Something new!
We'd like to make sure that you get the best offers on the some of the best books published every month. So here are our February titles...
Just let us know which you'd like and we can pop them to one side for collection, deliver or gift wrap and post.
Susan and John Carter are crazy about each other and life is perfect but for one thing - they are on the brink of financial disaster. Surely being a surrogate mother to another man's child won't harm such a strong relationship? Especially when the mysterious Mr Sarotzini is offering to save their home and business - everything they've worked for.
What seems to be a perfect solution begins to feel like an impossible situation. Susan's pregnancy is disturbingly painful but no-one will tell her why. It becomes apparent that Sarotzini wields immense power and Susan begins to doubt everything she knows. As she realises the terrifying origin of the dark forces Sarotzini controls she is in fear for herself and John but most of all for her unborn baby ...
SHORTLISTED FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
An extraordinary story of love and hope from the bestselling, Man Booker-shortlisted author of The Reluctant Fundamentalist
This is Nadia. She is fiercely independent with an excellent sense of humour and a love of smoking alone on her balcony late at night.
This is Saeed. He is sweet and shy and kind to strangers. He also has a balcony but he uses his for star-gazing.
This is their story: a love story, but also a story about how we live now and how we might live tomorrow. Saeed and Nadia are falling in love, and their city is falling apart. Here is a world in crisis and two human beings travelling through it.
Exit West is a heartfelt and radical act of hope - a novel to restore your faith in humanity and in the power of imagination.
Bursting with imagination, THE TWELVE LIVES OF SAMUEL HAWLEY by Hannah Tinti has been described as 'One part Quentin Tarantino, one part Scheherazade' (Ann Patchett) and will appeal to fans of the Coen Brothers' True Grit or Emma Cline's The Girls.
Hero. Villain. Father...
After years spent living on the run, Samuel Hawley and his daughter Loo finally settle in Olympus, Massachusetts. Hawley takes up fishing, while Loo struggles with friendship and first love, and tries to piece together the puzzle surrounding her mother's death. Haunting them both are the twelve scars Hawley carries on his body, from twelve bullets in his criminal past - a past that is about to spill over into Loo's present, with explosive consequences.
From the award-winning author of If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things. Reservoir 13 tells the story of many lives haunted by one family's loss.
Midwinter in the early years of this century. A teenage girl on holiday has gone missing in the hills at the heart of England. The villagers are called up to join the search, fanning out across the moors as the police set up roadblocks and a crowd of news reporters descends on their usually quiet home.
Meanwhile, there is work that must still be done: cows milked, fences repaired, stone cut, pints poured, beds made, sermons written, a pantomime rehearsed.
The search for the missing girl goes on, but so does everyday life. As it must.
An extraordinary novel of cumulative power and grace, Reservoir 13 explores the rhythms of the natural world and the repeated human gift for violence, unfolding over thirteen years as the aftershocks of a stranger’s tragedy refuse to subside.
Jane Grey was Queen of England for nine days. Using her position as cousin to the deceased king, her father and his conspirators put her on the throne ahead of the king’s half-sister Mary, who quickly mustered an army, claimed her crown and locked Jane in the Tower. When Jane refused to betray her Protestant faith, Mary sent her to the executioner’s block. There Jane turned her father’s greedy, failed grab for power into her own brave and tragic martyrdom.
‘Learn you to die’ is the advice that Jane gives in a letter to her younger sister Katherine, who has no intention of dying. She intends to enjoy her beauty and her youth and find love. But her lineage makes her a threat to the insecure and infertile Queen Mary and, when Mary dies, to her sister Queen Elizabeth, who will never allow Katherine to marry and produce a potential royal heir before she does. So when Katherine’s secret marriage is revealed by her pregnancy, she too must go to the Tower.
‘Farewell, my sister,’ writes Katherine to the youngest Grey sister, Mary. A beautiful dwarf, disregarded by the court, Mary finds it easy to keep secrets, especially her own, while avoiding Elizabeth’s suspicious glare. After watching her sisters defy the queen, Mary is aware of her own perilous position as a possible heir to the throne. But she is determined to command her own destiny and be the last Tudor to risk her life in matching wits with her ruthless and unforgiving cousin Elizabeth.
