Published March 27th, 2025 by Hodder & Stoughton Romcom, Romance, Romatic Comedy, Humorous Fiction
Welcome to my review for this spicy and heartfelt romcom. Thank you to Hodder and Stoughton for sending me a proof copy in exchange for my honest review.
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ABOUT THE BOOK:
Sometimes all it takes is one long summer weekend for the person you thought you hated to become something more…
‘It’s about friendship, it’s about life, it’s about how people change . . . I loved it very much’ MARIAN KEYES ‘Funny, filled with emotion and very, very sexy! Add it to your 2025 TBR pile immediately…’ BETH O’LEARY ‘I laughed out loud, cried until I was a husk and finished it feeling refreshed, renewed, and looking at life a little bit differently. It’s a summer I never wanted to end’ CRESSIDA MCLAUGHLIN ‘Your favourite writer’s favourite writer . . . fun, sexy, bittersweet and utterly romantic, I fell head over heels for Cassie and Marc’ LINDSEY KELK ‘Expertly crafted, extremely loveable and a perfect balance of wit, heart and smut’ LAUREN BRAVO ****
After a disastrous first meeting, Cassie and Marc become arch nemeses. He might have great cheekbones and a sexy French accent but he’s a terrible person who did a terrible thing. Too bad that Cassie’s best friends Lucy and Russell think he’s wonderful.
But years later, when an unexpected tragedy strikes their friendship group, Cassie and Marc team up to give Lucy and Russell the best weekend ever so they can make new memories with all of their favourite people. Which means convincing everyone that Cassie and Marc are head over heels in love.
After hating him for so long, it takes four bittersweet days for Cassie to wonder if she got Marc all wrong. Can they let go of their troubled past and together, face whatever the future is going to throw at them?
⭐Enemies to lovers ⭐Fake relationship ⭐Grumpy / sunshine ⭐Heartfelt and emotional ⭐True love ⭐Hot, French, male main character ⭐Spicy, including a walk-in pantry scene…
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MY REVIEW:
Cassie and Marc have been the archest of nemeses ever since their disastrous first meeting sixteen years ago. She knows that beyond his sexy French good looks is a terrible person, even if her friends seem to like him. But now an unexpected tragedy forces Cassie and Marc to work together to give their mutual friends, Lucy and Russell, the best weekend ever. And to make things worse, they must pretend to be in love. As the weekend unfolds, Cassie begins to see Marc in a new light. Could her arch enemy actually be the man she’s been waiting for all this time?
Sarra Manning never fails to deliver. A delightful and funny romcom filled with depth that made me feel all the feelings, The Last Days of Summer was the perfect pick for our SquadPod Book Club this month. This is Manning at her best. The enemies to lovers storyline radiates hatred and chemistry, the spice is sizzling, the humour is sharp, and the emotions are heartbreaking. Heartfelt but hopeful, it had me glued to the pages and I devoured it in under a day.
Cassie and Marc are compelling characters who immediately drew me in. I loved how different they were and the added mystery of a secret history between them that was at the root of their mutual distaste. Their best friends, Lucy and Russell, were also brilliantly written, pulling on my heartstrings with their tragic storyline that I’m not ashamed to say brought tears to my eyes a few times. Their love radiated from the pages and I understood Cassie’s mixed feelings of jealousy at the love they shared and grief at what was happening to them. As the story, and the weekend away, progressed, I was glued to the pages by Cassie and Marc’s will they/won’t they romance. I really related to Cassie as Manning expertly portrayed the fear, insecurities, hurt and resentment she was feeling. I wanted her to find the love she longed for, and after seeing how red-hot her chemistry was with Marc, I wanted her to find it with him.
So, if you’re looking for a spicy but emotional romcom to read in the sun, this is for you.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮.5
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sarra Manning has been a voracious reader for over forty years and a prolific author and journalist for twenty five.
Her novels, which have been translated into fifteen different languages include Unsticky, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, After The Last Dance, The Rise And Fall Of Becky Sharp and her latest, Rescue Me, which publishes in 2021. Sarra has also written over fifteen YA novels, and four light-hearted romantic comedies under a pseudonym.
She started her writing career on Melody Maker and Just Seventeen, has been editor of ElleGirl and What To Wear and has also contributed to The Guardian, ELLE, Grazia, Stylist, Fabulous, Stella, You Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and is currently the Literary Editor of Red magazine.
Sarra has also been a Costa Book Awards judge and has been nominated for various writing awards herself.
She lives in London surrounded by piles and piles of books.
Published March 4th by Thomas & Mercer Thriller, Psychological Fiction, Suspense
BOOK DESCRIPTION: “Electrifying and page-turning, John Marrs is not to be missed.”―#1 New York Times bestselling author Freida McFadden
“This is trademark John Marrs and then some.”―Sunday Times bestselling author Andrea Mara
Three women. Three smouldering secrets. Who will make it out alive?
It’s 5 November, and a woman awakens to a nightmare. Bound and gagged, she lies trapped in the heart of a towering bonfire. As the smoke thickens, panic sets in – she’s moments away from being engulfed in flames. How did it come to this?
Rewind eleven months: Margot, a faded TV star, and her long-suffering friend Anna watch as glamorous Liv and her flawless family move into their street. The three women soon fabricate the perfect pretence of friendship, but each harbours her own deadly secret – and newcomer Liv senses something is terribly wrong beneath the polished exteriors.
As cracks widen in the veneer of perfection and lies escalate out of control, tension ignites. Bonfire Night is approaching and someone is set to burn…But who will it be?
Published March 4th by Del Rey Fantasy Fiction, Romantic Fantasy, Romance Novel, Lesbian Literature, Science Ficiton, Dystopian Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: FROM THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LADY MACBETH AND A STUDY IN DROWNING
‘There’s one thing about Ava Reid; she doesn’t miss.’ Sasha Peyton Smith ‘You’ll start saving space on your shelf for Ava Reid.’ Kendare Blake
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The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in this stand-alone dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.
By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.
Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt―enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.
Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.
When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs―the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.
For Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.
As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing.
And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.
Published March 4th by John Murray Historical Fiction, Thriller, Crime Fiction, Romance Novel
BOOK DESCRIPTION: IT WAS A SECRET AFFAIR. UNTIL IT WAS A PUBLIC SCANDAL. ‘Lyrical, brutal and passionate. I devoured it’ MIRANDA COWLEY HELLER, author of The Paper Palace
‘Evocative, sensitive and compelling . . . Fires directly at the heart and hits the mark’ DELIA OWENS, author of Where the Crawdads Sing
‘Broke my heart then mended it again. An epic, tortured love story. Bring tissues’ JENNIE GODFREY, author of The List of Suspicious Things
Everyone in the village said nothing good would come of Gabriel’s return. And as Beth looks at the man she loves on trial for murder, she can’t help thinking they were right.
Beth was seventeen when she first met Gabriel. Over that heady, intense summer, he made her think and feel and see differently. She thought it was the start of her great love story. When Gabriel left to become the person his mother expected him to be, she was broken.
It was Frank who picked up the pieces and together they built a home very different from the one she’d imagined with Gabriel. Watching her husband and son, she remembered feeling so sure that, after everything, this was the life she was supposed to be leading.
But when Gabriel comes back, all Beth’s certainty about who she is and what she wants crumbles. Even after ten years, their connection is instant. She knows it’s wrong and she knows people could get hurt. But how can she resist a second chance at first love?
A love story with the pulse of a thriller, Broken Country is a heart-pounding novel of impossible choices and devastating consequences.
Published March 6th by Doubleday UK Historical Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Biographical Fiction
BOOK DESCRPTION: This is the story of three women – one an orphan and refugee who finds a place in the studio of a famous French artist, the other a wife and mother who has stood by her husband for nearly forty years. The third is his daughter, caught in the crossfire between her mother and a father she adores.
Amelie is first drawn to Henri Matisse as a way of escaping the conventional life expected of her. A free spirit, she sees in this budding young artist a glorious future for them both. Ambitious and driven, she gives everything for her husband’s art, ploughing her own desires, her time, her money into sustaining them both, even through years of struggle and disappointment.
Lydia Delectorskaya is a young Russian emigree, who fled her homeland following the death of her mother. After a fractured childhood, she is trying to make a place for herself on France’s golden Riviera, amid the artists, film stars and dazzling elite. Eventually she finds employment with the Matisse family. From this point on, their lives are set on a collision course….
Marguerite is Matisse’s eldest daughter. When the life of her family implodes, she must find her own way to make her mark and to navigate divided loyalties.
Based on a true story, Madame Matisse is a stunning novel about drama and betrayal; emotion and sex; glamour and tragedy, all set in the hotbed of the 1930s art movement in France. In art, as in life, this a time when the rules were made to be broken…
Published March 6th by Viper Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, Legal Thriller, Political Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A trial is rather like a play. We wear our costumes. We perform to the audience. And on a good day no-one gets murdered.
Six nights a week the cast of the smash-hit play Daughter of the Revolution performs to a sold-out audience. A thrilling story of forbidden marriage and a secret love child, the critics say it’ll run for years. That is until one night the third act ends not in applause but in death, when leading lady Alexandra Dyce is beheaded live on stage.
Every cast member has a motive, but it is the dead woman’s co-star – and ex-husband – Hollywood legend Leo Lusk who is charged with the crime. When defence barrister Charles Konig is brought in last minute, he knows this ought to be the case of a lifetime. But Charles would rather be on his holiday trekking up K2, and he isn’t interested in celebrities, especially ones that seem to be mysteriously trying to derail their own defence. But as he and his co-counsel New York lawyer Yara Ortiz sift through the evidence, it becomes clear that clues may lie in the play itself. And that Charles’s only chance of victory is to identify the real murderer…
A delightfully clever legal mystery with as many layers as an onion. Perfect for readers of Janice Hallett, Tom Hindle, Rob Rinder and Richard Osman.
Published March 6th by Corvus Thriller, Psychological Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: If you hurt me, I’ll hurt you. Not right away of course, because where’s the fun in that?
When an empty passenger plane mysteriously crashes in the Lake District, journalist Carly Atherton is determined to get to the truth of what happened – the love of her life was one of the two pilots on board.
But when she contacts the family of the other pilot, the conflicting memories of his wife and his sister draw her into a story far darker than she could possibly have imagined.
As Carly delves into the dynamics of a seemingly ordinary family, she realises that the bonds that shape us can also tear us apart – and that sometimes there are monsters living among us, hiding in plain sight…
Published March 6th by Harvill Secker Historical Fiction, Historical Romance
BOOK DESCRIPTION: The sea stole him from her. Could it bring him back?
Winter, 1900. A little boy washes up on the beach of a small fishing village in Scotland, barely alive. He bears an uncanny resemblance to teacher Dorothy’s son, lost to the sea many years before.
When the village is snowed in, Dorothy agrees to look after the child until he can be returned home. But, as the past rises to meet the present, long-buried secrets in this tight-knit community start to come to light. And Dorothy finds herself thrown together again with the reclusive fisherman Joseph, after years of keeping their distance.
Bursting with tension and tenderness, this is an exquisite love story that delves into the griefs and hopes that can lie behind village gossip.
Published March 6th by Penguin UK Literary Fiction, Translated Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: ‘A must-read debut. Funny and frank, this book lingers in the mind long after you turn the final page’ BBC Books of 2025
Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka Isawa has severe spine curvature and uses an electric wheelchair and ventilator. Within the limits of her care home, her life is lived online: she studies, she tweets indignantly, she posts outrageous stories on an erotica website. One day, a new male carer reveals he has read it all – the sex, the provocation, the dirt. Her response? An indecent proposal…
Written by the first disabled author to win Japan’s most prestigious literary award and acclaimed instantly as one of the most important Japanese novels of the 21st century, Hunchback is an extraordinary, thrilling glimpse into the desire and darkness of a woman placed at humanity’s edge.
PublishedMarch 11th by Bloomsbury Publishing Historical Fiction, War Story
BOOK DESCRIPTION: An unforgettable historical debut set in Second World War Brussels: exploring love, resistance and courage in all their forms ___________________________________
Charlotte Sauvin has always seen the world differently. At home on 33 Place Brugmann, in the heart of Brussels, her father and her closest friends and neighbours – the Raphaëls from the fourth floor, and Masha from the fifth – have ensured her secret is safe. But when the Nazis invade Belgium, and Masha and the Raphaëls disappear, Charlotte must navigate her new world alone.
Over the border and across the sea, in occupied Paris and battered Blitz London, Masha and the Raphaels are reinventing themselves – as refugees, nurses, soldiers, heroes. Though scattered far and wide, they dream of only one place, one home: 33 Place Brugmann.
But back at Place Brugmann, Charlotte feels impending danger closing in. Who can she trust in this world – where everyone is watching, and everyone is harbouring their own secrets? As the months pass, and the shadow of war darkens, Charlotte and her neighbours must face what – and who – truly matters to them most – and summon the courage to fight for more than just survival.
With soaring imagination and profound intimacy, 33 Place Brugmann is a captivating and devastating celebration of the power of love, courage and art in times of great threat.
Published March 13th by Bloomsbury Publishing Historical Fiction, Romance Novel, Humorous Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: From the bestselling author of The Miniaturist. Jessie Burton’s Hidden Treasure is the phenomenal page-turning story of two children whose lives collide when they find an ancient treasure with the power to return to them the most precious thing they have ever lost
For the people who live on the banks of the Thames, the river is a living, breathing thing. It can take your treasures. It can hide your treasures. And, sometimes, it can give them back.
Bo and Billy are two children who have never met. Billy is an orphan. Bo’s dad died when she was small and now her brother is off to war. Both children are poor, but they have each found half of a priceless treasure, given up by the river. A treasure which – when the pieces are reunited – holds the power to give back to one of them the most precious thing they have ever lost.
But should the treasure be put back together again? And why has the river given it up now?
For fans of Katherine Rundell and Philip Pullman’s The Ruby in the Smoke, Hidden Treasure is a classic in the making, with a rip-roaring plot, spine-tingling twists and an unforgettable cast of characters.
Published March 13th by Orenda Books Mystery, Thriller, Crime Fiction, Nordic Noir, Police Procedural, Hardboiled Mystery, Women Sleuths
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Everyone here is lying…
Expert on body language and memory, and consultant to the Oslo Police, psychologist Kari Voss sleepwalks through her days, and, by night, continues the devastating search for her young son, who disappeared on his birthday, seven years earlier.
Still grieving for her dead husband, and trying to pull together the pieces of her life, she is thrust into a shocking local investigation, when two teenage girls are violently murdered in a family summer home in the nearby village of Son.
When a friend of the victims is charged with the barbaric killings, it seems the case is closed, but Kari is not convinced. Using her skills and working on instinct, she conducts her own enquiries, leading her to multiple suspects, including people who knew the dead girls well…
With the help of Chief Constable Ramona Norum, she discovers that no one – including the victims – are what they seem. And that there is a dark secret at the heart of Son village that could have implications not just for her own son’s disappearance, but Kari’s own life, too…
For fans of Harlan Coben, Lars Kepler, Jo Nesbo and Jorn Lier Horst … and The Mentalist
It’s the height of summer and on a quiet suburban cul-de-sac a housewife is scrubbing the yellow and white chequered tiles of her bathroom floor. But all is not as it seems. For one thing, it’s 3 a.m. For another, she is trying desperately to remove all traces of blood before they stain. Her husband seems remarkably calm, considering their neighbour has just been murdered.
As the sun rises on Warrah Place, news of Antonio Marietti’s death spreads like wildfire, gossip is exchanged in whispers and suspicion mounts. Twelve-year-old Tammy launches her own investigation, determined to find out what happened, but she is not the only one whose well-meaning efforts uncover more mysteries than they solve. There are secrets behind every closed door in the neighbourhood – and the identity of the murderer is only one of them . . .
Richly atmospheric and simmering with tension, The Grapevine is an acutely observed debut novel about prejudice and suspicion, the hidden lives of women, and how the ties that bind a community can also threaten to break it.
Published March 13tb by The Borough Press Dystopian Fiction, Humorous Science Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Annie is nine months pregnant.
She’s shopping for a crib at IKEA.
That’s when the massive earthquake hits.
There’s nothing to do but walk.
Annie is 37 weeks pregnant, standing in IKEA, finally about to take home the crib she should have bought months ago. That’s when it happens – the long-anticipated Cascadia Earthquake, dismantling Portland and the entire Pacific Northwest in a matter of minutes.
Propulsive, disruptive, funny, terrifying, Tilt is a novel about how the foundations of our lives are built and shaken. About a woman trying to walk back to the husband she’s long been pushing away. About put-off dreams and inevitability and what makes us keep moving forward.
