Lent 2025

The London Book Fair 11-13 March 2025 Olympia London

Cleavage by Cleo Watson

About the book: As Tory drawers are caught down yet again, the Opposition takes the chance to pull up its socks.

Prime Minister Eric Courtenay, fresh from another scandal, realises he has his work cut out when the Labour offensive kicks off with the charismatic Vicky Tennyson and handsome Christian Eccles at the helm, both dead set on an end to Conservative rule.

The desperate Tories resort to hiring maverick strategist Callum Gallagher to get them out of a fix. Gallagher’s methods are unusual in the extreme and kept from his employers. As he and his data geeks sieve through the red-hot web searches of the unsuspecting electorate, it becomes clear that sex sells. Everyone’s at it, but the question is whose fantasy will win the big role play?

To top it all, the Houses of Parliament are in desperate need of repair, but everyone’s too busy thinking about ballot boxes and throbbing majorities to care. If Whips (2023) got you hot under the collar, Cleavage (2024) will have you begging for more.

Cleavage is a Sunday Times Best Book of 2024 and a Daily Mail Top 10 Best Fiction Book of 2024.

About the author: Cleo Watson is a British author of Whips (Corsair) and the presenter of the Radio 4 series, How to Win a Campaign. She worked in politics and campaigning for over a decade, including President Barack Obama's re-election in 2012, the 2017 and 2019 UK general elections and the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 EU referendum. In government, she served in 10 Downing Street as Theresa May's political adviser, then Boris Johnson's co-deputy chief of staff. She is the author of two books.

Rating: 2/5

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim

About the book: The Enchanted April (1922), Elizabeth von Arnim's brilliant, irrepressible novella, tells the tale of four very different women who, on answering an advertisement in The Times, find themselves far away from the drizzle of London and instead in the warmth of an Italian sun. There, alongside the lapping of the Mediterranean, the women's spirits begin to shift, and quite unexpected changes take place.

First published in 1922, this delightful novel is imbued with the descriptive power and light-hearted irreverence for which Elizabeth von Arnin is renowned.

About the author: Elizabeth von Arnim was born on 31 August 1866 in Australia. She was cousin to the writer Katherine Mansfield. In 1890, she married her first husband, Count Henning August von Arnim-Schlagenthin, a Prussian aristocrat, with whom she had five children. 

Elizabeth and her German Garden, published anonymously in 1898, was a barely fictionalised account of Elizabeth’s life and the creation of her garden at the family home of Nassenheide in Pomerania, where Hugh Walpole and E M Forster were tutors to her children. Its instant success was followed by many more novels, including Vera (1921) and The Enchanted April (1922), and another almost-autobiography, All the Dogs of My Life (1936). She separated from Count von Arnim in 1908, and after his death two years later, she built a house in Switzerland, marrying John Francis Stanley Russell in 1916. This marriage also ended in separation in 1919 when Elizabeth moved to America, where she died on 9 February 1941, aged 74.

Rating: 5/5

Cloudless by Rupert Dastur

About the book: It is autumn 2004 and in a farmhouse on the hills outside Llandudno, a family endures the agonizing wait for their son to return from Iraq. His decision to join up has left them reeling, yet there are other pressing concerns to be met at home: the working of the farmland that has been theirs for generations and what to do with their troubled younger son.

Catrin’s childhood sweetheart comes back to their small town, giving the boys’ doting mother a glimpse into the life she could have had. 

And John, their father, falls once more into his gambling habit, even as the farm sits on the brink of bankruptcy.

As each member of the family grasps at their own tenuous lifeline, they drift further from one another – until, on a cold winter evening, there is a fateful knock at the door.

Written in luminous, exquisitely calibrated prose, Cloudless (2025) is a masterful portrayal of the fragility and resilience of human connection.

About the author: Rupert Dastur is a writer, editor and publisher. His writing has been shortlisted for the Bath Short Story Award and the Fish Short Story Prize, and won the Federation of Scottish Writers Award in 2018. He is the founder of TSS Publishing and director of The Cambridge Prizes for Short Fiction, and he runs writing workshops across the UK and abroad. He read English at Cambridge University and lives in London. Cloudless is his debut novel.

