Are you looking for your next great read? Why not try out the books from across the pond? Despite from what governments say, books are essential and are needed now, more than ever. So if you are need of a variety and want to read diverse stories, then I suggest you try out some British and Irish titles!
We may have left 2020 behind, but the pain and struggles of last year are still being faced, especially independent bookstores. Continue to support indie bookstores by shopping on Bookshop.org and Hive.co.uk.
You can buy these titles from BookDepository.com, a subsidiary of Amazon. They provide free international delivery, although this is being affected right now due to the pandemic. You can also try with the British bookstore, Blackwell’s, also with Wordery.com. Now on with the recommendations!
Featured Book of the Month:
The Comfort Book by Matt Haig
“It is a strange paradox, that many of the clearest, most comforting life lessons are learnt while we are at our lowest. But then we never think about food more than when we are hungry and we never think about life rafts more than when we are thrown overboard.” THE COMFORT BOOK is Haig’s life raft: it’s a collection of notes, lists, and stories written over a span of several years that originally served as gentle reminders to Haig’s future self that things are not always as dark as they may seem. Incorporating a diverse array of sources from across the world, history, science, and his own experiences, Haig offers warmth and reassurance, reminding us to slow down and appreciate the beauty and unpredictability of existence.(Credit: Penguin Life)
Assembly by Natasha Brown
Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment. Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things. Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness. But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.
The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend’s family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself. As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can’t escape the question: is it time to take it all apart? (Credit: Penguin Books)
This title will be released in September in the US.
Reputation by Lex Croucher
Abandoned by her parents, middle-class Georgiana Ellers has moved to a new town to live with her dreary aunt and uncle. At a particularly dull party, she meets the enigmatic Frances Campbell, a wealthy member of the in-crowd who lives a life Georgiana couldn’t have imagined in her wildest dreams.
Lonely and vulnerable, Georgiana falls in with Frances and her unfathomably rich, deeply improper friends. Georgiana is introduced to a new world: drunken debauchery, mysterious young men with strangely arresting hands, and the upper echelons of Regency society. But the price of entry to high society might just be higher than Georgiana is willing to pay …(Credit: Bonnier Zaffre )
I Know What You’ve Done by Dorothy Koomson
What if all your neighbours’ secrets landed in a diary on your doorstep?
What if the woman who gave it to you was murdered by one of the people in the diary?
What if the police asked if you knew anything?
Would you hand over the book of secrets?
Or … would you try to find out what everyone had done? (Credit: Headline Publishing Group )
We Want Our Books: Rosa’s Fight to Save the Library by Jake Alexander
Rosa wants a book. But when she gets to the library, she finds it is closed. What could be the end of the story is just the beginning, as Rosa and her sister Maria try everything they can think of to bring their community together and fight to get back their precious library.
A picture book that features big subjects in a child-friendly way, with beautiful artwork, making this the perfect discussion starter for curious children. From debut author and illustrator, Jake Alexander, winner of the Creative Conscience Gold Medal. (Credit: Pan Macmillan)
The Second Woman by Charlotte Philby
Two women are found dead. Both had a secret. Both had a choice.
Artemis leaves the remote Greek island she grew up on to start a shiny new life in 1990s London with her British husband, a successful entrepreneur. Finally, she has escaped the ghosts of her past. Until she is found hanging from the stairs of her beautiful family home.
Two decades later, the apparent suicide of an heiress uncannily mirrors Artemis’ mysterious death. And when the ensuing investigation uncovers links to a criminal cartel, National Crime Agency officer Madeleine Farrow begins to pull apart the web of deceit surrounding the two women.
The Second Woman is a deeply unsettling, brilliantly gripping story of a family legacy built upon lies.
Secrets can be suffocating… especially in the wrong hands. (Credit: HarperCollins)
The Night Caller by Martina Murphy
Expected Publication Date: July 15
On Doogarth East Bog, Achill Island, a body is found. The close community is stunned to learn that it’s Lisa Moran, a popular teacher who disappeared two days earlier.
DS Lucy Golden is assigned to the case. For her, it’s personal. As an Achill native, she knows that sometimes great evil can lurk in plain sight. Having moved back from Dublin, she has spent the last ten years trying to prove herself to her colleagues after her husband was jailed for fraud. This is her chance to put the past behind her. Her teenage son Luc’s behaviour, however, is increasingly troubling and Lucy doesn’t have time for distractions.
When another body is found in an abandoned property on the bog, with links to a murder 20 years ago, the stakes are raised – but a pattern is emerging. Can Lucy put the pieces together? Or will her family crisis mean the murderer claims his next victim? (Credit: Little, Brown Book Group)
Afterlove by Tanya Byrne
Expected Publication Date: July 22
The lesbian love story you’ve dying to read. Ash Persaud is about to become a reaper in the afterlife, but she is determined to see her first love Poppy Morgan again, the only thing that separates them is death.
Car headlights.The last thing Ash hears is the snap of breaking glass as the windscreen hits her and breaks into a million pieces like stars. But she made it, she’s still here. Or is she?
This New Year’s Eve, Ash is gets an RSVP from the afterlife she can’t decline: to join a clan of fierce girl reapers who take the souls of the city’s dead to await their fate.
But Ash can’t forget her first love, Poppy, and she will do anything to see her again… even if it means they only get a few more days together. Dead or alive…
Not even death can tear them apart. (Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
This Is My Truth by Yasmin Rahman
Expected Publication Date: July 22
Best friends Amani and Huda are getting nervous about their GCSEs – and their future beyond school, which they’re both wildly unprepared for.
Shy, quiet Amani has an outwardly picture-perfect family – a father who is a successful TV presenter, a loving mother, and an adorable younger brother – while confident and impulsive Huda has grown up with over-affectionate foster parents who are now expecting a baby of their own.
Both girls are jealous of each other’s seemingly easy life, without realising the darkness or worries that lie underneath. Then Huda witnesses Amani’s father hitting her mother, and Amani’s biggest secret is suddenly out.
As Amani convinces Huda to keep quiet by helping her with her own problems, a prank blog starts up at school, revealing students’ secrets one by one. Will this anonymous blogger get hold of Amani’s secret too? Will Huda keep quiet? (Credit: Hot Key Books)
How to Kill Your Family by Bella Mackie
Expected Publication Date: July 22
When I think about what I actually did, I feel somewhat sad that nobody will ever know about the complex operation that I undertook. Getting away with it is highly preferable, of course, but perhaps when I’m long gone, someone will open an old safe and find this confession. The public would reel. After all, almost nobody else in the world can possibly understand how someone, by the tender age of 28, can have calmly killed six members of her family. And then happily got on with the rest of her life, never to regret a thing.
A wickedly dark romp about class, family, love… and murder. (Credit: HarperCollins)
Allies: Real Talk About Showing Up, Screwing Up, And Trying Again edited by Shakirah Bourne end Dana Alison Levy
Expected Publication Date: July 29
As an ally, you use your power—no matter how big or small—to support others. You learn, and try, and mess up, and try harder. In this collection of true stories, 17 critically acclaimed and bestselling YA authors get real about being an ally, needing an ally, and showing up for friends and strangers.
From raw stories of racism and invisible disability to powerful moments of passing the mic, these authors share their truths. They invite you to think about your own experiences and choices and how to be a better ally.
There are no easy answers, but this book helps you ask better questions. Self-reflection prompts, resources, journaling ideas, and further reading suggestions help you find out what you can do. Because we’re all in this together. And we all need allies. (Credit: DK Publishing)
cup of tea with that book, please 