Books

  • Reacher Killing Floor

    Reacher Killing Floor

    12.50

    Killing Floor is the first book in the phenomenal bestselling Jack Reacher series by Lee Child. It introduces Reacher for the first time, as the tough ex-military cop of no fixed abode. Trained to think fast and act faster, he is the perfect action hero for when times get tough.

    Margrave is a no-account little town in Georgia. Jack Reacher steps off a bus and walks fourteen miles in the rain to reach it, in search of a dead guitar player. But Margrave has just had its first homicide in thirty years.

    And Reacher is the only stranger in town. He seems the obvious fall guy. As the body count mounts, only one thing is for sure: they picked the wrong guy to frame for murder.

  • Trespasses

    Trespasses

    12.50

    * LONGLISTED FOR THE WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2023 *
    * WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 *
    * SHORTLISTED FOR BRITISH BOOK OF THE YEAR: DEBUT FICTION *
    * SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 *
    * AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVELIST OF 2022 *
    * A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME *

    One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice. If Davy had remembered to put on a coat. If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street.

    If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt. There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever.

    As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like ‘petrol bomb’ and ‘rubber bullets’. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together.

    Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.

     

     

  • Klara and the Sun

    Klara and the Sun

    12.50

    From the bestselling and Booker Prize winning author of Never Let me Go and The Remains of the Day, a stunning new novel – his first since winning the Nobel Prize in Literature – that asks, what does it mean to love? A thrilling feat of world-building, a novel of exquisite tenderness and impeccable restraint, Klara and the Sun is a magnificent achievement, and an international literary event.

  • Oh William!

    Oh William!

    12.50

    SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2022

    THE TOP 10 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

    The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker-longlisted, bestselling author returns to her beloved heroine Lucy Barton in a luminous novel about love, loss, and the family secrets that can erupt and bewilder us at any point in life. Lucy Barton is a successful writer living in New York, navigating the second half of her life as a recent widow and parent to two adult daughters. A surprise encounter leads her to reconnect with William, her first husband – and long-time, on-again-off-again friend and confidante. Recalling their college years, the birth of their daughters, the painful dissolution of their marriage, and the lives they built with other people, Strout weaves a portrait, stunning in its subtlety, of a tender, complex, decades-long partnership.

    Oh William! captures the joy and sorrow of watching children grow up and start families of their own; of discovering family secrets, late in life, that alter everything we think we know about those closest to us; and the way people live and love, against all odds. At the heart of this story is the unforgettable, indomitable voice of Lucy Barton, who once again offers a profound, lasting reflection on the mystery of existence. ‘This is the way of life,’ Lucy says. ‘The many things we do not know until it is too late.’

    ‘A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own’ Hilary Mantel

    ‘A terrific writer’ Zadie Smith

    ‘She gets better with each book’ Maggie O’Farrell

    ‘One of America’s finest writers’ Sunday Times

    ‘This is meticulously observed writing, full of probing psychological insight. Lucy Barton is one of literature’s immortal characters – brittle, damaged, unravelling, vulnerable and, most of all, ordinary – like us all’ Booker Prize Judges

  • The Whalebone Theatre

    The Whalebone Theatre

    12.50

    This is the story of an old English manor house by the sea, with crumbling chimneys, draping ivy and a library full of dusty hardbacks. It’s the story of the three children who grow up there, and the adventures they create for themselves while the grown-ups entertain endless party guests: the worlds they imagine from books they aren’t supposed to read, and the lessons they learn from eavesdropping through oak-panelled doors. This is the story of a whale that washes up on a beach, whose bones are claimed by a twelve-year-old girl with big ambitions and an even bigger imagination.

    An unwanted orphan who grows into an unmarriageable young woman, chafing under the confines of her traditional upbringing and fiercely determined to do things differently. But as the children grow to adulthood, another story has been unfolding in the wings. And when the war finally takes centre stage, they find themselves cast, unrehearsed, into roles they never expected to play.

