2003, Singapore. Friendless and fatherless, sixteen-year-old Szu lives in the shadow of her mother Amisa, once a beautiful actress and now a hack medium performing seances with her sister in a rusty house. When Szu meets the privileged, acid-tongued Circe, an unlikely encounter develops into an intense friendship and offers Szu a means of escape from her mother's alarming solitariness.

Seventeen years later, Circe is struggling through a divorce in fraught and ever-changing Singapore when a project comes up at work: a remake of the cult seventies horror film series 'Ponti', the very project that defined Amisa's short-lived film career. Suddenly Circe is knocked off balance: by memories of the two women she once knew, by guilt, and by a past that threatens her conscience.

Told from the perspectives of all three women, Ponti is about friendship and memory, about the things we do when we're on the cusp of adulthood that haunt us years later. Beautifully written by debut author Sharlene Teo, and enormously atmospheric, Ponti marks the launch of an exciting new literary voice in the vein of Zadie Smith.

Meet 10-year-old Zac - a boy on a mission - in Katy Regan's Little Big Man . . . You can't see the truth from the outside, that's what I've worked out. Ten-year-old Zac has never met his dad, who allegedly did a runner before he was born. But when his mum lets slip that he's the only man she's ever loved, Zac turns detective and, roping in his best friend, hatches a plan to find his father and give his mum the happy-ever-after she deserves. What he doesn't realize, though, is that sometimes people have good reasons for disappearing . . . Little Big Man is a story about family secrets and fierce, familial love. It's about growing up and being accepted; grief and lies, and the damage they can do. Most of all though, it's about a little boy determined to hunt down the truth; a boy who wants to give the Dad he's never met a second chance to be a father - and his mum a second chance at love.

This wasn’t how Kelsey Worthington’s day was supposed to go. She wasn’t supposed to be picking up Starbucks for her smarmy boss. She wasn’t supposed to get hit by a car that jumped the curb. And she certainly wasn’t supposed to wake up in a hospital room next to Georgina Tate—the legendary matriarch of New York City businesswomen.

Kelsey and Georgina couldn’t be more opposite. Kelsey’s a dreamer, a writer who questions her own skill. And Georgina is a confident businesswoman whose years of shouldering her way into boardrooms and making her voice heard have made her far too outspoken for the faint of heart.

But now, when Georgina’s failing kidneys force her to face some big regrets about the way she’s lived her life, the two women recognize they share a common thread. Maybe it’s time to confront a few things. They must ask themselves: What if I said yes to everything I’ve always said no to?

With Georgina as her companion, Kelsey soon finds herself doing things she’s never done before. Eating street food. Swimming in the ocean. Matchmaking for Georgina with the help of Georgina’s handsome son. And writing her own romance—both in book form and in real life.

So begins the Summer of Yes.

In Ten Storey Love Song, over the course of a single dynamite paragraph, we follow Bobby the Artist's rise to stardom and horrific drug psychosis, as Johnnie attempts to stop thieving and start pleasing Ellen in bed and forty-year-old truck driver Alan Blunt spends a worrisome amount of time patrolling the grounds of the local primary school. And when Bent Lewis, a famous art dealer and mover-shaker from London, appears, Bobby and friends are quickly swept away on a sweaty adventure of self-discovery, hedonism, and violence.

"Ten Storey Love Song" is a cutting but characteristically charismatic portrait of a deeply dysfunctional, creative, and drug-sodden world, delivered with great beauty and abandon.

Penny, an artist, has lived in the same apartment for decades, surrounded by the artifacts and keepsakes of her long life. She is resigned to the mundane rituals of old age, until things start to slip. Before her longtime partner passed away years earlier, provisions were made, unbeknownst to her, for a room in a unique long-term care residence, where Penny finds herself after one too many "incidents." Initially, surrounded by peers, conversing, eating, sleeping, looking out at the beautiful woods that surround the house, all is well. She even begins to paint again. But as the days start to blur together, Penny - with a growing sense of unrest and distrust - starts to lose her grip on the passage of time and on her place in the world. Is she succumbing to the subtly destructive effects of aging, or is she an unknowing participant in something more unsettling? At once compassionate and uncanny, told in spare, hypnotic prose, Iain Reid's genre-defying third novel explores questions of conformity, art, productivity, relationships, and what, ultimately, it means to grow old. 'I loved this book and couldn't put it down - a deeply gripping, surreal and wonderfully mysterious novel. Not only has Reid given us a brilliant page turner, but a profoundly moving meditation on life and art, death and infinity. Reid is a master' Mona Awad, author 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl and All's Well

Twenty-nine-year-old teacher Emily needs her father to believe her life is a success. He may have walked out on the family when she was a child and let her down when she needed him most, but her life is perfect despite him.

Or it was until last Friday, when her fiancé dumped her. Now she's facing a frighteningly empty future, and she's unravelling at work. And just when she thought things couldn't get worse, her father turns up on her doorstep.

Ed knows he's got it wrong, and he wants to make amends, even if his motives aren't entirely selfless. What better way to do that than to show Emily how much he cares about her wedding? He'll even shell out for the dress if that's what it takes.

