Ajay Chowdhury, the inaugural winner of the Harvill Secker-Bloody Scotland prize, is a tech entrepreneur and theatre director. His children’s book – Ayesha and the Firefish, was published in 2016 and adapted into a musical which premiered in San Francisco. 
 
 
The Waiter (Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month), was published in 2021, and is the first in his critically-acclaimed crime series about Detective Kamil Rahman, an ex-policeman from Kolkata who has moved to Brick Lane in London. It is being adapted for television by Moonage Pictures.The Cook (Guardian Top Crime Books of the Year) was published in May 2022 to excellent reviews and deals with the issue of homelessness. The third book in the series – The Detective (Sunday Times Top Crime Books of the Year) – is about government surveillance and AI. The Spy (Longlisted Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing), the fourth book, sees Kamil infiltrate a terrorist cell. The Shadow (A Sunday Times Crime Book of the Month) is the latest book in the series.

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Devi Sridhar

**THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER | BBC RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK** 
 
The definitive story of COVID-19 and how global politics shape our health - from a world-leading expert and the pandemic's go-to science communicator 
 
Professor Devi Sridhar has risen to prominence for her vital roles in communicating science to the public and speaking truth to power. In Preventable she highlights lessons learned from outbreaks past and present in a narrative that traces the COVID-19 pandemic - including her personal experience as a scientist - and sets out a vision for how we can better protect ourselves from the inevitable health crises to come. 
 
In gripping and heartfelt prose, Sridhar exposes the varied realities of those affected and puts you in the room with key decision makers at crucial moments. She vibrantly conveys the twists and turns of a plot that saw: deadlier varients emerge (contrary to the predictions of social media pundits who argued it would mutate to a milder form); countries with weak health systems like Senegal and Vietnam fare better than countries like the US and UK (which were consistently ranked as the most prepared); and the quickest development of game-changing vaccines in history (and their unfair distribution) 
 
Combining science, politics, ethics and economics, this definitive book dissects the global structures that determine our fate, and reveals the deep-seated economic and social inequalities at their heart - it will challenge, outrage and inspire. 
 
'A brutally compelling reminder that if voices like Devi's had been listened to, so many more could have lived' OWEN JONES 
 
'One of the most brilliant scientists in the world who has been proven consistently right in this crisis' PIERS MORGAN 
 
'Excellent . . . Fair, clear and compelling' NICOLA STURGEON 
 
'Those who have found Professor Devi Sridhar's expertise and calm advice invaluable since the arrival of Covid-19 will be glad to know that she has written Preventable' RACHEL COOKE, Guardian, Non-fiction to look out for in 2022

Preventable

How a Pandemic Changed the World & How to Stop the Next One

Nadifa Mohamed

Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff's Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, petty criminal. He is many things, but he is not a murderer. So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn't too worried. Witnesses allegedly saw him enter a shop that night and love lends him immunity too: the fierce love of his wife, who forgives his gambling in a heartbeat, and his children. It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of returning home dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a fight for his life - against conspiracy, prejudice and cruelty - and the truth may not be enough to save him.

The Fortune Men

Shortlisted for the Costa Novel Of The Year Award

Simon Park

Wreckers sinks the old narratives of imperialism, revealing the violent, chaotic and improvised reality of empire-building from the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries. 
 
While figures such as Christopher Columbus, Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan are celebrated for their maritime achievements – reaching the Americas, India, and circumnavigating the globe – focusing solely on these voyages distorts our perspective on the past. Many explorers ended up as castaways, clinging to the splintered timbers of their wrecked ships, while those who survived often faced resistance and ridicule from indigenous communities across the globe. 
 
Drawing on maritime stories from various languages and continents – from Brazil and Southeast Africa to India and the Philippines – Wreckers shares dramatic tales of the sea and the events on land that followed. This offers an alternative timeline for the century after Columbus’ 1492 voyage and sheds light on the fractures and fault lines that accompanied the increasing geographical range of European ships. 
 
