the pathologising of children, the epidemic of opioid addiction and the tyranny of the WhatsApp Gods. The first novel by the acclaimed translator is a comic cocktail, an exuberant skewering of contemporary anxieties and prejudices.
Elodie was beautiful. Elodie was smart. Elodie was troubled. Elodie is dead.
In Provence, under a sweltering sun, Sylvie returns to the crumbling family home of La Reverie with her youngest daughter Emma.
Yet every corner of the house is haunted by the memories of Elodie, her first child – memories she has tried to forget, but whose long-ago death the villagers certainly haven’t.
As temperatures rise, and forest fires rage through the French countryside, memories of Elodie spread further through Sylvie’s mind . . .
Because there’s something Sylvie’s been hiding about what happened to Elodie all those summers ago.
Kamran Hadid feels invincible. He attends Hampton school, an elite all-boys boarding school in London, he comes from a wealthy family, and he has a place at Oxford next year. The world is at his feet. And then a night of revelry leads to a drunken encounter and he must ask himself a horrific question.
With the help of assault counsellor, Zara Kaleel, Kamran reports the incident in the hopes that will be the end of it. But it’s only the beginning…
Powerful, explosive and important, Truth Be Told is a contemporary courtroom drama that vividly captures today’s society. You will not stop thinking about it for a long time to come.
Take a deep breath and immerse yourself in this stunning new novella from #1 Bestselling author Joanne Harris.
When you can find me an acre of land, Every sage grows merry in time, Between the ocean and the sand Then will you be united again. (Inspired by The Child Ballads 2 & 19)
So begins a beautiful and tragic quest as a heartbroken mother sets out to save her lost daughter, through the realms of the real, of dream, and even into the underworld itself.
But determination alone is not enough. For to save something precious, she must give up something precious, be it a song, a memory, or her freedom itself . . .
Beautifully illustrated by Bonnie Helen Hawkins, this is a stunning and original modern fairytale.
For fans of Longbourn and The Other Bennet Sister, this beautifully told story of marriage, duty and friendship follows Charlotte’s story from where Pride and Prejudice ends. Everybody believes that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is unmarried, plain, poor and reaching a dangerous age. But when she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her fortunes change. Her best friend Lizzy Bennet is appalled by her decision, yet Charlotte knows this is the only way to provide for her future. What she doesn’t know is that her married life will propel her into a new world: not only of duty and longed-for children, but secrets, grief, unexpected love and friendship, and a kind of freedom.
An atmospheric literary thriller set during the devastating North Sea flood of 1953, in which a love triangle turns murderous.
Her heart beat hard. There was a crazed beauty to the storm. It was almost miraculous, the way it took away the mess of life, sweeping all in its path…
No-one could have foreseen the changes the summer of 1952 would bring. Cramming for her final exams on her family’s farm on the Norfolk coast, Verity Frost feels trapped between past and present: the devotion of her childhood friend Arthur, just returned from National Service, and her strange new desire to escape.
When Verity meets Jack, a charismatic American pilot, he seems to offer the glamour and adventure she so craves, and Arthur becomes determined to uncover the dirt beneath his rival’s glossy sheen.
As summer turns to winter, a devastating storm hits the coast, flooding the land and altering everything in its path. In this new, watery landscape, Verity’s tangled web of secrets, lies and passion will bring about a crime that will change all their lives forever.
Sylvia knows that she’s running out of time. Very soon, she will exist only in the memories of those who loved her most and the pieces of her life she’s left behind.
So she begins to write her husband a handbook for when she’s gone, somewhere to capture the small moments of ordinary, precious happiness in their married lives. From raising their wild, loving son, to what to give their gentle daughter on her eighteenth birthday – it’s everything she should have told him before it was too late.
But Sylvia also has a secret, one that she’s saved until the very last pages. And it’s a moment in her past that could change everything…
She says he is a killer. He says she is delusional. Somebody is lying.
When Claire Fontaine learns that her ex-husband Simon is marrying again, to a woman with a teenage daughter, her blood runs cold. She is sure that years ago Simon molested her own daughter and was responsible for her mysterious death. She can’t let him get away with it a second time. Vandalism, harassment; whatever it takes, Claire will expose him.
Simon doesn’t know where Claire got this delusion from; her daughter’s death was ruled a suicide, but she has always blamed herself – is she just lashing out? Wanting to protect his new fiancee, he hires Sloane Wilson, an ex-cop turned ‘sin-eater’, whose job it is to handle delicate cases without getting the police involved, to get Claire off his back.
Sloane must navigate the wreckage of Claire and Simon’s marriage to discover the truth. Two people with conflicting stories and a whole lot of reasons to want to hurt each other. Is she crazy or is he manipulative? And can Sloane stay clear-headed enough to figure it out?
The legendary Laestadius becomes a kind of Sherlock Holmes in this exceptional historical crime novel.
It is 1852, and in Sweden’s far north, deep in the Arctic Circle, charismatic preacher and Revivalist Lars Levi Laestadius impassions a poverty-stricken congregation with visions of salvation. But local leaders have reason to resist a shift to temperance over alcohol.
Jussi, the young Sami boy Laestadius has rescued from destitution and abuse, becomes the preacher’s faithful disciple on long botanical treks to explore the flora and fauna. Laestadius also teaches him to read and write – and to love and fear God.
When a milkmaid goes missing deep in the forest, the locals suspect a predatory bear is at large. A second girl is attacked, and the sheriff is quick to offer a reward for the bear’s capture. Using early forensics and daguerreotype, Laestadius and Jussi find clues that point to a far worse killer on the loose, even as they are unaware of the evil closing in around them.
To Cook a Bear explores how communities turn inwards, how superstition can turn to violence, and how the power of language can be transformative in a richly fascinating mystery.
Translated from the Swedish by Deborah Bragan-Turner
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Puffin Clothbound Classics)
Puffin Clothbound Classics – stunningly beautiful hardback editions of the most famous stories in the world.
Heathcliff, an orphan, is raised by Mr Earnshaw as one of his own children. Hindley despises him but wild Cathy becomes his constant companion, and he falls deeply in love with her. But when she will not marry him, Heathcliff’s terrible vengeance ruins them all. Yet still his and Cathy’s love will not die.
The stories in Emma Cline’s stunning first collection consider the dark corners of human experience, exploring the fault lines of power between men and women, parents and children, past and present. A man travels to his son’s school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she’s playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father.
These outstanding stories examine masculinity, male power and broken relationships, while revealing – with astonishing insight and clarity – those moments of misunderstanding that can have life-changing consequences. And there is an unexpected violence, ever-present but unseen, in the depiction of the complicated interactions between men and women, and families. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories are unforgettable.
Meet Lana, Judith and Catrin. Best friends since primary school when they swore an oath on a Curly Wurly wrapper that they would always be there for each other, come what may.
After the trip of a lifetime, the three girls are closer than ever. But an unexpected turn of events shakes the foundation of their friendship to its core, leaving their future in doubt – there’s simply too much to forgive, let alone forget. An innocent childhood promise they once made now seems impossible to keep …
Packed with all the heart and empathy that made Ruth’s name as a screenwriter and now author, Us Three is a funny, moving and uplifting novel about life’s complications, the power of friendship and how it defines us all. Prepare to meet characters you’ll feel you’ve known all your life – prepare to meet Us Three.
Journalist Janey Everett arrives at a remote village on the island of Kauai, determined to solve one of the world’s greatest unsolved mysteries.
Ten years earlier, renowned pilot Sam Mallory left to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He never returned.
Now Janey has tracked down the woman she believes to be Mallory’s former flying partner, the legendary Irene Foster, and the one person who might know what really happened to him.
But Irene is hiding a story of her own. The story of an extraordinary life and a secret love she’s not quite ready to reveal…
Following the hugely successful Sunday Times Bestseller, Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize nominee and Costa shortlisted, The Salt Path, Raynor Winn returns with her second brilliant book.
This time the narrative explores the difficulties surrounding the return to mainstream life after a period of homelessness.
Recovering self-esteem and trust, in herself and in others, is harder than she expected. Raynor and her husband Moth continue to face his debilitating illness, until an incredible gesture by someone who read The Salt Path changes everything.
This book is about readjusting to life after homelessness, but also about recovering trust and self-belief after a traumatic event – feelings that can translate to many episodes in the life of any of us.
Olivia is the domestic goddess who has won millions of followers by sharing her picture-perfect life online. And now she’s releasing her tell-all autobiography.
For professional ghostwriter Nicky it’s the biggest job of her career. But as she delves deeper into Olivia’s life, cracks begin to appear in the glamorous facade. From the strained relationship with her handsome husband, to murky details of a tragic family death in her childhood, the truth belies Olivia’s perfect public image.
But why is Olivia so desperate to leave an old tragedy well alone? And how far will she go to keep Nicky from the truth? Published by Orion. Buy here
The Life We Almost Had by Amelia Henley
This is not a typical love story, but it’s our love story.
Anna wasn’t looking for love when Adam swept her off her feet but there was no denying their connection, and she believed they would be together forever.
Years later, cracks have appeared in their relationship. Anna is questioning whether their love can really be eternal when a cruel twist of fate delivers a crushing blow, and Anna and Adam are completely lost to one another. Now, Anna needs Adam more than ever, but the way back to him has life-changing consequences.
Is a second chance at first love really worth the sacrifice? Anna needs to decide and time is running out…
Winner of the Comedy Women in Print Prize‘Inspired and stylish’ Jenny Eclair‘Original and witty’ Helen Lederer
When her father falls ill, Billie returns home to the Yorkshire farm which she left behind for life in London. The transition back to country lass from city girl isn’t easy, not least because leaving London means leaving her relationship with Joely Chevalier, just as it was heating up.
And when she gets to Yorkshire, Billie’s shocked to discover the family dairy farm is in dire straits – the last thing Billie expected was a return to the life of a farmer but it isn’t long before she’s up at 5am with manure up to her wellies.
Battling misogyny, homophobia and some very unpredictable dairy cows, Billie must find a way to keep the cows happy, save the farm and save herself…
Otty has just landed her dream job. She’s about to join the writing team of one of the most respected showrunners in TV. And then the night before her first day, she’s evicted from her flat.
Joe has been working with Russell for years. He’s the best writer on his team, but lately something has been off. He’s trying to get his mojo back, but when his flatmate moves out without warning he has other things to worry about.
Otty moving into Joe’s house seems like the perfect solution to both their problems, but neither is prepared for what happens next. Paired together in the writing room, their obvious chemistry sparks from the page and they are the writing duo to beat. But their relationship off the page is an entirely different story, and neither of them can figure out why.
And suddenly the question isn’t, will they, or won’t they? It’s why won’t they?
Jess and Laura might be sisters, but they’re very different people. Laura is laid-back, eats cheese in bed, and takes life as it comes. Jess, meanwhile, is the classic overachiever: Chief of Chivvying, Queen of all WhatsApp groups. They’re family, but they’re not exactly friends.
…but you can let them in.
When their mum dies, the sisters struggle to agree on anything, from where to scatter the ashes to whether “passed away” is an acceptable term. But as life forces them together, Laura and Jess realise: the only way through this is as a team. After all, they’re stuck with each other – and drinking wine is more fun as a pair…
Jenna is a wife, a mother, a doctor. She’s also the victim of a stalker.
Every time she leaves her house, she sees him. Disturbing gifts are left at her door. Cruel emails are sent to her colleagues. She has no idea who this man is but she feels powerless against him.
Until the day he is brought into her hospital after a serious accident, and Jenna is given the chance to find out once and for all why this man is tormenting her. Now, the power is all hers.
But how many lines is she willing to cross to take back control of her life?
Joe and Imogen seem like the perfect couple – they’ve been in a relationship for years and are the envy of their friends at school. But after accidentally becoming involved a tragic fatal accident, they become embroiled in a situation out of their control, and Joe and Imogen’s relationship becomes slowly unravelled until the truth is out there for all to see … Structured around a dramatic and tense court case, the reader becomes both judge and jury in a stunning and page-turning novel of uncovering secrets and lies – who can be believed?
Avery has a plan: keep her head down, work hard for a better future.
Then an eccentric billionaire dies, leaving her almost his entire fortune. And no one, least of all Avery, knows why.
They had everything.
Now she must move into the mansion she’s inherited.
It’s filled with secrets and codes, and the old man’s surviving relatives – a family hell-bent on discovering why Avery got ‘their’ money.
