New paperbacks out this month
Ian McEwan (Author)
'One of the finest writers alive' Sunday Times
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, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain's remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.
When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.
A quest, a literary thriller and a love story, What We Can Know is a masterpiece that reclaims the present from our sense of looming catastrophe, and imagines a future world where all is not quite lost.
'A true master' Daily Telegraph
'McEwan is one of the most accomplished craftsmen of plot and prose' New York Times
Tim Spector (Author)
'No one knows more about fermenting'' Davina McCall
‘The master of gut health and intelligent eating' Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
An inspiring guide to the life-changing power of fermentation from world-leading gut scientist and no. 1 bestselling author Tim Spector
From kombucha and kefir to sourdough, miso and coffee, Professor Tim Spector dispels the myths around fermented foods. He explains what fermented foods are, what to look for when buying them, how to make them at home, and why adding simple ferments to everyday meals can transform your gut health and overall well-being.
Blending cutting-edge science with practical, reassuring advice, Ferment shows how small changes to what’s on your plate can make a big difference to your health.
‘By the end of the book, I had jars of kombucha and sauerkraut brewing in my pantry’ New Scientist
‘A super healthy and tasty gift for you and your gut microbiome’ Clare Bailey Mosley
'Fermentation is the original wellness hack - and Tim reminds us that the best health breakthroughs can begin in a jar' Liz Earle
Arundhati Roy (Author)
‘Heart-smashed’ by the death of the mother she ran from at age eighteen and shaken by the intensity of her response, Arundhati Roy began this remarkable memoir – a soaring account, both intimate and inspiring, of how the author became the person and the writer she is: shaped by circumstance, but above all by her relationship to her extraordinary, singular mother, Mary, who she describes as ‘my shelter and my storm’.
With the scale, sweep and depth of her novels, and the passion, political clarity and warmth of her essays, Mother Mary Comes to Me is an ode to freedom, a tribute to thorny love and savage grace – a memoir like no other.
Colwill Brown (Author)
Shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and the Goldsmiths Prize
Longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize
From the winner of the BBC National Short Story Award
The lives of three teenage girls are torn apart by a secret in this gut-punch of a novel – for fans of Eliza Clark and Megan Nolan
'It feels essential. You will read nothing else like it this year' GUARDIAN
'Blistering, brilliant, savage and smart' EIMEAR McBRIDE
Ask anyone non-Northern, they’ll only know Donny as punch line of a joke or place they changed trains once ont way to London.
But Doncaster’s also the home of Rach, Shaz and Kel, bezzies since childhood and Donny lasses through and through. They share everything, from blagging their way into nightclubs to trips to the Family Planning clinic when they are late. Never mind that Rach is skeptical of Shaz’s bolder plots; or that Shaz, who comes from a rougher end of town, feels left behind when the others begin charting a course to uni; or that Kel sometimes feels split in two trying to keep the peace - their friendship is as indestructible as they are. But as they grow up and away from one another, a long-festering secret threatens to rip the trio apart.
‘An astonishing polyphonic debut’ Irish Times, Books of the Year
‘Sublime’ Roisin O’Donnell
'Brilliant and original on every level... she is a writer like nobody else' Elizabeth McCracken
‘Electrifying… Written in what feels like a new and utterly distinctive female voice, it is very hard to put down’ Mark Haddon
Irvine Welsh (Author)
It’s the late 1980s. Separated after a drug deal gone wrong, Renton, Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie each want to feel alive. They fill their days with sex and romance and trying to get ahead; they follow the call of the dance floor, with its promise of joy and redemption.
Sick Boy begins an intense relationship with Amanda – rich, connected, his ‘princess’. When the pair set a date for their wedding, he sees a chance for his generation to take control at last.
But as the 1990s dawn, will finding love be the answer to the group’s dreams or just another doomed quest?
Kim Jee Hye (Author)
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Shanna Tan (Translator)
Welcome to Soyangri Book Kitchen
In a peaceful village in the countryside, Yoojin has left behind the stresses of her city life in Seoul and created a book lovers’ paradise, a sanctuary for weary souls just like herself. With its book-filled shelves and wafts of delicious food from the café, Soyangri Book Kitchen offers its guests a true escape: the warm embrace of an overnight bookstay.
