FICTION

The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue | FICTION | 20th March | £18.99

Autumn, 1895. Paris is as chaotic as it is glamorous, with industry and invention creating huge wealth and terrible poverty. One morning, an anarchist boards the ill-fated Granville to Paris express train, determined to make her mark on history. Aboard the train are others from across the globe: the railway crew who have built a life together away from their wives, a little boy travelling alone for the first time, an artist far from home, a wealthy statesman and his invalid wife, and a young woman with a secret. Truths are revealed and relationships forged as the train speeds towards the City of Light and a future that will change everything…

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie | FICTION | 4th March | £20

Chiamaka is a Nigerian travel writer living in America. Alone in the midst of the pandemic, she grapples with her choices and regrets. Zikora, her best friend must turn to the person she thought she needed least. Omelogor, Chiamaka’s bold, outspoken cousin, begins to question how well she knows herself. And Kadiatou, Chiamaka’s housekeeper, is proudly raising her daughter in America – but faces an unthinkable hardship that threatens all she has worked to achieve. In Dream Count, Adichie trains her fierce eye on these women in a sparkling, transcendent novel that takes up the very nature of love itself. Is true happiness ever attainable or is it just a fleeting state? And how honest must we be with ourselves in order to love, and to be loved?

Flesh by David Szalay | FICTION | 6th March | £18.99

Fifteen-year-old István lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour – a married woman close to his mother’s age – as his only companion. These encounters shift into a clandestine relationship that István himself can barely understand, and his life soon spirals out of control. As the years pass, he is carried gradually upwards on the currents of the twenty-first century’s tides of money and power, with his own competing impulses for love, intimacy, status and wealth winning him unimaginable riches, until they threaten to undo him completely.

The House of Barbery by Isabela Schuller | FICTION | 13th March | £16.99

Beatrice Barbary has been raised to believe that while education will set her mind free, there are some questions better left unanswered. But when her father, one of the most powerful men in Bern, is brutally murdered in their own home, she is left reeling, unprotected and vulnerable. Her future uncertain. Plunging head first into the mysteries surrounding her father and her own upbringing, Beatrice discovers The Order of St. Eve and the violent secrets they have been hiding her entire life. It’s time for her to take control. Will she be able to right the wrongs of her father, or will the Order silence her first?

Green Ink by Stephen May | FICTION | 13th March | £16.99

David Lloyd George is fretting about the fact that his involvement in selling public honours is about to be revealed by Victor Grayson.  Intent on rebuilding his profile as the leader of the revolutionary Left, Victor doesn’t know exactly how much of a hornet’s nest he’s stirred up. Doesn’t know that this is, in fact, his last day. No one really knows what happened to Victor Grayson – he vanished one night in late September 1920, having threatened to reveal all he knew. Was he murdered by the British government? By enemies in the Socialist movement? Did he fall in the Thames drunk? Did he vanish to save his own life? Whatever the truth, Green Ink imagines what might have been with humour and humanity.

Universality by Natasha Brown | FICTION |  13th March | £14.99

Late one night on a Yorkshire farm, a man is brutally bludgeoned with a solid gold bar. A plucky young journalist sets out to uncover the truth surrounding the attack, connecting the dots between an amoral banker landlord, an iconoclastic columnist, and a radical anarchist movement. She solves the mystery, but her viral longread exposé raises more questions than it answers. Universality is a twisty, slippery descent into the rhetoric of truth and power. Through a voyeuristic lens, it focuses on words: what we say, how we say it, and what we really mean.

The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits | FICTION | 27th March | £16.99

What’s left when your kids grow up and leave home? When Tom Layward’s wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact.  Also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he’s been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class – something he hasn’t yet told his wife. So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past – an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son – on route, maybe, to his father’s grave in California.

Theft by Abdulrazak Gurnah | FICTION | 18th March | £18.99

It is the 1990s. Growing up in Zanzibar, three very different young people – Karim, Fauzia and Badar – are coming of age, and dreaming of great possibilities in their young nation.  Brought into a lowly position in a great house, Badar finds the first true home of his life – and the friendship of Karim, the young man of the house. Even when a shattering false accusation sees Badar sent away, Karim and Fauzia refuse to turn away from their friend. But as the three of them take their first steps in love, infatuation, work and parenthood, their bond is tested – and Karim is tempted into a betrayal that will change all of their lives forever.