Published March 13th by Faber & Faber Literary Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A MUST-READ NOVEL OF 2025 IN THE GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, GQ, ELLE, WATERSTONES AND GOOD HOUSEKEEPING, AMONG OTHERS ‘Brave, wry, cool, and thrilling.’ Andrew O’Hagan ‘Original, vital, and unputdownable.’ Tess Gunty ‘Breathtaking … a precise dissection of class, wealth and power.’ Elizabeth Day
In the new novel from the author of Assembly, a viral longread exposé raises more questions than it answers.
Remember – words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency.
Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar.
A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral longread exposé raises more questions than it answers.
Universality is a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power. Through a voyeuristic lens, it focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean. The follow-up novel to Natasha Brown’s Assembly is a compellingly nasty celebration of the spectacular force of language. It dares you to look away.
Published March 13th by Serpent’s Tail Literary Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A BOOK TO WATCH IN 2025 IN THE GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, ROLLING STONES AND THE BBC
‘As innovative, insightful, funny, and confronting as we’ve come to expect from Peters’ work’ Independent, Best Books to Look Out for in 2025
‘A shining talent’ Stylist Best Books of 2025 ‘Hot, heartbreaking and thrillingly victorious’ MIRANDA JULY ‘Potent and surprising and takes no prisoners’ CARMEN MARIA MACHADO ‘Spellbinding. With pathos and wit, Peters explores characters on the brink of self-discovery’ BRIT BENNETT
Deep in the forest, a group of restless lumberjacks working an illegal logging outfit plan a winter dance that some will volunteer to attend as women; the broadest, strongest axeman finds himself caught in a rivalry with a pretty, young jack that culminates in jealousy, betrayal and an astonishing spectacle of transition. Meanwhile, in other times and places, the gender apocalypse is brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend; an illicit boarding-school romance surfaces intrigue and cruelty; and a Las Vegas party weekend turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between a thrilling mystery man or a veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.
In this quartet of tales, Torrey Peters’ keen eye for the rough edges of desire reveals fresh possibilities. Acidly funny, boldly inventive and breathtaking in scope, Stag Dance provokes and unsettles, inspires and delights.
Published March 13th by The Borough Press Literary Fiction, Contemporary Ficiton
BOOK DESCRIPTION: The first time Joe plays Percy one of his songs in his college room in 2000, she instantly realises three things:
One, she is watching a star in the making.
Two, she can shape his music into something extraordinary.
Three, she will always be on the sidelines.
She swallows her jealousy and throws herself into collaboration, transforming Joe’s songs into indie hits with her blistering critiques.
But there’s an undercurrent to the music they’re making – something undeniably electric, hurtling towards love. And then, almost inevitably, towards heartbreak.
As Joe steps into the spotlight, can Percy bear to watch on in silence?
And can he exist there without her?
Deep Cuts is an irresistible novel about passion and obsession, love and longing and, above all, our need to be heard.
Published March 13th by Bloomsbury Publishing Thriller, Suspense
BOOK DESCRIPTION: ‘With biting, mordant humor, Chilton sends readers on a serial killer hunt for our disassociated, true-crime-obsessed social media age.’ ASHLEY WINSTEAD, bestselling author of In My Dreams I Hold a Knife
Kirby Cornell needs a break from everything: – Her crumbling flat in the sleepy town of Crowhurst (famous for its award-winning sausage rolls and a second-rate serial killer from the 90s). – Her dead-end job. – Her sleazy landlord. – Her slobbish housemates. – And, most of all, the terrible thing they all did.
Luckily, that hasn’t caught up with her just yet. Until a new message on their old group chat pops up:
Everyone in the group chat will die.
It’s the first text her ex-flatmate and social-media sleuth Esme has sent for ages, but that’s not the really weird thing.
The really weird thing is, Esme died twelve months ago.
Don’t miss the new laugh-out-loud thriller from L.M. Chilton, Everyone in the Group Chat Dies – a murder mystery that fuses the flatmate comedy of Friends with the serial-killer thrills of I Know What You Did Last Summer.
Published March 13th by Faber & Faber Mystery, Cosy Mystery, Thriller, Women Sleuths
BOOK DESCRIPTION: The first in a sparkling new 1950s seaside mystery series, featuring sharp-eyed former nun Nora Breen.
In a house like Gulls Nest, curiosity might prove fatal . . .
After thirty years in a convent, Nora Breen has thrown off her habit and set her sights on the seaside town of Gore-on-Sea. Her fellow sister Frieda has gone missing and it’s up to Nora to find her.
Nora’s only clue is that Frieda was last seen at Gulls Nest boarding House. So she travels down, takes a room and settles in to watch and listen. Over dubious – and sometimes downright inedible – dinners, Nora gathers evidence about the other lodgers and what they knew about Frieda.
At long last, Nora has found the perfect outlet for her powers of observation and, well, nosiness. When one of the lodgers is found dead, Nora decides she must find the murderer. Not least because she suspects the victim knew Frieda. Could solving this mystery help her to understand what has happened to her friend?
Published March 13th by Cornerstone Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Psychological Thriller
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A story of obsession, love and murder – and not the one you’re expecting. . . Discover a gripping new thriller with a killer twist at its core.
When Claire surprises her fiancé, Noah, at work for their anniversary, she’s the one who ends up being shocked to her core …
Because Noah left the company nine months ago, and she had no idea. How can she not have known?
Now he isn’t answering her calls. He won’t respond to her messages. He’s disappeared.
As Claire desperately tries to find her fiancé, her world begins to shatter as the truth about who Noah really is starts to emerge.
And things are about to spiral dangerously out of control . . .
Published March 13th by Hodder & Stoughton Historical Fiction, Romance Novel, Historical Romance, Romantic Suspense, Adventure Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Celebrated writer and historian Maria Graham must make the treacherous voyage from Brazil to London to deliver her latest book to her publisher. Having come to terms with the loss of her beloved husband, Maria is now determined to live her life as she pleases, free from the smothering constraints of Georgian society.
For a woman travelling alone it’s a journey fraught with danger, and as civil war rages around her, the only ship prepared to take Maria belongs to roguish smuggler Captain James Henderson. Onboard, all is well until Maria makes two shocking discoveries – the first a deadly secret, the second an irresistible attraction to the enigmatic captain.
With Henderson on a journey of his own and determined to finally put his life of crime behind him, he and Maria grow ever closer. But can Henderson escape his illicit past or will the scandalous secret he’s hiding ruin them both?
Published March 13th by Harper Voyager Romantic Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Fairy Tale, High Fantasy, Romance Novel, Fantasy Comedy
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Howl’s Moving Castle meets The House in the Cerulean Sea in Andrea Eames’ debut cosy fantasy: a cheeky butcher’s daughter, a befuddlingly handsome sorcerer, and his clever talking cat unlock magical secrets in the dark heart of their kingdom –and just might discover the meaning of true love.
Everyone in Foss Butcher’s village knows what happens when the magic-workers come; they harvest human hearts to use in their spells. That’s just how life in her kingdom works. But Foss, plain, clumsy, and practical as a boot, never expected anyone would want hers.
When a sorcerer snags a piece of Foss’s heart without meaning to, she is furious. For once a heart is snagged, the experience is … well, unpleasant. So, Foss finds herself stomping toward the grand City to keep his enchanted House and demands that he fixes her before she keels over and dies, or whatever happens when hearts are Snagged.
But the sorcerer, Sylvester, is not what she expected. Petulant, idle, and new to his powers, Sylvester has no clue how to undo the heart-taking, or how to do much of anything really, apart from sulk. Foss’s only friend is a talking cat and the walls themselves have moods.
As Foss searches for a cure, she accidentally uncovers that there is much more to the heart-taking – and to the magic-workers themselves – than she could have ever imagined…
Published March 13th by Pushkin Press Dystopian Fiction, Horror Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A fearsomely dark, incantatory new dystopia set in a post-apocalyptic convent from the author of viral sensation Tender is the Flesh
‘Barbaric, brutal and utterly beautiful. The Unworthy is a searing haunt of a novel that I will never forget’ LUCY ROSE, AUTHOR OF THE LAMB
In the House of the Sacred Sisterhood, the unworthy live in fear of the Superior Sister’s whip. Seething with resentment, they plot against each other and await who will ascend to the level of the Enlightened – and who will suffer the next exemplary punishment.
Risking her life, one of the unworthy keeps a diary in secret. Slowly, memories surface from a time before the world collapsed, before the Sacred Sisterhood became the only refuge.
Then Lucía arrives. She, too, is unworthy – but she is different. And her presence brings a single spark of hope to a world of darkness.
Published March 20th by Picador Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A woman determined to make her mark. A journey that will change everything.
‘Ratchets up the pace until it’s hurtling along as fast as the train itself’ – Alice Winn, author of In Memoriam
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Room and The Pull of The Stars, Emma Donoghue takes readers on a thrilling ride through a simmering turn-of-the-century Paris on the edge of a dazzling future.
Autumn, 1895. Paris is as chaotic as it is glamorous, with industry and invention creating huge wealth and terrible poverty. One morning, an anarchist boards the ill-fated Granville to Paris express train, determined to make her mark on history.
Aboard the train are others from across the globe: the railway crew who have built a life together away from their wives, a little boy travelling alone for the first time, an artist far from home, a wealthy statesman and his invalid wife, and a young woman with a secret.
Truths are revealed and relationships forged as the train speeds towards the City of Light and a future that will change everything . . .
Published March 20th by W&N Thriller, Crime Fiction, Suspense, Satire, LGBT Literature
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Decisions were made: I made them. Violence was done: I did it. Crime scenes were fled: I fled them. People were hurt: I hurt them. Someone was loved: I loved them. Not everything I did was bad. Just most of it. A scholarship kid with straight As and massive potential, Evie Gordon always thought she was special, that she’d be someone.
But after graduating from an elite university, she finds herself drowning in debt and working as a private tutor to the children of Los Angeles’s super-rich.
Everything changes when Evie arrives at the Victor family’s lavish mansion for her weekly lesson to discover, not the bored teenager she excepted, but pure carnage: the bloody remains of Mr and Mrs Victor sullying their beautiful back garden, and a woman crying for help from within the walls of the house.
Within moments, Evie and the woman go from bystanders to suspects to fugitives.
Suddenly at the heart of a nation-wide manhunt, Evie finds that her mysterious companion, who refuses to speak, has quickly become the most important person in her upside-down life. Meanwhile, the press runs wild with Evie’s story – anointing her the new Charles Manson, a blood thirsty ninety-nine percenter looking to start a class war.
Evie is – finally and disastrously – someone.
Droll, dark and deeply insightful, Killer Potential is an edge-of-your-seat break-neck ride, a queer love story, and a darkly funny critique of the horrors of late capitalism and how the stories we’re sold about our potential can shape the course of our lives.
I Want To Go Home But I’m Already There by Roisin Lanigan
Published March 20th by Fig Tree Psychological Fiction, Horror Fiction, Urban Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Renting is a nightmare…
Áine should be feeling happy with her life. She’s just moved in with Elliot. Their new flat is in an affluent neighbourhood, surrounded by bakeries, yoga studios and organic vegetable shops. They even have a garden. And yet, from the moment they move in, Áine can’t shake the sense that there’s something not quite right about the place…
It’s not just the humourless estate agent and nameless landlord: it’s the chill that seeps through the draughty windows; the damp spreading from the cellar door; the way the organic fruit and veg never lasts as long as it should. And most of all, it’s the upstairs neighbours, whose very presence makes peaceful coexistence very difficult indeed.
The longer Áine spends inside the flat – pretending to work from home; dissecting messages from the friends whose lives seem to have moved on without her – the less it feels like home. And as Áine fixates on the cracks in the ceiling, it becomes harder to ignore the cracks in her relationship with Elliott…
Brilliantly observed and darkly funny, I Want to Go Home But I’m Already There is a ghost story set in the rental crisis. A wonderfully clear-eyed portrait of loneliness, loss and belonging, it examines what it means to feel at home.
Published March 20th by Bantam Historical Fiction, Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Historical Mystery
BOOK DESCRIPTION: INTRODUCING ROSE BURNHAM: DESIGNER, DRESSMAKER . . . DETECTIVE?
South-east London, 1925.
Talented, ambitious designer-dressmaker Rose Burnham knows well both the strains of her profession and the secrets it can yield. Newly established in her own business, she and her sisters are privy to the hushed conversations that unspool behind the fitting room’s closed doors.
So when a major client finds herself the victim of a deception, it is Rose she tells. Driven by the shortage of men following the Great War, Miss Holmes had engaged the services of a matrimonial agency, only to be cheated out of her inheritance by a fake suitor.
Rose is determined to bring the swindler to justice. To begin with, playing the detective is a grand adventure, but as pressures mount and an old friend receives a troubling string of poison-pen letters, Rose discovers there is more to investigating – and these investigations – than she’d bargained for.
Rose had the sense of a thread being pulled. One tug and everything could unravel . . .
Published March 20th by Tor Fantasy Fiction, Romantic Fantasy, Lesbian Literature
BOOK DESCRIPTION: A wedding should be fun . . . right?
The Princess Bride meets Travis Baldree in Tea You at the Altar, the third cosy fantasy in Rebecca Thorne’s bestselling Tomes & Tea series. Our sapphic adventurers must navigate the ultimate maelstrom – their own wedding!
Kianthe and Reyna are finally ready to walk down the aisle. This feels so right, but their plans are going all wrong. Pirates crowd the town, Kianthe’s estranged parents invited themselves, the baby dragons are causing mayhem – and they might run out of tea. Yet the truth overshadows everything . . . for their wedding has nothing to do with marriage, and everything to do with overthrowing the vicious Queen Tilaine.
But the Queendom’s secret heir would rather manage a hive of bees or study city planning than take the throne. As the big day nears and the coup unravels, Kianthe and Reyna must rely on each other and their friends to survive the experience. Six days until they say ‘I do’. Six days until the Realm changes for ever.
Published March 27th by Bantam Press Thriller, Mystery, Crime Fiction, Suspense, Crime Series
BOOK DESCRIPTION: INCLUDES A BONUS SHORT STORY BY LEE CHILD AND TESS GERRITSEN, STARRING JACK REACHER AND THE ENIGMATIC MAGGIE BIRD. . .
The Summer Guests is the exhilarating and gripping new thriller from Sunday Times bestselling author of The Spy Coast.
THE MARTINI CLUB ISN’T OPEN TO EVERYONE . . .
Maggie Bird’s ‘book group’ is an unusual one – a group of retired spies living an anonymous life in the seaside town of Purity. And this summer they plan little more than ‘reading’ (whilst sipping martinis), and some gentle birdwatching.
But trouble is just around the corner as the summer guests arrive.
For acting Police Chief Jo Thibodeau, summer brings its own problems – packed streets, bar brawls, petty theft. And now, a missing teenager down by the lake.
When their good friend becomes a prime suspect in the girl’s disappearance, Maggie and her Martini Club must put down their binoculars and roll up their sleeves. Leaving Jo to deal with not only a powerful family desperate for answers, but a meddlesome group of retirees.
Can Jo and the Martini Club find a way to work together, as they uncover one of the deadliest scandals their small town has ever seen?
Published March 27th by Quercus Mystery, Crime Fiction, Cozy Mystery, Crime Series
BOOK DESCRIPTION: The much-anticipated sequel to How To Solve Your Own Murder
Annie thought the murders were over. She was wrong.
It is autumn in Castle Knoll and Annie Adams is busy settling into her new home. She doesn’t find Gravesdown Hall particularly cosy, especially since she found two dead bodies there over the summer. What’s more, ever since she arrived in the village, Annie has had the creeping sense she’s being watched.
Lonely, and desperate for some company, Annie starts talking to a stranger she meets in the grounds of the estate. The striking old woman introduces herself as Peony Lane, the fortune-teller who predicted Great Aunt Frances’ murder all those years ago. And now she has a fortune to tell Annie.
Desperate not to fall into the same trap as Frances, Annie flees Peony Lane, refusing to hear any of her grim predictions. But she can’t outrun Peony for long, as hours later she finds her, dead on the floor of Gravesdown Hall, a ruby-hilted dagger plunged into her back.
But who killed the mysterious fortune teller and why? And can Frances’ library of evidence help Annie solve the case?
Published March 27th by Michael Joseph Mystery, Crime Fiction, Cozy Mystery, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Thriller, Regency Romance, Crime Series
BOOK DESCRIPTION: “Who are you, Miss Austen, but a young lady of little experience and no consequence?”
Welcome to Kent, 1797. Following many years apart, Jane Austen is set to spend the summer with her estranged brother, Neddy. As heir to wealthy widow Mrs Knight’s fortune, it is imperative that Neddy stays in his benefactor’s good graces. The financial security of Jane’s entire family depend on him.
