From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at forty-five she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians. On the way, she discovers a story that stretches from East to West, from the Civil War to Wounded Knee and Vietnam, and finds the balm to heal her wild and wounded soul.
One of Harrison's most ambitious novels, Dalva explores an extraordinary family through the strong, engaging voice of an unforgettable woman, confirming Harrison as one of America's most memorable writers.
When I was in eighth grade my sister helped kill another girl.
For the Oliviera family - mum Carol, daughters Angel and Marie - autumn 2009 in the once-prosperous beach town of Ashaway, Rhode Island is the worst of times. Money is tight, Carol can't stay away from unsuitable men, Angel's world is shattered when she learns her long-time boyfriend Myles has been cheating on her with classmate Birdy, and Marie is left to fend for herself. As Angel and Birdy, both consumed by the intensity of their feelings for Myles, careen towards a collision both tragic and inevitable, the loyalties of Carol and Marie will be tested in ways they could never have foreseen.
Stewart O'Nan's expert hand has crafted a crushing and propulsive novel about sisters, mothers and daughters, and the desperate ecstasies of love and the terrible things we do for it. Both swoony and haunting, Ocean State is a masterful work by one of the great storytellers of everyday American life.
The international-bestelling saga of a large and colourful Jewish family buffeted from quiet respectability-of-sorts in 1871 to the Nazi death camps of 1945
THERE'S NOT ENOUGH DATA IN THE WORLD TO PREDICT WHO WILL MAKE YOUR HEART BEAT FASTER...
It's high time for Stella Lane to settle down and find a husband - or so her mother tells her. This is no easy task for a wealthy, successful woman like Stella, who also happens to have Asperger's. Analyzing data is easy; handling the awkwardness of one-on-one dates is hard. To overcome her lack of dating experience, Stella decides to hire a male escort to teach her how to be a good girlfriend.
Faced with mounting bills, Michael decides to use his good looks and charm to make extra cash on the side. He has a very firm no repeat customer policy, but he's tempted to bend that rule when Stella approaches him with an unconventional proposal.
The more time they spend together, the harder Michael falls for this disarming woman with a beautiful mind, and Stella discovers that love defies logic.
'Original and sexy and sensitive' - Roxane Gay
'Steamy hot and sweet at the same time' - Guardian
'An absolute delight... Equal parts endearing and (very) steamy' - Buzzfeed, 30 Best Summer Books
Sunday Times bestseller and The Times #1 bestseller
A Between The Covers Book Club Pick 2023
Longlisted for the Booker Prize 2019
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2019
Winner of the 2019 LA Times Award for Best Crime Thriller
Capital Crime Debut Author of the Year 2019
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'A literary sensation'
Guardian
'A bombshell of a book... Sharp, explosive, hilarious'
New York Times
'Glittering and funny... A stiletto slipped between the ribs and through the left ventricle of the heart' Financial Times
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When Korede's dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what's expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This'll be the third boyfriend Ayoola's dispatched in, quote, self-defence and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede's long been in love with him, and isn't prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other...
The international bestseller that has captivated Europe
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In an Italian monastery, an infamous sculptor lays on his death bed.
During Mimo's final hours, he reveals his life story: his impoverished childhood, his unlikely rise to fame and most importantly, his meeting with Viola, the daughter of a powerful aristocratic family.
Mimo and Viola are instantly drawn to one another. Together, they traverse the unrest of the twentieth century. While Mimo becomes a celebrated artist, Viola fights to claim her education and independence.
Over the decades, they will lose and find each other, but never will they give up on the love they share.
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Readers around the world love Watching Over Her
'One of the most beautiful, best-written books I have ever read'
'Something truly special'
'Reading this book is pure joy'
'An authentic masterpiece'
'It is a long time since I have been so impressed by a novel'
From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial new epic of love, faith and medicine, set in Kerala, South India.
