THE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER

A Daily Mirror best fiction pick of 2019
A Daily Express best book of 2019

'I LOVE it . . . I can't remember the last time I read a book that was so fun' DOLLY ALDERTON

They were the new icons of rock and roll, fated to burn bright and not fade away.
But on 12 July 1979, it all came crashing down.

There was Daisy, rock and roll force of nature, brilliant songwriter and unapologetic drug addict, the half-feral child who rose to superstardom.

There was Camila, the frontman’s wife, too strong-willed to let the band implode – and all too aware of the electric connection between her husband and Daisy.

There was Karen, ice-cool keyboardist, a ferociously independent woman in a world that wasn’t ready for her.

And there were the men surrounding them: the feuding, egotistical Dunne brothers, the angry guitarist chafing on the sidelines, the drummer binge-drinking on his boat, the bassist trying to start a family amid a hedonistic world tour. They were creative minds striking sparks from each other, ready to go up in flames.

It’s never just about the music…

In Blessing In Disguise, Danielle Steel's wise, warm-hearted novel, one of her most memorable characters discovers the highs and lows of being a mother to three very different daughters.

As a young intern at an art gallery in Paris, Isabelle McAvoy meets Putnam Armstrong, wealthy, gentle, older and secluded from the world. Her time at his Normandy chateau is the stuff of dreams, for when she learns she is pregnant, she knows that marriage is out of the question. Returning to New York, Isabelle enters a new relationship that she hopes will be more stable but before long she realizes she has made a terrible mistake and once again finds herself a single mother.

With two young daughters Isabelle unexpectedly finds happiness and a love that gives her a third child, a baby as happy as her beloved father. And yet, life brings more change . . .

Her three girls grow up to be very different women and Isabelle's relationship with each of them is unique. When one final turn of fate brings a past secret to light, it bonds mother and daughters closer, turning a challenge into a blessing.

This book explores the inter-relationships between Agatha Christie and her works to seek the wholeness in the Christie experience. The authors perceive an integration in personal experience and moral and aesthetic values between the woman and her art.

From the Costa-Winning, Women's Prize-shortlisted author of Unsettled Ground: a gripping, haunting novel about memory, love and survival, for readers of Never Let me Go and Leave the World Behind Neffy is a young woman running away from grief and guilt and the one big mistake that has derailed her career. When she answers the call to volunteer in a controlled vaccine trial, it offers her a way to pay off her many debts and, perhaps, to make up for the past. But when the London streets below her window fall silent, and all external communications cease, only Neffy and four other volunteers remain in the unit. With food running out, and a growing sense that the strangers she is with may be holding back secrets, Neffy has questions that no-one can answer. Does safety lie inside or beyond the unit? And who, or what is out there? While she weighs up her choices, she is introduced to a pioneering and controversial technology which allows her to revisit memories from her life before: a childhood divided between her enigmatic mother and her father in his small hotel in Greece. Intoxicated by the freedom of the past and the chance to reunite with those she loves, she increasingly turns away from her perilous present. But in this new world where survival rests on the bonds between strangers, is she jeopardising any chance of a future? The Memory of Animals is a taut and emotionally charged novel about freedom and captivity, survival and sacrifice and whether you can save anyone before you save yourself. 'Another literary page-turner ... Compulsive and thoroughly convincing. Terrific!' Clare Chambers, author of Small Pleasures 'Haunting and unsettling, moving and thoughtful, with horror lurking at the edges, this is a subtle, elegant novel. Claire Fuller is a huge talent' Lucy Atkins, author of Magpie Lane

Centuries ago, they say that the holy river Saraswati flowed through what is now Punjab, alongside the Indus River and its five tributaries.

Some dismiss this as myth or allegory, but when Satnam arrives in Punjab for his grandmother's funeral, he finds water in the dried-up well behind her house. The discovery sets in motion a contentious government scheme to unearth this lost river as an act of Hindu nationalist pride.

Tracing each river as threads in a tapestry, Gurnaik Johal takes us through the lives of seven people whose histories resurface with a river that will change the course of their future forever. Ambitious, moving and brimming with rich folklore, Saraswati is a debut novel from one of Britain's most-feted young writers.

Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world -- of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over.

When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.

This is the story of the perfect worlds Sadie and Sam build, the imperfect world they live in, and of everything that comes after success: Money. Fame. Duplicity. Tragedy.

