Literature & Fiction

FROM THE BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF LIE WITH ME

It is the summer of 1916 and, with German Zeppelins on the skyline, the men of Paris are off at war. For Vincent, the sixteen-year-old son of a prestigious family, the tranquillity of the city sits at odds with the salons and soirees he attends. But, after an electrifying encounter with the enigmatic writer, Marcel P, draws Vincent’s desires out into the light, his ever-riskier liaisons with a young solider begin to shape Vincent’s future.

Translated by Frank Wynne

‘A short, bold and original novel which beautifully captures the romance and amorality of gilded youth’ Independent

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An enchanting story, masterfully told, The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is about the profound experience of discovering an unlikely family in an unexpected place – and realizing that family could be yours.

‘I loved it. It is like being wrapped up in a big gay blanket. Simply perfect’ – V. E. Schwab, author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

He expected nothing. But they gave him everything . . .

Linus Baker leads a quiet life. At forty, he has a tiny house with a devious cat and his beloved records for company. And at the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, he’s spent many dull years monitoring their orphanages.

Then one day, Linus is summoned by Extremely Upper Management and given a highly classified assignment. He must travel to an orphanage where six dangerous children reside – including the Antichrist.

At the orphanage, Linus must somehow determine if they could bring about the end of days. But their guardian, the charming and enigmatic Arthur Parnassus, will do anything to protect his wards. And, as Arthur and Linus grow ever closer, Linus must choose: his duty, or his dreams . . .

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune is an uplifting, heart-warming fantasy tale that’s become a New York Times, USA Today and Washington Post bestseller.

‘Likely to cause heart-swelling’ – Washington Post

‘A modern fairy tale . . . It’s a beautiful book’ – Charlaine Harris, bestselling author of Dead Until Dark

‘Touching, tender and truly delightful’ – Gail Carriger, author of Soulless

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THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION

‘A marvel’ Marlon James

Brilliant, heart-breaking and highly original, discover Ocean Vuong’s shattering coming of age novel.

This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family’s struggle to forge a new future.

And it serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog’s life his mother has never known – episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion – all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation.

‘Reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty does hard and important work’ Rebecca Solnit

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Winner of the Booker Prize
Winner of ‘Book of the Year’ and ‘Debut of the Year’ at the British Book Awards
The Million-Copy Bestseller

‘An amazingly intimate, compassionate, gripping portrait of addiction, courage and love.’ – The judges of the Booker Prize
‘Douglas Stuart has written a first novel of rare and lasting beauty.’ – Observer

It is 1981. Glasgow is dying and good families must grift to survive. Agnes Bain has always expected more from life, dreaming of greater things. But Agnes is abandoned by her philandering husband, and as she descends deeper into drink, the children try their best to save her, yet one by one they must abandon her to save themselves.

It is her son Shuggie who holds out hope the longest. Shuggie is different, he is clearly no’ right. But Shuggie believes that if he tries his hardest, he can be normal like the other boys and help his mother escape this hopeless place.

Shuggie Bain lays bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride. For readers of A Little Life and Angela’s Ashes, it is a heartbreaking novel by a brilliant writer with a powerful and important story to tell.

‘A heartbreaking novel’ – The Times
‘Tender and unsentimental . . . The Billy Elliot-ish character of Shuggie . . . leaps off the page.’ – Daily Mail

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***GIVE THE GIFT OF CHRISTMAS EARLY WITH THIS DELICIOUSLY DARK CHRISTMAS MYSTERY FOR FANS OF CLEVER, PUZZLING CRIME. THE PERFECT STOCKING FILLER***

THIS CHRISTMAS, A KILLER TAKES FAMILY GAMES TO A MURDEROUS NEW LEVEL.

On 19th of December, renowned puzzle setter, loner and Christmas sceptic Edie O’Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside, six jigsaw pieces. When fitted together, the pieces show part of a crime scene – blood-spattered black and white tiles and part of an outlined body. Included in the parcel is a message: ‘Four, maybe more, people will be dead by midnight on Christmas Eve, unless you can put all the pieces together and stop me.’ It’s signed, Rest In Pieces.

Edie contacts her nephew, DI Sean Brand-O’Sullivan, and together they work to solve the clues. But when a man is found near death with a jigsaw piece in his hand, Sean fears that Edie might be in danger and shuts her out of the investigation. As the body count rises, however, Edie knows that only she has the knowledge to put together the killer’s murderous puzzle.

Only by fitting all the pieces together will Edie be able to stop a killer – and finally lay her past to rest.

Praise for Alexandra Benedict’s Christmas mysteries:

‘The perfect gift for quizzers and mystery addicts . . .’ Val McDermid
‘Whatever you unwrap for Christmas, you had better hope it’s this book This is 21st-century cosy Christmas crime that doesn’t shy away from the darkness’ Janice Hallett
‘A thrilling journey from start to finish. Highly recommended’ Elly Griffiths
‘It’s wonderful! A page-turning homage to the Golden Age, with a dash of Poirot and a dark, modern heart’ S J Bennett

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‘A gothic fairy tale, sublime in its creepiness’ – Florence Welch

Our Wives Under The Sea is the haunting novel from Julia Armfiled, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep, deep sea.

Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. But It soon becomes clear that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home.

Memories of what they had before – the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers – only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realize that the life that they had might be gone.

Shortlisted for the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize

‘A wonderful novel, deeply romantic and fabulously strange’ – Sarah Waters, author of Ghost Wall

‘Part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller’ – The Times

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THE TIKTOK SENSATION

The darkly funny, spellbinding trip of a novel that EVERYONE is talking about

‘No punches pulled, no hilarities dodged, no meme unmangled. O Bunny you are sooo genius!’ MARGARET ATWOOD

We call them Bunnies because that is what they call each other. Seriously. Bunny.