Rating: 5/5

Once Upon A Time: The Captivating Life Of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy by Elizabeth Beller

About the book: The life and legacy of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, wife of John F Kennedy Jr, are reexamined in this captivating and effervescent biography that is perfect for fans of My Travels with Mrs Kennedy, What Remains, and Fairy Tale Interrupted.

A quarter of a century after the plane crash that claimed the lives of John F Kennedy Jr, his wife Carolyn, and her sister Lauren, the magnitude of this tragedy remains fresh. Yet, Carolyn is still an enigmatic figure, a woman whose short life in the spotlight was besieged with misogyny and cruelty.

Amidst today’s cultural reckoning about the way our media treats women, Elizabeth Beller explores the real person behind the tabloid headlines and media frenzy. When she began dating America’s prince, Carolyn was increasingly thrust into an overwhelming spotlight filled with relentless paparazzi who reacted to her reserve with a campaign of harassment and vilification.

To this day, she is still depicted as a privileged princess - icy, vapid, and drug-addicted. She has even been accused of being responsible for their untimely death, allegedly delaying take-off until she finished her pedicure. But now, she is revealed as never before.

A fiercely independent woman devoted to her adopted city and career, Carolyn relied on her impeccable eye and drive to fly up the ranks at Calvin Klein in the glossy, high-stakes fashion world of the 1990s. When Carolyn met her future husband, John was immediately drawn to her strong-willed personality, effortless charm, and high intelligence. Their relationship would change her life and catapult her to dizzying fame, but it was her vibrant life before their marriage and then hidden afterwards, that is truly fascinating.

Based on in-depth research and exclusive interviews with friends, family members, teachers, roommates, and colleagues, and featuring never-before-seen family photos, this comprehensive biography - Once Upon A Time (2024) - reveals a multi-faceted woman worthy of our attention regardless of her husband and untimely death.

About the author: Elizabeth Beller is a writer and journalist specializing in culture, art, and travel with more than fifteen years of experience as a book and story editor. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, Vogue, and Travel + Leisure, among other outlets. Before turning to writing and editing, she spent two years as a script reader for Miramax, followed by twelve years in the art world at Sotheby’s Auction House. She splits her time between New York and New Orleans with her husband, writer Thomas Beller, and their two children.

Definition: A Story

The House Of My Mother by Shari Franke

About the book: The House Of My Mother (2025) is the shocking true story behind the viral 8 Passengers family vlog, the hidden abuse Shari Franke suffered at the hands of her mother, and how, in the face of unimaginable pain, she found freedom and healing.

Shari Franke’s childhood was a constant battle for survival. Her mother, Ruby Franke, enforced a severe moral code while maintaining a façade of a picture-perfect family for their wildly popular YouTube channel 8 Passengers, which documented the day-to-day life of raising six children for a staggering 2.5 million subscribers. 

But a darker truth lurked beneath the surface – Ruby’s wholesome online persona masked a more tyrannical parenting style than anyone could have imagined.

As the family’s YouTube notoriety grew, so too did Ruby’s delusions of righteousness. Fuelled by the sadistic influence of relationship coach Jodi Hildebrandt, together they implemented an inhumane and merciless disciplinary regime.

Ruby and Jodi were arrested in Utah in 2023 on multiple charges of aggravated child abuse. On that fateful day, Shari shared a photo online of a police car outside their home. Her caption had one word: 'Finally'.

For the first time, Shari will reveal the disturbing truth behind 8 Passengers and her family’s devastating involvement with Jodi Hildebrandt’s cultish life coaching program, 'ConneXions'. No stone is left unturned as Shari exposes the perils of influencer culture and shares for the first time her battle for truth and survival in the face of her mother’s cruelty.

The House Of My Mother is the instant No 1 New York Times Bestseller and No 2 Sunday Times Bestseller.

About the author: Shari Franke is the eldest daughter in the Franke family. She is a student at Brigham Young University.

Learning From Silence: Lessons From More Than 100 Retreats by Pico Iyer

About the book: Over the past three decades, Pico Iyer has made more than a hundred journeys to a small hermitage high above the sea in Big Sur, California. He's not a Christian, nor a member of any religious group, and yet his life has been transformed by these periods of time spent in silence.

