Alex Danchev

Alex Dekker served as a member of the U.S. Army Special Forces 'Green Berets' for nearly 20 years, first with 5th Special Forces Group and then as a special operations team member assigned to the United States Army Special Operations Command. He has deployed multiple times to Iraq, Afghanistan, and other locations worldwide, and has attended multiple advanced tactical and technical schools within the U.S. Special Operations community and interagency. Alex has traveled to dozens of countries for work and personal adventures and has spent years living abroad. He is an avid student of history who has participated as a volunteer in numerous archaeological digs, is an Arabic speaker, and holds a Masters in Applied Intelligence from Georgetown University. When not traveling, Alex lives in Northern Virginia with his wife Savannah, a former CIA Operations Officer, their children, and their German Shepherd Donovan.

Alex Dekker

Alex Dimitrov is the recipient of the Stanley Kunitz Prize from the American Poetry Review and a Pushcart Prize and is the author of Begging For It (2013), Together And By Yourselves (2017), and Love and Other Poems (2021). His work has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Poetry, and more. Formerly, he was the Senior Content Editor at the Academy of American Poets where he edited the popular online series Poem-a-Day and American Poets magazine. From 2009-2013, he founded and ran Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York. Currently, he teaches creative writing at NYU where he is Writer in Residence.

Alex Dimitrov

Alex Dingwall-Main

Alex Duval

Alex Edelman

Alex Edmans

Alex Evans is Campaigns Director at Avaaz.org, a Senior Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation (CIC), and has nearly twenty years’ experience in climate and development policy. Alex has worked as Special Adviser to two UK Secretaries of State for International Development (Hilary Benn and Valerie Amos), as an expert on climate change in the UN Secretary-General’s office, and with think tanks including Chatham House and the Brookings Institution. He has also worked as a consultant on futures and foreign policy for organizations from Oxfam to the US National Intelligence Council. 
Alex lives in North Yorkshire and is married with two children.

Alex Evans

Alex Ferguson was born and brought up in Govan, Glasgow. He has always been a controversial figure, never far from the limelight, from the time he led an apprentices’ strike before entering full-time football. As a player with a reputation as uncompromising centre-forward his clubs included Glasgow Rangers, Dunfermline and Falkirk, and he became a spokesman for the player’s union. His first appointment as manager was with East Stirling, from where he moved to Love Street, where St Mirren’s crowds under his dynamic leadership rose from 3,000 to 12,000. He joined the Pittodrie set-up as manager in 1978.

Alex Ferguson

Alex Fryer

Alex Games

Alex Garland was born in London in 1970. He is the author of two novels, The Beach, The Tesseract and an illustrated novella, The Coma, in collaboration with his father. He has also written screenplays for films including 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Never Let Me Go and Dredd. In 2015, Garland made his directorial debut with Ex Machina.

Alex Garland

Dr Alex George was the UK’s Mental Health Ambassador for children and young people from 2021 until early 2025, and he currently hosts the Stompcast podcast. Dr Alex’s first children’s book A BETTER DAY was a Sunday Times No.1 bestseller, won a British Book Award and sold 42,000 copies through TCM. Dr Alex previously worked for the NHS as an A&amp;E doctor and is now passionate about helping to equip everyone – especially children and young people – with the tools needed to live a full, productive and meaningful life.

Alex George

Alex Gordon

Alex Grecian worked for an ad agency before returning to writing fiction full-time and raising his son. Alex is the author of the long-running and critically acclaimed comic-book series Proof, and the bestselling Scotland Yard Murder Squad series. He lives in Topeka, Kansas, with his wife and son.

Alex Grecian

Alex Gutteridge

Alex Halberstadt is the author of the award-winning Lonely Avenue: The Unlikely Life and Times of Doc Pomus. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, GQ and The Paris Review. He is a two-time James Beard Award nominee and a recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Yaddo. He works and lives in New York.

