The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell

Winter, 1561. Lucrezia, Duchess of Ferrara, is taken on an unexpected visit to a country villa by her husband, Alfonso.
He intends to kill her. Lucrezia is sixteen years old, and has led a sheltered life locked away inside Florence's grandest palazzo. What is Lucrezia to do with this sudden knowledge? How can she ensure her survival. The Marriage Portrait is an unforgettable reimagining of the life of a young woman whose proximity to power places her in mortal danger.

£9.99

The Arctic by Don Paterson

'The Arctic' is the name of a bar frequented by the survivors of several kinds of apocalypse. The poems gathered here are as various as the clientele: elegies for the poet's musician father; tales of the love lives of gods and the childhoods of psychopaths; troubled encounters between men and women; odes to movies and the male anatomy; studies of art and ambition, politics and parenthood. By turns urgent, railing and tender, these are poems of and for our times, by one of our most celebrated and formally adventurous writers.

£10.99

Best of Friends by Kamila Shamsie

In 1988 Karachi, two fourteen-year-old girls are a decade into their friendship, sharing in-jokes, secrets and a love for George Michael. As Pakistan's dictatorship falls and a woman comes to power, the world suddenly seems full of possibilities. Elated by the change in the air, they make a snap decision at a party.
That night, everything goes wrong, and the two girls are powerless to change the outcome

£8.99

Ian Hamilton Finlay: Selections

Best known for his garden Little Sparta, this volume surveys the life and work of Ian Hamilton Finlay , poet and artist. This book directs sustained attention to Finlay the verbal artist, revealing the full breadth and richness of his poetics. It illuminates the evolution from his early years of composing plays, stories and lyrical poems to his discovery of Concrete poetry and his emergence as a key figure in the international avant-garde of the 1960s.

£21 paperback

Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart

The extraordinary, powerful second novel from the Booker prizewinning author of Shuggie Bain, Young Mungo is both a vivid portrayal of working-class life in Glasgow’s housing estates and the deeply moving story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. A gripping and revealing story about the meaning of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.

£9.99

Sell Us the Rope by Stephen May

May 1907. Young Stalin - poet, bank-robber, spy - is in London for the 5th Congress of the Russian Communist Party.

As he builds his powerbase in the party, Stalin manipulates alliances with Lenin, Trotsky, and Rosa Luxemburg under the eyes of the Czar's secret police. Meanwhile he is drawn to the fiery Finnish activist Elli Vuokko and risks everything in a relationship as complicated as it is dangerous.

£8.99

One Sky Day by Leone Ross

Dawn breaks across the archipelago of Popisho. The world is stirring awake again, each resident with their own list of things to do: A wedding feast to conjure and cook: An infidelity to investigate: A lost soul to set free. As the sun rises two star-crossed lovers try to find their way back to one another across this single day. When night falls, all have been given a gift, and many are no longer the same…

£8.99

How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue

Set in the fictional African village of Kosawa, this is the story of a people living in fear amidst environmental degradation wrought by an American oil company. Pipeline spills have rendered farmlands infertile. Children are dying from drinking toxic water. Promises of clean-up and financial reparations are made - and broken. Left with few choices, the people of Kosawa decide to fight back. But it will come at a steep price - one which generation after generation will have to pay.

£8.99

The Darkest Sin by D. V. Bishop

Florence. Spring, 1537. When Cesare Aldo investigates a report of intruders at a convent in the Renaissance city's northern quarter, he enters a community divided by bitter rivalries and harbouring dark secrets.

