Hay Festival 2025

The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus, the Greek king of Ithaca, on his way home from fighting in the Trojan War.His journey takes ten years — on the high seas, he encounters the cyclops, the lotus-eaters, the alluring sirens as well as the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece that readers have come to know and love.Shipwrecks, battles, monsters, threats natural and supernatural — Odysseus must keep his wits if he is to reach home safely.The epic final chapter to Stephen Fry's outstanding retellings of the Greek myths.

Why do some people become radicalized? Who is most susceptible to ideological thinking? Can we unchain our minds from toxic dogmas?Drawing on her groundbreaking research, Dr Leor Zmigrod uncovers the hidden mechanisms driving our beliefs and behaviours. She uses the powerful tools of neuroscience to show that our political beliefs are not transient thoughts in our minds, divorced from our bodies — ideologies actually change our neural architecture, our cells. For instance, she demonstrates how a simple card sorting game can reveal your entire approach to life. Cognitive rigidity in such tasks — struggling to adapt to new rules — mirrors the rigidity with which you cling to social and political ideologies. While some individuals are more susceptible to dogmatic thinking than others, all of us can strive to be more flexible.The Ideological Brain examines the processes happening inside each of us and teaches readers to spot rigid thinking in themselves and others. We need to learn to avoid black-and-white thinking and embrace ambiguity. We need to recognize our ability to resist irrational rules and authority.The Ideological Brain is essential reading in today’s polarized and polarizing world. Regardless of your political stance, this book will challenge you to reassess your convictions — and what they are doing to your brain.

"By normal, you mean like you? A slag with a saviour complex?"When academic Nadia is disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, she decides to make a getaway — accepting a UN job in Iraq. Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues.But then Nadia meets Sara, a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen, and she is struck by how similar their stories are. Both from a Muslim background, both feisty and opinionated, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines, Sara and Nadia immediately connect and a powerful friendship forms. When Sara confesses a secret, Nadia is forced to make a difficult choice.A bitingly original, wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion, radicalism, and the decisions we make in pursuit of connection and belonging, Fundamentally upends and explores a defining controversy of our age with heart, complexity and humour — delivered by one of the most fearless and talented new voices in contemporary fiction.

At the heart of Is a River Alive? is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings, who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law. Macfarlane takes the reader on a mind-expanding global journey into the history, futures, people and places of the ancient, urgent concept.Around the world, rivers are dying from pollution, drought and damming. But a powerful movement is also underway to recognize the lives and the rights of rivers, and to re-animate our relationships with these vast, mysterious presences whose landscapes we share. The young "rights of nature" movement has lit up activists, artists, law-makers and politicians across six continents—and become the focus for revolutionary thinking about rivers in particular.The book flows like water, from the mountains to the sea, over three major journeys. The first is to northern Ecuador, where a miraculous cloud-forest and its rivers are threatened with destruction by Canadian gold-mining. The second is to the wounded rivers, creeks and lagoons of southern India, where a desperate battle to save the lives of these waterbodies is underway. The third is to northeastern Quebec, where a spectacular wild river—the Mutehekau or Magpie—is being defended from death by damming in a river-rights campaign led by an extraordinary Innu poet and leader called Rita Mestokosho.From the celebrated writer, observer and naturalist Robert Macfarlane comes a brilliant, perspective-shifting new book, which answers a resounding "yes" to the question of its title. Is a River Alive? is at once a literary work of art, a rallying cry and a catalyst for change. It is a book that will open hearts, spark debates and challenge perspectives. A clarion call to re-centre rivers in our stories, law and politics, it invites us to radically re-imagine not only rivers but life itself. At the heart of this vital, beautiful book is the recognition that our fate flows with that of rivers—and always has.