Alex Halberstadt

Alex Haley

Dr Alex Hanna is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR) and a former senior research scientist on Google's Ethical AI team. She is an outspoken critic of the tech industry and a proponent of community-based uses of technology.

Alex Hanna

Alex Hannaford

Alex Hely-Hutchinson

Professor Alex Hill is the co-founder and Director of The Centre for High Performance – a collaboration between the University of Kingston, Duke Corporate Education, London Business School and Green Templeton College, Oxford – which is dedicated to helping high-performing organizations develop a stronger and more robust economy, society and environment. The Centre has worked with organizations in sectors ranging from the arts and education to sport, technology and the military. 
 
He is also a Professor at Kingston University (UK), Educator at Duke Corporate Education (US), and Visiting Professor at Cass Business School (UK), Gordon Institute of Business Science (South Africa), The Academy of National Economy (Russia) and KEDGE Management School (France). 
 
He has written a number of books, published articles in leading academic journals such as the Harvard Business Review, advised the UK Government on educational policy, appeared on BBC Newsnight, presented at the Global Economics and Skills Forum and has written for The Times and Schools Week.

Alex Hill

Alex Hoffler and Stacey O’Gorman’s motto is ‘Follow your dream’. Just a couple of year ago Alex and Stacey quit their 9 to 5 jobs and began their Meringue Girls journey. Now they have a bakery HQ in Broadway Market with a staff of eight, which sells to Selfridges, Fortnum &amp; Mason, Recipease and Harvey Nicholls, as well as fashion events, weddings and their weekly market stall. They run masterclasses rated by the Evening Standard as one of the best in London. They have had a huge media and social media response including numerous TV appearance and over 80,000 Instagram followers. They are in talks to open a franchise in Dubai. 
 
They also do weekly food styling for various publications including the Guardian. They live in east London. Alex has a new baby, and Stacey recently got married.

Alex Hoffler

Alex Holt is the Global Head of the multi-billion-dollar Technology, Media and Telecoms practice at KPMG. He leads a large team who work with all the major organisations across the sector on everything from multi-billion M&amp;A deals through to tax, audit and management consulting. As well as leading the TMT sector globally, Alex is also the Global Lead Partner for some of the largest tech companies in the world. 
 
 Alex also serves on the Board of the anti-poverty charity JobTrain.

Alex Holt

Alex Horne 
noun 
1. comedian, writer, gambler, taskmaster, podcaster, birdwatcher, potential neologist and father.

Alex Horne

Alex Hughes is an online recipe creator who is committed to making reaching your weight goals not only delicious but fun. All her recipes are comforting, low-calorie and will help you feel full. She can be found doing a little dance in her kitchen (the recipes taste that good) at @alexskitchenbangers on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

Alex Hughes

Alex James is a writer, farmer, and the bass player with Blur. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife and five children.

Alex James

Alex Kadis is half-British, half-Greek, and grew up in Leyton and Walthamstow, East London. She studied English Literature at Goldsmiths University before embarking on a music journalism career. She was Features Editor at Smash Hits in its heyday (RIP) and has also written for various newspapers and magazines, including Sunday Times Style and Q Magazine. She then went into artist management and now works as a consultant in the music industry. Alex suffers from delusions of grandeur and still believes she will, one day, headline Wembley Stadium.

Alex Kadis

Alex Kantrowitz is a senior technology reporter at BuzzFeed News and one of the ten most cited technology reporters in the world. His work has been referenced by dozens of major publications, from the New Yorker to the Wall Street Journal to Sports Illustrated. He is the founder of the tech publication and podcast Big Technology, which focuses on analysing tech giants. Kantrowitz is a graduate of Cornell University's College of Industrial and Labor Relations. This is his first book.

