Recent Books

Wifedom: Mrs. Orwell’s Invisible Life

By Anna Funder

August 6, 2024

Looking for wonder and some reprieve from the everyday, Anna Funder slips into the pages of her hero George Orwell. As she watches him create his writing self, she tries to remember her own…

When she uncovers his forgotten wife, it’s a revelation. Eileen O’Shaughnessy’s literary brilliance shaped Orwell’s work and her practical nous saved his life. But why – and how – was she written out of the story?

Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells’ marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell’s private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer – and what it is to be a wife.

Compelling and utterly original, Wifedom speaks to the unsung work of women everywhere today, while offering a breathtakingly intimate view of one of the most important literary marriages of the 20th century. It is a book that speaks to our present moment as much as it illuminates the past.

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All Fours

By Miranda July

August 6, 2024

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Getting Better

By Michael Rosen

August 6, 2024

In our lives, terrible things may happen. Michael Rosen has grieved the loss of a child, lived with debilitating chronic illness, and faced death itself when seriously unwell in hospital. In spite of this he has survived, and has even learned to find joy in life in the aftermath of tragedy.

In Getting Better, he shares his story and the lessons he has learned along the way. Exploring the roles that trauma and grief have played in his own life, Michael investigates the road to recovery, asking how we can find it within ourselves to live well again after – or even during – the darkest times of our lives. Moving and insightful, Getting Better is an essential companion for anyone who has loved and lost, or struggled and survived.

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Ash

By Louise Wallace

August 6, 2024

Thea lives under a mountain – one that’s ready to blow.

A vet at a mid-sized rural practice, she has been called back during maternity leave and is coping – just – with the juggle of meetings, mealtimes, farm visits, her boss’s search for legal loopholes and the constant care of her much-loved children, Eli and Lucy.

But something is shifting in Thea – something is burning. Or is it that she is becoming aware, for the first time, of the bright, hot core at her centre?

Then comes an urgent call.

Ingeniously layered, Ash is a story about reckoning with one’s rage and finding marvels in the midst of chaos.

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Parade

By Rachel Cusk

July 9, 2024

Midway through his life, an artist begins to paint upside down.

In Paris, a woman is attacked by a stranger in the street.

A mother dies. A man falls to his death. Couples seek escape in distant lands.

The new novel from one of the most distinctive writers of the age, Parade sets loose a carousel of lives. It surges past the limits of identity, character and plot, to tell a true story – about art, family, morality, gender and how we compose ourselves.

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Earth

By John Boyne

July 9, 2024

It’s the tabloid sensation of the year: two well-known footballers standing in the dock , charged with sexual assault, a series of vile text messages pointing towards their guilt.

As the trial unfolds, Evan Keogh reflects on the events that have led him to this moment. Since leaving his island home, his life has been a lie on many levels. He’s a talented footballer who wanted to be an artist. A gay man in a sport that rejects diversity. A defendant whose knowledge of what took place on that fateful night threatens more than just his freedom or career.

The jury will deliver a verdict – but, before they do, Evan must judge for himself whether the man he has become is the man he wanted to be.

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Stone Yard Devotional

By Charlotte Wood

July 8, 2024

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A Refiner’s Fire (June 2024)

By Donna Leon

June 18, 2024

When two teenage gangs are arrested after clashing violently in one of Venice’s campi, the son of a local hero is implicated. But when Commissario Guido Brunetti is asked by a wealthy foreigner to vet this man, Dario Monforte, for a job, he discovers that he might not be such a hero after all.

This seeming contradiction, and a brutal attack on one of Brunetti’s colleagues by a possible gang member, concentrate Brunetti’s attentions. Soon, he discovers the sordid hypocrisy surrounding Moforte’s past, culminating in a fiery meeting of two gangs and a final opportunity for redemption.

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48 Clues into the Disappearance of My Sister (June 2024)

By Joyce Carol Oates

June 18, 2024

Sculptor Marguerite has disappeared from her small town in upstate New York. But was foul play involved? Did she merely get away for some fun? Or did she finally decide to leave behind her claustrophobic life of limited opportunities?

Younger sister Gigi wonders if the clues left in Marguerite’s wake – the flimsy silk Dior dress, so casually abandoned; the footprints made by her Ferragamo boots, which end abruptly close to home – are really clues at all.

Bit by bit, revelations about both women are uncovered, together with Gigi’s true feelings about the much-loved Marguerite. The fate of the missing beauty slowly and subtly comes to light in this suspenseful story about the complex relationship between two sisters.

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The Divorcées (June 2024)

By Rowan Beaird

June 17, 2024

In 1951, unhappiness is hardly grounds for divorce – except at the divorce ranches of Reno, Nevada. Here women from different backgrounds live together for the six weeks it will take to earn their freedom. Six weeks of fun, friendship, casinos and flirting with cowboys.

Six weeks to discover who they could become.

And if their new friends are who they say they are . . .

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