Narrative theme: coming of age
Amazon Publishing A Frenzy of Sparks: A Novel
Book SynopsisFrom the author of A Lily in the Light comes a poignant story of innocence lost and what it means to grow up too fast. It’s 1965, and thirteen-year-old Gia, along with her older brother and cousins, are desperate to escape their sleepy, tree-lined neighborhood where nothing ever happens. The only thing Gia would miss is the surrounding marsh, where she feels at home among sea birds and salt water. But when one of Gia’s cousins brings drugs into their neighborhood, it sets off a chain of events that quickly turn dangerous. Everyone will be caught in the ripples, and some may be swept away entirely. Gia is determined to keep herself and her family afloat while the world is turned upside down around her. Can she find a way to hold on to the life she was so eager to leave behind, or will she have to watch it all disappear beneath the marsh forever? At turns heart-wrenching and hopeful, A Frenzy of Sparks explores a world where survival is the attempt to move forward while leaving pieces of your heart behind.Trade Review“A Frenzy of Sparks is a thoughtful exploration of family, heartache, and ultimately, carrying on. Set in the sixties in Queens—a time and place of intense transformation—Kristin Fields deftly tells the heartrending story of what addiction does to a family and exposes the dark underbelly of suburbia. Powerful and poignant—I didn’t want to leave the pages of this masterfully crafted book.” —Suzanne Redfearn, bestselling author of In an Instant “A deeply atmospheric novel that will have you turning the pages deep into the night, A Frenzy of Sparks is your next must-read.” —Catherine McKenzie, bestselling author of Hidden and I’ll Never Tell “Through the eyes of a naive girl precariously balanced on the brink of womanhood, Fields expertly portrays the brutal and crushing devastation of addiction without ever losing sight of all that is beautiful and good. Profoundly moving and insightful—a book club must-read!” —Kerry Anne King, bestselling author of Whisper Me This and Everything You Are “Kristin Fields evokes the rich historical landscape of Queens in the mid-1960s, then bravely sweeps away the mists of nostalgia to reveal the fragile, unforgettable core of her characters and her story. Both quietly powerful and agonizingly beautiful, A Frenzy of Sparks enchants readers into holding an unquestioning belief in a beautiful facade before stripping it away to allow the unvarnished truth to appear. Devastating, haunting, and poignant, this is one book you will not forget.” —Amber Cowie, author of Raven Lane
£12.02
Amazon Publishing Full: A Novel
Book SynopsisTo her followers, she advocates for an authentic and transparent life. In reality, she’s living a perfect lie. Wellness influencer Ava Maloney’s enormous success is based on total transparency, extolling the well-documented virtues of her full, balanced life. But the truth is, Ava’s social media platform is built on a lie. And her double life is beginning to take its toll. Escaping Los Angeles for a luxury wellness retreat on Martha’s Vineyard, Ava believes she can get everything back on track. No fans will be the wiser to the real reason for her visit. With the help of the other guests, staff, and a supportive local, Ava begins regaining control of her body, her mind, and her life. Except someone is onto her, threatening to expose the secret she’s hidden for so long. Ava was prepared to face her demons, but not publicly. Not yet. The fallout might also force Ava to finally reconcile who she’s been pretending to be with who she actually is—a woman discovering the real meaning of a full and balanced life.Trade Review“Raw and unflinching, this heartbreaking portrait of one glamorous social media influencer’s quest for physical perfection is insightful and moving, thanks to author Julia Spiro’s talent in proving the power of authenticity. The main character’s transformative journey to Island Wellness and Martha’s Vineyard delights with an insider tour of the sparkly New England island, a place where nature can heal the deepest wounds.” —Brooke Lea Foster, author of Summer Darlings
£12.12
Amazon Publishing The Night Burns Bright: A Novel
Book SynopsisIn this coming-of-age thriller, a twelve-year-old boy’s spark of courage to question the harmonious wooded commune he calls home may burn down more than just his own illusions. Lucien has everything he needs: a loving mama, a library full of books, and House of Earth, a private school nestled safely in the woods of upstate New York. It’s where Lucien is taught the importance of living in harmony with nature and building a peaceful and sustainable future. But when his youthful curiosity draws him into town and to Gabrielle, a public-school student living a life wholly different from his own, Lucien’s inquisitiveness about life beyond the commune and questions regarding the events of 9/11 threaten to unbalance everything he thought he knew. Slowly, things begin to change at House of Earth. The outside world is off limits. Security measures tighten. New rules are put in place, and anyone who violates them is asked to leave and never spoken of again. As forbidden questions pile up, Lucien’s willingness to obey weakens. Continuing to meet Gabrielle in secret only reinforces his gnawing fear that something about his world is terribly wrong. Unable to remain silent any longer, Lucien will soon discover that looking for answers at House of Earth may be the most dangerous rule he can break.Trade Review“An Earth-loving collective turns sinister. Though Barkan never uses the word cult, House of Earth is chillingly evocative of many, and as the novel takes its darker turns, the end is