An enchanting new tale about three characters living along two rivers, all under the shadow of one of the greatest epic poems of all time.In the ancient city of Nineveh, on the bank of the River Tigris, King Ashurbanipal of Mesopotamia, erudite but ruthless, built a great library that would crumble with the end of his reign. From its ruins, however, emerged a poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh, that would infuse the existence of two rivers and bind together three lives.In 1840 London, Arthur is born beside the stinking, sewage-filled River Thames. With an abusive, alcoholic father and a mentally ill mother, Arthur’s only chance of escaping destitution is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a leading publisher, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, and one book in particular catches his interest: Nineveh and Its Remains.In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl, is diagnosed with a rare disorder that will soon cause her to go deaf. Before that happens, her grandmother is determined to baptize her in a sacred Iraqi temple. But with the rising presence of ISIS and the destruction of the family’s ancestral lands along the Tigris, Narin is running out of time.In 2018 London, the newly divorced Zaleekah, a hydrologist, moves into a houseboat on the Thames to escape her husband. Orphaned and raised by her wealthy uncle, Zaleekah had made the decision to take her own life in one month, until a curious book about her homeland changes everything.A dazzling feat of storytelling, There Are Rivers in the Sky entwines these outsiders with a single drop of water, a drop which remanifests across the centuries. Both a source of life and harbinger of death, rivers—the Tigris and the Thames—transcend history, transcend fate: “Water remembers. It is humans who forget.”EndorsementsFrom the Booker Prize finalist author of The Island of Missing Trees.“Make place for Elif Shafak on your bookshelf… you won’t regret it.” — Arundhati Roy

One of the world’s great science writers and a book that reflects on the vast arc of evolutionary history and what it tells us about life on Earth. How much do we really know about our past? For centuries we have yearned to learn more about our ancestors and piece together the story of how we came to be. But language can only record so much, and fossils can be even harder to decipher. We are left groping in the dark, forced to speculate and reconstruct ways of life based on fragments of information. But what if there were a better way? In The Genetic Book of the Dead, Richard Dawkins explores the untapped potential of DNA to transform and transcend our understanding of evolution. In the future, a zoologist presented with a hitherto unknown animal will be able to read its body and its genes as detailed descriptions of the world its ancestors inhabited. This "book of the dead" would uncover the remarkable ways in which animals have overcome obstacles, adapted to their environments and, again and again, developed remarkably similar ways of finding solutions to life’s problems. It is a revolutionary, vividly illustrated book that unlocks the door to a past more vivid, nuanced and fascinating than anything we have ever seen.

Now, in Meditations for Mortals, Burkeman brings the themes and questions—time, mortality, imperfection, productivity, and how to live fully and deeply even when things are most challenging—into the heart of our daily lives.How do we embrace the reality of our finiteness? How do we make decisions and act with conviction when there is always too much to do and failure is inevitable? How do we find a deeper sense of purpose when we realize that life is not a problem to be solved? How does care for others make us more free?Comprised of four weeks of extended reflections on inspiring quotations—drawn from philosophy, religion, literature, psychology, and self-help—Meditations for Mortals is a companion for turbulent times, offering solace and enlightenment, inspiration and insight, and moments of humor and provocation.A four-week journey to embracing your limitations, thriving in an age of bewilderment, and finally making time for what counts. The result is a winking challenge to the usual self-help platitudes—a surprising and entertaining crash course in living meaningfully.

"The ghosts of today don’t live in castles or stately homes, they’re in normal houses and workplaces, witnessed by people just like you and me. But are they the dead returning from the 'undiscovered country' of death, or the product of that equally mysterious location, the human mind?"Danny Robins is on a mission to try to solve the greatest of all mysteries — do ghosts exist? This thrilling book tells the stories of ordinary people who have experienced extraordinary things and want to understand them. It is also a journey of self-discovery, as Danny explores what the paranormal means to us, and considers the exciting yet terrifying prospect that we are not alone.From poltergeists and apparitions, to UFOs and strange messages from beyond the grave, Into the Uncanny is a page-turning real-life supernatural adventure.So, are you Team Believer or Team Sceptic — and do you dare to find out?