But upon arrival at Godmersham Park, Jane quickly realises Neddy is in dire need of her help. For a mysterious young woman currently resides with Mrs Knight – a stranger who threatens to swindle the inheritance for herself.
Jane must uncover who this imposter is, to protect the fortunes – and fate – of her family. But when her investigation takes a dark and dangerous turn, can she solve the mystery – and save herself?
Published March 27th byBantam Press Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, Domestic Fiction, Supernatural Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: From the bestselling author of The Cloisters comes this electrifying thriller about an affluent family whose annual retreat to Italy is shattered when a decades-old murder resurfaces . . . think The Talented Mr Ripley meets Succession meets The White Lotus . . .
On the glittering island of Capri, anything can be a mirage. But one thing is true: there’s nothing deadlier than a family with everything to lose . . .
The world was shocked by playwright Sarah Lingate’s death thirty years ago at an opulent, white-washed villa on the island of Capri. Absolved of the crime, the Lingate family maintains that what happened that night was a tragic accident. And every July they return to Capri to prove it’s true.
This time, Helen Lingate – sole heir to the family fortune – has a plan. Tightly controlled by her father, she enlists the help of the family assistant, Lorna Moreno, to free herself from her family’s stranglehold on her life. And yet, behind closed doors, the legendary Lingate family unity is at breaking point. Upon arrival at the villa in Capri, an anonymous gift awaits them: the necklace Sarah was wearing the night she died.
In the aftermath, the paranoid, insular Lingates begin to unravel. As the investigation into her mother’s death is reopened, Helen begins to lose trust in everyone around her: her controlling father Richard, drug-addled aunt Naomi, aloof uncle Marcus, and even Lorna, whose past she realizes is frustratingly opaque. And as the family fractures, the long-hidden truth about that night and the secrets they’ve kept from one another boil to the surface – and they might not leave the island alive.
Published March 27th by Hodder & Stoughton Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Psychological Thriller
BOOK DESCRIPTION: What would you do if your childhood sweetheart was accused of murder?
Justine Stone left her hometown in Essex eighteen years ago, and she hasn’t looked back since. Married to Noah, with a beautiful house and a high-flying career as a barrister, she rarely thinks about her ex-boyfriend, Jake.
Until she’s given her first murder case, and sees his face staring up at her, charged with a horrific double murder.
The Jake that Justine loved would never have hurt anyone. But as evidence begins to come to light, Justine has to face up to the fact that perhaps she never really knew Jake at all. And as the past begins to merge with the present, Justine’s life that she’s worked so hard to create begins to fall apart.
You can run from your secrets. But they’ll always catch up with you.
Published March 27th by Head of Zeus Mystery, Psychological Thriller
BOOK DESCRIPTION: DON’T MISS THE NEXT ADDICTIVE THRILLER FROM TIKTOK SENSATION AND CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED AUTHOR ASHLEY WINSTEAD.
It’s the most famous crime in modern history. But only she knows the true story.
After her father dies suddenly, Jane Sharp finds a strange comfort in TheRealCrimeNetwork.com, where she befriends four amateur sleuths from across the country.
The group dives into its research dutifully, but when three college students are viciously stabbed to death, seemingly at random, the entire online-sleuth community is set ablaze. Jane and her team decide to take their investigation into the real world, travelling to small-town Idaho to find answers – only to discover the truth is more shocking than any of their previous cases.
Told one year after the astounding events that left the world reeling, Jane tells the true story of the Delphine Massacres.
And what she has to confess will shock even the most seasoned true-crime fans…
A poignant commentary on the consumerization of true crime, an exploration of society’s fascination with murder, a moving meditation on grief, and a brutally satisfying murder mystery with a shocking twist ending, This Book Will Bury Me is Ashley Winstead at her best. Perfect for readers of All Good People Here and Bright Young Women.
Published March 27th by Hodder & Stoughton Historical Fiction, Fairy Tale, Religious Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Ninth-century Mainz, in the heart of the Holy Roman Empire.
Agnes is the motherless child of an English priest – a wild and brilliant girl with a deep, visceral love of God. But when tragedy strikes, she is suddenly forced to choose between what is expected of her and the life she has always dreamed of. Determined to find her own freedom, she disguises herself as a man, securing a place at the revered Fulda monastery and forever altering the course of her existence.
Thus begins the life of John the Englishman: a matchless scholar and scribe of Fulda, then a charismatic heretic in an Athens commune and, by her middle years, a celebrated teacher in Rome. There, she dazzles the Church hierarchy with her knowledge of the old and new languages of Europe, theology and Church law, and finds herself at the heart of political intrigue in a city where gossip is a powerful – and deadly – currency.
And when the only person who knows her identity arrives in Rome, she will risk everything to once again feel what it is to be known – and loved.
Published March 27th by Mountain Leopard Press Historical Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Crime Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: DARKNESS LIES IN THE SHADOWS OF VICTORIAN LONDON
Opium, treachery, murder . . .
Pearl Fitzgerald arrives in Limehouse – London’s very first Chinatown – to settle her late father’s affairs and claim her inheritance. But when she unwittingly finds herself at the scene of a murder, her plans are thrown off course. Even more so by the alluring Mei, sister to the dead man. Utterly infatuated, Pearl promises Mei that she will bring her brother’s killer to justice, and she dives into the East End’s criminal underworld.
But in the city of smoke and silk, where cultures clash and the hangman’s noose is always waiting, the truth comes at a cost. With each step of the investigation Pearl risks her livelihood, her relationship with Mei, and her life. Because the killer will strike again, and they’re already hunting for the next victim . . .
Opium smuggling, murder and unexpected romance meet in this historical thriller for fans of Leonora Nattrass, Laura Shepherd-Robinson and Sarah Waters.
Published March 27th by HarperNorth Domestic Fiction, Coming-of-Age Story
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Would it kill you to smile, darling? Perhaps…
A men-only charity dinner. A clutch of young waitresses.
The jokes are uncomfortable. The hands linger. The collars loosen.
Behind closed doors, the wine flows.
The night is dark. The faces blur. The memories warp.
Behind closed doors, the money flows.
But revenge is sweet and justice is a burning flame.
Behind closed doors, the blood flows…
A fierce and addictive read about lust and power, the love we want versus the love we take, and the tinderbox secrets that hide so well in the heart of families, this is the searing new novel from the author of Spilt Milk.
Published March 27th by Hodder & Stoughton Romantic Comedy, Humorous Fiction
BOOK DESCRIPTION: Sometimes all it takes is one long summer weekend for the person you thought you hated to become something more...
After a disastrous first meeting, Cassie and Marc become arch nemeses. He might have great cheekbones and a sexy French accent but he’s a terrible person who did a terrible thing. Too bad that Cassie’s best friends Lucy and Russell think he’s wonderful.
But years later, when an unexpected tragedy strikes their friendship group, Cassie and Marc team up to give Lucy and Russell the best weekend ever so they can make new memories with all of their favourite people. Which means convincing everyone that Cassie and Marc are head over heels in love.
After hating him for so long, it takes four bittersweet days for Cassie to wonder if she got Marc all wrong. Can they let go of their troubled past and together, face whatever the future is going to throw at them?
Published March 27th by Doubleday UK True Crime, Biography
BOOK DESCRIPTION: No murderer should ever be the keeper of their victim’s story …
On 1 February, 1910, vivacious musichall performer, Belle Elmore, suddenly vanished from her north London home, causing alarm among her circle of female friends, the entertainers of the Music Hall Ladies’ Guild who demanded an immediate investigation.
They could not have known what they would provoke: the unearthing of a gruesome secret, followed by a fevered manhunt for the prime suspect: Belle’s husband, medical fraudster, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen.
Hiding in the shadows of this evergreen tale is Crippen’s typist and lover, Ethel Le Neve – was she really just ‘an innocent young girl’ in thrall to a powerful older man as so many people have since reported?
In this epic examination of one of the most infamous murders of the twentieth century, prizewinning social historian Hallie Rubenhold gives voice to those who have never properly been heard – the women.
Featuring a carnival cast of eccentric entertainers, glamorous lawyers, zealous detectives, medics and liars, STORY OF A MURDER is meticulously researched and multi-layered, offering the reader an electrifying snapshot of Britain and America at the dawn of the modern era.
Published November 9th, 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton Romance Novel, Contemporary Romance, Romantic Comedy, Humorous Fiction
Today is my stop on the blog tour for this funny, sexy, warm and uplifting romcom. Thank you to Alara from Hodder & Stougton for the invitation to take part the copy of the book.
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SYNOPSIS:
‘Romantic, funny, sweet and sexy’ MARIAN KEYES
‘The funny, clever, deeply romantic, sinfully sexy, devastatingly heartbreaking, perfectly uplifting book of your dreams’ CRESSIDA MCLAUGHLIN
‘A very swoony, sexy, warm read’ CESCA MAJOR
Is he too good to be true?
Meet Theo. Handsome, sexy, funny. kind. And he can cook.
He’s literally the man of Esme’s dreams. But Esme’s sensible enough to know that you can’t just manifest your perfect boyfriend then have him turn up on your doorstep.
Or can you?
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MY REVIEW:
“I’ve already said, you’ve been in my head for years. Like a fantasy boyfriend. A sweet smorgasbord of all the qualities I’d want in an ideal man.”
The Man of Her Dreams is everything you could want in a romcom. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, sexy, warm, romantic, and uplifting. It’s a hug in book form that soothes your soul, makes you believe in love, and is guaranteed to put a smile on your face.
Esme Strange doesn’t believe in forever and has closed herself off to love ever since a messy divorce eight years ago that ripped her heart out. But her friends and family are encouraging her to move on, so during a hen party she creates a vision board of her perfect man to keep them from nagging her all night. Then she suffers a head injury on her way to the second venue and ends up in hospital being treated for the nasty gash to her head. While there she meets Theo and there’s an instant attraction. What’s more, he seems to be her vision board brought to life. Esme’s head-over-heels, but she’s known for her rich imagination and her friends and family all think Theo is yet another fantasy boyfriend, making Esme begin to doubt what’s real and what might be in her imagination. Could Theo be too good to be true? Or is luck finally on Esme’s side?
I absolutely adored this entertaining and refreshing twist on the usual ‘girl meets the man of her dreams’ story. Sarra Manning is an author I can always rely upon to deliver a fantastic romcom, but this was the best I’ve read yet. In a masterclass of storytelling she had me hooked as she expertly spun the threads of this cleverly crafted, swoon-worthy romance to perfection. It’s chaotic, crazy, utterly charming, and completely unputdownable.
Esme is a fantastic protagonist. She’s snarky, disorganised, and a daydreamer who creates fantasy boyfriends with elaborate backstories that she has filthy fantasy sex with (giving you an idea of how spicy this book can get at times). She’s understandably jaded when it comes to love and relationships but seems to be finding it hard to let go of her failed marriage despite it ending eight years ago. I loved her and found her funny, relatable and very easy to root for. Then there’s Theo, the kind, sweet, thoughtful but incredibly sexy love interest. They do have the kind of relationship that is absolute goals: it’s mutually respectful, filled with open communication, understanding, support, care, they fancy the pants off each other and have red-hot sex. It all sounds too good to be true but good men and good relationships DO exist, and it was great to see Esme finally have her time. But Manning is shrewd, sewing little seeds of doubt into our minds about whether or not Theo is real. Obviously, you’ll need to read the book to find out the truth, but I loved the mystery and unreliability of not being sure if this was real or all in Esme’sactive imagination.
Dreamy, sensuous, sweet, heartwarming and hilarious, The Man of Her Dreams is a gripping must-read romance.
Rating: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
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MEET THE AUTHOR:
Sarra Manning has been a voracious reader for over forty years and a prolific author and journalist for twenty five.
Her novels, which have been translated into fifteen different languages include Unsticky, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, After The Last Dance, The Rise And Fall Of Becky Sharp and her latest, Rescue Me, which publishes in 2021. Sarra has also written over fifteen YA novels, and four light-hearted romantic comedies under a pseudonym.
She started her writing career on Melody Maker and Just Seventeen, has been editor of ElleGirl and What To Wear and has also contributed to The Guardian, ELLE, Grazia, Stylist, Fabulous, Stella, You Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and is currently the Literary Editor of Red magazine.
Sarra has also been a Costa Book Awards judge and has been nominated for various writing awards herself.
She lives in London surrounded by piles and piles of books.
Welcome to another month of my most anticipated releases. I can’t quite believe we’re almost at the end of this year, and even though November and December generally have less releases, there’s still a lot of exciting books in this list.
Here’s the books out in November I’m most anticipating:
The Leftover Woman by Jean Kwok
Published November 2nd by Viper Books Mystery, Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Domestic Fiction
SYNOPSIS: * FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF GIRL IN TRANSLATION *
‘Kwok is an impressive talent’ – KARIN SLAUGHTER ‘A beautiful, propulsive story’ – LAURA DAVE ‘A hugely atmospheric and suspenseful mystery’ – LUCY FOLEY
‘I will find my daughter. No matter the cost…’
Jasmine Yang thought her daughter was dead at birth. But five years after she was taken from her arms, she learns that her controlling husband sent the baby to America to be adopted, a casualty of China’s one-child-policy. Fleeing her rural Chinese village, Jasmine arrives in New York City with nothing except a desperate need to find her daughter. But with her husband on her trail, the clock is ticking, and she’s forced to make increasingly risky decisions if she ever hopes to be reunited with her child.
Meanwhile, Rebecca Whitney seems to have it all: a high-powered career, a beautiful home, a handsome husband and an adopted Chinese daughter she adores. But when an industry scandal threatens to jeopardise not only Rebecca’s job but her marriage, this perfect world begins to crumble.
Two women in a divided city, separated by wealth and culture, yet bound together by their love for the same child. And when they finally meet, their lives will never be the same again…
Published November 2nd by Canongate Books Historical Ficiton, Biographical Fiction, Domestic Fiction
SYNOPSIS: Dolly Maunder is born at the end of the nineteenth century, when society’s long-locked doors are just starting to creak ajar for determined women. Growing up in a poor farming family in rural New South Wales, Dolly spends her life doggedly pushing at those doors. A husband and two children do not deter her from searching for love and independence.
Restless Dolly Maunder is a subversive, triumphant tale of a pioneering woman working her way through a world of limits and obstacles, who is able – despite the cost – to make a life she could call her own.
Mary; or, The Birth of Franenstein by Anne Eekhout
Published November 2nd by Pushkin Press Gothic Fiction, Historical Ficiton, Biographical Fiction, LGBT Literature
SYNOPSIS: Gothic, fantasy-tinged historical fiction, delving back into the teenage years of Mary Shelley to find the inspiration for Frankenstein Scotland, 1812. When Mary is sent to the countryside for her health, she soon forms a brooding, amorous friendship with Isabella, the grief-stricken eldest daughter of the Baxter family. While the girls explore the local countryside and revel in its stories of witches, ghosts and monsters, the mysterious David Booth develops a sinister interest in Mary and Isabella… Geneva, 1816. In the famous year without a summer, Mary is caught between her husband’s ideals of free love, her stepsister’s narcissism and the immense anguish she feels for her recently lost child. While her days are filled with strife, the long evenings are spent drinking laudanum-laced wine and sharing ghost stories. As Mary grapples with the inspiration for her famous novel, she is plagued by troubling memories… Provocative, sensual and dark, Mary; or the Birth of Frankenstein is a hypnotic ode to the power of the imagination.
Published November 2nd by Hodder & Stoughton Romance Novel, Humorous Fiction, Medical Fiction, Romantic Comedy
SYNOPSIS: It’s never too late for the adventure of a lifetime . . . Heather Winterbottom has worked side by side with her husband as GPs in their idyllic rural practice for over forty years. But as the time comes to hang up their stethoscopes, the Winterbottoms discover that they have rather different visions of retirement . . .
Heather dreams of exploring the Greek Islands, of escaping the shackles of her routine life and embracing an exciting new adventure. Alan dreams of growing his own vegetables.
When things come to a head at a family lunch, Heather announces that she has decided to take a year off. From her old life, from her marriage – from Alan. Alone in beautiful Greece, Heather embarks on her very own odyssey – complete with peak experiences, pitfalls and temptations. But what if coming home is the biggest adventure yet?
Published November 2nd by Hodder Mystery, Thriller, Young Adult Fiction
SYNOPSIS: Ten influencers. Ten secrets. One dead body. A pacy, page-turning thriller perfect for fans of We Were Liars, The Inheritance Games and One Of Us Is Lying.
‘Agatha Christie meets TikTok . . . a wicked, juicy page-turner’ – Alexa Donne, author of Brightly Burning
They’re used to being followed. But not like this . . .
Ten social media stars think they’re about to join the cast of a hot new reality show.
But the production crew never shows up, and the influencers find themselves stranded on a deserted Caribbean island with no contact with the outside world – except for messages from the mysterious ‘Sponsor’, who is threatening to expose their darkest secrets.
