Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903 and educated at Hertford College, Oxford. In 1928 he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). During these years he also travelled extensively and converted to Catholicism. In 1939 Waugh was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, experiences which informed his Sword of Honour trilogy (1952-61). His most famous novel, Brideshead Revisited (1945), was written while on leave from the army. Waugh died in 1966.

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Jarred McGinnis

There is no meant to be but the love I’ve known has made it hard to believe that. 
 
Jarred McGinnis was born to a Southern US clan where masculinity, resilience and physical violence were intertwined. In There Is No Meant to Be he unearths the legends, secrets and scars that have shaped his family line, from his outlaw Irish ancestors to his mother Momo’s gift of foresight, and the ghosts – both real and remembered – that follow him into adulthood.Two decades on from the near-fatal accident that left him in a wheelchair, McGinnis is married and the father of two girls, living first in East London and now Marseille. He writes about love within the context of care and of the particular vulnerability that comes from being a parent with a disability. In a daring imaginative leap, he writes of the end of life too, reaching beyond his own death to look at what truly makes a life.Inventive, funny and deeply moving, this is a family epic unlike any other: part love story, part elegy, part reminder that even in the mess of family and memory there is something to laugh about.

There Is No Meant to Be

A Family Story

Ajay Chowdhury

Newlyweds Adam and Aisha are in an airport lounge in Delhi, their honeymoon abruptly cut short by the murder of Adam’s best friend. While Aisha waits, Adam disappears, leaving only a cryptic message: 'I’m sorry'. 
 
Stranded in India without documents, Aisha is interrogated by RAW, India’s intelligence agency, and the FBI – both of whom seem to know more about her husband’s disappearance than she does. 
 
At the same time Adam’s ex-lover, Sara, receives an urgent message from him: 'Help her'. 
 
Thrown together by circumstance and suspicion, Aisha and Sara decode Adam’s clues, which lead them across the US in a hunt to find Adam before it’s too late. 
 
EDEN FALLS is a high-stakes thriller that spans continents and delves into the shady world of AI and tech billionaires. It is a gripping tale of intrigue, weaponised AI and the relentless pursuit of truth.

Eden Falls

Erin Kelly

When schoolgirls start fainting one after the other at a convent boarding school, old legends twist into new scandals. From irresistible bestselling storyteller Erin Kelly comes the new compulsive thriller that will leave you craving to read more. 
 
'Had me hooked from page one. . . a twisty, confounding mystery' JENNIE GODFREY 
 
Centuries of tradition are coming to an end at St Cordula's school. Deputy Head, Fiona Fox, is about to preside over a controversial move to save it from ruin. But it’s not easy to change things at a school this old. 
 
Legend has it that the ghost of fifteenth-century nun, Sister Matilda, will keep St Cordula’s safe. But only as long as the words ‘GOD FORGIVE ME’, scrawled by Matilda on a chapel staircase wall before she fell to her death, are repainted every year. The words have only been allowed to fade once, in 2002. But then, fits of vertigo spread through the pupils, and a second girl fell to her death on the night stairs. Only three people know the truth of what happened on the night of the tragedy. 
 
Now the vertigo is back, and Fiona must stem the outbreak before it threatens St Cordula’s future, or worse, another girl loses her life. But when one of her pupils begins a dangerous investigation into the past, old secrets start to twist into new scandals… 
 
PRAISE FOR ERIN KELLY: 
 
‘So thrilling and unexpected that it made my head spin’ LISA JEWELL 
‘Gripping, twisting, furiously clever’ RUTH WARE 
‘Erin Kelly is supremely skilled at unusual and intelligent suspense plots’ DAILY MAIL 
‘Original, suspenseful, and with complex characters that spring irresistibly to life on the page’ LOUISE CANDLISH 
‘An incredibly atmospheric psychological thriller with a clever, elaborate plot’ GRAZIA 
‘Incomparable…captivating, cleverly constructed’ PAULA HAWKINS 
‘A completely addictive story…Erin Kelly is a genius’ JANE CASEY 
‘Magnificent’ MARIAN KEYES 
‘A gripping tale of secrets, revenge and obsession, masterfully done’ GUARDIAN 
‘A unique storyteller; impossible to predict, impossible to put down’ JOHN MARRS 
‘Propulsive… atmospheric, original’ GILLIAN McALLISTER 
‘A taut chamber-piece of psychological suspense’ FINANCIAL TIMES 
'The worlds she creates are so rich and alive' JANE FALLON

The Night Stairs

Abir Mukherjee

James Abercrombie is a Hollywood actor who’s past his prime. Ten years ago, he was box office. These days he’s more boxed wine and coffee adverts. 
 
But they still love him in Asia. On the set of a whisky commercial, he meets the beautiful Sweety Sahota, India’s queen of Bollywood, beloved by billions. Marrying her might revive his fortunes. 
 
They move to Mumbai and into The Pinnacle. Sweety’s career continues to sky-rocket. James’s not so much. He hates India – it’s hot and dirty and crowded and the food upsets his stomach. Soon the marriage is in trouble. Is she cheating on him? The papers seem to think so. They have a clandestine photo of her with her ex-boyfriend, Bollywood heart-throb Chunky. 
 
James hits the bottle, and after one particularly drunken session, wakes in the apartment to find Sweety dead in their bed, her throat slit. Did he kill her? He’s sure he didn’t, but who the hell’s going to believe him? 
 
He needs to find out who killed his wife and why, and he needs to do it fast; before the crime is pinned on him, because, let’s face it, he’s not going to get a fair trial. If he doesn’t work it out, he's as good as dead.