Samantha Heather Mackey is an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at Warren University. In fact, she is utterly repelled by the rest of her fiction writing cohort – a clique of unbearably twee rich girls who call each other ‘Bunny’.

But then the Bunnies issue her with an invitation and Samantha finds herself inexplicably drawn to their front door, across the threshold, and down their rabbit hole.

Blending sharp satire with fairytale horror, Bunny provides a hilarious look at the dark side of female friendship from one of fiction’s most original voices.

‘The Secret History meets Jennifer’s Body. Brilliant, sharp, weird… I loved it and I couldn’t put it down.’ KRISTEN ROUPENIAN
‘Made me nod and cackle in terrified recognition.’ LENA DUNHAM
‘Hilarious, hallucinogenic freakery.’ DAILY MAIL
‘Cerebral and complusively readable.’ VANITY FAIR

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‘Riveting, heart-wrenching and full of Old Hollywood glamour’ BuzzFeed
‘This wildly addictive journey of a reclusive Hollywood starlet and her tumultuous Tinseltown journey comes with unexpected twists and the most satisfying of drama’ PopSugar

From the author of Daisy Jones & The Six in which a legendary film actress reflects on her relentless rise to the top and the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets the public could never imagine.

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo is a mesmerizing journey through the splendour of old Hollywood into the harsh realities of the present day as two women struggle with what it means and what it costs to face the truth.
 

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‘A fantastically moody, unsettling novel, with a teasing, enigmatic atmosphere entirely its own’ SARAH WATERS
‘Intensely lyrical and powerfully haunting… Sublime storytelling and Gothic fiction at its very best!’ SUSAN STOKES-CHAPMAN
‘A novel about wild, dissident passion, the profound dislocations of grief, and the intoxication of composition’ NAOMI BOOTH
‘A beautiful, hallucinatory dream of a novel’ J.M. MIRO

__________

There is a beast inside her, a monster. It wants to scream, it wants to tear things apart.

1816. Mary, eighteen years old, is staying in a villa on Lake Geneva with her lover Percy Shelley. She is tormented by his infidelities; haunted by the loss of her baby daughter.

Then one evening with friends, as storms rage outside and laudanum stirs their imaginations, Lord Byron challenges everyone to write a ghost story, and something fierce and wild awakens in Mary.

Memories surface of the long, strange summer she once spent with a family in Scotland, where she found herself falling in love with the enigmatic Isabella Baxter. She learned tales of mythical beasts, witches and spirits. And she encountered real monsters – both in the rocky wilds, and far, far closer to home…

Illuminating the past like a flash of lightning, this brilliant reimagining of the birth of Frankenstein takes us into a feverish world of waking dreams-where grief mingles with desire, and the veil between beauty and horror grows thin.

__________

PRAISE FOR FOR MARY

‘Like reading a laudanum dram’ ANNIE GARTHWAITE, author of Cecily
‘Rich, intricate and beguiling, this is a novel of enormous insight, great heart and incredible skill’ NELL STEVENS
‘A novel that tiptoes and whispers, woos and caresses like the darkest of fairytales’ JOANNE BURN, author of The Hemlock Cure
‘A literary creation story as bold, terrifying, and riveting as Frankenstein itself’ LAURIE LICO ALBANESE
‘A lyrical dream of a book that strays into the nightmarish, the gothic and the eerie with an assured elegance’ ELIZABETH LEE, author of Cunning Women
‘Mary reveals the rich inner life of one of the world’s greatest creative imaginations’ Sarah Sheridan
‘Creative confirmation of Shelley’s position as the mother of all goth girls. A moody and evocative reveal of the backstory (behind the backstory) of Frankenstein’ KIRKUS
‘A nuanced, beautifully atmospheric portrayal of a young woman’s intense inner life, foreshadowing Frankenstein’s themes of grief, loneliness, and the desire for love’ BOOKLIST

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Discover The Atlas Paradox, the electric dark academia sequel to viral sensation The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake – a No.1 Sunday Times bestseller. Inside the Alexandrian Society alliances will be tested, hearts will be broken and all must pick a side.

Six magicians were offered the opportunity of a lifetime.
Five are now members of the Society.
And two paths lie before them.

In this thrilling next instalment, the secret society of Alexandrians is unmasked. Its newest recruits realize the institute is capable of raw, world-changing power. It’s also headed by a man with plans to change life as we know it – and these are already under way. But the cost of this knowledge is as high as the price of power, and each initiate must choose which faction to follow. Yet as events gather momentum and dangers multiply, which of their alliances will hold? Can friendships hold true and are enemies quite what they seem?

Reader reviews for The Atlas Paradox:

‘Olivie Blake has done it again’

‘More of everything I loved from the first book’

‘I was completely shocked. NOW I NEED BOOK 3’

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**PRE-ORDER NOW**

The Atlas Complex marks the much-anticipated, heart-shattering conclusion in Olivie Blake’s trilogy that began with the internationally bestselling dark academic phenomenon, The Atlas Six.

Only the extraordinary are chosen. Only the cunning survive.

An explosive return to the library leaves the six Alexandrians vulnerable to the lethal terms of their recruitment.

Old alliances quickly fracture as the initiates take opposing strategies as to how to deal with the deadly bargain they have so far failed to uphold. Those who remain with the archives wrestle with the ethics of their astronomical abilities, while elsewhere, an unlikely pair from the Society cohort partner to influence politics on a global stage.

And still the outside world mobilizes to destroy them, while the Caretaker himself, Atlas Blakely, may yet succeed with a plan foreseen to have world-ending stakes. It’s a race to survive as the six Society recruits are faced with the question of what they’re willing to betray for limitless power―and who will be destroyed along the way.

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