Visitation by Carolyn Gillespie

About the book: How can you believe your own eyes when nothing feels real anymore?

It is 1983 Dundee, Scotland. Smart, lonely and raging with grief, Ella is done trying to fit in. 

Caught up in the post-punk scene and on the verge of going off the rails, she is packed off to St Cecilia's, a convent boarding school to keep her out of harm's way. 

But when her new classmates claim to have been visited by the Virgin Mary, Ella is drawn into a far darker world of chaos.

And who can tell what is fake and what is real?

From the immersive and beautifully rendered 80s setting to the timeless themes of belonging and identity, Visitation (2025) is a captivating exploration of loss, longing and difference.

About the author: Born and raised in Scotland, Carolyn Gillespie now lives and writes in the South of England. Winner of the Wells Festival of Literature Open Poetry Prize, she has written a collection of poems for children and is currently working on a middle grade novel. Her work has appeared in Molecule Tiny Lit Mag, The Crank, Oddity magazine, Coin Operated Press's Poetry zine and Scotland Outdoors. Shortlisted for the Soutar and Fish prizes. Carolyn was a panellist at the Guildford new Writers Festival where she read an extract from Pilgrim. She runs creative writing workshops in schools. Married, with three grown-up children, Carolyn (Kari) is hooked on long-distance walking. When she is not off a trek with the Sturdy Girls, she is fighting a losing battle to gain control of her unruly garden and Bernard, her rumbunctious pup.

Rating: 5/5

The Curious Case Of Mike Lynch: The Improbable Life & Death Of A Tech Billionaire by Katie Prescott

About the book: A maverick outsider. An improbable life. An even more improbable death. Discover the real story of Mike Lynch, Britain’s enigmatic billionaire.

On the morning of 19 August 2024, the Bayesian yacht tragically sank off the coast of Sicily, taking with it the lives of Mike Lynch, his daughter and five others. Hours earlier, Lynch’s associate and co-defendant in one of the biggest fraud cases in Silicon Valley history, Stephen Chamberlain, was hit by a car in Cambridge and killed.

The odds of these two deaths occurring together were estimated at four in one billion.

Drawing on extensive research and exclusive access to key sources, award-winning Times journalist Katie Prescott forensically explores the life and death of this elusive maverick. Prescott guides us from Lynch’s humble beginnings, through his meteoric rise to CEO of Autonomy, and beyond to a vicious legal battle lasting more than a decade following the 2011 sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for more than £11 billion. A truly brilliant feat of investigative reporting, this is a tale where nothing is quite as it appears.

The Curious Case Of Mike Lynch: The Improbable Life & Death Of A Tech Billionaire (2025) is named one of the Times and Sunday Times 'Best Books of 2025'.

About the author: Katie Prescott is technology business editor at The Times and a weekly columnist for the newspaper’s award-winning business section. A regular on Times Radio and The Times’ daily podcast The Story, she is a familiar voice to millions of listeners after a decade reporting for the BBC and presenting the business news on Radio 4’s Today. She is the current host of The Times Tech Podcast, and was the winner of ‘Tech Commentator of the Year’ at the UK Tech Awards.

A Gift Before Dying by Malcolm Kempt

About the book: AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD, CAN JUSTICE STILL BE FOUND?

After a botched high-profile murder investigation, Corporal Elderick Cole is exiled to the remote, rugged landscape of Nunavut, a vast territory in the Arctic Circle known for its untamed beauty, frigid temperatures, and endless winter nights. 

With his family having severed all ties, Cole waits out the result of a civil lawsuit alone - the wrong verdict could end what is left of his flailing career.

His bleak existence takes a sinister turn when he discovers the hanging body of Pitseolala, a troubled Inuit girl whom he had sworn to protect. 

Her death dredges up demons he thought he had buried along with the scars of a fractured marriage and the aching divide between him and his estranged daughter.

As Cole’s life unravels - and with it, the fragile thread of his investigation, he turns to Pitseolala’s younger brother, Maliktu, a fellow outsider. 

