All Woman and Springtime
B W Jones
W & N Fiction, PB, 9780297868330
Gi and Il-sun live behind North Korea's iron curtain, under the watchful eye of Dear Leader. As orphans, growing up on a diet of thin soup and propaganda, life is a struggle against hunger and fear. But tender Gi and headstrong Il-sun find consolation in each other and their unlikely friendship grows as deep as the bond between sisters. Everything will ... More/Buy
American Weather
Charles McLeod
Harvill Secker, PB, 9781846553332
Meet Jim Haskin. He's forty years old. He's worth around thirty-five million. He runs his own San Francisco ad firm, American Weather. AmWe's image is green, modern and forward-looking: if your product is upcycled or hydro or vegan, they'll make you an ad. But behind the scenes, Jim manufactures ways to support the old captains of American industry; bleach, beer and ... More/Buy
Another Country
Anjali Joseph
Fourth Estate, PB, 9780007462780
'They'd discussed it earlier, in the days of their friendship: the need to reach a certain phase in one's life, to become a householder, to enter the world and leave behind the selfish days of youth.' Paris, London, Bombay: three cities form a backdrop to a journey through Leela's twenties at the dawn of the new millennium, as she learns to ... More/Buy
Azazeel
Youssef Ziedan
Atlantic, PB, 9781848874282
Set in the 5th century AD, Azazeel is the beautifully written tale of a Coptic monk's journey from Upper Egypt to Alexandria and then Syria during a time of turmoil in Christianity. The self-christened 'Hepa' embarks on a journey both physical and spiritual, encountering the devil, Azazeel, and the hardship of severe temptation. At times he is able to resist and ... More/Buy
Bertie Plays The Blues
Alexander McCall Smith
Abacus, PB, 9780349000329
NOW B FORMAT. Even down to its well-set Georgian townhouses, Edinburgh is a hymn to measure and harmony. But on Scotland Street, domestic accord is in short supply. Matthew and Elspeth welcome three new arrivals, though the joys of multiple parenthood are somewhat lost due to sleep deprivation and the difficulties of telling their brood apart. Angus and Domenica are to ... More/Buy
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Ben Fountain
Canongate, PB, 9780857864529
The eight surviving members of Bravo Squad are national heroes. Four months into their combat tour of Iraq, Bravo defeat an elite force of enemy insurgents in a ferocious fire-fight. The battle is captured on film by a Fox News camera crew, the footage is a viral sensation on the internet and Bravo become celebrities, virtually overnight. Seizing on this public relations ... More/Buy
Breathing On Glass
Jennifer Cryer
Little Brown, PB, 9781408703571
Rhea - dark, intense and brilliant - and her golden, voluptuous sister Amber are not alike, but they are bound tighter than most: by love, by the loss of their father and by the man who stands between them. Lewis is Amber's husband and the ferociously driven director of the biotech lab where Rhea is a rising star. In search of ... More/Buy
Can We Still Be Friends
Alexandra Shulman
Fig Tree, PB, 9781905490783
It's the summer of 1983 and best friends, Salome, Annie and Kendra have left university to embark on adulthood. Three very different girls with very different paths ahead. Sal, the aspiring journalist whose personal demons threaten to destroy everything she has achieved. Annie, the capable domestic beauty, convinced that marriage will give her everything she wants Kendra, the daughter of chic, ... More/Buy
Canada
Richard Ford
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408815168
In 1956, Del Parsons' family came to a stop in Great Falls, Montana, the way many military families did following the war. His father, Bev, was a talkative, plank-shouldered man, an airman from Alabama with an optimistic and easy-scheming nature. Del and his twin sister, Berner, could easily see why their mother might have been attracted to him. But their mother ... More/Buy
The Coincidence Engine
Sam Leith
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408821725
A hurricane sweeps off the Gulf of Mexico and in the back-country of Alabama, assembles a passenger jet out of old bean-cans and junkyard waste. An eccentric mathematician - last heard of investigating the physics of free will and ranting about the devil - vanishes in the French Pyrenees. And the thuggish operatives of a multinational arms conglomerate are closing in ... More/Buy
The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard
Joe Brainard
Library of America, HB, 9781598531497
