Dua Lipa's Favourites

A novel of sexual, racial, political, and artistic passions, set in Greenwich Village, Harlem, and France. Stunning for its emotional intensity and haunting sensuality, this book depicts men and women, blacks and whites, stripped of their masks of gender and race by love and hatred at the most elemental and sublime.From one of the most important American novelists of the twentieth century.

Sally Jay Gorce is a woman with a mission. It's the 1950s, she's young, and she's in Paris. Having dyed her hair pink, she wears evening dresses in the daytime and vows to go native in a way not even the natives can manage. Embarking on an educational programme that includes an affair with a married man (which fizzles out when she realises he's single and wants to marry her); nights in cabarets and jazz clubs in the company of assorted "citizens of the world"; an entanglement with a charming psychopath; and a bit part in a film financed by a famous matador. But an education like this doesn't come cheap. Will our heroine be forced back to the States to fulfill her destiny as a librarian, or can she keep up her whirlwind Parisian existence?A timeless portrait of a woman hellbent on living.Endorsements"One of the best novels about growing up fast" — The Guardian

Nan Goldin's seminal second book The Other Side is finally back in print. Ever since the early 1970s Goldin has lived with and among drag queens, documenting both their glamour and their struggles. The Other Side is her very personal declaration of love and gratitude to these drag queens, who showed her a way out of the captivity of pre-packaged, socially prescribed identity. As she put it: "The pictures in this book are not of people suffering gender dysphoria but rather expressing gender euphoria... The people in these pictures are truly revolutionary; they are the real winners in the battle of the sexes because they have stepped out of the ring." In contrast to much of the early 90s drag queen mania, The Other Side has brilliantly passed the test of time: Goldin's photographs are as beautiful, moving, and vibrant as ever, heralding the utopian promises of a world where gender has stopped being a prison — a vision that remains as vital and acute as it was when the book was first published.

Since his debut in 1955, Tom Ripley has evolved into the ultimate bad-boy sociopath, influencing countless novelists and filmmakers. In this first novel, we are introduced to suave, handsome Tom Ripley: a young striver, newly arrived in the heady world of Manhattan in the 1950s. A product of a broken home, branded a "sissy" by his dismissive Aunt Dottie, Ripley becomes enamored of the moneyed world of his new friend, Dickie Greenleaf. This fondness turns obsessive when Ripley is sent to Italy to bring back his libertine pal but grows enraged by Dickie's ambivalent feelings for Marge, a charming American dilettante. A dark reworking of Henry James's The Ambassadors, The Talented Mr. Ripley was adapted into a 1990s film and René Clément's 1960s film, Purple Noon.

Tina Brown kept delicious daily diaries throughout her eight spectacular years as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair. Today they provide an incendiary portrait of the flash and dash and power brokering of the Excessive Eighties in New York and Hollywood.The Vanity Fair Diaries is the story of an Englishwoman barely out of her twenties who arrives in New York City with a dream. Summoned from London in hopes that she can save Condé Nast's troubled new flagship Vanity Fair, Tina Brown is immediately plunged into the maelstrom of the competitive New York media world and the backstabbing rivalries at the court of the planet's slickest, most glamour-focused magazine company. She survives the politics, the intrigue, and the attempts to derail her by a simple stratagem: succeeding. In the face of rampant skepticism, she triumphantly reinvents a failing magazine.Here are the inside stories of Vanity Fair scoops and covers — the Reagan kiss, the meltdown of Princess Diana's marriage to Prince Charles, the sensational Annie Leibovitz cover of a gloriously pregnant, naked Demi Moore. In the diary's cinematic pages, the drama, the comedy, and the struggle of running an "it" magazine come to life. Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is also a woman's journey, of making a home in a new country and of the deep bonds with her husband, their prematurely born son, and their daughter.Astute, open-hearted, often riotously funny, Tina Brown's The Vanity Fair Diaries is a compulsively fascinating and intimate chronicle of a woman's life in a glittering era.EndorsementsNamed one of the best books of 2017 by Time, People, Amazon.com, The Guardian, Paste Magazine, The Economist, Entertainment Weekly, and Vogue.

'In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars.' The world and his mistress are at Jay Gatsby's party. But Gatsby stands apart from the crowd, isolated by a secret longing. In between sips of champagne, his guests speculate about their mysterious host. Some say he's a bootlegger. Others swear he was a German spy during the war. They lean in and whisper 'He killed a man once.' Just where is Gatsby from and what is the obsession that drives him?

Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry Rasheed. Nearly two decades later, a friendship grows between Mariam and a local teenager, Laila, as strong as the ties between mother and daughter. When the Taliban take over, life becomes a desperate struggle against starvation, brutality and fear. Yet love can move a person to act in unexpected ways, and lead them to overcome the most daunting obstacles with a startling heroism.EndorsementsRichard & Judy Number One Bestseller'A suspenseful epic' — Daily Telegraph'A triumph' — Financial Times'Heartbreaking' — Mail on Sunday'Deeply moving' — Sunday Times

Summer is coming to a close on the East End of Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome.A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city.With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways, and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to Labor Day moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.A young woman pretends to be someone she isn't in this stunning novel.EndorsementsNew York Times bestselling author of The Girls.

Half of a Yellow Sun re-creates a seminal moment in modern African history: Biafra’s impassioned struggle to establish an independent republic in Nigeria in the 1960s, and the chilling violence that followed.With astonishing empathy and the effortless grace of a natural storyteller, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie weaves together the lives of three characters swept up in the turbulence of the decade. Thirteen-year-old Ugwu is employed as a houseboy for a university professor full of revolutionary zeal. Olanna is the professor’s beautiful mistress, who has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos for a dusty university town and the charisma of her new lover. And Richard is a shy young Englishman in thrall to Olanna’s twin sister, an enigmatic figure who refuses to belong to anyone. As Nigerian troops advance and the three must run for their lives, their ideals are severely tested, as are their loyalties to one another.Epic, ambitious, and triumphantly realized, Half of a Yellow Sun is a remarkable novel about moral responsibility, about the end of colonialism, about ethnic allegiances, about class and race—and the ways in which love can complicate them all. Adichie brilliantly evokes the promise and the devastating disappointments that marked this time and place, bringing us one of the most powerful, dramatic, and intensely emotional pictures of modern Africa that we have ever had.A masterly, haunting new novel.Endorsements“The 21st-century daughter of Chinua Achebe” — The Washington Post Book World

In Just Kids, Patti Smith's first book of prose, the legendary American artist offers a never-before-seen glimpse of her remarkable relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe in the epochal days of New York City and the Chelsea Hotel in the late sixties and seventies. An honest and moving story of youth and friendship, Smith brings the same unique, lyrical quality to Just Kids as she has to the rest of her formidable body of work—from her influential 1975 album Horses to her visual art and poetry.