Ruby has always been the generous mediator among her friends, family, and colleagues, which is why they have all turned up to celebrate her 50th birthday. But after a few too many glasses of champers, Ruby’s speech doesn’t exactly go to plan. Instead of delivering the witty and warm words her guests are expecting, Ruby takes her moment in the spotlight to reveal what she really thinks of every one of them. She also accuses her husband, Harry, of having an affair.Saving the best till last, Ruby lambasts her octogenarian mother for a lifetime of playing her three daughters against each other. It’s blisteringly brutal. As the stunned gathering gawks at Ruby, the birthday girl concludes her bravura monologue with the throwaway comment that she has terminal cancer. She has cashed in her life savings and plans on taking her two sisters cruising into the sunset for a dose of Husband Replacement Therapy. Courageous? Or ruthlessly selfish?But do they even want to go with her now that she's cast herself off into social Siberia?

O brave new world, that has such people in't.Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house.What does it mean?It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world.What would that actually be like?In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?And what’s a horse got to do with any of this?Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic.It's a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.

Teenaged István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. Shy and new in town, he is a stranger to the social rituals practiced by his classmates and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbor—a married woman close to his mother’s age, whom he begrudgingly helps with errands—as his only companion. But as these periodical encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, his life soon spirals out of control, ending in a violent accident that leaves a man dead.What follows is a rocky trajectory that sees István emigrate from Hungary to London, where he moves from job to job before finding steady work as a driver for London’s billionaire class. At each juncture, his life is affected by the goodwill or self-interest of strangers. Through it all, István is a calm, detached observer of his own life, and through his eyes we experience a tragic twist on an immigrant “success story,” brightened by moments of sensitivity, softness, and Szalay’s keen observation.Fast-paced and immersive, Flesh reveals István’s life through intimate moments, with lovers, employers, and family members, charted over the course of decades. As the story unfolds, the tension between what is seen and unseen, what can and cannot be said, hurtles forward until finally—with everything at stake—sudden tragedy again throws life as István knows it in jeopardy. Spare and penetrating, Flesh traces the imperceptible but indelible contours of unresolved trauma and its aftermath amid the precarity and violence of an ever-globalizing Europe with incisive insight, unyielding pathos, and startling humanity.EndorsementsFrom Booker Prize finalist David Szalay, a propulsive, hypnotic novel, about a man whose future is derailed by a series of events that he is unable to control.

A city is always a cemetery.When a professor named Cristina Rivera Garza stumbles upon the corpse of a man in a dark alley, she finds a stark warning scrawled on the brick wall beside the body, written in coral nail “Beware of me, my love / beware of the silent woman in the desert.”After reporting the crime to the police, the professor becomes the lead informant of the case, led by a detective with a newfound obsession with poetry and a long list of failures on her back. But what has the professor really seen? As more bodies of men are found across the city, the detective tries to decipher the meaning of the poems, and if they are facing a darker stream of violence spreading throughout the city.Written in sentences as sharp as the cuts on the bodies of the victims—a word which, in Spanish, is always feminine—Death Takes Me unfolds with the charged logic of a dream, moving from the professor’s classroom into the slippery worlds of Latin American poetry and art, as it explores with masterful imagination the unstable terrains of desire and sexuality.A dreamlike, genre-defying novel about a professor and detective seeking justice in a world suffused with gendered violence.EndorsementsFrom the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Liliana's Invincible Summer.

On a bright spring afternoon in Dublin, Ciara Fay makes a split-second decision that will change everything. Grabbing an armful of clothes from the washing line, Ciara straps her two young daughters into her car and drives away. Head spinning, all she knows for certain is that home is no longer safe.This was meant to be an escape. But with dwindling savings, no job, and her family across the sea, Ciara finds herself adrift, facing a broken housing system and the voice of her own demons. As summer passes and winter closes in, she must navigate raising her children in a hotel room, searching for a new home and dealing with her husband Ryan’s relentless campaign to get her to come back—because leaving is one thing, but staying away is another.

