Inspire

Here at Parade’s End we are huge fans of The Great British Bake Off and will be very sad when it ends in a couple of weeks. So to keep us going, here are some great baking books which include vegan, gluten-free options and even something for young bakers. We hope they will inspire you to get baking!

Sweet Enough by Alison Roman

Casual, effortless, chic: these are not words you’d use to describe most desserts.

But before Alison made recipes so perfect that they go by one name – The Cookie, The Pasta, The Lemon Cake – she was a restaurant pastry chef who spent most of her time learning to make things the hard way. She studied flavour, technique, and precision, then distilled her knowledge to pare it all down to create dessert recipes that feel special and approachable, impressive and doable. In Sweet Enough, Alison has written the book for people who think they don’t have the time or skill to pull off dessert. Here, the desserts you want to make right away, you can make right away.

Alison shows you how to make simple yet sublime sweets with her trademark casualness, like how to make jam in the oven, then turn that jam into a dessert – swirled into ice cream or folded into easy one-bowl cake batter (opening a jar of jam is more than fine, too). She waxes poetic on the virtues of frozen fruit and teaches you the best way to throw your own Sundae Party. There are effortless cakes that take just minutes to get into a pan. And there are new, instant classics with a signature Alison twist, like Salted Lemon Pie, Raspberries and Sour Cream, Toasted Rice Pudding, or a Caramelised Maple Tart. Requiring little more than your own two hands and a few mixing bowls, the recipes are geared towards those without fancy equipment or specialty ingredients.

Whether you’re a dedicated baker or, better yet, someone who doesn’t think they are a baker, Sweet Enough lets you finish any dinner, any party, or any car ride to a dinner party with a little something wonderful and sweet.

NOSH Gluten-Free Baking by Joy May

Friends had asked me to write a gluten-free book, but during the process, I realised that the stomach pains, which I had thought were due to medication I was taking, were significantly relieved when I cut out gluten from my diet. I was glad to find the cause of the problem, but knew that this would make life challenging! So I began my journey of gluten-free living with the book ‘NOSH Gluten-Free’ to help me and now I have added this latest book, ‘NOSH Gluten-Free Baking’. I have to be frank and say that the ‘Baking’ book has been the hardest book I have ever written; I have never had to deal with so many failed attempts in all my years of cooking! For instance, bread depends on gluten for its elasticity and ‘bounce’. I must have made about 50 different breads, all of which ended up in the bin, before coming up with the new ones in this book, and my quest still goes on to find more. During the process of writing this book, one of the highlights would definitely be the puff pastry recipe. When that pastry came out of the oven, with its distinct, crispy layers, I could have done a little jig in the kitchen, right there and then! When we find we are gluten intolerant, or ‘coeliac’, it can seem like a ‘life sentence of no treats’. We go into a cafe for coffee and cake and often find there is nothing we can eat – all the ‘yummy’-looking ones are full of gluten! My aim in this book has been to reverse the ‘sentence’. I have tried to include recipes for the many things we might like to eat in the coffee shops, as well as the regular desserts and savoury pastries that seemed to be ‘forbidden’. I hope that you enjoy cooking and eating many of these re-found treats.

The Vegan Baking Bible by Karolina Tegelaar

You shouldn’t have to compromise on flavour, texture and the look of your cake just because it’s vegan. From carrot cake and chocolate cookies to madeleines and muffins; in this ultimate bible, Karolina has veganised old baking favourites as well as creating new baking recipes to make vegan baking accessible and fun to the novice baker.

Over 10 years of hard work and trial-and-error, the talented Karolina Tegelaar has created the ultimate vegan baking book – a must-have for every baking-enthusiast’s kitchen. Vegan baking has been revolutionised by the introduction of aquafaba and plant-based dairy products, and this definitive bible chronicles everything you need to know to create all the baking classics, as well as new and interesting bakes, using the latest techniques. With this book, you’ll never again have to make compromises on flavour, texture and design when baking vegan.

Packed with hundreds of tips, techniques and troubleshooting advice, The Vegan Baking Bible includes everything from cakes, muffins, meringues, biscuits, cookies, brownies, gingerbread, ice cream and even a whole section on yeasted doughs and pastries so you can make bagels, doughnuts and pain au chocolat, too.

With The Vegan Baking Bible by your side, you’ll never stop saying, ‘I can’t believe it’s vegan!’.

Et Voila! by Manon Lagreve

A celebration of authentic, simple French classics for bakers of all abilities.

In France, the term pâtisser (‘to bake’) is mostly reserved for professionals, not home bakers. Home bakers simply ‘faire un gâteau’ (‘make a cake’) for a treat or Sunday family dessert. A simple sweet treat, made without fuss, for the joy of sharing. That is what this book is about: simple French classics, made in the comfort of your home, using tins and utensils which are likely already lurking in your kitchen drawer.

Showcasing tarts, choux, gateaux, clafoutis, brioches and more, this book contains all the well-known French desserts and some regional gems that Manon has come across when travelling in France (with some plant-based and gluten-free alternatives when possible). Without any fancy decorations or presentation, Manon will share exactly how it will look in your own home.

An accessible and positive introduction to French baking that aims to prove that everyone can make authentic French treats in their own home.

Bake It Better by Matt Adlard

In Bake It Better, Instagram and TikTok star Matt Adlard shares his tried-and-true baking approach to help home chefs advance from intermediate-level to master baker-all at their own pace. Each chapter has a dedicated theme, with recipes offering techniques to show you how to elevate your baking from refreshingly refined to extraordinarily elegant.

Each bake comes as a pair, beginning with a delicious “Tier 1” recipe, followed by an elevated “Tier 2” version for when you’re ready to take your skills to the next level. Love making Brioche from scratch? Why not take things up a notch with Brioche Cinnamon Rolls, using a slightly advanced technique? Or try your hand at Triple Chocolate Brownie Fingers once you’ve mastered the recipe for Chocolate Chunk Brownies.

Bake It Better includes:
– 70 mouthwatering recipes for cakes, pastries, breads, cookies, ice creams, and more.
– Techniques for mastering essential skills and deepening your abilities.
– Expert advice from Matt Adlard on enhancing your expertise and building your confidence as a baker.

Join Matt Adlard on a journey to whatever baking destination you seek-and enjoy the detours along the way!

Mary Berry’s Baking Bible – Updated in 2023

We couldn’t talk about baking without including the queen of cake herself!

This definitive collection from the undisputed queen of cakes brings together all of Mary Berry’s most mouth-watering baking recipes in a beautifully packaged edition. Filled with 250 foolproof recipes, from the classic Victoria Sponge, Very Best Chocolate Cake and Hazelnut Meringue Cake to tempting muffins, scones and bread and butter pudding, this is the most comprehensive baking cookbook you’ll ever need.

Mary’s easy-to-follow instructions and handy tips make it ideal for kitchen novices and more experienced cooks alike, and full-colour photographs and beautiful illustrations will guide you smoothly to baking success.

Drawing on her years of experience to create recipes for cakes, breads and desserts, Mary Berry’s Baking Bible will prove to be a timeless classic.

German Baking by Jurgen Krauss

The first book from the much-loved Great British Bake Off semi-finalist.

