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 2021 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!
The books link to the reading website StoryGraph.
Featured Book of the Month:
Only On The Weekends by Dean Atta
Expected Publication Date: May 24
Mack never thought he’d find love, but now two boys want to be with him. Will he choose Karim or Finlay? And can true love last for ever? A must-read queer love story for fans of Sarah Crossan and Sex Education, written in verse by Dean Atta.
Fifteen-year-old Mack is a hopeless romantic – he blames the films he’s grown up watching. He has liked Karim for as long as he can remember, and is ecstatic when Karim becomes his boyfriend – it feels like love.
But when Mack’s dad gets a job on a film in Scotland, Mack has to move, and soon he discovers how painful love can be. It’s horrible being so far away from Karim, but the worst part is that Karim doesn’t make the effort to visit. Love shouldn’t be only on the weekends.
Then, when Mack meets actor Finlay on a film set, he experiences something powerful, a feeling like love at first sight. How long until he tells Karim – and when will his old life and new life collide? (Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
Sister To A Star by Eloise Smith
Evie is forever crossing swords with her twin. While she practises her after-school fencing, Tallulah is winning movie auditions. Neither of them could have imagined how their worlds would collide, but when Tallulah goes to Hollywood Evie goes too – as her sister’s identical stand-in. But that changes, when the film needs some all-action sword-play. Soon Evie’s the one enjoying the limelight – that is, until Tallulah goes missing … An action-packed sibling adventure of twin rivalry, glamour and skulduggery set against the bright lights of Hollywood! (Credit: Chicken House)
The House With The Golden Door by Elodie Harper
Expected Publication Date: May 12
The life of a courtesan in Pompeii is glittering, yet precarious…
Amara has escaped her life as a slave in the town’s most notorious brothel, but now her existence depends on the affections of her patron: a man she might not know as well as she once thought.
At night she dreams of the wolf den, still haunted by her past. Amara longs for the women she was forced to leave behind and worse, finds herself pursued by the man who once owned her. In order to be free, she will need to be as ruthless as he is.
Amara knows her existence in Pompeii is subject to Venus, the goddess of love. Yet finding love may prove to be the most dangerous act of all. (Credit: Head of Zeus)
Ruth & Pen by Emilie Pine
Dublin, 7 October 2019. One day, one city, two women: Ruth and Pen. Neither known to the other, but both asking themselves the same questions: how to be with others and how, when the world doesn’t seem willing to make space for them, to be with themselves?
Ruth’s marriage to Aidan is in crisis. Today she needs to make a choice – to stay or not to stay, to take the risk of reaching out, or to pull up the drawbridge. For teenage Pen, today is the day the words will flow, and she will speak her truth to Alice, to ask for what she so desperately wants. (Credit: Penguin Books)
Fix The System, Not The Women by Laura Bates
Expected Publication Date: May 12
10 years after founding the Everyday Sexism Project, feminist writer and activist Laura Bates connects the dots between the ‘isolated incidents’ of violence against women and the institutional and systemic misogyny that is so deeply ingrained in our society.
Every three days in the UK, women are murdered by their current or former partners. 137 women worldwide are killed by a family member every day. These are not isolated incidents. They are part of a devastatingly clear pattern. But it is a pattern we are so used to seeing that we simply don’t notice it anymore. These incidents are the product of a society in which misogyny is so deeply ingrained that it has simply become part of our daily lives.
This book will lay these patterns bare for everyone to see. Joining the dots from an epidemic of school sexual violence to the failings of the police and CPS, institutional and systemic misogyny, political apathy and media distortion, this will be an examination of how the entire system lets women and girls down, again and again. (Credit: Simon & Schuster UK)
Idol by Louise O’Neill
Expected Publication Date: May 12
‘Follow your heart and speak your truth.’
For Samantha Miller’s young fans – her ‘girls’ – she’s everything they want to be. She’s an oracle, telling them how to live their lives, how to be happy, how to find and honour their ‘truth’.
And her career is booming: she’s just hit three million followers, her new book Chaste has gone straight to the top of the bestseller lists and she’s appearing at sell-out events.
Determined to speak her truth and bare all to her adoring fans, she’s written an essay about her sexual awakening as a teenager, with her female best friend, Lisa. She’s never told a soul but now she’s telling the world. The essay goes viral.
But then – years since they last spoke – Lisa gets in touch to say that she doesn’t remember it that way at all. Her memory of that night is far darker. It’s Sam’s word against Lisa’s – so who gets to tell the story? Whose ‘truth’ is really a lie?
‘You put yourself on that pedestal, Samantha. You only have yourself to blame.’ (Credit:Transworld Publishers Ltd)
Murder By The Seaside: Classic Crime Stories for Summer edited by Cecily Gayford
Expected Publication Date: May 12
It’s the height of summer. As the heat shimmers on the streets and ice cream melts onto sticky fingers, tempers begin to rise and old grudges surface. From Cornish beaches to the French Riviera, it’s not just a holiday that’s on people’s minds … it’s murder. In these ten classic stories from writers such as Dorothy L. Sayers, Cyril Hare and Margery Allingham, you’ll find mayhem and mysteries aplenty. So grab the suncream and head down to the beach – if you dare. (Credit: Profile Books)
The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Expected Publication Date: May 12
In Strasbourg, in the boiling hot summer of 1518, a plague strikes the women of the city. First it is just one – a lone figure, dancing in the main square – but she is joined by more and more and the city authorities declare an emergency. Musicians will be brought in. The devil will be danced out of these women.
