Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket – Hilma Wolitzer, £9.99 paperback
In this collection of short stories, Hilma Wolitzer invites us inside the private world of domestic bliss, seen mostly through the lens of Paulie and Howard’s gloriously ordinary marriage. From hasty weddings to meddlesome neighbours, ex-wives who just won’t leave, to sleepless nights spent worrying about unanswered chainmail, Wolitzer captures the tensions, contradictions and unexpected detours of daily life with wit, candour and an acutely observant eye. Including stories first published in magazines in the 1960s and 1970s – alongside new writing from Wolitzer, now in her nineties – Today a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket reintroduces a beloved writer to be embraced by a new generation of readers.
Crook O’Lune – ECR Lorac, £9.99 paperback
It all began up at High Gimmerdale with the sheep-stealing, a hateful act in the shepherding lands around the bend in the Lune river – the Crook o’ Lune. Then came the fire at Aikengill house and with the leaping of the flames, death, disorder and dangerous gossip came to the quiet moorlands. Visiting his friends, the Hoggetts, while searching for some farmland to buy up ahead of his retirement, Chief Inspector Robert Macdonald’s trip becomes a busman’s holiday when he is drawn to investigate the deadly blaze and the deep-rooted motives behind the rising spate of crimes. Renowned for its authentic characters and settings based partly on the author’s own experiences of life in the Lune valley, E.C.R. Lorac’s classic rural mystery returns to print for the first time since 1953.
A Town Called Solace – Mary Lawson, £9.99 paperback
A second read of this wonderful book for us, and it’s even better this time around. Set in the frozen north of Canada in 1972, this is a novel of painful histories and the moments in life when we can change for the better. Clara’s rebellious older sister is missing. Grief-stricken and bewildered, she yearns to uncover the truth about what happened. Liam, newly divorced and newly unemployed, moves into the house next door and within hours gets a visit from the police. Elizabeth is thinking about a crime committed thirty years ago, one that had tragic consequences for two families. She desperately wants to make amends before she dies.
A Trick of the Light – Louise Penny, £8.99 paperback
There is more to solving a crime than following the clues. Welcome to Chief Inspector Gamache’s world of facts and feelings. In the green depths of spring, morning breaks on a woman splayed in a bed of flowers – her eyes wide, her neck broken. Her death is a mystery; so is the woman herself. But as Chief Inspector Armand Gamache and his team peer into the dark corners of the victim’s past, they expose a secret that rots at the very heart of their community – a secret that will implicate someone they’ve trusted for years. And as Gamache knows too well, in the flickering shadows of death, the truth may be just a trick of the light.
Oh William! – Elizabeth Strout, £8.99 paperback
Strout returns to her beloved heroine, Lucy Barton, in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life. Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband – and longtime, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership. Oh William! captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way people live and love, against all odds. At the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again offers a profound, lasting reflection on the mystery of existence.