Book of the month

In Burntcoat we meet a celebrated sculptor, looking at her life and immense studio from within the first national lockdown in the UK. Her crucible glows, bringing with it memories of her lover. This studio is where she brought Halit, the last person she saw before all the doors were shut. A presence from another culture, a whisper, a doorway into a new and feverish world. ”An electrifying story of passion, connection and transformation from ’a writer of show-stopping genius’” – Guardian.

A small town in outback Australia wakes to an appalling crime. A local schoolteacher is found taped to a tree and stoned to death. Suspicion instantly falls on the refugees at the new detention centre on Cobb’s northern outskirts. Tensions are high, between whites and the local indigenous community, between immigrants and the townies, and Detective Sergeant George Manolis returns to his childhood hometown to investigate.

One summer can change everything… Ruth and Hannah are sisters. Bonded by love and friendship, they are perplexingly different characters. Hannah is radiant, organised and hard working. Ruth is forever single and totally aimless. Together they are invincible. Every summer they go on a budget holiday together where they bicker, laugh, fight and make up. But this time is different. Something bad happens. And now everything is changed forever. –  This bittersweet love story is about needing someone else as much as they need you. It is an ode to our most powerful bonds, how they build us and break us, and how, when all seems lost, we can find joy in the most unexpected places. A Sunday Times bestseller.

There’s fowl play in Follet Valley! Richard is a middle-aged Englishman who runs a B&B in the fictional Val de Follet in the Loire Valley. Nothing ever happens to Richard, and really that’s the way he likes it. One day, however, one of his older guests disappears, leaving behind a bloody handprint on the wallpaper. Another guest, the enigmatic Valérie, persuades a reluctant Richard to join her in investigating the disappearance. Then things become really serious and someone murders Ava Gardner, one of his beloved hens. The disappearance of a guest is one thing, but you don’t mess with a fellow’s hens! – ’A tricksy whodunnit, and a really, really funny story’. 

Hailed as Shafak’s best work yet, this is the story of two teenagers in Cyprus, one from the Greek and the other from the Turkish side who meet in secret in a taverna where a big fig tree grows. This tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually to their silent departures. It is there when war breaks out and the capital is reduced to rubble. Years later, a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. The tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited, and also to her family history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction! 

”Be twice as good as men and four times as good as white men.” Jia Khan has always lived like this. Successful London lawyer Jia Khan is a long way from the Northern streets she knew as a child, where her father, Akbar Khan, led the Pakistani community and ran the local organised crime syndicate. Often his Jirga rule – the old way – was violent and bloody, but it was always justice of a kind. Now, with her father murdered, Jia must return to take his place. Justice needs to be restored, and Jia is about to discover that justice always comes at a cost.

Perched on a sloping hill, set away from a small town by the sea, the High House has a tide pool and a mill, a vegetable garden, and, most importantly, a barn full of supplies. Caro, Pauly, Sally, and Grandy are safe, so far, from the rising water that threatens to destroy the town and that has, perhaps, already destroyed everything else. But for how long?   A searing novel that takes on take on parenthood, sacrifice, love, and survival under the threat of extinction. What can be salvaged at the end of the world?   Costa Award shortlisted!

Set in 1963, our hero is the African-American Korean war-hero Harry Ingram. Tensions are running high during Martin Luther King’s freedom speech, and news photographer Harry risks ending up a victim at every crime scene he photographs. But when an old army buddy of his is being accused of a crime, Harry senses foul play and ends up playing detective and is thrown head-first into the underbelly of LA society in the hope of finding justice for a friend.

Ethan has always been one of the good guys, and for years, nobody has appreciated this fact more than his wife. Until now. Ethan finds himself caught between their regular meetings at his home and the battle to get his livewire daughter Alex to sleep. But the new, stilted rhythm of his life is interrupted when he receives a panicked message. Accusations. Against his business partner. A slew of them. And Ethan is abruptly forced to question everything: his past, his future, his marriage, and what he values most. Unfolding over five turbulent days in 2018, The Smash-Up wrestles shrewdly with some of the biggest questions of our time: What, exactly, does it mean to be a good guy?

What price would you put on a second chance? When Alex Cassidy and Diane Alison meet by chance at a party in Princeton, New Jersey, there are instant sparks. Both are single parents living in wealthy suburbia, independent, highly competent and seemingly settled in their lives. She runs a successful catering business. He's part of a crew that robs banks, casinos and jewellery stores around the world. As Alex prepares for one final, daunting job, he discovers that he's not the only one with secrets - and that both of them are playing for the highest stakes imaginable.