Bows and Arrows: The Autobiography by Julian Lloyd Webber

About the book: In this explosive, no-holds-barred account of the life of a globally renowned classical musician, Julian Lloyd Webber lifts the lid on a profession previously shrouded in mystery.

From vivid descriptions of his childhood in one of the world's most famous musical dynasties to unfiltered stories from his incredible career - including collaborations with such stars as Yehudi Menuhin, Joaquin Rodrigo, Elton John, and his brother, Andrew Lloyd Webber - Bows and Arrows (2026) reveals a cut-throat world of agents, promoters, record companies, violin dealers and substance abuse, laying bare the classical music industry as never before.

With refreshing honesty and humour, Julian recounts the break-up of three of his four marriages, his lifelong passion for ensuring that every child has a chance to play a musical instrument and his devastation at the injury that forced him to stop playing and sell his Stradivarius cello in 2014. This earth-shattering loss, however, led him to discover a new calling as principal of a leading royal conservatoire and to double down on his efforts as a tireless champion of music education, working closely both with government and charities.

Culminating in Julian's return to the stage for the first time in twelve years, Bows and Arrows is a powerful story of passion, loss and a life reborn.

About the author: Julian Lloyd Webber is one of the leading classical musicians of our time. As a solo cellist, he played with the world’s greatest orchestras and conductors. In 2015, following his forced retirement due to injury, he was appointed principal of the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire, a role he held for five years.

2026 saw Julian return to the stage for a gala at London’s Wigmore Hall to mark his seventy-fifth birthday in April and the release of his first recording for twelve years, Jasmine, which features on his new album, Take a Bow (Decca Classics).

How Condescending

The Spinster Cookbook by Eli Davies

About the book: The Spinster Cookbook: Culture, Politics and Pleasure in the Single Woman’s Kitchen (2026) is a piercing exploration of what it means to cook for one in a society designed for couples and families. With sharp cultural insight, Eli Davies takes us on a culinary tour of the single woman’s kitchen, a space shaped as much by a search for freedom as by appetite.

The kitchen has always been a complex space for women: a place of labour and gendered expectations, as well as a site of nourishment, care and company. But how does this change when you’re alone, not cooking for family or friends, but simply for yourself?

Eli Davies explores what happens when food is uncoupled from domestic duty and romantic relationships and what it means to cook (or not) for yourself and by yourself. How does this shape your mealtimes, the way you shop for food, the kitchen equipment you use, and your relationship to cleaning up and looking after yourself?

With warmth, humour and insight, The Spinster Cookbook explores shopping and leftovers, solo meals and dinner parties for one, joy and grief and the politics of living on your own. This is a book about making a home in the face of housing precarity, loneliness, heartbreak and social norms, and finding independence, pleasure and self-expression through cooking. It is a cookbook of sorts, and a manifesto for living differently.

About the author: Eli Davies is a writer and researcher whose writing on culture, politics and literature has been published widely, including in the Guardian, Vittles, Tribune and the Tangerine.

She also co-edited Under My Thumb: Songs that Hate Women and the Women Who Love them, an anthology of women’s music writing published in 2017. She lives in London.

Pool House by Mary H K Choi

About the book: Stevie cannot wait to escape her mother. Whilst many people dream of moving to LA and into the spotlight, she is desperate to get out and start over.

Moon is many things: an out-of-work actress, a recovering addict, a nineties iconoclast, a dysfunctional mother – and whatever a mistress becomes when she’s widowed. Reeling in the aftermath of her lover and TV husband’s death, Moon is plunged into despair. The last thing she expects is for her daughter to leave her too.

Neither Stevie nor Moon can afford to quit each other, having been forced to move into the glass pool house in their back yard while their home is rented out to pay the bills. When Adam, Moon’s former TV son and Stevie’s girlhood crush, arrives for the funeral, the three of them are pulled into a messy triangle, moving back into the Big House and play-acting a picture-perfect family, even as tensions rise and relationships unravel.