The Pinnacle

Brigid Lowe

Three powerful heroines – a queen, a sorceress and woman made of flowers – plot revenge against the villain who wronged them. A gorgeously dark debut novel inspired by Celtic Britain’s original fantasy fiction. 
 
Man is cruel but the flowers will take their revenge. 
 
Three great heroines – slave queen Goewin, the reclusive sorceress Arianrhod, and Blodeuwedd, a woman conjured from flowers – unite to avenge themselves on the most dangerous man in ancient legend. 
 
Gwydion is a powerful sorcerer, whose ambition and cruelty wreak havoc across the kingdom. When at last the earth itself is put at stake, Goewin, Arianrhod and Blodeuwedd each unleash their uncanny powers to challenge him. 
 
In this vital and visceral novel, Brigid Lowe casts ancient light on desire, sex and our relationship with nature to bring these Celtic heroines to explosive, sensuous, blossoming new life.

The Bloody Branch

Édouard Louis

One evening, during a writers’ residency in Athens, Édouard receives a tearful phone call from his mother, Monique. She tells him that the man she lives with in Paris is abusive, inflicting upon her the same drunken behaviour as Édouard’s father, repeating the same cycles of violence, shame and humiliation she fled from before. 
Step by step, they plan her escape, celebrating each small victory of Monique’s new beginning. But how do you rebuild your life when you’ve never truly known freedom? 
Monique Escapes is an intimate and gripping portrait of a mother fighting for her self-determination, and of the son who becomes her ally. It is a story of reinvention, the price of liberty and the remaking of the relationship between a mother and a son who, despite the weight of their shared history, manage to find each other again.

Monique Escapes

Janet Tay

Every morning before sunrise, Lim Ah Hock opens the shutters of his small kitchen on Carpenter Street, lights an incense stick and prepares the best laksa soup in all of Kuching. According to Lim family legend, the laksa’s secret ingredient – their ancestral broth – was gifted to them by a deity, who promised the family prosperity as long as the broth is passed down through the generations. 
 
But Ah Hock is aging, and the broth’s quality is fading. His only son, Wei Ming, has no interest in the family business, having spent eight years in Hong Kong trying to prove himself as a chef. Now, he's struggling with gambling debts, embroiled in a love triangle, and the restaurant he's been left to run has lost its Global Restaurants Guild star. 
 
Invited home to Malaysia for his father's 60th birthday, Wei Ming sees a chance to escape his troubles. But when old conflicts resurface and a local businessman threatens to destroy the family legacy, father and son are forced to ask themselves what truly matters.

Early Mornings at the Laksa Cafe

Jane Healey

It’s the summer of 1957 and Max, a piano prodigy, is on a sold-out concert tour. 
His beautiful twin sister, Natasha, serves as his manager and minder. But despite Natasha’s careful planning, he begins, for the first time in his career, to make mistakes on stage. Upending his schedule to seek a cure in Paris, Max sets up the pair in the sprawling mansion of a handsome and wealthy count. But Henri is more than just a patron of the arts; he has also been – unknown to Max – Natasha’s lover.Freed from the familiar dynamic of manager and talent, Natasha’s simmering resentment and Max’s deep insecurity turn into a rivalry, as the two vie for Henri’s attention. While Henri woos Natasha in galleries and cafés during the day, it is Max’s playing that draws him from bed each night.As the twins compete, the fractures in their already vulnerable relationship start to show, with devastating consequences for both.

Crescendo

Amil

In a future Korea, the world has been ravaged by dust clouds and the deadly Akanta virus. Rather than live in their nightmarish present, people slip on virtual reality headsets to indulge in nostalgic simulations of the past. 
 
18-year-old Soop - stigmatised due to her brush with Akanta, which causes VR-rejection – is bullied at school for having to live solely in the real world. Her only solace comes from the K-Pop music she listens to on repeat. When a chance encounter brings Soop face-to-face with her idol, Yichae, a super-star whose new music video is being filmed at Soop's high school, she hopes this might be her chance at real connection. 
 
But Yichae has her own troubles. She is one of the few remaining ‘real’ human idols. In a K-pop world where virtual stars dominate, Yichae is forced to live up to unattainable beauty and body standards, under the guise of being celebrated for her supposed authenticity. 
 
The Forest Called You is a love letter to K-Pop, romance and high school politics – a novel about staying true to our passions, loving ourselves and each other, in an increasingly artificial world.

The Forest Called You

Megha Mohan

Society isn’t working for women - or any of us. 
 
But what if the rules were different? 
 
Imagine a world in which women have all the power. A world in which they work together to shape their societies and their futures. 
 
In reality, women's communities have always existed, and continue to thrive. In this vital and groundbreaking book, Megha Mohan goes in search of their roots, discovering a vibrant global history, brought together here for the first time. She also takes us into today's women-led spaces, where women live on their own terms, showing us how we can rethink society for new ways of living, working and collaborating. 
 
Through extensive research and exclusive first-hand reporting, and inspired by her great-grandmother’s own matrilineal community in South India, Mohan introduces us to fascinating and diverse groups of women. From the controversial feminist online trolls of South Korea, to older women co-housing in Paris and North London, and the Rain Queens of South Africa, this is a truly global look at women's community. 
 
Essential reading for anyone interested in our collective histories, cultures, economics and governance, Herlands shows the power and possibility of new ways of living - and leading - for us all.

Herlands

Lessons From Societies Where Women Make the Rules

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