both shocking and inevitable.” —Kirkus Reviews “With this haunting tale of innocence forever lost, Ross Barkan deftly explores how well-intentioned ideals, when taken to extremes, can lead to monstrous outcomes.” —Pitchaya Sudbanthad, author of Bangkok Wakes to Rain “The Night Burns Bright is mysterious and fascinating, a story that’s always told with the utmost urgency but also intriguingly eluding any sort of easy reach or classification. This is the sort of ambition all books should have.” —Will Leitch, author of How Lucky “Captivating from the very first page, The Night Burns Bright is a consummate thriller from the pen of a philosopher-poet. Barkan has done something wonderful, subtle, and brilliant here: in the character of Lucien—a young boy whose subjectivity is cast in the fires of 9/11—we find a contemporary Virgil, a trusted guide to the sweep of time, ruin, and the small beauties that have defined the early 21st century. Rarely has a character been such a fully-fleshed out, heartfelt, addictively readable historian of our times.” —Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of a Fox
£12.25
Lake Union Publishing Like Me
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£13.46
Amazon Publishing Fake Famous: A Novel
Book SynopsisIn this breezy novel from the author of Somebody That I Used to Know, one Iowa farm girl—a dead ringer for a global pop star—gets an unlikely shot at stardom. Will she choose fame…or the family farm? Red Morgan is fresh out of high school. With signature red curls and a remarkable singing voice, the bubbly teenager is a devoted daughter and big sister. The world should be her oyster. But Red already knows exactly where her future lies: the family farm in Orange City, Iowa. Zay-Zay Waters is at the top of her game. The Brooklyn-born singer has it all—talent, fame, even a smokin’ hot boyfriend. But life in the limelight isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. And when a video of Red singing in the mud—looking and sounding exactly like Zay-Zay herself—goes viral, the pop star begins to hatch a plan. Red is the key to Zay-Zay’s scheme. With much-needed money on the line, Red agrees to step into Zay-Zay’s famous shoes for one week. But when planned appearances start to go off script, Red may be in over her head. Can she really pull it off?Trade Review“An amiable fish-out-of-water story that engagingly explores the pitfalls of fame and celebrates young love.” —Kirkus Reviews “Davis, who is also an actor, believably depicts the sometimes outlandish realities of the lifestyles of the rich and famous in this Prince and the Pauper take.” —Publishers Weekly
£19.46
Amazon Publishing Happy Happy Happy
Book SynopsisEverything’s just perfect in Charlie’s life. Apart from all the things that are wrong. It’s been more than a decade since Charlie Trewin left her sleepy Cornish fishing village for the dazzling lights of London, vowing never to return. But when shocking news of her father’s death forces her back to Carncarrow, she’s confronted with everything she thought she’d left behind: the tragic loss of her mother, her father’s obsessive hoarding—and her own unresolved emotions about them both. At first Carncarrow seems like the same stuck-in-the-past, dead-end village Charlie escaped years ago. Nothing like London, where she’s built a wonderful new life: solid job, loving fiancé, and endless, boundless happiness. But as she sorts through her father’s stockpiled mementoes, she begins to rediscover the place she once called home—and realises that her life in London may not be as happy, happy, happy as she keeps telling herself. When her fiancé unexpectedly shows up in Carncarrow, her two complicated worlds collide. With the past and the present competing for her attention, can Charlie finally make her peace with her memories? And can she find a way to be truly happy on her own terms?
£12.12
Esplanade Books Swallowed
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£16.16
Exile Editions Cracker Jacks for Misfits
Book SynopsisCracker Jacks for Misfits is the Millenial story of four people who find themselves caught in the crosshairs of modern-day chaos as they discover independence, strength, and the power to love.In a series of interconnected short stories, Christine Ottoni tells the tale of a highly sensitive caregiver, Naomi, and her relationship with her reclusive, artistic mother, Joanne.From a whirlwind romance with a manic bartender named Marce, to an intense friendship with an ineffectual alcoholic named Jake, Naomi's search for intimacy and home is marked by urban claustrophobia and loneliness. The characters of Cracker Jacks for Misfits are hungry for human connection. They look for it online, in the unfamiliar bedrooms of Toronto, and in hushed conversations with strangers. Their stories are real – so real that we can all identify with their struggle. A portrait of millennial discontent and overconnectedness, Cracker Jacks for Misfits is about the moment when childhood becomes a new country of adult commitments and responsibilities. These stories are about the strange, intimate worlds we share with others, in dive bars, on road trips, and on the curb outside house parties. Ottoni presents a distinctive look at the struggle of a generation, and asks if we can every truly realise ourselves through our ability or inability to break free.This work of contemporary insight illuminates what is at the core of today's society: how important it is to understand and respect the sensibilities, goodness, strengths and frailties of those who we call friends, family, and the other. Cracker Jacks for Misfits is a moving and engaging narrative of a young person who finds their independence, strength, and power to love.