Shuggie Bain is the unforgettable story of young Hugh "Shuggie" Bain, a sweet and lonely boy who spends his 1980s childhood in run-down public housing in Glasgow, Scotland. Thatcher's policies have put husbands and sons out of work, and the city's notorious drugs epidemic is waiting in the wings. Shuggie's mother Agnes walks a wayward path: she is Shuggie's guiding light but a burden for him and his siblings. She dreams of a house with its own front door while she flicks through the pages of the Freemans catalogue, ordering a little happiness on credit, anything to brighten up her grey life. Married to a philandering taxi-driver husband, Agnes keeps her pride by looking good—her beehive, make-up, and pearly-white false teeth offer a glamorous image of a Glaswegian Elizabeth Taylor. But under the surface, Agnes finds increasing solace in drink, and she drains away the lion's share of each week's benefits—all the family has to live on—on cans of extra-strong lager hidden in handbags and poured into tea mugs. Agnes's older children find their own ways to get a safe distance from their mother, abandoning Shuggie to care for her as she swings between alcoholic binges and sobriety. Shuggie is meanwhile struggling to somehow become the normal boy he desperately longs to be, but everyone has realized that he is "no right," a boy with a secret that all but him can see. Agnes is supportive of her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her—even her beloved Shuggie.A heartbreaking story of addiction, sexuality, and love, Shuggie Bain is an epic portrayal of a working-class family that is rarely seen in fiction.Recalling the work of Édouard Louis, Alan Hollinghurst, Frank McCourt, and Hanya Yanagihara, it is a blistering debut by a brilliant novelist who has a powerful and important story to tell.

"I saw a whole generation of boys fall like irredeemable angels."Told in the heartrending voice of a girl trapped within the body of a boy, Bad Habit is a story of coming-of-age in working class Madrid — in a godforsaken neighborhood ironically named after a saint. Alana S. Portero's spunky protagonist struggles to make sense of herself and the world she inhabits, conveying her surroundings with mythic allusions and a poetic vitality absent from everyday life.Set against the heroin epidemic that ravaged Madrid in the 1980s and the city’s vibrant party scene that dominated its nightlife in the 1990s, Bad Habit follows Portero’s unnamed protagonist as she grows up in a blue-collar suburb that has no place for her. Forging ahead, she discovers community and kinship in downtown Madrid, amid a lively party scene animated by junkies, pop divas, and fallen angels. But with each step she takes forward, she finds herself confronted by a violence she does not yet know how to counter; in this exciting, often terrifying world, each choice can truly be a matter of life and death.Blistering and compassionate, Bad Habit illuminates the ties between gender and class, the search for identity, and the power of sisterhood. Shimmering in its lyrical beauty, vivid in its realism, autobiographical in its detail, it is a mesmerizing story of self-realization that speaks to the outsider in all of us.Translated from the Spanish by Mara Faye LethemCombining the raw realism and vulnerability of Shuggie Bain and Detransition, Baby with the poignant sensibility of Pedro Almodóvar, a staggering coming-of-age novel deeply rooted in the class struggles of a trans woman growing up in Madrid in the last decades of the twentieth century.

When he hears her favourite Beatles song, Toru Watanabe recalls his first love Naoko, the girlfriend of his best friend Kizuki. Immediately he is transported back almost twenty years to his student days in Tokyo, adrift in a world of uneasy friendships, casual sex, passion, loss and desire - to a time when an impetuous young woman called Midori marches into his life and he has to choose between the future and the past.Read the haunting love story that turned Murakami into a literary superstar.Endorsements'A masterly novel' — New York Times'Such is the exquisite, gossamer construction of Murakami's writing that everything he chooses to describe trembles with symbolic possibility' — Guardian'Evocative, entertaining, sexy and funny; but then Murakami is one of the best writers around' — Time Out'Poignant, romantic and hopeless, it beautifully encapsulates the heartbreak and loss of faith' — Sunday Times'This book is undeniably hip, full of student uprisings, free love, booze and 1960s pop, it's also genuinely emotionally engaging, and describes the highs of adolescence as well as the lows' — Independent on Sunday

A young woman is in love with a successful surgeon; a man torn between his love for her and his womanising. His mistress, a free-spirited artist, lives her life as a series of betrayals; while her other lover stands to lose everything because of his noble qualities. In a world where lives are shaped by choices and events, and everything occurs but once, existence seems to lose its substance and weight — and we feel 'the unbearable lightness of being'.The Unbearable Lightness of Being encompasses passion and philosophy, infidelity and ideas, the Prague Spring and modern America, political acts and private desires, comedy and tragedy — in fact, all of human existence.Milan Kundera's iconic novel of love and politics in communist Czechoslovakia.Endorsements'A cult figure.' — The Guardian'An artist.' — Salman Rushdie'A dark and brilliant achievement.' — Ian McEwan'Shamelessly clever ... Exhilaratingly subversive and funny.' — The Independent'A modern classic ... As relevant now as when it was first published.' — John Banville

Yasuko lives a quiet life, working in a Tokyo bento shop and being a good mother to her only child.When Detective Kusanagi of the Tokyo Police tries to piece together the events of that day, he finds himself confronted by the most puzzling, mysterious circumstances he has ever investigated. Nothing quite makes sense, and it will take a genius to understand the genius behind this particular crime...

Elsie is a sexy, funny and fiercely independent woman living in South London. But at just 28 she is tired. Though she spends her days writing tender poetry in her journal, her nights are spent working long hours for minimum wage at a neighbourhood gay bar.The difficulty of being estranged from her family, the struggle of being continually rejected from jobs, and the fear of never making money doing what she loves are too great. But Elsie is determined to keep the faith, for a little longer at least. Things will surely turn around. They have to.As she tries to breathe through panic attacks, sleeping with her hot, spirited co-worker Bea isn't straightforward and offers Elsie another place to hide.As Elsie tries to reconnect with her best friend Juliet, her fragile world spirals out of control. Can Elsie steady herself and avoid falling through the cracks?

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists — he a photographer, she a dancer — trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence.At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it.

Andy's story wasn't meant to turn out this way. Living out of a suitcase in his best friends' spare room, waiting for his career as a stand-up comedian to finally take off, he struggles to process the life-ruining end of his relationship with the only woman he's ever truly loved.As he tries to solve the seemingly unsolvable mystery of his broken relationship, he contends with career catastrophe, social media paranoia, a rapidly dwindling friendship group and the growing suspicion that, at 35, he really should have figured this all out by now.Andy has a lot to learn, not least his ex-girlfriend's side of the story.Warm, wise, funny and achingly relatable, Dolly Alderton's second novel is about the mystery of what draws us together — and what pulls us apart — the pain of really growing up, and the stories we tell about our lives.

