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.

Evelyn Waugh

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Cees Nooteboom

Alma and Almut share a fascination for Australia and its ancient peoples; their ceremonies, sand drawings and body paintings. After Alma suffers a traumatic attack, they board a cheap flight from São Paulo to Sydney, and together begin their journey across their secret continent. Alma slowly recovers through a brief love affair with an Aboriginal artist, and both women become involved with the Angel Project in Perth, where actors dressed as angels are concealed around the city for the public to discover. 
 
In a seemingly unconnected story, a man staying at a remote Alpine spa unexpectedly meets a woman he encountered years before and with whom he shared a single night. It was in a faraway city and she was dressed as an angel...

Lost Paradise

Namwali Serpell

**Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award 2020** 
 
 'The great African novel of the twenty-first century' Tade Thompson, author of Rosewater 
 
 On the banks of the Zambezi River, a few miles from the majestic Victoria Falls, there was once a colonial settlement called The Old Drift. 
 
 In 1904, in a smoky room at the hotel across the river, an Old Drifter named Percy M. Clark, foggy with fever, makes a mistake that entangles his fate with those of an Italian hotelier and an African busboy. 
 
 So begins a cycle of unwitting retribution between three Zambian families as they collide and converge over the course of the century, into the present and beyond. 
 
 'Extraordinary, ambitious, evocative, dazzling' Salman Rushdie 
 
 'Brilliant . . . heartbreaking' Sunday Times 
 
 'Charming, heartbreaking and breathtaking' Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House

The Old Drift

Umberto Eco

An extraordinary epic, brilliantly-imagined, new novel from a world-class writer and author of The Name of the Rose. Discover the Middle Ages with Baudolino - a wondrous, dazzling, beguiling tale of history, myth and invention. 
 
It is 1204, and Constantinople is being sacked and burned by the knights of the fourth Crusade. Amid the carnage and confusion Baudolino saves a Byzantine historian and high court official from certain death at the hands of the crusading warriors, and proceeds to tell his own fantastical story.

Baudolino

K-Ming Chang

Three generations of Taiwanese American women are haunted by the myths of their homeland in this blazing debut of one family's queer desires, violent impulses and buried secrets. 
 
One evening, Mother tells Daughter a story about a tiger spirit who lived in a woman's body. Her name was Hu Gu Po, and she hungered to eat children, especially their toes. Soon afterwards, Daughter awakes with a tiger tail. And more mysterious events follow: Holes in the backyard spit up letters penned by her estranged grandmother; a visiting aunt leaves red on everything she touches; a ghost bird shimmers in an ancient birdcage. 
 
All the while, Daughter is falling for a neighbourhood girl named Ben with mysterious stories of her own. As the two young lovers translate the grandmother's letters, Daughter begins to understand that each woman in her family embodies an old Taiwanese myth, and fears the power of the tiger spirit bristling within her to cause pain. She will have to bring her family's secrets to light in order to derail their destiny. 
 
'What gives me fuel are other books - anything stylish and/or dirty. This year I loved reading K-Ming Chang's Bestiary' Raven Leilani, author of Luster

Bestiary

The blazing debut novel about queer desire and buried secrets

*WINNER OF THE 2023 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR LESBIAN FICTION* 
 
*A New York Times 100 Notable Book of 2022* 
 
'These stories glitter and pulse' Dantiel W. Montiz 
 
In her singular, electrifying style, K-Ming Chang peels back questions of body, power and identity, and the relationships of Asian American women, with vivid imagination. 
 
A stream of women adjust to American life by sneaking kisses from women at temple and buying tubs of vanilla ice cream to prepare for citizenship tests. Ghost-cousins cross space, seas and skies to haunt their living cousin. Two girls explore each other's bodies for the first time in the belly of a plastic shark. 
 
Brimming with moths and mothers, nine-headed birds and storm-chasers, these queer, fabulist tales delve viscerally into myth and memory, corporeality and ghostliness, beauty and the grotesque. 
 
ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR in New York Times, NPR, Them and Book Riot, from the National Book Award '5 under 35' honoree and author of Bestiary. 
 