Over one year, as the seasons change, seven people at a turning point in their lives find their way to Yoojin’s door. Among them are a singer grappling with an identity crisis, a promising lawyer confronted with a daunting medical diagnosis, and a young musical director whose dreams have been stifled. As they arrive in Soyangri, each of them will find their life subtly transformed by the magic of its books and the kindness of its people.
Virginia Evans (Author)
Discover the word-of-mouth bestselling phenomenon that thousands of readers are calling their favourite book of the year!
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2026
A SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
OVER TWO MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE
A TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR 2025
AN IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER
A BBC RADIO 2 BOOK CLUB PICK
'A warm, funny gem of a novel'LAURA HACKETT, THE TIMES
'Masterful . . . I was delighted and moved'NEW YORK TIMES
'Immensely enjoyable'GUARDIAN
'I can't praise it enough. It's an absolute triumph'CLARE CHAMBERS
'What a novel! Tender, dry, sharp...devastating, but still feel good.'
PANDORA SYKES
'Tremendous'FREDRIK BACKMAN
'Shows us what a glorious thing growing older can be'FLORENCE KNAPP
'The year's breakout novel no one saw coming'WALL STREET JOURNAL
–Sybil Van Antwerp is seventy-three, slowly losing her sight and always writing letters . . .
To her children. Her favourite authors. Her ex-sister-in-law. The journalist poking into her past.
Her doctor. Suitors. Kindly neighbours. The infuriating gardening club.
All receive Sybil’s witty, wise correspondence, rich with everyday concerns.
But there is one letter that she has never sent. It concerns the darkest period of her life. To post it, Sybil must find forgiveness within herself.
The hardest letter to write is the one you’d never dare to send.
Francesca Segal (Author)
What if your mother knows you better than you know yourself?
'Absolutely blissful... Get both books in the series: I’ll eat my hat if you don’t love them' India Knight, Sunday Times
READERS LOVE ISLAND CALLING:
‘An enchanting, funny novel full of beguiling characters!’
‘Thoroughly enjoyable’
‘A fabulous return to the wonderful Island of Tuga’
‘I adore all the characters’
On the remote island of Tuga de Oro, vet Charlotte Walker has been taken to the islanders’ hearts and, between days on the farms and nights with a new love interest, she’s content to remain in blissful retreat from her real life, in London.
Just for now, obviously.
Until real life hits the island with the force of a tropical storm: Charlotte’s mother arrives.
Lucinda Compton-Neville knows an identity crisis when she sees one, and has come to haul her daughter back on course: back to England, back to her career, back home where she belongs.
Funny, moving, and hope-filled, Island Calling is the joyous second novel in the Tuga Island Trilogy – about mothers and daughters; about holding on and letting go.
‘Beguiling ... Segal is writing in a comic tradition that runs from Jane Austen to David Nicholls’' Observer
PRAISE FOR THE TUGA ISLAND TRILOGY:
‘A much-needed escape, I warmly recommend this beauty’ NIGELLA LAWSON
‘A magical novel, so uplifting, heartwarming, funny . . . One of my favourite books OF ALL TIME’ MARIAN KEYES
‘Brilliantly and thoroughly imagined. I didn’t want to go home’ NICK HORNBY
‘Sparkling and sophisticated’ JESSIE BURTON
Austin Taylor (Author)
When Zoe and Jack meet in a chemistry classroom in Harvard, they couldn’t be more different: she’s the daughter of a renowned MIT professor, he’s escaping an upbringing steeped in poverty – but they are immediately drawn to one another.
Neither knows it yet, but in two years’ time, they will have dropped out of college and become business partners in a billion-dollar company that promises longer life. But as they become wrapped up in a maelstrom of insatiable ambition, greed and ultimately deceit, their love for each other will be tested to its very limit…
Emi Yagi (Author)
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Yuki Tejima (Translator)
When Rika Horauchi accepts an unusual new part-time job, she never expects to fall in love.
