Recent Books

Party Boy

By Breton Dukes

March 4, 2026

Marco is stressed. On one hand, he’s a cook in a progressive city bar, a married father of three, doing all he can to raise his boys right. On the other (slightly burnt) hand, his life is chaos. Every day seems full of cruel and unusual obstacles, from temperamental arancini to a car breakdown at the worst possible time. Painkillers and booze can only do so much to protect him from the fallout of his adolescence – the bullying, the fear, the things that were done to him and the things he did.

Now his fiftieth birthday is approaching, and all the ghosts of his life are invited to the party. It feels like his last chance, though he isn’t sure for what.

Such a Perfect Family

By Nalini Singh

March 3, 2026

Love at first sight, a whirlwind Vegas wedding, a fairy-tale romance.

For seventy-nine days, Tavish Advani has been the happiest man in the world-until his new life turns to ash, his wealthy in-laws’ house going up in a fiery explosion. His badly injured wife lies in a coma, her family all but annihilated.

Tavish thought he left the sins of his Los Angeles life behind, but it’s not so easy to leave behind an investigation into the deaths of several high-profile women-all of whom he professed to love. Tragedy and death follow him no matter where he goes . . . but this time, he knows he’s innocent.

Desperately trying to clear his name as the authorities zero in, he begins his own investigation into the fire-and learns that his wife’s picture-perfect family may have been nothing but a meticulously constructed mirage. The truth is much darker than anything Tavish could’ve imagined . . .

A Long Winter

By Colm Toibin

March 3, 2026

One snowy morning, after arguing with her husband, Miquel’s mother walks out of their home high up in the Pyrenees and does not return. With his younger brother stationed far away on military service and his father cast out by the people of the town, Miquel and his father are left to fend for themselves. Together they will be forced to battle the elements, and their resentment of each other, through the long winter.

Miquel’s desperate searching for his mother is only interrupted when Manolo, an orphaned servant boy from the next village, arrives to help out in the house. As Miquel is forced to confront the reality of his mother’s absence, Manolo, with his silences and longing gaze, offers the promise of new love, and another kind of life.

Some Bright Nowhere

By Ann Packer

March 3, 2026

Eliot and his wife Claire have been happily married for nearly four decades. They’ve raised two children in their sleepy Connecticut town and have weathered the inevitable ups and downs that come with a long marriage. Now, eight years into Claire’s cancer diagnosis it’s time to gather their loved ones and prepare for what comes next.

Through Claire’s illness, Eliot has willingly and lovingly shifted into the role of caregiver, coming to appreciate the new intimacy this creates. But as he focuses on settling into what will be their last weeks together, Claire makes an unexpected request that leaves him reeling.

Ann Packer makes a triumphant return with this beautifully powerful and life-affirming novel. Some Bright Nowhere explores the profound gifts and costs of truly loving someone, and the unexpected feelings we experience as the end of life draws near.

The Art of a Lie

By Laura Shepherd-Robinson

March 3, 2026

London 1749

Hannah Cole’s world shatters following her husband’s brutal murder. Her confectionary shop, the Punchbowl and Pineapple, teeters on the brink of ruin. Just as she uncovers a hidden fortune—money her husband secretly possessed—a new nightmare begins.

Magistrate Henry Fielding, the renowned author, suspects illicit gains. To save her inheritance, her shop, and her very reputation, Hannah must delve into her late husband’s secret life. But as she unearths a labyrinth of lies and deceit, she finds herself entangled in a battle of wits far more dangerous than she could ever have imagined.

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?