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£18.99
In 2017, Hannah Murray was a successful actor whose career had taken her to Hollywood and given her the opportunity to act with A-list stars and Oscar-winning directors. But as the daily costs of acting grew, from the degradations of auditions to repeating violent scenes over and over, Hannah found herself searching for something to make her feel better. One day, a reiki healer promises her a new kind of treatment, a kind of magic, and all of a sudden Hannah’s life is changed. Back in London, she becomes increasingly involved with the organisation behind the magic, an organisation whose charismatic leader, promises of secret knowledge, and increasingly complex rituals, are seductive, cult-like – and ultimately destructive, as Hannah finds herself on a week-long course from her friends and family – and her sanity falls apart. ‘The Make-Believe’ is a shockingly honest and extraordinarily intimate portrayal of a mind taken over the edge.
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£20.00
With his eightieth birthday looming, it crossed Michael Palin’s mind that now might be the time to hang up his boots, to lounge about at home, to take things easy. Then the opportunity to visit Africa’s most populous nation arose. A few weeks later, he was at Lagos airport, camera crew in tow. The journal he kept during his trip offers a fascinatingly kaleidoscopic view of a country where some 500 languages are spoken and which contains within its borders everything from tropical rainforests to grasslands to desert plains. At one moment he is in vibrant but chaotic Lagos, the next in the seemingly deserted streets of Nigeria’s hyper-modern capital, Abuja, the next in the polluted oil fields of the Niger Delta. Brimming with wry humour and fascinating insights, this is a vivid and varied portrait of a complex country.
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£18.99
‘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
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£18.99
When a body washes up near Beachy Head, the police chalk it up to suicide – a tragic but not uncommon end in these parts. But local psychotherapist Patricia Philipps isn’t convinced. The victim? Her three o’clock patient, Henry Clayton. The cause? Supposedly self-inflicted. The truth? Pat suspects murder and she’s trained to spot what others miss. After all, she spends her days listening to secrets, resentments, fantasies and motives. And she’s certain someone wanted Henry Clayton dead. With her chaotic best friend Pritchard in tow (part-time poet, full-time meddler), Pat swaps the therapy room for the crime scene. It’s time to unpick the lies, untangle the egos and catch a killer hiding in plain sight.
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£16.99
There’s no health guru in Sweden better than Cassi. Couple’s therapy? Puppy yoga? Full moon rituals? She’s got everyone in the remote village of Bäcken covered. The locals don’t really know who Cassi is or how she managed to turn a derelict cottage into a successful self help retreat, but one thing is clear: they’re all willing to pay good money for her services. There’s only one problem: Cassi is a fraud. A great one at that, who has concealed her true self – a jobless, depressed alcoholic – and gotten rich in the process. But can a life based on a lie really last? And will her new friends accept her for who she really is when her secrets eventually come to the surface?
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£20.00
When Dante called despair ‘the sin that freezes the heart,’ was he describing the first burnout? What can a painting by Giotto reveal about our hunger to see others fail? Can desire ever lift us closer to wisdom, not drag us from it? What can a twelfth-century monk teach us about burnout, envy, or despair? Far more than we might imagine. In ‘Self-Help from the Middle Ages’, historian Peter Jones travels through Europe’s archives and libraries to uncover a lost psychology: a world where confession was therapy, sin was diagnosis, and the Seven Deadly Sins served as a map of the human mind.
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£18.99
With reflections on love, defiance and light, this novel is a story of profound human connection, on an unprecedented scale.
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£18.99
Ranging from the 1950s to the present day and moving across age, class, and region – from New England to Florida to California – these nine stories reflect and expand upon a single shared theme: the ceaseless battle between the dark and light in all of us. Among those caught in this match are a young woman suddenly responsible for her disabled sibling; a hot-tempered high school swimmer in need of an adult; a mother blinded by the loss of her family; and a banking scion endowed with a different kind of inheritance. Motivated by love, impeded by human fallibility, they try to do the right thing for as long as they can.
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£16.99
For Constance ‘Connie’ Costa, life is just beginning. She dreams of leaving behind her dull, dreary life in ’70s East London, shaking off her deeply embarrassing Greek-Cypriot community of interfering aunties and pretend ‘cousins’, and running away with her best mate Vas (fellow misfit; NHS specs; soul of a poet). She is determined to take her rightful place alongside her hero, David Bowie, onstage at Wembley Stadium. Only one thing stands in her way: her father, The Fat Murderer. No longer content with being an absolute imbecile and general abomination of nature, he has dialled up his campaign to ruin Connie’s life ever since the death of her mother. If she ever wants to claim the destiny that is rightfully hers, Connie has only one option left: to kill him.
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£16.99
It’s the summer of 1985 and the residents of Delmont Close are preparing a neighbourhood barbecue to watch the biggest music event in history: Live Aid. A day like no other that will end having reached millions and changed the lives of all who attend. House-proud Lydia Gordon, whose idols are Princess Di and Delia Smith, is determined to put on a show that will impress everyone – with her posh garden and state-of-the-art television and her sweet husband and two children, Hanna and David. But as the guests flood into number nine, so do all of the secrets that have been kept in the close.
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£16.99
Staff Pick!
Harriet Says…
I am giving everyone this book, it moved me so much. Beautifully written, in simple prose, it tells the story of a 20 year old boy who goes to live with his uncle, a small holding farmer in Cornwall, following the boy’s cardiac arrest.
His recovery and the slow pace of life on the farm are in sync, and the relationship between the uncle and nephew is poignant and reassuring.
Patrick Charnley, the son of poet and novelist Helen Dunmore, wrote this book after having suffered a cardiac arrest himself.
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After a near-death experience and life-changing injury, twenty-year-old Jago Trevarno goes to stay with his uncle on his small coastal farm a few miles from St Ives in Cornwall. Their existence is a simple one, their lives measured by the span of the days, the rhythms of the seasons and the animals they care for. But lurking in the shadows is local villain, Bill Sligo, who has designs on Jacob’s farm and in particular on a field near the cliffs housing a derelict mineshaft. Wanting to repay his uncle’s kindness, Jago determines to find out what Bill Sligo is up to. Jago is still vulnerable though, and in pursuing Sligo he delves into a murky world that he is ill-equipped to deal with. How far will Bill Sligo go to get what he wants? Jago doesn’t know it yet, but once again he is in grave danger.
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£25.00
When the Inter-Continental Hotel opened in Kabul in 1969, it reflected the hopes of the country – a glistening white edifice that embodied Afghanistan’s dreams of becoming an affluent, modern power. Five decades later, and the Inter-Continental is a dilapidated, shrapnel-damaged shell. It has endured civil wars, terrorist attacks, the US occupation, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban. But its decaying grandeur still hints at ordinary Afghans’ hopes of stability and prosperity. Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s Chief International Correspondent, has been staying at the Inter-Continental since 1988. She has spent decades meeting its staff and guests, and listening to their stories. And now, she uses their experiences to offer an evocative history of modern Afghanistan.