£16.16
The New York Review of Books, Inc Young Once
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£14.41
Soft Skull Press Exquisite Mariposa: A Novel
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£14.39
The Library of America Albert Murray: Collected Novels & Poems (LOA
Book SynopsisComplete in one volume for the first time, the joyous, jazz-saturated fiction of one of our foremost African American writers, including the four-novel Scooter sequenceOne of the leading cultural critics of his generation, Albert Murray was also the author of an extraordinary quartet of semi-autobiographical novels, vivid impressionistic portraits of black life in the Deep South in the 1920s and ''30s and in prewar New York City. Train Whistle Guitar (1974) introduces Murray''s recurring narrator and protagonist, Scooter, a "Southern jackrabbit raised in a briarpatch" too nimble ever to receive a scratch. Scooter''s education in books, music, and the blue-steel bent-note blues-ballad realities of American life continues in The Spyglass Tree (1991), Murray''s "Portrait of the Artist as a Tuskegee Undergraduate." The Seven League Boots (1996) follows Scooter as he becomes a bass player in a touring band not unlike Duke Ellington''s, and The Magic Keys (2005), in which Scooter at last finds his true vocation as a writer in Greenwich Village, is an elegaic reverie on an artist''s life. Editors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin round out the volume with a selection of Murray''s remarkable poems, including 11 unpublished pieces from his notebooks, and two rare examples of his work as a short story writer.LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation’s literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America’s best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
£42.75
University of New Orleans Press Continental Divide
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£17.06
Counterpoint Kill Me Now: A Novel
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£21.24
Black Lawrence Press American Gospel
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£18.95
WW Norton & Co Boys of Alabama: A Novel
Book SynopsisIn this bewitching debut novel, a sensitive teen, newly arrived in Alabama, falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. While his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives in the thick heat. Taken in by the football team, he learns how to catch a spiraling ball, how to point a gun, and how to hide his innermost secrets. Max already expects some of the raucous behavior of his new, American friends—like their insatiable hunger for the fried and cheesy, and their locker room talk about girls. But he doesn’t expect the comradery—or how quickly he would be welcomed into their world of basement beer drinking. In his new canvas pants and thickening muscles, Max feels like he’s “playing dress-up.” That is until he meets Pan, the school “witch,” in Physics class: “Pan in his all black. Pan with his goth choker and the gel that made his hair go straight up.” Suddenly, Max feels seen, and the pair embarks on a consuming relationship: Max tells Pan about his supernatural powers, and Pan tells Max about the snake poison initiations of the local church. The boys, however, aren’t sure whose past is darker, and what is more frightening—their true selves, or staying true in Alabama. Writing in verdant and visceral prose that builds to a shocking conclusion, Genevieve Hudson “brilliantly reinvents the Southern Gothic, mapping queer love in a land where God, guns, and football are king” (Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks). Boys of Alabama becomes a nuanced portrait of masculinity, religion, immigration, and the adolescent pressures that require total conformity.Trade Review"Hudson’s writing is magnetic. It’s like the Kristen Stewart of prose – chameleon-like, layered, funny and serious and sad, really gay, and so attractive.... It wrecked me, just like I wanted.... Hudson grew up in Alabama, and their complex relationship with the place shines through in this story, which quietly and then loudly hurtles toward a climax that had me staring into space for a full 10 minutes after I read it." -- Sarah Neilson, Them, "5 Queer Books We Loved in 2020""Debut novelist Hudson sets her unique coming-of-age tale in a hot, swampy Alabama steeped in football and God. . . . This is a little southern gothic, a little supernatural, and a little reminiscent of Wiley Cash’s suspenseful A Land More Kind than Home (2012)." -- Kathy Sexton, Booklist"Boys of Alabama brilliantly reinvents the Southern Gothic... An absolutely magical novel." -- Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks"A gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs." -- Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir"Genevieve Hudson dismantles and spins a new category of fairy tale for us, one that’s equal parts dirt and splendor. A glinting, dark beauty. An incantation." -- T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girl"This novel is a love song to outsiders of all kinds, a queer love story about the ways we find to heal ourselves and each other, and proof that there can be magic amid the burdens of masculinity." -- Melissa Febos, author of Whip Smart and Abandon Me"Genevieve Hudson has conjured a novel that sets place as a touchstone. Every field is alive: every leaf, every insect, every crawling thing. Hands beget love, words set like sweetness on the tongue. The magic contained in Boys of Alabama's pages isn't just fixed in the beauty of its sentences; it's seen in the way that Hudson carefully crafts the intimacy between people and how she tenderly exposes queerness. This book is a fragile web, full of longing and ache and regret." -- Kristen Arnett, author of Mostly Dead Things"Genevieve Hudson creates a new American erotics of longing and belonging, flush with want and desire, hope and home, translation and transformation." -- Matt Bell, author of Scrapper"Hudson goes right to a place where violence comes from—uncomfortably close to desire for magic, God, sex, whatever might actually heal us—and doesn’t turn away." -- Kristin Dombek, author of The Selfishness of Others"One of the finest—and weirdest!—first novels I’ve read in quite some long time." -- Tom Bissell, author of Apostle and coauthor of The Disaster Artist"Boys of Alabama perfectly captures the magic and inevitable heartache of young lust." -- Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light"[Depicts] a brand of Southern-fried masculinity that is immediately recognizable and startlingly fresh. This is an exquisite book." -- Nick White, author of How to Survive a Summer"Reminds us that behind so many of America’s most rigid beliefs lies the lonely human heart: twitchy, slippery, alive." -- Mikkel Rosengaard, author of The Invention of Ana
