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The Square

Rosie Millard

Jane has the ideal life: loving husband, beautiful house and delightful son. Her fashionable dinner parties are perfect - and so are her secret assignations with her neighbour's husband, Jay. From Tracey and her ‘New Money’ lottery winnings to eccentric artist Philip and his pornographic portraits, the residents of North London's most privileged enclave The Square are a very satisfied bunch. To raise money for communal fencing, the Residents' Association decides to hold a Talent Show, produced by Jane and hosted by TV celebrity Alan Makin. But when the show lurches into public disarray, reputations are shattered and everyone has to learn to live with a far less glossy reality than before.

The Wacky Man

Lyn G. Farrell

My new shrink asks me, 'What things do you remember about being very young?' It's like looking into a murky river, I say. Memories flash near the surface like fish coming up for flies. The past peeps out, startles me, and then is gone...

Amanda secludes herself in her bedroom, no longer willing to face the outside world. Gradually, she pieces together the story of her life: her brothers have had to abandon her, her mother scarcely talks to her, and the Wacky Man could return any day to burn the house down. Just like he promised.

As her family disintegrates, Amanda hopes for a better future, a way out from the violence and fear that has consumed her childhood. But can she cling to her sanity, before insanity itself is her only means of escape?

The Spare Heir Handbook

Bill Coles

Top tips and handy hints from Prince Harry to every second sibling around the world. An open letter to Princess Charlotte, this book will have you in stitches as the Prince uses his past 30 years of experience to give the new Royal Baby a head’s up on how to be the ideal Spare Heir.

Yeseni and the Daughter of Peace

Solange Burrell

The year is 1748. Elewa, known as ‘the Daughter of Peace’, bears a heavy responsibility on her young shoulders: to maintain the fragile truce between the warring peoples of her West African kingdom.

But as she begins to understand her role in the peace negotiations, even greater pressures emerge. Elewa discovers that she has Yeseni, a powerful gift that allows her to see events from any point in time, and to travel into the past and future.

When she experiences horrific visions of life aboard a slave ship, she realises she has to face the ultimate crossroads. She could use her gift to intervene in the past and try to prevent the transatlantic slave trade ever taking place. But that means she, as the Daughter of Peace, would be leaving her village behind at a precarious moment in the reconciliation process.

Whichever path she chooses to take, the future of her people lies on her shoulders.

Out of Love

Hazel Hayes

A novel for anyone who has loved and lost, and lived to tell the tale.

As a young woman packs up her ex-boyfriend’s belongings and prepares to see him one last time, she wonders where it all went wrong, and whether it was ever right to begin with. Burdened with a broken heart, she asks herself the age-old question . . . is love really worth it?

Out of Love is a bittersweet romance told in reverse. Beginning at the end of a relationship, each chapter takes us further back in time, weaving together an already unravelled tapestry, from tragic break-up to magical first kiss. In this dazzling debut Hazel Hayes performs a post-mortem on love, tenderly but unapologetically exploring every angle, from the heights of joy to the depths of grief, and all the madness and mundanity in between. This is a modern story with the heart of a classic: truthful, tragic and ultimately full of hope.

Damnable Tales

Richard Wells

This richly illustrated anthology gathers together classic short stories from masters of supernatural fiction including M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu and Arthur Machen, alongside lesser-known voices in the field including Eleanor Scott and Margery Lawrence, and popular writers less bound to the horror genre, such as Thomas Hardy and E. F. Benson.

These are damnable tales, selected and beautifully illustrated by Richard Wells. They stalk the moors at night, the deep forests, cornered fields and dusky churchyards, the narrow lanes and old ways of these ancient places, drawing upon the haunted landscapes of folk-horror – a now widely used term first applied to a series of British films from the late 1960s and 1970s: Witchfinder General (1968), Blood on Satan’s Claw (1971), and The Wicker Man (1973).