Here in one volume is the full range of Joe Brainard's writing in all its deadpan wit, effortless inventiveness, personal candor, and generosity of spirit: the complete text of I Remember, along with an unprecedented gathering of intimate journals, stories, poems, travel diaries, one-liners, comic strips, mini-essays, and short plays, many of them until now available only in expensive rare editions. ... More/Buy
The Cookbook Collector
Allegra Goodman
Atlantic, PB, 9781848875401
At the turn of the last century, two sisters are following very different paths. Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is a CEO of an internet start-up; twenty-three-year-old Jess is a grad student in philosophy, a vegan who rejects the rampant capitalism that surrounds her. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley while capricious Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily's boyfriend is ... More/Buy
Coronation
Paul Gallico
Bloomsbury, HB, 9781408830222
Imagine seeing the Queen that close as she goes by in her golden carriage! The kiddies will have something to tell their kiddies, won't they? And a drink of real champagne to go with it! Coronation Day, 2 June 1953! A humble, working-class family from Sheffield is desperate to buy train tickets to London to see the coronation, but doing so ... More/Buy
Dare Me
Megan Abbott
Picador, PB, 9781447221470
"We thought nothing and no one could touch us." Addy Hanlon and Beth Cassidy are the unchallenged rulers of their high school kingdom. They're the girls that nobody crosses, captains of the cheerleaders, invincible. Until their new coach arrives - all sleek poise and cool command - and their world is changed forever. That year, there are no limits. And in ... More/Buy
Dickens' Women: Audio CDs
Miriam Margolyes
BBC, CD, 9781445879178
Miriam Margolyes (Professor Sprout in the Harry Potter films) sparkles and delights in her one-woman show where she plays 23 different roles - men and women - from Dickens' books. Through them she tells the story of Dickens' life, using his characters like Miss Haversham, Little Nell, and Mr and Mrs Bumble. Most were based on real people, like Mary Hogarth ... More/Buy
The Dream of the Celt
Mario Vargas Llosa
Faber, PB, 9780571275724
As The Dream of the Celt opens, it is the summer of 1916 and Roger Casement awaits the hangman in London's Pentonville Prison. Dublin lies in ruins after the disastrous Easter Rising led by his comrades of the Irish Volunteers. He has been caught after landing from a German submarine. For the past year he has attempted to raise an Irish ... More/Buy
Dublinesque
Enrique Vila-Matas
Harvill Secker, PB, 9781846554896
Samuel Riba is about to turn 60. A successful publisher in Barcelona, he has published many of his generation's most important authors. But he is increasingly prone to attacks of anxiety - about the digital revolution and its threat to books and 'high culture', and about the fact that he has yet to discover in the younger generation a writer of ... More/Buy
The Echo Chamber
Luke Williams
Penguin, PB, 9780141019512
In coming into the world Evie Steppman pushed her mother out of it. Born two months late but with an extraordinary gift of hearing, Evie has an impression of the world that is vastly different to the experiences of other people. Taking us from Nigeria in the 1950s to 1970s America and finally on to Scotland in the early twenty-first century, ... More/Buy
Every Day, Every Hour
Natasa Dragnic
Chatto & Windus, PB, 9780701186944
From Croatia to France, from the lighthouse of Makarska to the theatres of Paris, Natasa Dragnic tells the captivating story of Luka and Dora, two inextricably linked souls, and love so close it cannot be separated. Dora and Luka are inseparable: ever since he fainted the first sight of her, walking into the classroom with her new schoolbag, and was awoken ... More/Buy
The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore
Benjamin Hale
Atlantic, PB, 9781848875340
NOW IN B FORMAT. Bruno Littlemore; linguist, artist, philosopher. A life defined by a soaring mind, yet bound by a restrictive body. Born in down-town Chicago, Bruno's precocity pulls him from an unremarkable childhood, and under the tuition of Lydia, his intellect dazzles a watching world. But when falls in love with his mentor, the world turns on them with outrage: ... More/Buy
Foreign Bodies
Cynthia Ozick
Atlantic, PB, 9781848877368