Sitting alone beside the languorous blue waters of the lagoon, Ana Magdalena Bach contemplates the men at the hotel bar. She has been happily married for twenty-seven years and has no reason to escape the life she has made with her husband and children. And yet, every August, she travels by ferry here to the island where her mother is buried, and for one night takes a new lover.Across sultry Caribbean evenings full of salsa and boleros, lotharios and conmen, Ana journeys further each year into the hinterland of her desire and the fear hidden in her heart.Constantly surprising, joyously sensual, Until August is a profound meditation on freedom, regret, self-transformation, and the mysteries of love—an unexpected gift from one of the greatest writers the world has ever known.The extraordinary rediscovered novel from the Nobel Prize–winning author of Love in the Time of Cholera and One Hundred Years of Solitude.

Narrated by a vivid chorus of animal voices that unveil the tyranny and ruthlessness required to uphold absolute power, Glory is the tale of an uprising and a country's implosion. At the centre of it all is a young goat named Destiny, returning home to bear witness to a revolution.Urgent, wild, dazzling with life and an irrepressible wit, Glory is a razor-sharp satire that unpicks power and shows how history can be halted in a moment.An exhilarating Animal Farm-inspired novel about power and corruption set in an animal nation trapped in a cycle as old as time, by one of the most exciting voices writing today.Endorsements“Bulawayo is really out-Orwelling Orwell. This is a satire with sharper teeth, angrier, and also very, very funny.” — New York Times Book Review“Glory is a masterpiece for our times. Gripping and exhilarating.” — ObserverLonglisted for the Women's Prize 2023Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2022Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2023Shortlisted for the 2023 Visionary Arts Awards

In a remote Polish village, Janina devotes the long, dark winter days to studying astrology, translating the poetry of William Blake, and serving as caretaker for the summer homes of wealthy Warsaw residents. Her reputation as a crank and a recluse is only amplified by her not-so-secret preference for the company of animals over humans. She's devastated when her two beloved dogs disappear. Then her neighbor, Bigfoot, turns up dead. As corpses pile up in increasingly strange circumstances, Janina inserts herself into the investigation, certain that she knows whodunit. If only anyone would pay her mind . . .A deeply satisfying and inventive thriller-cum-fairy tale, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the tug between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?An ingenious variation on murder noir, set in motion by a string of bizarre deaths in an isolated village.EndorsementsMan Booker International Prize–winning author and National Book Award finalist."One of Europe’s major humanist writers." — The Guardian

Gilbert offers insights into the mysterious nature of inspiration. She asks us to embrace our curiosity and let go of needless suffering. She shows us how to tackle what we most love, and how to face down what we most fear. She discusses the attitudes, approaches, and habits we need in order to live our most creative lives. Balancing between soulful spirituality and cheerful pragmatism, Gilbert encourages us to uncover the “strange jewels” that are hidden within each of us. Whether we are looking to write a book, make art, find new ways to address challenges in our work, embark on a dream long deferred, or simply infuse our everyday lives with more mindfulness and passion, Big Magic cracks open a world of wonder and joy.

When sixty-nine-year-old So-nyo is separated from her husband among the crowds of the Seoul subway station, her family begins a desperate search to find her. Yet as long-held secrets and private sorrows begin to reveal themselves, they are forced to wonder: how well did they actually know the woman they called Mother?

Mokhtar Alkhanshali grew up in San Francisco, one of seven siblings brought up by Yemeni immigrants in a tiny apartment. At age twenty-four, unable to pay for college, he works as a doorman, until a chance encounter awakens his interest in coffee and its rich history in Yemen. Reinventing himself, he sets out to learn about coffee cultivation, roasting and importing. He travels to Yemen and visits farms in every corner of the country, collecting samples, eager to improve cultivation methods and help Yemeni farmers bring their coffee back to its former glory. And he is on the verge of success when civil war engulfs Yemen in 2015. The U.S. embassy closes, Saudi bombs begin to rain down on the country and Mokhtar is trapped in Yemen. This is a heart-pounding true story that weaves together the history of coffee, the struggles of everyday Yemenis living through civil war and the courageous journey of a young man—a Muslim and a U.S. citizen—following the most American of dreams.

The Fox Hunt tells one young man’s unforgettable story of war, unlikely friendship, and his harrowing escape from Yemen's brutal civil war with the help of a daring plan engineered on social media by a small group of interfaith activists in the West.Born in the Old City of Sana’a, Yemen, to a pair of middle-class doctors, Mohammed Al Samawi was a devout Muslim raised to think of Christians and Jews as his enemy. But when Mohammed was twenty-three, he secretly received a copy of the Bible, and what he read cast doubt on everything he’d previously believed. After connecting with Jews and Christians on social media, and at various international interfaith conferences, Mohammed became an activist, making it his mission to promote dialogue and cooperation in Yemen.Then came the death threats: first on Facebook, then through terrifying anonymous phone calls. To protect himself and his family, Mohammed fled to the southern port city of Aden. He had no way of knowing that Aden was about to become the heart of a north-south civil war, and the battleground for a well-funded proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. As gunfire and grenades exploded throughout the city, Mohammed hid in the bathroom of his apartment and desperately appealed to his contacts on Facebook.Miraculously, a handful of people he barely knew responded. Over thirteen days, four ordinary young people with zero experience in diplomacy or military exfiltration worked across six technology platforms and ten time zones to save this innocent young man trapped between deadly forces—rebel fighters from the north and Al Qaeda operatives from the south.The story of an improbable escape as riveting as the best page-turning thrillers, The Fox Hunt reminds us that goodness and decency can triumph in the darkest circumstances.Endorsements“Nail-bitingly suspenseful. ... Inspiring. ... Essential reading.” — Booklist, starred review

War & Love is a poetry collection diving into the lives of millions of civilians facing atrocities amid brutal and deadly wars. Sana Uqba's debut book is but a mere attempt to humanise those that have been dehumanised for far too long, delving beyond the headlines and rising death tolls to see moments of day-to-day life.

Since the 1890s thousands of Arab seamen from Yemen have travelled to the northern port town of South Shields, near Newcastle, forming the first permanently settled Middle-Eastern community in Britain. Last of the Dictionary Men, based on an exhibition that opened in 2008 at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, traces the history of the British-Yemeni community through the stories of the fourteen surviving seamen from this first generation, known as the "Dictionary Men". The nickname comes from the fact that Yemeni Arabic remains the closest to Classical Arabic, giving rise to the country's nickname "Dictionary Land". A history spanning a hundred years saw generations of seamen from Yemen settling along the River Tyne in England's north-eastern region of South Shields in search of new opportunities abroad. Far from the Arabian Peninsula, these seamen not only made South Shields their home, but some 800 of them fought and died alongside the British in the Second World War. To add to its intriguing history, South Shields is also home to Al Azhar, Britain's first mosque, which was witness to boxing legend Muhammad Ali's wedding in 1977.

