It's Giving Treat Yourself ... and Your Shelf

Showcasing African Gothic at its finest, this hypnotic novel tangles together classic texts of madness and female rebellion alongside elements of the jingoistic novels of Victorian adventurer H. Rider Haggard. The result is an extraordinary reinvention of colonial and patriarchal perspectives.

The unnamed narrator spins a web back through a century of colonial possession – political, spiritual and mental – to imagine the stories of conquest and captivity, control and disruption, from the perspective of the women and men ‘half-broken’ by the stigmas attached to race and mental illness. Equally ‘half-broken’ are those dehumanised by their insane greed for dominion and treasure.

With trademark compassion and complexity, Siphiwe Gloria Ndlovu balances the humanity of her characters against the cruelty of empire, making for a spellbinding and literally haunting account of love and magic.

When an unusual building appeared overnight in a remote northern Cape community in the 1970s, and disappeared a few weeks later, it seemed to point to a series of baffling existential overlaps.

Some individuals claimed that occasionally they found themselves on the other side of a restive civil war divide, in identity embodiments that were highly contrary versions of themselves. In other cases, absurd social situations seemed to mock ‘normal reality’ by alternating with it. When a small-town journalist reported on the events, his quiet life became cruelly disrupted by unwanted attention.

Were these accounts imagined or real? Real enough to the eyewitnesses. Traumatised and adrift, the journalist later wrote up his story in reportage style when a childhood friend invited him to recuperate on her farm. He believed he had narrowly escaped the disappearance of an entire region – a place nobody has ever heard of – and its people, including the love of his life.

As the mystery unfolds, with an aura of retrieved memory, the narrator’s lost love becomes an increasingly evocative presence. The Equality of Shadows is a compelling novel – in some places uproariously funny, in others filled with deep pathos – about the vagaries of identity, love and time.

Sana and Meena will never meet. The two women share little beyond Akbar Manzil, the sprawling mansion they call home. When Meena fell in love with the owner of the house, it was the grandest residence on South Africa’s east coast near Durban. Eight decades later when Sana and her father move to the house, the latest of Akbar Manzil's long list of tenants, it is in near-ruins, crumbling, shabby and dark. This is a place where people come to forget. Or to be forgotten.

Full of questions about her new home, Sana is drawn to the deserted east wing, home to a clutter of broken and abandoned objects – and to the locked door at its end, unopened for decades. Soon, Sana begins to discover the tangled, troubling history of the house, awakening the memories of the house itself and dredging up old and terrible secrets that will change the lives of everyone – living and dead – at Akbar Manzil.

Sublime, heart-wrenching and lyrically stunning, The Lost Love of Akbar Manzil is a haunting, a love story and a mystery, all twined beautifully into one young girl's search for belonging.

I Do ... Don't I? is the much-anticipated sequel to the popular novel The Thing with Zola. It continues the sparkling and tender love story of free-spirited Zola and charismatic Mbali, traversing the vibrant landscapes of Kigali and Johannesburg as they navigate a long-distance relationship and the question of commitment. Will they say I do?

The cast is complete with the interweaving of the vivacious Okuhle on her heart-stirring journey to marriage, the audacious Thobile rebelling against societal norms, and the stoic Ongama navigating upheavals in her married life.

Personal desires collide with expectations, painting a unique picture of the nuances of love, dreams, and the trials of responsibilities and relationshipping. The result is a whirlwind of emotions, laughter, poignant revelations and the quest for a fairytale ending.

I Do … Don't I? is guaranteed to sweep you off your feet.

A POWERFUL AND HILARIOUS DEBUT NOVEL ABOUT FAMILY SECRETS, JUDGEMENTAL AUNTIES, AND BRAZILIAN BUTT LIFTS, FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE HIT STORY COLLECTION NEARLY ALL THE MEN IN LAGOS ARE MAD

Freshly out of Obáfémi Awólówò University, twenty-year-old Témì has a clear plan for her future: she is going to surgically enlarge her backside like all the other Nigerian women, move from Ilé-Ifè to Lagos, and meet a man who will love her senseless.

