Agatha Christie by Lucy Worsley, £10.99 paperback
Why did Agatha Christie spend her career pretending that she was ‘just’ an ordinary housewife, when clearly she wasn’t? As Lucy Worsley says, ‘She was thrillingly, scintillatingly modern’. She went surfing in Hawaii, she loved fast cars, and she was intrigued by the new science of psychology, which helped her through devastating mental illness. So why – despite all the evidence to the contrary – did Agatha present herself as a retiring Edwardian lady of leisure? She was born in 1890 into a world which had its own rules about what women could and couldn’t do.
Lucy Worsley’s biography is not just of an internationally renowned bestselling writer, it’s also the story of a person who, despite the obstacles of class and gender, became an astonishingly successful working woman. With access to personal letters and papers that have rarely been seen, Lucy Worsley’s biography is both authoritative and entertaining and makes us realise what an extraordinary pioneer Agatha Christie was – truly a woman who wrote the twentieth century.
Bel Canto by Ann Patchett, £9.99 paperback
Winner of The Women’s Prize for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. The poignant – and at times very funny – novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth. Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country’s vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera’s most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening – until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.
Swimming Lessons by Claire Fuller, £9.99 paperback
Twelve years ago Flora’s mother Ingrid disappeared, vanishing from a Dorset beach, presumed drowned. Everyone – especially her sister and father Gil – believes Ingrid is long dead. Everyone, except Flora. So when she hears that her father has had an accident, and is insisting that he saw his wife, Floral rushes home. But the answers she seeks are nowhere to be found – only further questions. Who did Flora’s father actually see that day? Why is his house filled with towering piles of books? And might the letters hidden within them hold the truth behind her parents’ extraordinary marriage? A compelling portrait of a complicated, unconventional marriage, and of flawed humanity, with all its secrets, silences and deceits.
Clear by Carys Davies, £12.99 hardback
1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Unaware of the stranger’s intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile on the mainland, John’s wife Mary anxiously awaits news of his mission. Against the rugged backdrop of this faraway spot beyond Shetland, Carys Davies’s intimate drama unfolds with tension and tenderness: a touching and crystalline study of ordinary people buffeted by history and a powerful exploration of the distances and connections between us.
Home Stretch by Graham Norton, £9.99 paperback
It is 1987 and a small Irish community is preparing for a wedding. The day before the ceremony a group of young friends, including bride and groom, drive out to the beach. There is an accident. Three survive, but three are killed. The lives of the families are shattered and the rifts between them are felt throughout the small town. Connor is one of the survivors. But staying among the angry and the mourning is almost as hard as living with the shame of having been the driver. He leaves the only place he knows for another life, taking his secrets with him. Travelling first to Liverpool, then London, he makes a home – of sorts – for himself in New York. The city provides shelter and possibility for the displaced, somewhere Connor can forget his past and forge a new life. But the secrets, the unspoken longings and regrets that have come to haunt those left behind will not be silenced. And before long, Connor will have to confront his past.
The Sportswriter by Richard Ford, £9.99 paperback
It is Easter weekend and we are introduced for the first time to Frank Bascombe. On the surface Frank’s life seems well set: he has a younger girlfriend and a job he adores as a sportswriter. To many men his age, thirty-eight, this would be a cause for optimism, yet Frank feels the pull of longing and the memory of his recent losses – a career has ended,his wife has divorced him, and his elder son has died. In the course of Easter weekend, Frank will lose all the remnants of his familiar life, though he will emerge heroic with spirits aloft.
The Hedgehog Handbook by Sally Coulthard, £9.99 paperback
Hedgehogs, with their quiet determination and bristling, bumbling ways, are one of the most enduring symbols of the countryside and town gardens. The Hedgehog Handbook explores different facets of this enigmatic and much-admired mammal – from its eating and sleeping habits to its literary heritage and how we can help preserve this icon of rural life. Packed with inspirational quotes, entertaining facts, folklore and literary references.
Gliff by Ali Smith, £18.99 hardback DUE OUT 31st October
Once upon a time not very far from now, two children come home to find a line of wet red paint encircling the outside of their house. What does it mean?It’s a truism of our time that it’ll be the next generation who’ll sort out our increasingly toxic world. What would that actually be like?In a state turned hostile, a world of insiders and outsiders, what things of the past can sustain them and what shape can resistance take?And what’s a horse got to do with any of this? Gliff is a novel about how we make meaning and how we are made meaningless. With a nod to the traditions of dystopian fiction, a glance at the Kafkaesque, and a new take on the notion of classic, it’s a moving and electrifying read, a vital and prescient tale of the versatility and variety deep-rooted in language, in nature and in human nature.
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L Sayers, £9.99 paperback
When his sexton finds a corpse in the wrong grave, the rector of Fenchurch St Paul asks Lord Peter Wimsey to find out who the dead man was and how he came to be there. The lore of bell-ringing and a brilliantly-evoked village in the remote fens of East Anglia are the unforgettable background to a story of an old unsolved crime and its violent unravelling twenty years later.
The Lantern of Lost Memories by Sanaka Hiiragi, £14.99 hardback
In a cosy photography studio in the mountains between this world and the next, someone is waking up as if from a dream. A kind man will hand them a hot cup of tea and gently explain that, having reached the end of their life, they have one final task. There is a stack of photos on their lap, one for every day of their life, and now they must choose the pictures that capture their most treasured memories, which will be placed in a beautiful lantern. Once completed, it will be set spinning, and their cherished moments will flash before their eyes, guiding them to another world. But, like our most thumbed-over photographs, our favourite memories become faded with age, so each visitor to the studio has the chance to choose one day to return to and photograph afresh. Each has a treasured story to tell, from the old woman rebuilding a community in Tokyo after a disaster, to the flawed Yakuza man who remembers a time when he was kind, and a strong child who is fighting to survive. Extraordinarily moving and wise, The Lantern of Lost Memories is a beautiful Japanese tale about the people that make us and the moments that change us.