When one of them winds up dead, things start to get more real than they bargained for . . .
With the body count rising, the influencers must figure out who is trying to get them cancelled – like, literally – before their number one follower strikes again.
Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros (The Empyrean Book 2)
Published November 7th by Piatkus Romantic Fantasy, High Fantasy, Fantasy Series
SYNOPSIS: THE THRILLING SEQUEL TO THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND NUMBER ONE GLOBAL PHENOMENON, FOURTH WING!
The deadly second year at Basgiath awaits. Don’t miss out on the series that the world can’t stop talking about:
‘This book contains an addictive, drug like essence that will make you relinquish all responsibility until the very last word. Do not say I didn’t warn you’ – Glamour
__________________________________________
She survived her first year at Basgiath War College . . . but the danger is only beginning.
Everyone expected Violet Sorrengail to die during her first year at Basgiath War College, Violet included. But Threshing was only the first impossible test meant to weed out the weak-willed, the unworthy, and the unlucky.
Now the real training begins, and Violet’s already wondering how she’ll get through. It’s not just that it’s grueling and maliciously brutal, or even that it’s designed to stretch the riders’ capacity for pain beyond endurance. It’s the new vice commandant, who’s made it his personal mission to teach Violet exactly how powerless she is – unless she betrays the man she loves.
Although Violet’s body might be weaker and frailer than everyone else’s, she still has her wits, and a will of iron. And leadership is forgetting the most important lesson Basgiath has taught her: Dragon riders make their own rules.
But a determination to survive won’t be enough this year.
Because Violet knows the real secret hidden for centuries at Basgiath War College – and nothing, not even dragon fire, may be enough to save them in the end.
Published November 7th by Sphere Contemporary Romance, Science Fiction Romance, Young Adult Fiction
SYNOPSIS: In this clever and swoonworthy new novel from the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis, life’s moving pieces bring rival chess players together in a match for the heart.
Mallory Greenleaf is done with chess. Every move counts nowadays; after the sport led to the destruction of her family four years earlier, Mallory’s focus is on her mom, her sisters, and the dead-end job that keeps the lights on. That is, until she begrudgingly agrees to play in one last charity tournament and inadvertently wipes the board with notorious ‘Kingkiller’ Nolan Sawyer: current world champion and reigning Bad Boy of chess.
Nolan’s loss to an unknown rookie shocks everyone. What’s even more confusing? His desire to cross pawns again. What kind of gambit is Nolan playing? The smart move would be to walk away. Resign. Game over. But Mallory’s victory opens the door to sorely needed cash-prizes and despite everything, she can’t help feeling drawn to the enigmatic strategist…
As she rockets up the ranks, Mallory struggles to keep her family safely separated from the game that wrecked it in the first place. And as her love for the sport she so desperately wanted to hate begins to rekindle, Mallory quickly realizes that the games aren’t only on the board, the spotlight is brighter than she imagined, and the competition can be fierce (-ly attractive. And intelligent… and infuriating…)
This novel is suitable for both young adult and adult audiences.
The Temple of Fortuna by Elodie Harper (Wolf Den Trilogy Book 3)
Published November 9th by Head of Zeus Historical Fiction, Romance Novel, Book Series, Historical Romance
SYNOPSIS: The final instalment in Elodie Harper’s Sunday Times bestselling Wolf Den Trilogy
A courtesan in Rome. Playing for power. Haunted by her past. Her name is Amara. How will her fortunes fall?
Amara’s journey has taken her far, from a lowly slave in Pompeii’s brothel to a high-powered courtesan in Rome. She is now a freedwoman with wealth and influence, yet she is still drawn back to her past.
For while Amara is caught up in the political scheming of the Imperial palace, her daughter remains in Pompeii, raised by the only man she ever truly loved. Although she longs for her family, Amara knows they are safest while she is far away. Perhaps, with enough cunning and courage, she will manage to turn Fortuna’s wheel in their favour.
But the year is ad 79, and Mount Vesuvius is preparing to make itself known…
The Temple of Fortuna is the dramatic final instalment in Elodie Harper’s Sunday Times-bestselling Wolf Den trilogy, which reimagines the lives of women who have long been overlooked.
Published November 9th by Orenda Mystery, Thriller, Suspense, PsychologivlcaThriller, Horror Satire
SYNOPSIS: Hotel Beresford: a grand old building, just outside the city, where any soul is welcome, and strange goings-on mask explosive, deadly secrets. A chilling, darkly funny sequel to Will Carver’s bestselling The Beresford…
There are worse places than hell…
Hotel Beresford is a grand, old building, just outside the city. And any soul is welcome.
Danielle Ortega works nights, singing at whatever dive bar will offer her a gig. She gets by, keeping to herself. Sam Walker gambles and drinks, and can’t keep his hands to himself. Now he’s tied up in a shoe closet with a dent in his head that matches Danielle’s broken ashtray.
The man in 731 has been dead for two days and his dog has not stopped barking. Two doors down, the couple who always smokes on the window ledge will mysteriously fall.
Upstairs, in the penthouse, Mr Balliol sees it all. He can peer into every crevice of every floor of the hotel from his screen-filled suite. He witnesses humanity and inhumanity in all its forms: loneliness, passion and desperation in equal measure. All the ingredients he needs to make a deal.
When Danielle returns home one night to find Sam gone, a series of sinister events begins to unfold. But strange things often occur at Hotel Beresford, and many are only a distraction to hide something much, much darker…
Published November 9th by Orenda Thriller, Mystery, Psychological Thriller, Police Procedural, Hardboiled, Literary Fiction
SYNOPSIS: Desperate for reward money – and to rescue his marriage – an embattled sheriff takes incalculable risks to find a missing boy. An edge-of-your-seat, twisted and twisty thriller from New Zealand’s King of Crime.
To catch a killer… Maybe you’ve got to be one…
Acacia Pines, USA. Sheriff Cohen’s life is falling apart – his father accidentally burned down the retirement home, his wife has moved out, and his son is bullying other kids at school.
When high-school student, Lucas Connor, is abducted, Cohen sees a chance to get his life back on track – to win back his wife and scoop the reward money offered for Lucas’s safe return.
But as the body count rises, it becomes clear that Cohen’s going to have to make the kind of decision from which there’s no coming back … a decision with deadly consequences…
A furiously paced, edge-of-your-seat thriller exposing the dark underbelly of small-town life, His Favourite Graves is also a twisted and twisty story of father-and-son relationships, and the one last gamble of a desperate man to save everything…
Published November 9th by Orion Mystery, Thriller, Psychological Thriller, Erotic Thriller
SYNOPSIS: Sharon Bolton has written another cracker! The twists! The tension! The characters!’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
‘You’ll never guess where this book is going’ SAMANTHA DOWNING ‘Totally gripping, with characters who draw you in’ JP DELANEY ‘A thriller that had me desperate for answers. I loved it!’ HARRIET TYCE
Olive Anderson is dining alone at a hotel when a glamourous stranger joins her table, pretending to be her wife. What starts as a thrilling game quickly turns into something dangerous. But as much as the fake wife has her secrets, Olive just might have more . . .
The Fake Wife is an unputdownable thriller that will shock and surprise you like the best television boxsets. If you enjoyed Netflix shows like Behind Her Eyes, The Stranger and Obsession you will love The Fake Wife.
The Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict
Published November 9th by Simon & Schuster UK Mystery, Cozy Mystery, Crime Fiction, Adventure Fiction, LGBT Literature, Domestic Fiction, Holiday Fiction
SYNOPSIS: ***GIVE THE GIFT OF CHRISTMAS EARLY. PRE-ORDER THIS DELICIOUSLY DARK CHRISTMAS MYSTERY FOR FANS OF CLEVER, PUZZLING CRIME. THE PERFECT STOCKING FILLER***
THIS CHRISTMAS, A KILLER TAKES FAMILY GAMES TO A MURDEROUS NEW LEVEL.
On 19th of December, renowned puzzle setter, loner and Christmas sceptic Edie O’Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside, six jigsaw pieces. When fitted together, the pieces show part of a crime scene – blood-spattered black and white tiles and part of an outlined body. Included in the parcel is a message: ‘Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.’ It’s signed, Rest In Pieces.
Edie contacts her nephew, DI Sean Brand-O’Sullivan, and together they work to solve the clues. But when a man is found near death with a jigsaw piece in his hand, Sean fears that Edie might be in danger and shuts her out of the investigation. As the body count rises, however, Edie knows that only she has the knowledge to put together the killer’s murderous puzzle.
Only by fitting all the pieces together will Edie be able to stop a killer – and finally lay her past to rest.
Published November 9th by Hodder & Stoughton Romance Novel, Contemporary Romance, Humorous Fiction
SYNOPSIS: ‘Romantic, funny, sweet and sexy’ MARIAN KEYES
‘The funny, clever, deeply romantic, sinfully sexy, devastatingly heartbreaking, perfectly uplifting book of your dreams’ CRESSIDA MCLAUGHLIN
Is he too good to be true?
Meet Theo. Handsome, sexy, funny. kind. And he can cook.
He’s literally the man of Esme’s dreams. But Esme’s sensible enough to know that you can’t just manifest your perfect boyfriend then have him turn up on your doorstep.
Published November 9th by Black & White Publishing Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Regency Romance, Coming-of-Age Story, New Adult Fiction, Transgender Fiction, LGBT Literature, Gay Fiction
SYNOPSIS: ‘Fun, fresh and clever . . . a huge treat for all fans of Jane Eyre.’ KATIE LUMSDEN, author of The Secrets of Hartwood Hall
‘A sublime and tenderly written novel.’ BEA FITZGERALD, author of Girl, Goddess, Queen
All Brontë Ellis has ever known is life at St. Mary’s all-boys boarding school, where he lingered first as a student and then as a teaching assistant. So when a chance to forge a new life in Cambridge presents itself, he seizes it with both hands.
Arriving at Greenwood Manor as the new live-in tutor, Bron finds himself welcomed by all – the gregarious Mr Edwards, his precocious pupil Ada . . . except for Darcy, the elusive and tempestuous eldest son. Despite the rumours about him, Bron cannot help feeling drawn to the one person who seems determined to avoid him.
When tragedy strikes the house, Bron begins to sense dark secrets smouldering beneath Greenwood Manor’s surface. Soon he’s not sure what to believe, or whether he even has a future at Greenwood. Only Darcy holds the key, if he can be persuaded to reveal his heart to Bron . . .
Published November 9th by Scribe UK Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
SYNOPSIS: From the author of The Picture Bride, two women’s lives and identities are intertwined ― through World War II and the Korean War ― revealing the harsh realities of class division in the early part of the 20th century.
Can’t I Go Instead follows the lives of the daughter of a Korean nobleman and her maidservant in the early 20th century. When the daughter’s suitor is arrested as a Korean Independence activist, and she is implicated during the investigation, she is quickly forced into marriage to one of her father’s Japanese employees and shipped off to the United States. At the same time, her maidservant is sent in her mistress’s place to be a comfort woman to the Japanese Imperial army.
Years of hardship, survival, and even happiness follow. In the aftermath of WWII, the women make their way home, where they must reckon with the tangled lives they’ve led, in an attempt to reclaim their identities, and find their places in an independent Korea.
Published November 9th by Fig Tree Contemporary Romance, Literary Fiction, Psychological Fiction
SYNOPSIS: ‘Leaves you heartsore but happier. Irresistible’ RICHARD E. GRANT
‘Wise and relatable and pee-your-pants funny… Dolly Alderton is, quite simply, the bard of modern day love’ LENA DUNHAM
—
Every relationship has one beginning. This one has two endings.
Andy loves Jen. Jen loved Andy. And he can’t work out why she stopped.
Now he is. . . 1. Without a home 2. Waiting for his stand-up career to take off 3. Wondering why everyone else around him seems to have grown up while he wasn’t looking
Set adrift on the sea of heartbreak at a time when everything he thought he knew about women, and flat-sharing, and his friendships has transformed beyond recognition, Andy clings to the idea of solving the puzzle of their broken relationship. Because if he can find the answer to that, then maybe Jen can find her way back to him.
Andy still has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend’s side of the story.
From the bestselling author of Ghosts and Everything I Know About Love: a sharply funny, beautifully observed and exquisitely relatable story of heartbreak and friendship, and how to survive both.
The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou by Eleni Kyriacou
Published November 9th by Head of Zeus Suspesne, Thriller, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery
SYNOPSIS: **Selected for BBC 2 Between the Covers Book Club 2023**
‘Tense. Moving. Morally complex. Zina Pavlou is wholly unforgettable.’ Rachel Rhys ‘Hugely powerful… Easily one of the best books you’ll read this year.’ Emma Christie THEY HAVE TOLD SO MANY LIES ABOUT ME.
London, 1954. Zina Pavlou, a Cypriot grandmother, waits quietly in the custody of the Metropolitan police. She can’t speak their language, but she understands what their wary looks mean: she has been accused of the brutal murder of her daughter-in-law.
Eva Georgiou, Greek interpreter for the Met, knows how it feels to be voiceless as an immigrant woman. While she works as Zina’s translator, her obsession with the case deepens, and so too does her bond with the accused murderer.
Zina can’t speak for herself. She can’t clear her own name. All she can do is wait for the world to decide…
IS SHE A VICTIM? OR IS SHE A KILLER?
A compelling historical crime novel set in the Greek diaspora of 1950s London – that’s inspired by a true story – The Unspeakable Acts of Zina Pavlou is perfect for fans of Erin Kelly, Sara Collins, and Jessie Burton.
Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree (Legends & Lattes Book 2)
Published November 9th by Tor Fantasty Fiction, Romance Novel, Romantic Fantasy, Gaslamp Fantasy, Cosy Fantasy, Lesbian Literature, Book Series
SYNOPSIS: A standalone cosy fantasy about the power of good bookshops, great friends and the unexpected choices along the way from the bestselling author of BookTok sensation Legends & Lattes.
First loves. Second-hand books. Epic adventures.
Viv’s career with the renowned mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned. Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk – so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it. What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?
Spending her hours at a struggling bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted. Even though it may be exactly what she needs. Still, adventure isn’t far away. A suspicious traveller in grey, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.
Sometimes, right things happen at the wrong time. Sometimes, what we need isn’t what we seek. And sometimes, we find ourselves in the stories we experience together . . .
Published November 9th by Simon & Schuster UK Humorous Fiction, Disability Fiction, Contemporary Fiction
SYNOPSIS: Joe loves predictability. But his life is about to become a surprising adventure.
Joe-Nathan likes the two parts of his name separate, just like his dinner and dessert. Mean Charlie at work sometimes calls him Joe-Nuthin. But Joe is far from nothing. Joe is a good friend, he’s good at his job, good at making things and good at following the rules, and he’s learning how to do lots of things by himself.
Joe’s mother knows there are a million things in life he isn’t prepared for. While she helps guide him every day, she’s also writing notebooks full of advice about the things she hasn’t told Joe yet, things he might forget and answers to questions he hasn’t yet asked.
Following her wisdom – applying it in his own unique way – this next part of Joe’s life is more of a surprise than he expects. Because he’s about to learn that remarkable things can happen when you leave your comfort zone, and that you can do even the hardest things with a little help from your friends.
Irresistable: How Cuteness Wired our Brains and Conquered the World by Joshua Paul Dale
Published November 9th by Profile Books Evolutionary Psychology, History of Japan
SYNOPSIS: Why are some things cute, and others not? What happens to our brains when we see something cute? And how did cuteness go global, from Hello Kitty to Disney characters?
Cuteness is an area where culture and biology get tangled up. Seeing a cute animal triggers some of the most powerful psychological instincts we have – the ones that elicit our care and protection – but there is a deeper story behind the broad appeal of Japanese cats and saccharine greetings cards.
Joshua Paul Dale, a pioneer in the burgeoning field of cuteness studies, explains how the cute aesthetic spread around the globe, from pop brands to Lolita fashion, kids’ cartoons and the unstoppable rise of Hello Kitty. Irresistible delves into the surprisingly ancient origins of Japan’s kawaii culture, and uncovers the cross-cultural pollination of the globalised world. If adorable things really do rewire our brains, it can help answer some of the biggest questions we have about our evolutionary history and the mysterious origins of animal domestication.
This is the fascinating cultural history of cuteness, and a revealing look at how our most powerful psychological impulses have remade global style and culture.
What The River Knows by Isabel Ibanez (Secrets of the Nile Duology)
Published November 14th by Hodderscape Historical Fantasy, Fantasy Fiction, Romantic Fantasy, Paranormal Romance
SYNOPSIS: A divine exploration. A deadly secret. A desire she can’t escape.