Simon Park argues that even when Europeans arrogantly claimed their own superiority, the truth was that they were often driven by a profound sense of greed and envy, and their actions included numerous mishaps. For example, in his hunt for gold, Martin Frobisher – who fancied himself England’s Columbus and Cortés combined – transported worthless rocks across the Atlantic by the tonne. In the search for spices, Captain and profiteer Manuel de Sousa de Sepúlveda’s ship was so overladen, it spewed its fragrant cargo when it crashed off the coast of South Africa. Moreover, in every place they went, Europeans depended on local know-how and goodwill – relying on indigenous knowledge of languages, geography, food and medicines. 
 
Wreckers reveals the precarious balance between imperious European powers, cunning locals who colluded to further their own agendas, and others who showed great tenacity in their resistance to European incursions. By focusing on stories of failure, defiance and comeuppance, Wreckers – a term Park uses to refer both to those who were wrecked and those involved in wrecking – offers a gripping and original account of a tumultuous period. It challenges the notion of unstoppable European dominance and enables a reimagining of history as a space of possibilities then, now and in the future.

Wreckers

Disaster in the Age of Discovery

Yeganeh Torbati

Bozorgmehr Sharafedin

Following the lives of six Iranians from the Iranian Revolution to the inspiring Woman Life Freedom protests, this harrowing, compulsively readable book traces the promise of the revolution, its betrayal by forces of autocracy and a people’s undying spirit of resistance. 
 
The 1979 revolution in Iran swept aside a monarchy, fuelled by a people’s dreams of social justice and political freedom. But the movement’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, and his acolytes instead built a system that served their narrow faction and worsened beyond imagination the brutality and corruption that had existed under the Shah. Stolen Revolution follows six Iranians who, together, have lived the arc of modern Iranian history: 
<ul><li>Mehdi Karroubi, a devotee of Khomeini, rose to the heights of power and helped shape the autocratic form it took, ignored the new government’s repression of its enemies, before being cast out of the inner circle.</li><li>Hila Sedighi, a young activist, gave voice through her poetry to her peers’ hopes during the reform years and ultimately voiced their shattered dreams.</li><li>Said Rahmani, a successful global tech entrepreneur, returned to Iran to spark a start-up boom in his native country and encountered a ruthless security state that wanted his company for itself.</li><li>Amir Moghadam, an ambitious government bureaucrat, witnessed corruption and graft on a scale that impelled him to take enormous risks to expose the truth.</li><li>Rozhin Yousefzade and Kosar Eftekhari, both born in the 1990s, escaped their gendered destinies by leaving their hometowns for Tehran where they joined a mass movement in confrontation with a ferocious state apparatus: the Woman Life Freedom protests. Each paid an enormous price.</li></ul>Through vivid and harrowing reporting, this is a new story of resistance and nascent revolution in Iran: tracing the unfulfilled promises passed down through the generations, a story of power, corruption and greed, and those brave individuals who fought back.

Stolen Revolution

Betrayal and Hope in Modern Iran

Eden McKenzie-Goddard

In 1961, 19-year-old Lucinda Brown travels to England in search of her lover, Clarence Braithwaite, a jazz musician who left Barbados to join the British army. Aboard the ship to Southampton, Lucinda meets Raldo, a free-wheeling Trinidadian, who offers her the wild freedom that both her old life in Barbados and the life that awaits her in Britain lack. Driven by loyalty, and the memory of the little boy she left behind, she chooses Clarence – though soon realises that he is no longer the saxophonist she fell in love with, but a veteran at war with himself. 
 
Fifty years later, Patrick Braithwaite, a father, husband, business owner and recovering alcoholic from Tottenham, has to rally his three siblings when their mother receives a letter from the Home Office that tears their life apart. They need to prove their mother’s legal arrival, to prevent her deportation, and to do that they need to find a man their mother once loved, known only by the name of Raldo… 
 
Tender, rich and big-hearted, Smallie is a stunning British debut about three generations of a Bajan-British family affected by the Windrush scandal that will move, enrage and pull you in.

Smallie

Ben Hinshaw

Surrounded by the dramatic beauty of Guernsey, a teenager discovers a secret and finds his betrayal has the power to ruin adult lives. In London, a marriage shot through with infidelity leads to a quest for revenge, resulting in a series of simultaneously comical and catastrophic events. And in California, as wildfires threaten landscapes and lives, a young veteran struggles with the trauma of war, seeking solace at a local ranch. 
 