'Wild and lyrical, visionary and touching. Read her!' Sharlene Teo 
 
'A voracious, probing collection, proof of how exhilarating the short story can be' New York Times 
 
'Stunning and moving... One of our most brilliant authors' Bryan Washington

Gods of Want

A New York Times Notable Book of 2022

Margo Lanagan

In her inspired re-working of the fairy-tale Snow White and Rose Red Margo Lanagan has created characters that are vivid, passionate, flawed and fiercely devoted to their hearts' desires, whether these desires are good or evil. It is the story of two worlds - one real, one magical - and how, despite the safe haven her magical world offers to those who have suffered, her characters can never turn their backs on the real world, with all its beauty and brutality. 
 
Tender Morsels is an astonishing novel, fraught with the tension between love and horror, violence and tenderness, despair and hope.

Tender Morsels

Kirsty Logan

In their tiny, sea-beaten cottage on the north coast of Scotland, Liska and Ruth await the birth of their first child. 
 
Each passes the time by telling the baby stories, trying to pass on the lessons they’ve learned: tales of circuses and stargazing, selkie fishermen and domestic werewolves, child-eating witches and broken-toothed dragons. 
 
But they must keep their storytelling a secret from one another, as they’ve agreed to only ever tell the plain truth. So to cloak their tales, Ruth tells her stories when Liska is at work, to a background of shrieking seabirds; Liska tells hers when Ruth is asleep, with the lighthouse sweeping its steady beam through the window.

A Portable Shelter

Marie Phillips

Being immortal isn't all it's cracked up to be. Life's hard for a Greek god in the 21st century: nobody believes in you any more, even your own family doesn't respect you, and you're stuck in a delapidated hovel in north London with too many siblings and not enough hot water. But for Artemis (goddess of hunting, professional dog walker), Aphrodite (goddess of beauty, telephone sex operator) and Apollo (god of the sun, TV psychic) there's no way out... Until a meek cleaner and her would-be boyfriend come into their lives, and turn the world literally upside down. 
 
Gods Behaving Badly is that rare thing, a charming, funny, utterly original first novel that satisfies the head and the heart.

Gods Behaving Badly

Daisy Johnson

'Weird and wild and wonderfully unsettling... Dive in for just a moment and you'll emerge gasping and haunted' Celeste Ng, bestselling author of Little Fires Everywhere 
 
 It's been sixteen years since Gretel last saw her mother, half a lifetime to forget her childhood on the canals. But a phone call will soon reunite them, and bring those wild years flooding back: the secret language that Gretel and her mother invented; the strange boy, Marcus, living on the boat that final winter; the creature said to be underwater, swimming ever closer. 
 
 In the end there will be nothing for Gretel to do but to wade deeper into their past, where family secrets and aged prophesies will all come tragically alive again. 
 
 'As readable as it is dazzling, full of unsettling twists and dark revelations' Observer 
 
**SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2018**

Everything Under

Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Julie Myerson

Flynn is a thirteen-year-old girl caught between her violent, out-of-control brother, Sam, and her mother, who is struggling to cope. And then, one impossibly hot night, a strange half-feral boy called Alex turns up at the bottom of Flynn's garden. Alex is one of three runaways; there's also Diana, who has just had a baby, and Mouse, who is only six and already an accomplished arsonist. 
 
With Flynn and Sam in tow, the rag tag group of children venture into the deserted countryside, pursued by a terrifying and unseen man. Deep in the woods, they stumble across an abandoned cottage which seems to offer refuge but soon begins to reveal its dark and terrifying secrets...

Out of Breath

Keith Donohue

Seven-year-old Henry Day is kidnapped by fairy changelings living in the dark forest near his home - ageless beings whose secret community is threatened by encroaching modern life. They give Henry a new name, Aniday, and the gift of agelessness - now and forever, he will be seven years old. 
 
The group has left another child in Henry's place. This changeling boy, who has morphed himself into Henry's duplicate, must adjust to a new way of life and hide his true identity from the Day family. But he can't hide his extraordinary talent for the piano, and his near-perfect performances prompt his father to suspect that he is an impostor. 
 