    They raised themselves on stories. Now it’s time for them to write their own …

  • Too Big For His Roots

    Too Big For His Roots

    12.50

    Robert O Connor was not expecting cheering crowds to greet him on his return to
    Dromahair. Few there were likely to view him as a war hero. Nobody believed he had
    acted out of principle when he enlisted, as the man had never served any cause other
    than his own. That did not bother Robert. If anything, he revelled in the notoriety.
    After all, he was destined for bigger and better things than his home village could
    offer.

  • The Colony

    The Colony

    12.50

    He handed the easel to the boatman, reaching down the pier wall towards the sea. Mr Lloyd has decided to travel to the island by boat without engine – the authentic experience. Unbeknownst to him, Mr Masson will also soon be arriving for the summer.

    Both will strive to encapsulate the truth of this place – one in his paintings, the other by capturing its speech, the language he hopes to preserve. But the people who live on this rock – three miles long and half-a-mile wide – have their own views on what is being recorded, what is being taken and what is given in return. Soft summer days pass, and the islanders are forced to question what they value and what they desire.

    As the autumn beckons, and the visitors head home, there will be a reckoning.

  • Forever Interrupted

    Forever Interrupted

    12.50

    Elsie Porter is an average twentysomething and yet what happens to her is anything but ordinary. On a rainy New Year’s Day, she heads out to pick up a pizza for one.

    She isn’t expecting to see anyone else in the shop, much less the adorable and charming Ben Ross. Their chemistry is instant and electric. Ben cannot even wait twenty-four hours before asking to see her again.

    Within weeks, the two are head over heels in love. By May, they’ve eloped. Only nine days later, Ben is out riding his bike when he is hit by a truck and killed on impact.

    Elsie hears the sirens outside her apartment, but by the time she gets downstairs, he has already been whisked off to the emergency room. At the hospital, she must face Susan, the mother-in-law she has never met-and who doesn’t even know Elsie exists. Interweaving Elsie and Ben’s charmed romance with Elsie and Susan’s healing process, Forever, Interrupted will remind you that there’s more than one way to find a happy ending.

  • Cleopatra and Frankenstein

    Cleopatra and Frankenstein

    12.50

    New York is slipping from Cleo’s grasp.

    Sure, she’s at a different party every other night, but she barely knows anyone. Her student visa is running out, and she doesn’t even have money for cigarettes. But then she meets Frank.

    Twenty years older, Frank’s life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo’s lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art-and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking.

    He is everything she needs right now. Cleo and Frank run head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with. It reshapes their lives and the lives of those around them, whether that’s Cleo’s best friend struggling to embrace his gender identity in the wake of her marriage, or Frank’s financially dependent sister arranging sugar daddy dates after being cut off.

    Ultimately, this chance meeting between two strangers outside of a New Year’s Eve party changes everything, for better or worse. Cleopatra and Frankenstein is an astounding and painfully relatable debut novel about the spontaneous decisions that shape our entire lives and those imperfect relationships born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.

  • Tree of Yoga

    Tree of Yoga

    12.50

    The definitive guide to yoga in everyday life from B.K.S. Iyengar, the world’s most respected yoga teacher.

    B.K.S. Iyengar has devoted his life to the practice and study of yoga. It was B.K.S. Iyengar’s unique teaching style, bringing precision and clarity to the practice, as well as a mindset of ‘yoga for all’, which has made it into a worldwide phenomenon.

    His seminal book, ‘Light on Yoga’, is widely called ‘the bible of yoga’ and has served as the source book for generations of yoga students around the world. In ‘The Tree of Yoga’, the collected wisdom of his many years of practice and its application in real life are brought into a single-volume work.

    A collected philosophy for life researched through decades of practice, these are his core teachings and advice for living a long, healthy, happy life. Using the tree as a structural metaphor for both life and yoga practice, the essays cover many aspects of life and practice which are vital to health and happiness and in need of care.

    This includes:* Yoga and health* Yoga as part of daily life* Childhood and parenthood* Love* Death* Faith – hope and spirituality* Teachers and teaching

  • The Sentence

    The Sentence

    12.50

    In this stunning and timely novel, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning author Louise Erdrich creates a wickedly funny ghost story, a tale of passion, of a complex marriage and of a woman’s relentless errors. Louise Erdrich’s latest novel, The Sentence, asks what we owe to the living, the dead, to the reader and to the book.