This book is a quilt, piecing together memoir, history, and theory into a living portrait of an artist and an art. Within these pages, illustrated throughout with photos and original artwork, Sasha Velour illuminates drag as a unique form of expression with a rich history and a revolutionary spirit.Each chapter strips off a new layer, removing one tantalizing glove and then another, to reveal all the twists and turns in the life of a queen. As Sasha recalls her own journey, from the women who raised her, to learning the craft of an artist, to success, disaster, and more, she also uncovers the history of queer life around the world that made it all possible.From shamans to “fairies balls,” empresses to RuPaul’s Drag Race (and beyond), The Big Reveal chronicles and celebrates our shared queer pasts.From an iconoclastic drag queen comes an equally singular, thought-provoking manifesto that brings necessary and sparkling substance to our understanding of drag, queerness, beauty, and liberation!Endorsements“Drag embodies the queer possibility that exists within each of us—the infinite ways in which gender, good taste, and art can be lived.” — Sasha Velour

Amrou knew they were gay when, aged ten, they first laid eyes on Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. It was love at first sight.Amrou’s parents weren’t so happy.From that moment on, Amrou began searching in all the wrong places for ways to make their divided self whole again.Life as a Unicorn is a hilarious yet devastating memoir of a search for belonging, following the painful and surprising process of transforming from a god-fearing Muslim boy to a queer drag queen, strutting the stage in seven-inch heels and saying the things nobody else dares to.From a god-fearing Muslim boy enraptured with their mother to a vocal, queer drag queen estranged from their family, this heart-breaking and hilarious memoir follows the author's fight to be true to themselves.Endorsements'It should be read far and wide' — Ian McKellen

A sweeping, heartfelt saga about the course of one man's life, beginning and ending in post-war Ireland.Cyril Avery is not a real Avery — or at least, that's what his adoptive parents tell him. And he never will be. But if he isn't a real Avery, then who is he?Born out of wedlock to a teenage girl cast out from her rural Irish community and adopted by a well-to-do if eccentric Dublin couple via the intervention of a hunchbacked Redemptorist nun, Cyril is adrift in the world, anchored only tenuously by his heartfelt friendship with the infinitely more glamorous and dangerous Julian Woodbead. At the mercy of fortune and coincidence, he will spend a lifetime coming to know himself and where he came from, and over his many years will struggle to discover an identity, a home, a country, and much more.We are shown the story of Ireland from the 1940s to today through the eyes of one ordinary man.The Heart's Invisible Furies is a novel to make you laugh and cry while reminding us all of the redemptive power of the human spirit.EndorsementsBy the New York Times bestselling author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

‘Before I had a chance to rebel against the world of my childhood, that world rebelled against me. In truth, confronting my parents, my social class, its poverty, racism and brutality came second. From early on I provoked shame and even disgust from my family and others around me. The only option I had was to get away somehow. This book is an effort to understand all that.’Édouard Louis grew up in Hallencourt, a village in northern France where many live below the poverty line.It is an extraordinary portrait of escaping from an unbearable childhood, inspired by the author’s own. Written with an openness and compassionate intelligence, Ultimately, it asks: how can we create our own freedom?

In a small corner of a field in Wales, Tiffany Murray is hiding with Boggle the dog, dreaming of her mum's moussaka, blackberry and apple crumble, and, if she's lucky, ice-cold lemonade. A sheep bleats. The smell of hay tickles her nose. The twang of a guitar and crack of a snare carry on the breeze.It's the late 1970s and Tiff lives with her mum, Joan, at Rockfield, the iconic recording studios. This place of legend, where some of the most famous rock albums of all time were recorded, is the background to a freewheeling, ever-changing whirlwind of a childhood. Tiff's days are spent running around the farm, making friends with local wildlife and helping out with the endless array of dishes her mum creates to keep the bands fed. She's looking for a dog, she's looking for a father; but the one constant throughout is her and Joan, building an unconventional family in the most unlikely of locations.My Family and Other Rock Stars is Tiff's remarkable, truly unique story of growing up in a rural idyll, of Cordon Bleu cookery and of a childhood where the chances of bumping into Freddie Mercury playing piano, or a group of Hell's Angels turning up to record for Lemmy, or even the hope of David Bowie appearing, were as normal as hopscotch and homework.Endorsements'From start to end - very, very good' — Roddy Doyle'Full of pop gossip that'll leave you starry-eyed, and written with a warmth and precision you'll want to savour for as long as you can... I didn't want it to end.' — Séamas O'Reilly'Funny, vivid and touching... An utter treat.' — Rachel Joyce

Set in the 1950s Paris of American expatriates, liaisons, and violence, a young man finds himself caught between desire and conventional morality. With a sharp, probing imagination, James Baldwin's now-classic narrative delves into the mystery of loving and creates a moving, highly controversial story of death and passion that reveals the unspoken complexities of the human heart.

One of the most important and blazingly original writers of his generation, George Saunders is an undisputed master of the short story, and Tenth of December is his most honest, accessible, and moving collection yet.In the taut opening, "Victory Lap," a boy witnesses the attempted abduction of the girl next door and is faced with a harrowing choice: Does he ignore what he sees, or override years of smothering advice from his parents and act? In "Home," a combat-damaged soldier moves back in with his mother and struggles to reconcile the world he left with the one to which he has returned. And in the title story, a stunning meditation on imagination, memory, and loss, a middle-aged cancer patient walks into the woods to commit suicide, only to encounter a troubled young boy who, over the course of a fateful morning, gives the dying man a final chance to recall who he really is. A hapless, deluded owner of an antique store; two mothers struggling to do the right thing; a teenage girl whose idealism is challenged by a brutal brush with reality; a man tormented by a series of pharmaceutical experiments that force him to lust, to love, to kill—the unforgettable characters that populate the pages of Tenth of December are vividly and lovingly infused with Saunders' signature blend of exuberant prose, deep humanity, and stylistic innovation.Writing brilliantly and profoundly about class, sex, love, loss, work, despair, and war, Saunders cuts to the core of the contemporary experience. These stories take on the big questions and explore the fault lines of our own morality, delving into the questions of what makes us good and what makes us human.Unsettling, insightful, and hilarious, the stories in Tenth of December—through their manic energy, their focus on what is redeemable in human beings, and their generosity of spirit—not only entertain and delight; they fulfill Chekhov's dictum that art should "prepare us for tenderness."

