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 2023 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.
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
Rani Choudhury Must Die by Adiba Jaigirdar
Expected Publication Date: November 14
Meghna and Rani used to be friends. Now they’re bitter rivals. Or are they?
When Meghna fails to make it to the final round of a competition but her boyfriend Zak and her rival Rani do, she thinks things can’t get much worse. Until she discovers Zak has been cheating on her. With Rani.
Soon she realises Rani is also a victim and they team up to expose Zak as a cheater in front of all the judges he is so eager to please. And as the two girls grow closer, they begin to question their feelings for one another and why they ever became enemies in the first place . . .
Rivals team up to get revenge on the boy who wronged them both in this new sapphic YA enemies-to-lovers novel by award-winning author Adiba Jaigirdar.(Credit: Hachette Children’s Group)
The Christmas Stocking Murders by Denzil Meyrick
‘Old ways die hard on the Welsh border…’
In these haunting tales, nothing is as it seems. A tormented voice calls from the barred windows of an empty room. A dusty museum exhibit possesses sinister powers. A glass of blackberry wine links the living with the sins of the dead.
Between 1965 and 1975, Elizabeth Walter published five collections of supernatural stories. But whilst the names of her contemporaries such as Robert Aickman are now widely recognised, Walter is relatively unknown to modern readers. Mixing folklore, history, and ancient traditions, these gothic stories draw on Walter’s Welsh heritage and the rich inspiration of South Wales and the border country.
Including the mysterious ritual of ‘The Sin-Eater’, the folk horror of ‘Dead Woman’ and the poignant ‘Come and Get Me’, Let a Sleeping Witch Lie is the perfect way to rediscover Elizabeth Walter’s chillingly remarkable talent. (Credit: Poetry Wales Press)
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Bettany Hughes
The Seven Wonders of the World were staggeringly audacious impositions on our planet. They were also brilliant adventures of the mind, test cases for the reaches of human imagination.
Now only the great pyramid remains fully standing, yet the scale and majesty of these seven wonders still enthral us today. In a thrilling, colourful narrative enriched with the latest archaeological discoveries, bestselling historian Bettany Hughes walks through the landscapes of both ancient and modern time. This is a journey whose purpose is to ask why we wonder, why we create, why we choose to remember the wonder of others. She explores traces of the Wonders themselves, and the traces they have left in history. A magisterial work of historical storytelling, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World reinforces the exciting and nourishing notion that humans can make the impossible happen. (Credit: Orion Publishing)
Murder at the Christmas Emporium by Andreina Cordani
Christmas shopping can be murder.
It’s Christmas Eve at the Emporium, a bespoke gift shop hidden in the depths of London’s winding streets, where a select few shoppers are browsing its handcrafted delights.
But when they go to leave, they find the doors are locked and it isn’t long before they realise this is no innocent mix-up. The shoppers have been trapped here by someone who knows their darkest secrets, who will stop at nothing until they have all been unwrapped – and there is a gruesome gift waiting in Santa’s grotto . . .
For those that survive the night, it will be a Christmas to remember.(Credit: Bonnier Books)
Topographia Hibernica by Blindboy Boatclub
‘You don’t fully appreciate how large a donkey’s head is until it’s beside you in a Fiat Punto. The view in my mirror was furry and violent. I was driving blind.’
Driving with a donkey stuffed in the back seat; jackdaws pecking brains out through the roof of a confessional box; cat piss and astronauts. This is the world not as you see it, but as it is, twisted from the maverick mind of Blindboyboatclub.
These are stories of the strange unsettlings in the souls of men caught in between the past and the possible; stories of heart-blinding rage and disquieting compassion.
Taking its title from a twelfth-century English manuscript of the same name, which dehumanised the people and culture of Ireland to facilitate domination, Topographia Hibernica is a collection that unravels the knotted threads of humanity, nature and colonisation from a contemporary Irish perspective. (Credit: Hodder & Stoughton)
Ice Town by Will Dean
ONE WAY IN. NO WAY OUT.
‘Deaf teenager goes missing in Esseberg. Mountain rescue are launching a search party but conditions hinder their efforts. The tunnel is being kept open all night as an exception.’
When journalist Tuva Moodyson reads this news alert she knows she must join the search. If this teenager is found, she will be able to communicate with him in a way no one else can.
Esseberg lies on the other side of a mountain tunnel: there is only one way in and one way out. When the tunnel closes at night, the residents are left to fend for themselves. And as more people go missing, it becomes clear that there is a killer among them …(Credit: Hodder & Stoughton)
When It’s Your Turn For Midnight by Blessing Musariri
Wars never end, they just change location.’
An exceptional, thought-provoking YA novel about sisterhood, trauma and the fighting spirit of women, from Zimbabwean author, Blessing Musariri.
When her Mama drops a bombshell, Chiante’s world shatters. In Zimbabwe, bloodlines matter, so when Chiante discovers her Baba is not the man she thought he was, she flees. Seeking refuge in a secluded corner of Mutare with her feisty, stylish grandmother, Chiante finds solace in a sisterhood forged by bonds of war. This close-knit community of elders and ex-combatants are living their best lives: singing, dancing, drinking and running a successful fashion-upcycling business. But at the heart of their carefully-built world are secrets no one can give voice to.
As Chiante pieces together the puzzle of her family’s past, she wrestles with how sorrow seeps down the generations, and how hope survives all, obliging us to step up and live life to the full. (Credit: Bloomsbury Publishing)
City of Destruction by Vaseem Khan
Expected Publication Date: November 28
Bombay, 1951. A political rally ends in tragedy when India’s first female police detective, Persis Wadia, kills a lone gunman as he attempts to assassinate the divisive new defence minister, a man calling for war with India’s new post-Independence neighbours.
With the Malabar House team tasked to hunt down the assassin’s co-conspirators – aided by agents from Britain’s MI6 security service – Persis is quickly relegated to the sidelines. But then she is given a second case, the burned body of an unidentified white man found on a Bombay beach. As she pursues both investigations – with and without official sanction – she soon finds herself headed to the country’s capital, New Delhi, a city where ancient and modern India openly clash.
Meanwhile, Persis’s colleague, Scotland Yard criminalist Archie Blackfinch, lies in a hospital fighting for his life as all around him the country tears itself apart in the prelude to war…(Credit: Hodder & Stoughton)
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