But when she finally finds the courage to tell her mother, older sister, and aunties, her announcement causes an uproar. As each of the other women try to cure Témì of what seems like temporary insanity, they begin to spill long-buried secrets, including the truth of the mysterious disappearance of Témì’s older sister five years earlier.

In the end, it seems like Témì might be the sanest of them all …

In Only Big Bumbum Matters Tomorrow, Damilare Kuku brings her signature humour, boldness and compassion to each member of this loveable but exasperating family, whose lives show just how sharp the double-edged sword of beauty can be.

A LOCAL MYTH. A DEADLY THREAT.

Vera Stanhope, star of ITV’s Vera, returns in the eleventh novel in Sunday Times No. 1 bestseller Ann Cleeves’ acclaimed series.

A body is found by an early morning dog walker on the common outside Rosebank, a care home for troubled teens. The victim is Josh, a staff member, who never showed up to work.

DI Vera Stanhope is called out to investigate. Her only clue is the disappearance of fourteen-year-old resident Chloe. Vera can’t bring herself to believe that a teenager is responsible for the murder, but even she can’t dismiss the possibility.

Vera, Joe and new team member Rosie are soon embroiled in the case, but when a second body is found near the Three Dark Wives standing stones in the wilds of the Northumbrian countryside, folklore and fact begin to collide.

Vera knows she has to find Chloe to get to the truth, but it seems that the dark secrets in their community may be far more dangerous than she could ever have believed. . .

'This 11th novel is one of her best . . . and, as always, the stunning Northumbrian countryside plays a part in the search for a killer' - The Globe

A vicious attack. Hidden perpetrators. An ordinary family.

Aalia

In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11, FBI Special Agent in Charge Aalia Knox and her team come under intense pressure to locate and arrest the ringleaders. But their targets are survivalists, skilled at melting into the forests of the Pacific Northwest, where they recognise no outside authority, state or federal.

Becca

Becca Abrahamson is a woman with a secret. She might look like just another suburban Monterey mother, but her ties to the survivalist community run deep. The FBI will go to any lengths to incriminate her in the terrorist attack, while she will stop at nothing to protect her family.

As the country shudders in the wake of the brutal attack on a business park, long-buried secrets emerge as the FBI seeks justice for the lives lost.

Brenda has always worked hard to fit in – from her school days, when her talent in athletics gave her access to a richer world, to marriage to her soulmate, which bound her to that world.

It’s hard to know how much of her discomfort comes from the ongoing presence of Denver in her life. From the time when they were the two fastest girls in the athletics team, through years of marriage and parenthood, Denver has always offered friendship, worthy competition … and simmering resentment.

When Brenda realises that Denver is a threat to her family’s well-being, there’s nothing she won’t do to protect them. And Denver will do anything to protect herself. After years of rivalry, who will cross the finish line first?

#1 New York Times bestselling author of Red, White & Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston's delicious romantic comedy The Pairing.

Theo and Kit have been a lot of things: childhood best friends, crushes, lovers and now estranged exes. After a brutal breakup on a flight to their dream European food and wine tour, they exited each other's lives.

Time apart has done them good. Theo is a bartender and aspiring sommelier with a long roster of lovers. Kit graduated as the reigning sex god of his pastry school and now bakes at one of the finest restaurants in Paris. All that remains is the unused voucher for the European tour that never happened. Four years later, it seems like a great idea to finally take the trip. Solo. Separately.

It's not until Theo and Kit board the tour bus that they discover they've both had the exact same idea, and now they're trapped with each other for three weeks of the most romantic sights and sensuous flavours of France, Spain, and Italy. But, it'll be fine as long as they agree they're absolutely over each other.

So, when Theo suggests a friendly wager to see who can sleep with their hot Italian tour guide first, Kit is game. In fact, why stop there? Why not a full-on European hookup competition?

But sometimes a taste of everything only makes you crave what you can't have.