Jürgen Krauss’s gentle charm, ambitious flavours and scientific know-how captured audiences’ hearts on The Great British Bake Off, his semi-finals departure triggering unprecedented complaints from dismayed viewers.

Drawing on the flavours and techniques of his childhood home in the Black Forest, this fool-proof collection of recipes provides delicious inspiration for any time of day and any occasion.

From sweet and savoury classics such as Flammkuchen, cinnamon and raisin braid, Streusel, marble cake, and Sacher Torte, to festive bakes such as Lebkuchen, marzipan swirl biscuits, Stollen and Easter braid, they are the perfect way to celebrate German baking at home.

My First Baking Book by David Atherton

A beautifully illustrated collection of baking recipes for first cooks written by the 2019 winner of The Great British Bake Off.
Learn how to bake breads, cakes, pastries and biscuits to perfection in this imaginative collection of deliciously healthy recipes. Featuring easy to follow, beautifully illustrated step-by-step instructions, and a wealth of classic and creative bakes, this first baking book is jam-packed with inspiring content and has everything budding bakers need to take their first steps to baking glory!

November celebrates all things plant-based. Whether you are already a staunch vegan or would like to introduce more meat-free recipes to your repertoire, we have a great selection of Vegan cookbooks for you.

Here are 6 of our favourite vegan recipe books and something you should read if you are vegan curious.

Anything You Can Cook, I Can Cook Vegan by Richard Makin

The ultimate guide to truly knockout plant-based cooking with recipes, tips and techniques from @schoolnightvegan

Imagine a world with limitless vegan options; a place where anything and everything can be made vegan. Mac ‘n cheese? Proper English fry up? Decadent ice cream sundae? Imagine no more – you can find them all here!

Anything You Can Cook, I Can Cook Vegan is a guide to truly creative plant-based cooking with zero sacrifices. With over 100 innovative recipes, along with tips, techniques and ingredient guides, this book will teach you how to feel more confident than ever in a plant-based kitchen.

With cleverly marked difficulty levels, recipes range from quick, school-night classics to fun weekend baking projects. You’ll learn to make delicious meat alternatives and proper, grateable vegan cheeses, and find out just how versatile tofu can be. Incredible veganised recipes include:

– Vegan Fried Eggs – Mushroom Brisket Sandwiches – Tempeh Nuggies – Beefless Bourguignon – Chocolate Pretzel Pie

Richard Makin packs each recipe with genius vegan “hacks” to help everyone from novice cooks to plant-based pros. This book shows just how exciting vegan cooking can be, and you’ll soon wonder how you ever coped without it.

Let’s Go Nuts by Estella Schweizer

We all know that nuts are a superfood; rich in protein, healthy fats, fibre, and minerals, they make a convenient snack and add crunch to a salad. But the true versatility of nuts as a main ingredient has been underexplored. Organized to honour the gifts of every season, this book kicks off with a spring menu of asparagus with peanuts, chilis, and mango; plunges into summer with a walnut Bolognese on zucchini pasta; celebrates fall’s bounty with pumpkin and lentil lasagne filled with cashew béchamel sauce; takes off winter’s chill with a no-cheese fondue—and more soups, salads, dips, cakes, breads, and desserts. Each recipe is presented in double-page spreads with gorgeous photographs, a list of kitchen equipment, and tips for serving and substitutions.

Schweizer also does a deep dive into a variety of nuts and seeds—from almonds to walnuts, pecans to pepitas—providing not just nutritional information but also in-depth histories, origins, and types of uses. Whether you’re a gourmet plant-based cook, or just looking for new ways to benefit from a nutritional powerhouse, these recipes look good, taste great, and will make you feel even better.

Nistisima by Georgina Hayden

Nistisima means fasting food – food eaten during Lent and other times of fasting observed by those of Orthodox faith. Mostly this involves giving up meat and dairy and instead using vegetables, pulses and grains to create easy, delicious dishes that all just happen to be vegan.

In this book, Georgina draws on the history and culture around nistisimo cooking in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Eastern Europe to share the simple, nutritious and flavour-packed recipes at the heart of the practice, including:

· Salatet malfouf cabbage slaw · Briam (‘Greek ratatouille’) · Pumpkin, raisin and harissa pie · Kibbet el raheb, ‘monks’ soup’ · Jewelled lentil moutzentra · Rizogalo rose rice pudding with roasted strawberries · Moustokouloura spiced grape, honey and chocolate biscuits

Whether you’re vegan, vegetarian, or simply want to eat more plant-based food, Nistisima offers you tried and tested recipes that celebrate the very best of this tradition – all bursting with flavour and all surprisingly vegan.

Plentiful by Denai Moore

In this first-of-its-kind book, Denai Moore pays homage to flavours and authentic dishes from her Jamaican roots whilst firmly planting them within a modern-day context.

From her convenient Rice & Peas Arancini to her comforting ‘Oxtail’ Gravy & Roasted Garlic Spring Onion Mash, the recipes are approachable, engaging and downright delicious.

Jamaican food is often misrepresented, simplified and reduced to being really spicy – and MEAT heavy.

Denai is a Jamaican chef who loves to make vegan food and in Plentiful she debunks this taboo about Jamaican food.

With this book, she shows how exciting, diverse, and vibrant vegan flavours and Jamaican food truly are.

You Can Cook This! by Max La Manna

Easy plant-based recipes to save you time, money and waste!

Over 120 no-fuss meals that celebrate your favourite veg, social media sensation Max La Manna delivers simple vegan food with big flavour to keep things quick and easy.

This stunning book delivers solutions with a chapter dedicated to each of our most loved but also commonly wasted ingredients and recipes for how to cook with them, from bread to tomatoes, onions and bananas.

Learn recipe hacks and tips on how to get the best out of food, including practical ideas for using up the whole vegetable, transforming leftovers and the best ways to store foods to keep them fresh.

Covering everything from weeknight dinners and comforting one-pots, to sweet treats and instant crowd-pleasers, this book embraces the power of plants and shows how anyone can get delicious, veg-packed meals on the table with joy and ease.

New Vegan Baking by Ana Rusu

Reawaken your love for all things sweet and become a master of modern plant-based baking. Through this carefully curated and visually stunning recipe collection, Ana Rusu guides you in using vegan ingredients to create mouthwatering, ultra-satisfying baked goods and no-bake treats for you and your loved ones. Ana’s recipes pair rich flavors with delicate fruits and aromatic herbs for desserts with beautifully balanced taste and luscious texture, such as:

• Dulce de Leche Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze • Chocolate, Chili & Sea Salt Cookies • Lemon Posset Tart with Raspberry and Whipped Cream • Chantilly & Diplomat Cream with Tropical Fruit Cake • Gluten-Free Upside-Down Sour Cherry Cake with Crème Anglaise

While the flavours may sound advanced, Ana’s recipes use simple and easy-to-follow instructions, complete with home chef tips to help inexperienced bakers achieve success. With 60 spectacular vegan treats spanning six flavour-forward chapters – Chocolate & Caramel, Fruit, Citrus, Spice, Coffee, Nuts & Seeds and Booze – plus stunning photography with every recipe, every page will fill you with inspiration to pull out the measuring cups and bring sweetness to your day.