Hilarious, biting and unexpectedly moving, Pool House is a brilliantly observed novel about the complexities of love, sex, fame, family and grief, and an unforgettable portrait of two women grappling with what it means to grow up and grow older in Hollywood.

About the author: Mary H K Choi is a New York Times bestselling author whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times Magazine, New York, GQ and Elle. Formerly, she was the culture correspondent for Vice News on HBO, a columnist at Wired and Allure magazine, a guest columnist for the New York Times Opinion section, as well as the executive producer of an MTV documentary. She has written comics for Marvel and DC. She is currently developing her young adult books for film and TV.

Rating: 4/5

The Yahoo Boys by Carlos Barragán

About the book: When his mother fell for an ‘American soldier’ who promised to send gold bars to their Madrid apartment, Carlos Barragán found himself with an unexpected window into the shadowy world of online romance fraud. 

He set off on a journey to find his mother’s scammer, but what he discovered was much bigger: a world of young Nigerian men who drag themselves out of destitution by catfishing lonely hearts in the US and Europe, in the process building a dizzying local economy from their phones.

The Yahoo Boys: Real Life with the Love Scammers of Lagos (2026) follows four scammers in Ikotun – one of Lagos’s poorest neighbourhoods, a scant ten miles from the gleaming heart of the megacity. Through their twisting fortunes, Barragán discovers the psychological tactics they perfect, the economic desperation that drives them, and the moral dilemmas they face. 

A work of radical empathy, this astonishing narrative nonfiction debut reveals the human face behind a global phenomenon, and shows how isolation in the West and poverty in Nigeria are just two sides of the same screen.

The Yahoo Boys is a New York Times most anticipated book of 2026.

About the author: Carlos Barragán is a reporter and researcher at The New York Times based in Spain. Raised in Madrid, he earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University. The Yahoo Boys is his first book.

American Han: A Novel by Lisa Lee

About the book: Growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s, Jane Kim and her brother, Kevin, dutifully embodied the model minority myth as their parents demanded: both stellar tennis players and academically gifted, they worked hard to make their parents proud. 

Jane went on to law school. Kevin came close to becoming a professional tennis player. But where they started is nowhere near where they have ended up: Jane has stopped going to her law school classes, and Kevin, now a policeman, has become increasingly distant. 

Their parents, each on their own path toward the elusive American Dream (their mother hell-bent on having the perfect house and the perfect family, their father obsessed with working his way up from one successful business to the next), do not want to see the family unraveling. 

When Kevin goes missing, no one recognizes his absence as the warning sign it is until it erupts, forcing them all to come to terms with their past and present selves in a country that is not all it promised it would be. 

Both deeply serious and wickedly funny, American Han (2026) is a profound story about striving and assimilation, difficult love, and family fidelity. A searing portrait that challenges assumptions about the immigrant experience, Lisa Lee’s debut introduces a powerful new voice on the literary landscape. 

About the author: Lisa Lee is the recipient of the Marianne Russo Emerging Writer Award from the Key West Literary Seminar, an Emerging Writer Fellowship from the Center for Fiction, and a Pushcart Prize. She has received other fellowships and awards from Kundiman, Millay Arts, Hedgebrook, the Rona Jaffe Foundation, Tin House, Jentel Artist Residency, and the Korea Foundation. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, VIDA, North American Review, Sycamore Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. Lee holds an MFA from the University of Houston and a PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Southern California. She lives in Los Angeles.

Rating: 5/5

All Nylon

Rule Of Lies by Jamison R Firestone

About the book: Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin's Russia (2026) is an American lawyer’s brilliant, propulsive story of witnessing and playing a part in the transformation of Russia under Yeltsin and Putin. A true tale of fascinating personalities, criminal intrigue, harrowing situations, audacious actions and international politics that combines Bill Browder’s Red Notice with Michael Lewis’s Liar's Poker.

Raised by his father, a multimillionaire conman and crack addict who owned Manhattan’s most expensive brothel, twenty-four-year-old Jamison R Firestone decided to change the channel. He graduated from law school in 1991 and sought his fortune in Gorbachev’s USSR, establishing Russia’s first independent foreign law firm.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Jamison lived in the maelstrom that was Russia, defending himself and his clients from mafia attacks, dealing with corrupt police officers, having his law office raided by armed commandos, and once having to bug the offices of the Russian police.