Alex Kantrowitz

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Helon Habila

Modern Europe is a melting pot of migrating souls: among them a Nigerian American couple on a prestigious arts fellowship, a transgender film student seeking the freedom of authenticity, a Libyan doctor who lost his wife and child in the waters of the Mediterranean, and a Somalian shopkeeper trying to save his young daughter from forced marriage. And, though the divide between the self-chosen exiles and those who are forced to leave home may feel solid, in reality such boundaries are tenuous, shifting, and frighteningly soluble. 
 
Moving from a Berlin nightclub to a Sicilian refugee camp to the London apartment of a Malawian poet, Helon Habila evokes a rich mosaic of migrant experiences. And through his characters' interconnecting fates, he traces the extraordinary pilgrimages we all might make in pursuit of home.

Travellers

Bernardine Evaristo

Imagine if the transatlantic slave trade was reversed. 
Imagine Africans the masters and Europeans their slaves . . . 
 
Now meet young Doris, living in a sleepy English cottage. One day she is kidnapped and put aboard a slave ship bound for the New World. On a strange tropical island, Doris is told she is an ugly, stupid savage. Her only purpose in life is to please her mistress. Then, as personal assistant to Bwana, Chief Kaga Konata Katamba I, she sees the horrors of the sugarcane fields. Slaves are worked to death under the blazing sun. But though she lives in chains, Doris dreams of escape - of returning home to England and those she loves . . .

Blonde Roots

From the Booker prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other

Stanley Williams, angst-ridden banker and boffin, wonders whether there's more to life than his daily nine-to-five grind.  One night he's dragged to a disco at Piccadilly Circus and there he meets Jessie: artiste, motormouth, ducker and diver.  She swoops Stanley out of his soulless life and off on a rollercoaster road trip across Europe, bringing him face to face with a host of forgotten luminaries from the rich mix of black European history and literature.

Soul Tourists

Wendell Berry

As in thought he passes backward into time, the country becomes quieter, and it seems to grow larger. The sounds of engines become less frequent and farther apart until they cease altogether. 
 
 On a clear Kentucky night in 1888, a young woman risks her life to save a stranger from a drunken mob. Almost a hundred years later, her great-grandson Andy climbs a hill at the edge of town, and is flooded with memories of all he has lived, seen and heard of the past century of neighbourly feuds and family secrets; of grief and betrayal - and of great friendship that endures for a lifetime. 
 
 Wendell Berry unravels the story of a town over the course of four generations, lovingly chronicling the intertwined lives of the families who call it home. Affectionate, elegiac and wry, these uplifting rural fables invite us to witness the beauty and quiet heroism at the heart of each ordinary, interconnected life.

Stand By Me

Lara Williams

Twenty-nine year old Roberta has spent her whole life hungry - until the day she invents Supper Club. 
 
Supper Club is a secret society for hungry women. Women who are sick of bad men and bad sex, of hinted expectations to be thinner, smile more, talk less. So they gather at night to feast and drink and dance, seeking the answer to a simple question: if you feed a starving woman, what will she grow into? 
 
This is a story about the hunger that never goes away. It is a story about friendship, food and female rage. Above all, it is about the people who make us who we are - who lead us astray and ultimately save us.

Supper Club

Jane Fallon

When Laura's marriage falls apart she needs to find a home for her and her daughter. And quickly. 
 
Welcome to The Close, a beautiful street of mansions, where Laura rents a tiny studio above a garage, and gorgeous Stella is the indisputable Queen Bee - who soon suspects Laura of having designs on her fiancé. 
 
But when Laura unearths the ghastly secret he is hiding, it threatens Stella's perfectly curated world as well as 
Laura's business and friendships. Unless she can befriend Stella and show her the truth about her soon-to-be husband. But she should know that revenge always comes with a sting in the tail . . .

Queen Bee

The hilarious novel from the author of FAKING FRIENDS

Yiyun Li

'Days: the easiest possession. The days he had refused would come, one at a time. They would wait, every daybreak, with their boundless patience and indifference, seeing if they could turn me into an ally or an enemy to myself.' 
 