Just beyond the city’s limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their livelihood. Her best friend Ida visits regularly and Lisbet is so looking forward to sharing life and motherhood with her. And then, just as the first woman begins to dance in the city, Lisbet’s sister-in-law Nethe returns from six years’ penance in the mountains for an unknown crime. No one – not even Ida – will tell Lisbet what Nethe did all those years ago, and Nethe herself will not speak a word about it.
It is the beginning of a few weeks that will change everything for Lisbet – her understanding of what it is to love and be loved, and her determination to survive at all costs for the baby she is carrying. Lisbet and Nethe and Ida soon find themselves pushing at the boundaries of their existence – but they’re dancing to a dangerous tune… (Credit: Pan Macmillan)
Ghosted by Emily Barr
Expected Publication Date: May 12
Ariel’s accidental meeting with a handsome stranger called Joe is completely perfect; they have a connection like she’s never known before. They exchange numbers and agree to meet when he is back from a trip to France. But when Ariel messages him, the number Joe gave her is disconnected. He’s ghosted her. She assumes she will never see him again.
Except she does. Again and again.
Ariel returns to the place she and Joe met, and is stunned to find him there, not in France as he said he’d be, and behaving as if he has no idea who she is. It turns out that their first meeting has been life-changing for them both, actually it’s even more than that for Joe. But what do you do when – with every day that passes – you’re literally growing apart from the best person you’ve ever known? (Credit: Penguin Books UK)
Wrong Place Wrong Time by Gilliam McAllister
Expected Publication Date: May 12
It’s every parent’s nightmare. Your happy, funny, innocent son commits a terrible crime: murdering a complete stranger. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your teenage boy is in custody and his future lost.
That night you fall asleep in despair. Until you wake… and it is yesterday.
Every morning you wake up a day earlier, another day before the murder. Another chance to stop it. Somewhere in the past lie the answers, and you don’t have a choice but to find them… (Credit: Penguin Books)
If you can wait, this title comes out in the US on August 2.
More Fiya: A New Collection of Black British Poetry edited by Kayo Chingonyi
Expected Publication Date: May 19
In this blistering anthology, poet, editor and DJ Kayo Chingonyi brings together a selection of exceptional Black British poets. This is his dream mixtape featuring a cross-generational span of current poets extending and inhabiting the spirits of the ancestors. Following in the tread of Lemn Sissay’s The Fire People, More Fiya aims to lodge in the mind of its readers for a lifetime, radiating to touch the lives of many. (Credit: Canongate Books Ltd)
The Fire People: A Collection of British Black and Asian Poetry edited by Lemn Sissay
Expected Publication Date: May 19
This seminal collection of Black British poets ignited a movement when it was first published in 1998. It celebrated the rising stars of the time, many of whom have since become established names.
Inspired and influenced by roots, reggae and hip-hop, this anthology is edited by number one bestselling author and poet Lemn Sissay. (Credit: Canongate Books Ltd)
Do No Harm by Jack Jordan
Expected Publication Date: May 26
My child has been taken. And I’ve been given a choice – kill a patient on the operating table, or never see my son again. The man lies on the table in front of me. As a surgeon, it’s my job to save him. As a mother, I know I must kill him. You might think that I’m a monster. But there really is only one choice. I must get away with murder. Or I will never see my son again.
I’ve saved many lives. Would you trust me with yours? (Credit: Simon & Schuster)
The Butterfly Assassin by Finn Longman
Expected Publication Date: May 26
Innocent by day, killer by night: a dark, twisting thriller about a teen assassin’s attempt to live a normal life.
Trained and traumatised by a secret assassin programme for minors, Isabel Ryans wants nothing more than to be a normal civilian. After running away from home, she has a new name, a new life and a new friend, Emma, and for the first time, things are looking up.
But old habits die hard, and it’s not long until she blows her cover, drawing the attention of the guilds – the two rival organisations who control the city of Espera. An unaffiliated killer like Isabel is either a potential asset… or a threat to be eliminated.
Will the blood on her hands cost her everything? (Credit: Simon & Schuster)
One of The Girls by Lucy Clarke
Expected Publication Date: May 26
One is a liar. One is a stranger, One is a cheater. Who is a killer?
We were dying for a holiday…
The six of us arrived on that beautiful Greek island dreaming of sun-drenched beaches and blood orange sunsets, ready to lose ourselves in the wild freedom of a weekend away with friends.
On the first night we swam under a blanket of stars. On the second night the games began on our clifftop terrace. On the third night the idyll cracked, secrets and lies whispering on the breeze. And by the final night there was a body on the rocks below…
Who would kill for it? (Credit: HarperCollins UK)
The Breakfast Club Adventures: The Beast Beyond the Fence by Marcus Rashford and Alex Falase-Koya and illustrated by Marta Kissi
Expected Publication Date: May 26
There’s something fishy going on at school…
When twelve-year-old Marcus kicks his favourite football over the school fence, he knows he’s never getting it back. Nothing that goes over that wall ever comes back. But the next morning during Breakfast Club Marcus gets a mysterious note inviting him to join the Breakfast Club Investigators, and he is soon pulled into an exciting adventure with his new mates to solve the mystery and get his football back! (Credit: Pan Macmillan)
