Summer reading season is finally upon us, but what books belong at the top of your TBR?
Here are ten fiction paperbacks perfect for the reader on the go. From thrilling tales of espionage to what has been called the ‘best Shakespeare retelling since She's The Man ’ by the internet’s resident librarian, Jack Edwards, these picks will provide the perfect escape without taking up too much room in your tote or carry-on.
Two couples inhabit the same apartment in Paris, almost fifty years apart.
In 2019, David takes a job in London, leaving Anna alone in their Paris apartment. It’s August and the city is deserted, but when Clémentine moves into the building Anna finds herself drawn inextricably into the younger woman’s world…
In 1972, Florence is finishing her degree in psychology and contemplating pregnancy. But Henry isn’t sure he’s ready for fatherhood and both have distractions outside their marriage…
As the two couples face the challenges of marriage and fidelity, the characters and their ghosts bump into and weave around each other, not knowing that they once all inhabited the same space.
Sadie Smith – a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics and bold opinions – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France.
Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical activists influenced by the beliefs of an enigmatic elder, Bruno Lacombe. But just as she is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Sadie becomes caught in the crossfire between the past and the future…
Max didn’t believe in an afterlife. Until he died.
As a reluctant ghost trying to work out why he remains, Max watches his girlfriend Hannah lost in grief in the flat they shared and begins to realise how much of her life was invisible to him.
Both a celebration and autopsy of a relationship, The Echoes is a novel about stories and who has the right to tell them, asking what of our past can we shrug off and what is fixed forever.
London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster.
When a grouse shooting accident makes a romance out of Hal’s rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, a life of his own.
But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past. Move over Anyone But You
In one night, Nayan lost everything. Years later, his world is at risk again.
Nayan has fought hard to move on, losing himself in his political work, trying to make a better world. A fresh challenge arrives with newcomer Megha, who threatens not just his career ambitions, but his ideals.
Meanwhile the enigmatic Helen Fletcher returns to Chesterfield and Nayan finds himself growing close to her. But Helen carries secrets which connect her to Nayan in ways he doesn’t realise.
Early one morning, at the close of St Colibri’s carnival, a young female steel-pan player is found dead beneath a cannonball tree. It is a discovery that will transform the lives of everyone on this small island.
As the days pass, this shocking event draws together four women, and in a community in which women’s voices are often silenced and violence against them is overlooked time after time, the group soon find themselves compelled to speak out – to act. But even they could never have foreseen the consequences of their courage…
At sixty-six, Paula Spencer – mother, grandmother, widow, survivor – is finally living her life.
A job at the dry cleaners she enjoys, a man with whom she shares what she wants, friends who see her for who she is, and four grown children. Despite its ghosts, Paula has started to push her past aside.
That is until Paula’s eldest, Nicola, turns up on her doorstep determined to leave the life everyone thinks of as a success behind.
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before.
A young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. If you haven't read this internet sensation, this summer is your moment to finally do it.
A compact read that packs a punch, gain a new perspective of life on our planet as you've never seen it before when you read this Booker Prize-winning novel.
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe.
The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
Jade has become everything she ever wanted to be.
Successful lawyer. Dutiful daughter. Beloved girlfriend. Loyal friend.
Until one night, something terrible happens after a work event, and she starts to wonder if she really wants to be the person she’s become.
