'This is a stunning read that plunges you into another world. Backman writes with incredible sensitivity and insight. Every one of the characters is real and multi-faceted, having you breathlessly turning the pages, following their fears and hopes, fretting for their futures. This is storytelling at its best: Emotional, vivid, wise and utterly brilliant' Hazel Prior 'It's often said that winners write history, but there are no winners here' This is a small story about big questions. It's a story about family, community, life. It starts with a storm - and a death. But how does it end? Two years have passed since the events that no one wants to think about. Everyone has tried to move on, but there's something about this place that prevents it. The residents continue to grapple with life's big questions: What is a family? What is a community? And what, if anything, are we willing to sacrifice in order to protect them? As the locals of Beartown struggle to overcome the past, great change is on the horizon. Someone is coming home after a long time away. Someone will be laid to rest. Someone will fall in love, someone will try to fix their marriage, and someone will do anything to save their children. Someone will submit to hate, someone will fight, and someone will grab a gun and walk towards the ice rink. So what are the residents of Beartown willing to sacrifice for their home? Everything. Praise for the Beartown books: 'I utterly believed in the residents of Beartown, and felt ripped apart by the events in the book' Jojo Moyes 'Surrounded by impenetrable forests, Beartown recreates the stifling atmosphere of a dying community. A mature, compassionate novel' Sunday Times 'Backman can tickle the funny bone and tug on the heart strings when he needs to, and is a clever enough storyteller to not overindulge in either' Independent 'As popular Swedish exports go, Backman is up there with ABBA and Stieg Larsson' The New York Times Book Review 'Backman is a masterful writer' Kirkus Review

A riveting, deeply felt story that examines the ties that bind families together, and the secrets that can break them apart.

ONE NEIGHBOURHOOD. ONE NIGHT. A constellation of lives changed forever.

When retired doctor Ben Wilf comes across ten-year-old Waldo Shenkman in the middle of the night under Division Street's old oak tree, he is treated to an unexpected and magical tour of the stars. But this is not the first time the boy and old man have met. In fact, they go way back, to the night of Waldo's birth, and further still.

Secrets preside over the neighbourhood along with the majestic oak. One night in particular has been kept buried. Following it, the Wilfs ­? parents and children ? change and grow, but each is haunted by what they choose to forget. Then the young Shenkmans move in across the street: a couple with their own secrets and a lonely, brilliant son who is captivated by the night sky. As their stories collide in ways they never could have imagined, the past comes hurtling back to Division Street, setting in motion a spellbinding chain of events that will transform both families forever.

Signal Fires is an exquisite portrait of two families, and a testament to the human capacity to experience love and loss. With wry tenderness it shows how we are all connected through time in ways that are at once beautiful, mysterious, profound and full of hope.

A laugh-out-loud-funny, addictive book book about growing up, finding your purpose and whether everyone really does have a novel within them.

An Australian expat in Berlin, Kim is jobless, rootless, and – as she’s slowly discovering – somewhat useless. That is until a chance encounter with Matthew, a hotshot New York literary agent, gives Kim the direction she’s been craving.

This year she will:

• Finally write her novel
• Decide what said novel is actually about
• Romantically pin down the increasingly flighty Matthew
• Be less jealous of best friend Bel’s baby
• Convince her therapist that the amount of artichokes she eats doesn’t classify as an eating disorder
• Stay sane in the process of achieving the above

Because Kim’s story will not become a sad girl novel. Definitely not.

“Nothing quite like this has ever been published before,” proclaimed The Guardian about the Neapolitan novels in 2014. Against the backdrop of a Naples that is as seductive as it is perilous and a world undergoing epochal change, Elena Ferrante tells the story of a lifelong friendship between two women with unmatched honesty and brilliance.

The Story of the Lost Child is the concluding volume in the dazzling saga of two women― the brilliant, bookish Elena, and the fiery, uncontainable Lila. Both are now adults, with husbands, lovers, aging parents, and children. Their friendship has been the gravitational center of their lives. Both women fought to escape the neighborhood in which they grew up―a prison of conformity, violence, and inviolable taboos. Elena married, moved to Florence, started a family, and published several well-received books. In this final novel she has returned to Naples, drawn back as if responding to the city’s obscure magnetism. Lila, on the other hand, could never free herself from the city of her birth. She has become a successful entrepreneur, but her success draws her into closer proximity with the nepotism, chauvinism, and criminal violence that infect the neighborhood. Proximity to the world she has always rejected only brings her role as its unacknowledged leader into relief. For Lila is unstoppable, unmanageable, unforgettable.

The four volumes in this series constitute a long remarkable story that readers will return to again and again, and each return will bring with it new revelations.