It is then that Cole uncovers what binds them - a singular mission to find her killer.

Against fierce backlash, Cole’s overriding desire to redeem just one aspect of his otherwise failed life becomes an obsession - and he is willing to break every rule in his unyielding pursuit of justice and the smallest shred of redemption.

A Gift Before Dying (2026) is Kempt's debut novel. 

About the author: Malcolm Kempt worked as a criminal lawyer in the remote Arctic for seventeen years before leaving to write full-time. He won the Percy Janes Award for Best Unpublished Novel in 2023. He now lives on the island of Newfoundland.

Rating: 5/5

Moderation by Elaine Castillo

About the book: Moderation is a bold and inventive novel about real romance in the virtual workplace—​bringing Castillo’s trademark wit and sharp cultural criticism to an irresistible story about the possible future of love.

Girlie Delmundo is the greatest content moderator in the world, and despite the setbacks of financial crises, climate catastrophe, and a global pandemic, she is going places: she is getting a promotion. 

Now thanks to her parent company Paragon’s purchase of Fairground—the world’s preeminent virtual reality content provider—she is on the way to becoming an elite VR moderator, playing in the big leagues and, if her enthusiastic bosses are to be believed, moderating the next stage of human interaction. 

Despite the isolation that virtual reality requires from colleagues, friends, and family, the unbelievable perks of her new job mean she can solve a lot of her family’s problems with money and mobility. 

She does not have to think about the childhood home they lost back in the Bay Area, or history at all—she can just pay any debts that come due. 

But when she meets William Cheung, Playground’s wry, reticent co-founder (now Chief Product Officer) and slowly unearths some of his secrets, and finds herself somehow falling in love, she will learn that history might be impossible to moderate and the future utterly impossible to control.

Moderation (2025) is named a Best Book of 2025 by The New Yorker, TIME, Slate, and Kirkus Reviews.

About the author: Elaine Castillo, named one of “30 of the Planet’s Most Exciting Young People” by the Financial Times, was born and raised in the Bay Area. Her debut novel, America Is Not the Heart, was a finalist for numerous prizes including the Elle Big Book Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize and was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, Real Simple, Lit Hub, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Public Library.

Rating: 4/5

Running My Own Airbnb by Angela Jackson

About the book: Ever wondered what it would be like to run your own Airbnb business?

Or maybe you are already running a successful short-term let business and fancy some light reading about someone else's tentative first steps experience?

If this is you, then this book will appeal.

It is written with a light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek perspective.

Running My Own Airbnb: A Light-Hearted Diary of a 60-Something's Entrepreneurial Journey (2026) is an entertaining diary of a 60-something's approach to entrepreneurship which chronicles an 18-month journey from viewing a potential property through to completing the first 12 months as a host.

This is not a "how to do it book". There is plenty of those on the market.

This book merely highlights the (many) ups and downs of buying a property, setting it up as an Airbnb, navigating the Online Travel Agency platforms, dealing with guests and learning to be a housekeeper extraordinaire.

"If you are looking for a book to give you the 'instant formula' for running your holiday let successfully, then don't buy this book. For those already running your own Airbnb prosperously, you will know how hard but rewarding it can be. For those thinking of taking a leap into the unknown world of short-term holiday letting, read my light-hearted approach to running my first year. I hope you find my book entertaining, useful and inspiring. If I can do it, so can you." - Angela Jackson

Running My Own Airbnb: A Light-Hearted Diary of a 60-Something's Entrepreneurial Journey is available in both paperback and e-book formats on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

May We Feed The King by Rebecca Perry

About the book: She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. 

But in the lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the edges of her life begin to blur.

He is a reluctant ruler with no hunger for power, rushed to the throne after the untimely deaths of his older brothers. But it is not long before whispers begin to fly around the court. And with the growing belief that the King is not fit for the throne comes the idea that another might rule in his stead.

May We Feed the King (2026) dances between the lives of a historical subject who risks the future of his kingdom and a woman who turns to the past to hide from her present. Laced with desire and longing, it is a playful, stirring meditation on history and storytelling: on what makes a King 'Great', and a life meaningful.

