Books Archive

By Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

November 4, 2025

Birds, Strangers and Psychos is a thrilling anthology that brings together the biggest names in mystery and crime fiction to pay homage to Alfred Hitchcock, the legendary filmmaker whose name is synonymous with suspense. Acclaimed editor Maxim Jakubowski curates 24 original short stories, each inspired by the mood, tension, and style that defined Hitchcock’s groundbreaking work. This anthology invites both emerging and established voices to reimagine the chilling atmospheres, twisted plots, and unforgettable characters of Hitchcock’s films, from Psycho and Vertigo to North by Northwest and The Birds.

Each author takes on the challenge of evoking the quintessentially ‘Hitchcockian’ elements that have captivated audiences for decades: ordinary lives interrupted by peril, psychological duels, and unexpected encounters that spiral into nightmares. The volume showcases an extraordinary blend of talent, including Lee Child, Denise Mina, Sophie Hannah, Vaseem Khan, MW Craven, Jeff Noon and S. A. Cosby and many more!

Just as Hitchcock adapted stories from literary giants like Daphne du Maurier, Patricia Highsmith, and Roald Dahl, Birds, Strangers and Psychos unites today’s literary stars to craft new suspenseful tales that are destined to thrill, haunt, and unsettle. This volume is not just a collection of stories – it’s an invitation to rediscover the artistry of suspense.

Strange House

By Uketsu

November 4, 2025

A sinister hidden room.

A dead space between two walls.

A sealed cellar.

A child’s face glimpsed at a window.

Every house hides secrets.

But some secrets are far darker than others.

More than a million readers have discovered the terrible truth behind these strange houses.

Now it’s your turn.

Show Them a Good Time

By Nicole Flattery

November 4, 2025

A young, broke Irish woman narrates her relationship with a successful comedian in New York; two hapless university students take to the stage in a bid to assert their autonomy; a school teacher makes her way through a series of dead-end dates, gamely searching for love or distraction as the world teeters towards ruin.

The characters in these magnificently accomplished stories are haunted as much by the future as they are by their pasts. Urgent and unforgettable, Show Them a Good Time marks the arrival of a strikingly original new voice in fiction.

No Straight Road Takes You There

By Rebecca Solnit

November 4, 2025

This book’s title, No Straight Road Takes You There, is an evocation and a declaration. Highways tend to be built across the easy routes and flat places, or the landscape is cleared away – logged, graded, levelled, tunnelled through – but to stick to these roads is to miss what else is out there. In her writing and activism, Rebecca Solnit has sought the pathless places in order to celebrate indirect and unpredictable consequences, and to embrace slowness and imperfection, which, she argues, are key to understanding the possibilities of change.

Everyone in this Bank is a Thief

By Benjamin Stevenson

November 4, 2025

I’ve spent the last few years solving murders. But a bank heist is a new one, even for me. I’ve never been a hostage before.

The doors are chained shut. No one in or out. Which means that when someone in the bank is murdered, hostages become suspects.

THE BANK ROBBER
THE MANAGER
THE SECURITY GUARD
THE KID
THE FILM PRODUCER
THE PRIEST
THE RECEPTIONIST
THE PATIENT
THE CARER
ME

Turns out, more than one person planned to rob the bank today. You can steal more from a bank than just money.

Who is stealing what? And are they willing to kill for it?

Carrion Crow

By Heather Parry

November 4, 2025

Marguerite Périgord is locked in the attic of her family home, a towering Chelsea house overlooking the stinking Thames. For company she has a sewing machine, Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management and a carrion crow who has come to nest in the rafters. Restless, she spends her waning energies on the fascinations of her own body, memorising Mrs Beeton’s advice and longing for her life outside.

Cécile Périgord has confined her daughter Marguerite for her own good. Cécile is concerned that Marguerite’s engagement to a much older, near-penniless solicitor, will drag the family name – her husband’s name, that is – into disrepute. And for Cécile, who has worked hard at her own betterment, this simply won’t do. Cécile’s life has taught her that no matter how high a woman climbs she can just as readily fall.

Of course, both have their secrets, intentions and histories to hide. As Marguerite’s patience turns into rage, the boundaries of her mind and body start to fray. And neither woman can recognise what the other is becoming.

All Her Lives

By Ingrid Horrocks

November 4, 2025

All Her Lives follows women across generations as they resist, nurture and transform. These are lives shaped by love and politics, motherhood and memory, constraint and defiance.

From girls raised in the garden of Plunket founder Truby King, to a queer university student at a mid-2000s Berlin rave, to a mother facing the cost of her son’s climate rebellion, the women of All Her Lives are complex, resilient and deeply human. Shadowing their stories is the early feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft, whose journey of grief and revolution will become a vessel for what endures – and for finding hope.

Vast and intimate, All Her Lives explores the layered selfhood of women – all that they inherit, sacrifice, imagine and carry forward – and the power found in unravelling and reweaving those selves on their own terms.

Boleyn Traitor

By Philippa Gregory

November 3, 2025

Jane Boleyn watches from the shadows of the Tudor court. Where nothing is more powerful than a secret. And power rests on the edge of a tyrant King’s sword.

She wears many masks – loving wife, devoted sister, and obedient spy. It’s what a woman must do to survive.

The only weapon she has is her voice.

They say Jane’s whispers sealed the fate of two queens. They called her a liar and a traitor.

But the truth is far more dangerous…