New Staff Picks 1…
Blog · Posted May 28, 2025
Vicky’s top picks for May…
John Collan’s life is about to change when a nobleman with a shabby hat comes to tell him he is in fact the Earl of Warwick and rightful heir to the throne of England.
Raised on a farm where his only real problem is his mortal enemy, Gaspard the goat, he is suddenly thrust into a world of warring Plantagenets and paranoid Tudors. But as surely as he rises, so too shall he fall.
Based on true events, I marvelled at Jo Harkin’s ability not only to weave fact with fiction, but to breathe new life into this well-trodden period of history with such wit and character.
Original, laugh-out-loud funny and nothing short of genius. I already miss reading it. This will be one of my books of the year, without a doubt.
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
When 76 year-old artist Vic Kemp tells his children he’s to marry a 27 year-old woman, it’s safe to say the news doesn’t go down well. She’s 6 years younger than his youngest child…what is she planning? Goose, Netta, Iris and Susan don’t get much time to find out as 46 days later, their father is dead. Questions arise about the nature of his death and where his final painting went. But perhaps the biggest question of all is did they really know their father?
Set during a heatwave in an idyllic Italian villa, this is a novel about family and what happens when those ties fracture. The Homemade God showcases what Rachel Joyce does best – a deeply empathetic study of relationships, of grief and of pilgrimage. This author never disappoints.
If you take one book on holiday this year, forget all those paperbacks – you’ll only need this one.
Days of Light by Megan Hunter
On Easter Sunday 1938, Ivy and her family are awaiting the arrival of a newcomer – her brother’s girlfriend Frances. It’s an elysian afternoon but as evening comes, tragedy strikes. Ivy endures the consequences of what happens through the days and decades that follow, but in her search for a truth that is unattainable, she will find a love that defies denial.
Megan Hunter captures moments of a life with stunning detail and with writing so beautiful, it feels like a dream. She achieves the seemingly impossible by combining a highly personal and emotive narrative with a sweeping epic that spans through the 20th century.
Days of Light is about family and marriage, love and loss and everything in between. This is one to hold close to your heart.
The Eights by Joanna Miller
It’s 1920 – the first year that women are allowed to matriculate at Oxford university. Facing strict rules, pranks and downright discrimination, it wasn’t all plain sailing from there.
Dora, Otto, Marianne and Beatrice will become your chums. In many ways they are worlds apart, but they come together on corridor eight at St Hugh’s College to form an enduring friendship. Carrying their own troubles and experiences from the recent war, here there is camaraderie, acceptance and even some romance.
Miller’s debut is vivid, heartwarming and captures a pivotal moment in women’s history. Pick this up for a bit of girl power!
Fun and Games by John Patrick McHugh
It’s John’s last summer on the small island where he grew up. (So small, in fact, that now everyone has seen a leaked nude photo of his mum.) Working at the local hotel and trying to get into the senior football team, he’s waiting for exam results before heading to college.
Fun and Games is unflinching in its honesty and often excruciating, but therein lies its appeal. This is a raw and authentic look at male friendships, the pitfalls of first romance and just the terrible business of growing up. McHugh conveys all this with an easy and tender humour. While you will inevitably cringe at most of John’s decisions, you can’t help but root for him.
A debut that is all-encompassing. If you loved Close to Home and Glorious Exploits, this one’s for you.
Fair Play by Louise Hegarty
A highly original take on the whodunnit genre. It’s time for Abigail’s annual New Year murder mystery party. It coincides with her brother Benjamin’s birthday and includes their close circle of friends. But events take a terrible turn when Benjamin is found dead the next morning.
Fair Play affectionately parodies crime fiction as well as simultaneously utilising it to demonstrate the overwhelming effect of loss. Its experimental format cleverly and deliberately distracts you from the true and shattering subject: grief.
Revealing itself in an ingenious way, this multi-layered debut introduces a unique voice into the genre.
