Showing 1–12 of 22 resultsSorted by latest
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Aude
£9.99
Staff Pick!
Selected by Aude…
“This is a book about all the kinds of love: friends, family, partners… All are Loved Ones. It is a book about grief and death and about how life goes on. It is a bit sad but also joyful and even boastful. It is a debut and it has some faults, but it is a promising debut and I can already see this adapted for television or made into a film.”
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‘THE FUNNIEST BOOK YOU’LL EVER READ ABOUT GRIEF’ MAGGIE SHIPSTEAD
‘PERFECTLY CAPTURES THE MESSINESS, HEARTACHE AND BEAUTY OF GRIEF’ RED MAGAZINE
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Aude
£22.00
Staff Pick!
Aude Says…
I am not the biggest George Michael fan (don’t get me wrong, I love Wham! and “Last Christmas” is my favourite festive song) but this book is so much more: social commentary, historical insight on the 80s, portrait of Queer Britain and Immigrant Britain. It tells the story of a fascinating man and an exceptionally gifted artist.
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In his brilliantly original Tonight the Music Seems so Loud, bestselling author Sathnam Sanghera portrays the extraordinary life, and times, of one of Britain’s most beloved musical icons: George Michael.
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Mia
£20.00
Staff Pick!
Mia Says…
Each time I think I’ve gathered everything I need to know about a character in John of John, something entirely new and unexpected comes along. I absolutely loved this. Who do we belong to?
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From Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo comes a stunning new novel, John of John.
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Mia Y
£18.99
Staff Pick!
Mia Y Says…
“I enjoyed this book a lot! Emma Straub creates such a strong sense of place and writes characters that feel so real that it almost feels like you’re there on the cruise. I thought the meditations on aging, fame and womanhood were interesting and thought-provoking. If you like character driven fiction and you had a boyband phase in your teens, this is a perfect summer read for you!”
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Annie is on a journey straight back to her past. When the American Fantasy cruise ship sets sail for a four-day themed voyage, aboard are all five members of a famous 1990s boyband, and three thousand women who have worshipped them since their youth. Newly divorced and with an empty nest, Annie is on board as a lark to appease her sister. Once a diehard fan of the band as a teen, she now feels out of place amid the sea of bedazzling t-shirts bearing the singers’ faces. Yet when the lights go down, the cocktails are poured and the band starts singing, Annie finally reconnects to a long-submerged part of herself. As she encounters Keith, the band’s slightly depressed, fifty-something lead singer – not just a celebrity but someone clearly in need of a friend – she feels like anything is possible. But is the connection between Annie and Keith just a fantasy? Or is this the beginning of a new chapter for them both?
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Matt
£18.99
Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He goes about his days teaching American history to high schoolers, correcting their casual ignorance, and lending a kind word to those who need it most. He spends his free time sailing the beautiful Massachusetts Bay, or with his adult son and his wife of more than three decades – and as Artie does these things, he plans the event that will forever change the world he inhabits. But when a startling accident awakens a new perspective in Artie, and he realizes that life has its own secret it’s been keeping from him – along with a lot more to say on the weighty matters of fate and freedom in his home and his country – he charts another course full of grief, hilarity and heart, to a place where the end marks the beginning.
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Justina
£9.99
In Georgian London, widowed confectioner Hannah Cole must prove the legitimacy of her late husband’s fortune with the help of his associate, William Devereux. But both are hiding secrets . . .
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Aude
£18.99
Staff Pick!
Aude Says…
Such a small but powerful and intense novel.
Fictionalised biography? Auto fiction? Essay on Art and artists in 20th Century Paris? This book takes many forms and they are all fascinating. Every sentence matters, you will not want to miss a single word, a single thought.
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Who was Gertrude Stein? Avant-garde American poet and art collector who made her home in Paris, godmother of modernism, queer icon, friend to Picasso and Hemingway, self-declared genius – a writer who has baffled readers and critics for a century. And why does she matter? The narrator of Deborah Levy’s novel has gone to Paris to find out. There she meets Eva with the blinding gaze, an artist in a long-distance marriage, and Fanny, a sexually adventurous financier; together they cook, walk, read and argue late into the nights. As Paris sweeps her along in its ceaseless flow, she thinks – about what we have to lose to become modern, navigating anxiety, living with uncertainty, angry fathers, making a new life in another country, art and language – how all these things looked to Gertrude Stein in the early days of the twentieth century, and how they look to her and her friends in the early twenty-first.
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Mia Y
£9.99
In the summer of 1980, astrophysics professor Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston’s Johnson Space Center, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates: Top Gun pilots Hank Redmond and John Griffin; mission specialist Lydia Danes; warm-hearted Donna Fitzgerald; and Vanessa Ford, the magnetic and mysterious aeronautical engineer. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant.
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Mia
£22.00
Staff Pick!
Mia Says…
Could not put this down. A mesmerising and thrilling glimpse of a city that I didn’t know existed. A rage-inducing account of billionaires in the shadows of London, all told along the thread of one absolutely astonishing and chilling story of a teenage boy caught up in an unbelieavable web of lies. Patrick Radden Keefe is an extraordinary storyteller.
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From the bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing comes a riveting story of wealth, violence and deceit at the heart of a glittering city.
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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Mia
£9.99
Staff 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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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Mia
£9.99
Staff 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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★ STAFF PICK!
Selected by Aude
£18.99
Staff Pick!
Aude says…
Cynthia d’Aprix Sweeney’s prose is gentle, her characters real and her stories incredibly relatable. She writes human interactions, mistakes and with a sharp eye and a tender touch. After The Lake Effect, read The Nest for maximum family drama!
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It’s 1977 and an air of restlessness has settled on the residents of Cambridge Road in Rochester, New York. When Nina Larkin is given a copy of The Joy of Sex by her newly divorced friend, she can no longer dismiss the nearly non-existent intimacy of her marriage. Just as her oldest child, Clara, is falling in love for the first time, Nina finds herself longing for the forbidden: a midlife awakening. An intoxicating fling with a neighbour brings Nina a freedom she never thought possible-but also risks the reputations of both families and unravels Clara’s world, just as she stands on the threshold of adulthood.
Years later Clara, now a successful food stylist in New York City, has never been able to move past the long-ago scandal. Drawn back home by the pull of a family wedding and wrestling with her own demons, she makes a pivotal decision that turns her life upside down.
Written with Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney’s signature humour and insight, LAKE EFFECT is a wise and probing look at love and desire, mothers and daughters, loss and grief, and what we owe the people we love most.