Growing up in the same Ghanaian town, Selasi and Akorfa are more than just cousins — they're best friends. The girls share whispered late-night conversations, dreams for the future, secrets. But as they enter their teens, Selasi begins to change, building 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.A stunning novel about a childhood friendship rocked by hidden secrets, from a star of Ghanaian writing.Endorsements'Remarkable' — Chika Unigwe'I was hooked on Peace's writing! I found Nightbloom a blistering story, written with razor sharp precision.' — Huma Qureshi

The gripping and shocking story of three generations of the Sackler family and their roles in the stories of Valium, OxyContin and the opioid crisis.The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied institutions — Harvard; the Metropolitan Museum of Art; Oxford; the Louvre. They are one of the richest families in the world, known for their lavish donations in the arts and the sciences. The source of the family fortune was vague, however, until it emerged that the Sacklers were responsible for making and marketing OxyContin, a blockbuster painkiller that was a catalyst for the opioid crisis — an international epidemic of drug addiction which has killed nearly half a million people.In this masterpiece of narrative reporting and writing, award-winning journalist and host of the Wind of Change podcast Patrick Radden Keefe exhaustively documents the jaw-dropping and ferociously compelling reality.Empire of Pain is the story of a dynasty: a parable of twenty-first-century greed.EndorsementsWinner of the 2021 Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-FictionShortlisted for the 2021 Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year AwardOne of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2021‘Jaw-dropping... Beggars belief’ — Sunday Times‘You feel almost guilty for enjoying it so much’ — The Times

The Land Where Lemons Grow uses the colourful past of six different kinds of Italian citrus to tell an unexpected history of Italy, from the arrival of citrons in 2nd century Calabria, through Arab domination of Sicily in the 9th century, to slow food and cutting-edge genetic research in the 21st. Along the way Helena Attlee traces the uses of citrus essential oils in the perfume industry and describes the extraction of precious bergamot oil; the history of marmalade and its production in Sicily; the extraordinary harvest of 'Diamante' citrons by Jewish citron merchants in Calabria; the primitive violence of the Battle of Oranges, when the streets in Ivrea run with juice. She reveals the earliest manifestations of the Mafia among the lemon gardens outside Palermo, and traces the ongoing links between organised crime and the citrus industry.By combining insight into the country's cultural, political and economic history with travel writing, horticulture and art, Helena Atlee gives the reader a unique view of Italy. Helena Attlee is the author of four books about Italian gardens, and others on the cultural history of gardens around the world. Helena is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Fund and has worked in Italy for nearly 30 years.

A fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank and subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. In this debut collection, she conjures the disturbing and often hilarious experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City. Her stories cut across generations and continents, moving from the fraught halls of a public school in Flushing, Queens, to the tumultuous streets of Shanghai, China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the absence of grown-ups, latchkey kids experiment on each other until one day the experiments turn violent; an overbearing mother abandons her artistic aspirations to come to America but relives her glory days through karaoke; and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God.Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat — dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck — these seven stories showcase Zhang's compassion and moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy's Complaint.A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again.

In Native Speaker, author Chang-rae Lee introduces readers to Henry Park. Park has spent his entire life trying to become a true American—a native speaker. But even as the essence of his adopted country continues to elude him, his Korean heritage seems to drift further and further away.Park's harsh Korean upbringing has taught him to hide his emotions, to remember everything he learns, and, most of all, to feel an overwhelming sense of alienation. In other words, it has shaped him as a natural spy.But the very attributes that help him to excel in his profession put a strain on his marriage to his American wife and stand in the way of his coming to terms with his young son's death. When he is assigned to spy on a rising Korean-American politician, his very identity is tested, and he must figure out who he is amid not only the conflicts within himself but also within the ethnic and political tensions of the New York City streets.Native Speaker is a story of cultural alienation. It is about fathers and sons, about the desire to connect with the world rather than stand apart from it, about loyalty and betrayal, about the alien in all of us and who we finally are.

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people — a dutiful wife and a mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian. But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion.Yeong-hye's passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sexual sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, as she spirals further into her fantasies.Disturbing and beautiful by turns, The Vegetarian is a revelatory novel about modern-day South Korea: a tale of shame, desire, and our faltering attempts to understand others.EndorsementsWinner of the International Booker Prize.A strange, painfully tender exploration of the brutality of desire indulged and the fatality of desire ignored... Exquisite — Eimear McBride

Vero has grown up in Rome with her eccentric, omnipresent mother who is devoted to her own anxiety, a father ruled by hygienic and architectural obsessions, and a precocious genius brother at the centre of their attention.As she becomes an adult, Vero's need to strike out on her own leads her into bizarre and comical episodes: she tries (and fails) to run away to Paris at the age of fifteen; she moves into an unwitting older boyfriend's house after they have been together for less than a week; and she sets up a fraudulent (and wildly successful) street clothing stall to raise funds to go to Mexico. Most of all, she falls in love — repeatedly, dramatically, and often with the most unlikely and inappropriate of candidates.As she continues to plot escapades, her mother's relentless tracking methods and guilt-tripping mastery thwart her at every turn; it is no wonder that Vero becomes a writer — and a liar, inventing stories in a bid for her own sanity.Narrated in a voice as wryly ironic as it is warm and affectionate, Lost on Me seductively explores the slippery relationship between deceitfulness and creativity, beginning with Vero's first artistic act: a painting she steals from a school classmate and successfully claims as her own.Deceptively simple, its tenderness is offset by moments of cool brutality; Lost on Me is a masterwork of human observation.For fans of Rachel Cusk and Deborah Levy.Endorsements'Deliciously enjoyable' — Katherine Heiny'I adored it' — Naoise Dolan'Hilarious' — Roddy Doyle'Thrillingly original' — Monica Ali

A work of fantasy, I Who Have Never Known Men is the haunting and unforgettable account of a near future on a barren earth where women are kept in underground cages guarded by uniformed groups of men. It is narrated by the youngest of the women, the only one with no memory of what the world was like before the cages, who must teach herself, without books or sexual contact, the essential human emotions of longing, loving, learning, companionship, and dying. Part thriller, part mystery, I Who Have Never Known Men shows us the power of one person without memories to reinvent herself piece by piece, emotion by emotion, in the process teaching us much about what it means to be human.

