Books Archive

10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World

By Elif Shafak

February 4, 2026

An intensely beautiful and haunting novel about the wonder of life, the mystery of death and the strange space in between.

In the moments after she has been murdered and left in a dumpster outside Istanbul, Tequila Leila enters a state of heightened awareness. Her heart has stopped beating but her brain is still active. While the Turkish sun rises and her friends sleep soundly nearby, she remembers her life – and the lives of others: outcasts just like her.

For Leila, each minute after her death brings a sensuous memory: the taste of spiced goat stew, sacrificed by her father to celebrate the long-awaited birth of a son; the bubbling vats of lemon and sugar women use to wax their legs while men attend mosque; the scent of cardamom coffee that Leila shares with a handsome student in the brothel where she works. Each memory, too, recalls the friends she made at each key moment in her life. As her epic journey to the afterlife comes to an end, it is her chosen family who brings her story to a buoyant and breathtaking conclusion.

Men explain things to me: And other essays

By Rebecca Solnit

February 4, 2026

A collection of essays on feminism, from one of the most important and original public intellectuals writing today.

All that I am

By Anna Funder

February 4, 2026

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless; her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller; her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth’s husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take awe-inspiring risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it is, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart.

Some seventy years later, Ruth is living out her days in Sydney, making an uneasy peace with the ghosts of her past, and a part of history that has all but been forgotten.

The Opposite of Murder

By Sophie Hannah

February 4, 2026

What if the only way to prevent a murder is by confessing to it?

Jemma Stelling has confessed to a murder – one she can’t have committed. She has an unshakeable alibi: when Marianne Upton was stabbed to death outside her home, Jemma was at the police station confessing to a murderous obsession with Marianne and a plan to kill her in precisely the way she was killed.

So is Jemma innocent? Or is she an ingenious, cold-blooded murderer?

Kings of this World

By Elizabeth Knox

February 3, 2026

Vex is used to people being afraid of her power, the ability to persuade others to do what she wants.

But when she arrives at a new school, it is packed with people who have the same power, and who might even like her.

There is her roommate Ronnie, a coolheaded high achiever; and Ronnie’s friend Taye, who is recovering from a brain injury. There is witty, lordly Hannu, whose father happens to be a billionaire. And then there’s Ari: troubled, blessed, honourable, terrifying Ari.

Vex is enchanted by her new friends when, five weeks into term one, they are kidnapped.

They find themselves chained in the basement of an abandoned factory, trying to figure out how to escape, all the while tormented by questions like: Why were they taken? Why do the kidnappers seem to hate Vex, and at the same time want to recruit her?

Can Vex and her friends save themselves? And if they do, will they ever feel safe again? What kind of reckoning will they face afterwards? And will Vex once again feel responsible for all the bad things that happened?

By Julian Barnes

February 3, 2026

Departure(s) is the story of a man called Stephen and a woman called Jean, who fall in love when they are young and again when they are old. It is the story of an elderly Jack Russell called Jimmy, enviably oblivious to his own mortality.

It is also the story of how the body fails us, whether through age, illness, accident or intent. And it is the story of how experiences fade into anecdotes, and then into memory. Does it matter if what we remember really happened? Or does it just matter that it mattered enough to be remembered?

It begins at the end of life – but it doesn’t end there. Ultimately, it’s about the only things that ever really mattered: how we find happiness in this life, and when it is time to say goodbye.

This is the Day They Dream Of

By Robert Goddard

February 2, 2026

Trouble has a way of finding those who spend most of their time trying to avoid it. Or so it appears to Superintendent Taleb, whose attempts to wind his career down to an unobtrusive retirement are once again in jeopardy.

When delegated a television interview to discuss a thirty year old political controversy, his instructions are clear enough: whatever you say, do not rock the boat. But an inexplicable urge in the moment to tell the truth lands him in dangerously hot water. It also reopens some decades wounds which will bring him to the forefront of an investigation he is keen to avoid.

Whether he likes it or not, the past is coming for him. And the past in Algeria is venomous, vengeful and relentless, quick to consume the unwary traveller. He will soon find himself staring down the barrel of a long buried mystery, which looks likely to add him to its lengthy roster of victims.

Hamnet

By Maggie O'Farrell

February 2, 2026

On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help. Why is nobody at home?

Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.

Hamnet is a novel inspired by the son of a famous playwright: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.