Inspire

Put a spring in your step this weekend! We have something for everyone in these 6 books all featuring clocks in the title. Just don’t forget to wind yours forward!

The Water Clock

The Water Clock is the first in a series of stories following local reporter Philip Dryden and is a sinister murder mystery set in the bleak snowbound landscape of the Cambridgeshire Fens,

A car is winched from a frozen river. Inside, locked in a block of ice, is a man’s mutilated body. Later, high on Ely Cathedral, a second body is found, grotesquely riding a stone gargoyle. The decaying corpse has been there more than thirty years. When forensic evidence links both victims to one awful event in 1966, local reporter Philip Dryden knows he’s on to a great story. But as his investigations uncover some disturbing truths, they also point towards one terrifying foggy night in the Fens two years ago. A night that changed Dryden’s life forever…

The Water Clock by Jim Kelly – email orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk to get your copy.

Red Clocks

America has changed. For women, it has changed for the worse.

Ro, a single high-school teacher, is desperate to become a mother. But with IVF now illegal – along with abortion and other reproductive rights – parenthood looks increasingly unlikely for her. Her best friend Susan is trapped in a failing marriage with two children, her star student Mattie is unwillingly pregnant and Gin, an outcast offering other women natural remedies, has become the centre of a modern-day witch-hunt.

With warmth, wit and ferocious inventiveness, Red Clocks shows us an all-too plausible near-future: like The Handmaid’s Tale, it is a call to arms, set to become a modern classic.

Red Clocks by Leni Zumas – email orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk to get your copy.

The Baghdad Clock

This is a heart-rending tale of two girls growing up in war-torn Baghdad

Baghdad, 1991. The Gulf War is raging. Two girls, hiding in an air raid shelter, tell stories to keep the fear and the darkness at bay, and a deep friendship is born. But as the bombs continue to fall and friends begin to flee the country, the girls must face the fact that their lives will never be the same again.

This poignant debut novel reveals just what it’s like to grow up in a city that is slowly disappearing in front of your eyes, and how in the toughest times, children can build up the greatest resilience.

The Baghdad Clock by Shahad Al Rawi – email orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk to get your copy.

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart

This is a thriller about love, loss and the memories we hold close to our hearts.

George Foss never thought he’d see her again, but on a late-August night in Boston, there she is, in his local bar, Jack’s Tavern.

When George first met her, she was an eighteen-year-old college freshman from Sweetgum, Florida. She and George became inseparable in their first fall semester, so George was devastated when he got the news that she had committed suicide over Christmas break. But, as he stood in the living room of the girl’s grieving parents, he realized the girl in the photo on their mantelpiece – the one who had committed suicide – was not his girlfriend. Later, he discovered the true identity of the girl he had loved – and of the things she may have done to escape her past.

Now, twenty years later, she’s back, and she’s telling George that he’s the only one who can help her…

The Girl with a Clock for a Heart by Peter Swanson – email orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk to get your copy.

Clock Dance

Willa Drake can count on one hand the defining moments of her life: her mother’s disappearance when she was just a child, being proposed to at an airport at the age of twenty-one, the accident that would leave her a widow in her forties. Each time, Willa ended up on a path laid out for her by others.

So when she receives a phone call from a stranger informing her that her son’s ex-girlfriend has been shot, she drops everything and flies across the country. The spur-of-the moment decision to look after this woman and her nine-year-old daughter leads Willa into uncharted territory and the eventual realisation that it’s never too late to choose your own path.

Clock Dance is a bittersweet novel of family and self-discovery.

Clock Dance by Anne Tyler – email orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk to get your copy.

The Bone Clocks

Run away, one drowsy summer’s afternoon, with Holly Sykes: wayward teenager, broken-hearted rebel and unwitting pawn in a titanic, hidden conflict.

Over six decades, the consequences of a moment’s impulse unfold, drawing an ordinary woman into a world far beyond her imagining. And as life in the near future turns perilous, the pledge she made to a stranger may become the key to her family’s survival . . .

The Bone Clocks by David Mitchell – email orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk to get your copy.

Since Jonathan Swift, Ireland has brought us hundreds of amazing Irish authors. This St.Patrick’s Day we are raising a glass to a few of our favourites here at Parade’s End Books.