At the Golden Sunset retirement home, it is not unusual for residents to invent stories. So when elderly Ms Mook first begins to unspool her memories, the obituarist listening to her is sceptical. Stories of captivity, friendship, murder, assumed identities and spying. A life that moves from WWII Indonesia to Busan during the Korean War, from Cold War Pyongyang to a Protestant church in China. The adventures are so colourful and various, at times so unbelievable. Surely they can't all belong to the same woman. Can they? As playful and thought-provoking as it is compelling, as brutal and harrowing as it is achingly poignant and tender, this is a novel about love and war, deceit and betrayal, about identity, storytelling and the trickery required for survival.Slave. Escape-artist. Murderer. Terrorist. Spy. Lover. Mother. Trickster.Endorsements'Captivating' — New York Times'Dazzling' — Financial Times'A cracking good read' — Historical Novel Society

From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors comes this ravishing and generous-hearted novel about a friendship that lasts a lifetime. The story of Elena and Lila begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighborhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these tough streets, the two girls learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone or anything else, as their friendship, beautifully and meticulously rendered, becomes a not always perfect shelter from hardship. Ferrante has created a memorable portrait of two women, but My Brilliant Friend is also the story of a nation. Through the lives of Elena and Lila, Ferrante gives her readers the story of a neighborhood, a city, and a country undergoing momentous change.

In a London flat, two young boys face the unbearable sadness of their mother's sudden death. Their father, a Ted Hughes scholar and scruffy romantic, imagines a future of well-meaning visitors and emptiness.In this moment of despair they are visited by Crow — antagonist, trickster, healer, babysitter. This sentimental bird is drawn to the grieving family and threatens to stay until they no longer need him.This extraordinary debut, full of unexpected humour and emotional truth, marks the arrival of a thrilling and significant new talent.

A whip-smart debut about three women—transgender and cisgender—whose lives collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires around gender, motherhood, and sex.Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men.Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese—and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby—and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it—Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family—and raise the baby together?This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.

The town was once a hub of industry. A place where men toiled underground in darkness, picking and shovelling in the dust and the sleck. It was dangerous and back-breaking work but it meant something. Once, the town provided; it was important and had purpose. But what is it now? Brothers Alex and Brian have spent their whole life in the town where their father lived and his father, too. Still reeling from the collapse of his personal life, Alex is now in his middle age and must reckon with a part of his identity he has long tried to mask. Simon, the only child of Alex, had practically no memory of the mines. Now in his twenties and working in a call centre, he derives passion from his side hustle in sex work and his weekly drag gigs. Set across three generations of a South Yorkshire mining family, Andrew McMillan's short and magnificent debut novel is a lament for a lost way of life as well as a celebration of resilience and the possibility for change.

In November 2018, Eloise and Lewis rent a car in Las Vegas and take off on a two-week road trip across the American southwest. While wildfires rage, the married couple make their way through Nevada, California, Arizona, and Utah, tracing the course of the Colorado River, the aquatic artery on which the Southwest depends for survival. Lewis, an artist working for a prominent land art foundation, is grieving the recent death of his mother, while Eloise is an academic researching the past and future of the Colorado River as it threatens to run dry.Over the course of their trip, Eloise, beginning to suspect she might be pregnant, helplessly witnesses Lewis’s descent as he struggles to find a place for himself in the desert where he never quite felt at home.Elegy, Southwest is a novel which entwines a tragic love story with an intelligent and profound consideration of the way we now live alongside environmental breakdown; an elegy for lost love and for the landscape that makes us.A timely and urgent novel following a young married couple on a road trip through the American southwest as they grapple with the breakdown of their relationship in the shadow of environmental collapse, for fans of Rachel Cusk and Sigrid Nunez.

A mysterious stranger shows up at Riccardo’s apartment with news that his grandmother Perihan has died, and Riccardo has inherited her villa in Milan along with her famed butterfly collection.The struggling writer is out of options. He’s hoping the change of scenery in Milan will inspire him, and maybe there will be some money to keep him afloat. But Perihan’s house isn’t as opulent as he remembers. The butterflies pinned in their glass cases seem more ominous than artful. Perihan’s group of mysterious old friends is constantly lurking. And there’s something wrong in the greenhouse.As Riccardo explores the decrepit estate, he stumbles upon Perihan’s diary, which might hold the key to her mysterious death. Or at least give him the inspiration he needs to finish his manuscript.But he might not survive long enough to write it.A haunting novel about the boundaries people will cross to keep their dreams alive.

On St George's Day, the morning of the local country fair, Johnny 'Rooster' Byron, local waster and Lord of Misrule, is a wanted man. The council officials want to serve him an eviction notice, his son wants to be taken to the fair, a vengeful father wants to give him a serious kicking, and a motley crew of mates wants his ample supply of drugs and alcohol.Jerusalem premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2009, directed by Ian Rickson and starring Mark Rylance in an astonishing performance as Johnny Byron. It transferred to the West End in 2010.A comic, contemporary vision of life in England's green and pleasant land.EndorsementsWinner of the Evening Standard Award for Best Play, and the Critics Circle and Whatsonstage.com Awards for Best New Play."Unarguably one of the best dramas of the twenty-first century" — Guardian"Tender, touching, and blessed with both a ribald humour and a haunting sense of the mystery of things... one of the must-see events of the summer" — Telegraph"Jez Butterworth's gorgeous, expansive new play keeps coming at its audience in unpredictable gusts, rolling from comic to furious, from winsome to bawdy" — Observer"Storming... restores one's faith in the power of theatre" — Independent"Show of the year" — Time Out

Born with a congenital muscle disorder, Shaka spends her days in her room in a care home outside Tokyo, relying on an electric wheelchair to get around and a ventilator to breathe. But if Shaka's physical life is limited, her quick, mischievous mind has no limits: she takes e-learning courses on her iPad, publishes explicit fantasies on websites, and anonymously troll-tweets to see if anyone is paying attention ('If I were to live again, I'd want to be a high-class prostitute'). One day, she tweets into the void an offer of an enormous sum of money for a sperm donor. To her surprise — and ours — her new nurse accepts the dare, unleashing a series of events that will forever change Shaka's sense of herself as a woman in the world.Hunchback is a feminist story about the dignity of an individual who insists on her right to make choices for herself, no matter the consequences. Formally creative and refreshingly unsentimental, Hunchback depicts the joy, anger, and desires of a woman demanding autonomy in a world that doesn't always grant it to people like her.Full of wit, bite, and heart, this unforgettable novel reminds us all of the full potential of our lives, no matter the limitations we experience.EndorsementsWinner of the Akutagawa Prize.

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she recalls her past lovers and grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend, is a lawyer who has been successful at everything until — betrayed and brokenhearted — she must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, is a financial powerhouse in Nigeria who begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve.In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved? A trenchant reflection on the choices we make and those made for us, on daughters and mothers, on our interconnected world, Dream Count pulses with emotional urgency and poignant, unflinching observations on the human heart, in language that soars with beauty and power.

