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John Updike

In the words of his contemporary, Philip Roth, John Updike was ‘Our time’s greatest man of letters – as brilliant a literary critic and essayist as he was a novelist and short-story writer’. 
 
Over the course of his long and immensely productive career, he also proved himself a brilliant correspondent, his letters filled with comic observations, opinions and personal news, told in his characteristically elegant and exquisitely fluid style. 
 
In this sparkling selection of his letters, edited by James Schiff, we can see Updike in real time, capturing every stage of his unspooling life, from Pennsylvania farm boy to Pulitzer prizewinner; and from young father negotiating his first book contract to the bestselling writer he became, following the international success of his novels Couples and the ‘Rabbit ‘sequence. 
 
Here are letters to family, friends, editors and lovers, a remarkable outpouring over six decades – including, most movingly perhaps, the letters of his final year bidding farewell to children, colleagues and friends. 
 
Taken together, these missives make a page-turning ‘life in letters’ like no other – an intimate testament to one of the greatest of all American writers.

A Life in Letters

Anna Goldreich

Moving to the countryside is supposed to fix Clare and Phoebe’s relationship. A fresh start, a change of scenery, a chance to heal after the miscarriage of their baby girl. 
 
Instead, Phoebe feels suffocated. Back in the rural community she ran from at seventeen and unable to face the partner she cannot help, she throws herself into work on the family farm. Clare is a stranger in the village, uninitiated and out of place. She spends her days drifting around the cottage, its walls groaning and shifting as she withdraws into a world inside her head. 
 
One day, wandering through the forest nearby, Clare finds a leveret – her own little Isla. A surrogate to lick and love. A way to feel whole again. 
 
But as Isla grows into an adult hare she becomes wild and unruly – a kicking, biting, scratching creature. With Clare’s grasp on reality growing ever more tenuous, Phoebe begins to question whether Isla is the cure for grief Clare is searching for as she desperately clings on to the woman she loves . . . 
 
With this bruisingly tender love story, debut author Anna Goldreich has conjured a hazy dream of a novel about the fantasies we create as a refuge from grief. The Leveret is a heartbreakingly gorgeous and lyrically haunting hymn to queer love and the power to rebuild from the wreckage of a relationship.

The Leveret

Michael Marshall

Here, for the first time, is complete collection of actor and entertainer Stanley Holloway&rsquo;s incomparable comic monologues, which he performed between 1929 and 1941. All the much-loved characters such as Albert Ramsbottom (&lsquo;with a stick with an &lsquo;orse&rsquo;s &lsquo;ead &lsquo;andle&rsquo;), Sam Small (&lsquo;Sam, Sam, pick oop tha&rsquo; arm), and King &lsquo;Arold (&lsquo;on his &lsquo;orse with his &lsquo;awk in his &lsquo;and&rsquo;) are gathered together and brilliantly illustrated by cartoonist Bill Tidy.

The Stanley Holloway Monologues

Robert Macfarlane

Jackie Morris

In 2017 Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris broke the mould with The Lost Words, a book of paintings in watercolour and gold leaf accompanied by acrostic spell-poems, capturing the unique essence of common but underappreciated species like Otter, Acorn, Ivy and Heron, Willow and Kingfisher. The response from readers was truly extraordinary: an instant bestseller, it inspired people of all ages all over the world, prompting mass fundraising campaigns to donate copies, and adaptations into folksong, symphony, theatre, puppetry, dance and mural. Three years later the creative duo delighted fans with a second title, The Lost Spells, celebrating the spirit of Red Fox, Silver Birch, Swallow, Jackdaw, and more. 
 
The Wild Cards draws together 100 pieces of artwork from The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. Every named species from the books is pictured at least once; many appear several times, though each postcard image is unique. The series also depicts many plants and animals not named in the original books - hidden details for the keen-eyed aficionado to discover - such as Blackbird, Stag and Rowan. On the reverse of the cards is an accompanying line of spell-text along with an identification of the depicted species. They have been otherwise left blank, their space waiting to be filled in by pen, pencil or paint and sent out into the world to make and renew connections.

The Wild Cards

A 100 Postcard Box Set

Sophie Mackintosh

Clara and Francis are in love - but nobody knows it. For months they have been slipping away from their respective lives, sharing sweet, stolen afternoons in anonymous hotel rooms. Until one day they wake up in a bedroom neither of them recognises with no memory of how they got there. 
 
