Sleep
£9.99‘Beautiful … Incredibly moving’ ANN PATCHETT
‘Sun-saturated prose’ GOOD HOUSEKEEPING
‘A rich tale you can’t put down’ iNEWS
‘Deeply satisfying … beautifully written’ POLLY SAMSON
Showing 33–48 of 111 resultsSorted by latest
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Hunger and Thirst
£18.991987: After childhood trauma and years in and out of the care system, sixteen-year-old Ursula finds herself with a new job in the postroom of a local art school, a bed in a halfway house, and – delightfully – some new friends, including wild-child, Sue. When Ursula is invited to join a squat at The Underwood, a mysterious house whose owners met a terrible end, she can’t resist the promise of a readymade, hodgepodge family. But as Sue’s behaviour and demands become more extreme, Ursula who has always been hungry – for food – and more importantly for love, acceptance and belonging, carries out her friend’s terrible dare. It’s a decision that will haunt her for decades. Thirty-six years later, Ursula is a renowned, reclusive sculptor living under a pseudonym in London when her identity is exposed by a true-crime documentary-maker who is digging into an unsolved disappearance.
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Hey, Good Morning, How Are You?
£14.99Juno Isabella Flock is a dancer and performance artist who spends her days caring for her ailing husband, and her nights chatting to love scammers online. She’s aware of the risks these men pose – she’s watched a documentary about them – but she’s also discovered a heady freedom in these online conversations, and the things they allow her to say. When Juno meets Owen Wilson223 – or, to use his real name, Benu – she senses an immediate connection between them, even though they’re separated by thousands of miles. Gradually, they reveal more and more about themselves to each other: about their real selves, and about who they really want to be. And just as Juno sees through Benu’s lies, he sees through hers too.
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People Pleaser
£20.00Olivia Greenwood has been trying very hard to please people for a very long time. But today is going to change Olivia in a big way. A soul-crushing career disappointment, a fiery young woman with a chip on her shoulder and a cigarette in her hand, and one single blue hallucinogenic gummy all lead to a raucous night out and one hell of a hangover. And when Olivia wakes up the next morning, it seems she’s unable to please anyone but HERSELF. So who actually is Olivia Greenwood, when she’s not trying to be what everyone else wants her to be?
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American Woman
£10.99On the run after an act of violence against the American government, twenty-five-year-old Jenny Shimada is drawn into caring for three younger fugitives. One of them, the kidnapped granddaughter of a San Francisco millionaire, has become a national celebrity for joining her captors’ revolutionary cell. Yet as Jenny and her charges pursue their destinies from an old farmhouse in upstate New York to California, isolation turns to paranoia and their radical ideals soon begin to fracture.
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Tilt
£9.99Annie 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.
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Devotions
£14.99A woman recalls the time her grandfather claimed to have met Jesus. A professional musician travels across the world and through her memories with a violin older than the USA. A young Belfast theatre troupe brings their experimental production of Hamlet to New York. Transporting and profound, these are stories of love, grief, and the ways that lives can be haunted.
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Animal People
£10.99This is a 24-hour urban love story. It follows Stephen Connolly through one of the worst days of his life. On a stiflingly hot December day, he has decided it’s time to break up with his girlfriend Fiona. He’s 39, aimless and unfulfilled; he’s without a clue working out how to make his life better. As an ordinary day develops into an existential crisis, Stephen begins to understand, perhaps too late, that love is not a trap, and only he can free himself.
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We All Live Here
£9.99Welcome to the Kennedy household: There’s Lila who wrote a bestseller about keeping your marriage alive. Now divorced, she watches her ex play happy families with another woman. There’s Bill – her stepdad – who moved in after Lila’s mum died. Celie, Lila’s eldest, hates school. Hates it so much she’s stopped going. Violet is nine and sings age-inappropriate rap songs, laughs at fart jokes and Lila dearly hopes she’ll never, ever change. Lastly, there’s Truant the dog. He’s just taken a bite out of the American actor who’s suddenly landed on the Kennedy’s doorstep. This is Gene – Lila’s estranged father, he walked out on Lila and her mum years ago – and wherever he goes domestic discord follows. Because Gene’s presence changes things in unexpected ways. Soon the girls discover a kindred spirit in a man always chasing life’s joys. Something is happening to the Kennedy household – but what is it? And will it break, or save, their family?
