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 2022 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.
Please note that Book Depository closed down it’s website on April 26, 2023.
Waterstones currently ships to the United States but there will be an international shipping fee. 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 Trap by Catherine Ryan Howard
Expected Publication Date: August 17
Stranded on a dark road in the middle of the night, a young woman accepts a lift from a passing stranger. It’s the nightmare scenario that every girl is warned about, and she knows the dangers all too well – but what other choice does she have?
As they drive, she alternates between fear and relief – one moment thinking he is just a good man doing a good thing, the next convinced he’s a monster. But when he delivers her safely to her destination, she realizes her fears were unfounded.
And her heart sinks. Because a monster is what she’s looking for.
She’ll try again tomorrow night. But will the man who took her sister take the bait? (Credit: Transworld Publishers Ltd)
Whirly Twirly Me by Manjeet Mann and illustrated by Amanda Quartey
A sensitive and reassuring picture book on understanding and handling big feelings from award-winning author Manjeet MannSome days are good days. Some days are bad days. And some days are whirly twirly days, where the strops have you in a flop and everything is TOO MUCH. But what if you weren’t just angry?
Written by award-winning author Manjeet Mann, this brilliant picture book helps young readers explore difficult feelings and identify their emotions.Sensitively written and accompanied by beautiful artwork by Amanda Quartey, this book reassures little readers it’s normal to feel a lot of things at once and helps them to embrace their own whirly twirly days. (Credit: HarperCollins)
Kill For Me Kill For You by Steve Cavanagh
She will kill your worst enemy. All you have to do is kill hers.
One dark evening in New York City, two strangers meet by chance. Over drinks, Amanda and Wendy realise they have so much in common. They both feel alone. They both drink alone.
And they both desperately want revenge against the two men who destroyed their families. Together, they have the perfect plan. If you kill for me, I’ll kill for you. (Credit: Headline Publishing Group)
Koku Akanbi and the Heart of Midnight by Maria Motunrayo Adebisi
Cursed with a weird name and an illness to match, Koku thinks life can’t get any worse – until he unleashes a demon on a school trip. He expects detention, but instead he’s hurled into an impossible quest filled with MAGICAL TRIBES, MAN-EATING MONSTERS and VENGEFUL MERMAIDS.When an ASSASSIN is sent to hunt him down, Koku’s only hope is to team up with a clumsy shapeshifter and a moody warrior-in-training. Together they enter the JUJULAND JUNGLE, a place filled with DANGEROUS SECRETS.
Can Koku discover his own power, before it’s too late? (Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
Over My Dead Body by Maz Evans
Hello? Can you hear me? Probably not. I’m Dr Miriam Price… and I’m dead.
The local police, who couldn’t investigate their own nostrils, think I drank myself into an early grave. The nerve! I was murdered. I was just too plastered to know whodunnit, that’s all.
Unless I prove to my inquest this week that my death was no ‘misadventure’, I’m condemned to 50 years in Limbo. I have to find my killer – but I can’t communicate with any living human. Well, there’s one, but she barely qualifies… Winnie – my neighbour and nemesis. It seems the dying can interact with the dead, which is helpful news for me, if not stellar for Winnie. Oh well. She’ll live. Maybe.
Suspects? How long have you got? My saintly husband, who’d reached his limit? My best friend, who was anything but? My secret lover, or his wife? My disgruntled colleague? The mother who wrongly holds me responsible for her child’s death? Professor Plum? Your guess is as good as mine.
So Winnie – slap on your deerstalker and strap on your granny pants. Let’s catch a killer! Assuming we don’t kill each other first…(Credit: Headline Publishing Group)
Windswept: Life, Nature and Deep Time in the Scottish Highlands by Annie Worsley
A few years ago, Annie Worsley traded a busy life in academia to take on a small-holding or croft on the west coast of Scotland. It is a land ruled by great elemental forces – light, wind and water – that hold sway over how land forms, where the sea sits and what grows. Windswept explores what it means to live in this rugged, awe-inspiring place of unquenchable spirit and wild weather.
