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Lawrence Norfolk

In February 1516, a Portugese ship sank with the loss of all hands a mile off the coast of Italy. The Nostra Senora da Adjuda had sailed 14000 miles from the Indian kingdom Gujarat: her mission, to deliver a rhinoceros to the Pope. The Pope's Rhinoceros tells the stories which culminate in this bizarre incident. Ranging from the Baltic Sea to a flyblown colony in India, from a tribe hidden in the African rain forest to atrocities committed in an obscure town in Tuscany, Norfolk's brilliant novel holds up the true history of the rhinoceros as a mirror to the fantasies and obsessions of the Renaissance.

The Pope's Rhinoceros

Mary Wesley

Laura Thornby is independent, individual and perfectly in control of her life. Her affairs are brief but delightful, her career fulfilling and she copes with her two rather peculiar relatives and the gossip about her parentage with wryness and humour. 
 
But then she meets twenty-three-year old Claude, a struggling writer, and she is overcome by an irresistible desire to interfere, manipulate and experiment - all for his own good, of course. 
 
What Laura does not foresee, however, are the possibilities that one day Claude may actually complete his novel and that she may well fall in love.

Second Fiddle

Janet Davey

Two men meet by chance in the taxi queue outside Paddington station one January night. Richard is in his mid-forties, apparently happily married, with two children. Abe is young, and casually manipulative. The men share a taxi and, on impulse, Richard invites Abe into his home- an action that sends ripples not only through his own life and that of his wife, but also through the fragile existence of Abe's younger sister, Kirsty, who is herself unsure of the best way to settle down...

The Taxi Queue

Josie Lloyd

Emlyn Rees

She can't read his mind. He can't read hers. But you can read both. The iconic '90s rom-com from the number-one bestselling authors. 
 
Dating in the 90s sucks. Men are from Mars, women are from Venus and no one is getting a call after the first date. 
 
Meet Jack: twenty-seven-year old commitment-phobe and serious partier. He tried love – it didn’t work out. So why bother, when being single is this much fun? Right? 
 
Meet Amy: while she’s stuck in dead-end temp jobs, her friends are settling down and her mother is despairing of her. It’s time to sort things out and make a change. 
 
Now find out what happens when they meet each other. They don’t want the same things, they’re caught up in the whirlwind of distractions offered by 1990s London and they can only communicate by landline – do they have a chance? 
 
*Josie and Emlyn's brilliant new time-travel rom-com You & Me and You & Me and You & Me is available to pre-order now.* 
 
‘Their characters live and breathe’ Sunday Times 
 
‘Endearing and addictive’ Heat 
 
‘Brilliantly written and wittily observed’ Daily Express

Come Together

Alice Hoffman

This haunting, poignant and addictive story travels effortlessly across time, telling the tale of three generations of women who make the wrong choices and have to live with the consequences. 
 
It opens in London in the present day, when an envious sibling comes to her sister's wedding. Back in the Swinging Sixties, the bridegroom's conventional English mother, Freida, behaves in a wholly unconventional way while working in a Knightsbridge hotel. Even before that, the seeds of tragedy are sown in the Fifties, when twelve-year-old Lucy first visits London and the same hotel. Precocious, impatient, wise beyond her years, Lucy becomes a go-between for two star-crossed lovers and then holds herself agonisingly responsible for what happens...

The Third Angel

Regina Porter

When the boy was four, he asked his father why people needed sleep. His father said, ‘So God could unfuck all the things people fuck up.’ 
 
*LONGLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION 2020* 
 
As America recovers from the Second World War, two families’ journeys begin. James Vincent, born in 1942 to an Irish-American family, escapes his parents’ turbulent marriage and attends law school in New York, where he moves up the social ladder as a prosperous and bright attorney. Meanwhile, Agnes Miller, a beautiful black woman on date with a handsome suitor, is pulled over by the police on a rural road in Georgia. The terrible moments that follow make her question her future and pivot her into a hasty marriage and new life in the Bronx. 
 
Illuminating more than six decades of sweeping change – from the struggle for civil rights and the chaos of Vietnam to Obama’s first year as President – James and Agnes’s families will come together in unexpected, intimate and profoundly human ways. 
 
