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A heady mixture of fiction, diary and confession, When I Died for the First Time’ is a raw account of a musician that tested his uppermost limits, hitting legendary highs and crashing to catastrophic lows. Where did it all go wrong? And just how does anyone die twice?
Centuries ago, the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Punjab. Many dismiss this as myth, but when Satnam arrives in his ancestral village for his grandmother’s funeral, he finds water in the dried-up well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious scheme to unearth the lost river as an act of Hindu nationalist pride. The river changes the course of Satnam’s life, and those of six others. As legends and histories resurface, the distant relatives – from a Canadian eco-saboteur to a Mauritian pest exterminator to a Bollywood stunt double – are brought together in a rapidly changing India. Ambitious, moving and brimming with folklore, ‘Saraswati’ is a tour de force from one of Britain’s most feted young writers.
The tyrannical Mrs Churchill is convinced someone is trying to kill her. As if she didn’t have enough to vex her, she’s concerned that Jane Fairfax has won the heart of her nephew, Frank. She has hired the talented and devious Harriet Smith to break up this nascent relationship as well as uncover who might want her dead. With the help of her long-suffering, sensible best friend, Robert Martin, Harriet’s list of suspects soon grows – Frank Churchill, Jane Fairfax, Mrs Elton and Wakefield the butler all have means, motive and opportunity. Will Harriet prevent the worst from happening? And will she avoid falling for the charming Frank Churchill herself?
When she first meets Adam, Coralie is new to London and feeling adrift. But Adam is clever, witty, and (he insists) a quarter of an inch taller than the average British male. His charming four-year-old daughter, Zora, only adds to his appeal. But ten years on, something important is missing from the life Coralie and Adam have built. Or maybe, having gained everything she dreamed of, Coralie has lost something she once had: herself.
Christmas, 1983. In the aftermath of yet another furious argument, seven-year-old Andrev’s mother lets him in on a secret: his father is, in fact, not his father. And so begins a new kind of childhood, in which fathers come and go, arriving in red Volvos and sweeping his mother off her feet. Fathers can be magicians or murderers, artists or canoe enthusiasts, and, like growing pains, or the weather, they appear uninvited and leave without warning. Fathers are drawn to his mother like moths to a flame – but even she can’t control how they behave.
One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes up hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, likely drowned. The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit, and she and her American mother Anne return to the US profoundly changed. This traumatic event reverberates across time and space, as we follow mother and daughter trying to go on with their lives, while the mystery of what really happened to Serk that night slowly unravels.
1926. On the towering cliffs of Yorkshire, men are lowered on ropes to steal the eggs of the sea birds who nest there. The most beautiful are sold for large sums. But when small and hungry Celie Sheppard finds an ‘impossible’ red egg, it will forever alter the course of her life – and the lives of others. One hundred years later in a remote cottage in Wales, Patrick Fort discovers his friend, Nick, and his mother tied up and robbed. The only thing missing: a carved case containing an incredible scarlet egg. Doggedly attempting to retrieve it, Patrick and Nick discover the cruel world of egg trafficking, and soon find themselves on the trail of a priceless collection of eggs lost to history. Until now.
1820. Mary Dorothea Knatchbull is living under the sole charge of her widowed father, Sir Edward – a man of strict principles and high Christian values. But when her father marries Miss Fanny Knight of Godmersham Park, Mary’s life is suddenly changed. Her new stepmother comes from a large, happy and sociable family and Fanny’s sisters become Mary’s first friends. Her aunt, Miss Cassandra Austen of Chawton, is especially kind. Her brothers are not only amusing, but handsome and charming. And as Mary Dorothea starts to bloom into a beautiful young woman, she forms an especial bond with one Mr Knight in particular. Soon, they are deeply in love and determined to marry. They expect no opposition. After all, each is from a good family and has known the other for some years. It promises to be the most perfect match. Who would want to stand in their way?
Tricase Porto, Puglia, Italy 1958: The summer of innocence. Amongst the lemon trees, Rafaella Parisi impatiently waits for the summer visitors to arrive in her small fishing village on the coast of Puglia. She may be dating Fon Gianelli, but there is one person she longs to see: Cosimo – son of the wealthy Franchetti family. 1959: The summer everything changed. After a devastating accident at the lavish Franchetti villa, Rafa makes a vow that changes the course of all their futures. 1961: The summer they met again. And when Rafa and Cosi’s lives collide, Rafa must decide if she’s willing to risk the life she has built for the future she might have had.
Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her bathroom-less studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual, spiking stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Unemployed and subsisting on selling plant propagations, Dell starts her own livestream in order to fundraise $14,000 for a week of private life support for Daisy. Finally, Dell has found something she’s good at. But when a troll-turned-incel threatens to expose her past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores and what real redemption means.
It’s the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war, and everybody knows it. On a final night of abandon, Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young financial secretary (and ‘not an entirely good girl’), pursues a one-night stand. Some people, if you make the mistake of sleeping with them, leave you with a rash, or regrets. It seems that sleeping with young Geoff, a technical whizz at the BBC’s nascent television unit, leaves you pursued by a creature from another world. As Britain threatens to fall apart and the Nazi bombs descend, Iris finds herself stepping off the known world’s edge, into a reality where otherworldly powers lurk and act, where spirits can be called and enslaved, where time can be warped and rewound, and where a magical fascist is plotting her path back in time, gun in hand, in search of Churchill, to fire a shot that will end the war before it ever began. Naturally, only Iris can stop her.
From Emma Donoghue, the bestselling author of Room, The Paris Express is a propulsive novel set at the end of the nineteenth century about a high-speed steam train journey, the people on board and the secrets and dangers they carry with them.
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