Recent Books

Circle of Days

By Ken Follett

July 2, 2026

In the high summer heat, Joia watches the Midsummer ceremony that signals the start of a new year, enthralled. She dreams of a miraculous new monument, raised from the biggest stones in the world. It is a vision of a great circle, assembled by the divided tribes of the Great Plain. Helped by Seft, a talented miner, it will become their life’s work.

But as drought ravages the earth, mistrust grows between the herders, farmers and woodlanders. And an act of savage violence leads to open warfare.

The Shadow of the Object

By Chloe Aridjis

July 2, 2026

Flora is visiting home in Mexico when the family dog leaps up and bites her hand. She winds up in hospital where she undergoes several surgeries under anaesthesia and meets Wilhelmina, an elderly German woman with pneumonia, who collects pre-cinema toys and instruments. The two of them embark on a series of dream-like conversations in the hospital corridors. Wilhelmina puts on a magic lantern show for Flora, leaving her spellbound.

When things take an unexpected turn, Flora finds herself entrusted with an important mission. She returns to London, where she resumes her job polishing silver at a jewellery shop, and strikes up a strange friendship with Wilhelmina’s son, Max. As Flora dips in and out of her imagination, she is increasingly aware it’s not only the magic lantern that projects, and her perception of reality is subtly altered.

The Hotel

By Daisy Johnson

June 15, 2026

A place of myths, rumours and secrets, The Hotel looms over the dark Fens, tall and grey in its Gothic splendour. Built on cursed land, a history of violent death suffuses its very foundations –yet it has a magnetism that is impossible to ignore.

On entering The Hotel, different people react in different ways. To some it is familiar, to others a stranger. Many come out refreshed, longing to return. But a few are changed forever, haunted by their time there. And almost all those affected are women…

They are children and mothers, monsters, cult film-makers, thrill-seekers and workers on the night shift, all with their own tales of its strange power, of the horrors of Room 63, and of desperate but failed attempts to escape its seductive pull.

The Witch

By Marie NDiaye

June 10, 2026

Lucie comes from a long line of witches, powers passed down from mother to daughter. Her own mum was formidable in her powers, but ashamed of her magic. Perhaps as a result, Lucie’s own gift is weak: she can see into the future, sometimes – but more often, she can only see the present of some other location. Not very useful. And the worst part? All she can ever see are insignificant details – a scrap of outfit, the colour of the sky.

Lucie’s own children are initiated into their family’s peculiar womanhood when they reach twelve years of age, and in a few short months, Maud and Lise are crying the curious tears of blood that denote their magical powers. Having learned, they take off quickly and fly the nest. Literally.

Witty, dreamlike, vaguely unsettling, and utterly enchanting (pun intended), The Witch brings the mysteries of womanhood and motherhood into sharp relief and leaves us teetering on the edge, unbalanced by questions as seemingly unbreakable relationships break down left and right.

Taiwan Travelogue

By Yáng Shuāng-zǐ

June 10, 2026

A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power.

May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.

Soon a Taiwanese woman is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the ‘something’ is.

Hope Rises

By David Baldacci

June 4, 2026

REVENGE IS A DISH BEST SERVED COLD . . .

After turning informant for the FBI against a global criminal empire, Walter Nash has lost everything he cherished to its ruthless leader, Victoria Steers. Once gentle and sensitive, Nash’s rigorous training has forged him into a figure of power and precision with a singular mission: to take down Steers.

Defeating a mastermind requires cunning. Known for her sharp instincts, Steers confides in only a trusted few, so to penetrate her inner circle and dismantle her operation, Nash must summon all of his savvy and strength.

But as he edges closer to the woman who unraveled his life, Nash finds himself oddly drawn to Steers in ways he never could’ve imagined. And what he uncovers will upend all he knows, leading him to a choice that will change everything.

Griefdogg

By Michael Winkler

June 4, 2026

Meet Jeffrey Watson-Johnson: hydrologist, husband of Martine, father of Bern, model citizen of Mildura.

But after he inherits a small fortune from an obscure aunt and has a disconcerting encounter with his cousin Pam, Jeffrey decides it’s time to change everything.

He tells Martine he wants to live as if he were the family pet.

Sleeping through the day or wandering beside the river, he discovers a new power: he can sense secret grief in others. What to do with this gift? Or with his awareness of the endless streams of water flowing unseen beneath the earth?

Michael Winkler’s first novel Grimmish became a cult hit. Griefdogg is another triumph. Funny, sad, always entrancing, it tells a crazy-sane story about identity, love, family and forgiveness.

Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century

By Ece Temelkuran

June 4, 2026

Butter

By Asako Yuzuki

June 3, 2026

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body. Might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, ‘The Konkatsu Killer’, Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, gripping exploration of misogyny, obsession and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

Transcription

By Ben Lerner

June 3, 2026

A writer returns to his college town, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor. But after he drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device – a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess.

What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate our memories, and a moving exploration of the relationships that make us who we are.