'Regina Porter’s sprawling, sparkling debut novel… is an exhilarating ride. Porter is a wickedly astute chronicler of human foibles. In her hands, this series of glimpses feels something like life itself.' Guardian

The Travelers

Kurban Said

Ali Khan and Nino Kipiani live in the cosmopolitan, oil-rich capital of Azerbaijan which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, is a melting-pot of different cultures. Ali is a Muslim, with his ancestors' passion for the desert, and Nino is a Christian Georgian girl with sophisticated European ways. Despite their differences, the two have loved each other since childhood and Ali is determined that he will marry Nino as soon as she leaves school. But there is not only the obstacle of their different religions and parental consent to overcome. The First World War breaks out. As the Russians withdraw, the Turks advance, and Ali and Nino find themselves swept up in Azerbaijan's fight for independence.

Ali And Nino

Carlene Bauer

It is not love at first sight for Frances and Bernard. 
 
She finds him faintly ridiculous while he sees her as aloof. But after that first meeting, Bernard writes Frances a letter which changes everything and soon they are immersed in the kind of fast, deep friendship that can alter the course of lives. They find their way to New York and discover cramped West Village kitchens, rowdy cocktail parties stocked with the sharp-witted and glamorous, taxis that can take you anywhere at all and long talks along the Hudson River as the lights of the Empire State Building blink on above. 
 
Irresistibly witty and deeply moving, Frances and Bernard is a story of kindred spirits and the people who help us discover who we are.

Frances and Bernard

Marina Warner

Like Visconti's film The Leopard, this magnificent novel paints in sensuous colours the story of a family. It brings to new life the ancient disparaged south of the Italian peninsula, weakened by emigration, silenced by fascism. 
 
According to family legend, David Pittagora died as a result of a duel. His death is the mysterious pivot around which his grand-daughter, an independent modern woman, constructs an imaginary memoir of her mother's background and life. She follows the family as they emigrate to New York - where they find only humiliation and poverty - and after their return to Italy in the early 1920's. As she is drawn by the passions and prejudices of her own imagination, we see how family memory, like folk memory, weaves its own dreams.

The Lost Father

Rose Tremain

'A hell of a read' Sunday Times 
 
'Triumphant, and beautifully told...one of the best novelists writing today' Sara Collins, Guardian 
 
All must gamble with their fate. But not all can win... 
 
In the city of Bath, in the year 1865 Jane Adeane, renowned for her restorative skills, is convinced that some other destiny will one day show itself to her. 
 
But when she finds herself torn between a dangerous affair with a female lover and the promise of a conventional marriage to an apparently respectable doctor, her desires begin to lead her towards a future she had never imagined... 
 
Discover the ultimate historical read. 
 
'Terrific' The Times 
 
'One of our most accomplished novelists' Observer 
 
'One of my favourite writers' Nina Stibbe

Islands of Mercy

From the bestselling author of The Gustav Sonata

Barbara Keating

Stephanie Keating

During their childhood years in the Kenya Highlands of the 1950s, three girls from vastly different backgrounds become blood sisters, promising that nothing will ever destroy the bond between them. But as they grow up love rivalries, broken promises and the tensions and violence of a newly independent Kenya threaten to tear their childhood dreams apart.

Blood Sisters

Damon Galgut

WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2021 
 
One family. One promise. One chance to tell a new story. 
 
'A moving, brilliantly told family epic' Elizabeth Day 
 
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 
 
On a farm outside Pretoria, the Swarts are gathering for Ma's funeral. The younger generation, Anton and Amor, detest everything the family stand for - not least their treatment of the Black woman who has worked for them her whole life. Salome was to be given her own house, her own land...yet somehow, that vow is carefully ignored. 
 
As each decade passes, and the family assemble again, one question hovers over them. Can you ever escape the repercussions of a broken promise? 
 
 
'A tour de force... A spectacular demonstration of how the novel can make us see and think afresh' Booker Judges, 2021 
 
'Astonishing' Colm Tóibín 
 
'Utterly compelling' Patrick Gale

The Promise

Layne Fargo

To the world, they were a scandal. To each other, an obsession. 
 
The epic love story that reimagines the tempestuous romance of Wuthering Heights in the sparkling, savage world of elite figure skating. 
 