In this extraordinary debut, a cast of characters grapple with unexpected betrayal, the loss of innocence and the lies we tell. With sharp insight, Ben Hinshaw illuminates the unnerving nature of what it means to grow up, to be a teenager playing at adulthood and an adult playing games.

Exactly What You Mean

The BBC Between the Covers Book Club Pick

Sathnam Sanghera

In Britain, imperialism is everywhere - though we often choose not to see it. From the way we travel and the foundation of the NHS to the nature of our racism and wealth, it is central to the way we think and conduct politics. In his bestselling book, Sathnam Sanghera demonstrates how so much of modern Britain - including the exceptionalism that inspired Brexit and our response to the COVID-19 crisis - is rooted in our imperial past. 
 
Empire is foundational to modern Britain yet is barely taught in schools or mentioned in museums. At a time of great division, when we are arguing about what it means to be British, Empireland is a groundbreaking revelation - a much-needed and illuminating portrait of modern British society with the power and potential to change minds.

Empireland

How Imperialism Has Shaped Modern Britain

Donna Tartt

'Everything, somehow, fit together; some sly and benevolent Providence was revealing itself by degrees and I felt myself trembling on the brink of a fabulous discovery, as though any morning it was all going to come together---my future, my past, the whole of my life---and I was going to sit up in bed like a thunderbolt and say oh! oh! oh!' 
 
Under the influence of a charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at a New England college discover a way of thought and life a world away from their banal contemporaries. But their search for the transcendent leads them down a dangerous path, beyond human constructs of morality.

The Secret History

30th anniversary edition

Khashayar J. Khabushani

Three young brothers leave Los Angeles in the dead of night for Iran, taken by their father from their mother to a country and an ancestral home they barely recognize. They return to the Valley months later, spit back into American life and changed in inexorable ways. Under the dazzling light of the California sun, our protagonist, the youngest brother, begins to piece together a childhood shattered by his father's violence, a queer adolescence marked by a shy, secret love affair with a boy he meets on the basketball court, and his ever-changing status as a Muslim in America at the turn of the new millennium. 
 
Lyrical and open-hearted, I WILL GREET THE SUN AGAIN is an unforgettable portrait of a family being torn apart, and a boy emerging from its ashes.

I Will Greet the Sun Again

Deepa Paul

In the early hours of dawn in Amsterdam, Deepa Paul rises from her boyfriend’s bed. She gets dressed, slips away with a kiss and cycles home, where she is welcomed into the arms of her husband, whose contentment is mellow alongside her own. There isn’t a glimmer of shame, deception or guilt, only the honesty and compassion needed to make this kind of life possible — even if it wasn’t always this easy.You might have questions. Whose idea was it? What are the rules? Are you ever jealous? In this memoir, Deepa offers her answers openly and tenderly, as she explores the truth to questions of her own. Can I ask for what I want, and still honour the life I have chosen? Do I deserve it? Is it worth it?Unexpectedly relatable and joyfully vibrant, this is one woman’s story of discovering her own desires and how to liberate them, of shifting identities from mother to lover and back again, and of finding the courage to ask for the marriage she wanted, beyond the marriage she had.One question at a time.

Ask Me How It Works

Love in an Open Marriage

A Memoir of Love and Motherhood in an Open Marriage

Elliot Ackerman

TWO MISFITS. 
ONE MISSION. 
ZERO BACK-UP. 
WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG? 
 
‘You know Slow Horses – now meet the Sheepdogs . . . glorious . . . hilarious' SUNDAY TIMES 
 
'A rollicking military-adjacent adventure . . . replete with jet-setting paramilitary types, secret meetings at the highest level of government and firefights, with some rough sex and women in peril added for good measure' WASHINGTON POST 
 
Skwerl and Cheese are down on their luck after being screwed over by the US military. Skwerl used to work for the CIA’s elite paramilitary wing until he was unceremoniously fired after a raid went bad in Afghanistan. Big Cheese Aziz, a legendary Afghan pilot also formerly employed by the CIA, is stuck working the graveyard shift at the local gas station. 
 