Now there’s only one rule: winner takes all. Soon she is caught in a deadly game that everyone in this strange family is playing. But just how far will they go to keep their fortune?
Poppy, Lily, and Belladonna would do anything to protect their best friend, Raven. So when they discovered he was suffering abuse at the hands of his stepmother, they came up with a lethal plan: petals of poppy, belladonna, and lily in her evening tea so she’d never be able to hurt Raven again. But someone got cold feet, the plot faded to a secret of the past, and the group fell apart.
Three years later, on the eve of Raven’s seventeenth birthday, his stepmother turns up dead. But it’s only belladonna found in her tea, and it’s only Belladonna who’s carted off to jail.
Desperate for help, Belle reaches out to her estranged friends to prove her innocence, but who can she trust? Someone is lying and when the tangled web of secrets and betrayal is finally unwound, what lies at its heart will change the group forever.
The Fullers are the picture-perfect family, a wealthy couple with a grand home in the middle of remote woodland. But even they have something to hide – and it will prove fatal.
Some crimes can’t be forgotten.
Psychologist Dr Jessie Flynn and DI Marilyn Simmons arrive at the Fuller’s home to find a suburban nightmare. A crime scene more disturbing than anything they have ever encountered.
Some killers can’t be stopped.
Jessie knows that this is no random act of violence. And if she can’t unlock the motivation behind the crime and shine a light into this killer’s mind, the Fullers won’t be the only family to die…
Following the death of her mother, Becky begins the sad task of sorting through her empty flat. Starting with the letters piling up on the doormat, she finds an envelope post-marked from Cornwall. In it is a letter that will change her life forever. A desperate plea from her mother’s elderly cousin, Olivia, to help save her beloved home.
Becky arrives at Chynalls to find the beautiful old house crumbling into the ground, and Olivia stuck in hospital with no hope of being discharged until her home is made habitable.
Though daunted by the enormity of the task, Becky sets to work. But as she peels back the layers of paint, plaster and grime, she uncovers secrets buried for more than seventy years. Secrets from a time when Olivia was young, the Second World War was raging, and danger and romance lurked round every corner…
The Sea Gate is a sweeping, spellbinding novel about the lives of two very different women, and the secrets that bind them together.
England, 1459: Cecily Neville, Duchess of York, is embroiled in a plot to topple the weak-minded King Henry VI from the throne. But when the Yorkists are defeated at the Battle of Ludford Bridge, Cecily’s family flee and abandon her to face a marauding Lancastrian army on her own.
Cecily can only watch as her lands are torn apart and divided up by the ruthless Queen Marguerite. From the towers of her prison in Tonbridge Castle, the Duchess begins to spin a web of deceit – one that will eventually lead to treason, to the fall of King Henry VI, and to her eldest son being crowned King Edward IV.
This is a story of heartbreak, ambition and treachery, of one woman’s quest to claim the throne during the violence and tragedy of the Wars of the Roses.
Chuck Palahniuk returns with the chilling tale, in classic Palahniuk tradition, of a father in search of his daughter, a young woman with a secret, and a malicious recording that can make “the whole world scream at the exact same time.”
Private detective Foster Gates is a father is in search of his missing daughter, and sound engineer Mitzi harbors a secret that may help him solve the case. It’s Mitzi’s job to create the dubbed screams used in horror films and action movies. She’s the best at what she does.
But what no one in Hollywood knows is the screams Mitzi produces are harvested from the real, horror-filled, blood-chilling screams of people in their death throes–a technique first employed by Mitzi’s father and one she continues on in his memory–a deeply conflicted serial killer compelled beyond her understanding to honor her father’s chilling legacy.
Soon Foster finds himself on Mitzi’s trail. And in pursuit of her dark art, Mitzi realizes she’s created the perfect scream, one that compels anyone who hears it to mirror the sound as long as they listen to it–a highly contagious seismic event with the potential to bring the country to its knees.
The Darkest Evening (Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves
DCI Vera Stanhope returns in The Darkest Evening, the ninth novel in Sunday Times bestseller Ann Cleeves’ enduringly popular series.
Driving home during a swirling blizzard, Vera Stanhope’s only thought is to get there quickly.
But the snow is so heavy, she becomes disoriented and loses her way. Ploughing on, she sees a car slewed off the road ahead of her. With the driver’s door open, Vera assumes the driver has sought shelter but when she inspects the car she is shocked to find a young toddler strapped in the back seat.
Afraid they will freeze, Vera takes the child and drives on, arriving at Brockburn, a run-down stately home she immediately recognizes as the house her father Hector grew up in.
Inside Brockburn a party is in full swing, with music and laughter to herald the coming Christmas. But outside in the snow, a young woman lies dead and Vera knows immediately she has a new case. Could this woman be the child’s mother, and if so, what happened to her?
A classic country house mystery with a contemporary twist, Ann Cleeves returns with a brilliant Vera novel to savour.
Three years after a virus wiped out 99% of the men on earth, a mother and son are on the run . . .
All Cole has left in the world is her boy, Miles.
With men now a prized commodity, keeping him safe means breaking hastily written new rules – and leaving her own sister for dead.
All Miles has left in the world is his mother.
But is one person enough to save him from the many who would kill to get their hands on a living boy?
Together, Cole and Miles embark on a journey across a changed, hostile country, towards a freedom they may never reach. And when Cole’s sister tracks them down, they’ll need to decide who to trust – and what loyalty really means in this unimaginable new world.
Martha – a home-maker. Victoria – a social butterfly. Serena – a free spirit. Kirk – a hot-blooded man. Eleni – a risk taker. Tina – a young girl with a dark past.
They’d get along fine, if they didn’t share a body.
Carolyn Grand’s traumatic childhood led to her developing six distinct personalities. The man responsible was convicted of child abuse and sentenced to thirty years in jail. The man responsible was her father, Hank Grand.
28 years later, when Hank Grand is released early from prison, Martha, Victoria, Serena, Kirk, Eleni and Tina must confront the man who made them.
But now Hank Grand is dead, murdered and Carolyn is the police’s primary suspect. Or suspects. Who really did it? Martha, Victoria, Serena, Kirk, Eleni and Tina don’t even know themselves. But one of them may be lying…
A chilling psychological thriller with a unique cast of characters, this is sure to have you hooked to the very last page.
From the widely renowned author Andrew O’Hagan, a heartbreaking novel of an extraordinary lifelong friendship.
Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit.
With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently.
Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news.
Mayflies is a memorial to youth’s euphorias and to everyday tragedy. A tender goodbye to an old union, it discovers the joy and the costs of love.
The World Does Not Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott
Welcome to Cross River, Maryland. Established by the leaders of the country’s only successful slave revolt in the mid-nineteenth century, its residents thump out a beat that echoes its violent founding. Among them – spanning decades, perspectives, and species – are David Sherman, a struggling musician who just happens to be God’s last son; Tyrone, a ruthless Ph.D student channelling the insurrections of his forebears through a childhood game; Jim, a Robot Personal Helper desperate to escape the master who enslaves him; and James-my-man, who travels the path of the Underground Railroad year after year. Not to forget the water women who lure men to their watery graves and the screecher birds who cry out for sacrificial flesh…
An invitation from an old friend draws Jack Morgan into a deadly conspiracy . . .
On a cold January morning, Jack Morgan stands inside the New York Stock Exchange with his former US Marine comrade whose company is being launched onto the market, eagerly awaiting the opening bell.
But before the bell rings, a bullet rips through the air and finds its mark.
In the aftermath of the murder, the victim’s wife hires Jack to find the killer. As the head of Private, Jack has at his disposal the world’s largest investigation agency. What he discovers shakes him to his core.
Jack identifies another murder in Moscow that appears to be linked. So he heads to Russia, and begins to uncover a conspiracy that could have global consequences.
With powerful forces plotting against him, will Jack Morgan make it out alive?
The Memory of Souls – A Chorus of Dragons by Jenn Lyons
The city of Atrine lies in ruins. And now Relos Var has revealed his plan to free the monstrous god, Vol Karoth, the end of the world is closer than ever.
To buy time for humanity, Kihrin and his friends need to convince a king to perform an ancient ritual. The power released would imprison the god for an age to come. But this may come at too high a price for the King of the Vane, as the ritual would strip his people of their immortality. As a result, some will do anything to prevent this ritual – including assassinating those championing this solution.
Worse, Kihrin must come to terms with a horrifying possibility. It seems his connection to Vol Karoth is growing in strength . . . but what does it mean? And how can Kihrin hope to save his world, when he might be the greatest threat of all?
Alan Noland discovers his father’s memoirs and learns the truth about the violent man he despised.
In this unsparing family history, Alan distils his father’s life in the Dutch East Indies into one furious utterance. He reads about his work as an interpreter during the war with Japan, his life as an assassin, and his decision to murder Indonesians in the service of the Dutch without any conscience. How he fled to the Netherlands to escape being executed as a traitor and met Alan’s mother soon after. As he reads his father’s story Alan begins to understand how war transformed his father into the monster he knew.
Birney exposes a crucial chapter in Dutch and European history that was deliberately concealed behind the ideological facade of postwar optimism. Readers of this superb novel will find that it reverberates long afterwards in their memory.
This life is like being in an ocean. Some people keep swimming towards the bottom. Some people touch the bottom with one foot, or even both, and then push themselves off it to get back up to the top, where you can breathe. Others get to the bottom and decide they want to stay there. I don’t want to get to the bottom because I’m already drowning. This is a story of a London you won’t find in any guidebooks.
This is a story about what it’s like to exist in the moment, about boys too eager to become men, growing up in the hidden war zones of big cities – and the girls trying to make it their own way. This is a story of reputations made and lost, of violence and vengeance – and never counting the cost. This is a story of concrete towers and blank eyed windows, of endless nights in police stations and prison cells, of brotherhood and betrayal. This is about the boredom, the rush, the despair, the fear and the hope. This is about what’s left behind.
The action-packed and gripping new adventure by number one bestselling author, Wilbur Smith, about one man’s quest for revenge. ‘The right of the cat over the mouse, of the strong over the weak. The natural law of existence.’ Mungo St John, A Falcon Flies The son of a wealthy plantation owner and a doting mother, Mungo St John is accustomed to the wealth and luxuries his privilege has afforded him. That is until he returns from university to discover his family ruined, his inheritance stolen and his childhood sweetheart, Camilla, taken by the conniving Chester Marion.
Fuelled by anger, and love, Mungo swears vengeance and devotes his life to saving Camilla – and destroying Chester. Camilla, trapped in New Orleans, powerless to her position as a kept slave and suffering at the hands of Chester’s brutish behaviour, must learn to do whatever it takes to survive. As Mungo battles his own fate and misfortune to achieve the revenge that drives him, and regain his power in the world, he must question what it takes for a man to survive when he has nothing, and what he is willing to do in order to get what he wants
In a Europe on the verge of collapse, the Nazi organisation Ahnenerbe is pillaging sacred landmarks across the world. Their aim is to collect treasures with occult powers, which will help them establish the Third Reich.
The organisation’s head, Himmler, has sent SS officers to search a forgotten sanctuary in the Himalayas, while he tries to track down a mysterious painting. Which ancient power do the Nazis believe they hold the key to?
Meanwhile, in London, Churchill has discovered that the war against Germany will also be a spiritual one: their light must fight the occult if they are to win . . .
Toni Windsor is trying to live a quiet life in the green and pleasant county of Staffordshire. She’d love to finally master the rules of croquet, acquire a decent boyfriend and make some commission as an estate agent. All that might have to wait, though, because there are zombies rising from their graves, vampires sneaking out of their coffins and a murder to solve. And it’s all made rather more complicated by the fact that she’s the one raising all the zombies. Oh, and she’s dating one of the vampires too. Really, what’s a girl meant to do?
Soaked in sunlight, love and the mysteries surrounding a famous artist The Diver and the Lover is a novel inspired by true events.
It is 1951 and sisters Ginny and Meredith have travelled from England to Spain in search of distraction and respite. The two wars have wreaked loss and deprivation upon the family and the spectre of Meredith’s troubled childhood continues to haunt them. Their journey to the rugged peninsula of Catalonia promises hope and renewal.
While there they discover the artist Salvador Dali is staying in nearby Port Lligat. Meredith is fascinated by modern art and longs to meet the famous surrealist.
Dali is embarking on an ambitious new work, but his headstrong male model has refused to pose. A replacement is found, a young American waiter with whom Ginny has struck up a tentative acquaintance.