‘Perfect if you’re a fan of Daisy Jones and the Six’ Cosmopolitan 
‘Brilliant… will keep you guessing until its very last page’ Jodi Picoult 
'A delight - I was completely hooked' Sophie Cousens 
‘A must-read’ Sarah Michelle Gellar 
 
 
***** READERS ARE OBSESSED WITH THE FAVOURITES***** 
‘A true gold medal 5-star book’ 
‘Forever changed me’ 
‘Completely captivating’ 
‘Spectacular drama’ 
‘My book of 2025 – already’ 
‘Get ready to be obsessed’ 
 
The whole world was obsessed with Kat and Heath. 
 
Childhood sweethearts turned Olympic champions, they captivated fans with their scorching chemistry, rebellious style and rollercoaster relationship – on and off the ice. 
 
Until that fateful day. As the world watched, the unthinkable happened. 
 
Everyone saw it. 
 
Nobody knows the truth. 
 
But that’s about to change. 
 
NOW INCLUDES A BONUS STORY TOLD FROM HEATH'S PERSPECTIVE

The Favourites

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

Allen Bratton

*2025 Lammy Award Finalist* 
 
'One of the most exciting new novels' FINANCIAL TIMES 
 
'Very funny... Its deeply felt pages flew by' GUARDIAN 
 
'Sexy, compassionate, uncommonly imaginative: I've never read anything quite like it' Oisín McKenna, author of Evenings and Weekends 
 
London, 2014. Hal Lancaster – twenty-two, gay, Catholic, chops lines of cocaine with his myWaitrose card – is the reluctant heir of his father Henry, the sixteenth Duke of Lancaster. Henry is half tyrant, half martyr, with an investment in his eldest son that has grown into an obsession. While Hal floats between internships and drinking sessions, Henry keeps him in check with passive-aggression, religious guilt, and a cruelty that Hal sometimes confuses for tenderness. 
 
When a grouse shooting accident – funny in retrospect – makes a romance out of Hal’s rivalry with fumblingly leftist family friend Harry Percy, Hal finds that he wants, for the first time, a life of his own. But his father Henry is an Englishman: he will not let his son escape tradition. To save himself, Hal must reckon not only with grief and shame but with the wounds of his family's past. 
 
'Deeply enjoyable' Julia Armfield, author of Our Wives Under the Sea 
 
'Thrillingly imaginative' Kaliane Bradley, author of The Ministry of Time

Henry Henry

Fourteen years after independence, the enduring childhood friendship of three women has carried them through times of violence and loss in Kenya, their chosen homeland. 
 
Hannah Olsen and her husband Lars own Langani Farm and Safari Lodge where they struggle to protect their wildlife and land from poachers and corrupt officials. But the developing relationship between their daughter and a young African boy with a terrifying legacy tests the strength of their family. 
 
Sarah Singh, wildlife researcher and renowned photographer, is married to an Indian journalist. However, their inability to have children puts Sarah's relationship with her husband and his family under increasing pressure. 
 
And Camilla Broughton Smith, international model and fashion designer, has given up a sparkling career to work with the charismatic safari guide Anthony Chapman, who has been injured in a tragic accident. Yet his bitterness and fear of commitment threaten to shatter her dreams. 
 
The final part of the Langani trilogy is an unforgettable story of courage and fortitude, of loyalty and murderous deceit, of friendship and betrayal, set against the backdrop of the beauty and wilderness of Kenya.

In Borrowed Light

Tessa Hadley

As London comes alive with the new youth revolution, one woman makes a choice that defies all expectations. 
 
'Transporting' Meg Mason 
 
'Wonderful' Marian Keyes 
 
'My favourite author' Kate Atkinson 
 
'Achingly moving and real' Guardian 
 
'Beguiling' Hilary Mantel 
 
'Compelling' Elizabeth Day 
 
'Will bring you to tears' Daily Mail 
 
It's 1967 and London is alive with the new youth revolution. In the suburbs, meanwhile, Phyllis Fischer inhabits a world of conventional stability. Married with two children, her life is both comfortable and predictable. 
 
But when Nicky - a twenty-something friend of the family - visits one hot summer evening and kisses Phyllis in the dark of the garden, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations . . .

Free Love

Fannie Flagg

The time is 1946-2000. The Place is Elmwood Springs, Missouri. World War II has ended. Neighbour Dorothy broadcasts daily from her front room - to an audience across the state - the antics of her wayward son Bobby and adolescent Anna Lee. It's hard to keep secrets in a community like theirs, but life isn't perfect, and even Neighbour Dorothy has a tragedy as well hidden as it can be. 
 
