Tag: Fiction
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Jacob’s Transition Goals
by Arthur Webber, illustrated by Ang Hui Qing Hardback, £12.99 This is a bright and exciting picture book that tells an important and moving story, aimed at children aged 3 and up. Jacob is a young boy who is trans and loves football. He moves from the girls’ to the boys’ football team, and after…
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Flesh
By David Szalay Paperback, £9.99 This year’s Booker Prize winner! Szalay was up against writers including Ben Markovits, Susan Choi and Katie Kitamura in the running for this year’s prize. Flesh is a novel about a young Hungarian man’s journey into adult life – dealing with masculinity, loneliness, and relationships.
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Almost Life
by Kiran Millwood Hargrave Hardback, £16.99 This wonderful novel begins with Erica, who is about to start university, taking a trip to Paris in the summer of 1978. There she meets Laure, who is a few years older and draws Erica in with her cool demeanour and air of grubbiness. Hargrave lays out the ways…
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The Night of Baba Yaga
by Akira Otani (Translated by Sam Bett) Paperback, £9.99 The Night of Baba Yaga is an adrenalising, cleverly-plotted queer action thriller. It is the most violent, goriest, and yet most heartfelt story I have ever read. Translated and published in English in 2024, it won the 2025 Crime Writers’ Association Dagger for Crime Fiction in Translation.…
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Orange
by Curtis Garner Paperback, £10.99 This is a beautiful book. It’s Garner’s second novel, and it follows Daniel, who has moved to London from Cornwall and is figuring out how to mesh his identity together. The chapters alternate between Daniel’s somewhat pained life as a lonely teenager in Cornwall and his much livelier one as…
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Vigil
by George Saunders Hardback, £18.99 The vigil in question is being held for a wealthy elderly man called K J Boone who is dying in what appears to be the present-day United States. Those coming in and out include people from his past – some from his time as a global leader of an oil…
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The Midnight Library
by Matt Haig Paperback, £9.99 This novel was published in 2020, and is an antidote to the stress caused by life’s inevitable uncertainties. Haig had me thinking about what actually matters, beyond all the specific choices we all make. The Midnight Library follows music shop assistant and cat owner Nora Seed, who has had enough…
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Good Girl
by Aria Aber Paperback, £9.99 A portrait of the artist as a young woman in a Berlin that can’t escape its history: an electric debut novel about the daughter of Afghan refugees and her year of nightclubs, bad romance, and self-discovery.
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Hamnet
by Maggie O’Farrell £10.99, Paperback The untold love story that inspired Shakespeare’s greatest masterpiece. 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. Hamnet tells the powerful story of Agnes and Will, and of the son whose…
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Briefly, a Delicious Life
by Nell Stevens Paperback, £9.99 If I had to condense my review of this book into three words, I would describe it as full of life, which is ironic, as the narrator is a ghost who has been dead for centuries. However, this ghost – Blanca – watches and involves herself in the stories of…
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Heap Earth Upon It
By Chloe Michelle Howarth Hardback, £16.99 Goodness me. This is certainly a book. And it’s definitely not a coincidence that it’s coming out at Halloween. The back of my proof copy says: “A creeping story of sibling rivalry and dangerous obsession”, and I’d say that’s one of the most accurate descriptions of a book I’ve…
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It Might Never Happen
By Emily Slapper Hardback, £16.99 The cover and the first page of this book drew me in because I suspected it would fit into the same niche as Sally Rooney and Naoise Dolan – and having read it, I think it does – but it has something a little different. Slapper’s writing is more visceral,…
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The Woman Dies
by Aoko Matsuda Europa Editions, Paperback, £14.99 What I love about short stories is that they can lightly slip into the crack of everyday hectic-ness. One day, Aoko Matsuda, the author of Where the Wild Ladies Are — witty, uncanny, feminist tales rewriting Japanese folklore, winner of the 2021 World Fantasy Award Best Collection —…
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The Proof of my Innocence
by Jonathan Coe This is the funniest book I’ve read all year. Stuffed with good puns and jokes, it’s also an excellent pastiche of genres including cosy crime, autofiction and ‘dark academia’ (no, I had no idea either – apparently it includes The Secret History). I knew I’d enjoy it when I saw that the…
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My Rice is Best!
By Selina Brown and Maxwell A. Oginni Penguin, Paperback, £7.99 Any books about food immediately draw me in, and this was no exception! Brown’s storytelling and Oginni’s illustrations are bound to start conversations about favourite foods and cooking. Each page is brimming with as much energy as the children in the book, Yinka and Shane,…
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A Language of Limbs
By Dylin Hardcastle Verve Books, Paperback, £10.99 I picked this book up at random based on the image on the cover, which really drew me in with the affection and vulnerability portrayed, and I’m very glad I chose it. Hardcastle weaves together the stories of two very different lives with great skill and emotion, and…
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Butter
By Asako Yuzuki Harpercollins, Paperback, £9.99 11 months ago, the paperback for Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow (by Gabrielle Zevin) came out and I spent the summer selling it. My first thought was that it was probably overhyped, but I was intrigued and caved when a friend lent me a copy in early autumn. I…
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All Fours
By Miranda July Canongate Books, Paperback, £9.99 “I’d whipped myself into a froth of longing — or worked, created fictions…. Was there any actual enchantment or was it all just survival, ways to muddle through?” I’m jealous of you if you are yet to read Miranda July’s All Fours, now out in paperback. It has…
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