Our booksellers have been loving these new books from emerging authors! Read them now to discover what has us excited.
Eros: Queer Myths for Lovers
Zoe Terakes
Eros is a stunning collection of short stories, grounded in truth and coloured with dazzling imagination and alluring unpredictable mystery.
Revealing how queerness, nature and myth have been intertwined for eternity, these are stories of gods and goddesses: of Zeus, of Aphrodite, of Hermaphroditus, of Icarus before he flew into the sun. Stories of queer life, lust, revenge, wrath, passion and sex. Of yearning, love, loss. Some stories span across a life, and others, an evening. Perspectives will shift. Houses will burn. Lovers will learn their fate.
Read our staff review here.
Vulture
Phoebe Greenwood
An ambitious young journalist, Sara is sent to cover a war from the Beach Hotel in Gaza. The four-star hotel is a global media hub, promising safety and generator-powered internet, with hotel staff catering tirelessly to the needs of the world's media, even as their own homes and families are under threat.
Sara is determined to launch her career as a star correspondent. So, when her fixer Nasser refuses to set up the dangerous story she thinks will win her a front page, she turns instead to Fadi, the youngest member of a powerful militant family. Driven by the demons of her entitled yet damaging childhood, Sara will stop at nothing to prove herself in this war, even if it means bringing disaster upon those around her.
Read our staff review here.
The Dinner Party
Viola van de Sandt
Franca left the Netherlands behind to start her new life in England with Andrew. Andrew, whose parents lived in South Kensington but had a flat their son could 'borrow' nearby. Andrew, an old-fashioned British gentleman, who encourages her not to work but to instead focus on her writing. Andrew who suggests a dinner party with his colleagues to celebrate their big upcoming launch … A dinner party that Franca must plan and shop and cook and clean for. A dinner party during a heatwave, when the fridge breaks, alcohol replaces water and an unexpected guest joins their ranks. A dinner party where everything she once was and everything she now is comes together and she feels like she might implode.
Read our staff review here.
The Ex-Boyfriend’s Favourite Recipe Funeral Committee
Saki Kawashiro, translated by Yuka Maeno
Twenty-nine-year-old Momoko has been tragically dumped. So, Momoko does what many broken-hearted people do – she gets incredibly drunk. So drunk, that she passes out in an empty cafe. Eager to tell her story to anyone who will listen, she pours her heart out to a curious manager and the sole other customer in the cafe, a monk who trains at a temple nearby. When she starts to describe how she doted on her boyfriend, how he loved her cooking, the manager decides to indulge her, and allows her to slip into the kitchen, and cook up her ex’s favorite dish: a warm, delightful butter chicken curry. Soon, as Momoko finishes telling her story and as they all eat her dish, she realizes this combination of cooking and sharing has healed her heart in a way nothing else can.
The manager has an idea – what if they started doing this regularly, inviting in patrons to hear stories about breakups, heartbreaks, and tragic endings, and cook up dishes that meant something to the relationship? Like an unconventional therapy group, the “Ex-Boyfriend’s Favourite Recipe Funeral Committee” is formed.
The Lucky Ride
Yasushi Kitagawa, translated by Takami Nieda
In this charming story, the unluckiest man in Japan is given a chance to flip his fortunes when a mysterious driver appears, offering him the opportunity to seize a new path. Life’s setbacks can often feel overwhelming, but in The Lucky Ride, you’ll embark on a journey of self-growth that shows us that luck isn’t something you’re born with – it’s a result of the choices you make and the positive energy you bring into the world.
Set off on this heartwarming adventure and discover that luck isn’t a random gift – it’s something you build over time, a treasure that can be passed down through the generations. Yasushi Kitagawa’s uplifting and compassionate parable will inspire you to find joy in every moment, recognize the blessings in your life, and understand that by living each day with a good spirit, you’re crafting your own luck, one ride at a time.
Every One Still Here: Stories
Liadan Ní Chuinn
A young girl spends her days on a double-decker bus. A bride-to-be prays to Saint Valentine’s bones. Bouquets are found all over a museum. Teenagers gather to dissect a human body.
Brimming with compassion and thrumming with energy, these stories are scrupulous in their attention to detail and epic in their scope.
In this bravura debut collection from a stunning new voice in Irish literature, Liadan Ní Chuinn delivers a consummate blend of the personal and the political.
Workhorse
Caroline Palmer
New York City, 2001. Editorial Assistant Clodagh “Clo” Harmon wants nothing more than to rise through the ranks at the world’s most prestigious fashion magazine. But there’s just one problem: she doesn’t have the right pedigree. Clo is a ‘workhorse’ in a world of beautiful, wealthy, impossibly well-connected ‘show horses’ and it seems that her fortunes will never change. That is until Clo meets Harry Wood, a reporter with visions of his own media empire and the person who might be Clo’s ally in gaming the system … or is he the only thing standing between Clo and her rightful place at the top?
Clo begins to wade across boundaries, taking ever greater and more dangerous risks to become the Important Person she wants to be. But who is Clo under all the borrowed designer clothes and studied manners? And who are we if we share her desires?
Service
John Tottenham
What’s this book about? Is there a restroom? Do you work here?
The worst thing about a bookshop is the customers. Then there's the gift-wrapping, the invoicing, the stock takes. The Yelp reviews that inevitably contribute to self-loathing.
In his late forties, Sean is still a frustrated bookseller who should have written his novel already. Instead, he spends his days drowning in his overwhelming sense of contempt – for LA, for its readers, for its casual disdain for service. And what, or whom, is he serving anyway?
Beasts of the Sea
Iida Turpeinen, translated by David Hackston
1741. The crew of Vitus Bering's ill-starred Great Northern Expedition are shipwrecked off a remote, uncharted island. With no hope of rescue, they give in to despair. Until they discover the flesh of a huge marine mammal that feeds in herds on the kelp in the bay.
1859. The Russian colony of Alaska is on the brink of collapse. Governor Hampus Furuhjelm takes solace in the quest for a unique artefact: a complete skeleton of what is now known as Steller's Sea Cow, rumoured to have disappeared a hundred years before.
Even extinct, the sea cow will continue to shape lives and destinies, from the woman charged with sketching its likeness from its bones, to the expert egg restorer who will refurbish those same bones a century later. A stunning debut that melds natural history, human endeavour and the extinction of species with compelling storytelling across centuries.
Here and Beyond
Hal LaCroix
After the collapse of life on Earth as it once was known, 600 people are selected for passage on Shipworld, a spacecraft charting a 360-year voyage to a new planet. Their mission will see generation after generation born, living and dying onboard until one day their descendants finally step foot on the 'Super Earth' that might offer the last chance for humankind's survival.
But life aboard Shipworld is far from a waiting game. The spacecraft promises a world of its own, a harmonious system free of class distinctions and wealth accumulation. Yet with each new generation comes daunting challenges to the future of their civilisation – from creeping doubts about the nature of reality to an outbreak of disease that could eradicate their population, from rebels who threaten the unity of the mission to a traumatic encounter with a mysterious space phenomenon.
📚 Find more recommended debut novels here!
