One photograph, one treasured memory, one chance to go back . . .

In a cosy photography studio in the mountains between this world and the next, someone is waking up as if from a dream. A kind man will hand them a hot cup of tea and gently explain that, having reached the end of their life, they have one final task.

There is a stack of photos on their lap, one for every day of their life, and now they must choose the pictures that capture their most treasured memories, which will be placed in a beautiful lantern. Once completed, it will be set spinning, and their cherished moments will flash before their eyes, guiding them to another world.

But, like our most thumbed-over photographs, our favourite memories become faded with age, so each visitor to the studio has the chance to choose one day to return to and photograph afresh. Each has a treasured story to tell, from the old woman rebuilding a community in Tokyo after a disaster, to the flawed Yakuza man who remembers a time when he was kind, and a strong child who is fighting to survive.

Extraordinarily moving and wise, The Lantern of Lost Memories is a beautiful Japanese tale about the people that make us and the moments that change us.

All the twisted games are back as Devil's Night returns in this dark romance from New York Times bestselling author Penelope Douglas.

Buried in the shadows of the city, there's an abandoned hotel called The Pope, surrounded by a mystery about the hidden twelfth floor and the guest who never checked out. Banks knows the local legend, but Kai believed the myth around the hotel. He and his friends think they know her, think they can scare her, but Banks knows something they don't. Even though she struggles to hide everything she feels when Kai looks at her, the person he seeks is much closer than he'll ever realise.

She'll never reveal her secret. This Devil's Night, Kai will be the hunted one.

But Banks doesn't understand what Kai had to turn into to survive three years in prison. He wants the hotel, its guest and his life back. But the more he's around Banks, the more Kai realises this new version of himself is exactly who he was meant to be.

Kai's seen her hideaway. It's time for Banks to see his.

**Hideaway is a STANDALONE dark romance with no cliffhanger. It is suitable for ages 18+**

Another sexy, high-stakes holiday spinoff installment of the New York Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series.

Nothing warms a cold heart like true love, and in this newest Black Dagger Brotherhood winter book, a fighter who has never been a savior finds himself falling in love—and trying to rescue—a male who’s lost all hope.

With the BDB training center reopening, and the Brothers looking to add more soldiers in the war against the Lessening Society, fan favorite Callum decides to find his purpose in fighting. Apex knows what suffering the male has survived, and he joins the program just to make sure Callum doesn’t get himself killed.

As the two hit the streets, and the danger gets real, Callum must decide whether he can open himself up to love or if he will give in to his inner darkness and spiral down into an abyss of hatred and death...forever.

The New York Times bestselling author of The Diamond Eye and The Rose Code returns with a haunting and powerful story of female friendships and secrets in a Washington, DC, boardinghouse during the McCarthy era.

Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.

Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst?

Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

The first weapon I ever held was my mother's hand.

On a slave plantation in the Carolinas, Annis has survived in the light of her mother's resilience, comforted by stories of her African warrior grandmother. Everything she knows, she learned from her mother – how to fight, how to be strong, how to grow up in a world shrouded in darkness.

When she is sold south by the white enslaver who fathered her, Annis must venture onward through the rich but unforgiving landscapes of the American South alone: from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans, and into the fearsome heart of a Louisiana sugar plantation. Searching for relief in memories of her mother, she opens herself to a world beyond her own, teeming with spirits of earth, water, history and myth.

A reimagining of American slavery as beautifully rendered as it is heart-wrenching, Let Us Descend offers a magnificent portrait of the strength of the human spirit and its ability to emerge from darkness into light. This is a story of beauty, love, rebirth and reclamation – a masterwork for the ages.

When a wedding forces them to return home, two childhood friends must face the secrets and heated longing between them in this New Adult romance debut by Cameron Capello (BookTok's @ChamberofSecretBooks).

Remember why you left. Remember who you left.

Once so close to her big family, Magdalen Savoy is now paralyzed with anxiety every time she's tempted to leave her safe haven at Oxford and return to their sleepy Italian village. But when Magdalen receives an invitation to her sister’s upcoming wedding, she has no choice but to pack her bag for what is sure to be a long summer.

After seven years, Theo finds himself back in Chivasso, where nothing changes. It's as if time has stopped here. But upon seeing his sister's best friend after all these years, it's obvious that the sweet little Maggie from his childhood is long gone. In her place is a young woman with long legs, thick hair, and walls built around the innocent heart he once knew.

Now too close for comfort during the preparations for a wedding that will join their two families, they must confront the long-buried secrets of their past and the burning tension slowly pulling them together. But their old secrets threaten to tear their worlds apart—and could possibly separate them forever. . .