Tessa is a thoroughbred. A young, brilliant barrister. She has worked her way up from a working-class background to be at the top of her game: defending, cross-examining and lighting up the shadows of doubt in any case. Her masterful line of questioning in the courtroom has netted Tessa win after win, freeing men accused of rape and sexual assault. As controversial as it is, this is her job — it's just about the facts and who can game the system.Working late one night, Tessa falls into a casual relationship with Julian, a coworker, an attorney who comes from an elite, wealthy family. A light-hearted affair, with a man she admires. She begins to wonder if perhaps there is a future for the two of them.One sickening night, though, Julian makes a choice and Tessa finds herself in a position countless women — one in three — have before her. And she's faced with a gut-wrenching, life-changing decision: will she take the stand to testify about her rape, with the full awareness that the system has not been built to protect her?Drawn from the internationally acclaimed play, Prima Facie is a propulsive, raw look at the price victims pay for speaking out and the system that sets them up to fail.With breakneck prose and a devastating emotional intensity, this is a novel for our times, by one of Australia's most important writers.

When Evie's father falls desperately ill, she finally returns to the family home on Orkney and the wild landscape she left as a teenager, swearing never to return. Not everyone is happy at her arrival, particularly her estranged sister Liv, their relationship broken after a childhood trauma.As Evie clears out her father's neglected house to prepare it for sale, lonely Evie finds herself drawn to a group of cold-water swimmers led by her old friend Freya, who find calmness beneath the waves. Together they help Evie face up to the mistakes in her past, unlocking a treasure of truths that will reverberate through the community, and shake her family to its core.Escape with this feel-good and big-hearted debut novel from broadcaster Lorraine Kelly. If you love Maeve Binchy, you'll love The Island Swimmer. Once the tide turns, you can't hold it back...Endorsements"Gorgeous debut novel" — Marian Keyes"Warm and wise... a Scottish Maeve Binchy" — Veronica Henry"Like getting a warm hug on a freezing cold day" — Jane Fallon

It is spring in 1963 and George Smiley has left the Circus. With the wreckage of the West’s spy war with the Soviets strewn across Europe, he has eyes only for a more peaceful life. And indeed, with his marriage more secure than ever, there is a rumor in Whitehall — unconfirmed and a little scandalous — that George Smiley might almost be happy.But Control has other plans. A Russian agent has defected, and the man he was sent to kill in London is nowhere to be found. Smiley reluctantly agrees to one last simple task: interview Szusanna, a Hungarian émigré and employee of the missing man, and sniff out a lead. But, as Smiley well knows, even the softest step in the shadows resounds with terrible danger. Soon, he is back there, in East Berlin, and on the trail of his most devious enemy’s hidden past.The novel is set in the missing decade between two iconic instalments in the George Smiley saga, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.An extraordinary novel set in the world of John le Carré's most iconic spy, George Smiley, written by Nick Harkaway. Karla's Choice is a thrilling return to the world of spy fiction's greatest writer, John le Carré.

Fleeing a nameless war, an unknown soldier emerges from deep within the Mediterranean scrubland, dirty and exhausted. A chance meeting forces him to rethink his journey, and the price he puts on a life. On 11 September 2001, aboard a small cruise ship on the River Havel near Berlin, a conference of scientists pays homage to the late East German mathematician Paul Heudeber, a Buchenwald survivor and steadfast antifascist who remained loyal to his side of the Berlin Wall despite the collapse of the Communist utopia, unaware that a new era of violence is about to descend. Out of the tension between these narratives, everything that is at stake in times of conflict – in love as in politics – comes to commitment and betrayal, loyalty and lucidity, hope and survival. Translated by Charlotte Mandell, this latest work by Mathias Énard vividly lays bare the devastations of war on the most intimate aspects of our lives.