‘Expertly plotted, explosively adventurous, and burning with romance’ STEPHANIE GARBER
The Mummy meets Death on the Nile in this lush, immersive historical fantasy set in 19th century Egypt, filled with adventure, a rivals-to-lovers romance, and a dangerous race.
Bolivian-Argentinian Inez Olivera belongs to the glittering upper society of nineteenth century Buenos Aires, and like the rest of the world, the town is steeped in old world magic that’s been largely left behind or forgotten. Inez has everything a girl might want, except for the one thing she yearns for the most: her globetrotting parents – who frequently leave her behind when they venture off on their exploring adventures.
When she receives word of their tragic deaths, Inez inherits their massive fortune and a mysterious guardian, an archaeologist in partnership with his Egyptian brother-in-law. Yearning for answers, Inez sails to Cairo, bringing her sketch pads and an ancient golden ring her father sent to her for safekeeping before he died. But upon her arrival, the old world magic tethered to the ring pulls her down a path where she soon discovers there’s more to her parent’s disappearance than what her guardian led her to believe.
With her guardian’s infuriatingly handsome assistant thwarting her at every turn, Inez must rely on ancient magic to uncover the truth about her parent’s disappearance-or risk becoming a pawn in a larger game that will kill her.
Published November 14th by Sphere Historical Fiction, Religious Fiction, Jewish Fiction
SYNOPSIS: A moving new novel from the beloved author of Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven
When the Nazis invade Salonika, Greece, eleven-year-old Nico Crispi is offered a chance to save his family. He is instructed to convince his fellow Jewish residents to board trains heading towards the east, where they are promised jobs and safety. He dutifully goes to the station platform every day and reassures the passengers that the journey is safe. Only after it is too late does Nico discover that the people he loved would never return.
In The Little Liar, Nico’s story is interweaved with other individuals impacted by the occupation: his brother Sebastian, their schoolmate Fanni and the Nazi officer who radically changed their lives. As the decades pass, the consequences of what they endured come to light.
Exploring honesty, survival, revenge and devotion, The Little Liar is a timeless story about the harm we inflict with our deceits, and the power of love to redeem us.
Published November 23rd by Orenda Thriller, Suspense, Historical Mystery, Noir Fiction, Hardboiled, Horror Fiction
SYNOPSIS: An art expert joins a detective to investigate a horrific murder on a Swedish island, leading them to a mystery rooted in Viking rites and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter. The Queen of French Noir returns with a chilling, utterly captivating historical thriller, based on a true story.
Art expert Emma Lindahl is anxious when she’s asked to appraise the antiques and artefacts in the infamous manor house of one of Sweden’s wealthiest families, on the island of Storholmen, where a young woman was murdered nine years earlier, her killer never found.
Emma must work alone, and with the Gussman family apparently avoiding her, she sees virtually no one in the house. Do they have something to hide?
As she goes about her painstaking work and one shocking discovery yields clues that lead to another, Emma becomes determined to uncover the secrets of the house and its occupants.
When the lifeless body of another young woman is found in the icy waters surrounding the island, Detective Karl Rosén arrives to investigate, and memories of his failure to solve the first case come rushing back. Could this young woman’s tragic death somehow hold the key to the first?
Battling her own demons, Emma joins forces with Karl to embark upon a chilling investigation, plunging them into horrifying secrets from the past – Viking rites and tainted love – and Scandinavia’s deepest, darkest winter…
Published November 23rd by Hodder & Stoughton Psychological Thriller
SYNOPSIS: YOU WANT TO BE JUST LIKE HER. BUT DO YOU REALLY KNOW HER?
Rani has always felt like an outsider. First growing up among her white, wealthy peers. And now next to her successful, child-free friends. From the tiny rented flat she lives in with her family, she imagines being the kind of woman who owns the beautiful house across the street.
Then Natalie moves in. With her expensive clothes, adoring husband and high-powered job, she has everything Rani wants, and Rani can’t help but be drawn to her new neighbour.
But as the two women strike up a friendship and begin open up, Rani wonders – is Natalie’s perfect-seeming life too good to be true?
Published November 23rd by Raven Books Dark Comedy, Satire, Thriller, Mystery
SYNOPSIS: ‘It’s a clever book … [Im Seong-sun] offers readers his razor-sharp observations on consumerism, capitalism and what it means to feel anonymous’ M.W. Craven _______________ Sometimes work can be murder…
The Consultant is very good at his job. He creates simple, elegant, effective solutions for. restructuring. Nothing obvious or messy. Certainly nothing anyone would ever suspect as murder.
The ‘natural deaths’ he plans have always gone well: a medicine replaced here, a mechanism jammed there. His performance reviews are excellent. And it’s not as though he knows these people.
Until his next ‘customer’ turns out to be someone he not only knows but cares about, and for the first time, he begins to question the role he plays in the vast, anonymous Company. And as he slowly begins to understand the real scope of their work, he realises just how easy it would be for the Company to arrange one more perfect murder…
But how far will he go to escape The Company? And how far will they go to stop him?
The electrifying first novel from award-winning Korean thriller-writer Im Seong-Sun – now in English for the first time – combines the tension of the best crime fiction with searing social criticism to present a searing take-down of global corporate life.
Published November 23rd by One More Chapter Mystery, Suspense, Psychlogical Thriller, Crime Fiction, Coming-of-Age Story
SYNOPSIS: ‘The Talented Mr Ripley meets The White Lotus. Unpredictable, whip smart, utterly absorbing. I ADORED that ending!’ John Marrs ‘One of the most unsettling novels of recent years. It’s also one of the most compelling’ John Boyne
***
Everyone is capable of murder. Are you?
It started with an invitation to dinner. An evening of good food and good company at a luxury villa. But as the night progresses, the party takes a dark turn.
The host makes you an offer, a party favour he calls it: another guest has committed a heinous crime, you can end their life, stop their terror. He tells you there will be no consequences; do you believe him?
Your decision will change your life. Choose carefully.
***
You’ve read The Talented Mr Ripley, you’ve devoured American Psycho, get ready for your next dark obsession! The unrelenting new thriller from Sunday Times bestseller B P Walter is back and available to pre-order now!
Unnatural Death by Patricia Cornwell (A Kay Scarpetta Novel)
Published November 23rd by Sphere Mystery, Thriller, Pscyhological Thriller, Crime Fiction, Medical Thriller, Crime Series
SYNOPSIS: THE BREATHTAKING NEW KAY SCARPETTA THRILLER FROM THE 120-MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER
Two mauled bodies in the woods. Two top secret autopsies. The most chilling case of Scarpetta’s career . . .
In this thrilling new instalment of the #1 bestselling series, chief medical examiner Dr Kay Scarpetta finds herself in a Northern Virginia wilderness examining the remains of two campers wanted by federal law enforcement.
The victims have been savaged beyond recognition, and other evidence is terrifying and baffling, including a larger-than-life footprint.
After one of the most frightening body retrievals of her career, Scarpetta must discover who would commit murders this brutal, and why.
‘A chilling, thrilling, macabre masterpiece. Unnatural Death is Patricia Cornwell at her mesmerising finest. The best just got better’ CHRIS WHITAKER, author of WE BEGIN AT THE END
Published November 23rd by Harper Via Contemporary Fiction, Domestic Fiction
SYNOPSIS: From one of Australia’s most celebrated authors comes a powerful mother-daughter drama that explores the fault lines between love and control, pairing the claustrophobic intensity of Room and My Year of Rest and Relaxation with the youthful angst of Freshwater.
Sixteen and pregnant, Karuna finds herself trapped in her mother’s Melbourne public housing apartment for one hundred days awaiting the birth of her child—and her mother’s next move in a shocking power struggle over who will raise the baby. To fill the seemingly endless hours of her imprisonment, she writes to her unborn child, determined that her baby will know the truth, no matter what happens.
Karuna’s pregnancy is the result of a heady act of independence, lust, and defiance that happened in a moment of freedom from her overprotective mother. In reaction to her daughter’s recklessness, Karuna’s mother locks her inside their apartment to her to make sure she can’t get into any more trouble. While postpartum confinement is a tradition in many cultures, is Karuna’s an act of love—or emotional abuse? As the birth approaches, Karuna and her mother repeatedly trip the fault lines between love and control. And somehow, despite their battles, Karuna recognizes her mother’s love in even the strangest of behaviors.
At times tense and unnerving, One Hundred Days illuminates the pain, confusion, and thrill of growing up and the overwhelming desire of adults to protect the children they
Published November 28th by Verve Books Historical Mystery, Medical Thriller, Mystery, Historical Thriller
SYNOPSIS: A disquieting contemporary mystery with a historical twist and fast-paced plot, from the author of the Jen Shaw series.
Six decades. Seven people. One unspeakable secret.
1957. A catastrophe occurs at the pharmaceutical lab in Coventry where sixteen-year-old Wilf is working for the summer. A catastrophe that needs to be covered up at all costs.2017. Phiney is shocked by the death of her grandfather, Wilf, who has jumped from a railway bridge at a Coventry station. Journalist Mat Torrington is the only witness.
Left in utter disbelief, with a swarm of unanswered questions, Phiney, Mat and Wilf’s wife, Dora, begin their own enquiries into Wilf’s death. It is soon clear that these two events, sixty years apart, are connected – and that Wilf is not the only casualty.
But what is the link? And can they find out before any more lives are lost?
Published November 30th by Bantam Press Fantasy Fiction, Fairy Tale
SYNOPSIS: Light and dark – this is the destiny placed upon Natasha and Clara, the birthright bestowed on them by their godfather, the mysterious sorcerer Drosselmeyer. Clara, the favourite, grows into beauty and ease, while Natasha is cursed to live in her sister’s shadow. But one fateful Christmas Eve, Natasha gets her chance at revenge. For Drosselmeyer has returned and brought with him the Nutcracker, an enchanted present which offers entry to a deceptively beautiful world: the Kingdom of Sweets.
In this land of snow and sugar, Natasha is presented with a power far greater than Drosselmeyer: the Sugar Plum Fairy, who is also a giver of gifts . . . and a maker of dread-filled bargains. As Natasha uncovers the dark destiny laid before her birth, she must reckon with powers both earthly and magical . . . and decide to which world she truly belongs.
Published November 30th by Gollancz Romantic Fantasy, Contemporary Romance, Paranormal Fiction, Romance Novel
SYNOPSIS: Welcome back to Glimmer Falls!
Calladia Cunnington knows she’s rough around the edges and her hot temper can get the best of her. So when she stops a demon attack one night, she’s horrified to realize the man she saved is none other than the cold-hearted Astaroth.
Astaroth is a legendary member of the demon high council – or at least he was. Suffering from amnesia after being stripped of his immortality and banished to the mortal plane, Astaroth doesn’t know why a demon named Moloch is after him, nor why the angry, hot-in-a-terrifying-way witch hates him so much.
Calladia grudgingly agrees to help Astaroth find the witch who might be able to restore his memory, vowing that once Astaroth is cured, she’ll kick his ass. But the more time she spends with the snarky yet utterly charming demon, the more she realizes she likes this new, improved Astaroth… and maybe she doesn’t want him to recover his memories after all.
Published November 30th by Simon & Schuster UK Literary Fiction, Lesbian Literature
SYNOPSIS: A hypnotic, sexy, and incisive debut adult novel following one woman’s affair with her daughter’s best friend that tests the limits of love and ambition from #1 New York Times bestselling author of Red Riding Hood.
It’s opening night, but Alice’s performance in the local Bay Area production of The Winter’s Tale is far from glamorous. She doesn’t have dreams of stardom, but the basement theater in a wildfire-choked town isn’t exactly what she envisioned for her career back home in Los Angeles. To make matters worse, her best friend Sadie is not even coming.
Pragmatic, serious Sadie and flighty, creative Alice have been best friends since high school–really one another’s only friends–but now that they are through with college (which they attended together) and living on opposite ends of California, Alice would at least expect her friend’s support. Sadie, determined not to cancel her plans with her boyfriend, ends up enlisting the help of her mother, Celine.
A professor of women’s and gender studies at UC Berkeley, Celine’s landmark treatise on sex and identity made her notorious, but she’s struggling to write her new book in a post-second-wave feminist world. So, when Sadie begs her to attend Alice’s play, she relents, if only to escape writer’s block. But in a turn of perplexing events, Celine becomes entranced by Alice’s performance and realizes that her daughter’s once lanky, slightly annoying best friend is now an irresistible young woman.
Set over the course of decades–from Alice and Sadie’s early friendship days and Celine’s decision to leave her husband to the radical movements of 1990s Berkeley and navigating contemporary Hollywood–Alice and Celine’s affair will test the limits of their love for Sadie and their own beliefs of power, agency, and feminism. Witty and relatable, sexy and surprising, Sarah Blakley-Cartwright’s debut adult novel is a mesmerizing portrait of the inner lives of three very different women.
Published August 3rd, 2023 by Hodder & Stoughton Romance Novel, Contemporary Romance, Humorous Fiction
Today I’m delighted to be resharing my review of London, with Love for the paperback publication blog tour. Thank you to Alara at Hodder & Stoughton for the invitation to take part and the gifted copy of the book.
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SYNOPSIS:
‘A VERY special book. GORGEOUS, real believable and BEAUTIFUL’ – Marian Keyes London. Nine million people. Two hundred and seventy tube stations. Every day, thousands of chance encounters, first dates, goodbyes and happy ever afters.
And for twenty years it’s been where one man and one woman can never get their timing right.
Jennifer and Nick meet as teenagers and over the next two decades, they fall in and out of love with each other. Sometimes they start kissing. Sometimes they’re just friends. Sometimes they stop speaking, but they always find their way back to each other.
But after all this time, are they destined to be together or have they finally reached the end of the line?
********
MY REVIEW:
After meeting at college, Jen and Nick strike up a close friendship that sizzles with an undercurrent of love and lust. Over the next twenty years the pair dip in and out of each other’s lives, fall in and out of love and try to make it work with other people. But when two people are meant to be something will just keep pulling them back together. Can they finally get the timing right or will they reach the end of everything they’ve shared?
London, with Love is a story of love, friendship, joy, heartbreak, triumph and tragedy. I loved the concept of following a couple that first fall for eachother in the all-important yet crazy teenage years but can never quite make it happen. It’s the fantasy of ‘the one who got away’ or the person who you always wonder ‘what if’ about that great romance stories are made of yet the reality never quite lives up to. I liked that Sarra Manning gave this book a dash of both fantasy and reality that she combines into one great story. There were times I was rooting for Nick and Jen to just get together already, and other times I wanted them to wake up and realise it would never work. But at every point I loved reading their story and rooting for Jen to find happiness.
But this love story isn’t just about romantic love. There is the love of writing and books woven into both Jen and Nick’s characters that this bibliophile adored, and then there is the fact that this novel is undoubtedly a love letter to the city of London. While it isn’t a place I’ve been many times or am that familiar with, I did find myself getting caught up in Jen’s love for her home city and how intricately it is woven into every facet of her life. The author makes London feel like a character in its own right and I could picture every place so clearly thanks to her evocative descriptions. Jen’s passion for London leaps from the pages and made even this staunch northerner feel a little bit of love for our capital.
But the thing I enjoyed most about this book is the nostalgia. I’m just under a decade younger than Jen and Nick, so while I was still in primary school when the book opened in 1986, I was of a similar age to them at many points in their story and enjoyed reliving the nineties and early noughties through them. The author weaves many memorable historical moments into the story such as Y2K that pulled me in and helped me feel even more connected to the story. I couldn’t help but reminisce about where I was, how I felt and what I was doing in life flashed before my eyes as I read.
So if you enjoy readable romances filled with compelling characters, engaging plotlines, familiar tropes and heaps of nostalgia, then this is the book for you.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮✰
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MEET THE AUTHOR:
Sarra Manning has been a voracious reader for over forty years and a prolific author and journalist for twenty five.
Her novels, which have been translated into fifteen different languages include Unsticky, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, After The Last Dance, The Rise And Fall Of Becky Sharp and her latest, Rescue Me, which publishes in 2021. Sarra has also written over fifteen YA novels, and four light-hearted romantic comedies under a pseudonym.
She started her writing career on Melody Maker and Just Seventeen, has been editor of ElleGirl and What To Wear and has also contributed to The Guardian, ELLE, Grazia, Stylist, Fabulous, Stella, You Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and is currently the Literary Editor of Red magazine.
Sarra has also been a Costa Book Awards judge and has been nominated for various writing awards herself.
She lives in London surrounded by piles and piles of books.
As much as I enjoy darker reads, there’s nothing better than a light-hearted and uplifting story. And if there’s some romance or a pensioner in the pages, even better! Here are the light-hearted books out this year I’m most anticipating.
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Becoming Ted by Matt Cain
SYNOPSIS: A charming, joyful and surprising story about love, friendship and learning to be true to yourself, Becoming Ted will steal your heart.