May We Feed the King is an Observer Best Debut Novelist 2026.

You can join Rebecca Perry for an evening of conversation to celebrate the release of her brilliant new novel May We Feed The King on Wednesday 11 February 2026 at Waterstones, King's Road, SW3 3NR. General Admission: £10; Book & Ticket: £20 can be purchased on the Waterstones website under Events.

About the author: Rebecca Perry was born in London in 1986. She graduated from the Centre of New Writing at The University of Manchester in 2008 with a master’s degree in Creative Writing and now lives and works back in London. Rebecca has had work published in Iota, Smiths Knoll, The Manchester Review and The Rialto. She placed third in the 2010 Plough Prize, and was Highly Commended in the 2011 Bridport Prize. Rebecca has also contributed to This Line is Not for Turning: An Anthology of Contemporary British Prose Poetry. 

Perry is the author of two full-length poetry collections - Beauty/Beauty and Stone Fruit - both published by Bloodaxe Books (2015, 2021), as well as four pamphlets. Her poetry has been shortlisted for awards including the TS Eliot Prize and her first collection won the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize. Her first work of creative non-fiction - On Trampolining - was published by Makina Books in 2023.

Rating: 5/5

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell

About the book: Discover the tragically beautiful world of So Long, See You Tomorrow, a quietly devastating masterpiece of human frailty and resilience

Away from the quiet farmlands of Illinois, two lonely teenagers – bound by the burden of their home lives – forge a delicate friendship. 

But when jealousy ignites in one of their families, it leads to unthinkable tragedy, and severs the two boys' bond forever.

Fifty years later, haunted by the past, the narrator seeks to piece together those harrowing events and find redemption for a lifetime of regret. 

So Long, See You Tomorrow is a haunting exploration of memory, loss, and the enduring quest for forgiveness.

So Long, See You Tomorrow (2025), originally published 1979, was shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2025 and was a finalist for the 1981 Pulitzer Prize. The novel is based on fact and has been described as an "autobiographical metafiction.

About the author: William Maxwell was born in 1908 in Lincoln, Illinois. He studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, and after earning a master’s at Harvard, returned there to teach freshman composition before turning to writing. He published six novels, three collections of short fiction, an autobiographical memoir, a collection of literary essays and reviews, and a book for children. For 40 years, he was a fiction editor at The New Yorker. From 1969 to 1972 he was president of the National Institute of Arts and Letters. He received the Brandeis Creative Arts Award Medal and, for So Long, See You Tomorrow, the National Book Award and the Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died in 2000.

Rating: 5/5

Jess And Norma by Jessica Asquith and Norma Burton

About the book: Hi! I'm Jess, and if you follow us on social media, you’ll already know my Nan, Norma. We’ve had so much fun writing this book together.

As well as plenty of personal stories we’ve never shared before – about our childhoods, our relationships and the moments that have shaped our lives together – this book is filled with Norma’s brilliant one-liners and hilarious views on the world. You'll hear her thoughts on a huge range of topics, including me (‘a tiresome little monkey’), my partner Jake (‘Somebody must be paying him’), sex and dating (‘Can’t we get through a blurb without you bringing the tone down?’), self care (‘Astral cream, you can’t beat it’) and more.

This book, Jess and Norma: A lifetime of laughter and our unbreakable bond (2026) is for everyone who has laughed, cried and found comfort in our videos. It's been a joy to write it together. With it, we promise to bring a smile to your face and warmth to your heart.

With love,

Jess and Norma xx

About the authors: Jessica Asquith graduated with a first from Sheffield Hallam University in 2020. She supported adults in the local community as a social worker until she became her grandmother Norma's full-time carer in 2023. In 2022, Jess started documenting her life with Norma on social media; the heartwarming content they share has inspired millions around the world.