'A novel you can read in one sitting that will stay with you forever' Karen Russell
'Very funny, very sad, very sharp, and completely delightful' Elif Batuman
The Bradford-Shmulkin family is falling apart. A very modern blend of Russian, Jewish, Korean, and New England WASP, they love each other deeply but the pressures of life in an unstable America are fraying their bonds. There's Daddy, a struggling, cash-thirsty editor whose Russian heritage gives him a surprising new currency in the upside-down world of 21st century geopolitics; his wife, Anne Mom, a progressive, underfunded blue blood from Boston who's barely holding the household together; their son, Dylan, whose blond hair and Mayflower lineage give him pride of place in the newly forming American political order; and, above all, the young Vera, half-Jewish, half-Korean, and wholly original.
Observant, sensitive, and always writing down new vocabulary words, Vera wants only three things in life: a friend at school; Daddy and Anne Mom to stay together; and to meet her birth mother, Mom Mom, who will at last tell Vera the secret of who she really is and how to ensure love's survival in this great, mad, imploding world.
Both biting and deeply moving, Vera, or Faith is a boldly imagined story of family and country told through the clear and wondrous eyes of a child. With a nod to What Maisie Knew, Henry James's classic story of parents, children, and the dark ironies of a rapidly transforming society, Gary Shteyngart's newest novel is among his best and shows why, in the words of Jonathan Safran Foer, he is 'a national treasure'.
When Anita Naakka jumps in front of an oncoming train, her daughter, Norma, is left alone with the secret they have spent their lives hiding: Norma has supernatural hair, sensitive to the slightest changes in her mood--and the moods of those around her--moving of its own accord, corkscrewing when danger is near. And so it is her hair that alerts her, while she talks with a strange man at her mother's funeral, that her mother may not have taken her own life. Setting out to reconstruct Anita's final months--sifting through puzzling cell phone records, bank statements, video files--Norma begins to realise that her mother knew more about her hair's powers than she let on: a sinister truth beyond Norma's imagining.
'I was transported every time I picked up this highly imaginative story'
'Everything I love about historical fiction'
'This is historical fiction at its best'
'Good to see female characters having strong roles'
'I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys history, literature and a "jolly good read"'
REBELLION. RETRIBUTION. REDEMPTION.
England, 1685. Decades after the end of the civil war, the country is once again divided when Charles II's illegitimate son, the Protestant Duke of Monmouth, arrives in Dorset to incite rebellion against his Catholic uncle.
Armed only with pitchforks, Monmouth's army is quickly defeated by King James II's superior forces and charged with high treason. Those found guilty will be hanged, drawn and quartered.
As Dorset braces for carnage, the redoubtable Lady Jayne Harrier and her enigmatic son, assisted by the reclusive daughter of a local magistrate, contrive ways to save men from the gallows.
Compelling and powerful, The Players is a story of guile, deceit and compassion during the dark days of The Bloody Assizes. Secrets are kept and surprising friendships formed in a dangerous gamble to thwart a brutal king's thirst for vengeance...
'Fascinating ... told with the masterful skill of a true storyteller' Anne O'Brien
'An immersive joy that will stand the test of time' Elizabeth Chadwick
'If you're honest, you'll admit that you've raised George or dated George or, worse, you are George' WASHINGTON POST
'This book is a knockout' MARIA SEMPLE
'An excellent novel...as convincing as it is moving' ADELLE WALDMAN
'A must-read tragicomedy for our times' SHARLENE TEO
'Perceptive, funny and tender' ALISON ESPACH
We all know a George. He's the kind of guy who's brimming with potential but incapable of following through; he doesn't know if he's in love with his girlfriend, but he certainly likes having her around; he's distant from - but still reliant on - his mother; he swears he'll finish his novel one day.
Sure, you might find him disappointing. But no one is more disappointed in George than George himself.
As funny as it is astute and as singular as it is universal, The Book of George is a deft, unexpectedly moving never-coming-of-age tale and a portrait of one man, but also countless others.
A TOP 12 BOOK OF THE YEAR PICK IN THE TIMES AND SUNDAY TIMES
THE BELLETRIST BOOK CLUB PICK FOR NOVEMBER 2024
'This book is magic. It's all I ever needed' LENA DUNHAM
Eve Babitz died on December 17, 2021. Found in the wrack, ruin and filth of her apartment, a stack of boxes packed by her mother decades before. The boxes were pristine, the seals of duct tape unbroken. Inside, a lost world, centred on a two-story rental in a down-at-heel section of Hollywood in the sixties and seventies.