Ted Ainsworth has always worked at his family’s ice-cream business in the quiet Lancashire town of St Luke’s-on-Sea.
But the truth is, he’s never wanted to work for the family firm – he doesn’t even like ice-cream, though he’s never told his parents that. When Ted’s husband suddenly leaves him, the bottom falls out of his world.
But what if this could be an opportunity to put what he wants first? This could be the chance to finally follow his secret dream: something Ted has never told anyone …
Published January 19th by Headline Pre-order here*
The House That Made Us by Alice Cavanagh
SYNOPSIS: One Day meets Up: The House That Made Us is a love story – and a life story – told through a series of photographs and inspired by a true story
When Mac and Marie marry and find a home of their own, Mac takes a snap of them outside their newbuild bungalow, the garden bare and the paint on the front door still wet. It becomes a tradition, this snap, and slowly the photographs build into an album of a fifty-year relationship.
Every year they take a photo and though things change around them – the garden matures, the fashions change, they grow older – the one constant is their love. Every year, come rain, come shine, from the Seventies through the decades, every photo tells the story of their love. But life never travels the path you expect it to, though they know that a life with love is a life lived to the full.
Now, in the present day, the photo album belongs to someone who doesn’t know the people in its pages. As they watch the lives from the past unfold, will the truth of their love story be told…?
A heart-breaking story about life and love for readers who love Holly Miller, Jojo Moyes and Hazel Prior.
Published January 19th by Simon & Schuster UK Pre-order here*
Looking Out For Love by Sophia Money-Coutts
SYNOPSIS: … But is she searching in the right places?
Stella Shakespeare isn’t having a good day, or month come to think of it. She’s been unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend,cut off from the bank of dad and at thirty-two years old, she doesn’t know what she’s doing with her life.
What Stella really wants is to find love. She wants all-consuming, can’t-think-about-anything-else, can’t-even-manage-to-eat kind of love. What she found beside her in bed that morning wasn’t love. But when a tall, handsome man in a well-fitting suit walks into a Notting Hill pub, she thinks she’s finally found The One.
Everything seems to be falling into place now Stella has met the man of her dreams and has an actual job working with a private investigator nicknamed ‘The Affair Hunter’. Although sadly, life is never that straightforward and Stella starts to question whether she’s been looking for love in the wrong places all along…
SYNOPSIS: A story of mix-ups, mess-ups and making the most of second chances, this is the new novel from international sensation Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You and The Giver of Stars
Who are you when you are forced to walk in someone else’s shoes?
Meet Sam . . . She’s not got much, but she’s grateful for what she has: a job she’s just about clinging on to and a family who depend on her for everything. She knows she’s one bad day away from losing it all – and just hopes today isn’t it . . .
Meet Nisha . . . She’s got everything she always dreamed of – and more: a phenomenally rich husband; an international lifestyle; and . . . she’s just been locked out of all of it after her husband initiates divorce proceedings . . .
Sam and Nisha should never have crossed paths. But after a bag mix-up at the gym, their lives become intertwined – even as they spiral out of control.
Each blames the other as they feel increasingly invisible, forgotten, lost – and desperately alone.
But they’re not.
No woman is an island. Look around. Family. Friends. Strangers. Even the woman you believe just ruined your life might turn out to be your best friend. Because together you can do anything – like take back what is yours . . .
Published Februrary 2nd by Michael Joseph Pre-order here*
Do I Know You? by Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka
SYNOPSIS: After five years’ marriage they’re about to have their first date . . .
Eliza and Graham’s marriage is quietly failing. With their five-year anniversary approaching, neither of them are thrilled about the weeklong getaway they’ve been gifted. The luxury retreat prides itself on being a destination for those in love and those looking to find it – but for Eliza and Graham it’s the last place they want to be.
After a well-meaning guest mistakes Eliza and Graham as being single and introduces them at the hotel bar, they don’t correct him. Suddenly, they’re pretending to be perfect strangers and it’s unexpectedly fun. Eliza and Graham find themselves flirting like it’s their first date.
Everyone at the retreat can see the electric chemistry between Eliza and Graham’s alter egos. But as their game continutes they realize this performance could be the very thing that saves their marriage . . .
Published February 2nd by Pan Macmillan Pre-order here*
The Vintage Shop of Second Chances by Libby Page
SYNOPSIS: Among the cobbled streets of the Somerset town of Frome, Lou is embarking on the start of something new. After the death of her beloved mother, she takes a deep breath into the unknown and is opening her own vintage clothes shop.
In upstate New York, Donna has just found out some news about her family which has called into question her whole upbringing. The only clue she has to unlock her past is a picture of a yellow dress, and the fact it is currently on display in a shop in England.
For Maggy, she is facing life as a 70-something divorcee and while she got the house, she’s not sure what to fill it with now her family have moved out. The new vintage shop in town sparks memories of her past and reignites a passion she’s been missing…
Together, can these three women find the answers they are searching for and unlock a second chance at a new life?
SYNOPSIS: From the author of modern classic The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets comes a feel-good novel about hope, love and the powerful bond between sisters.
It’s 1990. The Happy Mondays are in the charts, a 15-year-old called Kate Moss is on the cover of the Face magazine, and Julia Roberts wears thigh-boots for the poster for a new movie called Pretty Woman.
February Kingdom is nineteen years old when she is knocked sideways by family tragedy. Then one evening in May she finds an escaped canary in her kitchen and it sparks a glimmer of hope in her. With the help of the bird called Yellow, Feb starts to feel her way out of her own private darkness, just as her aunt embarks on a passionate and all-consuming affair with a married American drama teacher.
THIS COULD BE EVERYTHING is a coming-of-age story with its roots under the pavements of a pre-Richard Curtis-era Notting Hill that has all but vanished. It’s about what happens when you start looking after something more important than you, and the hope a yellow bird can bring…
Published February 16th by Simon & Schuster UK Pre-order here*
Not That Kind of Ever After by Luci Adams
SYNOPSIS: One damsel + one wolf + many, many, many frogs = DISTRESS
Gloriously fun, romantic and feel-good, discover a 21st century London fairytale with an unforgettable twist . . .
Bella Marble is a true, hopeless, despairing romantic. Above all things, even above her wish to be a writer, she wants love.
But when her beautiful best friend moves out of their flat share to live with the most boring ogre in history, and her perfectly paired parents tell her their own love story is coming to an end, Bella’s illusions of a happily ever after start to shatter. If they can’t find ‘the one’, what chance does she have?
Disenchanted, Bella throws herself into looking for love in all the wrong places. London may be fresh out of knights in shining Armani, but it’s got a surplus of frogs – and as Bella learns, kissing frogs can be extremely fun.
But Bella is forgetting the essential rule of all fairytales.
There is nothing more powerful than a first kiss . . .
Published Feburary 16th by Little Brown Book Group Pre-order here*
One Moment by Becky Hunter
SYNOPSIS: One moment in time can change everything…
The day Scarlett dies should have been one of the most important of her life. It doesn’t feel fair that she’ll never have the chance to fulfil her dreams. And now, she’s still … here – wherever here is – watching the ripple effect of her death on the lives of those she loved the most.
Evie cannot contemplate her life without Scarlett, and she certainly cannot forgive Nate, the man she blames for her best friend’s death. But Nate keeps popping up when she least expects him to, catapulting Evie’s life in directions she’d never let herself imagine possible. Ways, perhaps, even those closest to her had long since given up on.
If you could go back, knowing everything that happens after, everything that happens because of that one moment in time, would you change the course of history or would you do it all again?
SYNOPSIS: A novel of terrible first impressions, hilarious second chances and the joy in finding the perfect match
Dr Briana Ortiz’s life is seriously flatlining. Her divorce is just about finalised, her brother’s running out of time to find a kidney donor, and that promotion she wants…? Oh, that’s probably going to the new man-doctor who’s already registering eighty-friggin’-seven on Briana’s ‘pain in my ass’ scale.
But just when all systems are set to hate, Dr Jacob Maddox completely flips the game . . . by sending Briana a letter. It’s a really good letter. Like the kind that proves that Jacob isn’t actually Satan. Worse, he might be this fantastically funny and subversively likeable guy who’s terrible at first impressions. Because suddenly he and Bri are exchanging letters, sharing lunch dates in her ‘sob closet’ and discussing the merits of freakishly tiny horses.
When Jacob turns out to be the perfect donor for her brother, Bri starts to realise that this quietly sexy new doctor might just be her perfect match, too.
SYNOPSIS: Don’t miss the next heartwarming, uplifting and painfully relatable book from Amy Lavelle…
‘If you loved Fleabag, you’ll love this’ Laura Kemp on Definitely Fine
Four sisters. One house. It’s about to get messy…
Poppy, Saffron, Rosemary and Sorrell might be sisters, but they could not be more different…
Oldest Poppy has hit all the milestones before turning thirty, but constantly being in control is starting to feel a bit suffocating; peacemaker Saffron will do anything to keep her sisters together even at her own expense; Rosemary has crafted a perfect façade, but cracks in her engagement are beginning to surface; youngest Sorrell is pregnant after a one-night stand, and is determined to do it all on her own for once – without any help from her sisters!
But when they inherit their family home, the four must make the decision to keep or sell the house – and they’re about to discover that no one gets under your skin quite like family…
Can they ever put their differences aside and find a way to move forward together?
Heartwarming, uplifting and hilarious, Home Sweet Home is a novel about sisters, misunderstandings and growing up. Perfect for fans of Emma Gannon, Olivia Beirne and Helly Acton.
Years ago, Juliet left a little piece of her heart in Paris – and now, separated from her husband and with her children flying the nest, it’s time to get it back!
So she puts on her best red lipstick, books a cosy attic apartment near Notre-Dame and takes the next train out of London.
Arriving at the Gare du Nord, the memories come flooding back: bustling street cafés, cheap wine in candlelit bars and a handsome boy with glittering eyes.
But Juliet has also been keeping a secret for over two decades – and she begins to realise it’s impossible to move forwards without first looking back.
Something tells her that the next thirty days might just change everything…
SYNOPSIS: Two exes. One pact. Could this holiday change everything?
Harriet and Wyn are the perfect couple – they go together like bread and butter, gin and tonic, Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds.
Every year for the past decade, they have run away from their lives to drink far too much wine and soak up the sea air with their favourite people in the world.
Except this year, they are lying through their teeth. Harriet and Wyn broke up six months ago. And they still haven’t told anyone.
But this is the last time they’ll all be together here. The cottage is for sale, and since they can’t bear to break their best friends’ hearts, they’ll fake it for one more week.
But how can you pretend to be in love – and get away with it – in front of the people who know you best?
Brimming with characters you can’t help but fall for and off-the-charts chemistry, HAPPY PLACE is Emily Henry doing what she does best!
SYNOPSIS: Dear Lost for Words, We are trying to stay at home . . . I am enclosing a cheque and I hope that you will use it to send us some books. Please choose books that we might think are wonderful.
Rosemary
Loveday Cardew’s beloved Lost for Words bookshop, along with the rest of York, has fallen quiet. At the very time when people most need books to widen their horizons, or escape from their fears, or enhance their lives, the doors are closed. Then the first letter comes.
Rosemary and George have been married for fifty years. Now their time is running out. They have decided to set out on their last journey together, without ever leaving the bench at the bottom of their garden in Whitby. All they need is someone who shares their love of books.
Suddenly it’s clear to Loveday that she and her team can do something useful in a crisis. They can recommend books to help with the situations their customers find themselves in: fear, boredom, loneliness, the desire for laughter and escape.
And so it begins.
Published April 27th by Headline Review Pre-order here*
Only Love Can Hurt Like This by Paige Toon
SYNOPSIS: Neither of them expected to fall in love. But sometimes life has other plans.
When Wren realises her fiancé is in love with someone else, she thinks her heart will never recover.
On the other side of the world, Anders lost his wife four years ago and is still struggling to move on.
Wren hopes that spending the summer with her dad and step-family on their farm in Indiana will help her to heal. There, amid the cornfields and fireflies, she and Anders cross paths and their worlds are turned upside-down again.
But Wren doesn’t know that Anders is harbouring a secret, and if he acts on any feelings he has for Wren it will have serious fall-out for everyone.
Walking away would hurt Wren more than she can imagine. But, knowing the truth, how can she possibly stay?
Published April 27th by Penguin UK Pre-order here*
Preloved by Lauren Bravo
SYNOPSIS: A love story about things…
Gwen’s life has stalled. She’s in her mid-thirties, perpetually single, her friends are busy procreating in the country and conversations with her parents seem to revolve entirely around herbaceous borders and the council’s wheelie-bin timetable. Above all she’s lonely. But then, isn’t everyone?
When Gwen’s made redundant from a job she drifted into a decade ago and never left, she realises it’s time to make a change. Over what might be the best – and most solitary – meal she’s ever eaten, Gwen vows to find something meaningful to do with her life, reconnect with her family and friends – and finally book herself a dentist appointment.
Her search for meaning soon leads her to volunteer in a local charity shop where she both literally and metaphorically unloads her emotional baggage. With the help of the weird and wonderful people she meets in the shop and the donated items bursting with untold stories that pass through its doors, Gwen must finally address the events and choices that led her to this point and find a way to move forward with bravery, humanity and more regular dental care.
Brimming with life, love and the stories bound up in even the most everyday items, Preloved is a tale about friendship, loss, being true to oneself no matter the expectations – and the enduring power and joy of charity shops.
Published April 27th by Simon & Schuster Pre-order here*
The Cassandra Complex by Holly Smale
SYNOPSIS: Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit.
She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn’t (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order. Until now.
She’s just been dumped. She’s just been fired. Her local café has run out of banana muffins.
Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past.
Now, Cassie should be able to find a way to fix the life she accidentally obliterated. And with time on her side, how hard can it be…?
SYNOPSIS: Find out why readers LOVE Christina Lauren . . .
A romance novelist and a documentary filmmaker set out to craft the ultimate movie romance – but only if they can keep their own feelings for each other under control in this electrifying love story from the author of The Unhoneymooners.
SYNOPSIS: 19-year-old Phoebe and her courier father Al have recently moved to Devon, to a small cottage with a river at the end of the garden.
Struggling with her health, Phoebe doesn’t go out much these days. Instead, she spends her time playing detective – trying to deduce from her father’s deliveries what kinds of lives her neighbours lead.
When Phoebe finds an abandoned baby otter by the river, it’s just the push she needs to finally step into her new community. Taking the otter to the local sanctuary, she feels a joy that she has not felt in a very long time. But she soon starts to suspect that something is amiss at the local sanctuary – and she will need to put her detective skills to good use if she wants to save the otters.
A gorgeous feel-good novel about a young woman finding the courage to step back into the world, with the help of new friends and some very cute otters.
SYNOPSIS: Esther is out with her two friends, bemoaning her lack of relationship, when she finds a magazine from the noughties. Seeking comfort – and a laugh – she turns to the dating advice only to find an article that feels a little too close to home. According to the journalist, there are seven people a woman will date before finding the one:
The First Love, The Work Mistake, The Friend with Benefits, The Overlap, The Missed Chance, The Bastard and The Serious One.
Her friends laugh but Esther realises each of her exes fits these roles perfectly. Deciding that she’s mistaken her true love in the reject pile she decides to contact each of her exes to find out which is the one that got away…
Published May 25th by Simon & Schuster UK Pre-order here*
Lovestruck by Laura Jane Williams
SYNOPSIS: This isn’t one love story. It’s two.
Becca Calloway is calling it: she’s ready for Mr Right, and she’s ready now.
She even goes as far as to hold a manifestation ceremony for him – and when she receives a text from her ex five minutes later, she knows it’s a sign.
The problem is, she doesn’t know which way it’s pointing…
Should Becca reply and reignite things with her old flame Mike? Or delete and block, moving forward with the new man in her life?
Becca has one choice, with two ways this could go. And in Lovestruck, you’re about to see them both…
SYNOPSIS: From the author of tiktok sensations and global bestsellers The Love Hypothesis and Love on the Brain
Rival physicists collide in a vortex of academic feuds and fake dating shenanigans in this delightfully STEMinist romcom.
The many lives of theoretical physicist Elsie Hannaway have finally caught up with her. By day, she’s an adjunct professor, toiling away at grading labs and teaching thermodynamics in the hopes of landing tenure. By other day, Elsie makes up for her non-existent paycheck by offering her services as a fake girlfriend, tapping into her expertly honed people-pleasing skills to embody whichever version of herself the client needs.
Honestly, it’s a pretty sweet gig – until her carefully constructed Elsie-verse comes crashing down. Because Jack Smith, the annoyingly attractive and arrogant older brother of her favourite client, turns out to be the cold-hearted experimental physicist who ruined her mentor’s career and undermined the reputation of theorists everywhere. And he’s the same Jack Smith who rules over the physics department at MIT, standing right between Elsie and her dream job.
