HomeDiscoverArticlesVintage ebook deals of the monthVintage ebook deals of the month1 January 2025·min read·3· Decolonising My Body by Afua Hirsch How do we determine what is beautiful? Whose standards are we trying to meet when we spend our hard-earned money on our haircare, skincare and makeup; where do they come from, and how can we learn to undo them? Informed by research from around the world, Afua looks at how individual and collective notions of what is beautiful are constructed or stripped away from us. hese insights and discoveries will empower readers to reconnect with their cultures of origin, better understand the link between beauty and politics, and liberate themselves from mainstream beauty standards that aren't serving them. Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut Billy Pilgrim - hapless barber's assistant, successful optometrist, alien abductee, senile widower and soldier - has become unstuck in time. Hiding in the basement of a slaughterhouse in Dresden, with the city and its inhabitants burning above him, he finds himself a survivor of one of the most deadly and destructive battles of the Second World War. But when, exactly? How did he get here? And how does he get out? Travel through time and space on the shoulders of Vonnegut himself. This is a book about war. Listen to what he has to say: it is of the utmost urgency. Nephthys by Rachel Louise Driscoll Quiet and reserved, Clemmie is happy in the background. Although her parents may overlook her talents, her ability to read hieroglyphs makes her invaluable at the Egyptian relic parties which have made her father the toast of Victorian society. But at one such party, the words Clemmie interprets from an unusual amulet strike fear into her heart. The beautiful and dangerous glyphs she holds in her hands will change her life forever. The Devil's Star by Jo Nesbo Now a major Netflix series. A man is caught on CCTV, shooting dead a cashier at a bank. Detective Harry Hole begins his investigation, but after dinner with an old flame wakes up with no memory of the past 12 hours. Then the girl is found dead in mysterious circumstances and he begins to receive threatening emails: is someone trying to frame him for her death? The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami Toru Okada's cat has disappeared. His wife is growing more distant every day. Then there are the increasingly explicit telephone calls he has recently been receiving. As this compelling story unfolds, the tidy suburban realities of Okada's vague and blameless life, spent cooking, reading, listening to jazz and opera and drinking beer at the kitchen table, are turned inside out, and he embarks on a bizarre journey, guided (however obscurely) by a succession of characters, each with a tale to tell. Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry Sarah Perry’s father-in-law David died in the autumn of 2022, only nine days after a cancer diagnosis. He was in some ways a very ordinary man: he loved stamp collecting, fish and chips, comic novels and his local church. Yet as Sarah and her husband Robert nursed David through his final days, they realised how extraordinary he really was. This loving, clear-eyed and unforgettable book shows how death may be met and understood as a part of life – a universal experience that is terrible and beautiful, intimate and real, sometimes all at once. The Good Liar by Denise Mina When blood spatter expert Claudia O’Shiel finds herself on stage to talk about the most famous criminal case in recent history, she has a choice to make: explain how her evidence put away the man responsible for the brutal double murder? Or tell them the truth – that the real killer is still out there, and if she tries to expose this conspiracy, it won’t just be her life on the line. Flashlight by Susan Choi One evening, ten-year-old Louisa and her father take a walk out on the breakwater. They are spending the summer in a coastal Japanese town while her father Serk, a Korean émigré, completes an academic secondment from his American university. When Louisa wakes hours later, she has washed up on the beach and her father is missing, probably drowned. The disappearance of Louisa’s father shatters their small family unit. As Louisa and her American mother Anne return to the US, this traumatic event reverberates across time and space, and the mystery of what really happened to Serk slowly unravels. On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong Brilliant, heart-breaking and highly original, TikTok has fallen in love with Ocean Vuong's shattering portrait of a family.This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family's struggle to forge a new future. It serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog's life his mother has never known - episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion - all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation. The Husbands by Holly Gramazio One night Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. All the evidence – from photos to electricity bills – suggests he’s right. And then another one appears. Lauren’s attic, she slowly realises, is creating an endless supply of husbands for her. But when you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good-enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one? And how long should you keep trying to find out?