They find themselves in a strange, impossible city: a place populated entirely by adulterers. Here they can at last live openly as a couple, without fear of consequence, putting the theory of their love into practice. Here the sky is painted over the old town square in changeless, cloudless blue. Ripe fruits wait on their kitchen table each morning and the sunset comes down in a blaze of pink each night. And contact with the real world is impossible. As long as Clara and Francis are here, they only have each other. 
 
How do you know when you’ve found true love? How much would you sacrifice to keep hold of it? And how long can you stay in paradise before the cracks start to show?

Permanence

Isabel Waidner

Two men meet in a flat in London. They are total strangers and yet they look remarkably alike. Lewis is grieving his dead wife; Korine is hiding from his very-much-alive one. Lewis never had children; Korine is an ambivalent parent at best. Lewis is an erstwhile actor, too depressed to attend the big audition that has just fallen into his lap. Korine has tried a dozen dead-end jobs but never pursued his acting dreams. 
 
Two men living mirror image lives. Each seeking a second chance to get things right. Each wanting what the other has. 
 
As If is an existential farce about the road not taken. Surreal and slyly poignant, suffused with ironic melancholia, it is a parable for the twenty-first century everyman: a character trapped in reality’s hall of mirrors, endlessly searching for something to live for.

As If

Kiran Desai

When Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each other on an overnight train, they are immediately captivated, yet also embarrassed by the fact that their grandparents had once tried to matchmake them, a clumsy meddling that only served to drive Sonia and Sunny apart. 
 
Sonia, an aspiring novelist who recently completed her studies in the snowy mountains of Vermont, has returned to her family in India, fearing she is haunted by a dark spell cast by an artist to whom she had once turned for intimacy and inspiration. Sunny, a struggling journalist resettled in New York City, is attempting to flee his imperious mother and the violence of his warring clan. Uncertain of their future, Sonia and Sunny embark on a search for happiness together as they confront the many alienations of our modern world. 
 
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny is the sweeping tale of two young people navigating the many forces that shape their lives: country, class, race, history, and the complicated bonds that link one generation to the next. A love story, a family saga, and a rich novel of ideas, it is the most ambitious and accomplished work yet by one of our greatest novelists.

The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

Richard McGuire

Richard McGuire's groundbreaking comic strip Here was published under Art Spiegelman's editorship at RAW in 1989. 
 
Built in six pages of interlocking panels, dated by year, it collapsed time and space to tell the story of the corner of a room - and its inhabitants - between the years 500,957,406,073 BC and 2033 AD. 
 
The strip remains one of the most influential and widely discussed contributions to the medium, and it has now been developed, expanded and reimagined by the artist into this full-length, full-colour graphic novel - a must for any fan of the genre.

Here

All over the country, there are words disappearing from children's lives. Words like Dandelion, Otter, Bramble, Acorn and Lark represent the natural world of childhood, a rich landscape of discovery and imagination that is fading from children's minds. 
 
The Lost Words stands against the disappearance of wild childhood. It is a joyful celebration of the poetry of nature words and the living glory of our distinctive, British countryside. With acrostic spell-poems by peerless wordsmith Robert Macfarlane and hand-painted illustrations by Jackie Morris, this enchanting book captures the irreplaceable magic of language and nature for all ages.

The Lost Words

Rediscover our natural world with this spellbinding book

Richard McGuire has illustrated the New Yorker's articles for over a decade, using these 'spots' as a unique canvas upon which to practice the art of the graphic miniseries. Each single-panel line drawing stands alone but also fits withing a wider series of variations on a theme or an unfolding story. Here these are collected for the first time, with a single spot per page to allow the series to unfold slowly with each turn of the page, as they would in the original magazine. The result is a charming, joyful and witty 'short story' collection.

Sequential Drawings

Puk Qvortrup

'Three in the bed. One not yet born, another dead, and I'm alive.' 
 
Puk is 26 years old, preparing for the birth of her second child, when her husband has a heart attack on his morning run. She leaves their toddler with a friend and dashes to the hospital, where Lasse lies unresponsive in a coma. He dies a few hours later. 
 
Into a Star follows Puk and her young family for one year after this tragedy, which has shattered the ordinary life she thought she would live, as she finds her way slowly through the enormous grief and, eventually, out the other side. With remarkable dignity, candour and attention to the domestic details that make us human, Puk Qvortrup invites us into the hardest moments of her life. And she reveals, amid the devastation, a powerful thread of hope.

Into a Star

Zach Williams

A young family are trapped in a time loop in an idyllic holiday cabin. A middle-aged man becomes convinced that his disappointing son is an impostor. Two brothers take a midnight ride in a golf cart and run into trouble. The elderly tour guide at an alien contact site loses control of his guests. Meanwhile, all around them, America is dissolving, fragmenting, distorting beyond recognition. 
 