A woman's teenage son takes his own life. It is incomprehensible. The woman is a writer, and so she attempts to comprehend her grief in the space she knows best: on the page, as an imagined conversation with the child she has lost. He is as sharp and funny and serious in death as he was in life, and he will speak back to her, unable to offer explanation or solace, but not yet, not quite, gone. 
 
Taking the form of a dialogue between mother and son, Where Reasons End is an extraordinary portrait of parenthood, in all its painful contradictions of joy, humour and sorrow, and of what it is to lose a child.

Where Reasons End

Deborah Levy

In 1988, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Rd crossing. He is fine; he gets up and goes to see his girlfriend, Jennifer. They have sex and then break up. He leaves for the GDR, where he will have more sex (with several members of the same family), harvest mushrooms in the rain, bury his dead father in a matchbox and get on the wrong side of the Stasi. 
 
In 2016, Saul is hit by a car on the Abbey Rd crossing. He is not fine at all; he is rushed to hospital and spends the following days in and out of consciousness, in and out of history. Jennifer is sitting by his bedside. His very-much-not-dead father is sitting by his bedside. Someone important is missing.

The Man Who Saw Everything

Fatima Bhutto

Anita lives in Karachi's biggest slum. Her mother is a maalish wali, paid to massage the tired bones of rich women. But Anita's life will change forever when she meets her elderly neighbour, a man whose shelves of books promise an escape to a different world. 
 
On the other side of Karachi lives Monty, whose father owns half the city and expects great things of him. But when a beautiful and rebellious girl joins his school, Monty will find his life going in a very different direction. 
 
Sunny's father left India and went to England to give his son the opportunities he never had. Yet Sunny doesn't fit in anywhere. It's only when his charismatic cousin comes back into his life that he realises his life could hold more possibilities than he ever imagined. 
 
These three lives will cross in the desert, a place where life and death walk hand-in-hand, and where their closely guarded secrets will force them to make a terrible choice.

The Runaways

The new ‘bold and probing novel’ you won’t be able to stop talking about

Ali Smith

What unites Katherine Mansfield, Charlie Chaplin, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Brexit, the present, the past, the north, the south, the east, the west, a man mourning lost times, a woman trapped in modern times? 
 
Spring. The great connective. 
 
With an eye to the migrancy of story over time, and riffing on Pericles, one of Shakespeare's most resistant and rollicking works, Ali Smith tells the impossible tale of an impossible time. In a time of walls and lockdown, Smith opens the door. 
 
The time we're living in is changing nature. Will it change the nature of story? Hope springs eternal.

Spring

Grace is a Victorian orphan dreaming of the mysterious African father she will never meet. 
 
Winsome is a young Windrush bride, recently arrived from Barbados. 
 
Amma is the fierce queen of her 1980s squatters' palace. 
 
Morgan, who used to be Megan, is blowing up on social media, the newest activist-influencer on the block. 
 
Twelve very different people, mostly black and female, more than a hundred years of change, and one sweeping, vibrant, glorious portrait of contemporary Britain. Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country: ever-dynamic, ever-expanding and utterly irresistible.

Girl, Woman, Other

Dave Eggers

Two Western men are sent to work far away from home, tasked with paving a road the length of a country. The country is dangerous and largely lawless, only just recovering from a devastating civil war, and the road will unite north and south. The road is Progress. The road is Hope. And, when it is completed, a great parade will march it end to end. 
 
The two men follow a route from the outer villages to the capital, operating their high-tech road-building machine and bickering along the way. One man is highly experienced, reliable, focused, pausing only to sleep and eat the company-issued food. The other is chaotic, curious, forever joking with locals and breaking protocol. But when illness, corruption, and theft compromise their mission, the pair discover danger far greater than anything they had anticipated.

The Parade

Geraldine Quigley

School is almost over - and for Paddy, Liz, Christy and Kevin it's time to figure out what's next. But before they start the rest of their lives, these teenagers have the 'Cave' - a place to drink, smoke, flirt and listen to punk music. Somewhere to fend off the spectre of the future. 
 