The Songbird and the Heart of Stone is the third book of the New York Times bestselling Crowns of Nyaxia series by Carissa Broadbent, a heart-wrenching, epic fantasy romance of love and treachery between mortals and gods.
In the descent to the underworld, a bride of the sun must choose between the light of her redemption . . . or a dark love that defies the gods themselves.Mische lost everything when she was forcibly Turned into a vampire – her home, her humanity and, most devastating of all, the love of the sun god to whom she had devoted her life. Now, sentenced to death for murdering the vampire prince who Turned her, redemption feels impossible.

When Mische is saved by Asar, the bastard prince of the House of Shadow with a brutal past, she is forced into a mission worse than execution: a journey to the underworld to resurrect the god of death himself. But Mische is offered a chance at salvation by her sun god. All she has to do is betray Asar – and kill the god of death.

In the underworld, Mische and Asar must face treacherous trials, colossal beasts and the vengeful ghosts of their pasts. But most dangerous of all is the alluring call of the darkness, and Mische’s forbidden attraction to Asar. As the moment of her betrayal looms, Mische is forced to choose between faith and love – a decision that could lead to her redemption or her ruin . . .

From New York Times bestselling author Carissa Broadbent, The Songbird and the Heart of Stone is a brand-new book in the Crowns of Nyaxia series and the first book in the stunning Shadowborn duology.

Readers are obsessed with the Crowns of Nyaxia series . . .
‘A fantasy emotional rollercoaster’
‘Epic, beautiful, heartbreaking, soul-fixing story’
‘A must-read’
‘Believe the hype’

_{The Serpent and the Wings of Night, the first book in Crowns of Nyaxia series, was an instant No. 9 New York Times bestseller and USA Today bestseller on 06/12/23. Its sequel, The Ashes and the Star-Cursed King, was an instant No. 5 New York Times bestseller and No. 9 USA Today bestseller on 04/06/2024.}

The million-copy bestselling series

In the fifth book in the sensational Before the Coffee Gets Cold series translated from Japanese, the mysterious Tokyo café where customers arrive hoping to travel back in time welcomes four new guests:

- The father who could not allow his daughter to get married
- A woman who couldn't give Valentine's Day chocolates to her loved one
- A boy who wants to show his smile to his divorced parents
- A wife holding a child with no name . . .

They must follow the café's strict rules, however, and come back to the present before their coffee goes cold. Another moving and heartwarming tale from Toshikazu Kawaguchi, in Before We Forget Kindness our new visitors wish to go back into their past to move on their present, finding closure and comfort so they can embark on a beautiful future.

Catch up on the rest of the series with Before the Coffee Gets Cold, Tales from the Cafe, Before Your Memory Fades and Before We Say Goodbye.

Dazzling stories of love, magic and betrayal . . .

A sensational collection from internationally bestselling author Olivie Blake.

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, the spirit tethered to a magical bridge rapidly approaches burnout – and craves her freedom. Elsewhere, Congress enacts a complex auditing system designed to un-waste your youth. We also follow a banished fairy, as she answers a Craigslist ad. And we meet a Victorian orphan, who gains literacy for her occult situationship. In another time and place, a multiverse assassin contemplates the one who got away.

Escape the slow trudge of mortality with these magical ruminations on life, death and the love (or revenge) that outlasts both. This collection also features modified fairy tales, contemporary heists, absurdist poetry and at least one set of actual wedding vows.

Januaries is collection of new and existing short stories from the internationally bestselling author Olivie Blake.

‘Olivie Blake is a mind-blowing talent’ – Chloe Gong, author of These Violent Delights

‘Sign me up for anything she writes’ – Cosmopolitan

Also by Olivie Blake:
The Atlas Six
The Atlas Paradox
The Atlas Complex
Alone with You in the Ether
One For My Enemy
Masters of Death

^{Olivie Blake is a multiple Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller - reaching No. 1 for The Atlas Complex in January 2024.}

From the author of the bestselling TikTok sensation You’ve Reached Sam comes When Haru Was Here by Dustin Thao. A magical exploration of loneliness, complicated friendships, and what it means to let go.

'It's magical how Dustin Thao can make you fall in love with having your heart broken' - Adam Silvera, author of They Both Die at the End

What does it mean to let go . . . ?