The lives of the characters become entangled as family secrets, ego and the dangerous politics of Franco’s Spain threaten to undo the fragile bonds that have been forged.
A powerful story of love, sacrifice and the lengths we will go to for who – or what – we love.
He is a renowned Swedish filmmaker and has a plan for everything. She is his daughter, by the actress he directed and once loved. Each summer of her childhood, the daughter visits the father at his remote Faro island home on the edge of the Baltic Sea.
Now that she’s grown up – a writer, with children of her own – and he’s in his eighties, they envision writing a book together, about old age, language, memory and loss. She will ask the questions. He will answer them. The tape recorder will record.
But it’s winter now and old age has caught up with him in ways neither could have foreseen. And when the father is gone, only memories, images and words — both remembered and recorded – remain. And from these the daughter begins to write her own story, in the pages which become this book.
Heart-breaking and spell-binding, Unquiet is a seamless blend of fiction and memoir in pursuit of elemental truths about how we live, love, lose and age.
The staggering wealth of Venice contrasts the brutal lives of those in the ghetto. Opportunistic merchants arrive to make their fortune. Deception, malice and perversion thrive, leading to the emergence of a dark society: The Wolves of Venice.
Drawn into the Wolves’ plots are the innocents – including Marco Gianetti, assistant to Tintoretto; Ira Tabat, a Jewish merchant; Giorgio Gabal, an artist’s apprentice; and Giovanni Spoletto, the doomed castrato – all manipulated by the likes of Pietro Aretino, the courtesan Tita Boldini and the spy Adamo Baptista.
The lives of these characters criss-cross one another. Their destinies intermingle in a Venice corrupted by spies lingering in the shadows, working for paymasters that change allegiance with the wind. As the betrayals, murders and tragedies continue, will anyone be able to bring the Wolves of Venice to justice?
How To Raise An Elephant: No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Catch up on the latest from Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi and other favourites in this new instalment of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series.
As the temperature rises in Gaborone, Precious Ramotswe, founder of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, wonders whether the heat could be the reason that business is particularly slow. Luckily, a slower pace in life is her natural preference, unlike her colleague Mma Makutsi, who is alert to every passing observation and inclined to making snap decisions. With fewer cases to handle, Precious has time to contemplate her new neighbours, a couple who, by the sounds of it, have a rather volatile relationship . . .
But then a distant cousin of Mma Ramotswe’s comes to the agency with a plea for help, and the ladies decide to pursue the issue together. Armed with Mma Ramotswe’s circumspection and Mma Makutsi’s sharp eye, they proceed with confidence and open hearts. What, after all, could be more straightforward than a family matter?
Meanwhile, their colleague Charlie is behaving oddly, borrowing Mma Ramotswe’s van and returning it in an unusual condition. Digging a little deeper, the explanation is both strange and extraordinary, and takes Charlie, along with Mma Ramotswe’s husband, Mr J. L. B. Matekoni, on a hair-raising night-time expedition.
In the end, Precious is reminded of the need to view a picture from every angle, to accept the imperfections in people and situations, and then find a solution – preferably over a delicious slice of her friend Mma Potokwani’s fruit cake.
‘From now on when you see something, you’re seeing it because I want you to see it. When you think of something, it’ll be because I want you to think about it…’
And with those words, the obsession begins.
A writer has left his family in Brooklyn for a three month residency at the Deuter Centre in Berlin, hoping for undisturbed days devoted to artistic absorption.
When nothing goes according to plan, he finds himself holed up in his room watching Blue Lives, a violent cop show with a bleak and merciless worldview. One night at a party he meets Anton, the charismatic creator of the show, and strikes up a conversation.
It is a conversation that leads him on a journey into the heart of moral darkness. A conversation thatthreatens to destroy everything he holds most dear, including his own mind.
Red Pill is a novel about the alt-right, online culture, creativity, sanity and history. It tells the story of the 21st century through the prism of the centuries that preceded it, showing how the darkest chapters of our past haunt our present. More than anything, though, this is a novel about love and how it can endure in a world where everything else seems to have lost all meaning.
He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka
This is a Kafka emergency kit, a congregation of the brief, the minor works that are actually major. Joshua Cohen has produced a frame that refuses distinctions between what is a story, a letter, a workplace memo and a diary entry, also including popular favourites like The Bucket Rider, ThePenal Colony and The Burrow. Here we see Kafka’s preoccupations in writing about animals, messiah variations, food and exercise, each in his signature style.
Cohen’s selection emphasises the stately structure of utterly coherent logic, within an utterly incoherent illogical world, showing how Kafka harnessed the humblest grammar to metamorphic power until the predominant effect ceases to be the presence of an unreliable narrator, but the absence of the universe’s only reliable narrator. Who is God.
The New York Times bestselling series returns! Your favourite royal family are back for another thrilling instalment of gossip, drama and romance . . .
Beatrice Washington now rules America as its first ever queen, but her family are more concerned about rushing through her arranged marriage to a man she barely knows. No one can know that her heart really belongs to her bodyguard – but even their love is under threat.
Meanwhile, Princess Samantha is under more scrutiny than ever before – and she still longs to be with her sister’s fiancee. But with no sign of Bea’s wedding being called off, she’s surprised to find someone else catching her eye.
Nina Gonzalez is also tangled up with someone she never expected to be. She and Ethan are both nursing broken hearts, and it’s not long before they find themselves pulled irresistably together.
Luckily for Daphne Deighton, Prince Jeff’s grief for his father makes him a prime target for her attentions. She’s the closest she’s been in years to getting what she wants . . . so why can’t she let the idea of her and Ethan go?
As the royal wedding of the century creeps ever closer, will these four young women get what they want – or will their hearts be broken forever?
A brand-new chilling horror novel from the bestselling author of Alice and Lost Boy
When the bodies of two girls are found torn apart in her hometown, Lauren is surprised, but she also expects that the police won’t find the killer. After all, the year before her father’s body was found with his heart missing, and since then everyone has moved on.
Even her best friend, Miranda, has become more interested in boys than in spending time at the old ghost tree, the way they used to when they were kids. So when Lauren has a vision of a monster dragging the remains of the girls through the woods, she knows she can’t just do nothing. Not like the rest of her town. But as she draws closer to answers, she realizes that the foundation of her seemingly normal town might be rotten at the centre. And that if nobody else stands for the missing, she will.
The year is 1969 and Jack Sheffield is a young teacher in need of a job. In a room full of twenty-nine other newly qualified teachers, he’s overjoyed when he’s appointed to Heather View Primary. Jack is excited to start his first year there and to begin shaping young minds in a beautiful new location on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales.
But Heather View isn’t as idyllic as it first sounds. In fact, it looks more like a prison than a primary school. With less than adequate funding and a head teacher who doesn’t seem to care, it’s no easy task to give the kids the education they deserve. But Jack’s determined to do just that.
Full of warmth and good humour, Back to School is like taking a nostalgic walk through the past to a simpler time…
Lessons is the third novel in Jenny Colgan’s beloved Maggie Adair series.
As the summer holidays start, scandal hits Downey House. The attraction between Maggie Adair, the fiery, committed English teacher at Downey House and David McDonald, a teacher at the local boys’ school, has escalated – and now both are facing an uncertain future.
The girls of Downey House – mercurial Fliss, glamorous Alice and shy, dependable Simone – are facing long summers at home. But the new term is not far away – and it will bring new pupils and lots of fresh new challenges . . .
Down a winding lane lined with strawberry trees and wildflowers lies Appleyard Farm, a beautiful orchard in the English countryside. And in a little farmhouse in the furthest corner, a young woman has a difficult decision to make…
Life on Appleyard Farm is all Freya Sherbourne has ever known. Having spent her childhood playing in the emerald green meadows and berry picking until sunset, Freya intends to call the farmhouse home forever. But when her father suddenly passes away and Appleyard Farm goes up for sale, Freya’s world comes crashing down.
Holding back the tears, she starts packing boxes while waiting for a buyer. Now the river no longer sparkles, and the apples taste a little less sweet. Until Freya learns the exciting news that her best friends Merry and Willow are moving nearby to open a local shop. And when someone from her past re-emerges, handsomer than ever and offering to mend the cracks in her broken heart, Freya’s eyes begin to twinkle once again.
But falling in love is scary, especially when you don’t know what the future holds. And when Freya discovers that her new love has been keeping a secret, one that threatens both their fragile relationship and the farm, she risks losing everything.
With the clock ticking, will Freya choose to follow her heart or save the farm? Or can she find a way to do both?
Shell Smith is the most popular make-up artist on the ART counter at Duke & Sons, a beautiful but old-fashioned department store in her hometown. But whilst Shell’s love life is looking up, now that her long-time crush Nick is back in town and business is booming in the beauty department, the rest of the store is noticeably quiet . . .
The owner’s grandson Callum has come up with some creative ways to keep Duke & Sons afloat this Christmas, including allowing a production company to film a romcom after hours. When Shell discovers the secret, Callum recruits her to help out and, in the process, Shell finds there is more to Mr Duke Jr. than sharp suits and a business-like demeanour.
Change is coming and romance is in the air for Shell during this most wonderful time of the year. Except real life is nothing like a Christmas romcom . . . right?
Martha Packer is much loved by everyone in the village of Hillsbridge. As the landlady of The Three Feathers, she runs a respectable establishment and is known for her generosity and care for her family and others around her – she even took in two orphan girls to save them from a life of cruelty in the workhouse.
So when Martha announces that she has killed her son, Garth, the community is shocked. Garth was undoubtedly a bad seed, but they knew how much Martha adored her first-born. What could have driven Martha to such extreme actions?
Martha refuses to give a reason but her other children cannot believe their mother is capable of murder and they begin to believe that she is protecting someone – maybe even one of them…
Welcome to Broadwater Farm, one of the most well-known housing estates in Britain. A place where post-war dreams of concrete utopia ended in riots, violence and sub-standard housing. In this collection, Tottenham-born Jac Shreeves-Lee gives voice to the people of Broadwater Farm. With evocative language and raw storytelling, she compassionately portrays their shared sense of community. A community with a rich cultural heritage, comprising over forty nationalities, generations old.
Love at the Little Wedding Shop by the Sea by Jane Linfoot
It’s the most romantic day of the year but the girls aren’t just gearing up for Valentine’s Day and a busy wedding season ahead, it’s also the 10 year anniversary of their beloved shop!
Jess is planning the party of the decade and with the champagne and cocktails flowing, sparks are going to fly…and not just from the fireworks display!
The Kindness Club on Mapleberry Lane: Part One by Helen Rolfe
A little kindness can go a long way . . .
Veronica’s cottage is the neatest house on Mapleberry Lane. A place for everything, and everything in its place – that’s her motto. But within her wisteria-covered walls, Veronica has a secret: she hasn’t left her perfect home in years.
Then her granddaughter arrives on the doorstep, and Veronica’s orderly life is turned upside down. Ever since her parents’ divorce, Audrey has struggled to find her place in the world. ButWith a little help from the residents of Mapleberry Lane, Audrey forms a plan to give her gran the courage to reconnect with the community: a kindness club, with one generous action a day to make their world a better place – and perhaps help each other at the same time.
As their small acts of kindness begins to ripple through the village, both Veronica and Audrey find that with each passing day, they feel a little braver. There’s just one task left before the end of the year: to make Veronica’s own secret wish come true…
Christmas at Lock Keeper’s Cottage by Lucy Coleman
Imogen Tolliman never knew her mother. And when an accident robs Immi of her father too, she goes to live with her grandfather, Tollie, in his picturesque lock-keeper’s cottage by the Aysbury marina.
Tollie is the star of the Santa Ahoy Special each Christmas – a festive boat ride along the canal that enthralls both children and adults alike. And as Immi grows up, she starts to appreciate the magical community she is lucky enough to live in.
When Immi meets Gray Adams, she instantly realises he’s someone special. And as their relationship gets serious, they start to plan for the Christmas to beat all Christmases.
But as the day approaches, and the romantic snow showers turn into blizzards, their dream of a Christmas to remember, looks set to be one they’ll never forget – for all the wrong reasons. Can they salvage the festivities, or will old secrets that are finally uncovered turn Immi’s life upside down forever?
In The Killing Field, Poe and Tilly are having breakfast, wondering how to spend the rest of their holiday, when their presence is requested at a Cumbrian airfield. An airfield that, during the 2001 foot and mouth crisis, was known as the killing field . . .