In this collection of one novel and three novellas, Torrey Peters pushes trans-genre to its limits to explore who gets included—and excluded—from the possibilities of gender.In Stag Dance, this collection’s titular novel, a Paul Bunyan-type lumberjack working an illegal winter logging outfit recounts how the lonely woodsmen entertain themselves with a dance at which some of the loggers must volunteer to attend as women. Obsession, repressed desires, and betrayal lead up to the big night, as the lumberjack grows increasingly jealous of Lisen, the prettiest young man in camp, weaving a surreal tall tale that questions the nature of transition.Three equally visionary novellas surround Stag Dance. In Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones, Peters imagines a sci-fi future in which everyone must choose their own gender—the vengeful consequence of a rogue trio of charismatic trans women who destroy civilization as we know it. In The Chaser, a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last novella, The Masker, a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns horrific when a young crossdresser must choose between a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways and a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.Radical, witty, and gripping, these four narratives coalesce to form a portrait of identity-in-crisis that unsettles and delights.

Tommy Orange's wondrous and shattering novel follows twelve Native American characters—all traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow, all connected to one another in ways they may not yet realize. Among them are Jacquie Red Feather, newly sober and trying to make it back to the family she left behind; Dene Oxendene, who is pulling his life together after his uncle's death and working at the powwow to honor his memory; and fourteen-year-old Orvil, who comes to perform traditional dance for the very first time. Together, this chorus of voices tells of the plight of the urban Native American—grappling with a complex and painful history, with an inheritance of beauty and spirituality, with communion and sacrifice and heroism.Hailed as an instant classic, There There is at once poignant and unflinching, utterly contemporary and truly unforgettable.

Should we really ever bring our whole selves to work?In a London call centre, Jimmie helps holidaymakers with myriad problems, but he is hardly a model employee. He doesn’t simply provide customer service to his clients and advice to his colleagues, he gets involved in their fantasies and frustrations, and now he’s about to be hauled up in front of the boss.From perfecting his roles as an undertaker and as a clown to performing duties above and beyond his employment contract, he debates the importance of the optimum shade for lipstick and bathroom walls, the pros and cons of nudist versus textile, as well as the psychological impacts of an Italian mother and an emotional support animal.Jimmie’s sly, sharp, melancholy insights into the indignities of a world that aims to eliminate the human will make you laugh, weep and never look the same way at an electric carving knife again.

Tara Selter, the heroine of On the Calculation of Volume, has involuntarily stepped off the train of time: in her world, November eighteenth repeats itself endlessly. We meet Tara on her 122nd November 18th: she no longer experiences the changes of days, weeks, months, or seasons. She finds herself in a lonely new reality without being able to explain why: how is it that she wakes every morning into the same day, knowing to the exact second when the blackbird will burst into song and when the rain will begin? Will she ever be able to share her new life with her beloved and now chronically befuddled husband? And on top of her profound isolation and confusion, Tara takes in with pain how slight a difference she makes in the world. (As she puts it: “That’s how little the activities of one person matter on the eighteenth of November.”)Solvej Balle’s seven-volume novel wrings enthralling and magical new dimensions from time and its hapless, mortal subjects.

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.

Remember—words are your weapons, they’re your tools, your currency: a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power.Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, in the midst of an illegal rave, a young man is nearly bludgeoned to death with a solid gold bar.An ambitious young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement that has taken up residence on the farm. She solves the mystery, but her viral exposé raises more questions than it answers. Who wrote it? Why? And how much of it is true? Through a voyeuristic lens, and with a simmering power, the book focuses in on what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.Universality is a compelling, unsettling celebration of the spectacular, appalling force of language.It dares you to look away.Endorsements'powerful new voice in British Literature' — The Sunday Times

The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's car business is going under, but instead of doing anything about it, he's out in the woods preparing for the actual end of the world. Meanwhile his wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay and half-heartedly dodging the attentions of fast-talking local wrongun Big Mike. Their teenage daughter Cass, usually top of her class, seems determined to drink her way through the whole thing. And twelve year old PJ is spending more and more time on video game forums, where he's met a friendly boy named Ethan who never turns his camera on and wants PJ to run away from home.Digging down through layers of family history, the roots of this crisis stretch deep into the past. Meanwhile in the present, the fault lines keep spreading, ghosts slipping in through the cracks, and every step brings the Barneses closer to a fatal precipice. When the moment of reckoning finally arrives, all four of them must decide how far they're willing to go to save the family, and whether—if the story's already been written—there's still time to give it a happy ending...

Last night I was woken up by Marco ringing; he was crying. He said, 'He died, Ivor—he died.' I didn't need to hear who to know; I just hung up.Ivor and Marco have been getting high since they were thirteen, started dealing at fourteen, and by fifteen they were carrying knives. At sixteen, they hurtle from one trip to the next, one fight to the next, always watching their backs. Ivor dreams of getting out — finishing school, becoming a lawyer, marrying the girl he loves from the corner shop — but the path he's on only leads one way.In flashes of firecracker prose, shot through with rare empathy, irrepressible wit and gut-punch pathos, Oliver Lovrenski gives voice to young men growing up in a brutal and chaotic world.

Ursula, Alvin, Jen, and Duncan grew up as cousins in the sprawling Nguyen family, but the truth about their family is much more complicated. As young adults, they're on the precipice of new ventures—Ursula as a budding journalist in Manhattan, Alvin as an engineering intern for Google, Jen as a naive freshman at NYU, and Duncan as a promising newcomer on his high school football team. Their lives are upended when a series of violent, senseless attacks across America create a national panic, prompting a government policy forcing Vietnamese Americans into internment camps. Jen and Duncan are sent with their mother to Camp Tacoma while Ursula and Alvin receive exemptions.Cut off entirely from the outside world, Jen and Duncan try to withstand long dusty days in camp, forced to work jobs they hate and acclimate to life without the internet. That is until Jen discovers a way to get messages to the outside. Her first instinct is to reach out to Ursula, who sees this as an opportunity to tell the world about the horrors of detention—and bolster her own reporting career in the process.Informed by real-life events from Japanese incarceration, the Vietnam War, and modern-day immigrant detention, Kevin Nguyen gives us a version of reality only a few degrees away from our own—much too close for comfort. Moving and finely attuned to both the brutalities and mundanities of racism in America, Mỹ Documents is a strangely funny and touching portrait of American ambition, fear, and family. The story of the Nguyens is one of resilience and how we return to each other, and to ourselves, after tragedy.The paths of four family members diverge drastically when the U.S. government begins detaining Vietnamese Americans, in this sharp and touching novel about growing up at the intersection of ambition and assimilation.

The great-granddaughter of Iran's last emperor and the daughter of ardent Marxists describes growing up in Tehran in a country plagued by political upheaval and vast contradictions between public and private life.

In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel, causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and told them they had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died. The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies? A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.