As he grows older the new Henry Day becomes haunted by vague but persistent memories of life in another time and place. Both Henry and Aniday search obsessively for who they were before they changed places in the world.

The Stolen Child

Erin Morgenstern

THE TIKTOK SENSATION 
 
Discover the enchanting, magical bestseller from the author of The Night Circus, now in a stunning new edition. 
 
We are all stardust and stories... 
 
When Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a mysterious book containing details from his own life among its pages, it leads him on a quest unlike any other. 
 
Following the clues inside, he is guided to a masquerade ball, a dangerous secret club, and finally to an ancient library hidden far beneath the surface of the earth. What Zachary finds in this curious place is more than just a buried home for books and their guardians - it is a place of lost cities and seas, lovers who pass notes across time, and of stories whispered by the dead. 
 
But when the library is threatened, Zachary must race through its twisting tunnels and sweetly soaked shores, searching for the end of his story. 
 
 
PRAISE FOR THE STARLESS SEA: 
'Enchanting read... an ode to stories and storytelling itself, and the joy of reading' Guardian 
'Spellbinding' Daily Mirror 
'A magical mix of quests and fables...beautifully written' Heat

The Starless Sea

The spellbinding Sunday Times bestseller

Kristín Ómarsdóttir

'Magical and disturbing' Adam Thirlwell 
 
An astonishing, mind-bending novel about a woman discovering a community of swan-people from one of Iceland's greatest writers. 
 
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE ICELANDIC WOMEN'S LITERATURE PRIZE* 
 
In the not-too-distant future, a young spy named Elísabet Eva is about to discover something that will upend her life. 
 
Elísabet likes to take long solitary walks near the lake. One day, she sees two creatures emerging from the water, half-human, half-swan. She follows them through tangles of thickets into a strange new reality. 
 
Pulled into the monomaniacal, and often violent, quest of the swanfolk, Elísabet finds her own mind increasingly untrustworthy. Soon, she is forced to reckon with the consequences of her involvement with these unusual beings, and a past life she has been trying to evade. 
 
'Ómarsdottir's skills as a poet and playwright are evident' Helen Oyeyemi, New York Review of Books

Swanfolk

Rachel Louise Driscoll

‘Brilliant… I loved it.’ Santa Montefiore 
 
A FORGOTTEN EGYPTIAN GODDESS. A FAMILY IN DANGER. 
 
Victorian Egyptologist Clemmie’s dark talents have torn her family apart. Now she has one chance to atone for the past. 
 
Clemmie’s gift for reading hieroglyphs shines at the Egyptian relic parties which have made her father the toast of Victorian society. But at one party, the words she interprets from an unusual amulet strike fear into her heart. The childhood game she used to play about the immortal sisters, Isis and Nephthys, takes on a devastating resonance and it is only by following Nephthys' story back to Egypt that she can undo the mistakes of the past. 
 
‘An irresistible page-turner’ Susan Stokes-Chapman, author Pandora 
‘An intoxicating tale of adventure and obsession’ Emilia Hart, author of Weyward 
‘A joy of a book’ Fiza Saeed McLynn, author of The Midnight Carousel 
 
Readers ADORE Nephthys: 
 
‘A total page-turner! ... Wow! What darkness this book holds!’ 
‘Unique and gripping.... this tale of Egypt and England was full of twists and turns.’ 
‘A captivating blend of Victorian society, ancient Egypt, and dark secrets.’

Nephthys

Marina Warner

Inspired by The Tempest, Indigo traces the scars of colonialism across continents, family blood-lines and three centuries. Rich, sensual and magical in its use of myths and fairytales Indigo explores the intertwined histories of the Everard family and the imaginary Caribbean island where Ariel, Caliban, and his mother, the healer and dyer of indigo, Sycorax once lived.

Indigo Or Mapping The Waters

Anna Lawrence Pietroni

This is the tale of three women - one witch, one mermaid and one missing - and how Ruby was caught up in between. 
 