Into their midst comes the Oatman Family, white Southern Gospel singers who arrive for a pharmaceutical convention, and blow the place away. And then there's Hamm Sparks, a super-salesman everyone likes and trusts; and Charlie Fowler, the poultry king who can see the future in a bucket-to-go; and a wealth of other unforgettable residents. Not to mention the brand new Three Little Pigs Cafeteria, with its pink neon pig casting a glow over the high street and pointing the way to the future...

Standing In The Rainbow

Andrew Ridker

'Reading Andrew Ridker’s debut novel, you soon realise you’re in the presence of a new talent.' The Times 
 
Arthur Alter is in trouble. A middling professor at a Midwestern college, he can't afford his mortgage, he's exasperated his new girlfriend, and his kids won't speak to him. And then there's the money – the small fortune his late wife Francine kept secret, which she bequeathed directly to his children. 
 
Those children are Ethan, an anxious recluse living off his mother's money on a choice plot of Brooklyn real estate; and Maggie, a would-be do-gooder trying to fashion herself a noble life of self-imposed poverty. On the verge of losing the family home, Arthur invites his children back to St. Louis under the guise of a reconciliation. But in doing so, he unwittingly unleashes a Pandora's Box of age-old resentments and long-buried memories.

The Altruists

Helen Fielding

‘Bridget is a creation of comic genius’ NICK HORNBY 
 
8.45 P.M. Realise there have been so many times in my life when have fantasised about going to a scan with Mark or Daniel: just not both at the same time. 
 
Before motherhood, before marriage, BRIDGET JONES, with biological clock ticking very, very loudly, finds herself unexpectedly pregnant at the eleventh hour.Her joyful pregnancy is dominated, however, by a crucial but terribly awkward question – who is the father? Mark Darcy: honourable, decent, notable human rights lawyer? Or Daniel Cleaver: charming, witty, notable fuckwit?

Bridget Jones’s Baby

The Diaries

Ha Jin

For more than seventeen years, Lin Kong, a devoted and ambitious doctor, has been in love with an educated, clever, modern woman, Manna Wu. But back in his traditional home village lives the humble, loyal wife his family chose for him years ago. Every summer, he returns to ask her for a divorce and every summer his compliant wife agrees but then backs out. This time, after eighteen years' waiting, Lin promises it will be different.

Waiting

Joy Rhoades

'A heart-breaking love story from a great new voice' Saga 
 
Australia 1945. Until now Kate Dowd has led a sheltered life on her family's sprawling sheep station but, with her father's health in decline, the management of the farm is increasingly falling to her. 
 
Kate is rising to the challenge when the arrival of two Italian POW labourers disrupts everything – especially when Kate finds herself drawn to the enigmatic Luca Canali. 
 
Then she receives devastating news. The farm is near bankrupt and the bank is set to repossess. Given just eight weeks to pay the debt, Kate is now in a race to save everything she holds dear.

The Woolgrower’s Companion

Xiaolu Guo

'A fragmentary meditation on the nature of love' Guardian 
 
A Chinese woman comes to post-Brexit London to start over - just as the Brexit campaign reaches a fever pitch. 
 
 Isolated and lonely in a Britain increasingly hostile to foreigners, she meets a landscape architect and the two begin to build their future together. 
 
Playing with language and the cultural differences that our narrator encounters as she settles into her new life, the lovers must navigate their differences and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped apartment in east London. Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate novel asks what it means to make a home and a family in a new land.

A Lover's Discourse

Janette Jenkins

It is January, 1914 and Jonathan Crane returns home from his travels with a new American bride, former Coney Island showgirl Beatrice. In the remote Lancashire village Beatrice is the focus of attention, the men captivated by her beauty, the women initially charmed by tales of her upbringing in Normal, Illinois with her father, an amateur taxidermist, and her brother, a preacher, although she will take the story of how she became the Angel of Brooklyn to her grave. 
 
But when the men head off to fight in the Great War the glamorous newcomer slowly becomes an object of suspicion and jealousy for the women who are left behind and as the years pass, and their resentment grows, Beatrice's secret proves to be her undoing. 
 
Beautifully observed, tragic, funny and so evocative that you can taste the candy floss at Coney Island and feel the chill of wartime England, Angel of Brooklyn is an extraordinary, heartbreaking story.

