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!
Featured Books of the Month:
There Is (Still) Love Here by Dean Atta
There is (still) love here, the compelling new collection of poetry by Dean Atta, is a personal and powerful exploration of relationships, love and loss, encompassing LGBTQ+ and Black history, Greek Cypriot heritage, pride and identity, dislocation and belonging.
Atta’s tender, precisely-crafted and generous poems seek consolation and affirmation. These are poems as an antidote for challenging times, whether facing prejudice or the challenges of the pandemic, experiencing grief or recovering from heartbreak. Here, we encounter blue feelings and homesickness, things lost in translation and the pressures of the many roles we play in life. We also find the recipes of home, gifts and giving, the togetherness of community and connection to help us to heal. There is still love here – and journeys towards forgiveness, acceptance, queer joy and the power to unapologetically be yourself and fully embrace who you are. (Credit: Nine Arches Press)
Before Your Memory Fades by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
In northern Japan, overlooking the spectacular view Hakodate Port has to offer, Cafe Donna Donna has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
From the author of Before the Coffee Gets Cold and Tales from the Cafe comes another story of four new customers, each of whom is hoping to take advantage of the cafe’s time-travelling offer. Among some familiar faces from Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s previous novels, readers will also be introduced to:
A daughter who couldn’t say ‘You’re an idiot.’
A comedian who couldn’t ask ‘Are you happy?’
A younger sister who couldn’t say ‘Sorry.’
A young man who couldn’t say ‘I like you.’ (Credit: Pan Macmillan)
The Skeleton Key by Erin Kelly
Summer, 2021. Nell has come home at her family’s insistence to celebrate an anniversary. Fifty years ago, her father wrote The Golden Bones. Part picture book, part treasure hunt, Sir Frank Churcher created a fairy story about Elinore, a murdered woman whose skeleton was scattered all over England. Clues and puzzles in the pages of TheGolden Bones led readers to seven sites where jewels were buried – gold and precious stones, each a different part of a skeleton. One by one, the tiny golden bones were dug up until only Elinore’s pelvis remained hidden.
The book was a sensation. A community of treasure hunters called the Bonehunters formed, in frenzied competition, obsessed to a dangerous degree. People sold their homes to travel to England and search for Elinore. Marriages broke down as the quest consumed people. A man died. The book made Frank a rich man. His daughter, Nell, became a recluse.
But now the Churchers must be reunited. The book is being reissued along with a new treasure hunt and a documentary crew are charting everything that follows. Nell is appalled, and terrified. During the filming, Frank finally reveals the whereabouts of the missing golden bone. And then all hell breaks loose. (Credit: Hodder & Stoughton)
Hysterical: Exploding the Myth of Gendered Emotions by Pragya Agarwal
Emotions can be difficult things to define, yet we all recognise them when we feel them or see them in others. How we interpret those emotions and act on them has been heavily gendered, as far back as Ancient Greek and Roman times and – despite the improvements in societal equality – continues to be today.
We’ve all heard the sayings that girls should be ‘sugar and spice and all things nice’, while ‘boys don’t cry’. In Hysterical, Pragya Agarwal dives deep into the history and science that has determined the gendering of emotions to ask whether there is any truth in the notion of innate differences between the male and female experience of emotions. She examines the impact this has on men and women – especially the role it has played in the subjugation of women throughout history – and how a future where emotions are ungendered might look. (Credit: Canongate Books Ltd)
Remainders of the Day: More Diaries from The Bookshop, Wigtown by Shaun Bythell
The Bookshop in Wigtown is a bookworm’s idyll – with thousands of books across nearly a mile of shelves, a real log fire, and Captain, the bookshop cat. You’d think after twenty years, owner Shaun Bythell would be used to the customers by now.
Don’t get him wrong – there are some good ones among the antiquarian porn-hunters, die-hard Arthurians, people who confuse bookshops for libraries and the toddlers just looking for a nice cosy corner in which to wee. He’s sure there are. There must be some good ones, right?
Filled with the pernickety warmth and humour that has touched readers around the world, stuffed with literary treasures, hidden gems and incunabula, Remainders of the Day is Shaun Bythell’s latest entry in his bestselling diary series. (Credit: Profile Books Ltd)
Unraveller by Frances Hardinge
In a world where anyone can create a life-destroying curse, only one person has the power to unravel them.
Kellen does not fully understand his talent, but helps those transformed maliciously – including Nettle. Recovered from entrapment in bird form, she is now his constant companion, and closest ally.
But Kellen has also been cursed, and unless he and Nettle can remove his curse, Kellen is in danger of unravelling everything – and everyone – around him…(Credit: Pan Macmillan)
And Everything Will Be Glad to See You – Poetry Collections by Ella Risbridger and illustrated by Anna Shepeta
A forceful, passionate and uplifting collection of poems by women and girls that is guaranteed to inspire, delight and empower. From well-loved poets, including Maya Angelou, Wendy Cope, Lucille Clifton and Christina Rossetti, to newer voices such as Amanda Gorman, Yrsa-Daley Ward and Ada Limon, this outstanding collection from talented anthologist Ella Risbridger has poems for every mood and every moment.
Ella’s selection is wide-ranging but accessible and will appeal to poetry lovers both young and old alike. With sumptuous finishes including cloth binding, full colour illustrations throughout, textured paper jacket, ribbon marker, and head and tail bands. This is the perfect gift to begin a lifelong love of poetry. (Credit: Nosy Crow)
Undoctored by Adam Kay
Expected Publication Date: September 15
Adam Kay’s secret diary from his time as a junior doctor This is Going to Hurt was the publishing phenomenon of the century. It has been read by millions, translated into 37 languages, and adapted into a major BBC television series. But that was only part of the story.