On the evening of Father’s Day, 2005, separated husband Robert Farquharson was driving his three young sons back to their mom’s house when the car veered off the road and plunged into a dam. Farquharson survived the crash, but his boys drowned. Was this a tragic accident, or an act of revenge? The court case that followed became a national obsession—a macabre parade of witnesses, family members, and the defendant himself, each forced to relive the unthinkable for an audience of millions.In This House of Grief, celebrated writer Helen Garner tells the definitive and deeply absorbing story of it all, from crash to final verdict. Through a panoply of perspectives, including her own as a member of the public, Garner captures the exacting procedure and brutal spectacle of Australia’s criminal justice system. The result is a richly textured portrait of a man and his broken life, of a community wracked by tragedy, and of the long and torturous road to closure.The engrossing true-crime classic from one of Australia’s most acclaimed writers, which follows a man and his broken life, a community wracked by tragedy, and the long and torturous road to closure. Considered a literary institution in Australia, Helen Garner’s incisive nonfiction evokes the keen eye of the New Journalists. Brisk, candid, and never dismissive of its flawed subjects, This House of Grief is a masterwork of literary journalism.Endorsements"This House of Grief, in its restraint and control, bears comparison with In Cold Blood." — Kate Atkinson, author of Big Sky and Shrines of Gaiety

In early October 2023, Palestinian Plestia Alaqad was a recent graduate with dreams of becoming a successful journalist. By the end of November, her social media posts depicting daily life in Gaza, amid Israel's deadly invasion and bombardment, would profoundly move millions of people. She would be internationally known as the "Eyes of Gaza".Written as a series of diary extracts, The Eyes of Gaza relates the horrors of her experiences while showcasing the indomitable spirit of the men, women and children who share her communities. From the epicentre of turmoil, while bombs rain around her and devastation grips her people, she is witness to their emotions, their gentle acts of quiet, necessary heroism, and the moments of unexpected tenderness and vulnerability amid the chaos.Through the raw honesty and vulnerability of a normal 21-year-old woman trying to make her way through a human tragedy, The Eyes of Gaza is a potent reminder of the horrors of violence and a powerful testament to the human spirit. It recounts a harrowing experience, but it is not a heart-breaking lamentation. Rather, it is a deeply intimate love letter to a girl's homeland—demolished before her eyes, yes, but forever present in her heart.

Discover a powerful, evocative and urgent new young voice in nature writing.'Birdwatching has never felt like a hobby, or a pastime I can pick up and put down, but a thread running through the pattern of my life.'Meet Mya-Rose — otherwise known as 'Birdgirl'. Birder, environmentalist, diversity activist.To date she has seen over five thousand different species — around half of the world's bird species.Every single bird is a treasure. Each sighting is a small step in her family journey — a collective moment of joy and stillness, and each helps her to find her voice.Since she was young, she has visited every continent to pursue her passion, seeing first-hand the inequality and reckless destruction we are inflicting on our fragile planet. The simple, mindful act of looking for birds has made her ever more determined to campaign for our survival.This is her story: a journey defined by her love for these extraordinary creatures. Because large or small, brown, patterned or jewelled, there is something about birds that makes us, even for just moments at a time, lift our eyes away from our lives and up to the skies.Birdgirl is perfect for fans of H Is for Hawk and Diary of a Young Naturalist, and for young or aspiring environmentalists.EndorsementsWinner of the Somerset Maugham Award 2023

Meatless Days is a searing memoir of life in the newly-created country of Pakistan. When sudden and shocking tragedies hit the author's family two years apart, her personal crisis spirals into a wider meditation on universal questions: about being a woman when you're too busy being a mother or a sister or a wife to consider your own womanhood; about how it feels to begin life in a new language; about how our lives are changed by the people that leave them. This is a heart-breaking, hopeful and profound book that will get under your skin.Endorsements'Some of the more heart-shaking writing about love and grief I've ever read' — Kamila Shamsie, from the introduction'Extraordinary... as an evocation of family love, with all its sharpness, pain and need, Meatless Days is almost faultless' — New Statesman

Jack Kerouac. Allen Ginsberg. William S. Burroughs. LeRoi Jones. Theirs are the names primarily associated with the Beat Generation. But what about Joyce Johnson (née Glassman), Edie Parker, Elise Cowen, Diane Di Prima, and dozens of others?These female friends and lovers of the famous iconoclasts are now beginning to be recognized for their own roles in forging the Beat movement and for their daring attempts to live as freely as did the men in their circle a decade before Women's Liberation. Twenty-one-year-old Joyce Johnson, an aspiring novelist and a secretary at a New York literary agency, fell in love with Jack Kerouac on a blind date arranged by Allen Ginsberg nine months before the publication of On the Road made Kerouac an instant celebrity.While Kerouac traveled to Tangiers, San Francisco, and Mexico City, Johnson roamed the streets of the East Village, where she found herself in the midst of the cultural revolution the Beats had created. Minor Characters portrays the turbulent years of her relationship with Kerouac with extraordinary wit and love, and a cool, critical eye, introducing the reader to a lesser-known but purely original American voice: her own.

New York Times Bestseller Capturing the music, characters, escapades, and energy of his DJ days, a profound memoir from seven-time Grammy-winning record producer Mark Ronson. Lady Gaga, Adele, Amy Winehouse, Dua Lipa, Bruno Mars, Miley Cyrus, the Barbie soundtrack—behind some of the biggest musical moments in the past two decades is one man: Mark Ronson. Night People conjures the undeniable magic of the city's bygone nightlife—a time when clubs were diverse, glamorous, and a little lawless, and each night brought a heady mix of music, ambition, danger, delight, and possibility. It's about the beauty of what you can create with just two Technics and a mixer, in a golden era before Giuliani, camera phones, and bottle service upended everything. It's also about a teenager finding his way—stalking DJ Stretch Armstrong and biting his mixes, crate-digging in every corner of New York, grinding gig after gig through a decade of incredible music—and finding a community of people who, in their own strange, cracked ways, lived for the night. Organized around the venues that defined his experience of the downtown scene, Ronson evokes the specific rush of that decade and those spaces—where fashion folks and rappers on the rise danced alongside club kids and 9-to-5'ers—and invites us into the tribe of creatives and partiers who came alive when the sun went down. A heartfelt coming-of-age tale, Night People is the definitive account of '90s New York nightlife and the making of a musical mastermind.

From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human.On Oct 25th, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed over 10 million times.One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, Indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse.This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the West, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries — America, the UK, France and Germany. It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called ‘rules-based order’ — a generation that understands the West can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the Western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11.This book is his heartsick breakup letter with the West. It is a breakup we are watching all over the U.S., on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the West has served up. This is the book for our time.