Each week we bring you a sample of the books we’re reading, the films we’re watching, the television shows we’re hooked on, or the music we’re loving.

Tracy Hwang is reading Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li

I was lucky enough to have been given an early copy of Portrait of a Thief by Grace D. Li (publishing next week on 12 April), and upon finishing it I felt so grateful to have been able to read it—not just before it’s been released, but to read it period.

All I needed to know about Li’s book before deciding I absolutely had to read it, was that it was a heist novel centred on Chinese diaspora stealing back looted Chinese art from Western museums. I doubt anyone needs much more than that to get them intrigued but this book truly surprised me. It’s not a perfect book (if there even is such a thing); some readers may feel that the writing is lacking or that suspension of belief is required in rather generous amounts, but some readers will find themselves in its pages, and perhaps, like it did to me, this will mean the world.

When it comes down to it, Portrait of a Thief feels like a love letter to the Chinese diaspora experience. It’s a story about dreams and the weight of expectation on first and second-generation immigrants. It’s a story about identity, about finding it, losing it and not knowing it. This book showed me, concretely, that there is a real place for diaspora and their experiences in books, that people like me have a place in the industry. And for that, my gratitude for this story and this author, knows no bounds.

Lian Hingee is reading Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire

There’s this book I’ve been wanting to read for ages, and I’m constantly forgetting its name and annoying my workmates with vague descriptions like ‘the author’s name starts with an S?’, ‘it’s about, like, a support group for kids who’ve returned from fantasy worlds?’, and (their favourite) ‘the cover has a door in a tree? Or something?’. After being told for the umpteenth time ‘It’s Every Heart a Doorway, Lian. It’s always Every Heart a Doorway’, I decided that for the sake of everyone’s sanity I had to stop putting off reading it, and actually do it.

I’m glad I did, because at a meagre 176 pages, this multi award-winning novella was a fast and furious, enchanting, and unexpectedly gruesome thriller that left me hungry for more (fortunately, it’s the first in a series of interlinked novellas, so there’s plenty to go on to.)

Nancy has been booted out of the magical Underworld that has been her home since she stumbled across it in the basement of her childhood home years previously. Reeling with grief, and struggling to come to terms with being back in The Real World, she ends up at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, a boarding school especially for the Alice’s, the Dorothy’s, the Pevensie’s who find themselves back in mundanity after experiencing extraordinary adventures in alternate realities. Surrounded by other Chosen Ones she finally begins to heal, but when the other students start turning up dead, suspicion falls on the newcomer.

I adored the world-building in Every Heart a Doorway; the glimpses into vaguely familiar fantastical worlds, the attempts to apply rational understanding to the nonsensical. It’s an absolutely fascinating concept, and it’s explored brilliantly by author Seanan McGuire. I’m looking forward to reading the rest of the series.

Gabrielle Williams is reading The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

After reading, Circe by Madeline Miller (and absolutely loving it) I simply had to get my hands on a copy of The Song of Achilles (her earlier book).

A modern retelling of Homer’s Iliad from the point of view of Achille’s companion and lover Patroclus, I’m a little over halfway and am completely gripped. It’s romantic and beautiful and brutal and violent. There’s Odysseus, Agamemnon, vengeful gods and goddesses, the thousand ships that were launched by Helen’s abduction (or was she complicit? Hard to know), and the man himself - Achilles. Brilliant.