In Why Don’t Sheep Shrink?, a global pandemic forces Poe and Tilly to self-isolate together. Things don’t go well. They’re bickering and on the verge of falling out until Poe finds an old case file: a locked room mystery he’s been mulling over for years. Step forward, Tilly Bradshaw . . .
Dead Man’s Fingers sees Poe, Tilly and Edgar, Poe’s English springer spaniel, enjoying a picnic at a nature reserve. When Edgar chases a rabbit, and Poe and Tilly chase after him, they stumble upon a twenty-year-old mystery, a mystery that couldn’t be solved until now . . .
Tears stream down her face as she feels the cold blade press against her neck. The sweet scent of her daughter’s favorite strawberry pancakes all around, her last thought is for her beautiful girl. Please, please let Lisa have escaped.
When Detective Casey White is called early one morning to a beachside vacation campsite in the Outer Banks, she finds the bodies of Carl and Peggy Pearson side-by-side, their throats cut, and their thirteen-year-old daughter Lisa nowhere to be found. Haunted by memories of her own missing girl, Casey fears this could soon become a triple murder: because without the medication found in the bathroom cabinet, Lisa has just days to live.
As her team struggle to untangle the meaning of the cryptic symbol carved into the victims’ skin, Casey searches the area for signs of Lisa: and is rewarded when she finds her blistered and barefoot, staggering along the highway. The girl barely has breath left to whisper ‘he invited me’ before blacking out.
Days later, another couple is found murdered on a vacation yacht. A different symbol is etched on their bodies, and their teenage daughter is also missing. Casey’s only clue is an unsettling ‘invitation’ found on the girl’s phone, to a secluded building out in the cornfields.
Desperate to uncover who is luring these innocent families to their deaths, and certain forensics have missed something vital, Casey matches up the crime scene photos herself. The symbols combine to form an upcoming date. The killer is taunting them with the timing of the next murder.
Racing to follow the invitation in time, when Casey arrives she is shocked to glimpse not the missing girls from this case, but her own missing daughter…
A hint of gold glistened in the sand. It was a watch, no doubt about it. A watch… attached to a body.
Criminal psychologist Robyn Adams is at breaking point after a previous case resulted in an attempt on her own life. But as she sits in the car about to head home, her phone rings. It’s Robyn’s cousin, Vicky Carter, who she hasn’t seen or heard from in years.
Vicky’s voice cracks down the phone. Her husband, Simon, has been found buried on Golden Sands beach. Desperate to help and determined not to let her last case get the better of her, Robyn returns to the coastal village where she spent summers with Vicky as a child.
Robyn knows that she has let Vicky down in the past and is set on making up for lost time. Throwing herself into the case, she combs through evidence, intent on discovering a lead that will help the local police.
But there is clearly someone who wants Robyn gone. She is convinced someone is watching her and when she begins to receive threatening notes, Robyn knows that she could be risking her life…
But Robyn won’t leave again – she owes it to Vicky to stay.
The Nightingale House is a new beginning for widower Daniel Price and his young daughter Caitlyn. After months of grief, this will be the place where they start their life as a family of two.
But something is wrong-Daniel can’t settle. There’s an odd, cold feeling in the master bedroom, and a mysterious dripping noise that seems to move from room to room. Whispers of I can’t sleep echo through the corridors, long into the night.
And then Daniel uncovers the chilling story of the family who lived in the house years before, of betrayal, tragedy, and murder. Could the Nightingale House be not the home Daniel dreamed of for his daughter-but a place that will bring their worst nightmares to life?
‘If I’ve learned one thing,’ the late, great Father Fehily used to say, ‘it’s that life, families and rugby balls don’t always behave the way you want them to!’ Looking at my life, I’d have to say, the dude wasn’t wrong. My old man had been caught rigging a General Election. My old dear was about to become a seventy-year-old mother of six. And Honor was walking around in a yellow rain mac, telling everyone that the end of the world was coming. It was enough to drive a man to the brink. The only simple thing in my life was my new job as the Head Coach of Presentation College Bray – which is saying something given that I had to try to turn a collection of jokers, chokers and forty-a-day smokers into a team capable of winning the school’s first Leinster Schools Senior Cup in nearly ninety years. And while Father Fehily would have been spinning in his grave, I soon found myself falling in love – with the town I loathed so well.
Witch Child by Celia Rees (20th Anniversary Edition)
An updated edition of this outstanding historical novel, in a stunning new package to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its publication. When Mary sees her grandmother accused of witchcraft and hanged for the crime, she is silently hurried to safety by an unknown woman. The woman gives her tools to keep the record of her days – paper and ink. Mary is taken to a boat in Plymouth and from there sails to the New World where she hopes to make a new life among the pilgrims. But old superstitions die hard and soon Mary finds that she, like her grandmother, is the victim of ignorance and stupidity, and once more she faces important choices to ensure her survival. With a vividly evoked environment and characters skilfully and patiently drawn, this is a powerful literary achievement by Celia Rees that is utterly engrossing from start to finish.
As Witch Child ends so Sorceress begins. Alison Ellman is still searching for information about Mary Newbury; she has a diary and some scattered information about other people in Mary’s life, but Mary has disappeared into the forests and Alison has no way of following her. But when she meets Agnes Herne, Alison encounters the person who is going to tell her all about Mary’s life after she leaves Beulah. Agnes is a descendant of Mary’s and has a special skill which allows her to be in touch with Mary in the spirit world. And Mary has a story to tell. A story of love and friendship, sadness and loss. A story that takes her across the New World in an epic search for a home. We fell under the spell of Mary in Witch Child and now at last we find out what happened to her after her ill-fated time in Beulah. Just as Mary’s story has to be told to Agnes, it has to be read by us for it is passionate, compelling and utterly wonderful.
As the Shadow Rises is the spectacular second novel in Katy Rose Pool’s Age of Darkness trilogy – a modern fantasy blockbuster packed with magic, prophecy and adventure.
Katy Rose Pool ‘s showstopping fantasy debut There Will Come a Darknessbegan an epic tale of thrilling magic, ancient prophecy and five lives who could stop the approaching Age of Darkness – or unleash it.
Now the adventure continues in As the Shadow Rises, as the forces of light and darkness collide – and the end of the world begins.
This gorgeously imagined YA debut blends shades of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust and a breathtaking landscape of Hindu mythology into a radiant contemporary fantasy.
The daughter of a star and a mortal, Sheetal is used to keeping secrets. Pretending to be “normal.” But when an accidental flare of her starfire puts her human father in the hospital, Sheetal needs a full star’s help to heal him. A star like her mother, who returned to the sky long ago.
Sheetal’s quest to save her father will take her to a celestial court of shining wonders and dark shadows, where she must take the stage as her family’s champion in a competition to decide the next ruling house of the heavens-and win, or risk never returning to Earth at all.
A “best of” collection of creepy tales from Eisner award winner and legendary horror master Junji Ito.
This striking collection presents the most remarkable short works of Junji Ito’s career, featuring an adaptation of Rampo Edogawa’s classic horror story “Human Chair” and fan favorite “The Enigma of Amigara Fault.” With a deluxe presentation-including special color pages, and showcasing illustrations from his acclaimed long-form manga No Longer Human-each chilling tale invites readers to revel in a world of terror.
Don’t miss this exclusive, original story set between seasons 3 and 4 of the hit animated series The Dragon Prince! The Dragon Prince has been reunited with his mother, the Human Kingdoms and Xadia are at peace, and humans and elves alike are ready to move on. Only Rayla is still restless. Unable to believe Lord Viren is truly dead, and haunted by questions about the fate of her parents and Runaan, she remains trapped between hope and fear. When an ancient ritual calls her, Callum, and Ezran to the Moon Nex-us, she learns the lake is a portal to a world between life and death. Rayla seizes the opportunity for closure-and the chance to confirm that Lord Viren is gone for good. But the portal is unstable, and the ancient Moonshadow elves who destroyed it never intended for it to be reopened. Will Rayla’s quest to uncover the secrets of the dead put her living friends in mortal danger? Don’t miss this exclusive, original graphic novel from Peter Wartman and Xanthe Bouma, with story by The Dragon Prince creators Aaron Ehasz and Justin Richmond!
*A brand new collection of short stories from the incredible Sir Terry Pratchett!*
Imagination is an amazing thing.
It can take you to the top of the highest mountain, or down to the bottom of the deepest depths of the sea.
This is where it took Doggins on his Awfully Big Adventure: a quest full of magic and flying machines. (And the world’s best joke – trust me, it’s hilarious.)
It took three young inventors to the moon (where they may or may not have left a bottle of lemonade) and a caveman on a trip to the dentist.
You can join them on these adventures, and many more, in this incredible collection of stories . . .
From the greatest imagination there ever was.
Written for local newspapers when Terry Pratchett was a young lad, these never previously published stories are packed full of anarchic humour and wonderful wit.
Victoria Stitch: Bad and Glittering by Harriet Muncaster
‘The crystal keeper gazed around him at the shards of impure crystal, glittering furiously on the floor, and shivered with a terrible sense of foreboding.’
Twins, Victoria Stitch and Celestine, are denied their royal birth-right. Celestine accepts the decision with good grace, but Victoria Stitch is consumed with her obsession for power.
The twins are like moonlight and sunshine – could it be possible to break free of the role you have been given, rewrite your story, and change your own destiny?
The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker by Lauren James
What if death is only the beginning?
When Harriet Stoker dies after falling from a balcony in a long-abandoned building, she discovers a world of ghosts with magical powers – shape-shifting, hypnosis, even the ability to possess the living. Felix, Kasper, Rima and Leah welcome her into their world, eager to make friends with the new arrival. Yet Harriet is more interested in unleashing her own power, even if it means destroying everyone around her. But when all of eternity is at stake, the afterlife can be a dangerous place to make an enemy.
Board the California Comet and help Harrison Beck to solve another heart-stopping mystery in the second Adventures on Trains story, Kidnap on the California Comet, from prize-winning M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman.
After the excitement of his adventures aboard the Highland Falcon Thief, Harrison Beck can’t wait for the opportunity to go on another amazing train journey. So when his Uncle Nat invites him aboard the California Comet, the iconic three-day train journey from Chicago to San Francisco, he leaps at the chance to travel. But when the daughter of billionaire entrepreneur August Reza goes missing en route, Hal finds himself with another mystery to solve. Can he uncover the kidnapper before the journey’s end?
An adrenaline-fuelled journey across America from bestselling author M.G. Leonard and Sam Sedgman in the second mystery adventure in the major Adventures on Trains series.
The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
In a world divided by colonialism and threaded with magic, a desperate orphan turned pirate and a rebellious imperial lady find a connection on the high seas. Aboard the pirate ship Dove, Flora the girl takes on the identity of Florian the man to earn the respect and protection of the crew. For Flora, former starving urchin, the brutal life of a pirate is about survival: don’t trust, don’t stick out, and don’t feel. But on this voyage, Flora is drawn to the Lady Evelyn Hasegawa, who is headed to an arranged marriage she dreads. Flora doesn’t expect to be taken under Evelyn’s wing, and Evelyn doesn’t expect to find such a deep bond with the pirate Florian. Neither expects to fall in love.
Soon the unlikely pair set in motion a wild escape that will free a captured mermaid (coveted for her blood) and involve the mysterious Pirate Supreme, an opportunistic witch, double agents, and the all-encompassing Sea herself.
Deftly entwining swashbuckling action and quiet magic, Maggie Tokuda-Hall’s inventive debut novel conjures a diverse cast of characters seeking mastery over their fates while searching for answers to big questions about identity, power, and love.
The remarkable story of the Dick, Kerr Ladies is brought to young readers for the very first time by award winning and CILIP Carnegie nominated Eve Ainsworth. It’s 1917, and Britain is at war. Shy teenager Hettie wants to help the war effort, and signs up to work in the local Dick, Kerr & Co. munitions factory. She’s nervous, but she has no idea quite how much her life is about to change … For, inside this factory are young women who are about to make sporting history. Can Hettie find the courage to join them, and in doing so, find her own place in the world? Based on the thrilling true story of the Dick, Kerr Ladies team – football’s forgotten legends.]
Kate wasn’t expecting much when she wrote to her wealthy estranged uncle to ask for a birthday present. Certainly she wasn’t expecting a colossal steam train called the Silver Arrow to arrive on her doorstep.