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Everything That Is Beautiful
£16.99For Niamh Ryan, the Foleys are family. Her childhood flew by on their farm, playing with her best friend Peter and his sister Kate – all the while being doted on by their mother Helen and coached by their father Liam, a legendary former hurling player. Now, following a distressing series of events, the family ties are strained. Niamh receives drunken phone calls and messages from Peter who can’t understand what derailed their burgeoning relationship three years ago. Meanwhile, Helen Foley is trying her best to escape her life by checking into guesthouses under the names of women she went to school with. In her life in Belfast, Kate is attempting to hold down a job and a relationship while carrying the weight of the family’s secrets, and feeling like she is the one to blame. As a family wedding looms, and the women find themselves face to face, the knotty love that still binds Niamh, Helen and Kate might just bring them back together aga
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Seascraper
★ STAFF PICK!£9.99
Selected by MiaStaff Pick!
Mia says…
Thomas Flett works a difficult life on the shores, while secretly dreaming up folk music compositions. After striking an unlikely friendship with a man who claims to be a Hollywood film director, Thomas’s future seems at once closer and further away. A considerate novel about aspirations, hope, class, and pining, while the sea looms ominously in the background. I also very much recommend following the book’s ending prompt and listening to a “real-life” recording of Thomas’s song.
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Thomas lives a slow, deliberate life with his mother in Longferry, working his grandpa’s trade as a shanker. He rises early to take his horse and cart to the grey, gloomy beach and scrape for shrimp, spending the afternoon selling his wares, trying to wash away the salt and scum, pining for Joan Wyeth down the street, and rehearsing songs on his guitar. At heart, he is a folk musician, but it remains a private dream. When a striking visitor turns up, bringing the promise of Hollywood glamour, Thomas is shaken from the drudgery of his days and begins to see a different future. But how much of what the American claims is true, and how far can his inspiration carry Thomas?
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Fair Play
★ STAFF PICK!£9.99
Selected by MiaStaff Pick!
Mia Says…
Unlike any kind of “murder mystery” I’ve ever read…a clever sideways look at the genre. Alternating chapters take you effortlessly through two different worlds, and the result is original, funny, and heartbreaking. Witty treats for fans of a good old-fashioned Poirot, interspersed with a compassionate story about the mystery of grief. Was such a surprising read, I love this. (Note: while smart and funny, the tale is also sad! One to remember in case buying this for a holiday mystery book).
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A detective calls on a shell-shocked group of friends in this thrillingly inventive novel of love and grief with a murder-mystery twist.
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Room on the Sea
£8.99In the scorching New York heat, a hundred people wait to be selected as jurors. Paul is reading a newspaper. Catherine is reading a novel. So begins a whirlwind flirtation: over cappuccinos in Manhattan and gallery trips to Chelsea, Paul and Catherine escape into the illusion of an Italian getaway. Their feelings quickly evolve into something deeper, something – as mature adults with lives of their own – Paul and Catherine must carry on in secret, with the understanding that anything more than a casual crush is out of the question. But as the sultry summer week draws to a close, the end of their rendezvous comes into focus, and Paul and Catherine are forced to decide whether to act on their feelings or leave the fantasy of what could have been to the annals of the past.
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Flesh
£9.99Once a shy young man from a town in Hungary, István is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the 21st century’s tides of money and power, moving from the army to the company of London’s super-rich, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely. Spare and penetrating, ‘Flesh’ asks profound questions about what drives a life: what makes it worth living, and what breaks it.