This is Vegan Propaganda by Ed Winters

Our choices can help alleviate the most pressing issues we face today: the climate crisis, infectious and chronic diseases, human exploitation and, of course, non-human exploitation. Undeniably, these issues can be uncomfortable to learn about but the benefits of doing so cannot be overstated. It is quite literally a matter of life and death.

Through exploring the major ways that our current system of animal farming affects the world around us, as well as the cultural and psychological factors that drive our behaviours, This Is Vegan Propaganda answers the pressing question, is there a better way?

Whether you are a vegan already or curious to learn more, this book will show you the other side of the story that has been hidden for far too long. Based on years of research and conversations with slaughterhouse workers and farmers, to animal rights philosophers, environmentalists and everyday consumers, vegan educator and public speaker Ed Winters will give you the knowledge to understand the true scale and enormity of the issues at stake.

This Is Vegan Propaganda is the empowering and ground-breaking book on veganism that everyone, vegan and sceptic alike, needs to read.

What a wet month October was! But it didn’t dampen our spirits here at Parade’s End. We shut the curtains against the rain and nights drawing in and got stuck into some great books.

Here’s what our booksellers recommend from October.

Babel by R.F. Kuang

Oxford, 1836.

The city of dreaming spires.

It is the centre of all knowledge and progress in the world.

And at its centre is Babel, the Royal Institute of Translation. The tower from which all the power of the Empire flows.

Orphaned in Canton and brought to England by a mysterious guardian, Babel seemed like paradise to Robin Swift.

Until it became a prison…

But can a student stand against an empire?

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers

England, 1989.

Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men – traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone – set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project.

Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns.

As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation.

And that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

Fresh Water for Flowers by Valerie Perrin

Violette Toussaint is the caretaker at a cemetery in a small town in Bourgogne.

Her daily life is lived to the rhythms of the hilarious and touching confidences of random visitors and her colleagues—three gravediggers, three groundskeepers, and a priest.

Violette’s routine is disrupted one day by the arrival of police chief Julien Seul, wishing to deposit his mother’s ashes on the gravesite of a complete stranger. Julien is not the only one to guard a painful secret: his mother’s story of clandestine love breaks through Violette’s carefully constructed defences to reveal the tragic loss of her daughter, and her steely determination to find out who is responsible.  

The funny, moving, intimately told story of a woman who believes obstinately in happiness, Fresh Water for Flowers brings out the exceptional and the poetic in the ordinary. A delightful, atmospheric, absorbing tale.

Nearly All The Men in Lagos Are Mad by Damilare Kuku

One night, you will calmly put a knife to your husband’s penis and promise to cut it off. It will scare him so much that the next day, he will call his family members for a meeting in the house. He will not call your family members, but you will not care.

Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad is a collection of twelve short stories featuring characters with unique voices and stories that represent the diverse class, gender and ethnic melting pot that is Lagos.

There’s a story of a young lady who tries to find her oyibo soulmate on the streets of Lagos; another of a pastor’s wife who defends her husband from an allegation of adultery; a wife takes a knife to her husband’s penis; a night of lust between a rising musician and his Instagram baddie takes an unexpected turn.

Nearly All the Men in Lagos Are Mad underscores with wit, humour, wisdom and sensitivity, the perils of trying to find lasting love and companionship in Africa’s most notorious city.

Radical Love by Neil Blackmore

Welcome to England, 1809. London is a violent, intolerant city, exhausted by years of war, beset by soaring prices and political tensions. By day, John Church preaches on the radical possibilities of love to a multicultural, working-class congregation in Southwark. But by night, he crosses the river to the secret and glamorous world of a gay molly house on Vere Street, where ordinary men reinvent themselves as funny, flirtatious drag queens and rent boys cavort with labourers and princes alike. There, Church becomes the first minister to offer marriages between men, at enormous risk.

Everything changes when Church meets the unworldly and free-thinking Ned, part of a group of African activist abolitionists who attend his chapel. The two bond over their broken childhoods, and Church falls obsessively in love with Ned’s tender nature. In a fragile, colourful secret world under threat, Church’s love for Ned takes him to the edge of reason.

Based on the incredible true story of one of the most important events in queer history, Radical Love is a sensuous and prescient story about gender and sexuality, and how the most vulnerable survive in dangerous times.

Trust by Hernan Diaz

Trust is a sweeping puzzle of a novel about power, greed, love and a search for the truth that begins in 1920s New York.

Can one person change the course of history?

A Wall Street tycoon takes a young woman as his wife.

Together, they rise to the top in an age of excess and speculation. Now a novelist is threatening to reveal the secrets behind their marriage.

Who will have the final word in their story of greed, love and betrayal?

Composed of four competing versions of this deceptive tale, Trust by Hernan Diaz brings us on a quest for truth while confronting the lies that often live buried in the human heart.

Killers of The Flower Moon by David Grann

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma.

After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation.

In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery.

Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.

Clash of Civilizations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio by Amara Lakhous

Clash of Civilisations Over an Elevator in Piazza Vittorio tells the story of the immigrant tenants of a building in Rome, who offer skewed accounts of a murder.

In this award-winning satire by the Algerian-born Italian author Amara Lakhous, each character takes his or her turn centre-stage, “giving evidence,” recounting his or her story.

The dramas of emigration, the daily equivocations of immigration, the fears and misunderstandings of a life spent on society’s margins, abused by mainstream culture’s fears and indifference, preconceptions and insensitivity.

What emerges is a touching story that is common to us all, whether we live in Rome, London or in Los Angeles.

The English Understand Wool by Helen DeWitt

Raised in Marrakech by a French mother and English father, a 17-year-old girl has learned above all to avoid mauvais ton (“bad taste” loses something in the translation). One should not ask servants to wait on one during Ramadan: they must have paid leave while one spends the holy month abroad.

One must play the piano; if staying at Claridge’s, one must regrettably install a Clavinova in the suite, so that the necessary hours of practice will not be inflicted on fellow guests. One should cultivate weavers of tweed in the Outer Hebrides but have the cloth made up in London; one should buy linen in Ireland but have it made up by a Thai seamstress in Paris (whose genius has been supported by purchase of suitable premises).

All this and much more she has learned, governed by a parent of ferociously lofty standards. But at 17, during the annual Ramadan travels, she finds all assumptions overturned. Will she be able to fend for herself? Will the dictates of good taste suffice when she must deal, singlehanded, with the sharks of New York?

The Stolen Hours by Karen Swan

A reluctant bride. A forbidden romance. An island full of secrets . . .

It’s the summer of 1929 and Mhairi MacKinnon is in need of a husband. As the eldest girl among nine children, her father has made it clear he can’t support her past the coming winter. On the small, Scottish island of St Kilda, her options are limited. But the MacKinnons’ neighbour, Donald, has a business acquaintance on distant Harris also in need of a spouse. A plan is hatched for Donald to chaperone Mhairi and make the introduction on his final crossing of the year, before the autumn seas close them off to the outside world.

Mhairi returns as an engaged woman who has lost her heart – but not to her fiancé. In love with the wrong man yet knowing he can never be hers, she awaits the spring with growing dread, for the onset of calm waters will see her sent from home to become a stranger’s wife.