Because this is Derry in 1981, and the streets outside are a war zone. So when a friend is killed, suddenly the choices of who to be and what side to be on are laid starkly before them. New loves and old loyalties are imperiled even as whole lives hinge on a single decision . . .

Music Love Drugs War

Fiona Neill

Everyone is talking about Grace's family. 
 But for all the wrong reasons . . .Grace wanted to give her daughters the idyllic childhood she never had. And with teenage Lilly, her golden girl, she's never had to worry - unlike with ten-year-old Mia, who often lands herself in trouble. 
But when Lilly suddenly collapses at school, Grace's carefully ordered world crashes down. Because it turns out Lilly isn't the perfect daughter after all. Suddenly, Grace is fixated on uncovering the truth. 
Which is when she takes her eyes off Mia . . .

Beneath the Surface

The closer the family, the darker the secrets

Marlon James

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter - and he always works alone. But when he is engaged to find a child who disappeared three years ago, he must break his own rules joining a group of mercenaries to find the boy. Following the lost boy's scent from one ancient city to another, into dense forests and across deep rivers, Tracker starts to wonder: Who is this boy? Why do so many people want to stop him from being found? And most importantly, who is lying? 
 
Drawing from vivid African history and mythology, Marlon James weaves a saga of breathtaking adventure and powerful intrigue - a mesmerizing, unique meditation on the nature of truth and power.

Black Leopard, Red Wolf

Dark Star Trilogy Book 1

Elizabeth Strout

Rona Munro

Presenting an original audiobook performance of the stage production of My Name is Lucy Barton, starring Academy Award and Tony nominee Laura Linney. 
Praised as "deeply affecting" and "heartbreaking" by The Guardian (UK), this is a faithful adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Elizabeth Strout's best-selling novel of the same name. 
Unsteady after an operation, Lucy Barton wakes to find her mother sitting at the foot of her bed. She hasn't seen her in years, and her visit brings back to Lucy her desperate rural childhood, and her escape to New York. As she begins to find herself as a writer, she is still gripped by the urgent complexities of family life. 
Published as the play comes to Broadway after a highly-acclaimed UK run in 2018, this is a unique opportunity to hear Laura Linney's "simply superb" (The Times UK) performance of this haunting, dramatic monologue. 
My Name Is Lucy Barton was originally produced by Nicholas Hytner and Nick Starr for the London Theater Company at the Bridge Theatre in June 2018. Produced on Broadway by the Manhattan Theater Club, Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Barry Grove, Executive Producer and The London Theater Company, in association with Penguin Random House Audio. 
©2016 Elizabeth Strout (P)2019 Random House Audio

My Name Is Lucy Barton (Dramatisation)

David Gillham

In this unforgettable novel, David Gillham imagines Anne's life if she had survived the horrors of the Holocaust. It is 1945, and Anne Frank is sixteen years old. Having survived the concentration camps but lost her mother and sister, she reunites with her father, Pim, in newly liberated Amsterdam. But Anne is adrift, haunted by the ghost of her sister, Margot, and the atrocities they experienced. Her beloved diary is gone, and her dreams of becoming a writer seem distant and pointless now. As Anne struggles to build a new life herself, she grapples with overwhelming grief, heartbreak, and ultimately forgiveness. In this masterful story of trauma and redemption, David Gillham explores with breath-taking empathy the woman - and the writer - Anne Frank might have become.

Annelies

A Novel of Anne Frank

Nina Stibbe

Teenager Lizzie Vogel has a new job as a dental assistant. This is not as glamorous as it sounds. At least it means mostly getting away from her alcoholic, nymphomaniacal, novel-writing mother. But, if Lizzie thinks being independent means sex with her boyfriend (he prefers bird-watching), strict boundaries (her boss keeps using her loo) or self-respect (surely only actual athletes get fungal foot infections?) she's still got a lot more growing up to do.