£19.94
WW Norton & Co Thomas Mann: New Selected Stories
Book SynopsisA towering figure in the pantheon of twentieth-century literature, Thomas Mann has often been perceived as a dry and forbidding writer—“the starched collar,” as Bertolt Brecht once called him. But in fact, his fiction is lively, humane, sometimes hilarious. In these fresh renderings of his best short work, award-winning translator Damion Searls casts new light on this underappreciated aspect of Mann’s genius. The headliner of this volume, “Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow” (in its first new translation since 1936)—a subtle masterpiece that reveals the profound emotional significance of everyday life—is Mann’s tender but sharp-eyed portrait of the “Bigs” and “Littles” of the bourgeois Cornelius family as they adjust to straitened circumstances in hyperinflationary Weimar Germany. Here, too, is a free-standing excerpt from Mann’s first novel, Buddenbrooks—a sensation when it was first published. “Death in Venice” (also included in this volume) is Mann’s most famous story, but less well known is that he intended it to be a diptych with another, comic story—included here as “Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull.” “Louisey”—a tale of sexual humiliation that gives a first glimpse of Mann’s lifelong ambivalence about the power of art—rounds out this revelatory, transformative collection.Trade Review"Searls infuses the prose of Nobel laureate Mann (1875–1955) with momentum and energy in this excellent collection. English-language readers will find the humor and digressive appeal of Mann’s prose enhanced... A well-chosen excerpt from the novel Confessions of a Con Artist, by Felix Krull exhibits a connection between the title character, a peripatetic young man, and Mann’s other protagonists: “What a royal gift the imagination is, and what pleasure it affords us!” Felix narrates. Throughout, the characters are linked by their unspeakable desires, and their inner worlds are just as significant as, and often more so than, their actions. Scholars as well as those new to Mann will find much to appreciate in Searls’s stimulating approach." -- Publishers Weekly"Searls' superb translations of Mann’s most essential short works emphasize moments of despair and levity, breathing fresh humanity into the stories of the famously solemn German literary giant . . . Searls is meticulous in his attention to German-language nuance but intuitive in channeling the tensions and rhythms of his source material. His introduction reveals a deep fascination with Mann’s complexities, and an anxiety that Mann might soon be dismissed as a twentieth-century relic with little relevance to today’s readers. His work here goes a long way toward preventing that from happening." -- Brendan Driscoll - Booklist"In his witty, insightful, and charming introduction, Searls makes some useful observations about why Mann’s personal life is worth addressing . . . It’s a useful reminder of the subversive power of cultural hybridity — a writer whose Germanness was central to his public identity in fact contained multitudes." -- Matt Hanson - Arts Fuse"[A] trip into timeless themes of youthful innocence; the perpetual struggle between discipline and desire; and more. Readers turn to Mann not for lickety-split action but to take a literary amble through poetic sentences; those in the market for old-school leisure won't be disappointed." -- Michael Magras - Shelf Awareness"I have long loved Thomas Mann's subtlety, erudition, and elegant mind, but it wasn't until reading these newly translated stories that I picked up the range of the author's irony and humor. The art of translation seems to me the most delicate and precise of literary arts, and Damion Searls stands at the very apex of translators into English." -- Lauren Groff, author of Matrix"Damion Searls has produced the perfect Mann translation; the author’s erudition and aesthetic sensibility are mutually enhanced instead of one being sacrificed for the other. Mann has never been more readable in English, and the English reader never more aware of the shining beauty of the source." -- Anton Hur, translator"Although Mann’s stories are more than a century old, Damion Searls’s new translations capture the writer’s sly humor and warmth, making these short masterpieces feel wholly modern. Readers who know Mann will see him anew; for those who haven’t read him yet, this collection is a superb introduction to one of the greats." -- Rumaan Alam, author of Leave the World Behind"Searls’s selections of this funny, ironic, exceptionally readable 20th-century writer’s work are as inspired as his engaging and lucid translations: here we have the slow-burning torment and humiliation of 'Louisey,' the charming irony of 'Confessions of a Con Artist, By Felix Krull,' the startling emotional acuity of 'A Day in the Life of Hanno Buddenbrook,' and the great rediscovery, 'Chaotic World and Childhood Sorrow,' which condenses a novel’s worth of empathy, family conflict, and fine-grained observation into a riveting story less than forty pages long. Towering above all is 'Death in Venice'—the extraordinary pandemic tale, refreshed and haunting in its best-ever translation. I’ve spent years waiting for the Mannaissance—the publication of New Selected Stories will, at last, bring it into being." -- Mark Krotov, coeditor, n+1"In this vigorous new version . . . Searls takes pains to bring Mann’s decades-old prose to life without anachronism or false breeziness . . . A well-chosen, confidently translated gathering of stories that casts new light on its author." -- Kirkus Reviews, starred review