Roddy Doyle

We have been fans of Roddy Doyle ever since The Commitments. His humour and effective use of dialogue have the reader captured within the first few pages.

In his latest novel Love, we join old friends Davy and Joe as they meet up one summer’s evening and decide to revisit the haunts if their youth.

As they make their way through the Dublin pubs and one pint turns to five, the old friends, now married and with grown-up children, discover that their lives have taken seemingly similar paths. But Joe has a secret he has to tell Davy, and Davy a grief he wants to keep from Joe. Both are not the men they used to be.

With the ghosts of Dublin entwining around them – the pubs, the parties, the broken hearts and bungled affairs – the men find themselves face-to-face with the realities of friendship.

The book observes that some of the best moments in life are often the most mundane and will leave you reflecting on those moments of your own.

Love by Roddy Doyle – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

Anna Burns

All Anna Burns novels draw on the author’s background in conflict-ridden Belfast but it is her third novel, Milkman, which won the Booker prize in 2018 which most readers will know her for.

The Milkman is set in an unnamed city during an unnamed era and the lack of character names gives it an almost dystopian, futuristic quality. The narrator is a teenager, simply known as “middle sister” who is in a relationship with a much older man whilst also attracting the attention of a senior paramilitary figure – the Milkman.

Middle sister attempts to keep her mother from discovering her maybe-boyfriend and to keep everyone in the dark about her encounter with Milkman. But when first brother-in-law sniffs out her struggle, and rumours start to swell, middle sister becomes ‘interesting’. The last thing she ever wanted to be. To be interesting is to be noticed and to be noticed is dangerous.

Milkman is a tale of gossip and hearsay, silence and deliberate deafness. It is the story of inaction with enormous consequences.

Milkman by Anna Burns – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

Colm Tóibín

As with most novels turned into movies, Colm Tóibín is best known for Brooklyn but this prolific writer has explored many themes in his books, all of which tell compelling tales of life and identity.

His latest novel, The Magician, is no exception. It is a fictionalised biography explores the life and times of the exiled German Nobel prize winning author Thomas Mann.

Mann’s life was filled with great acclaim and contradiction. He would find himself on the wrong side of history in the First World War, cheerleading the German army, but have a clear vision of the future in the second, anticipating the horrors of Nazism.

He would have six children and keep his homosexuality hidden; he was a man forever connected to his family and yet bore witness to the ravages of suicide. He would write some of the greatest works of European literature, and win the Nobel Prize, but would never return to the country that inspired his creativity.

Through one life, Colm Tóibín tells the breathtaking story of the twentieth century.

The Magician by Colm Tóibín – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

Emma Donoghue

Emma Donoghue’s novels are set in a variety of times and places from the French Riviera in Akin, to Victorian London in The Sealed Letter, to 19th century York.

In The Pull of the Stars, the author returns to her native Ireland to tell the story of a Dublin nurse during the 1918 flu pandemic.

Expectant mothers have come down with an unfamiliar flu and are quarantined together. Into Julia’s regimented world step two outsiders: Doctor Kathleen Lynn, on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney.

Together, these three women work tirelessly to try and save the mothers and their babies, not always with the happy ending they hope for.

Julia also learns about the hardships the women have had to endure in a world where they are told they are not good wives if they haven’t borne at least twelve children.

In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over the course of three days, these women change each other’s lives in unexpected ways. They lose patients to this baffling pandemic, but they also shepherd new life into a fearful world. With tireless tenderness and humanity, carers and mothers alike somehow do their impossible work.

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

John Boyne

John Boyne is probably best known for The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas but he has written over 20 novels with a variety of themes.

His novels have tackled issues on homosexuality, transgender, the Catholic faith and persecution, all handled with his characteristic humour and razor-sharp observation.

His latest novel, The Echo Chamber follows the Cleverley family on a journey of discovery through the jungle of modern living. Along the way they will learn how volatile, how outraged, how unforgiving the world can be when you step from the proscribed path.

They are just one tweet away from disaster and destroying their carefully curated reputations forever.

The Echo Chamber is a satiric helter-skelter, a dizzying downward spiral of action and consequence, poised somewhere between farce, absurdity and oblivion. To err is maybe to be human but to really foul things up you only need a phone.

The Echo Chamber by John Boyne – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

Marian Keyes

Marian Keyes is a prolific writer who is much loved the world over for her works pf popular fiction and her unique sense of humour.

