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A man heads into the snow to hunt down the bear that has been taking stock from farms in the valley. A father tries to make something go right for the son he no longer lives with. A partner is called to help when a cow’s labour goes horribly wrong. A fierce storm threatens to bring down a tree on powerlines over a family’s home. Fear, vulnerability, tension and resolve course through these arresting and indelible stories from one of the finest British writers at work today.
Moving on from a traumatic experience, Yoohee has opened up her own Plant Shop to start afresh. Rows of plants, meticulously arranged like soldiers, thrive under her green fingers; sunlight filters through the windows at just the right angle making every leaf shimmer with health. It is a plant-lovers’ sanctuary, where peperomias and marigolds bloom, while the air itself is like an elixir of peace. Yoohee welcomes her customers, eager to share her tips, while scolding anyone attempting to caress an unfurling bloom, let alone snap off a stem. But as night falls, the soothing atmosphere transforms as Yoohee takes her shovel and hoe, and vanishes into her moonlit garden. In the shadows, she scatters the remains of the day – some finely ground powder and occasionally, the bloody remnants of an unfortunate encounter. Just as Yoohee thinks the past is buried, a young and determined police inspector comes knocking.
‘Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life?’One of America’s best loved poets, Mary Oliver is also among nature’s most brilliant and devoted observers, whose words ask us to live with our eyes open wider. This luminous selection brings together her best-known works from across her career.’Oliver’s poems are … as genuine, moving, and implausible as the first caressing breeze of spring’ New York Times Book Review’Mary Oliver’s poetry is fine and deep; it reads like a blessing’ Stanley Kunitz’Just a few seemingly simple phrases perfectly express what we need to know just then, in that moment’ Oprah Winfrey’It doesn’t feel like you have to take a seminar in order to understand Mary Oliver’s poetry. She’s speaking directly to you as a human being’ Ruth Franklin, The New Yorker.
2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found. 2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, an academic at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining island archipelagos, pores over the archives of that distant era, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith. When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the lost poem, a story is revealed of entangled loves and a crime that destroy his assumptions about people he thought he knew intimately well.
The extraordinary new science fiction novel from the Clarke Award-shortlisted author of THE CORAL BONES
When Charlie asks Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate, Cece can’t imagine anyone less appropriate for the task. Garrett doesn’t believe in love, much less marriage. But as she spends time with him and his gruff mask slips, her long-held expectations for her life with Charlie begin to crumble, leading to an impulsive decision that will alter the three friends’ lives forever – the events of that July reverberating through marriage, parenthood and across generations.
The Brooke family are gathering in their ancestral home to bury Philip: the blinding sun around which they have all orbited for as long as they can remember. Frannie has dreams of rewilding and returning the estate to nature: a last line of defence against the coming climate catastrophe. Milo envisages a treetop haven for the super-rich where, under the influence of psychedelic drugs, a new ruling class will be reborn. Each believes their father has given them his blessing, setting them on a collision course with each other. Isa has long suspected that her father thought only of himself, and hopes to seek out her childhood love, who still lives on the estate, to discover whether it is her feelings for him that are creating the fault lines in her marriage. And then there is Clara, who arrives from America, shrouded in secrets and bearing a truth that will fracture all the dreams on which they’ve built their lives.
‘Wonderful … an Under Milk Wood for the twenty-first century’ AMY LIPTROT’Reminds us with every luminous sentence about the fragile grace of ordinary lives’ EVIE WYLD’Extraordinary … The best serious fiction I’ve read this year’ FRANCIS SPUFFORD’Attuned, loving and thoughtful … I loved its warmth and intricacy’ SARAH MOSS’Nobody does nature better than Melissa Harrison’ TRISTAN GOOLEYA FINANCIAL TIMES AND OBSERVER BOOK TO LOOK OUT FOR IN 2026 April brings spring surging with it, giving rise, among many in the village, to a comforting illusion that all is somehow still right with the world, and that nothing will ever change.In the ancient Welm Valley, something is shifting: the river is behaving oddly, while the arrival of spring, with its familiar rhythms, is shadowed by an undercurrent of unease.A woman falls while out walking and hopes to be found before nightfall; a doctor realises, too late, that he has long underestimated his
It is summer, and Sebastian is in treatment following a breakdown that has left him with a fragile hold on reality and a persistent hunger to connect with the mother who abandoned him as a child. His therapist, Martin, is also facing challenges, including his adopted daughter Olivia’s tenuous relationship with her biological mother – a predicament that makes Sebastian’s struggle feel uncannily close to her own. Olivia is producing a radio series on natural disasters, which itself seems to be running parallel to the events unfolding in her personal life, as her best friend Lucy faces a grave diagnosis and her husband, Francis, pursues his mission of rewilding the world. Over the course of the next year their fates collide in outrageous and poignant ways, as each of their destinies is revealed in a marvellous new light.
Annie is nine months pregnant. She’s shopping for a crib at IKEA. That’s when the massive earthquake hits. Propulsive, disruptive, funny, terrifying, ‘Tilt’ is a novel about how the foundations of our lives are built and shaken. About a woman trying to walk back to the husband she’s long been pushing away. About put-off dreams and inevitability and what makes us keep moving forward.
Helm is a ferocious, mischievous wind – a subject of folklore and awe, who has blasted the sublime landscape of the Eden Valley since the very dawn of time. Through the stories of those who’ve obsessed over this phenomenon, Helm’s extraordinary history is formed: the Neolithic tribe who tried to placate Helm, the Dark Age wizard priest who wanted to banish Helm, the Victorian steam engineer who attempted to capture Helm – and the farmer’s daughter who loved Helm. But now Dr Selima Sutar, surrounded by infinite clouds and measuring instruments in her observation hut, fears human pollution is killing Helm.
This collection is a rallying call – a celebration of renewal and resilience – for all who care about Earth’s future.
A stunning and deeply moving literary debut of grief, loss and female friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic natural events.
Three women give birth in different countries and different decades. In the near future, they become neighbours in a coastal town in Aotearoa New Zealand. Single parent Keri has her hands full with four-year-old tearaway Walty and teen Wairere, a strange and gifted child, who always picks up on things that aren’t hers to worry about. They live next door to Janet, a white woman with an opinion about everything, and new arrival Sera, whose family are refugees from ecological devastation in Europe. When Janet’s son Conor arrives home without warning, sporting a fresh buzzcut and a new tattoo, the quiet tension between the neighbours grows, but no one suspects just how extreme Conor has become. No one except Wairere who can feel both the danger, and the swamp beneath their street, watching and waiting.