NON-FICTION

Spring by Michael Morpurgo | NON-FICTION  |  20th March  | £16.99

Michael Morpurgo’s first book of adult non-fiction in forty years. As the natural world shakes off a long winter, Michael watches lambs being born on the farm, delights in a fanfare of bluebells in the woods, and sings to the birds, dressed in his wellies and dressing gown. He shares small moments of joy found in the back garden, as well as more dramatic encounters with sparrowhawks, hares and otters. With new poems and reminiscences about childhood and springs gone by, this is an enchanting memoir of a season from one of the world’s best-loved authors.

The CIA Book Club by Charlie English | NON-FICTION  | 13th March  | £25

Ten million books that were smuggled across the Iron Curtain during the Cold War.  No physical combat would take place along the near-impenetrable frontier. Instead, the conflict would be fought in the psychological sphere. No one understood this more clearly than George Minden, the head of a covert intelligence operation known as the ‘CIA books programme’, which aimed to win the Cold War with literature. This is the true story of spycraft, smuggling and secret printing operations, highlighting the work of a handful of extraordinary people who risked their lives to stand up to the intellectual strait-jacket Stalin created. Books, it shows, can set you free.

Forgotten by Raj Shehadeh & Penny Johnson  | NON-FICTION  | 6th March  | £14.99

Forgotten is a search for hidden or neglected memorials and places in historic Palestine – now Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories – and what they might tell us about the land and the people who live on our small slip of earth between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. From ancient city ruins to the Nabi ‘Ukkasha mosque and tomb, acclaimed writers and researchers Raja Shehadeh and Penny Johnson ask: what has been memorialised, and what lies unseen, abandoned or erased – and why? In elegiac, elegant prose, they grapple not only with questions of Israeli resistance to acknowledging the Nakba – the 1948 catastrophe for Palestinians – but also with the complicated history of Palestinian commemoration today.

Story of a Murder  by Hallie Rubenhold  | NON-FICTION  | 27th March  | £25

1910. Belle Elmore suddenly vanished.  Her female friends demanded an investigation that unearthed a gruesome secret and led to a fevered manhunt for the prime suspect: Belle’s husband, medical fraudster, Dr Hawley Harvey Crippen. Hiding in the shadows of this tale is Crippen’s typist and lover, Ethel Le Neve – was she really just ‘an innocent young girl’ in thrall to a powerful older man as so many people have since reported. Featuring a carnival cast of eccentric entertainers, glamorous lawyers, zealous detectives, medics and liars, this is meticulously researched and multi-layered, offering the reader an electrifying snapshot of Britain and America at the dawn of the modern era.

Kitchen Table by Emily Cuffeford & Rachel Morgan | NON-FICTION  | 13th March  | £25

Simple things made well. This beautiful book weaves together recipes and stories – inspired by Emily and Rachel’s cookery journey, relationships with producers and communities, and their love of food since they were small. The recipes lovingly compiled in this book are all truly accessible for the home cook, inspiring the reader to learn new skills if they wish, or simply return to comforting classics, always ensuring quality ingredients and delicious results that you’ll want to share! With over 90 sweet and savoury recipes, the book is built around the kitchen table – for creating, feasting, coming together, having quiet moments and joyous celebrations.

Hidden Portraits by Sue Roe | NON-FICTION  | 27th March  | £25

Six extraordinary women shared Pablo Picasso’s life and were instrumental in his career, yet they have long been dismissed as simply passive models or muses. Hidden Portraits reveals that their lives were – without exception – remarkable.  Sue Roe delves deeply into the truth of the women’s experiences for the first time, to tell the story of Picasso’s women from their point of view. Her enthralling book spans seventy years, from Bohemian early twentieth century Montmartre to Paris under Nazi occupation and beyond Picasso’s final years of seclusion. The result is a riveting read about six fascinating and charismatic women, outstanding in their own time, whose individual stories have up to now been glossed over or hidden from view.

These are just some of the exciting new releases in non-fiction for this month. To keep up to date with more recommendations and new releases, keep an eye on our socials, or join our newsletter.