His case becomes far more complicated when a man's body is found deep inside the convent, stabbed more than two dozen times. Unthinkable as it seems, all the evidence suggests one of the nuns must be the killer…

£8.99

Pachinko by Min Jin Lee

Yeongdo, Korea 1911. In a small fishing village on the banks of the East Sea, a club-footed, cleft-lipped man marries a fifteen-year-old girl. The couple have one child, their beloved daughter Sunja. When Sunja falls pregnant by a married yakuza, the family face ruin. But then Isak, a Christian minister, offers her a chance of salvation: a new life in Japan as his wife. Following a man she barely knows to a hostile country in which she has no friends, no home, and whose language she cannot speak, Sunja's salvation is just the beginning of her story. Through eight decades and four generations, Pachinko is an epic tale of family, identity, love, death and survival.
£8.99

To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara

In 1893 the fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist's damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him - and solve the mystery of her husband's disappearances. A bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia
£9.99

The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex

Cornwall, 1972. Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper's weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. Inspired by real events, The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is an intoxicating and suspenseful mystery, an unforgettable story of love and grief that explores the way our fears blur the line between the real and the imagined.

£8.99

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

This is an exquisite book. An unforgettable story of hope, quiet heroism and simple human kindness.

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

£10

Pandora’s Jar by Natalie Haynes

Modern tellers of Greek myth have routinely shown little interest in telling women's stories. And when they do, those women are often painted as monstrous, vengeful or just plain evil. But Pandora - the first woman, who according to legend unloosed chaos upon the world - was not a villain, and even Medea and Phaedra have more nuanced stories than generations of retellings might indicate. Now, in Pandora's Jar, the voices that sing from these pages are those of Hera, Athena and Artemis, and of Clytemnestra, Jocasta, Eurydice and Penelope.
£9.99

Sorrow and Bliss by Meg Mason

Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift, her mother once said, not everybody gets. So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave?
Martha has one last chance to find out whether a life is ever too broken to fix - or whether, maybe, by starting over, she will get to write a better ending for herself.
£8.99

The Porpoise by Mark Haddon

A motherless girl grows up in isolated luxury, hidden from the world by her wealthy father. She believes their life together is normal - but as time passes, she has a growing sense that something between them is very wrong.
She cannot escape, so she seeks solace in her books. Her favourite tales are those that conjure ancient worlds - of angry gods and heroic mortals, one of whom will some day come to her rescue. Soon, she will forget where the page ends and her mind begins.

£8.99

Mordew by Alex Pheby

God is dead, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew. In the slums of the sea-battered city a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew. The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength - and it is greater than the Master has ever known.

£9.99

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he'd like to travel to Rome with her. In Dublin, her best friend Eileen is getting over a break-up and slips back into flirting with Simon, a man she has known since childhood. Alice, Felix, Eileen and Simon are still young - but life is catching up with them.

The hype surrounding a book like this can be off-putting but I assure you this is one of the most beautifully written novels I have ever read (Millie)

£8.99

Burntcoat by Sarah Hall

In the bedroom above her immense studio at Burntcoat, the celebrated sculptor Edith Harkness is making her final preparations. The symptoms are well known: her life will draw to an end in the coming days. Downstairs, the studio is a crucible glowing with memories and desire. It was here, when the first lockdown came, that she brought Halit. The lover she barely knew. A presence from another culture. A doorway into a new and feverish world.

'Sarah Hall makes language shimmer and burn . . . Damon Galgut

£8.99

The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. There is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows. Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. There aren’t enough words to describe this mesmerising book of belonging, identity, trauma and renewal.

£9.99

Last Summer in the City by Gianfranco Calligarich

Late 1960s, Leo Gazzara left his family in Milan and moved to Rome for work. Soon unemployed, he has spent his time in an alcoholic haze, drifting, aimless and alone. On the evening of his thirtieth birthday, he meets Arianna, a young woman who is both fragile and seductive. They eat brioche for breakfast, drink through the dawn, drive to the sea and back. A whirlwind beginning. This is the story of the year Leo fell in love and lost everything.

£8.99

Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy

A dark past. An impossible journey. The will to survive. Franny Stone is determined to go to the end of the earth, following the last of the Arctic terns on what may be their final migration to Antarctica. As animal populations plummet, Franny talks her way onto one of the few remaining boats heading south. But as she and the eccentric crew travel further from shore and safety, the dark secrets of Franny's life begin to unspool.