In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Mary is the middle of the five Bennet girls and the plainest of them all, so what hope does she have? Prim and pious, with no redeeming features, she is unloved and seemingly unlovable.The Other Bennet Sister, though, shows another side to Mary. An introvert in a family of extroverts; a constant disappointment to her mother who values beauty above all else; fearful of her father’s sharp tongue; with little in common with her siblings — is it any wonder she turns to books for both company and guidance? And, if she finds her life lonely or lacking, that she determines to try harder at the one thing she can be: right.One by one, her sisters marry – Jane and Lizzy for love; Lydia for some semblance of respectability – but Mary, it seems, is destined to remain single and live out her life at Longbourn, at least until her father dies and the house is bequeathed to the reviled Mr Collins.But when that fateful day finally comes, she slowly discovers that perhaps there is hope for her, after all.

In this modern fable with the impish magic of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a masked ball makes two upper-class British couples see each other in a new light.There are organizations for people who grieve, for alcoholics and other kinds of addicts. But if you’ve been devastated by the love of your life walking out on you, where the hell do you go?On the 20th anniversary of the day her first husband left her, Viv decides to host an unconventional party for those burned by love. She successfully ropes in her reluctant second husband, Alan, and their friends Beatrice and Stephen, and when she meets the famed fortuneteller Madame Sosostris—last seen in T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land, and rumored to be the secret to success of five prime ministers—she believes she’s found the perfect act to headline her masquerade.In a sacred wood in the south of France, the partygoers disguise themselves and wait eagerly for the great clairvoyant, who might be able to mend their broken pasts and brighten their futures. But the night soon goes awry, in a comically revealing way that causes our couples to question their relationships and the direction of their lives.A wise, enchanting novel about love, power, and our many selves—past and future, public and private.EndorsementsBooker Prize winner — Ben Okri

It's 412 BC, and Athens' invasion of Sicily has failed catastrophically. Thousands of Athenian soldiers are held captive in the quarries of Syracuse, starving, dejected and hanging on by the slimmest of threads.Lampo and Gelon are local potters, young men with no work and barely two obols to rub together. With not much to fill their time, they take to visiting the nearby quarry, where they discover prisoners who will, in desperation, recite lines from the plays of Euripides in return for scraps of bread and a scattering of olives.And so an idea is born: the men will put on Medea in the quarry. A proper performance to be sung of down the ages. Because after all, you can hate the Athenians for invading your territory, but still love their poetry.But as the performance draws near and the audacity of their enterprise dawns on them, it becomes difficult to distinguish between enemies and friends. And Lampo, whose ambitions have never stretched beyond having enough coin for the next jug of wine, finds his aspirations elevated, his heart entangled and his courage tested in ways he could never have imagined.Glorious Exploits is an exhilarating and fiercely original story of brotherhood, war and art; and — in the face of the Gods' apparent indifference — of daring to dream of something bigger than ourselves.Endorsements'Bold and totally unexpected, I loved this book' — Douglas Stuart, author of Shuggie Bain'A very special, very clever, very entertaining novel' — Roddy Doyle, author of Paddy Clarke, Ha Ha Ha'Madly ambitious, cathartic like all great tragedy, but shockingly funny too, Ferdia Lennon's outstandingly original début is just glorious' — Emma Donoghue, author of Room

‘A few days ago, a bomb went off in my life, but this bomb has also shattered the lives of those around me. My partner, my children, my friends.’On Boxing Day 2022, in Rome, Hanif Kureishi had a fall. When he came to, in a pool of blood, he was horrified to realise he had lost the use of his limbs.He could no longer walk, write or wash himself. He could do nothing without the help of others, and required constant care in a hospital. So began an odyssey of a year through the medical systems of Rome and Italy, with the hope of somehow being able to return home, to his house in London.While confined to a series of hospital wards, he felt compelled to write, but being unable to type or to hold a pen, he began to dictate to family members the words which formed in his head. The result was an extraordinary series of dispatches from his hospital bed – a diary of a life in pieces, recorded with rare honesty, clarity and courage.This book takes these hospital dispatches – edited, expanded and meticulously interwoven with new writing – and charts both a shattering and a reassembling: a new life born of pain and loss, but animated by new feelings – of gratitude, humility and love.