Norma Burton was born in Nottinghamshire in 1934 and grew up in war time Britain. She trained as a telephonist and worked at the General Post Office exchange in Retford until she was married in 1962. From the early 1970s, Norma worked as dinner lady where she remained for 20 years. She planned to have a long retirement, day-tripping with her husband Michael, until her granddaughter Jessica arrived in 1996 and shattered the peace.

Irish Monks

The Year I Lay My Head In Water by Laura Hall

About the book: Laying your head in water is what you do when you’re having a bad day. The water is where you go when you need time to think. It’s where you go when you reach a crossroads in your life.

Living in Copenhagen had been a dream for Laura Hall and it was working out - until it wasn’t. She discovered that the trials of life will follow you anywhere and felt herself disintegrating into stress and burn out. She was unmoored and unsure of how to find her place in the world.

What followed was a year swimming the cold seas of Scandinavia in search of answers and meaning. She swam in iceberg-filled seas in Greenland, experienced Viking spas in Iceland and visited beaches and piers all over Norway, Denmark and Sweden. 

During this year of discovery, Laura met other people doing the same thing and swapped notes, discovering ways to use the water to strengthen a bond with nature and get back to a more human way of life.

The Year I Lay My Head in Water (2026) is a love letter to the sea and the people of Scandinavia, this book is also a clarion call for anybody stuck in a rut who needs to rekindle their lust for life. It’s time to reconnect with the natural world. It’s time to lay your head in the water.

About the author: Laura Hall is an award-winning author, travel writer and journalist based in Copenhagen. She has written for outlets including The Sunday Times, BBC Travel, the Guardian, the Independent and Lonely Planet. Published on 8 January 2026, The Year I Lay My Head in Water is her first memoir.

Always Home, Always Homesick by Hannah Kent

About the book: From the bestselling author of Burial Rites comes an inspirational memoir about Hannah Kent's travels in Iceland, an extraordinary country that has forged a nation of storytellers.

When she was seventeen years old, Hannah Kent travelled to Iceland from Australia. She had never seen snow before, did not speak a word of Icelandic. 

All she knew was that she wanted to have an experience – to soak up something of the world.

Soon she found herself isolated in a remote part of Iceland in a dark winter. It was a gruelling experience, but she quickly fell in love with the country: with its brutally beautiful landscapes and with its people. 

On returning home, with images of Iceland's towering glaciers and windswept tundras in her dreams, Hannah began to write. 

Now, as a mother and a wife, she looks back to that extraordinary year in Iceland in Always Home, Always Homesick (2025).

About the author: Hannah Kent was born in Adelaide in 1985. She is the co-founder and publishing director of Australian literary journal Kill Your Darlings. In 2011 she won the inaugural Writing Australia Unpublished Manuscript Award. She is the author of Burial Rites (2024), The Good People (2017) and Devotion (2023).

Holy Boy by Lee Heejoo

About the book: One idol.

Four fans.

Worship’s never been bloodier.

Yosep is a K-pop idol with millions of adoring fans. But for four of them, a poster on the wall just won't cut it. They have a plan - a perfect, foolproof plan - to get their idol all to themselves.

Kidnapping Yosep seemed like the ultimate act of love. But inside a secluded mansion, plagued by paranoia and with their grip on reality slowly loosening, the women use increasingly disturbing strategies to keep Yosep in their possession. As their angel's halo slips and their perfect plan unravels, the women must fight not only to keep him, but to keep their secret buried - at all costs.

More than a little unhinged, Holy Boy is an exhilarating descent into the dark side of devotion.

Holy Boy (2026) will be released on 5 February 2026. 

It is translated from the Korean by Joheun Lee.

About the author: Lee Heejoo started her writing career winning the Munhakdongne University Novel Award with her novel Hwansangtong in 2016. She is also the author of the Love World series, the novel Holy Boy, and the short story “Mayumi”.

About the translator: Joheun Lee (Jo) is a literary translator from Korea who has been working as a Korean-to-English freelance translator for several commercial projects. With roots in K-pop fandom and a love of subcultures, she is especially drawn to stories of desire, relationships, and identity by women and queer writers. A UX Designer by day, Jo now lives with her partner and four cats in Shanghai, China.