In Learning from Silence, Iyer travels deep into inner stillness and joy in his many seasons at the monastery, even as his life is going through constant change: houses burn, a parent dies, a daughter is diagnosed with cancer. He shares the revelations he experiences, alongside wisdom from other non-monastics who have learned from adversity and inwardness. Most profoundly, he shows how solitude can be a training in community and companionship.

In so doing, he offers a unique outsider's view of monastic life - and of a group of selfless souls who have dedicated their days to ensuring there's a space for quiet and recollection that's open to us all.

Radiant, intimate and gripping, Learning from Silence offers ageless counsel about the power of silence and what it can teach us about how to live, how to love and, ultimately, how to die.

About the author: Pico Iyer is the acclaimed and bestselling author of more than a dozen books translated into twenty-three languages, most recently The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise. His journalism regularly appear in Time, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, the Financial Times, and more than 250 other periodicals worldwide. His TED talks have been viewed over eleven million times. He divides his time between Western Japan and Central California.

A Soul In Hell: The Story Of Annette compiled by Robert T Hart

About the booklet: What is related in these pages is of the greatest importance. Though the events in question took place in Germany, what we give here is, as far as we are able, a faithful translation from the original language. Translations have also been made into various other languages.

The Nihil obstat was granted by the Vicar of Rome and the Imprimatur was granted by the Pope's Vicar in Rome.  While these marks of approval cannot guarantee the veracity of the revelation, they do guarantee the text free from doctrinal error. Thus we can be certain that nothing in these pages departs in any way from the Church's established doctrine on Hell.

These frightening pages must sound a WARNING for us, describing as they do a way of life which is very common in present-day society.   

The Divine Mercy, in allowing these revelations, lifts for us a corner of the veil hiding those most awesome mysteries which await us all at the term of our days on earth.

WE HOPE THAT MANY SOULS WILL HEAR AND TAKE HEED.

A Soul in Hell is a literal account of a soul from Hell telling how she became eternally lost, taken from a reading given on an Ignatian Retreat. It can be downloaded in printable booklet form from www.SicutInCaelo.org.

The Life Of Sr Mary Wilhelmina by The Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles

About the book: "Every man’s life is acted out between two great events: his birth and his death. Man has two outlooks: an outlook toward life, and an outlook toward death. The pagan world was, for the most part, oppressed with the outlook toward death. After centuries of gloom, Christ was born in a poor stable in Bethlehem. This was a birth, which led to a death, which death was to remove the sting and gloom of death forever after from the lives of men. This was the good news, from which the practice of Christianity, a seeming paradox of joy and self-denial, sprang." - Sister Wilhelmina

Sister Mary Wilhelmina Lancaster, OSB, founded the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of Apostles in 1995 at the age of seventy. 

Four years after her death, in May 2023, the sisters were preparing for the reinternment of the remains of their beloved foundress after the completion of a St. Joseph Shrine. 

Upon seeing Sister Mary's remains, they discovered something incredible, something miraculous - her body appeared to be incorrupt!

In The Life of Sister Mary Wilhelmina (2023), you will become acquainted with this most humble sister, who, after fifty years of religious life, was called to establish the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, to remain faithful to the traditional religious life and the Latin Mass. 

This biography includes stories of her life, her experience as a Black Catholic during racial tensions, the founding of a community, and her original poetry. 

Her entire life is a testament to fidelity, devotion, and surrender to God's will.

About the author: Our community first began under the aegis of the Priestly Fraternity of St Peter in 1995, in the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania. We were originally called the Oblates of Mary, Queen of Apostles to indicate the offering of ourselves to the Benedictine family, and we had consecrated ourselves to Our Lady for her service. We began following a monastic horarium as laid out by St Benedict in his Rule, chanting the traditional Divine Office in Latin as prescribed.

In March 2006, we accepted the invitation of Bishop Robert W Finn to transfer to his diocese of Kansas City-St Joseph in Missouri. We were established as a Public Association of the Faithful with the new name Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles. By the grace of God, and through the fatherly solicitude of Bishop Finn, we were raised to the status of Religious Institute of Diocesan Right on 25 November 2014. 9 and 10 September 2018 saw the elevation of our priory to an abbey, the consecration of our abbey church, and the consecration of Mother Abbess Cecilia as our first abbess. On 28 April 2019, seven intrepid sisters left the abbey to establish our first daughter house, the Monastery of St Joseph in Ava, Missouri, where they have extended our order and mission.