Walk with Annie as she lays quartz stones in the river to reflect the moonlight and attract salmon, as she watches otters play tag across the beach, as she is awoken by the feral bellowing of stags. Travel back in time to the epic story of how Scotland’s valleys were carved by glaciers, rivers scythed paths through mountains, how the earliest people found a way of life in the Highlands – and how she then found a home there millennia later.
With stunning imagery and lyrical prose, Windswept evokes a place where nature reigns supreme and humans must learn to adapt. It is her paean to a beloved place, one richer with colour, sound and life than perhaps anywhere else in the UK. (Credit: HarperCollins Publishers)
The Wild Coast by Lin Anderson
A remote shoreline. A lethal killer. As lone visitors disappear from the rural northwest of Scotland, campsites are becoming crime scenes. The Wild Coast is a chilling thriller from Lin Anderson.
When forensic scientist Rhona MacLeod is brought in to analyse a shallow grave on Scotland’s west coast, she is disturbed by a bundle of twigs crafted into a stickman and left in the victim’s mouth.
Then, when a young woman is reported missing from a nearby campsite with another sinister figurine left in her van, it seems that someone is targeting wild campers. An idyllic coastline known for providing peace and serenity, now the area is a hunting ground.
As her investigation proceeds, Rhona is forced to reconsider her closest bonds. Rumours of sexual assault offences by serving police officers are circling in Glasgow, which may include her trusted colleague DS Michael McNab. Could it be true, or is someone looking to put him out of action?
All the while a young woman’s life is on the line and the clock is ticking…(Credit: Pan Macmillan)
Bliss & Blunder by Victoria Gosling
Arthur and Gwen married young. Twenty years on, Gwen’s got it all: wealth, beauty, a famous husband who’s the founder of Britain’s most successful tech company, stables full of horses, millions of followers on Instagram, an unstable lover, a wayward son, a hoard of secrets, an aching heart, and a cyberstalking blackmailer who calls himself The Invisible Knight. As the Wiltshire town of Abury prepares to celebrate the fortieth birthday of its favourite son, Morgan, Gwen’s former best friend, is on her way back to Abury after two decades away, keen to expose Abury’s long buried secrets and hellbent on revenge. An inventive, magisterial reworking of Britain’s greatest myth, Bliss & Blunder is a heartrending novel of power, friendship and betrayal. (Credit: Profile Books Ltd)
The Lodgers by Eithne Shortall
One house. Three strangers. A second chance at happiness.
Tessa’s life as an activist and volunteer worker takes a hit after a fall. At the ripe young age of 69, she’s no longer able to live alone and decides to take in two lodgers for free.
After the recent death of his brother, Conn is riddled with grief and determined to make amends. A free room seems too good to be true – until he meets the other lodger.
Chloe arrives at Tessa’s house to deliver a package and leaves with a room. But she takes an instant dislike to Conn, who refuses to say where he disappears to at night.
With everyone so busy keeping their own secrets, the mysterious package is forgotten. It’s addressed to Tessa’s daughter who’s been missing for 10 years – and only the contents have the answer to what happened…(Credit: Atlantic Books)
Consumed by Greg Buchanan
On a lonely farmstead, a 70-year-old woman falls down outside and, unable to move, is consumed overnight by two of her pigs.
It seems like a tragic accident, except the woman was well-known photographer Sophia Bertilak – and inside her house, someone has removed all her photos from their frames, seemingly erasing her past…The first photo Sophia ever took remains her most infamous: a missing girl who was never seen again. Forensic veterinarian Cooper Allen is drafted in for the post-mortem – and slowly becomes obsessed with the victim, her family, and the crimes she brought to light decades ago.
As Cooper pulls on a dark thread of deception, secrets and lies, she begins to unravel the case – as well as herself…(Credit: Orion Publishing Co)
Nowhere to Run: The ridiculous life of a semi-professional football club chairman by Jonathan Sayer
Expected Publication Date: August 10
On the second oldest football pitch in the world, Jonathan Sayer stands atop a beer crate to address the assembled fans of Ashton United FC. As his initial optimism begins to slip through his fingers, the new co-chairman and co-owner (alongside his dad) starts to realise the scale of the challenge ahead.