WINNER OF THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE 2017
A STORY OF LOVE AFTER DEATH
'A masterpiece' Zadie Smith
'Extraordinary' Daily Mail
'Breathtaking' Observer
'A tour de force' The Sunday Times
The extraordinary first novel by the bestselling, Folio Prize-winning, National Book Award-shortlisted George Saunders, about Abraham Lincoln and the death of his eleven year old son, Willie, at the dawn of the Civil War
The American Civil War rages while President Lincoln's beloved eleven-year-old son lies gravely ill. In a matter of days, Willie dies and is laid to rest in a Georgetown cemetery. Newspapers report that a grief-stricken Lincoln returns to the crypt several times alone to hold his boy's body.
From this seed of historical truth, George Saunders spins an unforgettable story of familial love and loss that breaks free of realism, entering a thrilling, supernatural domain both hilarious and terrifying. Willie Lincoln finds himself trapped in a transitional realm - called, in Tibetan tradition, the bardo - and as ghosts mingle, squabble, gripe and commiserate, and stony tendrils creep towards the boy, a monumental struggle erupts over young Willie's soul.
Unfolding over a single night, Lincoln in the Bardo is written with George Saunders' inimitable humour, pathos and grace. Here he invents an exhilarating new form, and is confirmed as one of the most important and influential writers of his generation. Deploying a theatrical, kaleidoscopic panoply of voices - living and dead, historical and fictional - Lincoln in the Bardo poses a timeless question: how do we live and love when we know that everything we hold dear must end?
This is a memoir by French bestselling and award-winning author and musician Mathias Malzieu. It focuses on a single year in which he explores his close encounter with death. Insightful, tragic and even often very funny, it is a hugely inspirational read.
In November 2013 Malzieu is diagnosed with a rare and life-threatening blood disease: his bone marrow does not produce enough blood cells, and those that survive are being attacked by the body's natural antibodies as if they were viruses. Highly anaemic and at risk of a cardiac attack or fatal haemorrhaging, Malzieu is whisked into hospital, and spends months in a sterile isolation room. He is kept alive by blood transfusions, while waiting for a bone marrow transplant. When he has the energy for it, he writes in his diary and strums his ukelele.
To read this book is to be in awe of the triumph of the human spirit. As a reader you find yourself marvelling at how we find the mechanisms to cope with tragedy and uncertainty when faced with the reality that we may die. Malzieu's highly active imagination allows him to transcend the limits of his body and its increasing failures through fantasy and escapism. His wonderfully addictive childish wonder with a punk Gothic twist lifts the narrative from being a depressing account to a reading experience that is evocative, poetic and intensely moving.
Malzieu survived thanks to a revolutionary operation involving stem-cell treatment with the blood from an umbilical cord. As he leaves the hospital with not only a different blood group but also a different DNA, he describes himself as the oldest newborn in the world. As Malzieu says himself, 'To have had my life saved has been the most extraordinary adventure I have ever had.'
A celebration of the one-hundred years since British women got the vote, told, in their own voices, by six centenarians: Helena, Olive, Edna, Joyce, Ann and Phyllis – The Century Girls
In 2018 Britain will celebrate the centenary of women getting the vote; during the intervening ten decades the lives of women in this country have been transformed. Told in their own voices, The Century Girls celebrates six centenarians who lived that change: what they saw, how they were treated, who they loved, what they did and where they are now. With stories that are intimately knitted into the history of these islands, The Century Girls is a time-travel adventure featuring society’s oldest, most precious national treasures.
In 1918 the Suffragettes famously blazed the trail for women, this book reveals what came next for girls growing up in twentieth century Great Britain, whether they resided in Scotland, England, Wales or Northern Ireland; whether they were housewives, or in the workplace; and describing their surroundings of the city, the countryside, or coming to the British Isles from the one of the Commonwealth countries. The narrative will travel through the experiences of some key figures who are now themselves well over a hundred years old: Joyce from Cambridge; Ann from Richmond; Edna from Wroughton; Olive from Archway, London; Phyllis from Edinburgh; and finally, Helena from Brecon. Through the prism of their own experiences and memories, it will tell the human story of how women gradually began to build independent lives for themselves in the modern world of post-Great War Britain, by re-telling what their actual day-to-day reality was like, through the decades.
THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER, WITH OVER THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD AROUND THE WORLD
'Is it the world that's busy, or my mind?'
The world moves fast, but that doesn't mean we have to. In this timely guide to mindfulness, Haemin Sunim, a Buddhist monk born in Korea and educated in the United States, offers advice on everything from handling setbacks to dealing with rest and relationships, in a beautiful book combining his teachings with calming full-colour illustrations. Haemin Sunim's simple messages - which he first wrote when he responded to requests for advice on social media - speak directly to the anxieties that have become part of modern life and remind us of the strength and joy that come from slowing down.