Despite parental misgivings, curiosity overwhelms Kate and her brother Tom and they climb aboard, only for the train’s engine to roar into life. Soon they reach a train station where an assortment of strange and beautiful creatures are waiting with tickets in their mouths, and Kate and Tom begin to understand that their job will be to see them safely home – if they can.
Lev Grossman’s first children’s book is a journey you’ll never forget: a rip-roaring adventure from desert plains to snow-covered mountains and everything in between. Packed with exciting creatures from the indignant porcupine to the lost polar bear and the adorable baby pangolin, The Silver Arrow is a classic story about saving our endangered animals and the places they live.
Hercules wants to be famous forever and the only way to do that is to complete the tasks the King sets him. The tasks won’t be easy; in fact, Hercules will have to face some of the most terrifying and dangerous creatures that live on earth – and in hell! Join Hercules as he wrestles a man-eating lion, tricks the god Atlas, and tries to kidnap Hades’ ferocious guard dog. Bloomsbury High Low books encourage and support reading practice by providing gripping, age-appropriate and illustrated stories for struggling and reluctant readers, those with dyslexia, or those with English as an additional language (EAL). With bonus bits at the back of the book, including reading notes and exciting facts, these are perfect for sparking discussion and engaging young readers. Printed on tinted paper with a dyslexia-friendly font, Hercules is aimed at readers aged 10+ and has a manageable length (96 pages) and reading age (8+). Produced in association with reading experts at Catch Up, a charity which aims to address underachievement caused by literacy and numeracy difficulties. Catch Up offers intervention programmes proven to significantly improve the achievement of learners who find literacy or numeracy difficult.
Arthur has no thoughts of being king – he’s a squire and that’s that. But the old king is dead and Merlin the wizard has set up a sword, pushed halfway into a rock. The one who pulls out the sword will be the new king – and soon, that’s Arthur! Follow King Arthur as he battles giants and knights, and learns to be a true king. Bloomsbury High Low books encourage and support reading practice by providing gripping, age-appropriate and illustrated stories for struggling and reluctant readers, those with dyslexia, or those with English as an additional language (EAL). With bonus bits at the back of the book, including reading notes and exciting facts, these are perfect for sparking discussion and engaging young readers. Printed on tinted paper with a dyslexia-friendly font, King Arthur is aimed at readers aged 10+ and has a manageable length (96 pages) and reading age (8+). Produced in association with reading experts at Catch Up, a charity which aims to address underachievement caused by literacy and numeracy difficulties. Catch Up offers intervention programmes proven to significantly improve the achievement of learners who find literacy or numeracy difficult.
Odysseus is a hero but all he really wants to do is defeat the Trojans and go home. The trouble is both those tasks will take a bit longer than he hoped, and he’ll need all his cunning to get there. What’s more, once he does, there will be more challenges in store! Bloomsbury High Low books encourage and support reading practice by providing gripping, age-appropriate and illustrated stories for struggling and reluctant readers, those with dyslexia, or those with English as an additional language (EAL). With bonus bits at the back of the book, including reading notes and exciting facts, these are perfect for sparking discussion and engaging young readers. Printed on tinted paper with a dyslexia-friendly font, Odysseus is aimed at readers aged 10+ and has a manageable length (96 pages) and reading age (8+). Produced in association with reading experts at Catch Up, a charity which aims to address underachievement caused by literacy and numeracy difficulties. Catch Up offers intervention programmes proven to significantly improve the achievement of learners who find literacy or numeracy difficult.
The tiny Tindims are like the Borrowers-on-Sea, who turn our everyday rubbish into treasure. Mother-and-daughter duo, prizewinning Sally Gardner and Lydia Corry, create a fun new world of characters and adventures in their empowering new series for 5-8 year olds inspiring conservation and inventive ways to recycle.
‘What is rubbish today is treasure tomorrow.’ Discover Rubbish Island which the Tindims have built entirely from things we have thrown away. Captain Spoons, Mug, Jug, Brew, Skittle and friends are busy recycling when Ethel B Dina is blown out to sea and the Tindims must launch a rescue operation with the help of some friendly fish and surprises along the way.
Printed in dyslexia-friendly font with pictures on every page and perfect for the reluctant reader, the Tindims show keen young ecologists how to help protect our planet for the future.
The next great Dog Man adventure from the worldwide bestselling author and artist Dav Pilkey. You’ll howl with laughter!
The Supa Buddies bamboozled the baddies, but all’s not right in the world. Dog Man has a new problem to pound, and he’s going to need his entire pack to help him. Will he go barking up the wrong tree?
Dav Pilkey’s wildly popular Dog Man series appeals to readers of all ages and explores universally positive themes, including empathy, kindness, persistence, and the importance of doing good.
The Great Realisation by Tomos ‘Tomfoolery’ Roberts
We now call it The Great Realisation and, yes, since then there have been many. But that’s the story of how it started … and why hindsight’s 2020.
First performed online in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Tomos Roberts’ heartfelt poem, with its message of hope and resilience, has been viewed over 60 million times and translated into over 20 languages.
Written in the form of a bedtime story, The Great Realisation is a celebration of the many things from simple acts of kindness, to applauding the heroic efforts of our key workers that have brought us together at a time of global crisis. It has captured, with magical resonance, the thoughts and feelings of millions in lockdown, as we adapt to a new way of life, find joy in unexpected places, cast aside old habits and reflect on what truly matters to us.
The Great Realisation is a story for any reader, young or old, who dares to dream of a brighter future of a fairer, kinder, more sustainable world. It is a timely reminder that, even during our most challenging moments, there is always hope.
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright! – An Animal Poem for Every Day of the Year: National Trust – Poetry Collections by Fiona Waters
A glorious and ambitious sequel to I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree – winner of Waterstones Children’s Gift of the Year 2018 and Red Magazine‘s Children’s Illustrated Book of the Year 2019
This lavishly illustrated gift book treasury of 366 animal poems – one for every day of the year – ranges from unforgettable classics to contemporary works from around the world, including poetry in translation. The spectacular range of poems for children includes work by Roger McGough, William Blake, Dick King-Smith, Ted Hughes, Grace Nichols, Lewis Carroll, Christina Rossetti, Emily Dickinson.
Britta Teckentrup’s breathtaking illustrations bring together all the richness and wonder of the animal kingdom, making this poetry anthology a perfect gift that will be treasured by generations. With sumptuous finishes including cloth binding, full colour illustrations throughout, textured paper jacket, ribbon marker, and head and tail bands. The perfect gift for any child or adult to treasure.
You Choose Fairy Tales by Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart
Make up your very own fairy tale adventure where YOU CHOOSE what happens next!
Which fairy tale hero would you like to be today? Where will you go on your fairy tale quest? And what fairy tale baddy would you least like to meet?
The possibilities are infinite in this captivating creative toolkit which will inspire children from three up to make their own stories again and again.
A magical sequel to YOU CHOOSE, YOU CHOOSE YOUR DREAMS and YOU CHOOSE IN SPACE – it’s spell-binding!
Published by Penguin Random House Childrens. Buy here.
Magical Fairy Tales by Enid Blyton
Hold on to your lucky charms and delve into this bewitching collection of 30 fairy tales and magic stories, retold by the world’s best-loved storyteller. Perfect for children aged 5 and up! Watch out for cats in boots, three bears who live in the woods and strange unicorns in this magical collection of short stories by Enid Blyton. From lost slippers and fairy curses to imps without names and a dragon called Mr Wumble, there’s fairy magic brewing. Who will live happily ever after? These traditional tales are ideal for younger children being read to and for newly confident readers to read alone. Each story stands alone and is the perfect length for reading at bedtime or in the classroom. Enid Blyton remains one of Britain’s favourite children’s authors and her bumper short story collections are perfect for introducing her to the latest generation of readers. Read all of Enid Blyton’s bumper short story collections. New in 2020: Nature Stories Stories of Rotten Rascals Magical Fairy Tales Christmas Wishes
Armadillos sit on pillows, bunnies sit on honey and cheetahs sit on fajitas… Let Frog, Dog and Cat guide you through the alphabet from Aardvark to Zebra in this hilarious new picture book from the creators of Oi Frog! With a special fold-out surprise! The laughter never ends with Oi Frog and Friends!
Published: September 3rd, 2020 Publisher: Michael Joseph Format: Paperback, Kindle, Audio Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Historical Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Holiday Fiction
I’m delighted to be sharing my review for this outstanding thriller as part of the blog tour. Thank you to Ella at Michael Joseph for the invitation and copy of the novel.
SYNOPSIS:
Elodie was beautiful. Elodie was smart. Elodie was troubled.
Elodie is dead.
Sylvie hasn’t been back to her crumbling French family home in years. Not since the death of her eldest daughter Elodie.
Every corner of the old house feels haunted by memories of her – memories she has tried to forget.
But as temperatures rise, and forest fires rage through the French countryside, a long-buried family secret is about to come to light.
Because there’s something Sylvie’s been hiding about what really happened to Elodie that summer.
And it could change everything.
MY REVIEW:
Sultry, evocative and alluring, The Heatwave is an outstanding summer sizzler. Set in 1993, the story moves between timelines to tell the story of the Winters family and the dark secrets they have kept for a decade. Sylvie and her fourteen-year-old daughter, Emma, return to La Reverie, Sylvie’s family home in the south of France, after a fire. They haven’t been back since Sylvie fled a decade ago following tragic events and the loss of her oldest daughter, Elodie. What happened has always been shrouded in mystery, with Sylvie only obliquely referring to her eldest daughter and never explaining the full story to her youngest child. But the house feels haunted, echoes of the truth living in its walls like a ghost, Elodie’s presence becoming stronger. As Emma begins to ask questions, Sylvie is scared she’s starting to remember. That the truth is coming back to haunt her, and her family will be shattered once again.
I devoured this book quickly, the author’s exquisite prose transfixing me from the first pages. A smouldering thriller that shimmers like the summer sun, it transported me to the south of France from the comfort of my own home so vividly that I could almost feel the heat. I loved that the author wrote it in two parts, each having their own distinct vibe while also continuing the steady temp loopo of malevolence and foreboding and the eerie and suspenseful atmosphere that had me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end.
The characters are richly drawn and compelling, with Elodie casting a particularly sinister and mysterious presence throughout the novel. I liked Sylvie and found her easy to relate to, though I did wonder what secrets she was harbouring, why she was so convinced Emma would hate her if she knew the truth. I had my suspicions, but with each new twist I was left questioning what I thought I knew.
An intoxicating and tantalising read, The Heatwave gave me vibes of We Need To Talk About Kevin, one of my all-time favourite books, and has earned a place on my forever shelf and I can’t wait to read more by this author. A beautifully written, layered and immersive thriller that you don’t want to miss.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮. 5
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Kate Riordan is a writer and journalist. She is an avid reader of Daphne du Maurier and Agatha Christie, both of whom have influenced her writing. She lives in the Cotswolds, where she writes full-time. The Heatwave is her fourth novel. Instagram|Twitter|Facebook
So, the summer is over. September is upon us and, in the UK at least, life is finding a new normal that merges with the life we knew pre-pandemic and the kids are going back to school! In our household this also heralds a change: our eldest got his G.C.S.E results this past month and is going to college and our youngest is our only child in school. It’s also his final year so it feels very strange knowing we’re only a year away from having no children is school! It also means that by the end of the month I’ll be having to get used to an empty house most days a week after six months of everyone, or at least the kids, being here with me. Is anyone else feeling really emotional about this? OK, that’s enough of me talking about my personal life. Lets get to books!
August was a month filled with some fantastic books and the discovery of an author that I am regretting taking so damn long to read! I took part in fourteen blog tours, three readalongs (one of which I’m currently reading), two zoom Q&A’s with authors and one murder mystery evening. I also read fourteen books:
You Are Not Alone by Greer Hendricks & Sarah Pekkanen
The Heatwave by Kate Riordan
You can read my review for the books listed by clicking on the title with the exception of All The Lonely People, You Are Not Alone and The Heatwave, which are coming soon. Thank you to the tagged publishers and authors for my gifted copies.
All of the books I read rated at four stars and above this month and are ones I would recommend. With so many amazing books, some that will be favourites of the year, it was hard to choose my book of the month. But, after a lot of deliberation, I have to give the title to The Midnight Library, a phenomenal and throughout-proving book that is just truly special. Coming close were All The Lonely People and Hinton Hollow Death Trip and I would highly recommend adding all three to your tbr.