This House Of Grief by Helen Garner

About the book: On the evening of Father’s Day, 2005, separated husband, Robert Farquharson, was driving his three young sons back to their mom’s house when the car veered off the road and plunged into a dam. 

Farquharson survived the crash, but his boys drowned. 

Was this a tragic accident, or an act of revenge? 

The court case that followed became a national obsession - a macabre parade of witnesses, family members, and the defendant himself, each forced to relive the unthinkable for an audience of millions.

In This House of Grief (originally published in 2014) (2024), celebrated writer Helen Garner tells the definitive and deeply absorbing story of it all, from crash to final verdict. Through a panoply of perspectives, including her own as a member of the public, Garner captures the exacting procedure and brutal spectacle of Australia’s criminal justice system. The result is a richly textured portrait of a man and his broken life, of a community wracked by tragedy, and of the long and torturous road to closure.

Considered a literary institution in Australia, Helen Garner’s incisive nonfiction evokes the keen eye of the New Journalists. Brisk, candid, and never dismissive of its flawed subjects, This House of Grief is a masterwork of literary journalism and a true crime classic, which examines just what we are capable of and how fiercely we hide it from ourselves.

This House of Grief is on Dua Lipa’s Book Club Pick for August 2025, The New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and one of the Guardian‘s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century.

About the author: Helen Garner was born in Geelong, Australia, in 1942. She worked as a high school teacher, then as a freelance journalist. Since 1977, she has published novels, stories, screenplays and works of non-fiction. She is the winner of the 2006 inaugural Melbourne Prize for Literature, the 2016 Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for Non-fiction, the 2019 Australia Council Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and the 2023 Australian Society of Authors Medal. Her books include This House of Grief, Monkey Grip and The Children’s Bach.

Truck It! by Bobby Bolton

About the book: What do you do when you have lost everything? You bet it all on a mad idea.

After a broken heart and a bankrupt business left him at rock bottom, Bobby Bolton made a drunken promise in a Wigan pub: he was going to drive to Australia in a converted truck with his dog, Red.

He thought it would be a story of one man and his dog. 

How wrong he was.

Just weeks into his journey, a chance encounter with a beautiful hiker named Marie changed everything. After only two dates, she bravely joined him on the adventure of a lifetime, and their epic love story began.

But their new life on the road was forged in the face of constant danger:

- Bribing corrupt Russian police

- Surviving a mountain track collapse in Italy

- Being interrogated at a Taliban checkpoint

- Rescuing his new girlfriend from a 200-metre fall down a cliff face

Action-packed, hilarious, and full of Northern charm, Truck It! The Drive Around the World that Saved my Life (2025) is the inspirational true story of what happens when you leave it all behind and find love, adventure, and a reason to live again.

Truck It! The Drive Around the World that Saved my Life is a Sunday Times bestseller at No 5, as of 29 July 2025.

About the author: Bobby Bolton grew up in Wigan, a town in Greater Manchester, UK, before moving to London to start his career. By twenty-five, he had quit the 9 to 5 to pursue a dream he had nurtured since a teenager – to run his own business. With a passion for building, and a degree from Loughborough University and a few years’ experience with a property developer, he felt ready to take on the world and the challenges that lay ahead. Little did he know that before he was thirty, his heart would be broken, he would be homeless and near bankrupt. To turn his life around Bobby set out on a crazy adventure, selling all his possessions to buy a truck and drive from his home town of Wigan all the way to Australia. He documents the journey on Instagram as One.Life.Truck.It and now has almost 500,000 followers. Truck It! is Bobby's first memoir of his travels.

Offline Reading Books

The Brain At Rest by Dr Joseph Jebelli

About the book: We are constantly told to make the most of our time. Stop procrastinating. Optimise. To be happy, creative and successful requires discipline and focus. The most important thing is to be efficient with every precious hour. 

But what if all that advice was wrong, and letting the brain rest, and the mind wander, could improve our lives?

Because when we let our brains rest, and our minds wander, something magical happens: the brain’s "default network" switches on, and suddenly we are able to think in completely new ways - be more content, less stressed, and actually more productive. 

