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In Thoughtlands, Jacky Colliss Harvey explores the link between walking, writing, and thinking. Through five walks, the author guides readers through diverse sceneries while reflecting on the works of famous writers and walkers. A literary journey through the landscapes of Suffolk blending memoir, travel and biography.
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?
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?
Woody Brown’s vibrant and profoundly moving debut novel takes us to sun-bleached California, to a day-care centre for Los Angeles’s disabled community. Among the clients and staff are Carlos, a charismatic aide who lost his mother as a boy, and Jorge, who is gentle, nonspeaking and prone to escape despite Carlos’s best efforts. Tom, a beautiful young man with cerebral palsy, pines for Ann, the lifeguard for the summer who feels out of her depth. Then there’s Dave, the centre’s director. He wanted to be an actor, but finds himself on a very different path. At the heart of the story is Walter, a recent college student returning to the company of his peers after a family tragedy. Around him, a story unfolds of friendships forged, connections missed and the dreams – some new, others almost forgotten – that shape us.
IZZY DOBSON HAS A FEW PROBLEMS: School is the WORST. Making friends is HARD. Her VERY TOP SECRET EMBARRASSING DIARY has gone MISSING! Cue Izzy’s Very Important Investigation, recorded in a Very Normal Notebook (definitely NOT another diary!). Can Izzy retrace her steps before the diary falls into the wrong hands? Or has its fate already been sealed by a SINISTER DIARY THIEF? Expect cat doodles, brilliant (ish) brainwaves, and Izzy’s hilarious commentary on life as you join her chaotic search – not just for the missing diary, but for her place in this Very Confusing World.
Once upon a time, there was a frog called Mr. Jeremy Fisher; he lived in a little damp house amongst the buttercups at the edge of a pond. Mr. Jeremy Fisher sets off to catch some minnows for his dinner – but his fishing trip doesn’t quite go to plan in this charming and iconic Beatrix Potter tale.
All is not well in the world with Dexter Procter, the world’s youngest doctor. His granny has broken her leg, his friends Rupi and Otto have been expelled, there’s an asthma epidemic he can’t get on top of, and everything fun at the hospital has been shut down by slimy politician Barbara Burnhall. And then his boss Dr Marigold disappears off the face of the earth! But what Dexter doesn’t realize is that he and his friends are about to uncover a dastardly plot featuring kidnap, earthquakes and a demolition ball. Dexter Procter doesn’t know what’s about to hit him. (Spoiler alert: it’s a demolition ball).
One long summer, a heatwave descends. Bloated sea creatures wash up along the parched riverbed, animals grow frenzied, ravens gather on the roofs of those about to die. As the stifling heat grips the village, so does a strange rumour: the Mansfield sisters have been seen transforming into a pack of dogs. With the witch trials only a recent memory, hysteria sets in. Slowly but surely, the villagers become convinced that something strange is taking root in Little Nettlebed. And when a bark finally leads to a bite, the sisters will be the ones to pay for it.
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.
Beginning with the death of Edward I in 1307 and ending with the deposition of Richard II in 1399, ‘Sceptred Isle’ is the story of a century told through the lives of the last Plantagenets, uncovering lesser-known voices and untold stories along the way. Through the epic drama of regicide, war, the prolonged spectre of the Black Death, religious antagonism, revolt and the end of a royal dynasty, we encounter the human stories behind a fractured monarchy, the birth of the struggle between Europeanism and nationalism, social rebellion and a global pandemic. ‘Sceptred Isle’ is a thrilling narrative account of a century of revolution, shifting power and great change – social, political and cultural – shedding new light on a pivotal period of English history and the people who lived it.
1969: Albert Speer, Hitler’s favourite architect and Minister for Armaments, publishes his memoirs. Rewriting his own past, from his involvement in Nazi rallies to the fall of the Third Reich, he becomes ‘the good Nazi’, the poster child of German guilt. Claiming to have known nothing about the Final Solution despite his proximity to the Führer, he declares himself ‘collectively responsible, but not individually guilty’. How do you write about a man who made fiction more seductive than truth? Retracing Speer’s life, from his early years as a Nazi to the height of his power, to his post-war rebranding as a best-selling author, and artfully questioning the truthfulness of his stories, Jean-Noël Orengo offers a dizzying portrait of the man who was once described as the Führer’s unrequited love.
On the cusp of adulthood, James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Beholden to the expectations of home and family, his burgeoning desire – an ache for autonomy, tenderness and sex – threatens to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm. Luke comes with a reputation for danger, yet underneath his bravado lie anxieties and hopes of his own. As the seasons pass, and the pair form an ever-changing bond, James falls into a terrifying first love that will transform his life forever.
This is the story of an affair. Clara and Francis are in love, but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing stolen afternoons in hotel rooms, their time together painfully sweet and all too short. Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there. They find themselves in a strange and unfamiliar city: a place where adulterers can live openly as couples, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice. Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on the table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible. As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other. How do you know when you’ve found true love?
Big-hearted, bold, and full of bite, Unapologetic Love Story is the dazzling debut adult romance novel from bestselling author, Elle McNicoll which follows the dazzling love story between an It Girl, neurodiverse podcaster and an edgy, cynical journalist.
Harlow Donne has devoted his life to the Classical world. When a chance comes up to study an obscure collection of papyrus fragments at Oxford University, he seizes it. Though it means leaving his daughter and fracturing marriage back home in Canada, this is the kind of career break he desperately needs. In the depths of the Bodleian Library, Harlow discovers a lost account of the Trojan War, a glimpse into the founding of Western civilization itself. He names the epic poem ‘The Psoad’, after its protagonist, a Greek commoner identified as Psoas of Midea but known to all as ‘son of nobody’. As sole translator and interpreter of ‘The Psoad’, Harlow dedicates the poem and its footnotes to his daughter, Helen. Under his gaze, the text unlocks echoes of Ancient Greece into the present day, and a personal message to his beloved child appears.
As a woman, if you lived in Scotland in the 1500s, there was a very good chance that you, or someone you knew, would be tried as a witch. Witch hunts ripped through the country for over 150 years, with at least 4000 accused, and with many women’s fates sealed by a grizzly execution of strangulation, followed by burning. Inspired to correct this historic injustice, campaigners and writers Claire Mitchell, KC, and Zoe Venditozzi, have delved deeply into just why the trials exploded in Scotland to such a degree. In order to understand why it happened, they have broken down the entire horrifying process, step-by-step, from identification of individuals, to their accusation, ‘pricking’, torture, confessions, execution and beyond.