£8.99

Build Your House Around My Body by Violet Kupersmith

Two young Vietnamese women go missing decades apart. Both are fearless, both are lost. And both will have their revenge. The fates of both women are inescapably linked, bound together by past generations, by ghosts and ancestors, by the history of possessed bodies and possessed lands. An unforgettable debut.

£8.99

The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante

Giovanna's pretty face has changed: it's turning into the face of an ugly, spiteful adolescent. But is she seeing things as they really are? Where must she look to find her true reflection and a life she can claim as her own?Giovanna's search leads her to two kindred cities that fear and detest one another: the Naples of the heights, and the Naples of the depths. Adrift, she vacillates between these two cities, falling into one then climbing back to the other.

£8.99

Rose Nicolson by Andrew Greig

Embra, winter of 1574. Queen Mary has fled Scotland, to raise an army from the French. Her son and heir, Jamie is held under protection in Stirling Castle. John Knox is dead. The people are unmoored and lurching under the uncertain governance of this riven land. It's a deadly time for young student Will Fowler, short of stature, low of birth but mightily ambitious, to make his name. A vivd, passionate and unforgettable novel.

£9.99

The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler

Crime novelist Charles Latimer is travelling in Istanbul when he makes the acquaintance of Turkish police inspector Colonel Haki and hears of the mysterious Dimitrios - an infamous master criminal, whose body has just been fished out of the Bosphorus. Fascinated by the story, Latimer decides to retrace Dimitrios' steps across Europe to gather material for a new book. But, as he gradually discovers more about his subject's shadowy history, fascination tips over into obsession.

£9.99

Three Apples Fell from the Sky by Karine Abgaryan

High in the Armenian mountains, villagers in the close-knit community of Maran bicker, gossip and laugh. Their only connection to the outside world is an ancient telegraph wire and a perilous mountain road. They sustain one another through good times and bad. But sometimes a spark of romance is enough to turn life on its head, and a plot to bring two of Maran's most stubbornly single residents together soon gives the village something new to gossip about…

£9.99

The Sandpit by Nicholas Shakespeare

A journalist becomes embroiled in a world of secrets and paranoia when a nuclear scientist goes missing. When John Dyer returns to Oxford from Brazil with his young son, Leandro, he expects a quiet life. His time living on the edge as a foreign correspondent is over. Leandro's schoolmates are the children of powerful people, and a chance conversation with another father, Iranian scientist Rustum Marvar, sets Dyer onto a truly dangerous path.

£8.99

The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff

This is technically a YA novel but we think it is for everyone and is our top pick summer read.

One family and one dreamy summer when everything changes. Suddenly there's a serpent in this paradise - and the consequences will be devastating. An irresistible and fresh coming-of-age story to devour.

£7.99

The Pull of the Stars by Emma Donoghue

Dublin, 1918. In a country doubly ravaged by war and disease, Nurse Julia Power works with expectant mothers who have come down with an unfamiliar flu and are quarantined together. Doctor Kathleen Lynn is on the run from the police, and a young volunteer helper, Bridie Sweeney joins Julia. In the darkness and intensity of this tiny ward, over the course of three days, these women change each other's lives in unexpected ways.

£8.99

Leave the World Behind by Rumaan Alam

This book is gripping and smart. Two families, one house and a power outage that has swept the country. An examination of race and class as well as complex ideas about privilege and fate. Isolation, fear and atmosphere are on every turn of the page and it will leave you with a lingering feeling of unease. It is brilliant.

£8.99

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins

Lydia Perez owns a bookshop in Acapulco, Mexico, married to a fearless journalist and has eight year old son Luca. It only takes a bullet to rip them apart. In a city in the grip of a drug cartel, friends become enemies overnight, and Lydia has no choice but to flee with Luca at her side. North for the border, whatever it takes to stay alive. Breathtaking and utterly consuming, this is a must read.