Reasons to be Cheerful

Winner of the 2019 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction

Gytha Lodge

On a hot July night in 1983, six school friends go camping in the forest. Bright and brilliant, they are destined for great things, and young Aurora Jackson is dazzled to be allowed to tag along. 
 
Thirty years later, a body is discovered. DCI Sheens is called to the scene, but he already knows what's waiting for him: Aurora Jackson, found at long last. 
 
But that's not all. The friends have all maintained their innocence, but the body is found in a hideaway only the six of them knew about. 
 
It seems the killer has always lurked very close to home...

She Lies in Wait

The gripping Sunday Times bestselling Richard & Judy thriller pick

Caroline Lea

1686, Iceland. 
 
Betrothed unexpectedly to Jon Eriksson, Rosa travels to the isolated, windswept village of Stykkisholmur. Here, the villagers are suspicious of outsiders - especially one from the everdark edge of civilisation. 
 
But Rosa harbours her own suspicions. Her husband buried his first wife alone in the dead of night. 
 
He will not talk of it. Instead he gives her a small glass figurine. She does not know what it signifies. 
 
The villagers look on them both not only with suspicion - but dread. They whisper dark threats. There is an evil here - she can feel it. Alone and far from home, Rosa sees the darkness coming. She fears she will be its next victim . . .

The Glass Woman

Raymond Khoury

Kamal Arslan Agha is a patriot, loyal to the Sultan and his dominion over Europe. As a Special Investigator for the Tashkeelat-i Hafiye - the secret police - Kamal is on the front lines of the empire's harsh response to the increasing political and economic turmoil throughout the continent. But the Caliphate's efforts to impose law and order spare no one, and soon, Kamal's own family draws the attention of the Hafiye's ever-watchful eye. 
 
His brother and sister-in-law have stumbled onto a secret, a piece of knowledge so profoundly dangerous that the Caliphate will do anything to suppress it. With the very foundations of the Empire under threat, Kamal's family has only one choice: they must run. And whether or not they escape the long-arm of the Hafiye will determine not only their own fate, but the existence of the Caliphate itself - its past, its present, and its future.

The Ottoman Secret

Helen Dunmore

Cathy and her brother, Rob, don't know why they have been abandoned by their parents. Alone in their grandfather's decaying country house, they roam the wild grounds freely with minds attuned to the rural wilderness. Lost in their own private world, they seek and find new lines to cross. But as the First World War draws closer, crimes both big and small threaten the delicate refuge they have built. Cathy will do anything to protect their dark Eden from anyone, or anything, that threatens to destroy it.

A Spell of Winter

Mohsin Hamid

This book is a self-help book. Its objective, as it says on the cover, is to show you how to get filthy rich in rising Asia. And to do that it has to find you, huddled, shivering, on the packed earth under your mother's cot one cold, dewy morning. Your anguish is the anguish of a boy whose chocolate has been thrown away, whose remote controls are out of batteries, whose scooter is busted, whose new sneakers have been stolen. This is all the more remarkable since you've never in your life seen any of these things . . .

How to Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia

Javier Marías

'For a while, she wasn't sure that her husband was her husband. Sometimes she thought he was, and sometimes not.' 
 
Berta and Tomás meet in Madrid and, though both young, they decide to spend their lives together. Eighteen and betrothed, Tomás leaves to study at Oxford. His talent for languages quickly catches the interest of a certain government agency, but Tomás resists their offers - until one day he makes a mistake that will affect the rest of his life, and that of his beloved Berta. After university he returns to marry her, knowing he won't be able to stay for long . . . 
 
Gripping and intricate, Berta Isla is about a relationship built on secrets and lies - and the counter forces of resentment and loyalty at its core.