Hugely popular in Korea, Haemin Sunim is a Zen meditation teacher whose teachings transcend religion, borders and ages. With insight and compassion drawn from a life full of change, the bestselling monk succeeds at encouraging all of us to notice that when you slow down, the world slows down with you.
Mia Campbell-Richardson, 16, is ballsy, gorgeous and kind of a disaster. Unlike her brilliant sisters, academic Grace (19) and champion swimmer Audrey (13), middle child Mia has no idea what she wants to do with her life and is convinced of her status as the black sheep of the family. Struggling at school and unable to deal with her parents easy acceptance of perfect sister Grace's fall from grace - Mia goes into a tailspin, misguidedly seducing a man in his 40s and putting herself at risk on several occasions by drinking herself into oblivion. It is only the disappearance of her quiet and loving baby sister that is eventually able to bring Mia and Grace back together and help Mia see at last that she doesn't need it all to be about Mia to be happy.
Fantastically Great Women Who Made History is the eagerly anticipated follow up to Kate Pankhurst's hugely successful, Fantastically Great Women Who Changed the World, number one best-selling children's non-fiction title in the UK market in 2017. This beautiful title looks at the stories, accomplishments and adventures of many more brilliant women from throughout history.
Travel through the Underground Railroad with the brave and courageous Harriet Tubman, turn the pages of the hauntingly brilliant Frankenstein with the incredibly talented Mary Shelley and prepare yourself for an unforgettable journey through history with these and many other remarkable women.
Overflowing with vibrant and beautiful illustrations, and wonderfully engaging text, Fantastically Great Women Who Made History is a celebration of just some of the inspirational women who put their mark on the world we live in. Written by the incredibly talented Kate Pankhurst, prepare to be inspired.
Did you know that mammoths and pharaohs walked the earth at the same time? Or that over 30 types of gladiators fought in ancient Rome? This fascinating book is filled with 100 historical facts, bright, infographic-style illustrations, a glossary and index. There are also links to specially selected websites with video clips and more information.
September, 1939. As the Second World War begins, ten-year-old Shirley is sent away on a train with her schoolmates. She doesn’t know where she’s going, or what’s going to happen to her when she gets there. All she has been told is that she’s going on ‘a little holiday’.
Shirley is billeted in the country, with two boys from East End London, Kevin and Archie – and their experiences living in the strange, half-empty Red House, with the mysterious and reclusive Mrs Waverley, will change their lives for ever.
Award-winning, bestselling and beloved author Jacqueline Wilson turns to this period of history for the first time, in this beautiful, moving story of friendship and bravery against the backdrop of the worst conflict the world has ever known.
Welcome to the Midnight Gang! Midnight is the time when all children are fast asleep, except of course for… the Midnight Gang. That is when their adventures are just beginning…
When Tom gets hit on the head by a cricket ball, he finds himself at Lord Funt Hospital, and is greeted by a terrifying-looking porter. Things go from bad to worse when he meets the wicked matron in charge of the children’s ward… But Tom is about to embark on the most thrilling journey of a lifetime!
The Midnight Gang tells an extraordinarily heartwarming and, of course, funny story of five children on a hospital ward – and on a quest for adventure! It is a story of friendship and magic – and of making dreams come true. Readers are set to be utterly spellbound by this heartfelt story that will bring magic to everyone.
A touching, timeless story about love and growing-up from bestselling author Jeanne Willis and rising star Holly Clifton-Brown.
Rory the lion can't sleep without a bedtime story and the little girl never forgets to tell him one. But one day the girl - not so little now - goes away. If Rory tells his own bedtime story will it somehow come true? Will it bring his little girl back?
Jeanne Willis is an award-winning author who has written over 150 books, including The Bog Baby, the Paddington Movie novelisation and Tadpole's Promise.
All mums are brilliant and the mum in this story is no exception. She doesn't wear a cape or fly to earth from outer space, but she runs for the bus so fast it feels like flying, uses her super strength to carry her daughter's boots, coat, bag AND scooter, and can make bumps and bruises better with just a kiss. This mum really does have superpowers!
'There's something very important that I need you to remember. When I say Ooh, you say Aah. Let's try it.'
Ooh the donkey has lost his pants. Readers must help him find them!
In this picture book, young readers help to sell the story by responding to simple verbal or visual cues. This hilarious book is perfect for reading aloud and is fun for the whole family.