When word comes that St Kilda is to be evacuated, the lovers are granted a few months’ reprieve, enjoying a summer of stolen hours together. Only, those last days on St Kilda will also bring trauma and heartache for Mhairi and her friends, Effie and Flora. And when a dead body is later found on the abandoned isle, all three have reason enough to find themselves under the shadow of suspicion . . .

The Mysterious Case of the Alperton Angels by Janice Hallett

THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAIL… True-crime author Amanda Bailey knows all about the notorious Alperton Angels cult. There have been dozens of books and films about the Angels, ever since the night nearly two decades ago, when they attempted to sacrifice a baby they believed to be the Antichrist.

With all the cultists now dead – apart from their charismatic leader – it seems like there’s nothing new to say about the Angels… until now. The Alperton baby has turned eighteen and can finally be interviewed, and if Amanda can track them down, it will be the scoop of the year. But rival author Oliver Menzies is just as smart, better connected, and is also on the baby’s trail.

As Amanda and Oliver are forced to collaborate, they realise that what everyone thinks they know about the Angels is wrong.

The truth is something much darker and stranger. And the devilish story of the Alperton Angels is far from over…

I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home by Lorrie Moore

From one of the most celebrated imaginations in American literature, Lorrie Moore’s new novel is a magic box of longing and surprise.

Following a middle-aged history teacher who embarks on a road trip with the great lost love of his life, I Am Homeless If This Is Not My Home is a masterfully crafted meditation on what it means to learn to live with your choices.

High up in a New York City hospice, Finn sits with his beloved brother Max, who is slipping from one world into the next.

But when a phone call summons Finn back to a troubled old flame, a strange journey begins, opening a trapdoor in reality.

It will prompt a questioning of life and death, grief and the past, comedy and tragedy, and the diaphanous separations that lie between them all.

Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.

White lies
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.

Dark humour
But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.

Deadly consequences…
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

Do not be afraid! Hallowe’en is just around the corner so we have rounded up some scary novels for you to fully immerse yourself in this spooky time of year. We hope they don’t keep you awake all night (unless it’s because you just can’t put them down).

Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson

Our lives are digital, exposed and always-on. We track our friends and family wherever they go. We have millennia of knowledge at our fingertips.

We know everything about our world. But we know nothing about theirs.

We have changed, but our ghosts have not. They’ve simply adapted and innovated, found new channels to reach us. They inhabit our apps and wander the metaverse just as they haunt our homes and our memories, always seeking new ways to connect.

To live amongst us.

To remind us.

To tempt us.

To take their revenge.

These stories are not ours to tell. They are the stories of the dead – of those we’ve lost, loved, forgotten… and feared. Some are fiction. But some may not be.

Eyes Guts Throats Bones by Moira Fowley

What will the end of the world look like?

Will it be an old man slowly turned to gold, flowers raining from the sky, or a hole cut through the wire fencing that keeps the monsters out?

Is it someone you love wearing your face, or a good old fashioned inter-dimensional summoning?

Does it sound like a howl outside the window, or does it look like coming home?

This startling and irresistibly witty collection from the phenomenally talented Moira Fowley is an exploration of all our darkest impulses and deepest fears.

Rouge by Mona Awad

For as long as she can remember, Belle has been insidiously obsessed with her skin and skincare videos. When her estranged mother Noelle mysteriously dies, Belle finds herself back in Southern California, dealing with her mother’s considerable debts and grappling with lingering questions about her death. The stakes escalate when a strange woman in red appears at the funeral, offering a tantalizing clue about her mother’s demise, followed by a cryptic video about a transformative spa experience. With the help of a pair of red shoes, Belle is lured into the barbed embrace of La Maison de Méduse, the same lavish, culty spa to which her mother was devoted. There, Belle discovers the frightening secret behind her (and her mother’s) obsession with the mirror—and the great shimmering depths (and demons) that lurk on the other side of the glass.

Snow White meets Eyes Wide Shut in this surreal descent into the dark side of beauty, envy, grief, and the complicated love between mothers and daughters. With black humor and seductive horror, ROUGE explores the cult-like nature of the beauty industry—as well as the danger of internalizing its pitiless gaze. Brimming with California sunshine and blood-red rose petals, ROUGE holds up a warped mirror to our relationship with mortality, our collective fixation with the surface, and the wondrous, deep longing that might lie beneath.

Holly by Stephen King

Holly Gibney, one of Stephen King’s most compelling and ingeniously resourceful characters, returns in this thrilling novel to solve the gruesome truth behind multiple disappearances in a Midwestern town.

Stephen King’s HOLLY marks the triumphant return of beloved King character Holly Gibney. Readers have witnessed Holly’s gradual transformation from a shy (but also brave and ethical) recluse in Mr Mercedes to Bill Hodges’s partner in Finders Keepers to a full-fledged, smart, and occasionally tough private detective in The Outsider. In King’s new novel, Holly is on her own, and up against a pair of unimaginably depraved and brilliantly disguised adversaries.

When Penny Dahl calls the Finders Keepers detective agency hoping for help locating her missing daughter, Holly is reluctant to accept the case. Her partner, Pete, has Covid. Her (very complicated) mother has just died. And Holly is meant to be on leave. But something in Penny Dahl’s desperate voice makes it impossible for Holly to turn her down.

Mere blocks from where Bonnie Dahl disappeared live Professors Rodney and Emily Harris. They are the picture of bourgeois respectability: married octogenarians, devoted to each other, and semi-retired lifelong academics. But they are harbouring an unholy secret in the basement of their well-kept, book-lined home, one that may be related to Bonnie’s disappearance. And it will prove nearly impossible to discover what they are up to: they are savvy, they are patient, and they are ruthless.

Holly must summon all her formidable talents to outthink and outmanoeuvre the shockingly twisted professors in this chilling new masterwork from Stephen King.

Hare House by Sally Hinchcliffe

Hare House is not its real name, of course. I have, if you will forgive me, kept names to a minimum here, for reasons that will become understandable . . .

In the first brisk days of autumn, a woman arrives in Scotland having left her job at an all-girls school in London in mysterious circumstances.

Moving into a cottage on the remote estate of Hare House, she begins to explore her new home. But among the tiny roads, wild moorland, and scattered houses, something more sinister lurks: local tales of witchcraft, clay figures and young men sent mad.

Striking up a friendship with her landlord and his younger sister, she begins to suspect that all might not be quite as it seems at Hare House. And as autumn turns to winter, and a heavy snowfall traps the inhabitants of the estate within its walls, tensions rise to fever pitch.

The Winter Sprits by various authors

The tradition of a haunted tale at Christmas has flourished across the centuries. These twelve stories – authored by some of today’s most loved and lauded writers of historical and gothic fiction – are all centred around Christmas or Advent, boldly and playfully re-imagining a beloved tradition for a modern audience.

Taking you from a haunted Tuscan villa to a remote Scottish island with a dark secret,, these vibrant haunted stories are your ultimate companion for frosty nights.

So curl up, light a candle, and fall under the spell of winters past . . .

Includes stories by 12 authors including Natasha Pulley, Laura Purcell, Jess Kidd and Stuart Turton.

October 14th is National Bookshop Day – our favourite day of the year! To mark the occasion we have selected 10 books that are set in bookshops across the world. We do hope to see you in the shop this weekend. Happy reading!