£22.79
Bloomsbury Publishing A Good Country
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£15.30
Other Press LLC What You Need from the Night: A Novel
Book SynopsisA CrimeReads Best International Fiction Book of Fall 2023A powerful, intimate portrait of grief and radicalization that grapples with the conundrum of having loved ones we no longer recognize.After the death of his wife, a father raises his two sons alone. His bond with Fus, the elder, and Gillou, the younger, is a close one. But their town is not a place of opportunity, and it soon becomes clear that the boys are heading down different paths. Gillou sets his sights on university in Paris. Fus, despite his socialist upbringing, falls in with the local far-right group. Though he joins mostly for the camaraderie, their activities, which might on the surface appear harmless, lead to a violent confrontation.How can a father and son find common ground when everything seems set to break them apart? A sudden tragedy will force them to find an answer.Tense, sharp, and ultimately heartbreaking, What You Need from the Night asks what acts can truly be forgiven, and shines a spotlight on the forgotten corners of a country where white supremacy has taken hold much like in the US.
£13.59
Bloomsbury Publishing The Great Passion
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£22.40
Bloomsbury Publishing The Great Passion
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£15.30
Bloomsbury Publishing Brother
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£13.60
Bloomsbury Publishing The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa
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£22.40
Akashic Books, Ltd. Swanna in Love
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£23.96
Akashic Books, Ltd. Swanna in Love
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£15.26
Crooked Media Reads Mobility
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£18.99
Bloomsbury Publishing USA Gravel Heart: By the Winner of the 2021 Nobel
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£14.45
Bloomsbury Publishing USA Confrontations
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£21.59
Bloomsbury Publishing USA We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies
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£16.14
Bloomsbury Publishing USA Sugar, Baby
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£22.39
Counterpoint It Needs To Look Like We Tried: A Novel
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£21.24
Counterpoint Prince Of Monkeys: A Novel
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£21.24
Counterpoint Hard Mouth: A Novel
Book SynopsisPlayfully, poetically unstable . . . What compels a woman to turn to the wilderness? What brings one, after a decade of caregiving, to exchange a terminal parent’s final vigil for the company of strangers? Goldblatt poses these questions with great assurance. —Lisa Locascio, The New York Times Book ReviewDenny works nights as a tech in a labyrinthine facility outside of D.C., readying fruit flies for experimentation. Her life’s routine is straightforward, limited. But when her father announces that he won’t be treating his recurrent, terminal cancer, she responds by quietly dismantling her life. She constructs in its place the fantasy of perfect detachment. Unsure whether her impulse is monastic or suicidal, she rents a secluded cabin in the mountains. Without saying goodbye, she leaves her parents behind and enters a new, solitary world. It’s not without disruption: her blowsy trash bag of an imaginary pal is still lingering. And then a house cat appears out of nowhere. And after a bad storm rips through the mountainside, someone else shows up, too. Her time in the wilderness isn’t the perfect detachment she was expecting. Denny is forced to reckon with this failure while confronting a new life with its own set of pleasures and dangerous incursions.Morbidly funny, subversive, and startling, Hard Mouth, the debut novel from 2018 NEA Creative Writing Fellow Amanda Goldblatt, unpacks what it means to live while others are dying.The novel begins existential (think: Camus as an intersectional feminist), and ends with a gut punch that somehow manages a deeply felt sympathy for its characters. —Rebekah Frumkin, NYLON
£12.34
Counterpoint Death And The Butterfly: A Novel
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£21.24
Counterpoint A Job You Mostly Won't Know How to Do: A Novel
£12.34
Counterpoint Oligarchy: A Novel
Book SynopsisFrom the author of The Seed Collectors comes a darkly comic take on power, privilege, and the pressure put on young women to fit in—and be thin—at their all-girls boarding schoolIt's already the second week of term when Natasha, the daughter of a Russian oligarch, arrives at a vast English country house for her first day of boarding school. She soon discovers that the headmaster gives special treatment to the skinniest girls, and Tash finds herself thrown into the school's unfamiliar, moneyed world of fierce pecking orders, eating disorders, and Instagram angst.The halls echo with the story of Princess Augusta, the White Lady whose portraits—featuring a hypnotizing black diamond—hang everywhere and whose ghost is said to haunt the dorms. It's said that she fell in love with a commoner and drowned herself in the lake. But the girls don't really know anything about the woman she was, much less anything about one another. When Tash's friend Bianca mysteriously vanishes, the routines of the school seem darker and more alien than ever before. Tash must try to stay alive—and sane—while she uncovers what's really going on.Darkly hilarious, Oligarchy is Heathers for the digital age, a Prep populated with the teenage children of the European elite, exploring youth, power, and affluence. Scarlett Thomas captures the lives of these privileged young women, in all their triviality and magnitude, seeking acceptance and control in a manipulative world.