Armed with a ton of unique and not obviously useful skills for peacetime living, both are recruited into a shadowy network of so-called ‘sheepdogs’ working jobs for an anonymous dispatcher. 
 
Their first mission? To repossess a luxury private jet stranded on a remote Ugandan airfield. Their fee: a cut of the jet’s $5 million value. But nothing about the job adds up. Their contact vanishes. Their handler’s motives are suspect. And when the women in their lives get involved – one pregnant wife and one dominatrix – the stakes skyrocket overnight. 
 
From the jungles of Kampala to the glitz of Marseille, Sheepdogs is a sly, hilarious, action-packed thriller introducing an instantly iconic spy duo. Operating in the moral grey zone between predator and prey, this is a wild ride through the absurd underworld of war and intelligence. 
 
‘Skwerl, Cheese, Dickhead Mike, the White Russian – these characters are totally addictive. I couldn’t put Sheepdogs down. A thriller and comedy in one, it’s a wild ride’ HARLAN COBEN 
 
‘Sheepdogs is the best thriller I’ve read in a long, long time. With a perfect blend of action and humor, I was hooked from the first page and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished . . . an absolute gem of a novel’ KEVIN POWERS

Sheepdogs

Tharik Hussain

This revelatory history explores the ancient roots of Muslim Europe, tracing their journey through the Mediterranean. 
 
Our odyssey begins in the little-known Sufi lodges in Cyprus, where Muslims arrived in 647AD. From there, we travel through the continent – visiting places such as Sicily, Malta, Portugal and Spain – encountering red-haired European Sultans and Arabic-speaking Christian Kings. We meet forgotten Muslim pioneers, such as Abbas Ibn Firnas who gave us flight and Ibn Sina who gave us modern medicine. We see the Islam-inspired mudejar art of fourteenth-century Christians in Spain, and how such cross fertilisation birthed Europe’s ‘Renaissance’. We discover the long-forgotten tombs of European Muslims who knew the Prophet Muhammad, and the author – award-winning writer Tharik Hussain – becomes the first Muslim in over 900 years to pray inside the remains of a nameless Sicilian Mosque. 
 
To remedy Europe’s Islamic amnesia, this ambitious history reveals that Islam is no side show to Western culture – but rather has been integral to its development over 1,400 years.

Muslim Europe

A Journey in Search of a Fourteen Hundred Year History

William Boyd

Gabriel Dax is a young man haunted by the memories of a tragedy: every night, when sleep finally comes, he dreams about his childhood home in flames. His days are spent on the move as an acclaimed travel writer, capturing changing landscapes in the grip of the Cold War. When he’s offered the chance to interview a political figure, his ambition leads him unwittingly into a web of duplicities and betrayals. 
 
As Gabriel’s reluctant initiation takes hold, he is drawn deeper into the shadows. Falling under the spell of Faith Green, an enigmatic and ruthless MI6 handler, he becomes ‘her spy’, unable to resist her demands. But amid the peril, paranoia and passion consuming Gabriel’s new covert life, it will be the revelations closer to home that change the rest of his story. . .

Gabriel's Moon

Mihail Sebastian

Stefan Valeriu, a young Romanian student, holidays alone in the Alps, where he soon becomes entangled in romantic relationships with three different women who pass through his guesthouse. We follow Stefan after his return to Paris as he reflects on the women in his life, at times playing the lover, and at others observing shrewdly from the periphery. 
 
Women's four interlinked stories offer nuanced and deeply moving portraits of romantic relationships in all their complexity, from unrequited love and passionate affairs to tepid marriages of convenience. In light, elegant prose, Mihail Sebastian, widely regarded as the greatest Romanian writer of the 20th century, explores longing, otherness, empathy, and regret.

Women

Emily Henry

When Margaret Ives, the famously reclusive heiress, invites eternal optimist Alice Scott to the balmy Little Crescent Island, Alice knows this is it: her big break. And even more rare: a chance to impress her family with a Serious Publication. 
 
The catch? Pulitzer-prize winning human thundercloud, Hayden Anderson, is sure of the same thing. 
 