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

Set in a second-hand bookshop in the fictional town of Murk, this is 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 . . .

The Book Shop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Set in a small East Anglian town.

Florence Green decides, against polite but ruthless local opposition, to open a bookshop.

Hardborough becomes a battleground.

Florence has tried to change the way things have always been done, and as a result, she has to take on not only the people who have made themselves important, but natural and even supernatural forces too.

Her fate will strike a chord with anyone who knows that life has treated them with less than justice.

The Bookshop is now a major motion picture starring Emily Mortimer and Bill Nighy.

The Door-to-Door Bookstore by Carsten Henn

Set in a bookstore in a small German town, THE DOOR-TO-DOOR BOOKSTORE is a heart-warming tale of the value of friendship, the magic of reading, and the power of books to unite us all.

Carl may be 72 years old, but he’s young at heart.

Every night he goes door-to-door delivering books by hand to his loyal customers.

He knows their every desire and preference, carefully selecting the perfect story for each person.

One evening as he makes his rounds, nine-year-old Schascha appears. Loud and precocious, she insists on accompanying him – and even tries to teach him a thing or two about books.

When Carl’s job at the bookstore is threatened, will the old man and the girl in the yellow raincoat be able to restore Carl’s way of life, and return the joy of reading to his little European town?

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich

A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer.

Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store.

Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading ‘with murderous attention,’ must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation and furious reckoning.

The Sentence begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020.

Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan

Set in a San Francisco bookstore where recession has shuffled Clay Jannon out of his life as a Web-design drone and serendipity coupled with sheer curiosity has landed him a new job working the night shift at Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. And it doesn’t take long for Clay to realize that the quiet, dusty book emporium is even more curious than the name suggests.

There are only a few fanatically committed customers, but they never seem to actually buy anything, instead they simply borrow impossibly obscure volumes perched on dangerously high shelves, all according to some elaborate arrangement with the eccentric proprietor.

The store must be a front for something larger, Clay concludes, and soon he has plugged in his laptop, roped in his friends (and a cute girl who works for Google) and embarked on a high-tech analysis of the customers’ behaviour. What they discover is an ancient secret that can only be solved by modern means, and a global-conspiracy guarded by Mr. Penumbra himself… who has mysteriously disappeared.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, the Morisaki Bookshop is a booklover’s paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building, the shop is filled with hundreds of second-hand books. It is Satoru’s pride and joy, and he has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife left him five years earlier.

When twenty-five-year-old Takako’s boyfriend reveals he’s marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle Satoru’s offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above his shop.

Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the shop.

And as summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.

Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum

Set in a quiet neighbourhood in Seoul where Yeongju did everything she was supposed to, go to university, marry a decent man, get a respectable job.

Then it all fell apart. Burned out, Yeongju abandons her old life, quits her high-flying career, and follows her dream. She opens a bookshop.

Surrounded by books, Yeongju and her customers take refuge. From the lonely barista to the unhappily married coffee roaster, and the writer who sees something special in Yeongju – they all have disappointments in their past.

The Hyunam-dong Bookshop becomes the place where they all learn how to truly live.

A heart-warming story about finding comfort and acceptance in your life – and the healing power of books.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin

Set on a fictional Cape Cod adjacent island where

A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and his prized possession – a rare first edition book has been stolen.

Over time, he has given up on people, and even the books in his store, instead of offering solace, are yet another reminder of a world that is changing too rapidly.

But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His life – and Maya’s – is changed forever.

Gabrielle Zevin’s enchanting novel is a love letter to the world of books – an irresistible affirmation of why we read, and why we love.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

Set in a bookstore in Acapulco ‘American Dirt’ explores the experience of attempting to illegally cross the US-Mexico border, a journey which thousands of migrants make each year.

Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop.

Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist.

Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world.

Today, her eight-year-old son Luca is all she has left.

For him, she will carry a machete strapped to her leg.

For him, she will leap onto the roof of a high speed train. For him, she will find the strength to keep running.

Midnight at the Christmas Bookshop by Jenny Colgan

Set in an ancient bookshop in Edinburgh.

Carmen is at a loose end. Her gorgeous bookshop is the filming site of a cheesy Christmas movie, she’s been ousted from her sister’s house, and the love of her life has just flown thousands of miles away. It’s threatening to be a very unjolly Christmas indeed!

But when the elderly owner of the shop comes to Carmen with a Christmas wish that threatens to never come true, Carmen knows she must buckle down to get the funds to save not only his trip, but the shop itself. While fending off a shady tatt-selling businessman, Carmen discovers wonders to the shop she could have never imagined, and opens a labyrinth of bookish backrooms for the customers to get lost in.

With her deadline looming, it might take more than a fresh coat of paint to solve Carmen’s problems. But with the help of their neighbours, her nieces and nephew, and a very distractingly cute male nanny, Carmen might just pull her greatest magic trick yet…

September was a busy reading month for our booksellers, and as usual, we read a wide range of different books. Here are some of our favourites that we hope you will love too. We are always happy to help you find your next read, so do pop in and see us at the shop.

The Vaster Wilds by Lauren Groff

…is a work of raw and prophetic power that tells the story of America in miniature, through one girl at a hinge point in history, to ask how -and if – we can adapt quickly enough to save ourselves.

A servant girl escapes from a settlement.

A servant girl escapes from a colonial settlement in the wilderness.

She carries nothing with her but her wits, a few possessions, and the spark of god that
burns hot within her.

What she finds in this terra incognita is beyond the limits
of her imagination and will bend her belief in everything that her own
civilization has taught her.

A profound and explosive novel about a spirited girl alone in the wilderness, trying to survive.

Weirdo by Sara Pascoe

The comedians first novel is a funny-peculiar first novel about a woman lurching through life that will challenge your preconceptions.

Deep in Essex and her own thoughts, Sophie had a feeling something was going to happen and then it did. Chris has entered the pub and re-entered her life after Sophie had finally stopped thinking about him and regretting what she’d done.

Sophie has a chance at creating a new ending and paying off her emotional debts (if not her financial ones).

All she has to do is act exactly like a normal, well-adjusted person and not say any of her inner monologue out loud. If she can suppress her light paranoia, pornographic visualisations and pathological lying maybe she’ll even end up getting the guy she wants?

Then she could dump her boyfriend Ian and try to enjoy Christmas.

So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan

The new short story by the author of Small Things Like These finds an unsatisfied man on his bus journey home reflect on the love that got away.

After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home.

There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently.

All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude – and the true significance of this particular date is revealed.

From one of the finest writers working today, Keegan’s new story asks if a lack of generosity might ruin what could be between men and women. Is it possible to love without sharing?

Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr

…is a luminous feat of imagination from the acclaimed author of All the Light We Cannot See, Cloud Cuckoo Land traces five unforgettable characters through three distinct time periods, all connected by a prized copy of a mysterious ancient text.

Cloud Cuckoo Land follows three storylines: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city wall during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and gentle octogenarian Zeno, in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for a distant exoplanet, decades from now.

A single copy of an ancient text – the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land – provides solace, mystery, and the most profound human connection to these five unforgettable characters.