The antiheroes of Beautiful Days are chronic underachievers, lost in their own lives and plagued by loneliness, self-doubt, toxic rage. They gaze on the world with both wonder and horror, longing for transcendence or salvation. They tune in to the faint buzz of anxiety which seems to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. And when the worst happens, they take to the road - criss-crossing the wilderness in stolen cars, riding trains to the end of the line, or cruising along ruined monorails as the skyline burns. 
 
Zach Williams' stories are haunted by the ghosts of America - its lost illusions, its dark aspirations, its boundless, disquieting potential. They leak through the fabric of reality and out into the void beyond. And they reach, ever-hopeful, towards a moment of connection that might pull a body back from the brink.

Beautiful Days

Susan Sontag

More than thirty years after On Photography comes Sontag on Film: a collection of Sontag's writings and musings on films and cinema, gathered together for the first time by critic David Thomson and producer Tom Luddy. Inspired, vigorous and enlightening, it includes lucid discussions of the intersection between film and literature; in-depth studies of films and directors; and other such delightful and illuminating fragments as a list of Sontag's top-ten films taken from a 1982 issue of Sight and Sound. 
 
This is an indispensable addition to the literature of film, and a wonderful reminder of the greatness of the writer.

Sontag on Film

Nicola Williams

When the Head Clerk at her Chambers is murdered, Lee Mitchell doesn’t know who she can trust. 
 
One of the last people to see him alive, the crime is pinned on Junior Clerk Dean who ‘seems like the type’. Working-class and still living on the estate where he grew up, he has the most to gain from Tom’s death. 
 
But Lee knows how easily prejudices can snowball into convictions – and steps in to defend him. As the trial progresses, people Lee has worked with for years become suspects as her Chambers crumbles into a world of chaos and deceit. 
 
And, what of the diary, whispered about by those at Chambers? The one Tom used to blackmail Lee’s friends and enemies alike to do his bidding? The one containing secrets some might kill to keep hidden? 
 
Maybe finding it will be the key to solving his murder. Or maybe some secrets are better left buried . . .

Killer Instinct

ABC Merriman-Labor

In Britons Through Negro Spectacles Merriman-Labor takes us on a joyous, intoxicating tour of London at the turn of the 20th century. Slyly subverting the colonial gaze usually placed on Africa, he introduces us to the citizens, culture and customs of Britain with a mischievous glint in his eye. This incredible work of social commentary feels a century ahead of its time, and provides unique insights into the intersection between empire, race and community at this important moment in history.

Britons Through Negro Spectacles

Ali Smith

Ghosts don't exist. 
They don't. End of. 
Story, however. 
It is haunting. 
Everything tells it. 
 
It all starts when Petra and her little sister Patch hear a horrifying story from the past and find themselves making up a ghost. 
Is it imaginary? Is it real? 
 
Then it all starts again thirty years later when Petra, now estranged from Patch, finds a phantom horse kicking the furniture to pieces in her bedroom. 
What to do? She phones her sister. 
 
In a chiaroscuro dance through our increasingly antagonistic era, Glyph asks if we’re attending to the history that’s made us and to the history we’re making. A funny, warm and clear-eyed take on where we are now, Glyph is about what our imaginations are for and how, in a broken, brutal and divided time, we rekindle care, solidarity, resistance and openness. 
 
This anti-war novel, Ali Smith’s most soulful, playful and vital yet, is a work of lightness that goes deep to counter the forces currently flattening the modern world. 
 
A standalone novel, it’s family to Gliff (2024).

Glyph

Kenan Orhan

Dilara is having her bathroom renovated. Her father's memory has started collapsing, dementia stealing a little more of him each day; her apartment must be adapted so he can move in with her. But when the builders finally unveil their handiwork, there is a problem: instead of a new bathroom, they have built a prison cell. Not just any cell - one that Dilara recognises. It is a room from Silivri Prison in Istanbul. 
 
At first she is outraged, exasperated, determined to reverse the bizarre mistake. Dilara's family are political exiles: they fled Turkey years ago and have never been back. The last thing she wants is a piece of her abandoned homeland appearing uninvited in her new home. But gradually her indignation gives way to curiosity. Even as she struggles to care for her dying father, to stretch their dwindling savings and stop the wheels coming off her marriage, she is drawn back again and again to the mysterious prison cell, which seems to connect, impossibly, to a city that once belonged to her - to the salt wind off the Marmara, the sky full of gulls and domes and minarets - a portal back to Istanbul.