    A small independent bookstore in Minneapolis is haunted from November 2019 to November 2020 by the store’s most annoying customer. Flora dies on All Souls’ Day, but she simply won’t leave the store. Tookie, who has landed a job selling books after years of incarceration that she survived by reading ‘with murderous attention,’ must solve the mystery of this haunting while at the same time trying to understand all that occurs in Minneapolis during a year of grief, astonishment, isolation and furious reckoning. The Sentence begins on All Souls’ Day 2019 and ends on All Souls’ Day 2020.

    Its mystery and proliferating ghost stories during this one year propel a narrative as rich, emotional and profound as anything Louise Erdrich has written.

  • Lessons in Chemistry

    Lessons in Chemistry

    12.50

    Your ability to change everything – including yourself – starts here.

    Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.

    But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Forced to resign, she reluctantly signs on as the host of a cooking show, Supper at Six. But her revolutionary approach to cooking, fuelled by scientific and rational commentary, grabs the attention of a nation.

    Soon, a legion of overlooked housewives find themselves daring to change the status quo. One molecule at a time.

  • Forever Home

    Forever Home

    12.50

    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.

    In his tense and darkly comic new novel Norton casts a light on the relationship between mothers and daughters, and truth and self-preservation with unnerving effect.

  • Ancestry

    Ancestry

    12.50

    SHORTLISTED FOR THE WALTER SCOTT PRIZE FOR HISTORICAL FICTION

    Almost two hundred years ago, Abraham, an illiterate urchin, scavenges on a Suffolk beach and dreams of running away to sea … Naomi, a seventeen-year-old seamstress, imagines a new life in the big city … George, a private soldier of the 50th Regiment of Food, marries his Irish bride, Annie, in the cathedral in Manchester and together they face married life under arms.

    Now these people exist only in the bare bones of registers and census lists but they were once real enough. Simon Mawer puts flesh on our ancestors’ bones to bring them to life and give them voice. There is birth and death; there is love, both open and legal but also hidden and illicit.

    Yet the thread that connects these disparate figures is something that they cannot have known – the unbreakable bond of family.

    ‘Utterly absorbing, cleverly constructed and beautifully written’ The Times

    ‘Moving and exhilarating’ Spectator

    ‘Evokes the messiness and fragility of everyday life in the nineteenth century’ Daily Mail

  • The Black Dog

    The Black Dog

    12.50

    A life-affirming debut novel from one of Britain’s most-loved comedians, Kevin Bridges – exploring dysfunctional friendships, family, and how to face your problems head on. Declan Dolan has always wanted to be a writer, turning the ideas that spiral in his head into stories on the page. He longs to emulate his hometown hero, renowned writer and actor, James Cavani.

    Though their lives couldn’t be more different, they have a lot more in common than they think. With his pet labrador Hector and his best friend-turned-mentor Doof Doof by his side, Declan sets out to escape his world of binge-drinking, supermarket shelf-stacking and small-time gangsters. Meanwhile Cavani finds himself drawn back into this world that he thought he had already escaped.

    Could it be that fate has a way of bringing two people together when they need it the most?

  • The Satsuma Complex

    The Satsuma Complex

    12.50

    ‘My name is Gary. I’m a thirty-year-old legal assistant with a firm of solicitors in London. To describe me as anonymous would be unfair but to notice me other than in passing would be a rarity.

    I did make a good connection with a girl, but that blew up in my face and smacked my arse with a fish slice.’

    Gary Thorn goes for a pint with a work acquaintance called Brendan. When Brendan leaves early, Gary meets a girl in the pub.

    He doesn’t catch her name, but falls for her anyway. When she suddenly disappears without saying goodbye, all Gary has to remember her by is the book she was reading: The Satsuma Complex. But when Brendan goes missing, Gary needs to track down the girl he now calls Satsuma to get some answers.

    And so begins Gary’s quest, through the estates and pie shops of South London, to finally bring some love and excitement into his unremarkable life.

    A page-turning story with a cast of unforgettable characters, The Satsuma Complex is the brilliantly funny smash hit first novel by bestselling author and comedian Bob Mortimer.