Dr Joseph Jebelli proves this surprising and fascinating point in The Brain at Rest: Why Doing Nothing can Change Your Life (2025), blending science and personal stories with practical tips about using the brain’s "default network," which turns itself on when we turn off the constant need to always do and achieve. 

About the author: Dr Joseph Jebelli received a PhD in neuroscience from University College London, then worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Washington. He has written two books, How the Mind Changed and In Pursuit of Memory, which was shortlisted for the Royal Society Trivedi Science Book Prize and longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. He lives in London.

Recipe For Murder (True Crime) by Duncan McNab

About the book: Recipe for Murder (2025) is the astonishing story of Erin Patterson and the mushroom murder trial that horrified and enthralled the world. 

On 29 July 2023, the family and friends of Erin Patterson sat down for lunch in Leongatha, a small town in rural Australia. 

On the menu: beef Wellington. 

The next day, four of the guests were hospitalised, and within a week, Erin’s mother- and father-in-law, Don and Gail Patterson, and her husband’s aunt Heather Wilkinson were dead. Heather’s husband, Ian, survived but only just.

Doctors suspected death cap mushroom poisoning, and four months later, Patterson was arrested and charged with three counts of murder and one of attempted murder. 

The case immediately captured media attention around the world. Had Patterson deliberately killed her estranged husband’s parents and aunt? 

Was the lunch a recipe for murder?

In this gripping new book, bestselling author, investigative journalist and former detective Duncan McNab expertly examines the sequence of events that left three people dead, and a community and family shattered. With forensic detail he brings to life the twists and turns of the trial and the dramatic final verdict: GUILTY!

About the author: Duncan McNab is a former police detective, private investigator specialising in criminal defence, investigative journalist and media adviser to government and the private sector. He is the author of twelve books, including the phenomenally bestselling Dead Man Running (with Ross Coulthart), Snapshot Killer, Waterfront and Roger Rogerson. Duncan was a producer on the Kennedy and Clarion award-winning Murder Uncovered series (7 Network) in 2017 and creator/series producer of the groundbreaking Australia Behind Bars (9 Network/ITV). 

In 2017, his book, Getting Away with Murder, won the Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime. In the same year, his bestselling book on disgraced former detective and convicted murderer, Roger Rogerson, was shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for Best True Crime. Duncan's forensic eye and engaging style makes him the perfect author to deep dive into the Erin Patterson case. 

Mother of God reading to Christ Icon

Borneo: The History Of An Enigma by Olivier Hein

About the book: Borneo: The History of an Enigma (2026) is a fun and fascinating history of an island best known for tropical rainforests and captivating wildlife but with a much bigger story to tell.

The world’s third-largest island, and the only one administered by three different sovereign nations, Borneo is something of a mystery. Home to an incredibly diverse indigenous population, once infamous for headhunting; a hotbed of military activity during World War II; a poster child for the ecological movement even as its rainforest is destroyed; and the host of Indonesia’s planned new capital city, Nusantara - Borneo’s past, present and future are nothing if not eclectic.

But hidden under its enigmatic façade is an extraordinary island at the centre of world affairs in ancient times, yet often aloof from them. From early visitors bringing new religions to the island, to a fluctuating relationship with China, to a time when piracy ruled, Olivier Hein’s sweeping tale uncovers the little-known events that shaped not only Borneo but the whole Malay Archipelago.

Linking Indonesian, Malaysian and Bruneian history, Hein brings together, for the first time, all the elements that make this island so unique. With Borneo sitting uncomfortably in the firing line of today’s great global power shift from Trans-Atlantic to Trans-Pacific, and now attracting millions of visitors a year, the story of this rich and complex island has never been more relevant.

About the author: Olivier Hein is a Mauritian-British author, whose books include Star and Key, a history of Mauritius (also published by Hurst). Formerly a UN, UK and OSCE diplomat, posted to New York, Paris, Kosovo and Turkmenistan, he also contributes to The Chap magazine. He lives with his family in the Cotswolds.