The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingale's life, leaving her middle-aged and alone, teaching in an impoverished borough of 1950s New York. When her estranged, difficult brother asks her to leave New York for Paris to retrieve a nephew she barely knows, she becomes entangled in the lives of her brother's family and even her ex-husband. Every one ... More/Buy
The Forgotten Waltz
Anne Enright
Vintage, PB, 9780099539780
It is the winter of 2009 and snow covers Dublin. As the city outside comes to a halt, Gina Moynihan recalls the bewildering speed of attraction and her irreparable slip into longing for Seán Vallely, a married man and 'the love of her life'. Gina remembers the days of their affair in one hotel room or another: long afternoons made blank ... More/Buy
Gold
Chris Cleave
Sceptre, PB, 9780340963449
Usually, this is where we'd tell you what this book is about. But with Chris Cleave, it's a bit different. Because if you've read THE OTHER HAND or INCENDIARY, you'll know that what his books are about is only part of the story - what really matters is how they make you feel. GOLD is about the limits of human endurance, ... More/Buy
The Headmaster's Wager
Vincent Lam
Fourth Estate, PB, 9780007340354
Percival Chen is the headmaster of the most respected English school in Saigon. He is also a bon vivant, a compulsive gambler and an incorrigible womaniser. He is well accustomed to bribing a forever-changing list of government officials in order to maintain the elite status of the Chen Academy. He is fiercely proud of his Chinese heritage, and quick to spot ... More/Buy
Irma Voth
Miriam Toews
Faber, PB, 9780571273560
The stifling, reclusive life of nineteen-year-old Irma Voth, recently married, and more recently deserted is turned on its head when a film crew moves in to make a movie about the strict religious community, in which she lives. When she clashes with her domineering father over her work as a translator for the crew, Irma is set on a path towards ... More/Buy
The J M Barrie Ladies' Swimming Society
Barbara J Zitwer
Faber, PB, 9781780720401
Joey, an overworked New York architect, has come to the Cotswolds to oversee the restoration of Stanway House - the stately home that inspired J.M. Barrie to write Peter Pan. But it hasn't been easy. The local residents aren't exactly welcoming, and then there's the problem of the brooding caretaker, a man who seems to take every opportunity to undermine her ... More/Buy
The Last Gift
Abdulrazak Gurnah
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408821855
One day, long before the troubles, he slipped away without saying a word to anyone and never went back. And then another day, forty three years later, he collapsed just inside the front door of his house in a small English town. It was late in the day when it happened, on his way home after work, but it was also ... More/Buy
The Map and the Territory
Michel Houellebecq
Vintage, PB, 9780434021413
NOW IN B FORMAT. If Jed Martin, the main character of this novel, was to tell you its story, he would perhaps begin by talking about a boiler breaking down, one 15th December. Or about his father, a well-known and committed architect, with whom he passed alone many a Christmas Eve.He would certainly recall Olga, a very pretty Russian he met ... More/Buy
The Marlowe Papers
Ros Barber
Sceptre, PB, 9781444737394
On May 30th, 1593, a celebrated young playwright was killed in a tavern brawl in London. That, at least, was the official version. Now let Christopher Marlowe tell you the truth: that his 'death' was an elaborate ruse to avoid his being hanged for heresy; that he was spirited across the channel to live on in lonely exile, longing for his ... More/Buy
The Method
Juli Zeh
Vintage, PB, 9781409028291
Mia Holl lives in a state governed by The Method, where good health is the highest duty of the citizen. Everyone must submit medical data and sleep records to the authorities on a monthly basis, and regular exercise is mandatory. Mia is young and beautiful, a successful scientist who is outwardly obedient but with an intellect that marks her as subversive. ... More/Buy
My New American Life
Francine Prose
Harper Collins, PB, 9780061713798
It is 2005, and 26-year-old Albanian Lula is waitressing illegally and sharing a tiny apartment with three other immigrant hopefuls in New Yorks Alphabet City. When she lands a job as caretaker to a high school senior in suburban New Jersey and moves in with Mister Stanley, an idealistic college professor turned Wall Street executive, and his rebellious son Zeke, it ... More/Buy
The Newlyweds
Nell Freudenberger
Knopf, HB, 9780307268846
