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:
As Good As Dead by Holly Jackson
Pip’s good girl days are long behind her. After solving two murder cases and garnering internet fame from her crime podcast, she’s seen a lot.
But she’s still blindsided when it starts to feel like someone is watching her. It’s small things at first. A USB stick with footage recording her and the same anonymous source always asking her: who will look for you when you’re the one who disappears? It could be a harmless fan, but her gut is telling her danger is lurking.
When Pip starts to find connections between her possible stalker and a local serial killer, Pip knows that there is only one choice: find the person threatening her town including herself–or be as good as dead. Because maybe someone has been watching her all along… (Credit: Electric Monkey)
It will also come out in the US on September 28.
Happy Here: 10 Stories From Black British Authors & Illustrators
Exploring themes of joy, home and family through a wide range of genres and styles, each author has been paired with a different illustrator to spotlight Black British artistic talent. With stories by Dean Atta, Joseph Coelho, Kereen Getten, Patrice Lawrence, Theresa Lola, E.L. Norry, Jasmine Richards, Alexandra Sheppard, Yomi Sode, and Clare Weze. (Credit: Knights of)
The Heights by Louis Candlish
He thinks he’s safe up there.
But he’ll never be safe from you.
The Heights is a tall, slender apartment building among the warehouses of Shad Thames, its roof terrace so discreet you wouldn’t know it existed if you weren’t standing at the window of the flat directly opposite. But you are. And that’s when you see a man up there – a man you’d recognize anywhere. He’s older now and his appearance has subtly changed, but it’s definitely him.
Which makes no sense at all since you know he has been dead for over two years.
You know this for a fact.
Because you’re the one who killed him. (Credit: Simon & Schuster)
Cecily by Annie Garthwaite
You are born high, but marry a traitor’s son. You bear him twelve children, carry his cause and bury his past. You play the game, against enemies who wish you ashes. Slowly, you rise.
You are Cecily.
But when the king who governs you proves unfit, what then? Loyalty or treason – death may follow both. The board is set. Time to make your first move.
Told through the eyes of its greatest unknown protagonist, this astonishing debut plunges you into the closed bedchambers and bloody battlefields of the first days of the Wars of the Roses, a war as women fight it. (Credit: Penguin Books)
Midsummer Mysteries by Agatha Christie
An all-new collection of summer-themed mysteries from the master of the genre, just in time for the holiday season.
Summertime – as the temperature rises, so does the potential for evil. From Cornwall to the French Riviera, whether against a background of Delphic temples or English country houses, Agatha Christie’s most famous characters solve even the most devilish of conundrums as the summer sun beats down. Pull up a deckchair and enjoy plot twists and red herrings galore from the bestselling fiction writer of all time. (Credit: HaperCollins)
Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different: Poems from Malika’s Poetry Kitchen edited by Maisie Lawrence and Rishi Dastidar
In the early years of the new millennium, poets Malika Booker and Roger Robinson saw the need for a space for writers outside of the establishment to grow, improve, discuss and learn. One Friday night, Malika offered her Brixton kitchen table as a meeting place. And so Malika’s Poetry Kitchen was born.
‘Kitchen’, as it became known, has ushered in a new generation of voices, launching some of the most exciting writers, books and initiatives in British poetry in the past twenty years. Today, Kitchen is a thriving writers’ collective, with a wealth of talented poets and branches in Chicago and India.
Too Young, Too Loud, Too Different is a celebration of Kitchen’s legacy, an appreciation of its foundational spirit and a rallying cry for all writers to dream the future. The collection features breathtaking new poems by Warsan Shire, Inua Ellams, Kayo Chingonyi, Dean Atta, Roger Robinson, Malika Booker among many others. (Credit: Little, Brown Book Group)
Home by John Mackay
Built for the new age, the house stood boldly upright on the edge of the ocean withstanding the harsh blasts of a cruel century, nurturing and protecting the family within, watchful of hearts swollen or broken, dreams delivered and dashed. It had absorbed the tears and echoed the laughter.
A sweeping saga of one family through a momentous century. Different people, divergent lives and distinctive stories. Bound together by the place they called home.
But one of them is missing, lost to the world. An unknown grandchild, born to a son who went to war and never came back. As the years pass, through wars and emigration, social transformation and generational change, the search continues.
And the questions remain the same: Who is he? Where is he? Will he ever come home? (Credit: Luath Press Ltd )
Hidden Heritage: Rediscovering Britain’s Lost Love of the Orient by Fatima Manji
Expected Publication Date: August 12
Why was there a Turkish mosque adorning Britain’s most famous botanic garden in in the eighteenth century? And more importantly, why is it no longer there? How did one of the great symbols of an Indian king’s power, a pair of Persian-inscribed cannon, end up in rural Wales? And who is the Moroccan man that stole British hearts depicted in a long forgotten portrait hanging in a west London stately home?
Throughout Britain’s galleries and museums, civic buildings and stately homes, relics can be found that beg these questions and more. They point to a more complex national history than is commonly remembered. These objects, lost, concealed or simply overlooked, expose the diversity of pre-twentieth-century Britain and the misconceptions around modern immigration narratives. (Credit: Vintage Publishing )
Splinters of Sunshine by Patrice Lawrence
Expected Publication Date: August 19
After a fun Christmas Eve decorating the tree and singing along with his mum to Queen, fifteen-year-old Spey wakes up on Christmas morning to find the ex-prisoner father he’s never met asleep on the sofa.
Then he receives a mysterious package in the post: a torn envelope filled with half a collage he made with his old friend Dee on her sixth birthday. Dee bounced between schools and pupil referral units until a tragedy meant she ended up in care outside of London, drawn into the world of county lines gangs. They haven’t spoken for years, but Spey is sure she must be in danger. He just doesn’t know where she is.
There’s only one person Spey can think of who might be able to help … On a roadtrip like no other, can Spey and his dad find Dee, and will they be ready to confront a criminal gang together? (Credit: Hachette Children)
Emily Noble’s Disgrace by Mary Paulson-Ellis
Expected Publication Date: August 19
When trauma cleaner Essie Pound makes a gruesome discovery in the derelict Edinburgh boarding house she is sent to clean, it brings her into contact with a young policewoman, Emily Noble, who has her own reasons to solve the case.
As the two women embark on a journey into the heart of a forgotten family, the investigation prompts fragmented memories of their own traumatic histories – something Emily has spent a lifetime attempting to bury, and Essie a lifetime trying to lay bare. (Credit Pan Macmillan)
Girls Rule by Alesha Dixon
Expected Publication Date: August 19
Superstar TV presenter and bestselling author Alesha Dixon is back with a hilarious story of sisterhood and strong girls!
Pearl moves into 10 Downing Street when her mum Patrice becomes the UK’s first Black female Prime Minister.
A chance meeting with Patrice’s childhood sweetheart Jackson and suddenly Pearl’s glam new life has an unexpected gatecrasher: Jackson’s daughter Izzy.
Pearl and Izzy loathe each other on sight and have only one thing in common: a desire to split their parents up. They play loud music which interrupts important meetings, swap confidential documents for silly notes and skateboard through Number Ten knocking over the President of the United States. But as Patrice’s popularity in the polls begins to decline as a result of the girls’ out-of-control sabotaging, will they realise that they are stronger as team? (Credit: Scholastic)
cup of tea with that book, please 