Rika has been tasked with talking to Venus, to keep her company when the museum is closed on Mondays. As Venus comes to life in the quiet of their surroundings, she opens up new worlds for Rika, and they speak about everything. But when the museum’s curator, Hashibami, makes it clear he wants to keep Venus for himself, what will Rika do?
When the Museum is Closed is by turns charming, funny and surprising, a love story about our perceptions of beauty, overcoming loneliness and breaking free.
Joanna Miller (Author)
They knew they were changing history. They didn't know they would change each other.
Oxford, 1920. For the first time in its 1,000-year history, the world’s most famous university has admitted female students. Giddy with dreams of equality, education and emancipation, four young women move into neighbouring rooms on Corridor Eight and find themselves thrust into an unlikely, life-affirming friendship. They have come here from all walks of life, but Dora, Beatrice, Otto and Marianne all long to move on from the Great War, whose ghosts, grief, and secrets still feel very real indeed.
But Oxford is a place caught between tradition and change, where centuries of misogyny and exclusion clash with the promise of new freedoms. And as the group navigate this tumultuous moment in time under the city’s dreaming spires, their friendship will become more important than ever.
‘A beautifully wrought story of women’s rights, freedom, love and experience. I couldn’t put it down’ Harriet Evans, author of The Treasures
‘I became completely involved in the lives of the four pioneering heroines whose friendship is the beating heart of the book’ Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures
Fran Littlewood (Author)
Alex, Nancy and Eva Fisher. Three grown-up sisters, loved equally by their parents, Vivienne and Patrick.
Or so they thought.
Until, during a family holiday, Patrick lets slip that he has a favourite. While they try to gloss over it, this sets in motion the unravelling of everything the sisters thought they knew - including their much treasured family bond.
But will it take falling apart to bring them closer together?
William Rayfet Hunter (Author)
SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2025
AN OBSERVER BEST NEW NOVELIST 2025
'This summer's hottest read'
SUNDAY TIMES
'You won't want to put it down'
BRITISH VOGUE
'Sticky, twisting and dangerous'
REBECCA K REILLY
It’s summer. An unnamed young man walks through the gates of a luxurious mansion in the South of France, ready to join the Blake family on their annual holiday. Here, during dreamlike days lounging by the pool and nights blurring into opulent parties, he quickly falls for Felix, the Blake’s eldest son. He is everything the man wants to be – handsome, charismatic, wealthy – and his desire is surprisingly reciprocated. Suddenly, a new world of money and power feels within reach.
But when summer ends and the two men return to London, the cracks in the Blakes’ careful façade begin to show. With the two tormented by demons of their own, their bond risks being pulled apart at the seams. Their secrets and the choices they make will change not only their lives, but the future of those around them.
Imaobong Umoren (Author)
From the 1500s to the mid-twentieth century, the events that took place in the Caribbean – from conquest, colonisation and capitalism to racial slavery, revolution and migration – and the people who forged them played a seminal role in creating modern Britain and the Anglophone Caribbean. By the 1960s, Western global empires had begun to crumble. Yet the British Empire in the Caribbean did not end. Instead, colonialism was replaced with a new type of power whose impact can still be felt: neo-colonialism.
Empire Without End offers a new interpretation of the British Empire, its enduring entanglement with the Anglophone Caribbean and the longevity of systemic racism. Taking a longer historical perspective starting in the period of European contact with the Caribbean and ending today, Imaobong Umoren looks at the impact and legacies of racial slavery to explore how later linked histories relating to capitalism, class, labour, war, political economy, poverty, gender and culture are crucial to telling the full story. In doing so, she sets out a compelling strategy to define our roles and responsibilities in challenging the legacy of colonialism and hierarchy – a legacy that continues to blight our society and our politics.
Matt Baker (Author)
For Detective Chief Inspector Joe Mottram, a summer on the island of Capri was meant to be an opportunity to reconnect with his troubled teenage daughter, Angelica, and his Italian in-laws, after his wife’s Francesca’s death by a hit-and-run.