Like Marie-Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See, Anna, Omeir, Zeno, Seymour, and Konstance are dreamers and misfits, on the cusp of adulthood, struggling to survive and finding resourcefulness and hope in the midst of peril.

A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley

From the brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author comes a rollicking murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls.

Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can’t resist confronting. Side by side with her friend Jean, and inspired by her reading, especially by Edgar Allan Poe’s detective Dupin, Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer, all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious.

Eliza and Jean are determined not just to survive, but to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild West – a bewitching combination of beauty and danger – as what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon.

As Mrs. Parks says, ‘Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise . . .’

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch

… is a work of breath-taking originality, offering a devastating vision of a country at war and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.

On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find the GNSB on her step.

Two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police are here to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

Ireland is falling apart.

The country is in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny and when her husband disappears, Eilish finds herself caught within the nightmare logic of a society that is quickly unravelling.

How far will she go to save her family? And what – or who – is she willing to leave behind?

A Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

From the author of Cutting for Stone comes a novel imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning – and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch – known as Big Ammachi – will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.

Dead Man’s Creek by Chris Hammer

If you like a darkly simmering mystery then this one is for you.

Newly-minted homicide detective Nell Buchanan returns to her hometown, annoyed at being assigned a decades-old murder – a ‘file and forget’.

But this is no ordinary cold case, her arrival provoking an unwelcome and threatening response from the small-town community. As more bodies are discovered, and she begins to question how well she truly knows those closest to her, Nell realises that finding the truth could prove more difficult – and dangerous – than she’d ever expected.

The nearer Nell comes to uncovering the secrets of the past, the more treacherous her path becomes. Can she survive to root out the truth, and what price will she have to pay for it?

Autumn is here, the nights are drawing in so you have the perfect excuse for staying home and curling up on the sofa with a good book. Here are 8 fabulous books coming out this October.

The Secret by Lee and Andrew Child

Fans of Jack Reacher will be thrilled to read the latest instalment out on October 24th.

Here’s a sneak preview..

Chicago. 1992. A hospital patient wakes to find two strangers by his bed.

They show him a list of names and ask a simple but impossible question. Minutes later he falls to his death from his twelfth floor window – a fall which generates some unexpected attention.

That attention comes from the Secretary of Defense, who calls for an inter-agency task force to investigate. Jack Reacher, recently demoted from Major, is assigned as the Army’s representative. If he gets a result, great. If not, he’s a convenient fall guy.

Reacher may be an exceptional military investigator, but office politics aren’t what gets him up in the morning. As he races to identify a cold-blooded killer and uncover a secret that stretches back 23 years, he must navigate around his new partners.

Will Reacher bring the bad guys to justice the official way . . . or his way?

Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

From the author of Costa Book Award winning Golden Hill comes this thrilling tale of murder and mystery set in a city that never was. Get your copy from October 5th.

It’s 1922, and Americans are drinking in speakeasies, dancing to jazz, stepping quickly to the tempo of modern times.

Beside the Mississippi, the ancient city of Cahokia lives on – a teeming industrial metropolis, containing every race and creed.

Among them, peace holds.

Just about. But that body on the roof is about to spark off a week that will spill the city’s secrets, and bring it, against a soundtrack of wailing clarinets and gunfire, either to destruction or rebirth.

Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare

The latest novel from the author of the Shadowhunter Chronicles, out on October 10th, is a spellbinding epic of power, intrigue and magic.

In the vibrant city-state of Castellane, a young orphan named Kel is stolen from his old life to enter a new one of luxury and peril. He’s to become Prince Conor Aurelian’s body-double, shielding the Prince from all dangers. As his ‘Sword Catcher,’ he and Conor become close as brothers – yet Kel lives for one purpose: to die for Conor.

Lin Caster is an Ashkar physician, part of a community ostracised for its rare magical abilities. But events pull her and Kel together and into the web of the mysterious Ragpicker King who rules Castellane’s criminal underworld.

Together, they’ll discover an extraordinary conspiracy. But can forbidden love bring down a kingdom? And will their discoveries plunge their nation into war and the world into chaos?

King of Greed by Ana Huang

From the author of the Twisted series comes, on October 24th, this steamy billionaire romance.

He had her, he lost her . . . and he’ll do anything to win her back.

Powerful, brilliant, and ambitious, Dominic Davenport clawed his way up from nothing to become the King of Wall Street.

He has everything – a beautiful home, a beautiful wife and more money than he could spend in a lifetime. But no matter how much he accumulates, he’s never satisfied.

In his endless quest for more, he drives away the only person who saw him as enough.

It isn’t until she’s gone that he realizes there may be more to life than riches and glory . . . but by then, it may be too late.

Kind, intelligent, and thoughtful, Alessandra Davenport has played the role of trophy wife for years.

She stood by her husband while he built an empire, but now that they’ve reached the top, she realizes he’s no longer the man she fell for.

Julia by Sandra Newman

On October 19th comes the book all fans of Orwell have been waiting for. The author of The Men tackles the world of Big Brother with a dramatically different feminist narrative.

London, chief city of Airstrip One, the third most populous province of Oceania. It’s 1984 and Julia Worthing works as a mechanic fixing the novel-writing machines in the Fiction Department at the Ministry of Truth. Under the ideology of IngSoc and the rule of the Party and its leader Big Brother, Julia is a model citizen – cheerfully cynical, believing in nothing and caring not at all about politics. She routinely breaks the rules but also collaborates with the regime whenever necessary. Everyone likes Julia. A diligent member of the Junior Anti-Sex League (though she is secretly promiscuous) she knows how to survive in a world of constant surveillance, Thought Police, Newspeak, Doublethink, child spies and the black markets of the prole neighbourhoods. She’s very good at staying alive.

But Julia becomes intrigued by a colleague from the Records Department – a mid-level worker of the Outer Party called Winston Smith – when she sees him locking eyes with a superior from the Inner Party at the Two Minutes Hate. And when one day, finding herself walking toward Winston, she impulsively hands him a note – a potentially suicidal gesture – she comes to realise that she’s losing her grip and can no longer safely navigate her world.

Let Us Descend by Jesmyn Ward

This beautiful reimagining of American slavery by the award winning author Jesmy Ward is available from October 24th.

Annis, sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, is the reader’s guide through this hellscape.

As she struggles through the miles-long march, Annis turns inward, seeking comfort from memories of her mother and stories of her African warrior grandmother.

Throughout, she opens herself to a world beyond this world, one teeming with spirits: of earth and water, of myth and history; spirits who nurture and give, and those who manipulate and take.

While Ward leads readers through the descent, this, her fourth novel, is ultimately a story of rebirth and reclamation.

The Blunders by David Walliams

The latest book by national treasure Walliams is a laugh-out-loud caper about a lovable family and is available on October 12th.

Just in time to keep the youngsters entertained during half-term.

Meet the Blunders: Bertie, Betsy, their children, Brutus and Bunny, along with their beloved grandma Old Lady Blunder, and their pet ostrich, Cedric.

An ostrich is not a sensible pet, but then the Blunders are not sensible people.

This family of upper-class twits lives in a crumbling country house named Blunder Hall.

When their home comes under threat, they must embark on a series of comic misadventures to save it.