Jamison was at the centre of some of Russia’s most important events. He employed Sergei Magnitsky who was murdered for uncovering the largest tax theft in Russian history and teamed up with Bill Browder and Alexei Navalny to expose his killers. Along the way, he inadvertently taught Navalny to make videos exposing corruption and started a war with the Russian government over passage of the Magnitsky Acts which threatened to sanction Russia’s most powerful people.

A real-life story that reads like a spy novel, Rule of Lies goes deep inside contemporary Russia and events that have reshaped the globe. Darkly comic, sometimes horrifying and deeply moving, it is a chilling warning of what can happen when a nascent democracy succumbs to one man’s corrupt iron rule, becoming not only an authoritarian nation but a profoundly criminal one - a true mafia state.

About the author: Jamison Firestone established the first independent foreign law firm in Russia where he lived for eighteen years. He is a co-founder along with Sir William Browder of the Global Magnitsky Justice Campaign which created the Magnitsky human rights and anti-corruption sanctions regimes. He also ran the Navalny 35 campaign promoting the sanctioning of corrupt oligarchs and officials identified by Alexei Navalny. He currently works on seizing Russian state assets for the benefit of Ukraine and has been featured on the BBC, Bloomberg, CBC, and in several documentaries. He lives in London.

Magnifica Humanitas by Pope Leo XIV

About the book: Magnifica Humanitas (2026) is the first encyclical of Pope Leo XIV, on safeguarding the human person in the time of Artificial Intelligence.

In this landmark encyclical released on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIV addresses the most urgent and transformative challenge of our era: the rise of artificial intelligence and the digital revolution. 

With prophetic insight and deep theological wisdom, the Holy Father calls humanity to a pivotal choice - to build a new Tower of Babel driven by technocratic power and self-sufficiency, or to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem through shared responsibility, solidarity, and love.

Magnifica Humanitas ("The Grandeur of Humanity") offers a comprehensive moral and spiritual framework for navigating the age of AI. Drawing on the rich tradition of Catholic social doctrine - from Leo XIII to Francis - the encyclical explores the foundations of human dignity, the common good, subsidiarity, solidarity, and social justice as essential principles for discerning the ethical use of emerging technologies.

About the author: Pope Leo XIV was born Robert Francis Prevost on 14 September 1955 in Chicago, Illinois. He grew up in a loving family and felt called to serve the Church from a young age. Before becoming a priest, he studied mathematics at Villanova University and later earned degrees in theology and canon law. After joining the Order of Saint Augustine, he became a priest and dedicated his life to helping others. His work took him to Peru, where he spent over 20 years supporting communities and promoting education. His compassion and leadership were recognised, and he was eventually appointed as a bishop and later a cardinal. On 8 May 2025, after the passing of Pope Francis, he was elected as the 267th pope and chose the name Leo XIV, honouring Pope Leo XIII, who was known for his work on social justice. His first words as pope were “Peace be with all of you!”

Juno The Bakery by Emil Glaser

About the book: Juno the Bakery (2025) is a book of recipes from the world-renowned neighbourhood bakery in Copenhagen in Denmark.

For the first time, Juno the Bakery shares a selection of the recipes that have made the bakery an international attraction in Copenhagen. Whether you are an amateur or an experienced baker, you can now bake buns, bread, and cakes from Juno the Bakery in your own kitchen.

The book provides a thorough introduction to their sourdough breads, laminated puff pastry, and their world-renowned cardamom buns with recipes for bread, buns, croissants and cakes made with seasonal ingredients. 

In the Christmas chapter, you can find recipes such as saffron scented Lucia buns, French nougat, and traditional Danish kransekage.

Behind Juno the Bakery are Swedish Emil Glaser and his wife Nina Schmiegelow. In 2017, the couple opened the doors to the neighbourhood bakery at Århusgade 48 in Copenhagen. The goal is simple: the best ingredients, gentle preparation, and pure, delicious flavours.