£14.41
Soho Press Inc Opioid, Indiana
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£14.40
Algonquin Books Who Are You, Calvin Bledsoe?
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£14.36
Algonquin Books Creatures
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£13.56
Algonquin Books Big Girl, Small Town
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£14.41
Workman Publishing The Archer
Book Synopsis“[Swamy’s] prose is so assured . . . The Archer dazzles as it asks: How does a woman remain an artist?” —The New York Times Book Review Recommended by: BuzzFeed * The Millions * Book Riot * Literary Hub * Bookmarks * Ms.* Bookish * Goodreads * Library Journal * San Francisco Chronicle FINALIST FOR THE CALIFORNIA BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION LONGLISTED FOR THE CENTER FOR FICTION FIRST NOVEL PRIZE In this original and transfixing novel, Vidya comes of age in 1960s- and 1970s-era Bombay, her childhood marked by the shattering absence and then the bewildering reappearance of her mother and baby brother at the family home. Restless, observant, and longing for connection with her brilliant and increasingly troubled mother, Vidya one day peeks into a classroom where girls are learning kathak, a dazzling, centuries-old dance form that requires the utmost discipline and focus. Her pursuit of artistic transcendence and escape through kathak soon becomes the organizing principle of her life, even as she leaves home for college and falls in complicated love with her best friend. As the uncertain future looms, she must confront the tensions between romance, art, and the legacy of her own imperfect mother. Lyrical and deeply sensual, Shruti Swamy’s The Archer is a bold portrait of a singular woman striving toward life as an artist while navigating desire, duty, and the limits of the body. It is also an electrifying and utterly immersive story about the transformative power of art, and the possibilities that love can open when we’re ready.Trade Review'Set in 1970s Bombay, the novel explores art, ambition, gender roles and class with the same shimmering prose of Swamy’s first book, the story collection A House Is a Body.' —San Francisco Chronicle '[A] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love.' —NPR Longlisted for the 2021 Center for Fiction First Novel Prize “Mesmerizingly poetic . . . The Archer’s beauty resides in Swamy's sequential narrative form, which reads like music—at times almost exactly like reading a musical score—but with something more; her words carry the visceral power of a dancer's intersection with air . . . [A] sublime, boundary-pushing exploration of sexuality, creativity, and love . . . A sensual, artful dance, powerfully told.” —NPR “This novel swallowed me whole. The Archer is the kind of book you always hope for: lush and sensual, tasted and felt, with striking images that play out like film behind the eyes. Swamy evokes an India that resists flat stereotype and teems with exuberance, beauty, and life. The Archer is timeless yet utterly modern as it asks what it means for a woman to make a life of art.” —C Pam Zhang, author of How Much of These Hills Is Gold “Shruti Swamy is a writer to celebrate. Her fiction is provocative, precise, and gorgeously inventive.” —Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning “With its coiled energy and feverish imagery, The Archer often reads more like a lucid dream than a novel, oceans of wild feeling roiling just below the surface . . . Swamy writes about the imperatives of an artist’s life with bright, furious poetry: the singular will of a body that burns to be in motion, and a mind set free.” —Entertainment Weekly “[A] visceral first novel . . . The Archer blends the corporeal and the spiritual in a story about what it means to be a woman and an artist. Swamy’s writing is transportive, precise and almost hypnotic . . . The author’s perceptive and observant eye misses nothing.” —BookPage “Set in 1970s Bombay, the novel explores art, ambition, gender roles and class with the same shimmering prose of Swamy’s first book, the story collection A House Is a Body.” —San Francisco Chronicle “A searing portrait of the woman artist . . . Shruti Swamy has defined herself as a bold new voice in not only South Asian diaspora literature, but modern literature as a whole.” —Chicago Review of Books “Every page of The Archer holds evidence of Swamy’s talent, each sentence a performance so strong as to appear effortless. But just as with an elite dancer, only in the recognition of the effort can we truly appreciate the art. Like any rapt audience, readers will delight and despair in the fiercely wrought world of The Archer, fully aware they are witnessing greatness.” —Chapter16 “Lush and poetic.” —Ms. Magazine “Swamy’s prose is incantatory and often lovely, swirling in dancelike rhythms that sweep the story along. She builds a complex character in Vidya, whose urge toward autonomy brings results that range from ecstatic to tragic. A young woman seeks freedom through art in a mesmerizing coming-of-age story.” —Kirkus Reviews “A saga as rich and gorgeous as Kathak itself.” —Library Journal “As in her lauded debut collection, A House Is a Body, Swamy examines women’s ownership of their very selves… [and] challenges expectations and exposes the limitations of being female.” —Booklist “[An] affecting debut novel . . . Swamy confidently evokes the time and place with spare, precise prose. This writer continues to demonstrate an impressive command of her craft.” —Publishers Weekly “This is a singular work, a story of a dancer, and of a hungry self seated at the table of womanness and desire and art, told with unparalleled originality and elegance. Swamy writes with a thrilling clarity of vision that wakes the sleepwalker right into joyful consciousness. Every word is intimate, honest, ecstatic—utterly alive.” —Meng Jin, author of Little Gods “The Archer is a stunning novel, as intimate and visceral as an expertly executed dance. Swamy's arresting and immersive prose vibrates with attention, and does what the best writing does: it leaves me more alive in my own body, and renders the world around me richer—more layered—with meaning. Meditating on what it means to be an artist (and a woman), Swamy has created her own wondrous work of art—singular, unforgettable, and important.” —Rachel Khong, author of Goodbye, Vitamin “Alive with desire, Shruti Swamy's prismatic language glimmers with the force that drives her characters to dance, beating against the restrictions of body, society, tradition, sexuality, and the fallible self toward a liberatory devotion to life. A gorgeous, taut, deeply embodied reading experience, The Archer further establishes Swamy as a writer of thrilling talent.” —Asako Serizawa, author of Inheritors “The Archer unfolds like an urgent dream, its heroine’s desire—for artistic transcendence, love, and liberation—its driving pulse. This novel, and the many keenly rendered moments within its pages (a swirl of bright fabric, the temperature of a lover’s skin, the abrupt chilling of a mood) lodged themselves in my consciousness long after. Shruti Swamy is one of the most gifted, excitingly unpredictable writers working today.”—Mimi Lok, author of Last of Her Name “Shruti's Swamy's The Archer combines exquisite prose with a kind of rare narrative propulsion. I found myself reading slower and slower, to make the sentences last even longer. By the end I was exhilarated and deeply moved. The Archer is a flat-out gorgeous piece of work.”—Peter Orner, author of Maggie Brown Others
£12.34
Graywolf Press Abundance
Book SynopsisLonglisted for the National Book Award for FictionA wrenching debut about the causes and effects of poverty, as seen by a father and son living in a pickupEvicted from their trailer on New Year?s Eve, Henry and his son, Junior, have been reduced to living out of a pickup truck. Six months later, things are even more desperate. Henry, barely a year out of prison for pushing opioids, is down to his last pocketful of dollars, and little remains between him and the street. But hope is on the horizon: Today is Junior?s birthday, and Henry has a job interview tomorrow.To celebrate, Henry treats Junior to dinner at McDonald?s, followed by a night in a real bed at a discount motel. For a moment, as Junior watches TV and Henry practices for his interview in the bathtub, all seems well. But after Henry has a disastrous altercation in the parking lot and Junior succumbs to a fever, father and son are sent into the night, struggling to hold things together and make it through tomorrow.In an ingenious structural approach, Jakob Guanzon organizes Abundance by the amount of cash in Henry?s pocket. A new chapter starts with each debit and credit, and the novel expands and contracts, revealing the extent to which the quality of our attention is altered by the abundance?or lack thereof?that surrounds us. Set in an America of big-box stores and fast food, this incandescent debut novel trawls the fluorescent aisles of Walmart and the booths of Red Lobster to reveal the inequities and anxieties around work, debt, addiction, incarceration, and health care in America today.
£14.40
Graywolf Press Echoland
Book SynopsisThe shimmering, windswept first novel by the internationally acclaimed author of Out Stealing Horses. Echoland is the powerful and emotionally resonant first novel from Per Petterson. Written in the mold of his early story collection Ashes in My Mouth, Sand in My Shoes, it features a young Arvid Janssen, who is now twelve, on the verge of his teenage years and beginning to understand more about the world and his place in it. Set over the course of a single formative summer, the novel captures a series of episodes from Arvid's long visit to his grandparents' home in Denmark. He rides his bike around town, befriends other children on the beach, fishes for plaice, and weathers misunderstandings with his mother and grandparents, all of which Petterson imbues with the hope and yearning that come with this stage of life. Echoland is an assured and poignant beginning for an authorand characterwho would go on to be loved the world over.