Although written in a light and humorous style, her novels cover themes including alcoholism, depression, addiction, cancer, bereavement, and domestic violence. The topics are handled sensitively through relatable characters and dialogue.

Grown Ups is about three very different women tied to three very different men, where every family occasion is a party – until the day the secrets spill out.

In the subsequent aftermath, the six adults find themselves wondering if it is finally time to grow up.

Grown Ups by Marian Keyes – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney rose to fame after her novel Normal People became a hit TV series in 2020 followed by her first novel Conversations with Friends also hitting the small screen in 2022.

Her third novel, Beautiful World Where Are You follows novelist Alice and her best friend Eileen.

Alice meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young – but life is catching up with them. They desire each other, they delude each other, they worry about sex and friendship and the times they live in.

It’s a story of friendship, love and missed opportunities. Will they find a way to believe in a beautiful world?

Beautiful World Where Are You by Sally Rooney – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

Anne Enright

Anne Enright holds the accolade of first Laureate for Irish Fiction and also won the Man Booker Prize for her novel The Gathering.

Her 2020 novel, Actress is a moving story about fame, sexual power, and a daughter’s search to understand her mother’s hidden truths.

This is the story of Irish theatre legend Katherine O’Dell, as told by her daughter Norah. It tells of early stardom in Hollywood, of highs and lows on the stages of Dublin and London’s West End. Katherine’s life is a grand performance, with young Norah watching from the wings.

But this romance between mother and daughter cannot survive Katherine’s past, or the world’s damage. As Norah uncovers her mother’s secrets, she acquires a few of her own. Then, fame turns to infamy when Katherine decides to commit a bizarre crime.

Actress by Anne Enright – available in paperback in store or orders@paradesendbooks.co.uk

This Mother’s Day give your Mum the gift of a book. These 11 books will transport your Mum to another world until it’s back to the normal routine on Monday.

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?

The Pharmacist by Rachelle Atalla – available in paperback £8.99

If I told you that I’d killed a man with a glance, would you wait to hear the rest? The why, the how, what happened next? Monster. Man-hater. Murderess. Forget everything you’ve been told about Medusa. Internationally bestselling author Jessie Burton flips the script in this astonishing retelling of Greek myth, illuminating the woman behind the legend at last.

Exiled to a far-flung island after being abused by powerful Gods, Medusa has little company other than the snakes that adorn her head instead of hair. Haunted by the memories of a life before everything was stolen from her, she has no choice but to make peace with her present: Medusa the Monster. But when the charmed and beautiful Perseus arrives on the island, her lonely existence is blown apart, unleashing desire, love… and betrayal.

Adapted from the hardback illustrated by Olivia Lomenech-Gill, this paperback edition is perfect for readers who loved Circe and Ariadne, as Medusa comes alive in a new version of the story that history set in stone long ago.

Medusa by Jessie Burton – available in paperback £8.99

New stories of love and mischief from the Sunday Times bestselling author

They explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.

They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales.

At the heart of the collection is a stunning sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love — and what comes after.

The glorious range of Atwood’s creativity and humanity is on full beam in these tales, which by turns delight, illuminate and quietly devastate.

Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood – available in hardback £22.00

There is a world hidden underneath this great city…

The London Silver Vaults – for well over a century, the largest collection of silver for sale in the world. It has more locks than the Bank of England and more cameras than a celebrity punch-up. Not somewhere you can murder someone and vanish without a trace – only that’s what happened.

The disappearing act, the reports of a blinding flash of light and memory loss amongst the witnesses all make this a case for Detective Constable Peter Grant and the Special Assessment Unit.

Alongside their boss DCI Thomas Nightingale, the SAU find themselves embroiled in a mystery that encompasses London’s tangled history, foreign lands and, most terrifying of all, the North!

And Peter must solve this case soon because back home his partner Beverley is expecting twins any day now. But what he doesn’t know is that he’s about to encounter something – and somebody – that nobody ever expects…

Amongst our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch – available in paperback £9.99

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?

Babel by R.F. Kuang – available in hardback £16.99

When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a mysterious book containing details from his own life among its pages, it leads him on a quest unlike any other.

Following the clues inside, he is guided to a masquerade ball, a dangerous secret club, and finally to an ancient library hidden far beneath the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians – it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes across time, and of stories whispered by the dead.