Now, Adam Kay returns and will once again have you in stitches in his painfully funny and startlingly powerful follow-up, Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran out of Patients. In his most honest and incisive book yet, he reflects on what’s happened since hanging up his scrubs and examines a life inextricably bound up with medicine. Battered and bruised from his time on the NHS frontline, Kay looks back, moves forwards and opens up some old wounds.
Hilarious and heartbreaking, horrifying and humbling, Undoctored is the astonishing portrait of a life by one of Britain’s best-loved storytellers. (Credit: Orion Publishing Co)
Stone Blind: Medusa’s Story by Natalie Haynes
Expected Publication Date: September 15
‘So to mortal men, we are monsters. Because of our flight, our strength. They fear us, so they call us monsters.’
Medusa is the only mortal in a family of gods. Growing up with her sisters, she quickly realizes that she is the only one who gets older, experiences change, feels weakness. Her mortal lifespan gives her an urgency that her family will never know.
When the sea god, Poseidon, commits an unforgivable act in her sacred temple the goddess, Athene, takes her revenge on an innocent – and Medusa’s life is changed forever. Appalled by her own reflection: snakes have replaced her hair and she realises that her gaze can now turn any living creature to stone. Medusa can no longer look upon anyone she loves without destroying them,, and so condemns herself to a life lived in shadow and solitude to limit her murderous rage.
That is, until Perseus embarks upon a fateful quest to fetch the head of a Gorgon . . .(Credit: Pan Macmillan)
Landlines by Raynor Winn
Expected Publication Date: September 15
We’re a long way from ‘nearly there’, the path winds higher and higher, until it almost disappears…
As the fracture lines between nations grow ever wider, how do we relate to each other, to the land on which we live and the world around us? Are we united enough to see protection of the natural environment as a priority?
These are the questions Raynor asks herself as she embarks on her most ambitious walk to date with her husband Moth – from the dramatic beauty of the Cape Wrath Trail in the north-west corner of Scotland, to the familiar territory of the South-west Coast Path.
Chronicling her journey across Great Britain with trademark luminous, exquisite prose, Raynor maps not only the physical terrain, but also captures the collective consciousness of a country facing an uncertain path ahead.
Let Down Your Hair by Bryony Gordon
Expected Publication Date: September 15
Barb may have zero friends IRL, but online, she is popular. Like, several-hundred-thousand-followers popular. Or at least, her hair is popular. Because Barb’s hair is glossy and beautiful. Which is why hairbrush manufacturers pay her stupid money for a 30-second clip. But most of the time Barb just wants to be a normal teenager, who has friends and a life. One who isn’t confined to her bedroom on the 12th floor of the tower-block flat she shares with her aunt making content. One who can go about her business without everyone obsessing over the way she looks. Barb just needs to save up some money to make a new life for herself.
But it’s soon clear something isn’t right. Because when Barb runs her fingers over her scalp, she feels something smooth and different. She gets out her mirrors and combs for a video and sees it… a bald patch the size of a ten pence coin, slap bang in the middle of her head. Barb has alopecia. (Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
As Long As The Lemon Tree Grow by Zoulfa Katouh
Expected Publication Date: September 15
Salama Kassab was a pharmacy student when the cries for freedom broke out in Syria. She still had her parents and her big brother; she still had her home. She was even supposed to be meeting a boy to talk about marriage.
Now Salama volunteers at a hospital in Homs, helping the wounded who flood through the doors. She knows that she should be thinking about leaving, but who will help the people of her beloved country if she doesn’t? With her heart so conflicted, her mind has conjured a vision to spur her to action. His name is Khawf, and he haunts her nights with hallucinations of everything she has lost. But even with Khawf pressing her to leave, when she crosses paths with Kenan, the boy she was supposed to meet on that fateful day, she starts to doubt her resolve in leaving home at all.
Soon, Salama must learn to see the events around her for what they truly are-not a war, but a revolution-and decide how she, too, will cry for Syria’s freedom. (Credit: Bloomsbury Publishing)
Soul of the Deep by Natasha Bowen
Expected Publication Date: September 29
One life. One choice. One sacrifice.
To save those closest to her, Simi sacrificed everything – her freedom, her life as mami wata, and the boy she loves.
Now she serves a new god, watching over the Land of the Dead at the bottom of the ocean. But the tide of change is coming and when Simi discovers demons have entered the human realm bent on destruction, she must break her vow and return to the world above the water. The fate of the world lies in her hands. (Credit: Penguin Random House Children’s UK)
Leila and the Blue Fox by Kiran Millwood Hargrave and illustrated by Tom de Freston
Expected Publication Date: September 29
She was very tired.
She lay down, her soft head on her soft paws.
The sunset licked her face.
The snow covered her like a blanket.
Fox wakes, and begins to walk. She crosses ice and snow, over mountains and across frozen oceans, encountering bears and birds beneath the endless daylight of an Arctic summer, navigating a world that is vast, wild and wondrous.
Meanwhile, Leila embarks on a journey of her own – finding her way to the mother who left her. On a breathtaking journey across the sea, Leila rediscovers herself and the mother she thought she’d lost, with help from a determined little fox. (Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
Forever Home by Graham Norton
Expected Publication Date: September 29
Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown. A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging. The new relationship sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned them all those years ago? But the gossip only serves to bring the couple closer.
When Declan becomes ill, things start to fall apart. His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home with its worn oak floors and elegant features and move back in with her parents.
Carol’s mother is determined to get to the bottom of things, she won’t see her daughter suffer in this way. It seems there are secrets in Declan’s past, strange rumours that were never confronted and suddenly the house they shared takes on a more sinister significance.
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