Book of the month

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.

Two young people meet at a pub in South East London. Both are Black British, both won scholarships to private schools where they struggled to belong, both are now artists trying to make their mark in a city that by turns celebrates and rejects them. Winner of the 2021 Costa Book Award Best First Novel.   

In the traditions of two great but very different British writers, Agatha Christie and P.G. Wodehouse, Waugh's hilarious and entirely original twist on the country house murder mystery comes complete with stiff upper lips, even stiffer drinks, and any stiffs that might embarrass the family getting smartly brushed under the carpet…  Longlisted for the Comedy Women In Print Award.

A gripping story of love and duty set in San Francisco's Chinatown during the 1950s. Seventeen-year-old Lily Hu can't remember exactly when the question took root, but the answer was in full bloom the moment she and Kathleen Miller walked under the flashing neon sign of a lesbian bar called the Telegraph Club.   America in 1954 is not a safe place for two girls to fall in love, especially not in Chinatown… A TikTok sensation.

Do you like women who don’t take any sh*t? Then this book is definitely for you. Think Villanelle – but she’s on your side. Nikki Griffin, our bookseller-by-day, badass PI-by-night heroine, is back…