7406 Franklin Avenue was the making of one great American writer: Joan Didion, a mystery behind her dark glasses and cool expression, an enigma inside her storied marriage to John Gregory Dunne. Franklin Avenue was also the breaking and then the remaking - and thus the true making - of another great American writer: Eve Babitz, goddaughter of Igor Stravinsky, nude of Marcel Duchamp, consort of Jim Morrison (among many, many others), a woman who burned so hot she finally almost burned herself alive. Didion and Babitz formed a complicated alliance, a friendship that went bad, amity turning to enmity.
With deftness and skill, journalist Lili Anolik uses Babitz, Babitz's brilliance of observation, Babitz's incisive intelligence and, most of all, Babitz's diary-like letters - letters found in those sealed boxes, letters so intimate you don't read them so much as breathe them - as the key to unlocking Didion.
'Like a hairier Buffy The Vampire Slayer, a big-hearted novel about finding your "pack" in unexpected places' Marie Claire, Best Books of the Year
Brian, an aimless slacker in his twenties, has been struggling to manage his transition to adulthood almost as much as his monthly transitions to a werewolf. Really, he's not great at the whole werewolf thing, and his recent murderous snaccidents have got his best friends Nik and Darby suspicious, and caught the attention of Tyler, a hot were-entrepreneur with a start-up idea for the mythological wellness market.
Tyler wants Brian to be part of his vision, but as the two get closer - and Brian drifts further from his friends - it becomes clear that Tyler's plans are much more nefarious than a little lupine enlightenment...
'Vividly conjures the excitement of Paris' RUTH HOGAN, bestselling author of THE KEEPER OF LOST THINGS
'Beguiling' The Times
Can she escape the darkness of her past in the City of Light?
It's 1959 and time for eighteen-year-old Sophie's real life to start. Her existence in the village of Poynsdean, Sussex, with her austere foster-father and his frustrated wife is suffocating.
She dreams of escape to Paris, the wartime home her French mother fled before her birth. Getting there will take spirit and ingenuity, but it will be her chance to uncover the mystery of her family background, and, perhaps, to find a place where she can finally belong.
When Sophie eventually arrives in the Paris arising from the ashes of the war, it's both everything she imagined, and not at all what she expected...
'Original, page turning, wonderful. I loved it.' KATIE FFORDE
'A delightful, funny, poignant story suffused with the atmosphere of Paris on the cusp of the Sixties' RACHEL HORE
A thrilling novel that explores private fears, public hysteria and the art of music, by one of America's most important living writers. 'Orfeo' is inspired by the fascinating real-life account of Steve Kurts, the bio-artist wrongly arrested for terrorism by the FBI and prosecuted by the American Government for four years. In a story of one man running for his life, Richard Powers shows how all of us are perilously close to crossing the blurred boundary that separates state security and state persecution. Longlisted for the 2014 Booker Prize.
Lost in the woods, two boys form a bond - one that will last a lifetime of broken hearts, broken bones and broken dreams. The new novel by critically acclaimed Craig Davidson is at once a tough, visceral story of masculinity and a powerfully sensitive elegy to childhood friendship
'Funny about death, real about anxiety, witty about the things that worry us the most' Emma Gannon, author of Olive
'So fundamentally kind that you can feel the warmth coming off each page' Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days
Gilda cannot stop thinking about death. Desperate for relief from her anxious mind and alienated from her repressive family, she responds to a flyer for free therapy at a local church and finds herself abruptly hired to replace the deceased receptionist Grace. It's not the most obvious job - she's queer and an atheist for starters - and so in between trying to learn mass, hiding her new maybe-girlfriend and conducting an amateur investigation into Grace's death, Gilda must avoid revealing the truth of her mortifying existence.
A blend of warmth, deadpan humour, and pitch-perfect observations about the human condition, Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead is a crackling exploration of what it takes to stay afloat in a world where your expiration - and the expiration of those you love - is the only certainty.
Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth's first life forms - what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.
Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency's work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.
'Utterly compelling' The Times, Books of the Year
'Profound and thrilling' New Statesman, Books of the Year
'A far-reaching epic' Financial Times, Books of the Year