Emily can't bear to tell her father that her life has fallen apart. So she doesn't. Before she knows it, they're planning – and booking – a wedding that's totally perfect.

Except for one small fact…

The Hyena and the Hawk is the third book in Adrian Tchaikovsky's epic fantasy trilogy, Echoes of the Fall, following The Bear and the Serpent. From the depths of the darkest myths, the soulless Plague People have returned. Their pale-walled camps obliterate villages, just as the terror they bring with them destroys minds. In their wake, nothing is left of the true people: not their places, not their ways. The Plague People will remake the world as though they had never been. The heroes and leaders of the true people - Maniye, Loud Thunder, Hesprec and Asman - will each fight the Plague People in their own ways. They will seek allies, gather armies and lead the charge. But a thousand swords or ten thousand spears will not suffice to turn back this enemy. The end is at hand for everything the true people know.

THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER

A world divided. A queendom without an heir. An ancient enemy awakens.

'Epic' Guardian
'Majestic' Daily Mail
'Escapism at its finest - Shannon, we salute you' Stylist

An enthralling, epic fantasy about a world on the brink of war with dragons - and the women who must lead the fight to save it.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction - but assassins are getting closer to her door.

Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

Across the dark sea, Tané has trained to be a dragonrider since she was a child, but is forced to make a choice that could see her life unravel.

Meanwhile, the divided East and West refuse to parley, and forces of chaos are rising from their sleep.

When the black box flight recorder of a plane that went missing 30 years ago is found at the bottom of the sea, a young man named Dove begins to remember a past that isn't his. The memories belong to a rare flower hunter in 1980s New York, whose search led him around the world and ended in tragedy. Restless and lonely in present-day London, Dove is quickly consumed by the memories, which might just hold the key to the mystery of his own identity and what happened to the passengers on that doomed flight, The Long Forgotten.

The Humptons is an entertaining tale of the inhabitants of two rival villages. It follows the lives of a number of the village members including the rumbustious titled owners of an ancient estate, a butler and his eastern mail order bride, several upright ladies and some not so upright, a professor, an artist and even a retired Brigadier. The book makes for perfect light reading and has a fun, entertaining atmosphere to it. The Humptons takes a fond look at life in a village community, touching on the many happenings and relationships that take place in a rural setting. However, it is not all sweetness and happiness, darker events play their part too in a disappearing way of life.

A ruthless and unflinching examination of American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The Year of Magical Thinking.

One thing in my defence, not that it matters: I know what ‘nothing’ means, and keep on playing

Somewhere out beyond Hollywood, hollowed-out actress Maria Wyeth’s life plays out in a numbing routine of perpetual freeway driving. In her early thirties, divorced from her husband, dislocated from friends, anesthetized to pain and pleasure, Wheth is a woman who has run out of both desires and motives – the epitome of a generation made ill by too much freedom.

More than five decades after its original publication, Play it as it Lays remains a profoundly disturbing novel that ruthlessly dissects American life in the late 1960s, from the author of The White Album and The Year of Magical Thinking.

Treasure every moment. Life can change in a heartbeat.

What the fans say: 'Wonderful characters and the stories are always great, with twists and turns' Gemma

It’s a beautiful day in Manchester and four friends are meeting for a birthday lunch. But then they witness a shocking accident just metres away which acts as a catalyst for each of them.

For Laura, it’s a wake-up call to heed the ticking of her biological clock. Sensible Jo finds herself throwing caution to the wind in a new relationship. Eve, who has been trying to ignore the worrying lump in her breast, feels helpless and out of control. And happy-go-lucky India is drawn to one of the victims of the accident, causing long-buried secrets to rise to the surface.

This is a novel about the startling and unexpected turns life can take. It’s about luck – good and bad – and about finding bravery and resilience when your world is in turmoil. Above all, it’s about friendship, togetherness and hope.

There’s a bar at the crossroads on the way out of town. Or the way in, depending on whether you’re coming or going. Marcie and her husband have run it for years. After thirty years of marriage, there aren’t many secrets left between them. Couples often say that, don’t they? But it’s not always true.

Arlene appeared in the bar one day, not long before Franky Albertino came back to town, hoping that she’d find a man called Jack. Franky was hoping that people might have forgotten the mess he’d left behind him the first time around. Franky’s problem had always been women. Women and money. What Arlene’s problem is isn’t clear. It’s obvious she has a history, but who doesn’t?

As Arlene gets closer to finding Jack – her father? her lover? – the bar becomes the scene of a great unravelling; secrets buried a lifetime ago are dragged into the light. In Things We Nearly Knew, Jim Powell invites us to consider how much we know about the people we love and asks, finally: would you want to know the truth?

The Story of a New Name, the second book of the Neapolitan Quartet, picks up the story where My Brilliant Friend left off.

Lila has recently married and made her entrée into the family business; Elena, meanwhile, continues her studies and her exploration of the world beyond the neighbourhood that she so often finds stifling. Love, jealousy, family, freedom, commitment, and above all friendship: these are signs under which both women live out this phase in their stories. Marriage appears to have imprisoned Lila, and the pressure to excel is at times too much for Elena. Yet the two young women share a complex and evolving bond that is central to their emotional lives and is a source of strength in the face of life’s challenges.