Did we read any of the same books this month? What was your favourite book you read in August?
Today’s First Line Friday is also a Publication Day post as this gorgeous historical novel is released today.
“Ruskin chased the open carriage as it thundered across Westminster Bridge. Several times he very nearly lost sight of it, yet he still pursued the landau, drawn by a pair of sprightly grey mares. The tales of his frock coat flapped bird-like as he crossed the gustiest part of the bridge, while he could hardly avoid scuffing his leather boots when he stumbled in his hurry, for he had no time to look where he was going.”
SYNOPSIS: London, 1858.
Passionate, contradictory, and fiercely loyal to his friends, John Ruskin is an eccentric genius, famed across Britain for his writings on art and philosophy. Haunted by a scandalous past and determined never to love again, the 39-year-old Ruskin becomes infatuated with his enigmatic young student, Rose La Touche, an obsession with profound consequences that will change the course of his life and work.
Written in a style recalling Victorian literature and spanning a period of twenty years, the story poses questions about the nature of love, the boundaries of parenthood, and compatibility in marriage. Unto This Last is a portrait of Ruskin’s tormented psyche and reveals a complex and misunderstood soul, longing for a life just out of reach.
Until This Last is published by Book Guild Publishing on August 28th, 2020 Buy here: Amazon|Waterstones|Hive
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Rebecca has had a passion for Victorian art and literature from a young age. She first discovered John Ruskin through E.M. Forster’s novel, A Room with a View, and later joined the Ruskin Society at the age of seventeen to learn more about Ruskin’s work. Rebecca pursued a career in journalism, specialising in arts writing and theatre reviews, and has worked for a number of national publications.
Rebecca says, “Most accounts of John Ruskin’s complex personal life focus on his brief marriage to Effie Gray, but his twenty-year relationship with Rose La Touche was of huge importance to the evolution of his thinking; it is a captivating and tragic story of two people whose loving friendship transcended boundaries and conventions to the very end.”
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this exquisite debut. Thank you to Poppy at Pushkin Press for the invitation to take part and the gifted copy of the book.
SYNOPSIS:
Gwendolyn and Estella are as close as sisters can be. But now Gwendolyn is lying in a coma, the sole survivor after Estella poisons their entire family.
As Gwendolyn struggles to regain consciousness, she desperately retraces her memories, trying to uncover the moment that led to this brutal act.
Journeying from the luxurious world of the rich and powerful in Indonesia to the spectacular shows of Paris Fashion Week, from the sunny coasts of California to the melting pot of Melbourne’s university scene, The Majesties is a haunting and deeply suspenseful novel about the dark secrets that can build a family empire – and also bring it crashing down.
MY REVIEW:
“When your sister murders three hundred people, you can’t help but wonder why – especially if you were one of the intended victims – though I do forgive her if you can believe it.”
I have a penchantfor anything with butterflies, so I was immediately drawn to the stunning cover of this book. When I read the synopsis it became a book I had to read and I was thrilled to receive an early copy from the publisher. Then, in May I read the first line above to share for #firstlinefriday and I was hooked. I knew I had to shelve my current reading plans and read this immediately.
“How ironic. We had embarked on this mission to save the family from darkness, only to discover that we ourselves were darkness through and through.”
The Majesties opens with Gwendolyn looking back on the day that her sister Estella murdered three hundred people and left her, the sole survivor, lying in a coma. It then follows as Gwendolyn looks back at their family’s history and events leading up to the murders, as she tries to figure out what drove her beloved sister to commit such a crime and how she missed the warning signs.
At its heart, this is a story about family. The murders happen at a family event, the novel is narrated by the sister or the killer, and their family dynamics are a big part of the storyline. The author examines the impact of the unspoken secrets and shame lying behind their respectable family’s polite facade. How it can trickle through the generations causing greater damage than anyone ever imagined. She also explores the topic of mental health: asking how we can miss the signs of someone close to us struggling or push our concerns aside while wrapped up in our own lives, and how those around us are affected by our mental health struggles.
“It was like watching someone drown without struggling, sinking serenely to the bottom of the deep blue sea.”
Tiffany Tsao is an exquisite writer. Her beautiful prose and vivid imagery brought the world she created to life and transported me to a place and culture I knew little about. The time and effort she has put in to get every line just right jumps from the page and I savoured every delicious word. I found the parts about the bagatelles – the Majesties – fascinating and once again her research and knowledge was evident. It is hard to believe this is a debut novel and I will definitely read what she writes next.
There is so much more to this layered and cleverly written novel than meets the eye. It addresses some deep, difficult and sinister topics and will surprise you just when you think you have it all figured out. I am still reeling from that ending!
The Majesties is a mesmerising debut from a wonderful new talent that you don’t want to miss.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Tiffany Tsao is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel The Majesties (originally published in Australia as Under Your Wings) and the Oddfits fantasy series.
Her translations from Indonesian to English include Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s poetry collection Sergius Seeks Bacchus, Dee Lestari’s novel Paper Boats, and Laksmi Pamuntjak’s The Birdwoman’s Palate. Her translations of Norman’s poetry have won the English PEN Presents and English PEN Translates awards.
Born in the United States and of Chinese-Indonesian descent, her family returned to Southeast Asia when she was 3 years old. She spent her formative years in Singapore (8 years) and Indonesia (6 years) before moving to the US for university. She has a B.A. in English literature from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in English literature from UC-Berkeley. She now lives in Sydney, Australia with her spouse and two children.
Today is my stop on the blog tour of this riveting debut thriller. Thank you to AJ Campbell for the invitation to take part and the finished copy of the book.
SYNOPSIS:
Absorb yourself in the powerful debut novel from AJ Campbell
LEAVE WELL ALONE
How far would you go to protect your family from the truth?
A broken family. Skeletons in the closet. Lives in danger.
When Eva’s brother Ben announces he has found their mother, Eva is determined to have nothing to do with the woman who abandoned them eighteen years ago to a traumatic childhood in foster care. Eva is happy now, in a loving relationship with rich and dependable Jim, and she is pregnant.
Nothing can change Eva’s mind. Her eyes are on the future, not the past. But when her baby is born with a serious hereditary illness, she is forced to confront both her mother and her past. Eva begins to find forgiveness. But as old secrets and layers of deceit emerge, she makes a shocking discovery, leaving her fearing for her baby’s, Jim’s, and her own life.
Great for fans of AJ Finn, Lisa Jewell, Paula Hawkins and K.L Slater.
MY REVIEW:
“That bone-chilling winter’s day when my brother returned home for good was when I first contemplated murdering my mother.”
“That bone-chilling winter’s day when my brother returned home for good was when I first contemplated murdering my mother.”
What an opening line! Full of foreboding, tension, mystery and sinister promise, I was instantly hooked. And from that moment I was immersed in this tense, twisty and compelling debut. I didn’t want to put it down, and the only reason I didn’t read it in one sitting was my body’s pesky need for sleep.
This is a truly unique psychological thriller. It is so evocative that you feel everything the characters do and are taken on an emotional rollercoaster ride as they navigate trials and conflict in this dramatic story. Told in dual narratives in dual timelines, the author tackles themes of childhood trauma, mental health issues, physical health issues, family secrets and forgiveness in a well thought out, thorough and realistic manner. The descriptions of Eva’s anxiety, panic attacks and PTSD particularly resonated with me, and I found she was the character I most connected with. What she had gone through as a child and the journey she went on over the course of the book really tugged on my heartstrings, and I could understand her reticence to forgive or reconnect with her mother after all that had happened. While I wasn’t holding my breath, I did hope that she would find the happy ending she deserved after going through so much.
I read a lot of thrillers and I will be honest and say I picked up this book for the blog tour at a time I really didn’t think I was in the mood for it. But what I didn’t know is how good this was going to be. Ms Campbell’s riveting and vivid writing had me under her spell from the opening line that packed a punch and dives straight into the anger and emotion of Eva’s story. She knows exactly how to keep the reader on the edge of their seat, guessing what will happen next.
A gripping, suspenseful and thrilling read, Leave Well Alone is a fantastic debut that I would highly recommend. Just make sure you don’t have any plans, as you’re not going to want to stop reading.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Until the birth of her twins in 2005, which radically changed her life, AJ was an accountant for several investment banks in London. One of her twins was born with severe disabilities, as a result of which she had to give up work to care for him. It was during this incredibly challenging (and rewarding) time that AJ began to draw on her love of the written word, partly for day-to-day inspiration and partly for her own mental health. She started writing her debut novel, Leave Well Alone, and then enrolled in several creative writing courses with the Faber Academy where she progressed with her writing career. AJ lives on the Essex / Hertfordshire border with her husband and three sons and splits her time between caring for her son and family and writing.
Published: August 21st, 2020 Publisher: Down & Out Books Format: Kindle, Paperback Genre: Thriller, Suspense
Today I’m featuring the new book by Lee Matthew Goldberg as part of the blog tour. Thank you to Blackthorn Tours for the invitation to take part.
SYNOPSIS:
A man wakes up in present-day Alaskan wilderness with no idea who he is, nothing on him save an empty journal with the date 1898 and a mirror. He sees another man hunting nearby, astounded that they look exactly alike except for his own beard. After following this other man home, he witnesses a wife and child that brings forth a rush of memories of his own wife and child, except he’s certain they do not exist in modern times—but from his life in the late 1800s.
After recalling his name is Wyatt, he worms his way into his doppelganger Travis Barlow’s life. Memories become unearthed the more time he spends, making him believe that he’d been frozen after coming to Alaska during the Gold Rush and that Travis is his great-great grandson. Wyatt is certain gold still exists in the area and finding it with Travis will ingratiate himself to the family, especially with Travis’s wife Callie, once Wyatt falls in love. This turns into a dangerous obsession affecting the Barlows and everyone in their small town, since Wyatt can’t be tamed until he also discovers the meaning of why he was able to be preserved on ice for over a century.
A meditation on love lost and unfulfilled dreams, The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner in present day Alaska and a historical adventure about the perilous Gold Rush expeditions where prospectors left behind their lives for the promise of hope and a better future.
The question remains whether it was all worth the sacrifice…
PRAISE FOR THE ANCESTOR:
“Lee Matthew Goldberg is an animal—there is no other way to say it. His prose is heavyweight ambitious, as visceral as a sweaty-toothed dog at your throat. He evokes Robert Louis Stevenson as much as he does a modern thriller novelist. And I’ll be honest: I expected a crime novel, but I got a spell-binding epic, an epistolary revelation, a tale as rich as a paying gold mine. The Ancestor is more than a novel. It’s an ode to the rich tradition of adventure storytelling…seasoned with ample spice of love and violence and greed.” —Matt Phillips, author of Countdown and Know Me from Smoke
“In The Ancestor, Lee Matthew Goldberg masterfully weaves together a story involving family and violence set against the backdrop of an unforgiving Alaska of both past and present.” —Andrew Davie, author of Pavement and Ouroboros
“From the icy opening battle of man vs. wolf, you feel yourself in the hands of a master storyteller and that feeling never lets up.” —SJ Rozan, bestselling author of Paper Son
“This thrilling novel is rich in descriptions of the vast, snowy, and deadly wilderness of Alaska; it ably captures the type of person who chases gold.” —Foreword Reviews
“A story that blends the familiar and the supernatural in a manner that calls Stephen King’s work to mind. That said, Goldberg’s book possesses a flavor all its own—a distinctive mélange of the sincere and the strange.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Beautifully written, and capturing the unforgiving grit of Gold Rush Alaska, Lee Matthew Goldberg’s The Ancestor is a thrilling page-turner with an ache in its heart. I’m a huge fan.” —Roz Nay, author of Hurry Home and Our Little Secret
“One of the year’s best thrillers. Blake Crouch fans will love Goldberg’s Alaskan opus.” —BestThrillers
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Lee Matthew Goldberg is the author of the novels THE DESIRE CARD, THE MENTOR, and SLOW DOWN. He has been published in multiple languages and nominated for the 2018 Prix du Polar. The second book in the Desire Card series, PREY NO MORE, is forthcoming in 2020, along with his first Sci-Fi novel ORANGE CITY.
His new endeavor will be as the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Fringe Press and Fringe Digital, dedicated to publishing fiction that’s outside-of-the-box.