Photographer Petra Kleis has documented everything with photos of the bakery and the recipes.

About the author: Emil Glaser is a trained chef and previously worked at the world-renowned restaurant noma. He founded Juno the Bakery in 2017 together with his partner, Nina Schmiegelow.

About the photographer: Petra Kleis is a Danish photographer who is renowned for her portrait and advertising work. Based in Copenhagen and Berlin, she has established herself as a sought-after photographer, capturing prominent figures across fields such as music, politics, and the arts. Petra Kleis photography has appeared in Vogue Scandinavia, GQ and Vice. Clients include Adidas, Pandora, John Lewis, Primark and Fila.

Whistler by Ann Patchett

About the book: The acclaimed, prize-winning #1 New York Times bestselling writer returns with a moving, luminous novel that reminds us of the sweetness and impermanence of life and the power of connection to defy time.

When Daphne Fuller and her husband Jonathan visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art, they notice an older, white-haired gentleman following them. The man turns out to be Eddie Triplett, her former stepfather, who had been married to her mother for a little more than year when Daphne was nine. 

Now fifty-three, Daphne has not seen Eddie for many years, not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again, time falls away; while their relationship was brief, it had a profound impact on them both, and now that they are reunited, they have no intention of ever being separated again.

Whistler (2026) is a story about two adults looking back over the choices they made, and the choices that were made for them. It is a story about bravery, memory, the often small yet consequential moments that define our lives, and the endless stream of loss that in time comes for us all. Beautiful in its simplicity, it is ultimately about how love endures, and how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

Ann Patchett is heading to the UK in August and September 2026 for her Whistler UK book tour!

About the author: Ann Patchett is the author of ten novels and four works of non-fiction. Her novel The Dutch House was a New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller, and longlisted for the 2020 Women's Prize. In 2002, she won the Orange Prize for Fiction with Bel Canto, a prize she has also twice been shortlisted for with The Magician's Assistant in 1998 and State of Wonder in 2012. She is also the winner of the PEN/Faulkner Award and was named one of Time magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012. Her work has been translated into more than thirty languages. 

In November, 2011, she opened Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tennessee. She has since become a spokesperson for independent booksellers, championing books and bookstores on NPR, PBS Newshour, and the TODAY Show. She was the inaugural ambassador for the Book Industry Charitable Foundation (BINC), and she founded the Parnassus Books Foundation, which gives books to children in Title I schools in Nashville. 

Ann Patchett lives in Nashville with her husband, Karl VanDevender, and their dog, Nemo. She makes weekly appearances on Parnassus’s social media, where her videos have amassed millions of views. On Tuesdays, she joins the Laydown Diaries crew to talk about the week’s new releases, and she can often be found making "new to you" recommendations on Fridays. Ann does not have her own social media, but you can find her on all of the Parnassus Books platforms!

Rating: 5/5

Valley Of The Moms: A Novel by Hannah Selinger

About the book: Stepford Wives meets Big Little Lies in this twisty thriller that uncovers the untruths, petty grievances, and local school politics underneath a seemingly quaint small town.

Hamilton, Massachusetts is one of those suburban towns that appears untouched by the outside world where stay-at-home moms wear 2ct diamond studs to the playground, where a million-dollar property is “affordable,” and where the Parent Teacher Organization is a hotbed of controversy. Sure, some people struggle to make ends meet, but residents would say discussing such ugly matters is impolite. Hamilton has been like this forever, and everyone likes it that way. Or: almost everyone.

It is not that Anna Plummer does not like Hamilton, but she never thought she would be married with two young kids, comfortable, complacent…and growing more bored by the minute. 

So, when she realizes her second grader would not be able to attend the "Ziti with Your Sweetie" school dance because she did not pay for a “Premium” membership, she snaps. She sends an email to the terrifying president of the PTO - and all hell breaks loose.

One year later, Anna is found dead in the frozen Ipswich River. Left to pick up the pieces, her husband, Denny, is shaken to his core. He is no expert, but he has seen enough Dateline to know that the police think he is the main suspect. If they are not going to get justice for Anna, he will. 

