A selection of new fiction and non-fiction books being published this January.
The page-turning new novel from the award-winning author of The Witchfinder's Sister. 'A gifted storyteller' Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent. 'The Key in the Lock is an absolute triumph! Dark, clever and utterly enthralling, this is historical fiction - and storytelling - at its absolute best' Elizabeth Macneal, author of Circus of Wonders. 'The Key in the Lock is the perfect gothic novel. It has secrets, guilt, brilliant characters, and a grand old house built on a terrible past. An absolute corker' Stuart Turton, author of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle I still dream, every night, of Polneath on fire. Smoke unravelling from an upper window, and the terrace bathed in a hectic orange light… Now I see that the decision I made at Polneath was the only decision of my life. Everything marred in that one dark minute. By day, Ivy Boscawen mourns the loss of her son Tim in the Great War. But by night she mourns another boy - one whose death decades ago haunts her still. For Ivy is sure that there is more to what happened all those years ago: the fire at the Great House, and the terrible events that came after. A truth she must uncover, if she is ever to be free. But once you open a door to the past, can you ever truly close it again? From the award-winning author of The Witchfinder's Sister comes a captivating story of burning secrets and buried shame, and of the loyalty and love that rises from the ashes.
'With captivating characters and a richly drawn setting, this poignant story is the perfect book to curl up with' Catherine Isaacs 'Moving, intriguing and beautifully written, this is a story about coming home' Katie Fforde 'An immensely enjoyable and absorbing novel: tender-hearted and infused with empathy and a great sense of place' Erica James
Little Wing is the powerful story of two families over three generations. In the 1960s, a pregnant 16-year-old is banished to one of the remotest parts of the UK. Years later, Nell and Dougie are both at critical moments in their lives when their paths cross. Between Camden, Colchester and the Outer Hebrides, the three story lines collide when secrets are uncovered and answers sought. Little Wing is a novel about resilience, forgiveness and the true meaning of family, about finding one's place in the world and discovering how we all belong somewhere and to someone.
'Grips like a vice' - Val McDermid'.
Twenty-one years ago, Dr Richard Carter and his wife Pamela were killed in what has become the most infamous double murder of the modern age. Their ten year-old daughter - nicknamed the Angel of Death - spent eight years in a children's secure unit and is living quietly under an assumed name with a family of her own. Now, on the anniversary of the trial, a documentary team has tracked down her older sister, compelling her to break two decades of silence.
Her explosive interview sparks national headlines and journalist Brinley Booth, a childhood friend of the Carter sisters, is tasked with covering the news story. For the first time, the three women are forced to confront what really happened that night - with devastating consequences for them all. When I Was Ten is the highly anticipated, stay-up-all-night next book by acclaimed crime author Fiona Cummins.
The new novel from The Sunday Times Bestselling Author Of The Appeal. 'It totally foxed me. So clever and totally brilliant' - Lisa Hall 'Enid Blyton meets Agatha Christie with a cracking twist' - Marion Todd' An elegant puzzle of a book with an exquisite heart' - Matt Wesolowski
It's time to solve the murder of the century... Forty years ago, Steven Smith found a copy of a famous children's book by disgraced author Edith Twyford, its margins full of strange markings and annotations. Wanting to know more, he took it to his English teacher Miss Iles, not realising the chain of events that he was setting in motion. Miss Iles became convinced that the book was the key to solving a puzzle, and that a message in secret code ran through all Twyford's novels. Then Miss Iles disappeared on a class field trip, and Steven has no memory of what happened to her.
Now, out of prison after a long stretch, Steven decides to investigate the mystery that has haunted him for decades. Was Miss Iles murdered? Was she deluded? Or was she right about the code? And is it still in use today? Desperate to recover his memories and find out what really happened to Miss Iles, Steven revisits the people and places of his childhood. But it soon becomes clear that Edith Twyford wasn't just a writer of forgotten children's stories.
A new edition to tie in with the critically acclaimed film directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, starring Olivia Colman, Dakota Johnson And Paul Mescal.
From the international bestselling author of My Brilliant Friend, Leda is devoted to her work as an English teacher and to her two children. When her daughters leave home to be with their father in Canada, Leda anticipates a period of loneliness and longing. Instead, slightly embarrassed by the sensation, she feels liberated, as if her life has become lighter, easier. She decides to take a holiday by the sea, in a small coastal town in southern Italy. But after a few days of calm and quiet, things begin to take a menacing turn. Leda encounters a family whose brash presence proves unsettling, at times even threatening.
When a small, apparently meaningless, event occurs, Leda is overwhelmed by memories of the difficult and unconventional choices she made as a mother and their consequences for herself and her family. The seemingly serene tale of a woman's pleasant rediscovery of herself soon becomes the story of a ferocious confrontation with an unsettled past. The Lost Daughter is a compelling and perceptive meditation on womanhood and motherhood, exploring the conflicting emotions that tie us to our children.
From the author of the modern classic, ‘A Little Life’, a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia.
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). The fragile young scion of a distinguished family resists betrothal to a worthy suitor, drawn to a charming music teacher of no means. In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientists damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him and solve the mystery of her husbands disappearances.
These three sections are joined in an enthralling and ingenious symphony, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another: A townhouse in Washington Square Park in Greenwich Village; illness, and treatments that come at a terrible cost; wealth and squalor; the weak and the strong; race; the definition of family, and of nationhood; the dangerous righteousness of the powerful, and of revolutionaries; the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise, and the gradual realization that it cant exist. What unites not just the characters, but these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: Fear. Love. Shame. Need. Loneliness. To Paradise is a fin de siècle novel of marvellous literary effect, but above all it is a work of emotional genius.