After the death of his best friend, Eric Ly creates imaginary scenarios in his head to deal with his grief. Until one of them becomes real, and a boy he met last summer – Haru Tanaka – walks into the coffee shop and sits down next to him. The only thing is, nobody else can see him.

Eric suddenly has someone to connect with, making him feel less alone in the world. But as they spend more time together, he begins to question what is real. Soon Eric is losing control of the very thing that is holding him together, and must confront his reality. Even if it means losing Haru forever.

'Get your tissues ready, this is another heart-wrenching, stunning exploration of love and loss from Dustin Thao' – Alex Aster, author of Lightlark

It is 2003 – ten years since Spud Milton’s class of 93 matriculated and the boys went their separate ways. Despite their seemingly unbreakable bond, the Crazy Eight – Rambo, Mad Dog, Vern, Fatty, Garth Garlic, Boggo, Simon and Spud – have not kept in touch. Or at least, not as far as Spud knows. When he receives an invitation from the school to attend the ten-year reunion weekend, Spud is determined to avoid the event at all costs, but he hasn’t reckoned with the bombardment of intrusive messages and threatening phone calls from his former dorm mates. No one is going to bend his arm, not this time; he is immune to peer pressure and wise to Rambo’s devious manipulation techniques. Spud has moved on. And, anyway, he has enough to worry about on the home front.

At twenty-eight Spud is stuck in a one-third life crisis. Reflecting on a decade of spectacular non-achievement, at a point where he’s coming to realise that his glittering stage career might have stalled before it’s even begun, casts him into deep gloom. For the former scholarship kid, the prospect of once again having to measure up to his blue-blooded school friends – and be found wanting – has him riddled with anxiety. Not only that. Spud still doesn’t have a serious girlfriend, which has seen him resort to a questionable international bath-sexting relationship with an old flame. Not to mention that circumstances have forced him to move back in with his parents and his senile grandmother, Wombat, whose walks never end where they began.

After a wildly unsuccessful fishing trip with his father, as well as a return to his old way of figuring things out – writing in his diary – to his own surprise, Spud finds his reunion resistance crumbling. Curiosity and courage win the day. It’s just a weekend, after all … what could possibly go wrong?

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

Born to an American myth and raised in the wilds of Graceland, Lisa Marie Presley tells her whole story for the first time in this raw, riveting, one-of-a-kind memoir faithfully completed by her daughter, Riley Keough.

In 2022, Lisa Marie Presley asked her daughter to help finally finish her long-conceived memoir.

A month later, Lisa Marie was dead, and the world would never know her story in her own words; never know the passionate, joyful, caring, and complicated woman that Riley loved and grieved.

Riley got the tapes that her mother had recorded for the book, lay in her bed, and listened as Lisa Marie told story after story: about smashing golf carts together in the yards of Graceland; about the unconditional love she felt from her father, Elvis; about being upstairs, just the two of them. About getting dragged screaming out of the bathroom as she ran towards his body on the floor. About living in Los Angeles with her mother, getting sent to school after school, always kicked out, always in trouble. About her singular, lifelong relationship with Danny Keough, and about being married to Michael Jackson, and what they had in common. About motherhood. About deep addiction. About ever-present grief. Riley knew she had to fulfill her mother’s wish to reveal these memories, incandescent and painful, to the world.

To make her mother known.

This extraordinary book is composed of both Lisa Marie’s and Riley’s voices, a mother and daughter communicating across the chasm of life and death as they try to heal each other. Profoundly moving and deeply revealing, From Here to the Great Unknown is a book like no other – the last words of the only child of a true legend.

'What will we find in the uncut grass?'

'It depends on what we’re looking for.'

From Trevor Noah, the author of the #1 bestselling memoir Born a Crime, comes a gorgeously illustrated fable in the tradition of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse about a young child’s journey into the world beyond the shadow of home, a magical landscape where he discovers the secrets of solidarity, connection, and finding peace with the people we love.

Infused with Trevor’s signature wit and imagination, in collaboration with visionary artist Sabina Hahn, it's a tale for readers of all ages – to be read aloud or read alone.