James Falconer returns in the third House of Falconer historical novel from multi-million copy bestseller Barbara Taylor Bradford.

The Somme, 1916. James Falconer, once a barrow boy on a London market, stands in the trenches, awaiting the command to go over the top. Away from his business empire in London, he is simply a soldier, war the great leveller.

But, unlike his men, and unknown to them, deep down, Falconer doesn’t care if he lives or dies.

When a face from the past offers James the chance to repair his fractured relationship with his estranged daughter, Leonie, he must decide if he can hold different things dear – and make space in his life for love.

But the war has left terrible scars, both personal and professional, and swept huge changes through the glittering world he once inhabited. James must weather myriad storms as he attempts to right past wrongs and build a new lif

It’s the Christmas countdown at the Regency Grand Hotel, and Molly the maid is polishing up her holiday list.

*Deck halls

*Dust off decorations

*Buy Secret Santa gift

*Solve mystery?

A festive plot throws Molly off-kilter. Why does her beau, Juan Manuel, keep disappearing? And why are the hotel corridors filled with whispers?

Someone is keeping a secret. And, as Molly discovers, the answers to the mystery lie in a most unexpected gift…

Full of charm and feel-good festive cheer, The Mistletoe Mystery is the perfect stocking-filler this Christmas!

Slow Horses meets Red Sparrow in this spy thriller featuring a brilliant young intelligence officer and a troubled heiress who stumble into a global conspiracy that pits present-day Russia against the CIA.

Combining realistic thrills with sophisticated spycraft and witty dialogue, The Collaborators delivers a gut-punch answer to the biggest geopolitical question of our time: how, exactly, did post-Soviet Russia turn down the wrong path?

Crisscrossing the globe on the way to this shocking revelation are disaffected millennial CIA officer Ari Falk, thrown into a moral and professional crisis by the death of his best asset; and brash, troubled LA heiress Maya Chou, spiraling after the disappearance of her Russian American billionaire father. The duo’s adventures take us to both classic and surprising locales—from Berlin, to Latvia, Belarus, and an abandoned technopark outside Moscow.

Dynamic, fast-paced, and filled with captivating details that provide a window into a secretive world, The Collaborators is a first-rate thriller “with a propulsive plot and fantastic twists” (Chris Pavone, author of The Expats) that pays homage to both meanings of “intelligence.”

From a New York Times bestselling author, Benjamin Franklin’s mysterious connection to Paul Revere and a cabal of powerful alchemists has been lost to history—until now.

Card shark Hailey Gordon and ex con Nick Patterson—fresh off uncovering one of the biggest secrets of the Revolutionary War alongside American history professor Adrian Jensen—now find themselves in Philadelphia, immersed in the history of Benjamin Franklin and Paul Revere. The Liberty Bell, Charles Willson Peale's Museum, and the Tomb of The Unknown Revolutionary Soldier are connected to Franklin in amazing ways. The more they discover, the more shocking the implications become.

The long buried secrets Hailey and Nick are chasing have previously only been known by a select few, who would prefer to keep it that way. A woman known as The Heiress—part of a mysterious organization called The Family—is one of these rare historians. After generations of members have failed before her, The Heiress has been tasked to finally unearth the alchemical secrets Revere and Franklin may have discovered during their lifetimes.

And she's not about to let Nick and Hailey get in her way.

From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark, satirical parable about a string of mysterious high school disappearances, the seedy underbellies of billionaires, and the tough choices we make in the face of an uncertain future.

In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface.

These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here, in Greener Pastures, that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades, and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal—doesn’t it?

In a high school only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite—but how much of a choice do they truly have?

Skye has been with Tim forever and the last thing she's thinking about is saying 'I do'. It's Tim that enters the dream wedding competition - he's longing to win an all-expenses-paid trip to romantic Montenello. An escape to a beautiful Italian hill town might be just what they need to find love again...

Ana definitely isn't interested in getting married - she doesn't need a man to make her happy. But when she loses her job at a glossy food magazine, she jumps at the chance of a new life, renovating a crumbling Italian farmhouse. Her handsome (and very distracting) neighbour definitely isn't part of the plan.

One thing's for sure, this summer has surprises in store!

Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Naguib Mahfouz, offers this epic story of a single alley in Cairo and the generations that passed through it.

A tumultuous neighbourhood known as 'the alley' has seen successive heroes rise and fall as they struggle to defend the rights left to them by their great ancestor, Gebelawi.

From the supreme feudal lord who disowns one son for pride and puts another to the test, to the saviour who tries to free his people from bondage, the men and woman of the alley seem unable to stop themselves from reenacting the lives of their holy forbearers. Through their successes and failures, the spiritual history of humankind is revealed.