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow takes us on a dazzling imaginative quest as it examines the nature of identity, creativity, disability, failure, the redemptive possibilities in play and, above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.

'A sprawling tale of love, family, duty, war, and displacement' Khaled Hosseini Correspondents by Tim Murphy is a powerful story about the legacy of immigration, the present-day world of refugeehood, the violence that America causes both abroad and at home, and the power of the individual and the family to bring good into a world that is often brutal. Spanning the breadth of the twentieth century and into the post-9/11 wars and their legacy, Correspondents is a powerful novel that centres on Rita Khoury, an Irish-Lebanese woman whose life and family history mirrors the story of modern America. Both sides of Rita's family came to the United States in the golden years of immigration, and in her home north of Boston Rita grows into a stubborn, perfectionist, and relentlessly bright young woman. She studies Arabic at university and moves to cosmopolitan Beirut to work as a journalist, and is then posted to Iraq after the American invasion in 2003. In Baghdad, Rita finds for the first time in her life that her safety depends on someone else, her talented interpreter Nabil al-Jumaili, an equally driven young man from a middle-class Baghdad family who is hiding a secret about his sexuality. As Nabil's identity threatens to put him in jeopardy and Rita's position becomes more precarious as the war intensifies, their worlds start to unravel, forcing them out of the country and into an uncertain future.

The best American novel to emerge from World War I, A Farewell to Arms is the unforgettable story of an American ambulance driver on the Italian front and his passion for a beautiful English nurse. Hemingway's frank portrayal of the love between Lieutenant Henry and Catherine Barkley, caught in the inexorable sweep of war, glows with an intensity unrivaled in modern literature, while his description of the German attack on Caporetto -- of lines of fired men marching in the rain, hungry, weary, and demoralized -- is one of the greatest moments in literary history. A story of love and pain, of loyalty and desertion, A Farewell to Arms, written when he was 30 years old, represents a new romanticism for Hemingway.

Once on the fringes of horror, the "zombie apocalypse," has become one of the most buzzworthy genres in popular culture. Now, in Day by Day Armageddon, J.L. Bourne delivers an intelligent, gripping thriller that will leave both new and die-hard zombie fans breathless--perfect for fans of The Walking Dead. Sporadic news reports indicate chaos and violence spreading through U.S. cities. An unknown evil is sweeping the planet. The dead are rising to claim the Earth as the new dominant species in the food chain.This is the handwritten journal depicting one man's struggle for survival. Trapped in the midst of global disaster, he must make decisions; choices that ultimately mean life, or the eternal curse to walk as one of them. Enter if you will into his world. The world of the undead.

Latif's life changes when he is appointed bellboy at the Paradise Lodge - a hotel where people come to die. After his father's death, drowned in the waters surrounding their small Island, it is 17 year-old Latif's turn to become the man of the house and provide for his ailing mother and sisters. Despite discovering a dead body on his first day of duty, Latif finds entertainment spying on guests and regaling the hotel's janitor, Stella, with made-up stories. However, when Latif finds the corpse of a small-time actor in Room 555 and becomes a mute-witness to a crime that happens there, the course of Latif's life is irretrievably altered. The Bellboy is as much a commentary on how society treats and victimizes the intellectually vulnerable as it is about the quiet resentment brewing against religious minorities in India today. With a mix of wry humour and heart-wrenching poignancy, the book narrates a young boy's coming-of-age on a small island, and his innocence that persists even in the face of adversity and inevitable tragedy.

Winner of the international Booker Prize 2024.

Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain.

But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.

From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.

'As a man loved a woman, that was how I loved...It was good, good, good...' Stephen is an ideal child of aristocratic parents - a fencer, a horse rider and a keen scholar. Stephen grows to be a war hero, a bestselling writer and a loyal, protective lover. But Stephen is a woman, and her lovers are women. As her ambitions drive her, and society confines her, Stephen is forced into desperate actions. The Well of Loneliness was banned for obscenity when published in 1928. It became an international bestseller, and for decades was the single most famous lesbian novel. It has influenced how love between women is understood, for the twentieth century and beyond.

Life had been looking up - she's dating a new man and finally getting praise at work. But after the accident everything seems to plummet downhill. In the space of a few days her flat is burgled and her flatmate assaulted - she loses her phone and then her job. Are these events linked? Perhaps what she had seen was something more sinister?