The proposal? A one-month trial period to unearth the truth behind one of the most scandalous families of the 20th Century, after which she’ll choose who’ll tell her story. 
 
The problem? Margaret is only giving each of them tantalising pieces. Pieces they can’t put together because of an ironclad NDA and an inconvenient yearning pulsing between them every time they’re in the same room. 
 
And it’s becoming abundantly clear that their story – just like the tale Margaret’s spinning – could be a mystery, tragedy, or love ballad … depending on who’s telling it.

Great Big Beautiful Life

Nell Zink

As a Berlin night draws in around the pristine glass exterior of the Hotel Interconti, a ragtag group of friends, family, and potential lovers find themselves frustrated. By promise or threat, they have all gathered at a lavish celebration of an elderly author’s venerable career. But dinner is delayed, the speeches are a drag and the gang – a young trans teen and her father; an ageing publisher and his flakey date; a dog, a troubled heiress and an Arabic Prince – begin to feel the pinch of boredom, hunger and horniness. Together they will make their bid for freedom, and soon will embark on an exhilarating odyssey through the city’s shadow and light. . .Sophisticated, sexy and exquisitely funny, Sister Europe is the remarkable new novel from one of the most singular, brilliant writers working today: a vivid tale of growing up, growing old and getting down. 
'Nell Zink is a writer of extraordinary talent and range. Her work insistently raises the possibility that the world is larger and stranger than the world you think you know' Jonathan Franzen

Sister Europe

Rory Clements

THE CLOSER YOU GET, THE FURTHER YOU HAVE TO FALL. 
 
Munich, 1936. All eyes are on the Bavarian capital for the upcoming Olympic games. As athletes fight for gold and the Nazis fight for power, Detective Sebastian Wolff faces a battle of his own. 
 
A famous actress has disappeared and Wolff has been ordered to find her, fast. But Elena Lang is no ordinary film-star: she is the mistress of Joseph Goebbels - Hitler's right-hand-man in the party that Wolff despises. 
 
But corruption runs deep in Munich and Elena is just the first to go missing. In a search that will take him from high society to the city's darkest corners, Wolff is about to learn just how easily the hunter becomes the hunted: this is a city on the brink of war, and some enemies are better left alone. 
 
Walking the tightrope between justice and jeopardy, Evil in High Places is the gripping new historical thriller from the million-copy-bestseller, Rory Clements.

Evil in High Places

Gabriel Dax, travel writer and accidental spy, is back in the shadows. Unable to resist the allure of his MI6 handler, Faith Green, he has returned to a life of secrets and subterfuge. Dax is sent to Guatemala under the guise of covering a tinderbox presidential election, where the ruthless decisions of the Mafia provoke pitch-black warfare in collusion with the CIA. 
 
As political turmoil erupts, Gabriel's reluctant involvement deepens. His escape plan leads him to West Berlin, where he uncovers a chilling realisation: there is a plot to assassinate magnetic young President John F. Kennedy. In a race against time, Gabriel must navigate deceit and danger, knowing that the stakes have never been higher. 
 
The Predicament, the second novel in the bestselling espionage trilogy starring Gabriel Dax, William Boyd weaves a masterful tale of suspense, loyalty, love and the dark temptations of spy craft.

The Predicament

Shannon Sanders

At thirty-two, Aubrey Lamb is stumbling through life. A semi-employed gig worker, she's still grieving her late father and coming to terms with being dumped by the man she had hoped to marry. Into this mess comes a call from a distant cousin about the land she has a vague memory of inheriting from her father – a sizable farm down in Lanyer County, Tennessee. Seeking distraction (and perhaps an opportunity to erase her mounting debts), Aubrey goes on a mission to get to know the land and the rich family history that lives there. 
 
The Lambs have owned the farm for nearly a century, beginning with Aubrey’s great-grandfather Thomas, one of the first Black landowners in his community, who gave his four children a homestead on which they could flourish. But the family farm proves to be a burdened inheritance, with rivalries, legal issues and one tragic event leaving a trail of consequences for years to come. 
 