But when a British tourist is found dead and a member of his late wife’s family is accused of murder, Joe is pulled back into a world of police cells, crime scenes and local corruption. As he discovers more about the island, he realises it holds the answers to Francesca’s death, which may not have been a tragic accident after all.
Olivia Laing (Author)
It is September 1974. Two men meet by chance in Venice. One is a young English artist, in panicked flight from London. The other is Danilo Donati, the magician of Italian cinema, the designer responsible for realising the spectacular visions of Fellini and Pasolini. Donati is in Venice to produce sketches for Fellini’s Casanova. A young – and beautiful – apprentice is just what he needs.
He sweeps Nicholas to Rome, into the looking-glass world of Cinecittà, the studio where Casanova’s Venice will be ingeniously assembled. Then in the spring, the lovers move together to the set of Salò, Pasolini’s horrifying fable of fascism.
But Nicholas has a secret and in this world of constant illusion, his real nature passes unseen. Amidst the rising tensions of Italy’s ‘Years of Lead’, he acts as an accelerant, setting in motion a tragedy he didn’t intend . . .
Luke Kemp (Author)
A radical retelling of human history through collapse – from the dawn of our species to the urgent existential threats of the twenty-first century and beyond.
** FEATURED IN THE NEW BBC SERIES CIVILISATIONS: RISE AND FALL **
** THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER **
‘A brilliant, utterly convincing account of the evolution of human society and why we are probably reaching humanity's end days’ HENRY MARSH
'Absolutely essential reading for understanding why past civilisations collapsed, and how to protect our own from the same fate' LEWIS DARTNELL
For the first 300,000 years of human history, hunter-gathering Homo sapiens lived in fluid, egalitarian civilizations that thwarted any individual or group from ruling permanently. Then, around 12,000 years ago, that began to change.
As we reluctantly congregated in the first farms and cities, people began to rely on novel lootable resources like grain and fish for their daily sustenance. And when more powerful weapons became available, small groups began to seize control of these valuable commodities. This inequality in resources soon tipped over into inequality in power, and we started to adopt more primal, hierarchical forms of organization. Power was concentrated in masters, kings, pharaohs and emperors (and ideologies were born to justify their rule). Goliath-like states and empires – with vast bureaucracies and militaries – carved up and dominated the globe.
What brought them down? Whether in the early cities of Cahokia in North America or Tiwanaku in South America, or the sprawling empires of Egypt, Rome and China, it was increasing inequality and concentrations of power that hollowed these Goliaths out before an external shock brought them crashing down. These collapses were written up as apocalyptic, but in truth they were usually a blessing for most of the population.
Now we live in a single global Goliath. Growth obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, big tech and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war. Our systems are now so fast, complex and interconnected that a future collapse will likely be global, swift and irreversible. All of us now face a choice: we must learn to democratically control Goliath, or the next collapse may be our last.
'An excellent survey of human history through the collapses of Goliath-like kings, states and empires' OBSERVER
'A comprehensive overview of societal collapse, based on the analysis of dozens of cases spanning thousands of years from the Paleolithic to today. Highly recommended' PETER TURCHIN
'A deeply sobering and strangely inspiring history of how societies collapse - and how we can still save ours. Read it now, or your descendants will find it in the ruins' JOHANN HARI
'Like reading Thomas Piketty filtered through Mad Max' NEW YORK TIMES
Jeremy Atherton Lin (Author)
A Book of the Year for The New Yorker
It’s 1996, and Jeremy, a young American, has met the British boy of his dreams — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples rights including immigration. The pair snatch time in forests and deserts, London fashion shows, and East Village hotel rooms; eventually, finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in San Francisco.
What emerges is an unexpected romantic comedy haunted by centuries of gay ghosts. Deep House moves through the couple’s various domiciles while unlocking doors to a lineage of outsiders who came before them: hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subvert the system and activists who go all the way to the Supreme Court to fight for their freedoms. Combining cultural history with radically intimate memoir, Deep House is at once a romp through the queer archives and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle.