Mark Haddon weaves ancient fables into fresh and unexpected forms, and forges new legends to sit alongside them. The myth of the Minotaur in his labyrinth is turned into a wrenching parable of maternal love — and of the monstrosities of patriarchy. The lover of a goddess, Tithonus, is gifted eternal life but without eternal youth. Actaeon, changed into a stag after glimpsing the naked Diana and torn to pieces by his hunting dogs, becomes a visceral metaphor about how humans use and misuse animals.From genetic engineering to the eternal complications of family, Haddon showcases masterfully how we are subject to the same elemental forces that obsessed the Greeks. Whether describing Laika the Soviet space dog on her fateful orbit, or St Anthony wrestling with loneliness in the desert, his astonishing powers of observation are at their height when illuminating the thin line between human and animal.From the bestselling author of The Porpoise come eight mesmerising stories exploring what, ultimately, makes us human.

A house is a precious thing...It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be—led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house—a spoon, a knife, a bowl—Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva—nor the house in which they live—are what they seem.An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past. Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget.

Lila Kennedy has a lot on her plate.A broken marriage, two wayward daughters, a house that is falling apart and an elderly stepfather who seems to have quietly moved in.Her career is in freefall and her love life is … complicated. So when her real dad — a man she has barely seen since he ran off to Hollywood thirty-five years ago — suddenly appears on her doorstep, it feels like the final straw.But it turns out even the family you thought you could never forgive might have something to teach about love, and what it actually means to be family.A fresh, contemporary story of a woman and her unruly blended family.EndorsementsNo. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author'Nobody writes women the way Jojo Moyes does' — Jodi Picoult

1843. Ishmaelle is born in a small village on the stormy Kent coast where she grows up swimming with dolphins. After her parents and infant sister die, her brother, Joseph, leaves to find work as a sailor. Abandoned and desperate for a life at sea, Ishmaelle disguises herself as a cabin boy and travels to New York.Call Me Ishmaelle reimagines the epic battle between man and nature in Herman Melville’s Moby Dick from a female perspective. As the American Civil War breaks out in 1861, Ishmaelle boards the Nimrod, a whaling ship led by the obsessive Captain Seneca, a Black free man of heroic stature who is haunted by a tragic past. Here, she finds protectors in Polynesian harpooner, Kauri, and Taoist monk, Muzi, whose readings of the I-Ching guide their quest.Through the bloody male violence of whaling, and the unveiling of her feminine identity, Ishmaelle realises there is a mysterious bond between herself and the mythical white whale, Moby Dick. Xiaolu Guo has crafted a dramatically different, feminist narrative that stands alongside the original while offering a powerful exploration of nature, gender and human purpose.Moby-Dick reimagined from the perspective of a cross-dressed female sailorEndorsements“Brilliantly written... ambitious, brave, strange” — Philip Hoare“One of the most valuable writers in the world” — Deborah Levy

"The missing boy is 10-year-old Alfie Risby, and to be perfectly honest with you, he's a little shit."Florence Grimes, age thirty-one, always takes the easy way out. Single, broke and unfulfilled after the humiliating end to her girl-band career, she has only one reason to get out of bed each day: her ten-year-old son Dylan. But then Alfie Risby, her son’s bully and the heir to a vast frozen-food empire, mysteriously vanishes during a class trip, and Dylan becomes the prime suspect.Florence, for once, is faced with a task she can’t quit: she’s got to find Alfie and clear her son’s name or risk losing Dylan forever—never mind that she has no useful skills (let alone investigative ones) and that all the other school moms hate her. Oh, and she has a reason to suspect Dylan might not be as innocent as she’d like to believe.

When his grandfather dies, a boy named Jay travels south with his family to the property he left them, a once flourishing farm that has fallen into disrepair. The trees are diseased, the fields parched from months of drought.Still, Jay’s father, Jack, sends him out to work the land, or whatever land is left. Over the course of these hot, dense days, Jay finds himself drawn to Chuan, the local son of the farm’s manager, different from him in every way except for one.Out in the fields, and on the streets into town, the charge between the boys intensifies. Inside the house, the other family members confront their own regrets, and begin to drift apart. Like the land around them, they are powerless to resist the global forces that threaten to render their lives obsolete.At once sweeping and intimate, The South is a story of what happens when private and public lives collide.A radiant novel of longing that blooms between two boys over the course of one summer—about family, desire, and what we inherit—from celebrated author Tash Aw.