The Black Country town of Cradle Cross - home to buttonmakers, canal folk, and more than its share of widows - is bounded by canals, grief and superstition. Caught within this web is motherless thirteen-year-old Ruby, who dreams of escaping the soot and smoke of her home-town for the clear air of the sea. When a mysterious stranger named Isa Fly appears on a quest to find her dying father's missing wife and daughter, Ruby is enchanted. 
 
But some of the townsfolk are instantly suspicious of the outsider and when Ruby introduces Isa to Truda Blick, the bluestocking graduate who has just inherited the town's button factory, the town is pushed to the brink of riot. 
 
Only Ruby knows enough to save them. But first she must save herself.

Ruby's Spoon

Isabel Greenberg

'A feminist fairy-tale... A wondrously intricate book, and a witty attack on the patriarchy, this is an instant classic.' Observer 
 
An enchanting fable about love, storytelling and survival, blending historical fantasy, folk tales and queer romance from the award-winning graphic novelist Isabel Greenberg 
 
 
From the author who brought you The Encyclopedia of Early Earth comes another Epic Tale of Derring-Do. 
 
Prepare to be dazzled once more by the overwhelming power of stories and see Love prevail in the face of Terrible Adversity! 
 
You will read of betrayal, loyalty, madness, bad husbands, lovers both faithful and unfaithful, wise old crones, moons who come out of the sky, musical instruments that won't stay quiet, friends and brothers and fathers and mothers and above all, many, many sisters. 
 
 
**Now a major film starring Emma Corrin, Nicholas Galitzine, Maika Monroe, Charli XCX, Amir El Masry, Felicity Jones and Richard E Grant**

The One Hundred Nights of Hero

A flooded world. 
A floating circus. 
Two women in search of a home. 
 
North lives on a circus boat with her beloved bear, keeping a secret that could capsize her life. 
 
Callanish lives alone in her house in the middle of the ocean, tending the graves of those who die at sea. As penance for a terrible mistake, she has become a gracekeeper. 
 
A chance meeting between the two draws them magnetically to one another - and to the promise of a new life. 
 
But the waters are treacherous, and the tide is against them. 
 
'The Gracekeepers is enchanting and heart-tugging. If you love Margaret Atwood you'll love this' Sunday Telegraph 
 
'A wondrous read' Stylist 
 
'Clever and original' The Times 
 
'Truly magical' Heat

The Gracekeepers

Amos Oz

In a village far away, deep in a valley, all the animals and birds disappeared some years ago. Only the rebellious young teacher and an old man talk about animals to the children, who have never seen such (mythical) creatures. Otherwise there's a strange silence round the whole subject. One wretched, little boy has dreams of animals, begins to whoop like an owl, is regarded as an outcast, and eventually disappears. 
 
A stubborn, brave girl called Maya and her friend Matti, are drawn to explore in the woods round the village. They know there are dangers beyond and that at night, Nehi the Mountain Demon comes down to the village. In a far-off cave, they come upon the vanished boy, content and self-sufficient. Eventually they find themselves in a beautiful garden paradise full of every kind of animal, bird and fish - the home of Nehi the Mountain Demon. The Demon is a pied piper figure who stole the animals from the village. He, too, was once a boy there, but he was different, mocked and reviled, treated as an outsider and outcast. 
 
This is his terrible revenge, one which has punished him too, by removing him from society and friendship, and every few years he draws another child or two to join him in his fortress Eden, where he has trained the sheep to lie down with the wolves, and where predators are few. He lets the two children return to the village, telling them that one day, when people are less cruel and his desire for vengeance has crumbled, perhaps the animals might come back...

Suddenly in the Depths of the Forest

John Burnside

‘Memorable, atmospheric and compelling’ Times Literary Supplement 
 
Liv lives with her mother on a remote island in the Arctic Circle. 
 
Her only friend is an old man who beguiles her with tales of trolls, mermaids, and the huldra, a wild spirit who appears as an irresistably beautiful girl, to tempt young men to danger and death. Then two boys drown within weeks of each other under mysterious circumstances, in the still, moonlit waters off the shores of Liv's home. 
 
