Find your summer reading in Books of the Month for July

Summertime is indeed reading time. If you need to restock your reading pile, we’ll be open every day all summer to help you find your next book.

In fact, we have quite a few great reads in this month’s Books of the Month-pick. Check out the list below, and then check them out at the shop :-)

MODERN FICTION
The End We Start From – Megan Hunter
A story of new motherhood in a terrifying setting: a familiar world made dangerous and unstable, its people forced to become refugees. Startlingly beautiful, The End We Start From is a gripping novel that paints an imagined future as realistic as it is frightening. And yet, though the country is falling apart around them, this family’s world – of new life and new hope – sings with love. (Film rights sold to Benedict Cumberbatch’s production company!)
Hardback 165:-

CLASSICS
The Man Who Loved Children – Christina Stead
’This crazy, gorgeous family novel is one of the great literary achievements of the twentieth century. I carry it in my head the way I carry childhood memories; the scenes are of such precise horror and comedy that I feel I didn't read the book so much as live it’ – Jonathan Franzen.
Our Classics Summer Read – join the reading group in August!
Paperback 165:-

SHORT STORIES
Multitudes – Lucy Caldwell
Multitudes is the beautiful debut story collection from the acclaimed, prize-winning novelist and playwright Lucy Caldwell.

From Belfast to London and back again the eleven stories explore the many facets of growing up – the pain and the heartache, the tenderness and the joy, the fleeting and the formative – or ’the drunkenness of things being various’. Stories of longing and belonging, they culminate with the heart-wrenching and unforgettable title story.
Paperback 130:-

BRITISH CRIME
The Riviera Express – T P Fielden
Murder on the Riviera Express… 
’TP Fielden is a fabulous new voice and his dignified, clever heroine is a compelling new character. This delicious adventure is the first of a series and I can’t wait for the next one.” – Daily Mail
Paperback 130:-

TOUGH CRIME
The Innocents – Ace Atkins
The extraordinary new novel in the New York Times-bestselling author’s acclaimed series about the real Deep South – ’a joy ride into the heart of darkness’ (Washington Post)
Paperback 150:-

SCIENCE FICTION
United States of Japan – Peter Tieryas
Decades ago, Japan won the Second World War. Americans worship their infallible Emperor, and nobody believes that Japan’s conduct in the war was anything but exemplary. Nobody, that is, except the George Washingtons – a shadowy group of rebels fighting for freedom. 

United States of Japan is a powerful book, unsettling at times surreal and hypnotic. There s a bit of Philip K. Dick in here, and Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, but Peter Tieryas is his own voice, a talented author, somebody to keep an eye on for sure.
Paperback 150:-

FANTASY
Queen of Blood – Sarah Beth Durst
Everything has a spirit: the willow tree with leaves that kiss the pond, the stream that feeds the river, the wind that exhales fresh snow… But the spirits that reside within this land want to rid it of all humans.

”Mythopoeic Award-winner Durst (Chasing Power) launches her Queens of Renthia series with a stellar and imaginative tale...In addition to a solid cast of characters and great political intrigue, Durst delivers some fascinating worldbuilding, and the spirits are malevolent, cunning, wild, and mysterious antagonists.” (Publishers Weekly)
Paperback 99:-

URBAN FANTASY/PARANORMAL
Poison City – Paul Crilley
’A sarcastic, demon-fighting cop with magic dragon tattoos and an alcoholic talking dog as a sidekick... Poison City is everything you never knew you wanted in a book.” – Krysten Ritter
Paperback 150:-

TEEN/YOUNG ADULT
One of Us is Lying – Karen McManus
One of Us Is Lying is the story of what happens when five strangers walk into detention and only four walk out alive. Everyone is a suspect, and everyone has something to hide. For fans of Gossip Girl and Pretty Little Liars, this is the perfect high school thriller.
Paperback 130:-

NON-FICTION (Biography)
A Life Discarded: 148 Diaries Found in a Skip –  Alexander Masters
Unique, transgressive and as funny as its subject, A Life Discarded has all the suspense of a murder mystery. Written with his characteristic warmth, respect and humour, Masters asks you to join him in celebrating an unknown and important life left on the scrap heap.

A Life Discarded is a biographical detective story. In 2001, 148 tattered and mould-covered notebooks were discovered lying among broken bricks in a skip on a building site in Cambridge. Tens of thousands of pages were filled to the edges with urgent handwriting

‘If Masters investigations feel like a Paul Auster detective story, there are also traces of Alan Bennet and Barbara Pym seeping through the Cambridge hedges … It’s not life affirming – Masters isn’t slick or pompous enough for that – but life-probing, pushing at the boundaries of empathy and understanding.’ – The Sunday Times
Paperback 150:-