When retired math teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the island, Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.“What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet…” Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by her mother as one of God's elect. Zealous and passionate, she seems destined for life as a missionary, but then she falls for one of her converts.At sixteen, Jeanette decides to leave the church, her home and her family, for the young woman she loves. Innovative, punchy and tender, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a few days' ride into the bizarre outposts of religious excess and human obsession.

What if the knight destined to unite Britain was not King Arthur, but a woman?Having won the battle against Mordaunt’s men, the sisterhood is left dealing with grief and banishment. Cass has become a leader, but her blossoming new powers threaten to overwhelm her. The fellowship will be tested to its limits as they fight off invading forces and come face to face with Arthur.An epic Arthurian fantasy reimagining for fans of Leigh Bardugo and Sarah J. Maas. Get ready for bigger battles, destiny, and old magic in this spectacular sequel!

Most histories have been written by men, about men, relegating women—with the exception of a few queens—to the shadows of time. Now, bestselling author Philippa Gregory reveals the importance of ordinary women, providing a more balanced and truer chronicle that expands and adds rich detail to the story of Great Britain.In Normal Women, Gregory draws on an enormous archive of primary and secondary sources to rewrite British history, focusing on the agency, persistence, and effectiveness of everyday women throughout periods of social and cultural transition. She sweeps from the making of the Bayeux tapestry in the eleventh century to the Black Death in 1348—after which women were briefly paid the same wages as men, the last time for seven centuries—to the 1992 ordination of women by the Church of England, when the church accepted, for the first time, that a woman could perform the miracle of the mass.Through the stories of the female soldiers of the civil war, the guild widows who founded the prosperity of the City of London, highwaywomen and pirates, miners, ship owners, international traders, the women who ran London theaters and commissioned plays from Shakespeare, and the "female husbands" who married each other legally in church and lived as husband and wife, Gregory redefines "normal" female behavior to include heroism, rebellion, crime, treason, money-making, and sainthood.As she makes clear, normal women make history.EndorsementsThe #1 New York Times bestselling historical novelist delivers her magnum opus—a landmark work of feminist nonfiction that radically redefines our understanding of the extraordinary roles ordinary women played throughout British history.

Margo is a troubled schoolgirl. After the death of her father, she’s on her way to a new boarding school in a new city.Moon is a salesman. He makes his living traveling through a series of interconnected worlds on a network of barely used train lines.They never should have met. But when Margo suddenly appears one day on Moon’s train, their fates become inextricably linked. If Margo wants to survive, she has to pass as a traveling salesman, too—except it’s not that easy.Move north on the train line and time speeds up, a day passing in mere hours. Move south and time slows down—a day can last several weeks. Slow worlds are the richest: you live longer, your youth lasting decades. Fast worlds are sharp, cruel, and don’t have time for pleasantries. Death is frequent. Salesmen die young of skipshock. That is, if they’re not shot down by the Southern Guard first.As Margo moves between worlds and her attachment to Moon intensifies, she feels her youth start to slip between her fingers. But is Moon everything he seems? Is Margo?Told through the eyes of both naive Margo and desperate Moon, the unforgettable realm of Skipshock will shake the way you think about love, time, and the fabric of the universe.Set in a universe where time is key to power and privilege, this dazzlingly inventive, genre-defying fantasy romance is the first in a duology.