Berta Isla

Stig Dagerman

In 1940s Stockholm, a young man named Bengt falls into deep, private turmoil with the unexpected death of his mother. As he struggles to cope with her loss, his despair slowly transforms to rage when he discovers that his father had a mistress. Bengt swears revenge on behalf of his mother's memory, but he soon finds himself drawn into a fevered and forbidden affair with the very woman he set out to destroy . . . 
 
Written in a taut, restrained style, A Moth to a Flame is an intense exploration of heartache and fury, desperation and illicit passion. Set against a backdrop of the moody streets of Stockholm and the Hitchcockian shadows in the woods and waters of Sweden's remote islands, this is a psychological masterpiece by one of Sweden's greatest writers.

A Moth to a Flame

Tove Ditlevsen

<a href="https://shop.penguin.co.uk/collections/book-bundles-modern-classics/?&amp;utm_source=Penguin.co.uk&amp;utm_medium=Linked_text&amp;utm_campaign=Penguin_Modern_Classics_Series_26_06">Choose 3 timeless classics for only £21 over on the Penguin Shop</a>

Life in Tove's neighbourhood in Copenhagen is confusing and difficult: her father can't find work, her mother is angry and remote, and Tove herself sometimes thinks she's been exchanged at birth. But 'inside of me long, mysterious words began to crawl across my soul' and she soon realizes that she has a vocation, something unknowable and secret within, and that if she can only find the right words, she will one day succeed in forging a true life of her own - somewhere beyond the narrow streets of her childhood. 
 
The first volume in Ditlvesen's autobiographical trilogy, Childhood captures the triumphs and tragedies of girlhood with intense vividness and a poet's clarity of vision.

Childhood

Tove is only twenty, but she's already famous, a published poet and wife of a much older literary editor. Her path in life seems set, but she has no idea of the struggles that lie ahead - love affairs, an unwanted pregnancy, physical pain and crippling opioid addiction. As the years go by, the central tension of Tove's life comes into painful focus: the terrible lure of dependency, in all its forms, and the possibility of living life freely and fearlessly - as an artist on her own terms. 
 
The final volume in Ditlvesen's autobiographical trilogy and perhaps her masterpiece, Dependency is a dark and blisteringly honest account of addiction, and the way out.

Dependency

Philippe Besson

Just outside a hotel in Bordeaux, Philippe, a famous writer, chances upon a young man who bears a striking resemblance to his first love. What follows is a look back to Philippe's teenage years, to a winter morning in 1984, a small French high school, and a carefully timed encounter between two seventeen-year-olds. It's the start of a secret, intensely passionate, world-altering love affair between Philippe and his classmate, Thomas. 
 
 Dazzlingly rendered by Molly Ringwald, the acclaimed actor and writer, in her first-ever translation, Besson's exquisitely moving coming-of-age story captures the tenderness of first love - and the heart-breaking passage of time.

Lie With Me

'Stunning and heart-gripping' André Aciman

Tana French

One night changes everything for Toby. He's always led a charmed life - until a brutal attack leaves him damaged and traumatised, unsure even of the person he used to be. He seeks refuge at his family's ancestral home, the Ivy House, filled with memories of wild-strawberry summers and teenage parties with his cousins. 
 
But not long after Toby's arrival, a discovery is made: a skull, tucked neatly inside the old wych elm in the garden. 
 
As detectives begin to close in, Toby is forced to examine everything he thought he knew about his family, his past, and himself.

The Wych Elm

The Sunday Times bestseller

Unable to stay on to high school, Tove starts her first job (which lasts only one day) and soon embarks on a varied and chequered career: as au pair, cleaner, stock-room assistant and office worker. But Tove is hungry, for poetry, for love, for real life to begin. As she navigates exploitative bosses, uninspiring boyfriends and a Nazi landlady, she struggles to keep her poetic vocation in sight - until she finally realizes the 'miracle' that she has always dreamed of. 
 
The second volume in Ditlvesen's autobiographical trilogy, Youth is a sensitive, often funny and almost painfully truthful portrayal of adolescence.

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