Hailed as 'the single most important writer in modern Arabic literature' (Newsweek), Naguib Mahfouz displays the richness and variety of his storytelling in this Egyptian literary classic.

When Murphy Meyer arrives at Eden State Hospital on the first of January 2001, driven to solve a small, personal mystery, the young doctor has no idea she’s deposited herself into something larger and darker than she could ever have imagined; something that has a life of its own.

Few at Eden State Hospital can claim to be single minded where duplicity is standard operating procedure.

The Concubine, Elechi Amadi's most celebrated work of fiction, paints a picture of pre-colonial life in rural Eastern Nigeria and explores the boundary between myth and reality.

Ihuoma is a woman of great beauty and dignity, beloved in a village that remains untouched by colonialism. By all accounts, she should be happy and in love. Yet she faces misfortune after misfortune when a mysterious force makes any suitor that she falls in love with meet an inexplicable - and unpleasant - end...

Brimming with lyrical prose, jealous gods, and masterful suspense, The Concubine is a tale about Igbo culture and beliefs. An unforgettable story full of beauty and tragedy.

For fans of American Housewife and the work of Lily King, a provocative, razor-sharp, and riotously entertaining story collection exploring the dark side of family and femininity.

"In my life, I had always been a good woman; controlling what it was that I wanted. But recently, I had started to notice my bad energy, and I began to follow it, wondering where it would take me . . ."

A woman has an unexpected outburst at a corporate therapy session for working mothers. A couple find some long-overdue time to rekindle their relationship and make an ill-advised home movie. A pregnant film director plots revenge on the actress who betrayed her. An ex-wife deliberately causes conflict at her ex-husband’s wedding.

This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things illuminates the lives of malicious, subversive, and untamed women. Exploring failed sisterhood, dubious parenting, and the dark side of modern love, this powerful and funny collection exposes how society wants women to behave, and shows what happens when they refuse.

Can she unlock the secrets of The House of Fever?

1935, Hedoné House, a luxurious sanatorium for the creative elite dedicated to the groundbreaking treatment of tuberculosis. As the doctor’s new wife, Agnes Templeton has pledged her life to a house of fever.

But Hedoné is no ordinary hospital. High society rubs shoulders with artists, poets and musicians. No expense is spared on the comfort of the guests, and champagne flows freely. It’s a world away from everything Agnes knows.

Her husband’s methods are unusual. There are whisperings about past patients and even a cure. Hedoné’s secrets draw Agnes in, revealing truths she could never anticipate, and soon she is caught between a past she is desperate to escape and a future she may forever regret.

A beautiful, thoughtful guide to finding your perfect next read, no matter what life’s throwing at you, from the founder of Aphra a.k.a. ‘your inclusive AF feminist book club’.

Through turbulent times, stories keep us afloat. Books, particularly, console and guide us, feed our souls, and open our eyes to worlds, possibilities and experiences we may never have considered before. Many of us have been self-medicating with books for years without identifying the practice as ‘bibliotherapy’.

This carefully curated collection will help you to identify the right reads for the right time. Whether you are in the throes of first love or the depths of heartbreak, embarking on a new beginning or questioning which path to take, use this guide to lose yourself in literature and find yourself anew, and discover the books that will always matter to you.

Includes celebrated classics, as well as overlooked modern masterpieces, with a focus on underrepresented voices. Recommended reads, include:
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Letter to my Daughter by Maya Angelou
The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante
Be Not Afraid of Love by Mimi Zhu

It is 2027. France is in a state of economic decline and moral decay.

As the country plunges into a closely-fought presidential campaign, the French state falls victim to a series of mysterious and unsettling cyberattacks. The sophisticated nature of the attacks leaves the best computer scientists at the DGSI – the French counter-terrorism agency – scrambling for answers.

An advisor to the country’s Finance Minister, Paul Raison is close to the heart of government. His wife Prudence is a Treasury official, while his father Édouard, now retired, has spent his career working for the DGSI. When Édouard has a stroke, his children have an opportunity to repair their strained relationships, as they determine to free their father from the medical centre where he is wasting away.

Michel Houellebecq’s Annihilation reveals new sides to his writing, adding compassion and tenderness to the emotions of rage and irony that have powered both him and his earlier works to international fame.

Translated from the French by Shaun Whiteside

Everybody thought Shiloh and Cary would end up together – everybody but Shiloh and Cary.

Slow Dance follows these star-crossed best friends from their inseparable teen years on the wrong side of the tracks to their far-flung adulthoods – through her marriage and motherhood and his time in the Navy – as they try to work out what they’re actually supposed to be to each other.