Entitled: The Rise And Fall Of The House of York by Andrew Lownie

About the book: What is Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York (2025) by Andrew Lownie about?

Entitled is the first joint biography of the Duke and Duchess of York and the first full biography of either of them, by renowned royal biographer and literary agent, Andrew Lownie.

Drawing on four years of research, numerous FOI requests and interviews with over a hundred people who have never spoken before, the book traces the lives of the late Queen’s second son and his ex-wife through their childhoods, courtship, marriage, divorce, careers, and royal and charitable activities.

Still living in the same house, they claim to be "the happiest divorced couple in the world". The book investigates the reality of their relationship and their love lives. It charts Andrew’s record in the Falklands, his business activities and reveals details of how the couple have been able financially to sustain their extravagant lifestyles. It also recounts the full story of the Yorks’ links with Jeffrey Epstein.

Chronicling their lives in parallel, the picture that emerges is of a spoilt prince unable to connect and a duchess pushed by her insecurities into a desperate need to maintain the attention her ‘royal’ status brought. Rigorously researched and packed full of revelations, this is eye-watering biography at its best.

Entitled: The Rise and Fall of the House of York is the Sunday Times #1 Bestseller, a Book of the Year for The Times, Financial Times and Waterstones in 2025.

About the author: Andrew Lownie was born in 1961 and was educated in Britain and America. He read history at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Union. He went on to gain an MSc at Edinburgh University and spend a year at the College of Law in London.

After a period as a bookseller and journalist, he began his publishing career as the graduate trainee at Hodder & Stoughton. In 1985, he became an agent at John Farquharson, now part of Curtis Brown, and the following year became the then youngest director in British publishing when he was appointed a director.

Since 1984, he has written and reviewed for a range of newspapers and magazines, including The Times, Spectator and Guardian, which has given him good journalistic contacts.

As an author himself, most notably of a biography of John Buchan and a literary companion to Edinburgh, he has an understanding of the issues and problems affecting writers. He is a member of the Society of Authors and was until recently the literary agent to the international writers' organisation PEN. In 1998, he founded The Biographers Club, a monthly dining society for biographers and those involved in promoting biography, and The Biographers' Club Prize which supports first-time biographers.

Animal Farm

I Love These Cold Days In London

Modern Life Sucks

Floating Home by Adam Lind

About the book: What if the life you're chasing… isn't the one you truly want?

After losing his father, Adam Lind made a decision that changed everything. He left behind the expected path and spent five years hitchhiking across twenty-six countries - learning from the people who picked him up, sleeping under open skies, and discovering the extraordinary hidden in the everyday. 

Now, aboard his stubbornly charming narrowboat The Raman Rose, Adam continues that journey on the UK's waterways - and invites us to join him.

Blending travel memoir, philosophy and the search for meaning, Floating Home: Lessons from a Life Less Ordinary (2025) reveals how adventure, community, and compassion can reshape our lives. 

With humour and heart, Adam shows that happiness is not found by following the rules - but by choosing your own way, one small brave step at a time.

About the author: Adam Lind is a charismatic, wise soul who advocates for living with purpose, vulnerability and self-expression. Having used his own challenges to excel in his career and personal life as a mindset coach & content creator. Through living on a narrowboat on the British waterways, Adam has unexpectedly built a large online community of over 900,000 loyal and engaged likeminded souls who enjoy soaking up his passion to live a life of meaning. Adam has appeared on Channel 4’s Narrow Escapes and has been featured in publications including The New York Post, Business Insider, The Sun, and others.

The New Year Stands Before Us

The Old Fire by Elisa Shua Dusapin

About the book: Octave says it couldn’t have been easy for Véra, growing up with a sister as brilliant as me.

In the wake of her father’s death, Agathe leaves New York and returns to her childhood home in the French countryside, after fifteen years away. She and her sister Véra have not seen each other in all that time apart. 

Now, they must empty their home before it is knocked down. Véra stopped speaking when she was six, and as the pair clean and sift through a lifetime’s worth of belongings, old memories and resentments surface.