£8.99

A Burning by Megha Majumdar

This is a fierce and fantastic debut set in modern India. This is a short, sharp shock of a novel that shows us how easy it is to rally a mob, to kill a Muslim woman and to silence a whole community. A Burning confronts issues of class, fate, prejudice and corruption with a Dickensian sense of injustice, and asks us to consider what it means to nurture big ambitions in a country hurtling towards political extremism.

£8.99

A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion

This book is utterly thrilling.

My mother made a snap decision. How could we know it would change us forever That's the feeling engulfing the car as Ellen's mother swerves over to the hard-shoulder and orders her daughter out onto the roadside. What would you do as you watch your little sister getting smaller in the rear view window? How far would you be willing to go to help her?

£8.99

Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers

Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud. Sharp, perceptive and quietly devastating.

£8.99

Burnt Sugar Avni Doshi

Tara and Antara, the woman and her angry shadow. But which one is which?Sharp as a blade and compulsively readable, Burnt Sugar slowly untangles the knot of memory and fiction that binds two women together, revealing the truth that lies beneath. This is a poisoned love story. But not between lovers - between mother and daughter.

£8.99

The Mermaid of Black Conch by Monique Roffey

Near the island of Black Conch, a fisherman sings to himself while waiting for a catch. But David attracts a sea-dweller that he never expected - Aycayia, an innocent young woman cursed by jealous wives to live as a mermaid.
As their love grows, they discover that the world around them is changing - and they cannot escape the curse for ever .

£8.99

Leonard and Hungry Paul by Ronan Hession

A beautiful, quiet and charming portrait of young men navigating the modern world. It finds value and specialness in the ordinary and by discovering the small things we can do well and offering it to others.

£8.99

Summerwater by Sarah Moss

A beautiful and brutal book about the complexities of human nature and our capability for kindness and cruelty. Set at a cabin park in the highlands beside a loch, the tension quietly builds to a screaming pressure as we observe the interactions between holidaying families.

(review by Millie)

£8.99

Expectation by Anna Hope

There is something about this book, it was personal, it stays with you. It is about how we expect too much from ourselves, of others and of the world. We expect so much from life and the stories of these three women captures that beautifully and devastatingly. In the end I felt sad and peaceful. There is so much to be talked about and to think about after reading this.

(review by Millie)

£8.99

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell

This is a story of the bond between twins, and of a marriage pushed to the brink by grief. It is also the story of a kestrel and its mistress; flea that boards a ship in Alexandria; and a glovemaker's son who flouts convention in pursuit of the woman he loves. Above all, it is a tender and unforgettable reimagining of a boy whose life has been all but forgotten. This is Maggie’s finest work to date.

This is our book of 2020!

£8.99

A History of Loneliness by John Boyne

Odran Yates enters Clonliffe Seminary in 1972 after his mother informs him that he has a vocation to the priesthood. He goes in full of ambition and hope, dedicated to his studies and keen to make friends. Forty years later, Odran's devotion has been challenged by the revelations that have shattered the Irish people's faith in the church. A powerful, courageous and personal novel.

£8.99

Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver

The general consensus seems to be that ‘The Poisonwood Bible’ is Kingsolver’s greatest work - I disagree. This book is heart-breaking at points, hilarious at others and extraordinary in its narrative.

Over the course of one humid summer, three characters find their connections of love to one another and to the surrounding nature with which they share a place.

£8.99

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stewart

This is a fierce and ruthless book, I thoroughly enjoyed it, but it is not for the faint hearted. Winner of the Booker prize Shuggie Bain is set in Thatcher era Glasgow - the story of a boy’s relationship with his alcoholic mother, the cruel nature of poverty, the limits of love and the hollowness of pride.

£8.99