Black History for Every Day of the Year by award-winning historian and broadcaster David Olusoga and his siblings, Yinka Olusoga and Kemi Olusoga, tells the unique and vital story of Black history, sweeping across the world and through the ages.In these pages you will see hope and connection, ingenuity and creativity, alongside tales of racism and oppression, resistance and celebration. From the Victorian Transatlantic anti-slavery movement and the Black contribution to World Wars One and Two, to the work of Black creatives during the Harlem Renaissance and contemporary figures such as Beyoncé and Stormzy, this book covers well-known figures and unsung heroes, famous and lesser-known cultural moments, and includes important information about Black people throughout history, from ancient times to the modern day.With a piece of history for every day of the year, this is the perfect book to dip into time and time again.Accompanied by quotes, poems, illustrations and pictures, Black History for Every Day of the Year is for all ages, revealing a rich history that is relevant to us all.

James Anderson had a plan. Or half of one. All that matters is that he managed to do what his older brother, the famous Aaron Warner Anderson, never did: infiltrate Ark Island, the last refuge of The Reestablishment. In the past decade no outsider has breached the stronghold of the authoritarian regime, but James is in. In a prison cell, sure, but as far as James is concerned, a win is a win.It’s been ten years since the fall of The Reestablishment. Ten years since the notorious duo — Juliette Ferrars and Aaron Warner Anderson — led a worldwide rebellion and established the New Republic of the West. But after a decade of unsettling quiet, The Reestablishment is ready to make a devastating move, and they have the perfect person for the job.Rosabelle Wolff had a plan. She always has a plan. On Ark Island, where constant surveillance is packaged as security, even emotions must be experienced with caution. A trained assassin, her every movement is monitored by synthetic intelligence—and when she’s given an order to kill, she never hesitates.Lose yourself in this exhilarating return to the Shatter Me universe, the first book in a new series set ten years after the fall of The Reestablishment. Brimming with pulse-pounding action and torturous romance, Watch Me is an explosive journey through a dystopian landscape where enemies-to-lovers has never felt more impossible. Step into a beloved and breathtaking world that demands an answer to a desperate question— Who are we when no one is watching?

On the evening of October 16, 1998, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was arrested at a medical clinic in London. After a brutal, seventeen-year reign marked by assassinations, disappearances, and torture—frequently tied to the infamous detention center at the heart of Santiago, Londres 38—Pinochet was being indicted for international crimes and extradition to Spain, opening the door to criminal charges that would follow him to the grave, in 2006.Three decades earlier, on the evening of December 3, 1962, SS-Commander Walter Rauff was arrested in his home in Punta Arenas, at the southern tip of Chile. As the overseer of the development and use of gas vans in World War II, he was indicted for the mass murder of tens of thousands of Jews and extradition to West Germany.Would these uncommon criminals be held accountable? Were their stories connected? The Nuremberg Trials—where Rauff’s crimes had first been read into the record, in 1945—opened the door to universal jurisdiction, and Pinochet's case would be the first effort to ensnare a former head of state.In this unique blend of memoir, courtroom drama, and travelogue, Philippe Sands gives us a front row seat to the Pinochet trial—where he acted as a barrister for Human Rights Watch—and teases out the dictator’s unexpected connection to a leading Nazi who ended up managing a king crab cannery in Patagonia. A decade-long journey exposes the chilling truth behind the lives of two men and their intertwined destinies on 38 Londres Street.In this intimate legal and historical detective story, the world-renowned lawyer and acclaimed author traces the footsteps of two of the twentieth century’s most merciless criminals—accused of genocide and crimes against humanity—testing the limits of immunity and impunity after Nuremberg.

Seventeen-year-old Adam has just broken up with his boyfriend Evan and is not looking forward to the excruciating awkwardness at school for the rest of the term or a whole summer stuck at home with his dad, stepmom, and baby brother, Benji.But then Adam discovers a diary in some boxes in the attic and is quickly enthralled by its poignant story. It was written by a young woman living in Nagasaki in 1911. Adam is enraptured by her life and loves, becoming totally absorbed in her story. And then he starts to be haunted by her ghostly presence...A young adult coming-of-age novel full of longing, love, and ghosts from the past, inspired by both Puccini's Madama Butterfly and Japanese history. Equal parts globe-trotting love drama, chilling ghost story and exploration of Japanese history, Songs for Ghosts's poetic prose and memorable characters will leave readers breathless.