Vegan fast-food is here to stay and never tasted so good with these stunningly inventive recipes for plant-based burgers, dogs, subs, wings and much more!
While traditional butchers might be disappearing from the high street, there's a new breed ready to slice a different kind of meat - made from plants! So-called 'vegetarian butchers' are creating food that mimics meat and offering convincing substitutes that look, feel and even taste like the real thing. Mock meat, of course, is nothing new. Burger patties made from soy-based protein and wheat gluten have been around since the 1960s but now vegetables, nuts, pulses and grains are in on the act and taking vegan substitutes for all our fast food favourites to a whole new level! But why buy over-processed and over-packaged meat-free products from supermarkets when you can make healthier, cheaper and equally delicious meatfree fast fixes at home? Prepare to be wowed by recipes for Easiest Vegan Burger Recipe Ever with Beet Ketchup, Hell Yeah Chilli Dogs, Baby Got No Beef Burrito, KFC-style Chkn Burger and even Tofish & Chips.
A compelling investigation into the phenomenon of dirty work - labour that society considers essential, but morally compromised. A New Statesman Book of the Year'This book will prompt a public reckoning with inequality in work' Michael J. Sandel'
Guards who patrol the wards of America's most violent and abusive prisons. Undocumented immigrants who man the 'kill floors' of industrial slaughterhouses. Roustabouts who drill for oil on offshore rigs. And drone operators who kill people from thousands of miles away. These are the essential workers we prefer not to think about. Their morally dubious, often physically violent and dangerous activity sustains modern society yet is concealed from our gaze.
It is work that falls disproportionately in deprived areas, on immigrants and people of colour, and entails a less familiar set of occupational hazards - stigma, shame and moral injury. Eyal Press reveals fundamental truths about the morality of work and the hidden costs of inequality. Striking, sophisticated and nuanced, Dirty Work will change the way you think about society.
'One of the most monstrous enterprises in the annals of international history,' said Karl Marx. 'A madness without parallel since Don Quixote,' said a future French president. This is history's judgement on the events surrounding the ill-fated reign of Maximilian of Mexico, the young Austrian archduke who in 1864 crossed the Atlantic to assume a faraway throne.
He had been convinced to do so by a duplicitous Napoleon III. Keen to spread his own interests abroad, the French emperor promised Maximilian a hero's welcome, which he would ensure with his own mighty military support. Instead, Maximilian walked into a bloody guerrilla war - and with a headful of impractical ideals and a penchant for pomp and butterflies, the so-called new emperor was singularly unequipped for the task. The ensuing saga would feature the great world leaders of the day, popes, bandits and queens; intrigue, conspiracy and cut-throat statecraft, as Mexico became the pivotal battleground in the global balance of power, between Old Europe and the burgeoning force of the New World: American imperialism. The Last Emperor of Mexico is the vivid history of this barely known, barely believable episode - a bloody tragedy of operatic proportions, and a vital debacle, the effects of which would be felt into the twentieth century and beyond.
Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea. Otto von Bismarck had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France - all without destroying itself in the process? In a unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War.
This often-startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron.
The Sunday Times' Science And Environment Book Of The Year 2021. Shortlisted For The Baillie Gifford Prize 2021. Shortlisted For The Wainwright Conservation Award 2021. Shortlisted For The British Academy Book Prize 2021. Longlisted For The Highland Book Prize 2021
This is a book about abandoned places: ghost towns and exclusion zones, no man's lands and fortress islands - and what happens when nature is allowed to reclaim its place. In Chernobyl, following the nuclear disaster, only a handful of people returned to their dangerously irradiated homes. On an uninhabited Scottish island, feral cattle live entirely wild.
In Detroit, once America's fourth-largest city, entire streets of houses are falling in on themselves, looters slipping through otherwise silent neighbourhoods. This book explores the extraordinary places where humans no longer live - or survive in tiny, precarious numbers - to give us a possible glimpse of what happens when mankind's impact on nature is forced to stop. From Tanzanian mountains to the volcanic Caribbean, the forbidden areas of France to the mining regions of Scotland, Flyn brings together some of the most desolate, eerie, ravaged and polluted areas in the world - and shows how, against all odds, they offer our best opportunities for environmental recovery.
By turns haunted and hopeful, this luminously written world study is pinned together with profound insight and new ecological discoveries that together map an answer to the big questions: what happens after we're gone, and how far can our damage to nature be undone?
That deeper calling within you? Don't ignore it! It's time to start listening to your intuition - and following it to find your true purpose. Intuition is the strongest tool we have, but far too often we forget to use it or aren't sure where to begin. This is the ultimate guide to connecting with your intuition, awakening to your spiritual purpose and leading an inspired, joyful life.
Award-winning spiritual coach Liz Roberta has devised a transformative framework of 21 inspiring questions to help you take practical steps to activate your intuition and start living in alignment. You'll discover how to: * listen, tune in and follow your intuition* develop deep trust and confidence in yourself* choose a life path aligned with your purpose* share your unique insights and gifts with the world It's time to trust your intuition and start living in tune with your deep inner knowing. You're here for a reason and your soul knows what's best for you.
When you close the last page, you'll know too.
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