Vet at the End of the Earth

Animal lovers will adore this memoir of a man who has dedicated his life to caring for the world’s beautiful creatures. The memoir is released on October 5th and you can meet Jonathan at our event on November 1st.

The role of resident vet in the British Overseas Territories of the Falklands, St Helena, Tristan da Cunha and Ascension encompasses the complexities of caring for the world’s oldest land animal – a 200-year-old giant tortoise – and MoD mascots at the Falklands airbase; pursuing mystery creatures and invasive microorganisms; relocating herds of reindeer; and rescuing animals in extraordinarily rugged landscapes, from subtropical cloud forests to volcanic cliff faces.

The Booker Prize 2023 shortlist is out and includes The Bee Sting, Western Lane, Prophet Song, This Other Eden, If I Survive You and Study For Obedience. But have you read any of the winners from the previous 6 years? Can you even remember what they were? Well here they are and we have them in stock on our website!

The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida

Last year’s winner is a magical realism whodunnit set amid Sri Lanka’s civil war.

Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet gay, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office.

His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him. At a time where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest.

But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to try and contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to a hidden cache of photos that will rock Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka’s foremost author delivers a rip-roaring epic, full of mordant wit and disturbing truths.

The Promise

Winner of The Booker Prize 2021 is a story of one family. One promise. One chance to tell a new story.

On a farm outside Pretoria, the Swarts are gathering for Ma’s funeral.

The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for – not least their treatment of the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life.

Salome was to be given her own house, her own land…yet somehow, that vow is carefully ignored.

As each decade passes, and the family assemble again, one question hovers over them.

Can you ever escape the repercussions of a broken promise?

Shuggie Bain

Douglas Stuart’s debut novel and winner in 2020 is an intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive.

Agnes Bain has always expected more from life, dreaming of greater things.

But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and as she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves.

It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different, he is clearly no’ right.

But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.

Girl, Woman, Other

Bernardine Evaristo’s interwoven stories of identity, race, womanhood, and the realities of modern Britain won her the Booker Prize in 2019 (shared that year with Margaret Atwood).

This is Britain as you’ve never read it.
This is Britain as it has never been told.

From Newcastle to Cornwall, from the birth of the twentieth century to the teens of the twenty-first, Girl, Woman, Other follows a cast of twelve characters on their personal journeys through this country and the last hundred years.

They’re each looking for something – a shared past, an unexpected future, a place to call home, somewhere to fit in, a lover, a missed mother, a lost father, even just a touch of hope . . .

The Testaments

Sharing the prize in 2019 was Atwood’s sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale.

When the van door slammed on Offred’s future at the end of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ readers had no way of telling what lay ahead. With ‘The Testaments,’ the wait is over.

Margaret Atwood’s sequel picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead.

What happened to Offred?

The Republic of Gilead is beginning to rot from within. At this crucial moment, two girls with radically different experiences of the regime come face to face with the legendary, ruthless Aunt Lydia. But how far will each go for what she believes?

Milkman

Anna Burn’s funny and compelling novel was the winner in 2018.

In an unnamed city, where to be interesting is dangerous, an eighteen-year-old woman has attracted the unwanted and unavoidable attention of a powerful and frightening older man.

‘Milkman’.

In this community, where suggestions quickly become fact, where gossip and hearsay can lead to terrible consequences, what can she do to stop a rumour once it has started?

Milkman is persistent, the word is spreading, and she is no longer in control . . .

Lincoln in the Bardo

In 2017 the American Civil War was the setting for the Booker winner with George Saunder’s masterpiece.

The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln’s beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy’s body.

From this seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a thrilling, supernatural domain both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself trapped in a transitional realm – called, in Tibetan tradition, the bardo – and as ghosts mingle, squabble, gripe and commiserate, and stony tendrils creep towards the boy, a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie’s soul.

The Booker Longlist for 2023 has been announced. Of the 13 nominations, 5 are debut novels but the remaining 8 have had previous novels published. Here are our suggestions of the nominated author’s books to read before you dive into the Booker longlist.

As You Were by Elaine Feeney

Sinéad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terrifying secret.

No-one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family.

She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie.

But she can’t go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future.

Somehow, Sinéad needs to seize the moment, and maybe then she can learn to be free…

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney is Booker 2023 longlisted.

The Mark and the Void by Paul Murray

What links the Investment Bank of Torabundo, www.myhotswaitress.com (yes, hots with an s, don’t ask), an art heist, a novel called For the Love of a Clown, a four-year-old boy named after TV detective Remington Steele, a lonely French banker, a tiny Pacific island, and a pest control business run by an ex-KGB man? You guessed it . . .

The Mark and the Void is Paul Murray’s madcap new novel of institutional folly, following the success of his wildly original breakout hit, Skippy Dies. While marooned at his banking job in the bewilderingly damp and insular realm known as Ireland, Claude Martingale is approached by a down-on-his-luck author, Paul, looking for his next great subject. Claude finds that his life gets steadily more exciting under Paul’s fictionalizing influence; he even falls in love with a beautiful waitress. But Paul’s plan is not what it seems-and neither is Claude’s employer, the Bank of Torabundo, which inflates through dodgy takeovers and derivatives-trading until-well, you can probably guess how that shakes out.

The Mark and the Void is a stirring examination of the deceptions carried out in the names of art, love and commerce – and is also probably the funniest novel ever written about a financial crisis.

The Bee Sting by Paul Murray’s is Booker 2023 longlisted.

Gathering Evidence by Martin Macinnes

With extinction imminent, researchers visit an exclusive national park to observe one of the last troops of bonobo chimpanzees. Amid unusual behaviour and unexplained deaths, Shel Murray suspects her team is being hunted. Back at home, Shel’s partner is attacked touring their new property.

Amnesiac and quarantined, John is visited by an inscrutable doctor, tending to the still fresh wounds. As his memory returns, John questions not only the assault, but the renewed marks on his body, and the black fungus now growing on the walls.

A sudden event changes everything. Shel is interrogated over the expedition in the park; John throws himself into work, developing new software. Together, with a greater understanding of how much they have to lose, they face a grave threat, something that promises to devour everything.

In Ascension by Martin Macinnes is Booker 2023 longlisted.

Beyond the Sea by Paul Lynch

Hector and Bolivar set sail from their South American fishing village on what they believe to be a routine expedition.

But then a devastating storm casts them adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

With no means of contacting the outside world and no sign of rescue, their only hope lies with one another. Both men must confront the truth about themselves, and the regrets that they have spent a lifetime trying to forget, if they are to survive.

Part gripping story of resilience, part fearless existential parable, Beyond the Sea is a meditation on what it means to be human, in a world that pushes us to the brink.

Prophet Song by Paul Lynch is Booker 2023 longlisted.

The Coming Bad Days by Sarah Bernstein

A woman leaves the man she lives with and moves to a low stone cottage in a university town. She joins an academic department and, high up in her office on the thirteenth floor, begins a research project on the poet Paul Celan. She knows nothing of Celan, still less of her new neighbours or colleagues.

She is in self-imposed exile, hoping to find dignity in her loneliness. Like everywhere, the abiding feeling in the city is one of paranoia.

The weather is deteriorating, the ordinary lives of women are in peril, and an unexplained curfew has been imposed.