But as this collection shows, writers of uncanny fiction were dabbling in the dark side of folklore long before. These twenty-two stories take the reader beyond the safety and familiarity of the town into the isolated and untamed wilderness. Unholy rites, witches’ curses, sinister village traditions and ancient horrors that lurk within the landscape all combine to remind us that the shiny modern, urban world might not have all the answers…

Ireland’s Green Larder

Margaret Hickey

Ireland's Green Larder tells the story of food and drink in Ireland, for the first time. From the ancient system of the Céide Fields, established a thousand years before the Pyramids were built, right up to today’s thriving food scene.

Rather than focusing on battles and rulers, Margaret Hickey digs down to what has formed the day-to-day life of the people. It’s a glorious ramble through the centuries, drawing on diaries, letters, legal texts, ballads, government records, folklore and more. The story of how Queen Maeve died after being hit by a piece of hard cheese sits alongside a contemporary interview with one of Ireland’s magnificent cheese makers, and the tale of the author’s day in Clew Bay on the wild Atlantic coast, collecting the world’s freshest oysters, is countered by Jonathan Swift’s complaint about dubiously fresh salmon being sold on the streets of Dublin.

Empire of Booze

Henry Jeffreys

Winner of the Fortnum and Mason Best Debut Drink Book Award 2017

From renowned booze correspondent Henry Jeffreys comes this rich and full-bodied history of Britain and the Empire, told through the improbable but true stories of how the world’s favourite alcoholic drinks came to be.

Read about how we owe the champagne we drink today to seventeenth-century methods for making sparkling cider; how madeira and India Pale Ale became legendary for their ability to withstand the long, hot journeys to Britain’s burgeoning overseas territories; and why whisky became the familiar choice for weary empire builders who longed for home.

Cleverlands

Lucy Crehan

As a teacher in an inner-city school, Lucy Crehan was exasperated with ever-changing government policy claiming to be based on lessons from ‘top-performing’ education systems. She resolved to find out what was really going on in the classrooms of countries whose teenagers ranked top in the world in reading, maths and science.

Cleverlands documents Crehan’s journey around the world, weaving together her experiences with research on policy, history, psychology and culture to offer extensive new insights into what we can learn from these countries.

Water Street

JP Maxwell

Liverpool 1863. The American Civil War comes to the British Empire’s second city and the world’s richest port.

Confederate Commander Banastre X. Dunwoody has a plan to turn the conflict by securing advanced warships, but the U.S. Government is one step ahead of him. It seeks to sabotage his efforts through its covert agent – Harriet Dunwoody – Banastre’s pregnant wife.

Alongside her undercover partner Conté, Harriet discovers that Banastre has plans to do more than building ships; he has a scheme that could very well draw Britain into the war.

As Gettysburg looms, an ocean away there’s another battle to be won and lost. The fate of the USA and the City of Liverpool rests upon it.

Definitions

Clare Coombes

When someone is missing and all you have are their words...

The sudden disappearance of Charley Ellison's sister leaves too many unanswered questions. With no close family, and the police showing little interest, Charley must track down Gina herself, using her sister's custom definitions - random words and sentences summarising life events. This leads Charley to realise how little she really knows about Gina's relationship with her fiancé and his family.

Desperate to find Gina, Charley begins a dangerous journey, using the definitions to question people close to her sister. They lead her into the sinister world of the family Gina was about to marry into. But Charley's own past holds dark secrets too, ones that threaten to overcome her at every turn.

Can you escape your past and move on? How well do you really know your own family? How far will they go to protect you? A tense, thrilling novel set in Liverpool about a family divided by secrets and a sister who won't give up.

The Christmas Ruse

Jennie Goutet

Nicholas Cranleigh suspects his meddlesome sister is up to something when she invites him to stay at Cothill Manor at the same time as Miss Dresden. He's on his guard, but it's hard to resist a woman with luminous eyes who's in need of a savior.

Lavinia Dresden is ready to sacrifice herself to save her family from financial ruin in the only path open to a woman of gentle breeding. But she hadn't counted the cost of her sacrifice until Lord Cranleigh came into her life—a man she knew to be her ideal.

There remain only five days until the Christmas ball when Miss Dresden's fate will be decided, and it soon becomes apparent to Nicholas that the question is not whether he wants to save Lavinia, but whether he is able.