In the Neapolitan Quartet, Elena Ferrante gives readers a poignant and universal story about friendship and belonging.

And in that instant I fall in love. Not just with him, though he is the better part of it, but with them both, with the whole scene: the house, the garden, the magazine perfection of it. And I want very badly to be in this picture.As Edie Jones lies in a bed on the fourteenth floor of a Cambridge hospital, her adult daughter Dido tells their story, starting with the day that changed everything.That was the day when Dido - aged exactly six years and twenty-seven days old - met the handsome Tom Trevelyan, his precocious sister, Harry, and their parents, Angela and David.The day Dido fell in love with a family completely different from her own.Because the Trevelyans were exactly the kind of family six year-old Dido dreamed of. Normal. And Dido's mother, Edie, doesn't do normal. In fact, as Dido has learnt the hard way, normal is the one thing Edie can never be . . .

“Ek wil ’n enkelkaartjie bespreek,” fluister Selma aan die man agter die toonbank in Flight Centre.

“Waarnatoe?” vra hy en kyk op.

“Geen idee nie,” sê Selma en lek oor haar droë lippe. “Solank dit baie ver van Johannesburg is.”

Selma Barnard se hele lewe het soos ’n kaartehuis inmekaargetuimel. Eers verloor sy haar man, toe haar kinders, en nou is haar hart van nuuts af gebreek deur ’n sogenaamde ridder op ’n wit perd. Hoe kon sy haar so misgis het? En waar was Louise, haar hartsvriendin van veertig jaar? Hoekom het sý haar nie gewaarsku nie. Indië toe, dis waarheen sy sal vlug, besluit Selma. Sy sal al haar durf en moed bymekaarskraap, vrou-alleen op die vliegtuig klim Mumbai toe, en ’n nuwe mens terugkom. À la Eat Pray Love.

"When I see light and dark, on off, on off, something weird happens inside me... Something changes, slows down. I can think again. I can find myself hidden in there somewhere..." Grace Sanderson's abusive childhood leaves her seeking a 'better brain' and wishing she could be 'reincarnated'. She is wasting away physically and mentally and living a partly hermitic existence in her room, trying to resist self-harming and avoiding her family. Her friend Jasmine dies of an overdose and the future seems dark. But Briony, a school friend in whom she trusts, introduces Grace to Nature's Way, a healing centre deep in local woodland. From that day on, Grace's life assumes a new meaning.

This book tells the story of a woman who becomes involved with a crook who trades in coloured diamonds. As with all Stacey's books the proceeds will be donated to a Homeless Charity. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Stacey George has written Poetry since she was 14 but wrote her first book in 2014 which she self-published the following year. She went on to write a sequel which was published in 2016 and this will be her 3rd and probably final book.

When her sister, Fikile, dies after bravely fighting breast cancer, Anele cannot give in to sadness; she has to ensure that the cultural ceremonies and rituals associated with the burial are performed. Fikile’s husband, Thiza, absent during her dying days, is still nowhere to be found.

As mourners arrive at the house in the township of New Hope for the period of grieving, old family conflicts lurk under the surface.

All the while, Anele is haunted by memories of Fikile, who sacrificed her youth to take over their household; who got involved with her teacher and eventually trapped herself in a marriage with him. Only Anele knows of the chance Fikile had to start over in later years. But then cancer struck.

A betrayal causes Anele’s own support system to crumble, but she still has to care for her mother and for Fikile’s children. Will her life take the same course as Fikile’s? Is her sole purpose ensuring the happiness of others? Or is she allowed to want something more?

The Darkest Day is the first novel in the five part Inspector Barbarotti series from renowned Swedish crime author Hakan Nesser. It's December in the quiet Swedish town of Kymlinge, and the Hermansson family are gathering to celebrate father Karl-Erik and eldest daughter Ebba's joint landmark birthdays. But beneath the guise of happy festivities, tensions are running high, and it's not long before the night takes a dark and unexpected turn . . . Before the weekend is over, two members of the Hermansson family are missing, and it's up to Inspector Barbarotti - a detective who spends as much of his time debating the existence of God as he does solving cases - to determine exactly what has happened. And he soon discovers he'll have to unravel a whole tangle of sinister family secrets in the process . . .

It was never the case of good people doing nothing; rather if they are prepared to cross the line and kill. After a chance meeting with two investigative journalists, Sam discovers that a man he hasn't seen for over twenty years and those he loves. Confronted with that realisation, he is led on a quest where he will be forced to take the long reach back and place his trust in someone who once betrayal him. But can he forgive that betrayal for the sake of a young child held by captors for whom violence holds no boundaries? And when Penny finds herself face to face with a date in history when the world was at war - a date that has become Sam's moral compass - little does she know that for one man, knowledge that of that moral compass, and that it is Sam's Achilles heel, will bring the two men together for one final showdown. The question is: who will walk away the victor and who will not?