Elsie is prepared for an all-out war of scholarly sabotage but… those long, penetrating looks? Not having to be anything other than her true self when she’s with him? Will falling into an experimentalist’s orbit finally tempt her to put her most guarded theories on love into practice?
SYNOPSIS: As the bombs began to fall, the book club kept their hopes alive…
The most emotional, uplifting and captivating story of wartime London and the extraordinary power of books to shine a light and draw people together in the darkest of days, inspired by true events.
London, 1938. Bookseller Gertie Bingham is facing difficult times, having just lost her beloved husband, Harry, and with a lingering sadness at never having been able to have a child of her own. Struggling to face running the bookshop she and Harry opened together, Gertie is preparing to sell up and move away when she is asked if she would be willing to take in a young Jewish refugee from Germany. Gertie is unsure and when sullen teenager Hedy Fischer arrives, Gertie fears she has nothing left to give the troubled girl.
But when the German bombers come and the lights go out over London, Gertie and Hedy realise that joining forces will make them stronger, and that books have the power to bring young and old together and unite a community in need in its darkest hour…
Published July 11th by Headline Review Pre-order here*
The Art of Belonging by Eleanor Ray
SYNOPSIS: Grace’s life is perfectly fine, thank you very much. A widow of seventy-two, she lives quietly, and although hearing a little more from her daughter and granddaughter would be nice, she has her health, her friends, her octogenarian yoga (however reluctantly attended) and most of all her weekly club where she creates exquisite, miniature train sets.
However, when her estranged daughter rings her in shock, about to lose her home, Grace invites Amelia and her daughter Charlotte to live with her. With them, they bring all the messy, complicated feelings from the past, and the more Grace gets to know her granddaughter Charlotte, the more she adores her. As Charlotte enlists her help to solve a mystery at school, the small family begin to find each other again. Grace is about to discover that although opening her heart again may be painful, in the end it’s the only thing that makes life worth living . .
SYNOPSIS: When a relationship expert’s own marriage falls apart, she invites four strangers to Italy for a vacation of healing and second chances in this uplifting new novel from the author of The Messy Lives of Book People.
Ginny Splinter, acclaimed radio host and advice expert, prides herself on knowing what’s best for others. So she’s sure her husband, Adrian, will love the special trip to Italy she’s planned for their thirtieth wedding anniversary. But when Ginny presents the gift to Adrian, he surprises her with his own very different plan—a divorce.
Beside herself with heartache, Ginny impulsively invites four heartbroken listeners to join her in Italy instead while live on air. From hiking the hills of Bologna to riding a gondola in Venice to sharing stories around the dining table of the little Italian hotel, Ginny and her newfound company embark on a vacation of healing.
However, when Adrian starts to rethink their relationship, Ginny must decide whether to commit to her marriage or start afresh, alone. And an unexpected stranger may hold the key to a very different future… Sunny, tender and brimming with charm, The Little Italian Hotel explores marriage, identity and reclaiming the present moment—even if it means leaving the past behind.
SYNOPSIS: Bridesmaids meets Emily in Paris–in London–this is a hilarious and heartfelt story of one woman who escaped to London after her moment of ridiculous revenge on an ex went viral, and the life-changing summer she discovers new love and her best self–and finally gets the sweetest revenge.
“I love-love-love Lizzy Dent.”–Emily Henry, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Book Lovers
Her past is a mess. But her present is about to get delicious.
Amy is more than the one disastrous night that ended in drunken revenge on her boss/ex-boyfriend’s canvas top Audi. The night that tanked her rising TV career and led to a hasty move to London for a fresh start. She is thirty-two years of awesomeness. At least, that’s what Amy tells herself every morning before trekking to her mediocre job making trailers at a failing British TV channel.
Two years later, she’s finally starting to believe it. But just as sparks fly between her and her handsome new downstairs neighbor and she starts to make inroads at work, the ex-boyfriend who wrecked her life is hired as her new boss and past and present are about to epically collide.
Published July 25th by Viking
The Wake-Up Call by Beth O’Leary
SYNOPSIS: ‘Beth O’Leary is that rare, one-in-a-million talent who can make you laugh, swoon, cry and ache all in the same book’ Emily Henry
Two sworn enemies. A failing hotel. One chance to save the season…
It’s the busiest season of the year, and Forest Manor Hotel is quite literally falling apart. So when Izzy and Lucas are given the same shift on the hotel’s front desk, they have no choice but to put their differences aside and see it through.
The hotel won’t stay afloat beyond Christmas without some sort of miracle. But when Izzy returns a guest’s lost wedding ring, the reward convinces management that this might be the way to fix everything. With four rings still sitting in lost property, the race is on for Izzy and Lucas to save their beloved hotel – and their jobs.
As their bitter rivalry turns into something much more complicated, Izzy and Lucas begin to wonder if there’s more at stake here than the hotel’s future. Can the two of them make it through the season with their hearts intact?
Published September 28th by Quercus Pre-order here*
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Are any of these on your TBR? Let me know in the comments below
May is shaping up to be another fabulous month for new releases in 2022. There are a plethora of exciting new releases, including many debuts, and it was a hard challenge to get this list down to the twenty-nine on this list.
Here are the books on my list of Emma’s Anticipated Treasures for May:
The Book of Night by Holly Black
Published: May 3rd Publisher: Del Rey Genre: Contemporary Fantasy, Thriller, Supernatural Fiction
SYNOPSIS: #1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black makes her stunning adult debut with Book of Night, a modern dark fantasy of shadowy thieves and secret societies.
Charlie Hall has never found a lock she couldn’t pick, a book she couldn’t steal, or a bad decision she wouldn’t make. She’s spent half her life working for gloamists, magicians who manipulate shadows to peer into locked rooms, strangle people in their beds, or worse. Gloamists guard their secrets greedily, creating an underground economy of grimoires. And to rob their fellow magicians, they need Charlie.
Now, she’s trying to distance herself from past mistakes, but going straight isn’t easy. Bartending at a dive, she’s still entirely too close to the corrupt underbelly of the Berkshires. Not to mention that her sister Posey is desperate for magic, and that her shadowless and possibly soulless boyfriend has been keeping secrets from her. When a terrible figure from her past returns, Charlie descends back into a maelstrom of murder and lies. Determined to survive, she’s up against a cast of doppelgängers, mercurial billionaires, gloamists, and the people she loves best in the world – all trying to steal a secret that will allow them control of the shadow world and more.
Published: May 3rd Publisher: Hot Key Books Genre: Fantasy Fiction, Coming-of-Age Story, Dystopian Fiction
SYNOPSIS: In a world where girls and women are taught to be quiet, the dragons inside them are about to be set free …
In this timely and timeless speculative novel, set in 1950s America, Kelly Barnhill exposes a world that wants to keep girls and women small – and examines what happens when they rise up.
Alex Green is four years old when she first sees a dragon. In her next-door neighbour’s garden, in the spot where the old lady usually sits, is a huge dragon, an astonished expression on its face before it opens its wings and soars away across the rooftops.
And Alex doesn’t see the little old lady after that. No one mentions her. It’s as if she’s never existed.
Then Alex’s mother disappears, and reappears a week later, one quiet Tuesday, with no explanation whatsoever as to where she has been. But she is a ghostly shadow of her former self, and with scars across her body – wide, deep burns, as though she had been attacked by a monster who breathed fire.
Alex, growing from young girl to fiercely independent teenager, is desperate for answers, but doesn’t get any.
Whether anyone likes it or not, the Mass Dragoning is coming. And nothing will be the same after that. Everything is about to change, forever.
And when it does, this, too, will be unmentionable…
SYNOPSIS: A family with a secret. A past about to catch up with them.
At thirty, Hanna has finally decided she’s better off without her family. They hold her responsible for the incident that ruined their lives fourteen years ago and they’ve barely spoken since.
But then, whilst browsing a true crime website, she sees her family home listed as the site of a brutal murder. Number of victims: three. Date of crime: today. When the police investigate, they find no bodies, but the house is abandoned. Hanna’s family have disappeared.
To find them, Hanna will have to confront what happened all those years ago.
And the person determined to make her pay for it . . .
SYNOPSIS: FOUR FRIENDS. ONE MURDER. A GAME THEY CAN’T ESCAPE
‘It was only a game.’
Until a boy went missing.
‘No one was meant to get hurt.’
But a body has been found.
‘Just some innocent fun.’
Except one of them is a killer.
Ready or not, here I come.
It’s time to play hide and seek again.
THE WHISPER MAN meets THE GUEST LIST in this gripping story; DI Fleet is up against some of the most powerful people in the country as he attempts to discover the truth about what happened on the day of the game…
SYNOPSIS: Isobel lives an isolated life in North London, working at a nearby library. She feels safe if she keeps to her routines and doesn’t let her thoughts stray too far into the past. But a newspaper photograph of a missing local schoolgirl and a letter from her old teacher are all it takes for her ordinary, careful armour to become overwhelmed and the trauma of what happened when she was a pupil at The Schoolhouse to return.
The Schoolhouse was different – one of the 1970s experimental schools that were a reaction to the formal methods of the past. The usual rules did not apply, and life there was a dark interplay of freedom and violence, adventure and fear. Only her teenage diary recorded what happened, but the truth is coming for her and everything she has tried to protect is put at risk.
Set between the past and the present, The Schoolhouse is a masterful and gripping novel about childhood, secrets and trust.
SYNOPSIS: London. Nine million people. Two hundred and seventy tube stations. Every day, thousands of chance encounters, first dates, goodbyes and happy ever afters.
And for twenty years it’s been where one man and one woman can never get their timing right.
Jennifer and Nick meet as teenagers and over the next two decades, they fall in and out of love with each other. Sometimes they start kissing. Sometimes they’re just friends. Sometimes they stop speaking, but they always find their way back to each other.
But after all this time, are they destined to be together or have they finally reached the end of the line?
The House with the Golden Door by Elodie Harper (The Wolf Den Trilogy Book 2)
Published: May 12th Publisher: Apollo Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Romance Novel
SYNOPSIS: ‘Beautiful, moving, captivating… A brilliant sequel to The Wolf Den‘ Jennifer Saint
Freed from Pompeii’s brothel. Owned as a courtesan. Determined to have revenge. Her name is Amara. What will she risk for power?
Amara has escaped her life as a slave in Pompeii’s most notorious brothel. She now has a house, fine clothes, servants – but all of these are gifts from her patron, hers for as long as she keeps her place in his affections.
As she adjusts to this new life, Amara is still haunted by her past. At night she dreams of the wolf den, and the women she left behind. By day, she is pursued by her former slavemaster. In order to be truly free, she will need to be as ruthless as he is.
Amara knows she can draw strength from Venus, the goddess of love. Yet falling in love herself may prove to be her downfall.
The House with the Golden Door is the stunning second novel in Elodie Harper’s celebrated Wolf Den Trilogy, which reimagines the lives of women who have long been overlooked.
Published: May 12th Publisher: Harper Collins UK Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Humorous Fiction, Coming-of-Age Story, Regency Romance
SYNOPSIS: The season is about to begin – and there’s not a minute to lose…
Kitty Talbot needs a fortune.
Or rather, she needs a husband who has a fortune. This is 1818 after all, and only men have the privilege of seeking their own riches.
With just twelve weeks until Kitty and her sisters are made homeless, launching herself into London society is the only avenue open to her. And Kitty must use every ounce of cunning and ingenuity she possesses to climb the ranks.
The only one to see through her plans is the worldly Lord Radcliffe and he is determined to thwart her at any cost.
Can Kitty secure a fortune and save her sisters from poverty? There is not a day to lose and no one – not even a lord – will stand in her way…
Published: May 12th Publisher: Bantam Press Genre: Urban Fiction, Erotic Literature, Coming-of-Age Story, Religious Fiction
SYNOPSIS: ‘Follow your heart and speak your truth.’
For Samantha Miller’s young fans – her ‘girls’ – she’s everything they want to be. She’s an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their ‘truth’.
And her career is booming: she’s just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she’s appearing at sell-out events.
Determined to speak her truth and bare all to her adoring fans, she’s written an essay about her sexual awakening as a teenager, with her female best friend, Lisa. She’s never told a soul but now she’s telling the world. The essay goes viral.
But then – years since they last spoke – Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn’t remember it that way at all. Her memory of that night is far darker. It’s Sam’s word against Lisa’s – so who gets to tell the story? Whose ‘truth’ is really a lie?
‘You put yourself on that pedestal, Samantha. You only have yourself to blame.’
Riveting, compulsive and bold, IDOL interrogates our relationship with our heroes and explores the world of online influencers, asking how well we can ever really know those whose carefully curated profiles we follow online. And it asks us to consider how two memories of the same event can differ, and how effortlessly we choose which stories to believe.
Published: May 12th Publisher: Michael Joseph Genre: Mystery, Historical Mystery, Romance Novel, Lesbian Literature, LGBTQ Literature
SYNOPSIS: Pre-order this immersive, emotionally gripping novel about jealousy, loyalty, and the secrets we keep to protect those we love . . .
1955: In an apartment on the Lower East Side, school teachers Dovie and Gillian live as lodgers. Dancing behind closed curtains, mixing cocktails for two, they guard their private lives fiercely. Until someone guesses the truth . . .
1975: Twenty years later in the same apartment, Ava Winters is keeping her own secret. Her mother has become erratic, haunted by something Ava doesn’t understand – until one sweltering July morning, she disappears.
Soon after her mother’s departure, Ava receives a parcel. Addressed simply to ‘Apartment 3B’, it contains a photo of a woman with the word ‘LIAR’ scrawled across it. Ava does not know what it means or who sent it. But if she can find out then perhaps she’ll discover the answers she is seeking – and meet the woman at the heart of it all . . .
Published: May 12th Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Genre: Suspense, Psychological Thriller, Noir Fiction, Gay Fiction, Domestic Fiction, Crime Series
SYNOPSIS: THE DARKNESS FROM HIS PAST WILL FINALLY COME TO LIGHT
For sixteen years, DS Adam Tyler has been searching for answers to his father, Richard’s, death. Convinced it wasn’t suicide, he has been investigating the case in secret.
When a body is found in a frozen lake, linked to a cold case from 2002, it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the death of his father – except Tyler knows Richard was investigating the same case shortly before he died. And Tyler doesn’t believe in coincidences.
As he throws himself into finding out what really happened that day, Tyler uncovers a string of botched investigations, mysterious disappearances and, ultimately, deep-seated police corruption. There are dangerous people who don’t want Tyler asking questions – and the truth always comes at a price.
Published: May 12th Publisher: Phoenix Genre: Historical Fiction
SYNOPSIS: ‘Shot through with spirit and hope, it’s one hell of a book’ Stylist, Books You Can’t Miss in 2022
Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies.
But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a tumbledown cabin, she’s surprised to find that her new patients are just eleven and thirteen years old. Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling their welfare benefits, that’s reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her new responsibilities, she takes India and Erica into her heart and comes to care for their family as though they were her own. But one day she arrives at their door to discover the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same.
Inspired by true events and a shocking chapter of American history, Take My Hand is a novel that will open your eyes and break your heart. An unforgettable story about love and courage, sisterhood and solidarity, it is also a timely and hopeful reminder that it only takes one person to change the world.
SYNOPSIS: THE BUNKER IS DESIGNED TO KEEP THEM ALL SAFE.
In the end, very few people made it to the bunker. Now they wait there for the outside world to heal. Wolfe is one of the lucky ones. She’s safe and employed as the bunker’s pharmacist, doling out medicine under the watchful eye of their increasingly erratic and paranoid leader.
BUT IS IT THE PLACE OF GREATEST DANGER?
But when the leader starts to ask things of Wolfe, favours she can hardly say no to, it seems her luck is running out. Forming an unlikely alliance with the young Doctor Stirling, her troubled assistant Levitt, and Canavan – a tattooed giant of a man who’s purpose in the bunker is a mystery – Wolfe must navigate the powder keg of life underground where one misstep will light the fuse. The walls that keep her safe also have her trapped.
How much more is Wolfe willing to give to stay alive?
Beautifully written and utterly gripping, The Pharmacist will be a guaranteed conversation starter when it is published.
Published: May 12th Publisher: Coronet Genre: Contemporary Fiction
SYNOPSIS: The wise and gloriously big-hearted debut novel from the much-loved broadcaster, Sara Cox
Becky: a single mum who prides herself on her independence. She knows from painful experience that men are trouble. Louise: a loving husband, gorgeous kids. She ought to feel more grateful. Jameela: all she’s ever done is work hard, and try her best. Why won’t life give her the one thing she really wants? Sheila: the nest is empty, she dreams of escaping to the sun, but her husband seems so distracted.