Battling to keep the club afloat, a record number of games without a win sees hope turn to despair as Jonathan contends with a mutiny from a group of octogenarian supporters, constant battles with the local council and a star striker who arrives on crutches despite somehow passing his medical.
As the on-pitch form continues to deteriorate and rifts appear between him and his father, Jonathan begins to make some increasingly desperate decisions: sinking his savings into an ever-spiralling wage bill, hiding in a freezing outdoor storage unit to avoid questions and even seriously contemplating bringing in a local priest to lift the ‘Boxing Day Curse’ by performing a late-night exorcism on the pitch.
Chronicling the euphoric highs and bitter disappointments of the less glamourous side of the beautiful game, Nowhere to Run is the hilarious, heart-warming tale of life in the hot seat of a non-league football club. (Credit: Transworld Publishers)
The Future Future by Adam Thirlwell
Expected Publication Date: August 10
It’s 1775, and Celine is in trouble. From colonial America to this very moment to the moon, this is a historical novel like no other.
It’s the eighteenth century, and Celine is in trouble. Her husband is mostly absent. Her parents are elsewhere. And meanwhile men are inventing stories about her – about her affairs, her sexuality, her orgies and addictions.
All these stories are lies, but the public loves them – spreading them like a virus. Celine can only watch as her name becomes a symbol for everything rotten this society ruled by men high on colonial genocide, natural destruction, and crimes against women.
To survive, Celine and her friends must band together in search of justice, truth and beauty. Fantastical, funny and blindingly bright, The Future Future follows one woman on an urgently contemporary quest to clear her name and change the world. (Credit: Vintage Publishing)
The Palace: From the Tudors to the Windsors, 500 Years of History at Hampton Court by Gareth Russell
Expected Publication Date: August 17
For centuries, Hampton Court has been a place of power, scandal and intrigue: a stage for events that shaped the nation. The Palace raises the curtain on 500 years of British history with royals, politicians, criminals, and geniuses all playing their parts.
Hampton Court has been an arc of monarchy, revolution, religious fundamentalism, sexual scandals, and military coups. In this rich and vivid history, Gareth Russell moves through the rooms and the decades, each time focusing on a different person who called Hampton Court their home.
Beginning with the Tudors, Russell takes the reader from the kitchens of Henry VII and the dreams of Anne Boleyn to Elizabeth I’s brush with death and the staging of Shakespeare’s plays. To the commissioning of the King James Bible, the republican victories of Oliver Cromwell, the many mistresses of Charles II and their laxative-laced attempts to embarrass one another. The gossip and feuds of Georgian aristocrats lead into the era of the Windsors when Hampton Court becomes the place to host Elizabeth II’s coronation ball and hide the last Tsar’s sister.
Fascinating and engaging, The Palace is as atmospheric as it is gossipy and through the many sovereigns and servants that lived and worked in its halls reveals the personal tragedy and political importance of this extraordinary place. (Credit: HarperCollins UK)
The Sentence by Christina Dalcher
Expected Publication Date: August 17
The one decision you can’t take back.
Prosecutor, Justine Boucher has only asked for the death penalty once, in a brutal murder case.
In doing so, she put her own life on the line. Because, if the convicted are later found innocent, the lawyer who requested the execution will be sentenced to death.
Justine had no doubt that the man she sent to the chair was guilty.
Until now.
Presented with evidence that could prove his innocence, Justine must find out the truth before anyone else does.
Her life depends on it. (Credit: HarperCollins)
Just Between Us by Adele Parks
Expected Publication Date: August 17
Lost. Missing. Murdered?
And both her husbands are suspects…Kylie Gillingham’s disappearance has gripped the nation: the woman with a shocking secret – married to two men at the same time – is missing, presumed dead. And both her husbands are suspects.
DC Clements knows the dark side of human nature and that love can make people do treacherous things; you can’t presume anything when it comes to crimes of the heart. While Kylie’s two husbands remain prime suspects, her sons won’t accept that she is dead. Until a body is found, this scandalous and sad case remains wide open.