Were the deaths accidental or were the boys lured to their doom by a malevolent spirit?

A Summer of Drowning

Susan Stokes-Chapman

**THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER FROM THE NEW VOICE IN HISTORICAL FICTION** 
 
A pure pleasure of a novel set in Georgian London, where the discovery of a mysterious ancient Greek vase sets in motion conspiracies, revelations and romance. 
 
'Weaves together Ancient Greek myth with suspenseful mystery and beguiling romance...utterly irresistible' Jennifer Saint, author of Ariadne 
 
*Longlisted for the Goldsboro Books Glass Bell Award* 
 
Perfect for fans of THE LEVIATHAN and THE SONG OF ACHILLES. 
 
London, 1799. Dora Blake lives with her uncle in what used to be her parents' famed shop of antiquities. 
 
When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered, Dora is intrigued by her uncle's suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young antiquarian scholar. For Edward, the ancient vase is the key to unlocking his professional future. For Dora, it's a chance to restore the shop to its former glory, and to escape her nefarious uncle. 
 
But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has believed about her life, her family, and the world as she knows it... 
 
 
'A gripping narrative in which secrets from the past are slowly and ingeniously revealed' Sunday Times, *Historical Fiction Book of the Month* 
 
'An immersive, evocative story full of romance and intrigue' Red 
 
'Romantic, suspenseful and beautifully written... a glorious treat' Daily Mail 
 
Readers love Pandora: 
'So addictive... the perfect mix of historical fiction, mystery, fantasy and romance' 
'Wonderfully atmospheric' 
'A beautifully written piece of historical fiction' 
'Crackles with danger and mystery... a joy to read' 
'An utterly magical book full of secrets, love and hope' 
'Beautifully written, gripping and evocative'

Pandora

Salman Rushdie

She will breathe a new empire into life – but all worlds can escape their creator… 
 
‘Full of adventure… A celebration of the power of storytelling’ GUARDIAN 
 
In the wake of an unimportant battle between two long-forgotten kingdoms, a nine-year-old girl has a divine encounter that will change the course of history. Pampa Kampana becomes a vessel for a goddess, who tells her that she will be instrumental in the rise of a great city called Bisnaga, ‘victory city’. 
 
Over the next two hundred and fifty years, Pampa Kampana’s life becomes deeply interwoven with Bisnaga’s as she attempts to make good on the task that the goddess set for her: to give women equal agency in a patriarchal world. But all stories have a way of getting away from their creator, and Bisnaga is no exception. 
 
‘Mesmerising’ ELIF SHAFAK, author of The Island of Missing Trees 
 
‘A total pleasure to read’ SUNDAY TIMES 
 
‘One of the planet’s greatest writers’ EVENING STANDARD 
 
‘A triumph… Enthralling’ I 
 
***A FINANCIAL TIMES AND THE TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR*** 
***A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK***

Victory City

Zachary Mason

After ten years' journeying Odysseus returns, again and again, to Ithaca. Each time he finds something different: his patient wife Penelope has betrayed him and married; his arrival accelerates time and he watches his family age and die in front of him; he walks into an empty house in ruins; he returns but is so bored he sets sail again to repeat his voyage; he comes back to find Penelope is dead. 
 
In these forty-four retellings of passages from Homer's Odyssey, Zachary Mason uses Homer's linear narrative and explodes it: presenting alternative and contradictory fragments of familiar stories - the Trojan Horse, the Cyclops, Circe, the Sirens - allowing us to see Homer's masterpiece afresh. Elegant, provocative and utterly fascinating, The Lost Books of the Odyssey seems destined to become a modern classic.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey

David Malouf

In this exquisite gem of a novel, David Malouf shines new light on Homer's Iliad, adding twists and reflections, as well as flashes of earthy humour, to surprise and enchant. Lyrical, immediate and heartbreaking, Malouf's fable engraves the epic themes of the Trojan war onto a perfect miniature - themes of war and heroics, hubris and humanity, chance and fate, the bonds between soldiers, fathers and sons, all brilliantly recast for our times.

Ransom

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