Told through the alternating perspectives of Anna and Denny exactly one year apart, and with a shocking concluding twist, Valley of the Moms (2026) is a gripping look at the underpinnings of grief, the social structures of wealth, and the secrets people keep - even among friends and loved ones.

Valley of the Moms will be released on 6 August 2026.

About the author: Hannah Selinger is a James Beard Award-nominated lifestyle writer and mother of two based in Boxford, MA, and the author of the memoir Cellar Rat: My Life in the Restaurant Underbelly. Her print and digital work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Eater, Travel + Leisure, Food & Wine, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and elsewhere. Her 2021 Bon Appétit essay, “In My Childhood Kitchen, I Learned Both Fear and Love,” is anthologized in the 2022 Best American Food Writing collection.

Rating: 5/5

Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant

About the book: Mailman (2025) is an uproarious and “utterly charming” (The Washington Post) memoir by a mailman in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, who found that working for the post office saved his life, taught him who he was, gave him purpose, and educated him deeply about a country he loves but had lost touch with.

Steve Grant was laid off in March of 2020. He was fifty and had cancer, so he needed health insurance, fast. Which is how he found himself a rural letter carrier in Appalachia, back in his old hometown.

Suddenly, he was the guy with the goods, delivering dog food and respirators and lube and heirloom tomato seeds and Lord of the Rings replica swords. He transported chicken feed to grandmothers living alone in the mountains and forded a creek with a refrigerator on his back. But while he carried the mail, he also carried a whole lot more than just the mail, including a family legacy of rage and the anxiety of having lost his identity along with his corporate job.

And yet, slowly, surrounded by a quirky but devoted band of letter carriers, working this different kind of job, Grant found himself becoming a different kind of person. He became a lifeline for lonely people, providing fleeting moments of human contact and the assurance that our government still cares. He embraced the thrill of tackling new challenges, the pride of contributing to something greater than himself, the joy of camaraderie, and the purpose found in working hard for his family and doing a small, good thing for his community. He even kindled a newfound faith.

A brash and loving portrait of an all-American institution, Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home (2025) offers a “warm and oddly patriotic” (The New York Times) look at both rural America and the dedicated (and eccentric) letter carriers who keep our lives running smoothly day to day. 

“A compelling and empathetic guide” (The Atlantic), Grant has written an irreverent, heartfelt, and often hilarious tribute to the simple heroism of daily service, the dignity and struggle of blue-collar work, the challenge and pleasure of coming home again after twenty-five years away, and the delight of going the extra mile for your neighbours, every day.

About the author: After twenty years as a consumer strategist, Stephen Starring Grant became a rural letter carrier during the pandemic. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he lives in Blacksburg, Virginia.

Under Water by Tara Menon

About the book: Under Water (2026) is a stunning and deeply moving novel of grief, loss and female friendship, set against the backdrop of two cataclysmic natural events

When six-year-old Marissa loses her mother, she is taken by her father to live on a small Thai island in the Andaman Sea. There, she forms a deep friendship with Arielle and together they explore the fragile wonders of its forests, reefs, and beaches. Holding their breath for minutes at a time, they learn to dive into the deep, as effortlessly synchronized as the manta rays they come to know by name. Then, on Boxing Day 2004, when the Indian Ocean tsunami makes landfall, they are swept up by the first wave and separated.

Eight years later, Marissa is living in New York. She spends her days wandering through the city and her nights seeking solace in the beds of strangers. As the city prepares for a devastating storm, Marissa reflects on her past and learns how to sustain herself in a precarious world.

Under Water is a story about friendship and grief, but also ecological change and natural disasters. It is a meditation on loss, a tribute to our dying oceans and forests, and a love letter to the disappearing coral reefs.

Under Water is a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick and a Vogue Best Debut 2026.

About the author: Tara Menon is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Harvard University. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Nation, Paris Review and Public Books, where she co-edits the Literary Fiction section. Tara was born in India, grew up in Singapore, spent a decade in New York, and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Rating: 5/5