Stacie Jones lives a quiet life in a small village, nursed by her father as she recovers from illness, shielded from any disquieting news of the outside world. But their reclusive life is about to be shattered.
How are these families linked, and can any of them ever rebuild their lives in the wake of tragedy? (Credit: HarperCollins UK)
The Situationship by Taylor-Dior Rumble
Expected Publication Date: August 17
When the love of her life shows up with a girlfriend, Tia decides it’s time to put herself out there.
Expectations of dating apps are low, so it’s a surprise when she instantly connects with handsome photographer Nate. He’s everything she’s looking for; he makes her feel safe, seen, and desired.
Tia assumes they’re on the same page – the only catch? They’re yet to have The Talk. In a generation that’s normalised competing over who cares the least, can Tia overcome her fears and lay her cards on the table, in the pursuit of something real? (Credit: Conerstone)
The Lodger by Helen Scarlett
Expected Publication Date: August 17
Grace Armstrong believes that she has come to terms with her own loss, the death of her dazzling fiance who was declared Missing in Action. But soon he starts to reappear both in her waking life and dreams.
To make matters worse, a body, dragged from the Thames, is identified as Elizabeth Smith, who lodged with Grace and her family for the last eight years before suddenly disappearing.
Elizabeth had been more than a lodger; she had become a close friend to Grace, who feels compelled to uncover the true circumstances of her death. In doing so, she is drawn reluctantly into the sordid and dangerous underbelly of London and a scandal that rocked Edwardian society.
Will Grace find the answers she so desperately craves, or will she lose herself in the search? (Credit: Quercus Publishing)
Imperial Island: A History of Empire in Modern Britain by Charlotte Lydia Riley
Expected Publication Date: August 24
Imperial Island shows how the end of empire and its ever-present aftermath have divided and defined Britain over the last seventy years.
After the Second World War, Britain’s overseas empire disintegrated. As white settlers from Rhodesia returned home to a country they barely recognised, Commonwealth citizens from Asia and the Caribbean migrated to a motherland that often refused to recognise them. Race riots erupted in Liverpool and Notting Hill even as communities lived and loved across the colour line. In the 1950s and 60s, imperial violence came home too, pervading the policing of immigrant communities, including their sex lives. In the decade that followed, a surge of support for the far-right inspired an invigorated anti-racist movement.
These tensions, and the imperial mindset that birthed them, have dominated Britain’s relationship with itself and the world ever since: from the jingoism of the Falklands War to the simplistic moral equation of Band Aid, from the rise of the gap year abroad to the invasion of Iraq. Most recently, in the tragedy of Stephen Lawrence and the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, we see how Britain’s contradictory relationship with its past has undermined its self-image as a multicultural nation, helping explain the Windrush deportations and Brexit.
Drawing on a mass of new research, from personal letters to pop culture, Imperial Island tells a story of immigration and fractured identity, of social strife and communal solidarity, of people on the move and of a people wrestling with their past. It is the story that best explains Britain today. (Credit: Vintage Publishing)
In the Shadow of the Wolf Queen: Book 1 – Geomancer by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Expected Publication Date: August 31
In the lakes, the wolf queen sharpens her spear.
In the mountains, an ancient girl opens an eye.
In the forest, an orphan is summoned by the trees.
Our story has begun …
Ysolda has lived her life in the shadow of the wolf queen’s tyrannical rule but, safe in her forest haven, she has never truly felt its threat.
Until one day when a mysterious earthquake shakes the land and her older sister Hari vanishes in its wake.
Accompanied by her loyal sea hawk, Nara, Ysolda embarks on a desperate rescue mission. But when she is forced to strike a bargain with the wolf queen herself, she soon finds herself embroiled in a quest for a magic more powerful – and more dangerous – than she could ever have imagined …(Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
So Late In The Day by Claire Keegan
Expected Publication Date: August 31
After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently. All evening, with only the television and a bottle of champagne for company, thoughts of this woman and others intrude – and the true significance of this particular date is revealed.
From one of the finest writers working today, Keegan’s new story asks if a lack of generosity might ruin what could be between men and women. Is it possible to love without sharing? (Credit: Faber & Faber)
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