His pilots and screenplays have been finalists in Script Pipeline, Book Pipeline, Stage 32, We Screenplay, the New York Screenplay, Screencraft, and the Hollywood Screenplay contests. After graduating with an MFA from the New School, his writing has also appeared in the anthology DIRTY BOULEVARD, The Millions, Cagibi, The Montreal Review, The Adirondack Review, The New Plains Review, Underwood Press and others. He is the co-curator of The Guerrilla Lit Reading Series and lives in New York City.
I can’t quite believe we’re so far into the year that I’m doing September’s Anticipated Treasures. September is packed full of wonderful sounding books and picking these wasn’t easy. It was made harder than ever this month thanks to September 3rd, also known as Fiction the third – the day when 590 Hardbacks and an unknown number of Paperbacks are released. I’ll be posting two blogs about the books out that day nearer to the time so keep an eye out for those.
So, here are the twenty books I’m most excited about in September:
SYNOPSIS: A lyrical and atmospheric homage to the strange and extraordinary, perfect for fans of Angela Carter and Erin Morgenstern.
This is the story of The Greatest Funambulist Who Ever Lived…
Born into a post-war circus family, our nameless star was unwanted and forgotten, abandoned in the shadows of the big top. Until the bright light of Serendipity Wilson threw her into focus.
Now an adult, haunted by an incident in which a child was lost from the circus, our narrator, a tightrope artiste, weaves together her spellbinding tales of circus legends, earthy magic and folklore, all in the hope of finding the child… But will her story be enough to bring the pair together again?
Beautiful and intoxicating, A Girl Made of Air brings the circus to life in all of its grime and glory; Marina, Manu, Serendipity Wilson, Fausto, Big Gen and Mouse will live long in the hearts of readers. As will this story of loss and reconciliation, of storytelling and truth.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: As soon as I took part in the cover reveal for this beautiful book I was in love. It helps that the book sounds as beautiful inside as it looks on the outside. Pre-order here
SYNOPSIS: Lucy and Jake live in a house by a field where the sun burns like a ball of fire. Lucy works from home but devotes her life to the children, to their finely tuned routine, and to the house itself, which comforts her like an old, sly friend. But then a man calls one afternoon with a shattering message: his wife has been having an affair with Lucy’s husband, he wants her to know.
The revelation marks a turning point: Lucy and Jake decide to stay together, but in a special arrangement designed to even the score and save their marriage, she will hurt him three times. Jake will not know when the hurt is coming, nor what form it will take.
As the couple submit to a delicate game of crime and punishment, Lucy herself begins to change, surrendering to a transformation of both mind and body from which there is no return.
Told in dazzling, musical prose, The Harpy by Megan Hunter is a dark, staggering fairy tale, at once mythical and otherworldly and fiercely contemporary. It is a novel of love, marriage and its failures, of power and revenge, of metamorphosis and renewal.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: This book first came on my radar when I heard Amanda talking about it at the beginning of the year. It immediately piqued my interest and I’ve been counting down to it’s release ever since. Pre-order here
SYNOPSIS: In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders.
But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case.
Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.
Can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer before it’s too late?
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: It’s no secret how much a love a good thriller book, and this one sounds like a doozy, I am part of the blog tour for this one and my review will be posted on September 20th. Pre-order here
The Heatwave by Kate Riordan
Published: Septermber 3rd, 2020 Publisher: Michael Joseph Genre: Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Historical Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Holiday Fiction
SYNOPSIS: The Heatwave is coming . . . This summer’s perfect poolside reading – a captivating story of a long-buried family secret.
In Provence, under a sweltering sun, Sylvie returns to the crumbling family home of La Reverie. In her hand is the letter that summoned her, and by her side is Emma, her youngest daughter.
Yet every corner of the house is haunted by the spectre of Elodie, her first child. Beautiful, manipulative Elodie, whose long-ago death the villagers still whisper about.
Sylvie has tried to put the past behind her. But like the spreading forest fires, memories of Elodie seem to be creeping ever closer.Because there’s a secret Sylvie has concealed about what happened to Elodie all those summers ago . . .
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: This book just sounds amazing; like it has everything I want in a great thriller. This is another book I’m on the blog tour for so check out my review on September 1st Pre-Order here
Truth Be Told by Kia Abdullah
Published: September 3rd, 2020 Publihser: HQ Genre: Crime Fiction, Legal Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Political Fiction, LGBT Literature
SYNOPSIS: ARE YOU READY TO START THIS CONVERSATION?
Kamran Hadid feels invincible. He attends Hampton school, an elite all-boys boarding school in London, he comes from a wealthy family, and he has a place at Oxford next year. The world is at his feet. And then a night of revelry leads to a drunken encounter and he must ask himself a horrific question.
With the help of assault counsellor, Zara Kaleel, Kamran reports the incident in the hopes that will be the end of it. But it’s only the beginning…
Powerful, explosive and important, Truth Be Told is a contemporary courtroom drama that vividly captures today’s society. You will not stop thinking about it for a long time to come.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: I loved Kia Abdullah’s debut novel and have been eagerly anticipating this follow up. I’m excited that it again features Zara Kaleel as I love a good series and she was a great character. My review will be posted as part of the blog tour on September 3rd. Pre-order here
House of Correction by Nicci French
Published: September 3rd, 2020 Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Genre: Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Police Procedural
SYNOPOSIS: THE NEW THRILLER FROM THE MASTER OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SUSPENSE
She’s a murderer.
Everyone knows she killed Stuart Rees – why else would his dead body be found in her shed? So now Tabitha is in prison, awaiting trial.
Coming back to the remote coastal village where she grew up was a mistake. She didn’t fit in then, and she doesn’t fit in now.
That day is such a blur, she can’t remember clearly what happened. There is something she is missing, something important… She only knows one thing. She is not capable of murder.
And the only one she can trust to help her out of this situation is herself. So she must fight. Against the odds.
For her life.
Beautifully written about prejudice, loneliness and fighting spirit, this new book by Nicci French is shocking, twisty and utterly compelling.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: I’ve been a big fan of Nicci French for many years and anything they write is an auto-buy for me. Pre-order here
After The Silence by Louise O’Neill
Published: September 3rd, 2020 Publisher: Riverrun Genre: Suspense, Literary Fiction
SYNOPSIS: Nessa Crowley’s murderer has been protected by silence for ten years. Until a team of documentary makers decide to find out the truth.
On the day of Henry and Keelin Kinsella’s wild party at their big house a violent storm engulfed the island of Inisrun, cutting it off from the mainland. When morning broke Nessa Crowley’s lifeless body lay in the garden, her last breath silenced by the music and the thunder.
The killer couldn’t have escaped Inisrun, but no-one was charged with the murder. The mystery that surrounded the death of Nessa remained hidden. But the islanders knew who to blame for the crime that changed them forever.
Ten years later a documentary crew arrives, there to lift the lid off the Kinsella’s carefully constructed lives, determined to find evidence that will prove Henry’s guilt and Keelin’s complicity in the murder of beautiful Nessa.
In this bold, brilliant, disturbing new novel Louise O’Neill shows that deadly secrets are devastating to those who hold them close.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: September seems to be filled with fantastic thrillers and this is one of the thrillers I’m most excited about. I’m taking part in a readalong of this one with Tandem Collective UK starting next week. Pre-order here
SYNOPSIS: An extraordinary debut novel by Natasha Randall, exposing the seam of secrets within an American family, from beneath the plastic surfaces of their new ‘smart’ home. Love Orange charts the gentle absurdities of their lives, and the devastating consequences of casual choices.
While Hank struggles with his lack of professional success, his wife Jenny, feeling stuck and beset by an urge to do good, becomes ensnared in a dangerous correspondence with a prison inmate called John. Letter by letter, John pinches Jenny awake from the “marshmallow numbness” of her life. The children, meanwhile, unwittingly disturb the foundations of their home life with forays into the dark net and strange geological experiments.
Jenny’s bid for freedom takes a sour turn when she becomes the go-between for John and his wife, and develops an unnatural obsession for the orange glue that seals his letters…
Love Orange throws open the blinds of American life, showing a family facing up to the modern age, from the ascendancy of technology, the predicaments of masculinity, the pathologising of children, the epidemic of opioid addiction and the tyranny of the WhatsApp Gods. The first novel by the acclaimed translator is a comic cocktail, an exuberant skewering of contemporary anxieties and prejudices.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: This one has only come on my radar the past week and now I can’t wait to read it! It sounds like a timely and utterly compelling debut. Pre-order here
Orfeia by Joanne M. Harris
Published: September 3rd, 2020 Publisher: Gollancz Genre: Fairy Tale, Fantasy, Romantic Fantasy
SYNOPSIS: When you can find me an acre of land, Every sage grows merry in time, Between the ocean and the sand Then will you be united again. (Inspired by The Child Ballads 2 & 19)
So begins a beautiful and tragic quest as a heartbroken mother sets out to save her lost daughter, through the realms of the real, of dream, and even into the underworld itself.
But determination alone is not enough. For to save something precious, she must give up something precious, be it a song, a memory, or herfreedom itself . . .
Beautifully illustrated by Bonnie Helen Hawkins, this is a stunning and original modern fairytale.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: While I’ve never read anything by this author, I have heard great things and love the movie Chocolat. This book i s the third Fantasy/Fairy Tale book on this list which I think shows how much my tastes have expanded towards that genre since reading A Court of Thorns and Roses Pre-order here
SYNOPSIS: For fans of Longbourn and The Other Bennet Sister, this beautifully told story of marriage, duty and friendship follows Charlotte’s story from where Pride and Prejudice ends.
Everybody believes that Charlotte Lucas has no prospects. She is unmarried, plain, poor and reaching a dangerous age.
But when she stuns the neighbourhood by accepting the proposal of buffoonish clergyman Mr Collins, her fortunes change. Her best friend Lizzy Bennet is appalled by her decision, yet Charlotte knows this is the only way to provide for her future.
What she doesn’t know is that her married life will propel her into a new world: not only of duty and longed-for children, but secrets, grief, unexpected love and friendship, and a kind of freedom.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: I love a good classic and I love books that are either retellings or pertain to a much loved classic, so this is right up my street. Pre-order here
SYNOPSIS: Because there’s never enough time to say goodbye…
Sylvia knows that she’s running out of time. Very soon, she will exist only in the memories of those who loved her most and the pieces of her life she’s left behind.
So she begins to write her husband a handbook for when she’s gone, somewhere to capture the small moments of ordinary, precious happiness in their married lives. From raising their wild, loving son, to what to give their gentle daughter on her eighteenth birthday – it’s everything she should have told him before it was too late.
But Sylvia also has a secret, one that she’s saved until the very last pages. And it’s a moment in her past that could change everything…
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: This one sounds like a beautiful, but emotional, read. Pre-order here
SYNOPSIS: She was ‘The Angel of the Baths’, the one woman whose touch everybody yearned for. Yet she would do more. She was certain of that.
In the city of Bath, in the year 1865, an extraordinary young woman renowned for her nursing skills is convinced that some other destiny will one day show itself to her. But when she finds herself torn between a dangerous affair with a female lover and the promise of a conventional marriage to an apparently respectable doctor, her desires begin to lead her towards a future she had never imagined.
Meanwhile, on the wild island of Borneo, an eccentric British ‘rajah’, Sir Ralph Savage, overflowing with philanthropy but compromised by his passions, sees his schemes relentlessly undermined by his own fragility, by man’s innate greed and by the invasive power of the forest itself.
Jane’s quest for an altered life and Sir Ralph’s endeavours become locked together as the story journeys across the globe – from the confines of an English tearoom to the rainforests of a tropical island via the slums of Dublin and the transgressive fancy-dress boutiques of Paris.
Islands of Mercy is a novel that ignites the senses, and is a bold exploration of the human urge to seek places of sanctuary in a pitiless world.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: I love historical fiction. It’s one of my favourite genres and this one has ‘must-read’ written all over it. It sounds atmospheric, absorbing and intriguing. Like one I won’t be able to put down. Pre-order here
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Published: September 15th, 2020 Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Genre: Fantasy
SYNOPSIS: Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has?
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell transported over four million readers into its mysterious world. It became an instant classic and has been hailed as one of the finest works of fiction of the twenty-first century.
Fifteen years later, it is finally time to enter the House and meet Piranesi.
May your Paths be safe, your Floors unbroken and may the House fill your eyes with Beauty.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: This book instantly screamed BUY ME and READ ME when I saw it on Twitter recently. There isn’t a lot in the description, but I am intrigued enough for this to be one of the books at the top of my wishlist. Pre-order here
Where The Edge Is by Grainne Murphy
Published: September 15th, 2020 Publisher; Legend Press Genre: Literary Fiction
SYNOPSIS: As a sleepy town in rural Ireland starts to wake, a road subsides, trapping an early-morning bus and five passengers inside. Rescue teams struggle and as two are eventually saved, the bus falls deeper into the hole.