An expansive family saga with a modern voice, The Great Wherever is at once grand and intimate. Under the watchful and gossipy eyes of the ghosts of Aubrey’s ancestors, it explores the ways we learn to define ourselves through and against our family, how we carry on after loss, and how the past lives on in all of us.

The Great Wherever

Margarita Liberaki

'That summer we bought big straw hats. Maria's had cherries around the rim, Infanta's had forget-me-nots, and mine had poppies as red as fire. . .' 
 
Three Summers is a warm and tender tale of three sisters growing up in the countryside near Athens before the Second World War. Living in a ramshackle old house with their divorced mother are flirtatious, hot-headed Maria, beautiful but distant Infanta, and dreamy and rebellious Katerina, through whose eyes the story is mostly observed. Over three summers, the girls share and keep secrets, fall in and out of love, try to understand the strange ways of adults and decide what kind of adults they hope to become.

Three Summers

Caleb Azumah Nelson

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists - he a photographer, she a dancer - trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Tentatively, tenderly, they fall in love. But two people who seem destined to be together can still be torn apart by fear and violence. 
 
At once an achingly beautiful love story and a potent insight into race and masculinity, Open Water asks what it means to be a person in a world that sees you only as a Black body, to be vulnerable when you are only respected for strength, to find safety in love, only to lose it. With gorgeous, soulful intensity, Caleb Azumah Nelson has written the most essential British debut of recent years.

Open Water

Winner of the Costa First Novel Award 2021

Catherine Airey

It is late September in 2001 and the walls of New York are papered over with photos of the missing. Cora Brady’s father is there, the poster she made taped to columns and bridges. Her mother died long ago and now, orphaned on the cusp of adulthood, Cora is adrift and alone. Soon, a letter will arrive with the offer of a new life: far out on the ragged edge of Ireland, in the town where her parents were young, an estranged aunt can provide a home and fulfil a long-forgotten promise. There the story of Cora's family is hidden, and in her presence will begin to unspool… 
 
An essential, immersive debut from an astonishing new voice, Confessions traces the arc of three generations of women as they experience in their own time the irresistible gravity of the past: its love and tragedy, its mystery and redemption, and, in all things intended and accidental, the beauty and terrible shade of the things we do.

Confessions

Elizabeth Strout

It’s autumn in Maine, and the town lawyer Bob Burgess has become enmeshed in an unfolding murder investigation, defending a lonely, isolated man accused of killing his mother. He has also fallen into a deep and abiding friendship with the acclaimed writer, Lucy Barton, who lives nearby in a house next to the sea. Together, Lucy and Bob talk about their lives, their hopes and regrets, and what might have been. Lucy, meanwhile, befriends one of Crosby’s longest inhabitants, Olive Kitteridge, now living in a retirement community on the edge of town. They spend afternoons together in Olive’s apartment, telling each other stories. Stories about people they have known – “unrecorded lives,” Olive calls them – reanimating them, and, in the process, imbuing their lives with meaning. 
 
Brimming with empathy and pathos, TELL ME EVERYTHING is Elizabeth Strout operating at the height of her powers, illuminating the ways in which our relationships keep us afloat. As Lucy says, “Love comes in so many different forms, but it is always love.”

Tell Me Everything

Ari Folman

David Polonsky

Lena Guberman

It's the middle of the night at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, and a thunderbolt has just shattered the protective glass case in which the most famous diary in history is displayed. Magically, Anne's imaginary friend, Kitty, comes to life. 
 
When Kitty learns that Anne and her beloved sister Margot have died in the war, 
she runs away from the house and follows the sisters&rsquo; path, recounting the complete story of Anne Frank's life, family, and diary from her own unique perspective. In the present day, Kitty's adventures bring her in contact with the refugee crisis in Europe, from which she discovers the true meaning of Anne Frank's legacy.

Where Is Anne Frank

Stefania Rousselle

Award-winning journalist and documentary maker Stefania Rousselle had stopped believing in love. She had covered a series of bleak assignments, from terrorist attacks to the rise of the far right. Her relationship had fallen apart. Her faith in humanity was shaken. She decided to set out alone on a road trip across France, sleeping in strangers' homes, asking ordinary men and women the one question everyone wants to know the answer to: What is love? 
 