Tender, melancholic and evocative, The Old Fire is an exploration of time and memory, of family and belonging, of the unsaid and the unanswered. It is also a graceful and profound exploration of how loss and grief can live alongside life and abundance.

The Old Fire is out on 29 January 2026.

The Old Fire is translated from the French by Aneesa Abbas Higgins.

About the author: Elisa Shua Dusapin was born in France in 1992 to a French father and a South Korean mother and grew up in Paris, Seoul, and Porrentruy, a town in the Swiss canton of Jura. She studied at the Swiss Literature Institute in Biel and presented her debut novel, Hiver à Sokcho [Winter in Sokcho, 2020], in 2016. The jury of the Robert Walser Prize, which she was awarded in 2016, declared the novel "a small masterpiece". The English translation received the prestigious US National Book Award in the Translated Literature category in 2021.

Elisa Shua Dusapin’s second novel, Les Billes du Pachinko [The Pachinko Parlour, 2022], was awarded a Swiss Literature Award in 2019.

Her most recent publication, Vladivostok Circus [2020], like its two predecessors, highlights a unique set of relationships. Le Figaro declared that "each of her words contains a world…The author’s style is as beautiful as the relationships she describes. She remains true to herself and allows cultures and continents to embrace each other in a poetic way. A sublime spectacle".

The author lives near Porrentruy, Switzerland.

About the translator: Aneesa Abbas Higgins is an award-winning translator. She has been translating literary works from French for the past ten years. Before becoming a translator, she taught French for many years. Just six years after publishing her first translation, Aneesa Abbas Higgins won the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature for Elisa Shua Dusapin’s Winter in Sokcho. In addition to winning the National Book Award in 2021, her work was named the winner of the Scott Moncrieff Prize (A Girl Called Eel by Ali Zamir) in 2020, and was twice shortlisted for that same award. Her published translations include works by Nina Bouraoui, Tahar Ben Jelloun, François Garde and Vénus Khoury-Ghata. Her translations have also appeared in Words Without Borders and Asymptote. She lives in London.

For a full list of Aneesa Abbas Higgins' translations, please see https://free99656.wordpress.com/

Blank Canvas by Grace Murray

About the book: 2026 is shaping up to be a big year for book releases. Introducing the first book in 2026, an outstanding new voice in literary fiction: a sensual, sharp, and utterly compelling campus novel about grief, reinvention, and the ripple effects of telling lies.

If I ever woke up with an ungodly dread - that I could change it all now, turn around, and confess - I ignored it. I had never been good, and there was no point in trying now.

On a small liberal arts campus in upstate New York, Charlotte begins her final year with a lie. Her father died over the summer, she says. Heart attack. Very sudden.

Charlotte had never been close with her classmates but as she repeats her tale, their expressions soften into kindness. And so she learns there are things worth lying for: attention, affection, and, as she embarks on a relationship with fellow student Katarina, even love. All she needs to do is keep control of the threads that hold her lie - and her life - together.

But six thousand miles away, alone in the grey two-up-two-down Staffordshire terrace she grew up in, her father is very much alive, watching television and drinking beer. Charlotte has always kept difficult truths at arm’s length, but his resolve to visit his distant daughter might just be the one thing she can’t control.

Blank Canvas will be released on 15 January 2026.

About the author: Grace Murray was born in 2003 and grew up in Norwich. She has recently graduated from Edinburgh University, where she read English Literature and found time to write between her studies and two part-time jobs. Her short fiction has been published in The London Magazine. 

In writing Blank Canvas, Grace set out to explore themes of Catholic guilt and queer identity, clashing moral codes and lies, and the opportunity for reinvention presented by moving between countries and settings. Blank Canvas was written over the course of a year as part of WriteNow, Penguin Random House’s flagship mentorship scheme for emerging talent. Grace Murray won one of nine places on the scheme on the exceptional strength of her writing, selected from a pool of over 1,300 applicants.

Rating: 4/5

Happy New Year 2026!