Angel of Brooklyn

Vesna Goldsworthy

'A piercingly evocative East-West love story' The Times 
 
 
This is a story of East and West. A story of love, betrayal, and lost illusions... 
 
The end of the Cold War seems unimaginable for Milena, a Red Princess trapped in a lifetime of limitless luxury. 
 
Yet when she meets Jason, a confident British poet, it's not long before she's secretly planning her escape to Britain. 
 
1980s London defies her privileged expectations. And when she discovers Jason's concept of freedom confronts her deepest-held beliefs, the very ideas of family and state come into question... 
 
 
'A wonderful, perfectly-pitched novel: full of delightful intrigue and wry insight about the human predicament and its unique tensions' William Boyd 
 
'Witty, poignant and full of surprises - every detail of this cross-cultural story of love and disillusionment rings true' Clare Chambers

Iron Curtain

A Love Story

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

Lisa Stromme

Summer 1893. In a small Norwegian fishing village, local girl Johanne dutifully gathers berries for tourists and poses barefoot for painters as ‘The Strawberry Girl’. 
 
When Johanne becomes a maid for the wealthy Ihlen family, their wayward daughter recruits her as a go-between in her pursuit of the controversial painter Edvard Munch. But when she is asked to hide more than just secrets, Johanne must decide whether to take the risk…

The Strawberry Girl

Anne Tyler

**BOOK OF THE YEAR Sunday Times, Daily Express, Times, Daily Telegraph, Good Housekeeping, Metro, Spectator, New Statesman** 
 
The ultimate treat this festive season - a perfect love story for imperfect people. 
 
Micah Mortimer measures out his days running errands for work, maintaining an impeccable cleaning regime and going for runs (7:15, every morning). He is in a long-term relationship with his woman friend Cassia, but they live apart. His carefully calibrated life is regular, steady, balanced. 
 
But then the order of things starts to tilt. Cassia is threatened with eviction, and when a teenager shows up at Micah's door claiming to be his son, he is confronted with another surprise he seems poorly equipped to handle. 
 
Can Micah, a man to whom those around him always seem just out of reach, find a way back to his perfectly imperfect love story? 
 
**LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2020** 
 
'Anne Tyler takes the ordinary, the small, and makes them sing' Rachel Joyce 
 
'She knows all the secrets of the human heart' Monica Ali 
 
'A masterly author' Sebastian Faulks 
 
'I love Anne Tyler. I've read every single book she's written' Jacqueline Wilson

Redhead by the Side of the Road

Salman Rushdie

**New York Times bestseller** 
A Guardian / Observer Book of the Year 
 
When powerful real-estate tycoon Nero Golden immigrates to the States under mysterious circumstances, he and his three adult children assume new identities, taking 'Roman' names, and move into a grand mansion in downtown Manhattan. Arriving shortly after the inauguration of Barack Obama, he and his sons, each extraordinary in his own right, quickly establish themselves at the apex of New York society. 
 
The story of the Golden family is told from the point of view of their Manhattanite neighbour and confidant, René, an aspiring filmmaker who finds in the Goldens the perfect subject. René chronicles the undoing of the house of Golden: the high life of money, of art and fashion, a sibling quarrel, an unexpected metamorphosis, the arrival of a beautiful woman, betrayal and murder, and far away, in their abandoned homeland, some decent intelligence work. 
 
Invoking literature, pop culture, and the cinema, Rushdie spins the story of the American zeitgeist over the last eight years, hitting every beat: the rise of the birther movement, the Tea Party, Gamergate and identity politics; the backlash against political correctness; the ascendency of the superhero movie, and, of course, the insurgence of a ruthlessly ambitious, narcissistic, media-savvy villain wearing make-up and with coloured hair. 
 
In a new world order of alternative truths, Salman Rushdie has written the ultimate novel about identity, truth, terror and lies. A brilliant, heartbreaking realist novel that is not only uncannily prescient but shows one of the world’s greatest storytellers working at the height of his powers.

The Golden House

Susan Choi

In 1955, a new student arrives at a small college in the Tennessee mountains. Chuck is shy, speaks English haltingly, and on the subject of his earlier life in Korea he will not speak at all. Then he meets Katherine, a beautiful and solitary young woman who, like Chuck, is haunted by a dark episode from the past. 
 
Without quite knowing why, these two outsiders are drawn together, each sensing in the other the possibility of salvation.

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