The Renovation

Linn Ullmann

Each summer of her childhood, the daughter visited her father at his remote Faro island home on the edge of the Baltic Sea. 
 
Years later, when she is grown with children of her own and he's in his eighties, they plan to write a book together. It will be about age and time, language and memory. She will ask the questions. He will answer them. The tape recorder will record. But old age has caught up with him in ways neither could have foreseen. And when the man is gone, only memories - both remembered and recorded - remain. 
 
Heart-breaking and spellbinding, Unquiet is a seamless blend of fiction and memoir in pursuit of elemental truths about how we live, love, lose and age.

Unquiet

Avni Doshi

A woman’s husband walks into their bedroom one evening and tells her that he wants a divorce. She is stunned. They have always had a happy marriage, an almost perfect marriage. In the following days, marooned with two young daughters in a hostile suburb, the woman starts coming apart. 
 
As she sifts through the ruins of a shared life, she begins to notice the warning signs which she chose not to see the first time around. She wanders deep into her own mind, where marital scenes intermingle with the old myths of headless women and vengeful goddesses. Over the course of a single summer, she is splitting like an insect in its chrysalis, liquifying and reforming, stretching her new antennae toward the light. 
 
Stiletto-sharp and darkly hypnotic, this is a novel about unhappy families – about the bloody battlefield of the home and the enduring threat posed by those closest to us.

The First House

Han Kang

In this light-filled and multi-faceted book, her first since being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Han Kang draws together the threads of her work and life, tracing the connections between her interior and exterior worlds through a sequence of essays, poems, photographs and diaries. 
 
A book of reflections, of words and light, it has at its heart the tiny, north-facing courtyard garden at her home, cultivated solely through the reflected sunlight of the mirrors which she must move throughout the day, as the earth turns on its axis. 
 
In a poem written at eight years old, Han Kang imagined a ‘gold thread’ of connection – an idea which she explores here with luminous attention, beginning with her Nobel Lecture. She writes of the wonder of following the thread we call language into the depths of other hearts, and her profound sense of an electric current which joins writer and reader. 
 
Both intimate and illuminating, Light and Thread is a book for all readers of Han Kang’s unique body of work.

Light and Thread

Marlon James

‘Darkness is a mood in Jamaica . . .' 
 
The Disappearers is Marlon James’s triumphant return to the Jamaica of A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal. 
 
So when eight gay men meet for the first time, in Kingston in 1988, answering the casting call for an openly queer play, they are already taking a big risk. But that is nothing compared to what rains down on them when a mob descends on one of their rehearsals. 
 
By the end of this night, one man is dead, all are injured, and two subsequently disappear. 
As the survivors heal, each man finds he must confront the bigotry and homophobia that the attack laid bare. Some try to forget; some embrace their rage; and some simply vanish – but all are forever scarred. 
 
As one of the victims puts it, ‘there’s a difference between when something ends and when something stops’. And this story won’t stop until both the disappearers and the perpetrators have been tracked, along trails both hot and cold, and an ending reached. 
 
Epic and intimate, violent and forgiving, The Disappearers is a tour de force which only Marlon James could have written – both an unflinching portrait of the hatred and shame faced by gay men in a society which refuses to accept them, and a deeply human story of acceptance and insight.

The Disappearers

Kindred in spirit to The Lost Words but new in form, The Lost Spells is a pocket-sized treasure, a new collection of 'spells' - acrostic poetry and artwork - by beloved creative duo Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris. 
 
Written to be read aloud, calling to forest, field, riverbank, ocean, and also to the heart, these 'spells' summon back what is often lost from sight and care, and inspire protection and action on behalf of the natural world. From Jay to Jackdaw, Oak to Barn Owl, Silver Birch to Grey Seal, they capture the special, individual spirit of each plant and creature. Above all, they celebrate a sense of wonder, bearing witness to nature's power to amaze, console and bring joy.

The Lost Spells

An enchanting, beautiful book for lovers of the natural world

Zadie Smith

'Married five times. Mother. Lover. Aunt. Friend. 
She plays many roles round here. And never 
Scared to tell the whole of her truth, whether 
Or not anyone wants to hear it. Wife 
Of Willesden: pissed enough to tell her life 
Story to whoever has ears and eyes...' 
 
Zadie Smith's first play is a joyous re-imagining of Chaucer's classic, The Wife of Bath's Tale. As the crowd in a small pub on the Kilburn High Road stand up to share their stories, the Wife of Willesden is not afraid to bare it all...

The Wife of Willesden

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