Under the watchful eyes of the media, the lives of three people are teetering on the edge. And for those on the outside, from Nina, the reporter covering the story, to rescue liaison, Tim, and Richie, the driver pulled from the wreckage, each are made to look at themselves under the glare of the spotlight.
When their world crumbles beneath their feet, they are forced to choose between what they cling to and what they must let go of.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: I only heard about this book two days ago, but it instantly became a must-read book when I read the compelling synopsis. It sounds like a book that will have me on the edge of my seat from beginning to end. Pre-order here
The Minders by John Marrs
Published: September 17th, 2020 Publisher: Del Rey Genre: Thriller, Suspense, Science Fiction
SYNOPSIS: Five strangers guard our secrets. Only four can be trusted…
In the 21st century, information is king. But computers can be hacked and files can be broken into – so a unique government initiative has been born. Five ordinary people have been selected to become Minders – the latest weapon in thwarting cyberterrorism. Transformed by a revolutionary medical procedure, the country’s most classified information has been taken offline and turned into genetic code implanted inside their heads.
Together, the five know every secret – the truth behind every government lie, conspiracy theory and cover up. In return, they’re given the chance to leave their problems behind and a blank slate to start their lives anew.
But not everyone should be trusted, especially when they each have secrets of their own they’ll do anything to protect…
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: It’s no secret that John Marrs is one of my favourite authors and his books are all must-reads for me. I love the sound of his latest novel as it sounds so unique and riveting. I’ve heard great things so I’m looking forward to picking it up myself. Pre-order here
SYNOPSIS: Film star Amelie Hart is the darling of the silver screen, appearing on the front pages of every newspaper. But at the peak of her fame she throws it all away for a regular guy with an ordinary job. The gossip columns are aghast: what happened to the woman who turned heads wherever she went?
Any hope the furore will die down are crushed when Amelie’s boyfriend Dave is arrested on charges of child sexual abuse. Dave strongly asserts his innocence, and when Amelie refuses to denounce him, the press witch hunt quickly turns into physical violence, and she has to flee the country.
While Dave is locked up with the most depraved men in the country and Amelie is hiding on the continent, Damaris, the victim at the centre of the story, is isolated a child trying to make sense of an adult world.
Breathtakingly brutal, dark and immensely moving, A Song of Isolation looks beneath the magpie glimmer of celebrity to uncover a sinister world dominated by greed and lies, and the unfathomable destruction of innocent lives in an instant.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: Orenda is one of my favourite publishers and I have heard nothing but praise for Michael J. Malone. I am looking forward to finally reading one of his books and will be posting my review on September 11th as par of the blog tour. Pre-order here
Pizza Girl by Jean Kyoung Frazier
Published: September 17th, 2020 Publisher: HQ Genre: Bildungsroman, Coming-of-Age Fiction, LGBT Literature
SYNOPSIS: Named a most anticipated book of 2020 by Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Marie Claire, Time, People, BuzzFeed, Bustle, and more. Perfect for fans of Normal People and Fleabag
Great inventiveness, unfailing intelligence and empathy, and best of all a rare and shimmering wit’ Richard Ford
Eighteen years old, pregnant, and working as a pizza delivery girl, our dysfunctional heroine is deeply lost and in complete denial about it all. She’s grieving the death of her father, avoiding her loving boyfriend, and flagrantly ignoring her future.
Her world is further upended when she becomes obsessed with Jenny, a stay-at-home mother new to the neighbourhood, who comes to depend on weekly deliveries of pickle-covered pizzas for her son’s happiness.
As one woman looks toward motherhood and the other toward middle age, the relationship between the two begins to blur in strange, complicated, and ultimately heartbreaking ways.
Bold, tender, and unexpected, Pizza Girl is a moving and funny portrait of a flawed, unforgettable young woman as she tries to find her place in the world.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: This just sounds like a book that is right up my street in every way. I love a flawed dysfunctional heroine and stories with heart and humour, which it sounds like this one has. My review will be posted on September 18th as part of the blog tour. Pre-order here
D (A Tale of Two Worlds) by Michael Faber
Published: September 17th, 2020 Publisher: Doubleday Genre: Modern Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Fantasy
SYNOPSIS: ‘If ever a book like this was needed, it is now. Dhikilo is a splendid heroine for our time: She stands for kindness, honesty and humanity. Her triumph will have readers rejoicing’ DIANE SETTERFIELD __________________________
A modern-day Dickensian fable and a celebration of friendship and humanity, by the acclaimed author of The Crimson Petal and the White.
It all starts on the morning the letter D disappears from the language. First, it vanishes from her parents’ conversation at breakfast, then from the road signs outside. Soon the local dentist and the neighbour’s Dalmatian are missing, and even the Donkey Derby has been called off.
Though she doesn’t know why, Dhikilo is summoned to the home of her old history teacher Professor Dodderfield and his faithful Labrador, Nelly Robinson. And this is where our story begins.
Set between England and the wintry land of Liminus, a world enslaved by the monstrous Gamp and populated by fearsome, enchanting creatures, D (Tale of Two Worlds) is a mesmerising tale of friendship and bravery in an uncertain world. Told with simple beauty and warmth, its celebration of moral courage and freethinking is a powerful reminder of our human capacity for strength, hope and justice.
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: A book described as ‘a modern-day Dickensien fable’? Sold! This book sounds absolutely mesemerising, delightful and uplifting; like it has the potential to be a modern-day clasic Pre-order here
Eudora Honeysett is Quite Well, Thank You by Annie Lyons
Published: September 17th, 2020 Publisher: One More Chapter Genre: Historical Fiction, Humorous Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Coming-of-Age Fiction
SYNOPSIS: Eudora Honeysett is done – with all of it. Having seen first-hand what a prolonged illness can create, the eighty-five-year-old has no intention of leaving things to chance. With one call to a clinic in Switzerland she takes her life into her own hands.
But then ten-year-old Rose arrives in a riot of colour on her doorstep. Now, as precocious Rose takes Eudora on adventures she’d never imagined she reflects on the trying times of her past and soon finds herself wondering – is she ready for death when she’s only just experienced what it’s like to truly live?
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: This sounds like a charming and heartwarming read; one of those books that just makes you smile while reading. And anything that is compared to Eleanor Oliphant is a must-read for me. Pre-order here
The Meaning of Mariah Carey by Mariah Carey
Published: September 29th, 2020 Publisher: Pan Macmillan Genre: Autobiography, Biography
SYNOPSIS: It took me a lifetime to have the courage and the clarity to write my memoir. I want to tell the story of the moments – the ups and downs, the triumphs and traumas, the debacles and the dreams, that contributed to the person I am today. Though there have been countless stories about me throughout my career and very public personal life, it’s been impossible to communicate the complexities and depths of my experience in any single magazine article or a ten-minute television interview. And even then, my words were filtered through someone else’s lens, largely satisfying someone else’s assignment to define me.
This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival and my songs. Unfiltered. I went deep into my childhood and gave the scared little girl inside of me a big voice. I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side.
Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit.
Love, Mariah
WHY I’M ANTICIPATING THIS BOOK: I have been a huge fan of Mariah Carey for 27 years so there was no question that her memoir would be on my most anticipated list. I can’t wait to read the truth about her life from the woman herself. Pre-order here
Are any of these on your wishlist? Which ones are you planning to read? Let me know in the comments.
The Foundling by Stacey Halls
The Confession by Jessie Burton
The Guest List by Lucy Foley
The Boy from the Woods by Harlan Coben
The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohoe
Grace is Gone by Emily Elgar
Silver Chris Hammer
The Scorched Earth by Rachael Blok 
The Serpent and Dove by Shelby Mahurin 
Gun Island by Amitav Ghosh
Dear Life by Rachel Clarke
Inheritance by Jenny Eclair
The Heights by Parker Bilal
Bury Them Deep (Inspector McLean 10) by James Oswald
The Man on the Street by Trevor Wood
Shadow Weapon by Anthony Horowitz
The Good Thieves by Katherine Rundell
Kind by Alison Green
A Girl Made of Air by Nydia Hetherington
The Harpy by Megan Hunter
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
After The Silence by Louise O’Neill
House of Correction by Nicci French
Love Orange by Natasha Randall
The Heatwave by Kate Riordan
Truth Be Told by Kia Abdullah
Orfeia by Joanne Harris
Charlotte by Helen Moffett
The Night of the Flood by Zoe Sommerville
For When I’m Gone by Rebecca Ley
An Inconvenient Woman by Stephanie Buelens
To Cook A Bear by Mikael Niemi
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (Puffin Clothbound Classics)
Daddy by Emma Cline
Us Three by Ruth Jones
Her Last Flight by Beatriz Williams
The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn
The Silent Daughter by Emma Christie
You Can Trust Me by Emma Rowley
The Life We Almost Had by Amelia Henley
Cow Girl by Kirsty Eyre
Our Story by Miranda Dickinson
We Are Family by Nicola Gill
One Step Behind by Lauren North
My Darling by Amanda Robson
Fifty-Fifty by Steve Cavanagh
Wrecked by Louisa Reid
The Inheritance Games by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
Lies Like Poison by Chelsea Pitcher
The Watcher by Kate Medina
The Sea Gate by Jane Johnson
The Queen’s Rival by Anne O’Brien
The Invention of Sound by Chuck Palahnuiuk
The Darkest Evening (Vera Stanhope) by Ann Cleeves
Afterland by Lauren Bukes
All of Us by A. F. Carter
Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan
The World Does Not Require You by Rion Amilcar Scott
Private Moscow (Private 15) by James Patterson
The Memory of Souls – A Chorus of Dragons by Jenn Lyons
The Interpreter from Java by Alfred Birney
Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze
Call of the Raven by Wilbur Smith
The Four Symbols by Giacometti
Grave Secrets by Alice James 
The Diver and The Lover by Jeremy Vine
Unquiet by Linn Ullmann
The Wolves of Venice by Alex Connor 
The Bench by Saskia Sarginson
How To Raise An Elephant: No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Red Pill by Hari Kunzru
He: Shorter Writings of Franz Kafka by Franz Kafka
American Royals 2: Majesty by Katharine McGee
The Ghost Tree by Christina Henry
Back To School by Jack Sheffield
Lessons (Maggie Adair) by Jenny Colgan
A Year at Appleyard Farm by Emma Davies
Someday at Christmas by Lizzie Byron
A Mother’s Sacrifice by Jennie Felton
Broadwater by Jac Shreeves-Lee
Love at the Little Wedding Shop by the Sea by Jane Linfoot
The Kindness Club on Mapleberry Lane: Part One by Helen Rolfe
Christmas at Lock Keeper’s Cottage by Lucy Coleman
Cut Short by M. W. Craven
The Innocent Girls by B.R. Spangler
Her Husband’s Grave by P. L. Kane
Nightingale House by Steve Frech
Braywatch by Ross O’Carroll-Kelly 
Witch Child by Celia Rees (20th Anniversary Edition)
Sorceress by Celia Rees
As the Shadow Rises by Kate Rose Pool
Star Daughter by Shveta Thakrar
Venus in the Blind Spor by Junji Ito
Through the Moon by Peter Wartman
The Time-travelling Caveman by Terry Pratchett
Victoria Stitch: Bad and Glittering by Harriet Muncaster
The Reckless Afterlife of Harriet Stoker by Lauren James
Kidnap on the California Comet by M. G. Leonard
The Mermaid, the Witch and the Sea by Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Kicking Off: Dick, Kerr Girls by Evie Ainsworth
The Silver Arrow by Lev Grossman
Hercules by Benjamin Hulme-Cross
King Arthur by Benjamin Hulme-Cross
Odysseus by Benjamin Hulme-Cross
The Tindums of Rubbish Island by Sally Gardner
Dog Man 9: Grime and Punishment by Dav Pilkey
The Great Realisation by Tomos ‘Tomfoolery’ Roberts
Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright! – An Animal Poem for Every Day of the Year: National Trust – Poetry Collections by Fiona Waters
You Choose Fairy Tales by Nick Sharratt and Pippa Goodhart
Magical Fairy Tales by Enid Blyton 
Oi Aardvark! by Kes Gray
Emma's Biblio Treasures 