Told with Rowell’s trademark sensitivity and abundant wit, Slow Dance is a big, beaming power ballad of a novel about a love so true, it refuses to be forgotten.

Six friends. One remote hotel. A long-overdue reunion. Welcome to The Hitchcock Hotel...

Alfred Smettle adores Hitchcock.

And who better to become founder, owner and manager of The Hitchcock Hotel, a remote, sprawling Victorian house sitting atop a hill in the beautiful White Mountains, New England. There, guests can find movie props and memorabilia in every room, round-the-clock film screenings, and an aviary with fifty crows.

For the hotel's first anniversary, Alfred invites the five college friends he studied film with. He hasn't spoken to any of them in sixteen years. Not after what happened. But who better to appreciate Alfred's creation?

His guests arrive, and everything seems to go according to plan. Until one glimpses someone standing outside her shower curtain.

Another is violently ill every time she eats the hotel food. Then their mobile phones go missing.

You should always make the audience suffer as much as possible, right?

The guests are stuck in the middle of nowhere, and things are about to get even worse. After all, no Hitchcock set is complete without a dead body.

Sometimes you have to let your heart do the thinking . . .

Arabella Hartley Thomas is smart. Kind. Even a little quirky, and that’s what makes her interesting. Known for her outlandish outfits and sense of humor, she is one of the most popular girls at Lancaster Prep. Everyone wants to be around her – except Rowan Lancaster.

Proud, untouchable Rowan is everything a girl could want. It’s why he’s so popular. But what is it about Arabella that he can’t stand?

Could it be that she gets under his skin like no one else? That there’s something about her that leaves him vulnerable? Just like he makes her feel . . .

So when Arabella is offered the chance to leave Lancaster Prep for good, she has to decide – does she follow her head, and forget enigmatic Rowan?

Or does she stay and give her heart to the boy she’s falling hopelessly in love with?

Chloe Gong returns with power plays, spilled blood, and lethal romance in the thrilling fantasy sequel to New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller Immortal Longings, inspired by Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra.

Calla Tuoleimi has succeeded in the impossible. Despite the odds, she has won San-Er’s bloody games and eliminated King Kasa, her tyrant uncle and the former ruler of Talin. She now serves as royal advisor to Kasa’s adopted son, August Shenzhi, who has risen to the throne.

Only Calla knows it isn’t really August.

Anton Makusa is still furious about Calla’s betrayal in the final round of the games. In an impossible feat, he took over August’s body to survive and has no intention of giving up this newfound power. But when his first love, the beautiful, explosive Otta Avia, awakens from a yearslong coma and reveals a secret that threatens the monarchy’s authority over Talin, chaos erupts.

As tensions come to a boiling point, Calla and Anton must set their conflicts aside and head to the kingdom’s far reaches to prevent anarchy...even if their empire might be better off burning.

There was no past, no future, no words, nothing - just the light and the yellow and the scent of dry leaves in the sun.

Japan's internationally celebrated storyteller returns with five stories of healing and hope. Effortlessly beautiful, nostalgic and melancholy, the stories in Dead-End Memories explore the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, find solace in the blissful moments in everyday life.

The daughter of a restaurant owner experiences a budding romance, accompanied by the ghosts of an elderly couple. After a scandalous near-death experience, an editor gains a new lease of life. A woman seeks refuge in the apartment above her uncle's bar after being betrayed by her fiancé. As Yoshimoto's gentle, effortless prose reminds us, one true miracle can be as simple as having someone to share a meal with, and happiness is always within us if only we take a moment to see it.

He's the prince of La Cosa Nostra. She's the witch who steals his heart.

From USA Today bestselling author Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairytale of The Little Mermaid.

Venesa Andersen has never been good. She wasn’t good enough for her parents, and she isn’t good enough for the gangster uncle who took her in after they died. But she’s cunning. Beautiful. Dutiful to her uncle’s demands. And she doesn’t have time for a moral compass, anyway. When her runaway cousin returns to their coastal southern town, she brings a man with her…and Venesa soon realizes he’s the only one who’s ever seen her for her.

There’s just one problem: she can never have him.

Enzo “Loverboy” Marino is a wealthy businessman by day and prince of the underworld by night. Underboss to a notorious mafia syndicate, he answers to no one except his father, the strongest don in the Northeast. When he’s tasked with marriage, Enzo doesn’t think twice.

Until he meets his fiancée’s cousin.

Venesa is everything he never knew he wanted, bewitching him with her sultry voice and supple curves. But Enzo learned long ago that for a man like him, life is better without the things you want.

When plans unravel and temptation sings its siren song, they’ll both have to choose what’s more important: duty to their families, or a forbidden love that was never supposed to be.