From a baker in Normandy to a shepherd in the Pyrénées, from a gay couple estranged from their families to a widow who found love again at 70, Amour is a treasure trove of poignant and profound stories about love, accompanied by beautiful full-colour photographs.

Amour

How the French Talk about Love

Nina Bouraoui

In All Men Want to Know the author traces her blissful childhood in Algeria, a sun-soaked paradise, recalling long trips across the desert with her mother and sister and hazy summer afternoons spent on the beach with her friend Ali. But Nina's mother is French - moving to Algeria for love at a time when most Europeans were desperate to leave - and as civil war approaches, their sunny idyll gives way to increasingly hostile and violent outbreaks. When something unspeakable happens to her mother, the family flee to Paris. 
 
In Paris, Nina lives alone. She is eighteen years old. It's the 1980s. Four nights a week she walks across Paris to a legendary women-only nightclub, the Katmandou. She sits alone at the bar, afraid of her own desires, of her sudden and intoxicating freedom. There she meets the glamorous, deeply troubled Ely, her volatile friends Lizz and Laurence, and the beautiful Julia, with whom she falls desperately in love. And, most importantly, she starts to write.

All Men Want to Know

Harriet Evans

Every family has a story to tell. Alice and Tom's begins here . . . 
 
On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Alice Jansen collects her treasures – the keepsakes, figurines and mementoes that help her make sense of her fragile family. But the next day her heart is broken, and the final treasure, a gift from her father, is lost. Two years later, Alice answers a phone call from a stranger and runs away to New York, and tries to forget her last golden summer at the orchard on the banks of the Hudson. 
 
Tom Raven can’t understand why he keeps losing so many of the things and people that really matter to him, but he knows for certain that something important is missing from his life. One day, he remembers a forgotten letter and makes a phone call, then leaves Sevenstones, the only place that feels like home, for a strange city.

The Treasures

The Sevenstones Trilogy: Book One

Elizabeth Arnott

You've heard of the men who kill, but what about the women who loved them? 
 
It's a baking hot summer in 1960s California and three women have formed an unlikely friendship. Beverley, Elsie and Margot may look like they lead idyllic lives, but behind the false smiles and glittering pools lies the truth: their husbands are some of the country's most notorious serial killers. 
 
Amidst neighbourhood gossip and pointed fingers, the women are fighting to forge new paths for themselves. Wide-eyed Beverley is raising two young children under the long shadow of their father's crimes. Bookish Elsie is determined to make a name for herself in the patriarchal newsroom, while Hollywood party-girl Margot has a penchant for an early morning margarita - anything to quieten the shame of her ex-husband's deceit. 
 
But when a string of local killings hits the news, the women - underestimated and overlooked - are hurled into an investigation of their own. After all, who better to catch a killer than those who have shared their lives with one?

The Secret Lives of Murderers' Wives

Amanda Eyre Ward

When Charlotte Perkins enters the 'Become a Jetsetter' contest, she dreams of reuniting her estranged children: Lee, an almost-famous actress; Cord, a handsome Manhattan venture capitalist; and Regan, a harried mother who has never got over Charlotte's gift of a Weight Watchers voucher for her birthday. 
 
But when she wins that once in a lifetime trip, all doesn't exactly go to plan . . . 
 
As long-buried secrets are revealed, and lovers new and old appear, can these four lost adults find their way back to each other? 
 
And more importantly, can they do it without killing each other? 
 
A hilarious and deliciously sun-scented novel about the courage it takes to reveal our true selves and the pleasures and perils of family.

The Jetsetters

A 2020 REESE WITHERSPOON HELLO SUNSHINE BOOK CLUB PICK

Cressida Connolly

On the battlefields of the Crimea, William Gale cradles the still-warm body of his brother. William's experience of war will bring about a change in him that will reverberate through his family over the next two centuries. 
In the 1970s, William's descendants invite Stephen, a distant relation, to stay in their house in the English countryside - but their golden summer entanglements will end in a shocking fall from grace. 
 
Half a century later, a confrontation between the surviving members of the family will culminate in a terrible reckoning.

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