The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes
Parents. You love them to bits and yet, you don’t know why or how, they just have the ability to annoy. This debut captures that strong relationship perfectly. It’s full of the foibles of loved ones, so closely observed that it will make you laugh out loud. But beneath the surface, there are secrets and there is heartbreak.
Join Miranda as she visits her parents in rural France. Married for 50 years, it’s safe to say they are set in their ways. Wanting only what’s best for them, Miranda and her sister must walk a fine line between the two. Often used as the single line of communication between the parents, the results are sometimes hilarious and always frustrating.
Funny, moving and oh so relatable.
When the Cranes Fly South by Lisa Ridzén
Now in his ninth decade, Bo’s days are filled with the trials of ageing, distant memories, and his beloved dog Sixten. A perfectly-formed debut, Bo’s perspective is interspersed with notes from his carers, who visit him three times a day. As we learn more about his past, we understand the difficulties he faces expressing himself, especially within the fraught relationship with his only son. Emotions come to a head, however, when his son threatens to take away Sixten, Bo’s constant companion.
Although warned that it would make me cry, I wasn’t quite prepared for the speechless sobbing it reduced me to. The raw tenderness in Ridzen’s writing will move the hardest of hearts.
When the Cranes Fly South is a book that makes you hold your loved ones closer. It will break your heart and, at the same time, restore your faith in human kindness. I will be pressing this into the hands of anyone and everyone.
A Room Above a Shop by Anthony Shapland
Spare and fragmentary, this stunning debut is quietly powerful and beautifully devastating.
M and B meet in a small town in rural Wales. The two men share an instant connection but have to hide their love during the AIDS crisis of the 1980s. A Room Above a Shop is full of the warmth felt between M and B, but also full of the grief of a life lived in secret.
Shapland is remarkable in how much he is able to convey in so few words. This is poetry in prose. I haven’t read anything so perfectly formed in a long time.
The Coast Road by Alan Murrin
A debut with a vivid sense of place but, more importantly, a deliberate sense of time. It’s 1994 and Ireland is about to go to the ballot box for a referendum deciding whether divorce will finally be legalised. It is against this political backdrop that the tumultuous events of fictional Ardglass take place.
Colette Crowley left her husband for a married man in Dublin, but now she’s back in Donegal. A beautiful woman with a questioned past, all eyes are on her. However, this is not a place to stand out. Murrin brings to life a community of closed minds and patriarchal control, and follows the lives of three women striving within this small town mentality.
This novel is full of compassion, conveying depths of emotion with seemingly easy elegance. Its anger is contained yet contagious. A stunning achievement from a debut author to watch.
The Examiner by Janice Hallett
If you haven’t discovered Janice Hallett yet, now is your chance.
Structured in the most ingenious and original ways, a puzzle will be unravelled to you in text messages, emails and other correspondence. The amount of detail, character development and sheer page-turning addiction Hallett is able to create with this format always takes me by surprise.
The Examiner is no exception. A university examiner receives work from an art course and is convinced that one of the students has been murdered…
Be warned – if you buy this, you’ll be coming back for the rest of her books. Compulsive, clever and unputdownable. No one does crime quite like this.
Ink Ribbon Red by Alex Pavesi
Six friends stay at Antatol’s for his birthday weekend. His father has recently died in an accident – or was it something more sinister? As entertainment for the night, each of them must write a short story where one of the group kills another. One thing is for sure – it won’t end well…
An experimental format results in a masterclass in misdirection and unending intrigue. Clever, inventive and unpredictable, this is a mystery to keep you on your toes.
Fours Shots in the Night by Henry Hemming
When Frank Hegarty’s body was found in a country road in 1986, it could have been signed off as the killing of just another IRA informant. Little did the organisation know that Hegarty’s death would become the subject of the biggest murder investigation in British history. Reopened in 2016, the case would reveal that Frank was killed by another British agent at the heart of the IRA.
This turbulent chapter of history has been well covered, but Hemming offers an astounding new account told from a jaw-dropping angle. A fantastic feat of research written with all the gripping urgency of a fictional thriller. In equal parts moving, infuriating and compelling, Four Shots in the Night should be compulsory reading.
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