£13.50
Graywolf Press The Sky Above the Roof
Book SynopsisA propulsive, kaleidoscopic novel about a fractured family and the persistence of hope.One night, seventeen-year-old Wolf steals his mother?s car and drives six hundred kilometers in search of his sister, who left home ten years ago. Unlicensed and on edge, he veers onto the wrong side of the road and causes an accident. He is arrested and incarcerated, forcing his mother and sister to reconnect and pick up the pieces in order to fight for his release.What follows is a lyrical, precise, and unflinching account of the events that led to this moment, told through the alternating perspectives of Wolf?s mother, sister, and grandfather, as well as the doctor who was present at Wolf?s birth. With each chapter, new versions of the story and views of reality unfold, and they fit together like puzzle pieces: in an uncertain order at first, and then slowly falling neatly into place as the pages turn. As details about the characters? lives and the disconnections in their relationships are revealed, the story becomes even more propulsive, even more compelling.In this raw and poignant novel, Nathacha Appanah considers how trauma shapes generations and the wounds it leaves behind. The Sky above the Roof is both a portrait of a fractured family and a poetic exploration of the ways we break apart and rebuild.
£13.50
Ediciones B Querido Edward / Dear Edward
Book Synopsis
£16.80
Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial (USA) LLC La chica salvaje (Movie Tie-In Edition) / Where
Book Synopsis
£15.26
Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial From Nowhere
Book Synopsis
£16.16
Erewhon Books Day Boy
Book SynopsisWinner of the Aurealis Awards for Best Fantasy and Best Horror NovelWith brilliantly evocative, hypnotic prose, Trent Jamieson crafts a coming-of-age, elevated horror story about a headstrong boy—and the monstrous vampire who taught him to be a man. The Masters, dreadful and severe, rule the Red City and the lands far beyond it. By night, they politic and feast, drinking from townsfolk resigned to their fates. By day, the Masters must rely on their human servants, their Day Boys, to fulfill their every need and carry out their will. Mark is a Day Boy, practically raised by his Master, Dain. It’s grueling, often dangerous work, but Mark neither knows nor wants any other life. And, if a Day Boy proves himself worthy, the nightmarish, all-seeing Council of Teeth may choose to offer him a rare gift: the opportunity to forsake his humanity for monstrous power and near-immortality, like the Masters transformed before him. But in the crackling heat of the Red City, widespread discontent among his fellow humans threatens to fracture Mark's allegiances. As manhood draws near, so too does the end of Mark's tenure as a Day Boy, and he cannot stay suspended between the worlds of man and Master for much longer.“Poetic and meditative—at times frightening, visceral and bloody—this is a dark journey worth making.” —AurealisTrade Review“At the fingertips of a gifted writer there will always be new and interesting takes on the vampire tale and happily, Day Boy is one of them. . . . At times touching, at times frightening, and always interesting. The ideas are fresh and new, and by the end of the novel there is still so much left to be said.” —Melbourne Review of Books“Jamieson has kept all of the central facets of vampire mythology while fashioning something new and often riveting. Poetic and meditative—at times frightening, visceral and bloody—this is a dark journey worth making.” —Aurealis“Dry, rolling heat flows from the page in waves of long days and even longer nights. . . . A poetic story of humanity, of monsters living in the Shadow of the Mountain, bitter cold and open to the burning of the clear night sky.” —Fantasy Book Review“A beautifully written and surprisingly tender novel about fathers and sons, and what it may mean to become a man.” —Good Reading
£18.99
Catapult The Inland Sea: A Novel
Book SynopsisIn this "eloquent debut," a young Australian woman unable to find her footing in the world begins to break down when the emergencies she hears working as a 911 operator and the troubles within her own life gradually blur together, forcing her to grapple with how the past has shaped her present (Publishers Weekly).Drifting after her final year in college, a young writer begins working part-time as an emergency dispatch operator in Sydney. Over the course of an eight-hour shift, she is dropped into hundreds of crises, hearing only pieces of each. Callers report car accidents and violent spouses and homes caught up in flame.The work becomes monotonous: answer, transfer, repeat. And yet the stress of listening to far-off disasters seeps into her personal life, and she begins walking home with keys in hand, ready to fight off men disappointed by what they find in neighboring bars. During her free time, she gets black-out drunk, hooks up with strangers, and navigates an affair with an ex-lover whose girlfriend is in their circle of friends.Two centuries earlier, her great-great-great-great-grandfather--the British explorer John Oxley--traversed the wilderness of Australia in search of water. Oxley never found the inland sea, but the myth was taken up by other men, and over the years, search parties walked out into the desert, dying as they tried to find it.Interweaving a woman''s self-destructive unraveling with the gradual worsening of the climate crisis, The Inland Sea is charged with unflinching insight into our age of anxiety. At a time when wildfires have swept an entire continent, this novel asks what refuge and comfort looks like in a constant state of emergency.
£15.26
