The Cat
£9.99Camille loves Alain, but Alain loves his cat, whom he has had from childhood, more than he could love any woman.
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Camille loves Alain, but Alain loves his cat, whom he has had from childhood, more than he could love any woman.

Haunted by memories of a doomed love affair, and living in something of a strange hiatus in Tokyo, the narrator finds himself dreaming of the days he used to wile away playing pinball in J’s Bar. Until one day he embarks on a quest: to find the exact model of pinball machine he played years earlier – the infamous three-flipper Spaceship.

Tucked behind the trees in a quiet neighbourhood in Tokyo, the beloved Marble café offers a cup of warm, healing matcha to all who pass through its doors. Customers flock all week to Café Marble, tucked away behind the cherry trees. But Monday is a special day: the enigmatic owner hosts a tea tasting. The ritual invites its clientele to pause, reconnect with their inner peace, and rediscover the value of simplicity, allowing the bitterness of matcha to soothe their troubles. Following the twelve calendar months, ‘Matcha on Monday’ follows people from all walks of life: a woman who needs to change, a couple facing a crisis, an artist who has lost her purpose, and a young woman struggling to break free from family expectations. As each customer frequents Café Marble’s cosy haven, they start their week with a warm sip of matcha and the joys of everyday human connection.

The poetry of Dylan Thomas has long been heralded as amongst the greatest of the Modern period, and along with his play, ‘Under Milk Wood’, his books are amongst the best-loved works in the literary canon. First published in 1940, at the height of his fame, this is a collection of short autobiographical stories that paint fascinating and humorous portraits of life in rural Wales, and pre-empt characters and traits that echo throughout his later work. Now rightly considered one of the most important volumes in his oeuvre, this book is the key to unlocking the great poet’s work.

Fleeing Scotland in the wake of family disgrace, 16-year-old Ida Campbell secures a scholarship at a failing girls’ boarding school on a remote part of the south English coast. Despite the eccentricities of her new Headmistress, who warns her of the dangers of the Cold War and the ever-present threat of the bomb, St Anne’s seems like a refuge to Ida. But all this is about to change.

It’s summer and a young man walks through the gates of a luxurious mansion in the south of France. At the dinner table, the Blakes are waiting for him: Annie, the family matriarch and world-famous singer, her inscrutable husband David and their children, Dot, aloof and rebellious, Lily, the man’s carefree university friend, and their enigmatic older brother Felix. Between sun-drenched days spent lounging by the pool and nights blurring into endless, opulent parties far from the reality of life in London, a restless attraction grows between Felix and the man. The possibility to be part of a family – and an entire world – in which he doesn’t belong is suddenly within reach. But the idyllic haze of the summer slowly fades as they return to the city. While the man struggles with his troubled past and the challenges of navigating Felix’s world as a black, working-class person, Felix is tormented by demons of his own.

On a bright summer night in 1990s Connecticut, fourteen-year-old Emily Vidal stands on her parents’ lawn, watching the adults arrive. Her mother is hosting a lavish birthday party for her father, even though he is about to leave her for another woman. Adrift between her feuding parents and eccentric neighbours, Emily is closer than she knows to the choices and heartbreaks that will define her in the years ahead.

Rachel Long’s second collection is a study of desire, crisis and self-realisation, at once moving and whip-smart, from one of our brightest stars.

Andrew Sean Greer showcases his wit and warmth in this magical tale set amidst the Tuscan hills. Broke and directionless, our young protagonist takes a job in the Italian countryside as the all-purpose assistant to Lisabetta, known to her friends as Coco – a strong-willed, wealthy widow of great local renown. Trained as an archivist, he thinks he’s been hired to catalogue the contents of the beautiful, crumbling mansion nestled in the green Tuscan hills – but what are his actual duties? Days are spent ridding the house of a marten – whatever that is – locating the antediluvian septic system, entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to unnervingly handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn, and not inadvertently sabotaging Coco’s great and final plan – to locate the lost love of her life and be reunited before it’s too late.

Zoe, Al, Rachel, Rob, Yas and Indie. Six friends who were inseparable at university, who have all had their secret or not so secret passions for each other, their own hopes and fears. Over the years, they have gone their separate ways. Rob is a history teacher, with a string of broken relationships behind him. Yas is a surgeon and very much her own woman. Indie is married and a successful coffee entrepreneur. Rachel is a stay at home mum with two children. Al, widowed young, is about to take over his father’s funeral business. When Rob’s engagement party throws the gang together once more, some passions are reignited, old connections and resentments resurface. Over the next twelve months, there will, among the friends, be a birth, a marriage, and a death – but whose?

One bright blue day, on a bench by the river, Nora’s partner Robin proposes. It is unexpected; they’d always agreed that they didn’t need a wedding. But after a decade of in-jokes, dancing in the low-lit kitchen and sharing morning toast in bed, Nora says yes. Why wouldn’t she? The answer lands on the night of their engagement party, when Bren turns up on her doorstep. Growing up, Bren and Nora were the sort of best friends who everyone swore would end up together. But when a sudden heartbreak turned their lives upside down, Bren left, Nora stayed, and the silent longing between them remained unspoken. Now, he’s back, and their tentative yet undeniable spark reignites, forcing Nora to ask herself: How can you know your heart, if it feels like it’s split in two?


Hi’i is proud to be a Naupaka, a family renowned for its contributions to hula and her hometown of Hilo, Hawaii, but there’s a lot she doesn’t understand. She’s never met her legendary grandmother and her mother has never revealed the identity of her father. Worse, unspoken divides within her tight-knit community have started to grow, creating fractures whose origins are somehow entangled with her own family history. In hula, Hi’i sees a chance to live up to her name and solidify her place within her family legacy. But in order to win the next Miss Aloha Hula competition, she will have to turn her back on everything she had ever been taught, and maybe even lose the very thing she was fighting for.

Mika is about to turn twenty-five, and all she has to show for it is a soul-sucking office job and a terminal case of virginity. Between the pervy salarymen she works with and the pretty boys she pines after, Mika is ready to explode. But it’s summer in Tokyo, AKA peacock season. Time to strut her stuff. So when her certified Hot Girl bestie sends her the invite for an upcoming beach party, Mika clicks ‘attending’. Just when she thinks real life is never going to live up to the wild fantasies her imagination cooks up, someone new catches her eye. It could be limerence, or the beginning of something much less one-sided.

One late summer evening in the post-industrial town of East Gladness, Connecticut, nineteen-year-old Hai stands on the edge of a bridge in pelting rain, ready to jump, when he hears someone shout across the river. The voice belongs to Grazina, an elderly widow succumbing to dementia, who convinces him to take another path. Bereft and out of options, he quickly becomes her caretaker. Over the course of the year, the unlikely pair develops a life-altering bond, one built on empathy, spiritual reckoning, and heartbreak, with the power to alter Hai’s relationship to himself, his family, and a community at the brink.

From 1960s Italy to present-day Ireland, Ripeness is the story of a family secret that rips apart a teenage girl’s world, only for her to discover its meaning decades later.
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