René Noël Théophile Girard (b 1923), French Historian, Literary Critic, and Philosopher of Social Science

Death By Bubble Tea (LA Night Market Mysteries) by Jennifer J Chow

About the book: Two cousins who start a food stall at their local night market get a serving of murder in this first novel of a delicious new cozy mystery series by Jennifer J Chow, bestselling author of Mimi Lee Gets a Clue.

When Yale Yee discovers her cousin Celine is visiting from Hong Kong, she is obliged to play tour guide to a relative she has not seen in twenty years. Not only that, but her father thinks it is a wonderful idea for them to bond by running a food stall together at the Eastwood Village Night Market. 

Yale has not cooked in years, and she hardly considers Celine’s career as a social media influencer as adequate experience, but because she has just lost her job at her local bookstore, she feels she has no choice.

 

Yale and Celine serve small dishes and refreshing drinks, and while business is slow, it eventually picks up thanks to Celine’s surprisingly useful marketing ideas. They are quite shocked that their bubble tea, in particular, is a hit - literally - when one of their customers turns up dead. 

Yale and Celine are prime suspects due to the gold flakes that Celine added to the sweet drink as a garnish. Though the two cousins are polar opposites in every way, they must work together to find out what really happened to the victim or the only thing they will be serving is time.

Death by Bubble Tea is the first instalment in the cosy LA Night Market mysteries.  

About the author: Jennifer J Chow is the Lefty Award-nominated author of the Sassy Cat Mysteries and the LA Night Market Mysteries. The first in the Sassy Cat series, Mimi Lee Gets A Clue, was selected as an Overdrive Recommended Read; a PopSugar Best Summer Beach Read; and one of BuzzFeed’s Top 5 Books by AAPI authors. She currently serves as Vice President on the national board of Sisters in Crime and is an active member of Crime Writers of Colour and Mystery Writers of America. Connect with her online at www.jenniferjchow.com.

Rating: 5/5

The Woman Who Fooled The World: The True Story Of Fake Wellness Guru Belle Gibson by Beau Donelly & Nick Toscano

About the book: The Woman Who Fooled The World (2025) is the jaw-dropping story of Instagram influencer and wellness scammer Belle Gibson, whose cancer diagnosis and cure was all a lie. It is now a Netflix Limited Series starring Kaitlyn Dever. 

Entrepreneur. Inspiration. Guru. Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson shot to fame after she convinced the world she had cured her terminal brain cancer with just a healthy diet. But there was one problem: she lied - she had never had cancer.

Gibson, a high school dropout and teenage mother, built a global business in less than eighteen months that vaulted her to fame and fortune. She had 200,000 Instagram followers from Melbourne to Los Angeles to London, international book deals, and a best-selling smartphone app, having fooled both Penguin Books and Apple. She was a digital-age celebrity, a one-woman cult, a hero of the “wellness” world, and an inspiration to many.

Written by the two journalists who assiduously uncovered the details of Gibson’s lies, The Woman Who Fooled the World unravels the mystery and motivation behind this deception. It follows the public reaction to the scandal, which included headlines in Time magazine and Gibson being named as a top-ten villain of the year by The Washington Post.

The Woman Who Fooled the World (2025) also explores the lure of alternative cancer treatments, the cottage industry flourishing behind the wellness movement, and the rise of social media. It documents not only Gibson’s folly but the devastating impact this con had on her fans and on people suffering from cancer.

About the authors: Beau Donelly is a multi-award-winning journalist who covered social affairs for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. His news-breaking and investigative skills have been recognised by the United Nations and the Melbourne Press Club. Donelly has been awarded for an exposé on illegal brothels, coverage of clergy sex-abuse trials, and reporting on disability issues. He has also been a finalist for Australian journalism’s highest honour, the Walkley Award. Donelly has a Bachelor of Journalism from Monash University, and is based in Europe.

Nick Toscano is a multi-award-winning journalist based in Melbourne, who specialises in federal politics, business workplace relations, and the labour movement for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He has been awarded the the Grant Hattam Quill for Investigative Journalism, and has twice received the highest honour in Australian journalism, the Walkley Award, for exposing the country’s biggest-ever underpayment scandal. Toscano has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Melbourne and a Masters in Journalism from RMIT.