The Newlyweds tells the story of Amina Mazid, who at age twenty-four moves from Bangladesh to Rochester, New York, for love. 100 years ago, Amina would have been called a mail-order bride. But this is an arranged marriage for the 21st century: Amina is wooed by—and woos—George Stillman online. For Amina, George offers a chance for a new life and a ... More/Buy
The Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Vintage, PB, 9781846555244
NOW B FORMAT. In 1886 a mysterious travelling circus becomes an international sensation. Open only at night, constructed entirely in black and white, the Cirque des Reves delights all who wander its circular paths and warm themselves at its bonfire. There are contortionists, performing cats, carousels and illusionists - all the trappings of an ordinary circus. But this is no conventional ... More/Buy
Night Falls On The City: The Lost Masterpiece of Wartime Vienna
Sarah Gainham
Abacus, PB, 9781408703793
Vienna, 1938: a place of high culture, gilded opera houses and intellectual salons. Beautiful actress Julia Homburg and her politician husband Franz Wedeker embody all the enlightened brilliance of their native city. But Wedeker is Jewish and just across the border the tanks of the Nazi Reich are primed for the Anschluss. When the SS invade, lists are drawn up and ... More/Buy
Once You Break a Knuckle
D W Wilson
Bloomsbury, HB, 9781408830284
In the remote Kootenay Valley in western Canada, good people sometimes do bad things. Two bullied adolescents sabotage a rope swing, resulting in another boy's death. A heartbroken young man chooses not to warn his best friend about an approaching car. Sons challenge fathers and break taboos. Crackling with tension and propelled by jagged, cutting dialogue, D.W. Wilson's stories reveal to ... More/Buy
Peaches for Monsieur le Curé: Chocolat 3
Joanne Harris
Doubleday, PB, 9781409044253
Joanne Harris returns to the land of Chocolat. It isn’t often you receive a letter from the dead, so when Vianne Rocher receives a letter from beyond the grave, she has no choice but to follow the wind that blows her back to Lansquenet, the village in which eight years ago, she opened up a Chocolate shop. But returning to her ... More/Buy
The Prisoner of Heaven
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Text Publishing, PB, 9781921922879
The Prisoner of Heaven returns to the world of the Cemetery of Forgotten Books and the Sempere & Sons bookshop. It begins just before Christmas in Barcelona in 1957, one year after Daniel and Bea from The Shadow of the Wind have married. They now have a son, Julian, and are living with Daniel's father at Sempere & Sons. Fermin still ... More/Buy
Railsea
China Mieville
Macmillan, PB, 9780230765122
On board the Medes, Sham yes ap Saroop watches in awe as he witnesses his first moldywarpe hunt. The giant mole bursting from the earth, the harpoonists targeting their prey — and the inevitable battle that follows between human and creature that will result in one's death and the other's glory. Travelling the rails of the Railsea, Sham knows there is ... More/Buy
The Restaurant of Love Regained
Ito Ogawa
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781846881800
Returning home from work, Rinko is shocked to find that her flat is totally empty. Gone are her TV set, fridge and furniture, gone are all her kitchen tools, including the old Meiji mortar she has inherited from her grandmother and the Le Creuset casserole she has bought with her first salary. Gone, above all, is her Indian boyfriend, the maitre ... More/Buy
Ru
Kim Thuy
Profile, PB, 9781846685484
Ru: In Vietnamese it means lullaby; in French it is a small stream, but also signifies a flow - of tears, blood, money. Kim Th?y's Ru is literature at its most crystalline: the flow of a life on the tides of unrest and on to more peaceful waters. In vignettes of exquisite clarity, sharp observation and sly wit, we are carried ... More/Buy
Seating Arrangements
Maggie Shipstead
Blue Door, PB, 9780007425228
59-year-old patriarch Winn Van Meter is heading for his family's retreat on the pristine New England island of Waskeke. Normally a haven of calm, for the next three days this sanctuary will be overrun with relatives and friends as Winn prepares to marry off his daughter Daphne to Greyson Duff. Winn has never really understood his daughters. Daphne is pleased to ... More/Buy
The Secret Life of William Shakespeare
Jude Morgan
Headline, PB, 9780755358236
The greatest writer of them all, brought to glorious life. How well do you know the man you love? How much do you think you know about Shakespeare? What if they were one and the same? He is an ordinary man: unwilling craftsman, ambitious actor, resentful son, almost good-enough husband. And he is also a genius. The story of how a ... More/Buy