But then she meets Clara, a woman who is her exact opposite: decisive, productive and assured. As their friendship grows in intimacy Clara suggests another way of living – until an act of violence threatens to sever everything between them.

Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein is Booker 2023 nominated.

The Lives of Saints by Sebastian Barry

From A Long Long Way, his Booker shortlisted novel about the Irish soldiers who fought for Britain during the First World War to his Donal McCann starring hit play, The Steward of Christendom; from his first Costa Book of the Year winning novel The Secret Scripture to his second, Days Without End, a decade later, Sebastian Barry’s writing career has been as long and varied as it has extraordinary.

Intimate, revealing and generous of heart, these three lectures – written and delivered as part of his three year tenure as the Laureate for Irish fiction – reflect on his life and career so far, and some of the formative moments and people he’s met along the way.

Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry is Booker 2023 longlisted.

The Gift of The Rain by Tan Twan Eng

enang, 1939. Sixteen-year-old Philip Hutton is a loner.

Half English, half Chinese and feeling neither, he discovers a sense of belonging in an unexpected friendship with Hayato Endo, a Japanese diplomat.

Philip shows his new friend around his adored island of Penang, and in return Endo trains him in the art and discipline of aikido.

But such friendship comes at a terrible price.

Tan Twan Eng’s masterful debut novel is a haunting and unforgettable story of betrayal, barbaric cruelty, steadfast courage and enduring love.

The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng is Booker 2023 nominated.

Stay With Me by Ayobami Adebayo

Yejide is hoping for a miracle, for a child. It is all her husband wants, all her mother-in-law wants, and she has tried everything. But when her relatives insist upon a new wife, it is too much for Yejide to bear.

Unravelling against the social and political turbulence of 1980s Nigeria, Stay With Me is a story of the fragility of married love, the undoing of family, the power of grief, and the all-consuming bonds of motherhood.

It is a tale about the desperate attempts we make to save ourselves, and those we love, from heartbreak.

A Spell of Good Things by Ayobami Adebayo is Booker 2023 longlisted.

We hope you had a great summer and got lots of reading in! We are looking forward to lots of new releases to share with you in the coming months. In the meantime, here’s what our booksellers read in August. We hope to inspire you!

Alchemy by S.J. Parris

Prague, 1588.

A COURT IN TURMOIL
The Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II, wants to expand the boundaries of human knowledge, and his court is a haven for scientists, astrologers and alchemists. His abiding passion is the feverish search for the philosopher’s stone and thus immortality. The Catholic Church fears he has pushed too far, into the forbidden realm of heresy – and the greatest powers in Christendom are concerned about the imperial line of succession.

A MURDERED ALCHEMIST
Giordano Bruno is sent to his court by Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth I’s spymaster. His task: to contact the famous English alchemist and mystic John Dee, another of Walsingham’s spies. But Bruno’s arrival in Prague coincides with the brutal murder of a rival alchemist – and John Dee himself has disappeared.

AN UNFORGIVING ENEMY
Ordered by the emperor to find the killer, Bruno’s investigations bring him face to face with an old enemy from the Inquisition. But could the real danger lie elsewhere? Amidst the jostling factions at court and the religious tensions brewing in the city, Bruno has to track down a murderer as elusive as the elixir of life itself.

Nightbloom by Peace Adzo Medie

Growing up in the same Ghanaian town, Selasi and Akorfa are more than just cousins – they’re best friends. The girls share everything: whispered late-night conversations, dreams for the future, secrets.

But as they enter their teens, Selasi begins to change, construction a wall around herself designed to keep everyone away. Soon, Akorfa no longer recognises her sullen, withdrawn cousin.

It will take many years for their paths to cross again. Their lives may have drifted in different directions, but Selasi and Akorfa haven’t forgotten the closeness they once shared. Akorfa now works in international development as she navigates the challenges of life as a Black woman and mother in the US; Selasi is a successful restaurateur running the hottest spot in Accra. And when an incident at her restaurant puts Selasi in danger, the women must overcome their differences and face the truth of what happened all those years ago, even if others would prefer them to remain silent.

Nightbloom is an irresistible story about female friendship, about the relationships that shape us and the people we never quite leave behind.

The Club by Ellery Lloyd

here’s no place like Home . . .

The Home Group is a collection of ultra-exclusive private members’ clubs and a global phenomenon, and the opening of its most ambitious project yet – Island Home, a forgotten island transformed into the height of luxury – is billed as the celebrity event of the decade.

But as the first guests arrive, the weekend soon proves deadly.

It turns out that even the most beautiful people can keep the ugliest secrets and, in a world where reputation is everything…

They’ll do anything to keep it.

If your name’s on the list, you’re not getting out . . .

Talking To Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell

The routine traffic stop that ends in tragedy.

The spy who spends years undetected at the highest levels of the Pentagon.

The false conviction of Amanda Knox.

Why do we so often get other people wrong?

Why is it so hard to detect a lie, read a face or judge a stranger’s motives?

Using stories of deceit and fatal errors to cast doubt on our strategies for dealing with the unknown.

Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual adventure into the darker side of human nature, where strangers are never simple and misreading them can have disastrous consequences.

Still Life by Sarah Winman

From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster.

1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening. Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.

Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses’ mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades.

Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful novel about beauty, love, family and fate.

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

panning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning – and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch – known as Big Ammachi – will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.

Imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

Death of a Book Seller by Alice Slater

A BOOKSHOP. A TRUE CRIME CASE. A DEADLY FRIENDSHIP.

THE UNMISSABLE DEBUT THRILLER.

Roach – bookseller, loner and true crime obsessive – is not interested in making friends. She has all the company she needs in her serial killer books, murder podcasts and her pet snail, Bleep.

That is, until Laura joins the bookshop.

Smelling of roses, with her cute literary tote bags and beautiful poetry, she’s everyone’s new favourite bookseller. But beneath the shiny veneer, Roach senses a darkness within Laura, the same darkness Roach possesses.

As Roach’s curiosity blooms into morbid obsession, it becomes clear that she is prepared to infiltrate Laura’s life at any cost.

The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker

When her city falls to the Greeks, Briseis’s old life is shattered. She is transformed from queen to captive, from free woman to slave, awarded to the god-like warrior Achilles as a prize of war.

And she’s not alone.

On the same day, and on many others in the course of a long and bitter war, innumerable women have been wrested from their homes and flung to the fighters.

The Trojan War is known as a man’s story: a quarrel between men over a woman, stolen from her home and spirited across the sea.

But what of the other women in this story, silenced by history? What words did they speak when alone with each other, in the laundry, at the loom, when laying out the dead?

Chain Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Welcome to Chain-Gang All-Stars, the popular and highly controversial programme inside America’s private prison system.

In packed arenas, live-streamed by millions, prisoners compete as gladiators for the ultimate prize: their freedom.

Fan favourites Loretta Thurwar and Hamara ‘Hurricane Staxxx’ Stacker are teammates and lovers.

Thurwar is nearing the end of her time on the circuit, free in just a few matches, a fact she carries as heavily as her lethal hammer.

As she prepares for her final encounters, as protestors gather at the gates, and as the programme’s corporate owners stack the odds against her – will the price be simply too high?