All 20 year old Daisy Haites has ever wanted is a normal life, but it’s just not on the cards for her. Raised by her older brother Julian since their parents were murdered in front of them 12 years ago, Daisy hasn’t ever lived beyond the watchful gaze of her gang lord brother. But Julian’s line of work means that Daisy’s life is...complicated. And things don’t become any less complex when she falls hard for Christian Hemmes, the beautiful and emotionally unavailable boy she’s been involved with for the last few months, who also happens to be one of the few men in London who doesn’t answer to Julian.

Christian’s life is no walk in the park either, being in love with his best friend’s girlfriend and all… He’s happy enough to use Daisy to throw off the scent of his true affections, that is until she starts to infiltrate those too.

As their romance blossoms into something neither were anticipating, Daisy, Christian, and Julian each have to come to terms with the fact that in this life everything comes at a price. As their relationships intersect and tangle, they all learn that sometimes life’s most worthwhile pursuits can only be paid in blood.

As a nuclear engineer, Zsolt StanA k lived for decades in the fascinating world of atoms, nuclear reactions and reactors and was continually surrounded by the language of the trade. One day, it dawned on him that there was also another world a " the everyday life of people a " that was inspiring and often amusing. His stories and books spring from this revelation and deal with absurd situations and common human challenges. Many of his stories are now available in English at www.amazon.co.uk and an electronic version of this book is available at www.kosmas.cz. A true Czechoslovak, fluent in both the Czech and Slovak languages, Zsolt StanA k absorbed both cultures in his formative years. He was born and spent his early youth in KoA!ice, Slovakia, and later studied nuclear physics and engineering in Prague, Czech Republic. His work often took him to Vienna, Austria, where the International Atomic Energy Agency is located and where a " between 1993 and retirement in 2006 a " he held the position of information manager. At present, he lives in Alhaurin de la Torre, Spain. He has two children, Danny and Lucie, three grandchildren, Anetka, David and NatA!lka and two greatgrandchildren, MatAE j and Marek. To learn more about Zsolt StanA k, please visit his website at www.stanik.name and www.kosmas.cz

From Laurie Frankel, the New York Times bestselling author of This Is How It Always Is, a Reese's Book Club x Hello Sunshine Book Pick, comes One Two Three, a timely, topical novel about love and family that will make you laugh and cry...and laugh again. In a town where nothing ever changes, suddenly everything does... Everyone knows everyone in the tiny town of Bourne, but the Mitchell triplets are especially beloved. Mirabel is the smartest person anyone knows, and no one doubts it just because she can't speak. Monday is the town's purveyor of books now that the library's closed--tell her the book you think you want, and she'll pull the one you actually do from the microwave or her sock drawer. Mab's job is hardest of all: get good grades, get into college, get out of Bourne. For a few weeks seventeen years ago, Bourne was national news when its water turned green. The girls have come of age watching their mother's endless fight for justice. But just when it seems life might go on the same forever, the first moving truck anyone's seen in years pulls up and unloads new residents and old secrets. Soon, the Mitchell sisters are taking on a system stacked against them and uncovering mysteries buried longer than they've been alive. Because it's hard to let go of the past when the past won't let go of you. Three unforgettable narrators join together here to tell a spellbinding story with wit, wonder, and deep affection. As she did in This Is How It Always Is, Laurie Frankel has written a laugh-out-loud-on-one-page-grab-a-tissue-the-next novel, as only she can, about how expanding our notions of normal makes the world a better place for everyone and how when days are darkest, it's our daughters who will save us all.

"Admissions. "Admission." Aren't there two sides to the word? And two opposing sides...It's what we let in, but it's also what we let out."

For years, 38-year-old Portia Nathan has avoided the past, hiding behind her busy (and sometimes punishing) career as a PrincetonUniversity admissions officer and her dependable domestic life. Her reluctance to confront the truth is suddenly overwhelmed by the resurfacing of a life-altering decision, and Portia is faced with an extraordinary test. Just as thousands of the nation's brightest students await her decision regarding their academic admission, so too must Portia decide whether to make her own ultimate admission.

"Admission" is at once a fascinating look at the complex college admissions process and an emotional examination of what happens when the secrets of the past return and shake a woman's life to its core.