The inhabitants of the Inventor’s Housing Estate keep themselves to themselves. There are the friendly ‘Hellos’ when commutes coincide and the odd cheeky eye roll when the wine bottles clank in number 7’s wheelie bin, but it’s not exactly Ramsay Street.
The dilapidated community centre is no longer the beating heart of the estate that Becky remembers from her childhood. So the new pottery class she’s helped set up feels like a fresh start. And not just for her.
The assorted neighbours come together to try out a new skill, under the watchful eye of their charismatic teacher, Sasha. And as the soft unremarkable lumps of clay are hesitantly, lovingly moulded into delicate vases and majestic pots, so too are the lives of four women. Concealed passions and heartaches are uncovered, relationships shattered and formed, and the possibility for transformation is revealed.
Published: May 12th Publisher: Picador Genre: Historical Fiction, Historical Romance, Domestic Fiction, LGBT Literature
SYNOPSIS: Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and as she is joined by hundreds of others, the authorities declare an emergency. Musicians will be brought in to play the Devil out of these women.
Just beyond the city’s limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their livelihood. And then, as the dancing plague gathers momentum, Lisbet’s sister-in-law Nethe returns from seven years’ penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name.
It is a secret that Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, she finds herself thrust into a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion, but she is dancing to a dangerous tune . . .
Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change, and inspired by the true events of a doomed summer, The Dance Tree is an impassioned story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge.
Published: May 12th Publisher: Penguin Genre: Romance Novel, Contemporary Romance
SYNOPSIS: Nora is a cut-throat literary agent at the top of her game. Her whole life is books.
Charlie is an editor with a gift for creating bestsellers. And he’s Nora’s work nemesis.
Nora has been through enough break-ups to know she’s the woman men date before they find their happy-ever-after. That’s why Nora’s sister has persuaded her to swap her desk in the city for a month’s holiday in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina. It’s a small town straight out of a romance novel, but instead of meeting sexy lumberjacks, handsome doctors or cute bartenders, Nora keeps bumping into…Charlie.
She’s no heroine. He’s no hero. So can they take a page out of an entirely different book?
Published: May 12th Publisher: Trapeze Genre: Thriller, Suspense, Dark Comedy, Psychological Thriller
SYNOPSIS: She’s accused of four murders. She’s only guilty of three…
When Ruby was a child growing up in Miami, she saw a boy from her school struggling against the ocean waves while his parents were preoccupied. Instead of helping him, Ruby dove under the water and held his ankle down until he drowned. She waited to feel guilty for it, but she never did.
And, as Ruby will argue in her senior thesis while studying psychology at Yale, guilt is sort of like eating ice cream while on a diet – if you’re already feeling bad, why not eat the whole carton? And so, the bodies start to stack up.
Twenty-five years later, Ruby’s in an interrogation room under suspicion of murder, being shown four photographs. Each is a person she once knew, now deceased. The line-up includes her husband Jason. She is responsible for three of the four deaths… but it might be the crime that she didn’t commit that will finally ensnare her.
From the Emmy nominated Executive Producer of The Bold Type, this darkly funny and compulsively page-turning novel is perfect for fans of Caroline Kepnes’ You and Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister the Serial Killer.
SYNOPSIS: *FEATURING THE CHARACTERS YOU LOVED IN THE BOOKISH LIFE OF NINA HILL!*
From the author of The Bookish Life of Nina Hill comes a story about friends who become our chosen family, proving that, even as adults, we all need help from time time. . . Perfect for fans of Marian Keyes and Nina Stibbe.
When Laura Costello arrives in downtown Los Angeles, her life has somewhat fallen apart.
Her apartment building has caught fire, her engagement to her high school sweetheart has been broken off, and she’s just been caught in a rare LA downpour and has no dry clothes.
But when she seeks shelter in Nina Hill‘s local neighbourhood bookshop, she finds herself introduced to the people who will become her new family. And as Laura becomes friends with Nina, Polly and Impossibly Handsome Bob, things start to look up.
Proving that – even as adults – we all sometimes need a little help assembling and re-assembling our lives. . .
Published: May 24th Publisher: Del Rey Genre: Thriller, Horror Fiction, Fantasy Fiction, Suspense, Ghost Story, Paranormal Fantasy
SYNOPSIS: A high-stakes hide-and-seek competition turns deadly in this dark supernatural thriller from New York Times bestselling author Kiersten White, perfect for fans of Stephen King and SQUID GAME.
The challenge: spend a week hiding in an abandoned amusement park and don’t get caught.
The prize: enough money to change everything.
Even though everyone is desperate to win – to seize their dream futures or escape their haunting pasts – Mack feels sure that she can beat her competitors. All she has to do is hide, and she’s an expert at that.
It’s the reason she’s alive, and her family isn’t.
But as the people around her begin disappearing one by one, Mack realizes this competition is more sinister than even she imagined, and that together might be the only way to survive.
Fourteen competitors. Seven days. Everywhere to hide, but nowhere to run.
Published: May 26th Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Psychological Fiction, Police Procedural, Medical Thriller, Medical Fiction, Domestic Fiction
SYNOPSIS: My child has been taken. And I’ve been given a choice… Kill a patient on the operating table. Or never see my son again.
The man lies on the table in front of me. As a surgeon, it’s my job to save him. As a mother, I know I must kill him. You might think that I’m a monster. But there really is only one choice. I must get away with murder. Or I will never see my son again.
I’VE SAVED MANY LIVES. WOULD YOU TRUST ME WITH YOURS?
DON’T MISS THE HEART-STOPPING THRILLER OF 2022 #DONOHARM
Published: May 26th Publisher: Orion Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Crime Fiction, Police Procedural, Crime Series
SYNOPSIS: ONCE, SHE SAVED HIS LIFE… NOW, HE’LL TAKE HERS.
When a baby is snatched from its pram and cast into the river Thames, off-duty police officer Lacey Flint is there to prevent disaster. But who would want to hurt a child?
DCI Mark Joesbury has been expecting this. Monitoring a complex network of dark web sites, Joesbury and his team have spotted a new terrorist threat from the extremist, women-hating, group known as ‘incels’ or ‘involuntary celibates.’ Joesbury’s team are trying to infiltrate the ring of power at its core, but the dark web is built for anonymity, and the incel army is vast.
Pressure builds when the team learn the snatched child was just the first in a series of violent attacks designed to terrorise women. Worse, the leaders of the movement seem to have singled out Lacey as the embodiment of everything they hate, placing her in terrible danger…
SYNOPSIS: When a middle-aged couple downsizes to the countryside for an easier life, their two daughters become isolated, argumentative and violent … A chilling, vicious and darkly funny psychological thriller from bestselling author Helen FitzGerald. ________________________________________
Desperate to enjoy their empty nest, Penny and Andeep downsize to the countryside, to forage, upcycle and fall in love again, only to be joined by their two twenty-something daughters, Asha and Camille.
Living on top of each other in a tiny house, with no way to make money, tensions simmer, and as Penny and Andeep focus increasingly on themselves, the girls become isolated, argumentative and violent.
When Asha injures Camille, a family therapist is called in, but she shrugs off the escalating violence between the sisters as a classic case of sibling rivalry … and the stress of the family move.
But this is not sibling rivalry. The sisters are in far too deep for that.
This is a murder, just waiting to happen…
Chilling, vicious and darkly funny, Keep Her Sweet is not just a tense, sinister psychological thriller, but also a startling look at sister relationships and the bonds they share … or shatter.
SYNOPSIS: Atmospheric historical novel set in 20th-century Suffragette London interweaving fact and fiction from a compelling new voice.
Lotta Rae is a young working-class woman who is viciously attacked by a wealthy gentleman. Lotta’s family are firm believers in justice, so Lotta makes the brave decision to testify in court against her attacker. The guardians of justice support her, or so it seems.
William Linden is a barrister about to lose everything. He is failing to live up to his father’s formidable reputation and if he loses one more case, how will he house, clothe and feed his wife and young son?
Both Lotta and William have decisions to make that will change the course of their lives and the lives of everyone around them for generations to come.
Notorious after her trial and unable to return to the life she had before her attack, Lotta’s quest for her own form of justice takes her from the streets of Spitalfields to a Soho brothel, into the heart of the Suffragette movement, to an unimaginable place. One she could never have foreseen.
Published: May 26th Publisher: Bantam Press Genre: Humorous Fiction, Urban Fiction, Lesbian Literature
SYNOPSIS: Nobody speaks to strangers on the train. But what would happen if they did?
Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. Every day, she sees the same people and makes assumptions about them, even giving them nicknames. But they never speak. Obviously.
Then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist-Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Suspiciously-Nice-New Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction.
With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don’t match reality. But when Iona’s life begins to fall apart, will her new friends be there when she needs them most?
You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Published: May 26th Publisher: Faber & Faber Genre: Contemporary Literature, Contemporary Romance, Romance Novel, LGBTQ Literature
SYNOPSIS: Luxuriate in this INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLING novelist’s sizzling hot entrance into the world of romance…
‘Emezi is a dream of a writer. My heart soared and shook and panted.’ Bolu Babalola
It’s the opportunity of a lifetime:
Feyi is about to be given the chance to escape the City’s blistering heat for a dream island holiday: poolside cocktails, beach sunsets, and elaborate meals. And as the sun goes down on her old life our heroine also might just be ready to open her heart to someone new.
The only problem is, she’s falling for the one man she absolutely can’t have.
SYNOPSIS: Pearl Winter hasn’t been outside in forty-three years.
Since she arrived on Dartmoor as a girl, an isolated family cottage has been her whole world. A place of safety. But now fifty-nine-year-old Pearl is utterly alone – except for the postman, the local crows, and memories of the summer of 1976.
Teenager Connor Matthews feels like a stranger in his own home.
Since his mother’s death he’s been adrift from his remaining family, troubled by the reality of moving on, and unable to see a future ahead. But when Connor begins a summer job as Pearl’s gardener, an unexpected friendship opens the door to a fresh start for them both. If only Pearl and Connor can take the first steps . . .
Published: May 26th Publisher: Picador Genre: Literary Fiction
SYNOPSIS: A provocative, razor-sharp, and timely debut novel about a beloved English professor facing a slew of accusations against her professor husband by former students – a situation that becomes more complicated when she herself develops an obsession of her own . . .
When I was a child, I loved old men, and I could tell that they also loved me.
And so we meet our deliciously incisive narrator: a popular English professor whose husband, a charismatic professor at the same small liberal arts college, is under investigation for his inappropriate relationships with his former students. The couple have long had a mutual understanding when it comes to their extramarital pursuits, but with these new allegations, life has become far less comfortable for them both. And when our narrator becomes increasingly infatuated with Vladimir, a celebrated, married young novelist who’s just arrived on campus, their tinder-box world comes dangerously close to exploding.
With her bold, edgy, and uncommonly assured literary debut, Julia May Jonas takes us into charged territory, where the strictures of morality bump up against the impulses of the human heart. Propulsive, darkly funny, and surreptitiously moving, Vladimir maps the personal and political minefield of our current moment, exposing the messy contradictions of power and desire.
It feels like the first month of the year both lasted forever and flew by so fast. Or is that just me?
I didn’t think I was going to do monthly wrap-ups this year as I don’t want to focus on how many books I’m reading. It’s about enjoying reading rather than the quantity. But this month has been jam packed with AMAZING books that I just had to share with you all, so I decided a wrap up post was needed.
I’ve had a fantastic start to my reading year and I think it is in part due to the quality of the books I’ve read, but also because I managed a lot of free reading. It’s been a long time since I was able to choose about half my books I read in a month simply by what I fancied reading, and I loved it. I do have quite a few tours in the next few months – damn so many incredible sounding books being released – but am renewed in my determination to do less of them this year and read more of what I feel like at my own pace.
All but one of my reads this month were four stars or more, with most of them being 4.5 or 5 star reads. The quality of books being released at the moment is phenomenal, particularly in terms of debuts, but it makes choosing a book of the month impossible. For that reason, I have chosen five favourites this month: The Shadow Man, The Lamplighters, The Summer Job, Dead Head and Everything Is Beautiful. Three of these –The Lamplighters, The Summer Job and Everything Is Beautiful – are debuts by authors I am excited to read more from.
There were three others I could have easily added to the list, but eight books of the month seemed a little too much.
Did we read any of the same books this month? Are any of these books in your tbr? Let me know in the comments.
You can see my reviews and more information on each book by clicking on the link in the title*. Thank you to the tagged publishers for my gifted review copies. *Some reviews are yet to be posted and will be up in the coming week.
Happy reading Bibliophiles. Until next time, Emma xx
Welcome to my stop on the blog tour for this utterly heartwarming novel. Thank you Niamh at Hodder and Stoughton for the invitation to take part and my gifted ARC.
SYNOPSIS:
Margot doesn’t have time for love.
Will is afraid to love.
And neither of them are expecting to fall in love with Blossom: a gentle Staffy with a tragic past, a belly made for rubbing and a head the size of a football.
After their first meeting at the rescue centre, both Margot and Will want to adopt Blossom so reluctantly agree to share custody. But Will’s obsession for micro-managing and clear-cut boundaries and Margot’s need to smother Blossom with affection, means that soon they have a very confused and badly behaved dog on their hands.
Can they put their differences aside to become successful “co-pawrents” and maybe even friends? And meanwhile, does Blossom have plans of her own?
MY REVIEW:
Heartwarming, uplifting, witty and absorbing, this book wraps its arms around you like a warm hug. It was just what I needed to read when I picked it up. Though I don’t know if my partner would agree as I’ve been banging on about getting a dog ever since.
Margot is thirty-six and ready for commitment and babies. Unable to find a man who’s as ready as she is and recently abandoned by her jerk of a cat, Percy, she decides to look for unconditional love at the dog rescue centre. She intends to adopt a cute, handbag-sized dog that will look good on the Gram but doesn’t bank on Blossom, the naughty staffy with bald patches, stealing her heart. The problem is Blossom has also stolen the heart of Will, who is at the rescue centre after being told by his therapist that he needs to open his heart up to others. Faced with the doggy version of the judgment of Solomon, they decide the only sensible solution is to share Blossom. But of course, things don’t run smoothly in this story about healing and finding love in unexpected places.
If you need a book that will lift your spirits when you’re down then this is the book for you. I adored this book. Yes, it’s a little cliched and predictable in places, but it is also a well-written, hilarious and tender story that gives you all the feelings. Many times I found myself sat smiling to myself like an idiot while reading and I kept laughing out loud and reading lines to my partner as it was just too funny to keep to myself.
There is no way I would consider sharing a dog with a stranger as I know I’d find it too painful, but it does make for a great story that is ripe for conflict and hilarity, which the author mines to perfection. Margot and Will are fantastic characters who are both equal parts likeable and frustrating. They are both trying to deal with their own heartaches and see Blossom as a way to do this, even if it is kind of reluctantly in Will’s case.
But the star of this show is undeniably Blossom. Like Margot and Will, Blossom stole my heart. The author’s love of dogs leaps from the pages and even if you weren’t a dog lover at the start of this book, I guarantee you will be by the end. Not only that, but if you’re anything like me you will be wanting to adopt one for yourself. We lost our old German Shepherd almost three years ago and this really didn’t help my yearning for another dog. I’ve been longingly looking at dog pictures and ads since reading this book and feel the hole left by our old girl more than ever. Don’t say I didn’t warn you!
I do like a good ‘enemies to lovers’ trope and this one was done so well that I couldn’t help but root for them and eat it up like the sappy woman I am. I couldn’t wait for them to finally get together and was going crazy with how long the author kept us waiting for it to happen. Like the secrets and twists in this story, the romance slowly unveils, raising the anticipation for the reader.
All jokes aside, this is a truly wonderful novel that I highly recommend. It was my first time reading this author and I definitely plan to read more. And don’t miss the author’s notes when you’ve finished. I promise you want to read them.
Rating: ✮✮✮✮
MEET THE AUTHOR:
Sarra Manning has been a voracious reader for over forty years and a prolific author and journalist for twenty five.
Her novels, which have been translated into fifteen different languages include Unsticky, You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me, After The Last Dance, The Rise And Fall Of Becky Sharp and her latest, Rescue Me, which publishes in 2021. Sarra has also written over fifteen YA novels, and four light-hearted romantic comedies under a pseudonym.
She started her writing career on Melody Maker and Just Seventeen, has been editor of ElleGirl and What To Wear and has also contributed to The Guardian, ELLE, Grazia, Stylist, Fabulous, Stella, You Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar and is currently the Literary Editor of Red magazine. Sarra has also been a Costa Book Awards judge and has been nominated for various writing awards herself.
She lives in London surrounded by piles and piles of books.
Emma's Biblio Treasures 