But when the library is threatened, Zachary must race through its twisting tunnels and sweetly soaked shores, searching for the end of his story.

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern – available in paperback £9.99

Will dark magic claim their home?
Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s too kind-hearted to collect his debts. They face poverty, until Miryem hardens her own heart and takes up his work in their village. Her success creates rumours she can turn silver into gold, which attract the fairy king of winter himself. He sets her an impossible challenge – and if she fails, she’ll die. Yet if she triumphs, it may mean a fate worse than death. And in her desperate efforts to succeed, Miryem unwittingly spins a web which draws in the unhappy daughter of a lord.

Irina’s father schemes to wed her to the tsar – he will pay any price to achieve this goal. However, the dashing tsar is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of mortals and winter alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and Irina embark on a quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power and love.

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik – available in paperback £9.99

When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a strange book hidden in his university library it leads him on a quest unlike any other. Its pages entrance him with their tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities and nameless acolytes, but they also contain something impossible: a recollection from his own childhood.

Determined to solve the puzzle of the book, Zachary follows the clues he finds on the cover – a bee, a key and a sword. They guide him to a masquerade ball, to a dangerous secret club, and finally through a magical doorway created by the fierce and mysterious Mirabel. This door leads to a subterranean labyrinth filled with stories, hidden far beneath the surface of the earth.

When the labyrinth is threatened, Zachary must race with Mirabel, and Dorian, a handsome barefoot man with shifting alliances, through its twisting tunnels and crowded ballrooms, searching for the end of his story.

What will be the cost of their ambitions? And will they be able to escape the legendary destructive power a mermaid is said to possess?

The Mermaid and Mrs.Hancock by Imogen Hermes Gowar – available in paperback £9.99

Woman. Witch. Myth. Mortal. Outcast. Lover. Destroyer. Survivor. CIRCE.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child – not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens the gods, she is banished to the island of Aiaia where she hones her occult craft, casting spells, gathering strange herbs and taming wild beasts.

Yet a woman who stands alone will never be left in peace for long – and among her island’s guests is an unexpected visitor: the mortal Odysseus, for whom Circe will risk everything. So Circe sets forth her tale, a vivid, mesmerizing epic of family rivalry, love and loss – the defiant, inextinguishable song of woman burning hot and bright through the darkness of a man’s world.

Circe by Madeline Miller – available in paperback £9.99

Listen to my history. My adventures are worth hearing. I have lived many lifetimes and been loved by emperors, kings and thieves. I have survived kidnap and assault. Revolution and two world wars. But this is also a love story. And the story of what we will do for those we love.

In Leonardo da Vinci’s studio, bursting with genius imagination, towering commissions and needling patrons, as well as discontented muses, friends and rivals, sits the painting of the Mona Lisa. For five hundred tumultuous years, amid a whirlwind of power, money, intrigue, the portrait of Lisa del Giocondo is sought after and stolen. Over the centuries, few could hear her voice, but now she is ready to tell her own story, in her own words – a tale of rivalry, murder and heartbreak. Weaving through the years, she takes us from the dazzling world of Florentine studios to the French courts at Fontainebleau and Versailles, and into the Twentieth Century.

I, Mona Lisa is a deliciously vivid, compulsive and illuminating story about the lost and forgotten women throughout history.

I, Mona Lisa by Natasha Solomons – available in paperback £9.99

Nora’s life has been going from bad to worse. Then at the stroke of midnight on her last day on earth she finds herself transported to a library. There she is given the chance to undo her regrets and try out each of the other lives she might have lived. Which raises the ultimate question: with infinite choices, what is the best way to live?

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig – available in paperback £9.99

Welcome to Parade’s End Books. Step inside, pull up a chair, grab a coffee. Ours is a place where you can make a new acquaintance or rediscover an old friend, as long as they are between the covers of a book.

Visit our shop on Ham Parade (at the end – hence the name!) where you will find everything from new fiction, classics, non-fiction, cookery, children’s and young adult. If you can’t find what you are looking for, let us know and we will try our best to get it for you.

If you’re looking for recommendations for your next read, our well-read staff will gladly assist you and if you’re looking for that perfect gift, we also sell gift paper and greetings cards.

Come and help us let you fall in love with books.