Skios
Michael Frayn
Faber, PB, 9780571281428
On the sunlit Greek island of Skios, the Fred Toppler Foundation's annual lecture is to be given by Dr Norman Wilfred, the world-famous authority on the scientific organisation of science. He turns out to be surprisingly young and charming - not at all the intimidating figure they had been expecting. The Foundation's guests are soon eating out of his hand. So, ... More/Buy
Snake Ropes
Jess Richards
Sceptre, PB, 9781444737844
No-one here goes to the main land, and no-one wants to. Our boats aren't strong enough, we dun know the way, them can't understand us, we're fine as we are. We have so many reasons; them stretch as wide as the distance to cross to take us there. The day the tall men come from the mainland to trade, Mary's little ... More/Buy
The Taliban Cricket Club
Timeri N Murari
Allen & Unwin, PB, 9781742378046
Rukhsana, a spirited young journalist in Kabul, is summoned to the infamous Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice to face its terrifying minister, Zorak Wahidi. A cricket tournament is announced, with the winning team to travel to Pakistan for training and then represent Afghanistan at an international level. In reality, the idea is ludicrous. The Taliban will ... More/Buy
Ten Thousand Saints
Eleanor Henderson
Quercus, PB, 9781780872179
It is New Year's Eve, 1987. For fifteen-year-old Teddy Michaels, it is a very significant day. He must find a new home following the disappearance of his mother and celebrate his best friend Jude's birthday by taking as many drugs as Jude can find. But he will also lose his virginity - to Jude's step-sister, Eliza -“ and his life. Teddy's ... More/Buy
This Is How It Ends
Kathleen MacMahon
Sphere, PB, 9781847445551
Ireland. Family secrets. Laughter. Tragedy. Lehman Brothers. Obama's election. Swimming. Dogs. Big beaches. Loneliness. Addie and Bruno. A story of unexpected, life-changing love, set in the autumn of ... More/Buy
The Trapeze Artist
Will Davis
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408823040
Although his parents thought he was nice and kind-hearted and teachers saw him as a good boy, secretly he hated his drab, ordered world and longed for more. Then, when he was fourteen, a new boy arrived at his school. Edward exuded the coolness of a latter-day Oscar Wilde. Edward listened to Patti Smith, watched Fassbinder films and knew the writings ... More/Buy
Underground Time
Delphine de Vigan
Bloomsbury, PB, 9781408821749
Everyday Mathilde takes the Metro, then the commuter train to the office of a large multi-national where she works in the marketing department. Every day, the same routine, the same trains. But something happened a while ago-she dared to voice a different opinion from her moody boss, Jacques. Bit by bit she finds herself frozen out of everything, with no work ... More/Buy
Unholy Night
Seth Grahame-Smith
Arena, PB, 9781743310519
he Three Kings of the Nativity are an iconic part of history's most celebrated birth. But what do we really know about them besides the claim that they followed a star to Bethlehem bearing strange gifts? The Bible has little to say about this enigmatic trio. But leave it to Seth Grahame-Smith, the brilliant and twisted mind behind Abraham Lincoln: Vampire ... More/Buy
What Dies In Summer
Tom Wright
Text Publishing, PB, 9781921922473
On the porch Biscuit finds a girl, bedraggled and speechless. It is his cousin, Lee Ann, who has come through the woods to find safety at the house where Biscuit lives with his grandma. As the novel unwinds, we discover the trauma she and other girls in the town have undergone. Told by Biscuit, a boy on the cusp of adolescence, ... More/Buy
The Woman Who Went To Bed For A Year
Sue Townsend
Michael Joseph, PB, 9780718157166
The day her gifted twins leave home for university, Eva climbs into bed and stays there. For seventeen years she's wanted to yell at the world, 'Stop! I want to get off.' Finally, this is her chance. Perhaps she will be able to think. Her husband Dr Brain Beaver, an astronomer who divides his time between gazing at the expanding universe, ... More/Buy
The Year of the Gadfly
Jennifer Miller
Text Publishing, PB, 9781921922886
Iris Dupont is a spirited teenage reporter whose only confidant is the chain-smoking spectre of Edward R. Murrow. Jonah Kaplan is a failed microbiologist-turned-biology-teacher who is haunted by the ghosts of his ... More/Buy