Shelley Jacobsen is in her 40s and feels trapped. The coffee and décor shop that she opened with her bestie is proving to be a gilded cage. Meanwhile, her husband is consumed with Jewish guilt since having their twins, which reminds Shelley that she will always be a Shiksa to his family. Then she hires Wayde Smith, a sexy 22-year-old surfer who smells like a Pina Colada Coconut Vanilla Dessert, as a barista. He makes her feel young and Shelley just wants some fun. But will it stay harmless?

In hierdie versameling vermaaklike rubrieke skryf Doc Immelman oor 'n wonderlike wereld van kameeldorings, rooi duine, leeus, narras, mahangu, kampvure en biltong. Terwyl hy met heimwee terugdink aan die ou Suidwes, kosbare raad aan jagters gee, sonderlinge karakters in herinnering roep en die natuurskoon van Suidelike Afrika op treffende wyse besing, skiet sy rubrieke nie aan humor te kort nie. Soos wanneer hy plaashekke dokumenteer en bevind dat die welbekende – en welgehate – konsertinahek, oftewel die smoelslaner, deur die duiwel geprakseer en deur Saddam Hoessein geïmplementeer is om die siele van goeie Christenmense te versondig. Maar met baie dinge het Doc Immelman vrede. 'Net solank die jagseisoen in die winter open en die kabeljou volgende naweek begin loop.'

Ellis's life has crumbled without warning. Her boyfriend has fallen in love with someone else, her job's insecure, her bank account's empty and she has a mouthful of unreliable teeth. Forced back to her childhood home, there is little in the way of comfort. Her mum is dating a younger man (a dentist, no less) and is talking of selling the house, her sister, Lana, is furious all the time, and a distant cousin has now arrived from the States to stay with them. During a long, hot Edinburgh summer, Ellis's world spins out of control. She's dogged by toothache, her ex won't compensate her for the flat and somehow she's found herself stalking his new lover on Facebook. Will Ellis realise before it's too late that the bite she was born with is worth preserving?

'A swirl of confetti made of joy, romance and just a few tears. Huge fun.' #1 Bestselling author Katie Fforde 'A modern, feisty heroine... Georgia had me rooting for Lily's happy ever after right from the start.'Jo Bartlett, Bestselling author of The Cornish Midwife series Where saying I do is just the beginning... Lily loves living in Hawke's Cove, and planning her best friend's wedding at the Hawkesbury estate is the icing on the cake. But when the estate's owner dies, and his son cancels the wedding, Lily must face Henry Hawkesbury - a man she hasn't seen since that fateful night ten years ago... Henry wants nothing more than to return to Hawke's Cove, sell his estranged late father's estate and leave. He certainly does not want to host a wedding, or face Lily, who gets on with everyone - except him! But when Henry needs Lily's help, she will only provide it if the wedding can go ahead. Working together means both must face their pasts, and, in doing so embrace their future. But can two people afraid of love acknowledge what they have always wanted...?

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.

WINNER OF THE AN POST IRISH BOOK AWARDS NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2022 SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2022 AN OBSERVER BEST DEBUT NOVELIST OF 2022 A BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME A 2022 BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR: THE TIMES * SUNDAY TIMES * GUARDIAN * TELEGRAPH * NEW STATESMAN * IRISH TIMES * IRISH INDEPENDENT 'Like Sally Rooney mixed with a political thriller' RUSSELL KANE 'Intense, unflinchingly honest, it broke my heart a million times' MARIAN KEYES 'Absolutely loved it' MAX PORTER 'A beautiful, devastating novel' NICK HORNBY One by one, she undid each event, each decision, each choice. If Davy had remembered to put on a coat. If Seamie McGeown had not found himself alone on a dark street. If Michael Agnew had not walked through the door of the pub on a quiet night in February in his white shirt. There is nothing special about the day Cushla meets Michael, a married man from Belfast, in the pub owned by her family. But here, love is never far from violence, and this encounter will change both of their lives forever. As people get up each morning and go to work, school, church or the pub, the daily news rolls in of another car bomb exploded, another man beaten, killed or left for dead. In the class Cushla teaches, the vocabulary of seven-year-old children now includes phrases like 'petrol bomb' and 'rubber bullets'. And as she is forced to tread lines she never thought she would cross, tensions in the town are escalating, threatening to destroy all she is working to hold together. Tender and shocking, Trespasses is an unforgettable debut of people trying to live ordinary lives in extraordinary times.

From the author of APPLE TREE YARD, now a major BBC drama starring Emily Watson A man dies a week after rewriting his will. In it, he has left everything he owns to a woman he has known for only three weeks. As Bet investigates Peter's past, she discovers that her ex-lover was not all that he seemed... In a crumbling office block, another woman has a different sort of ghost to confront. Iris runs her own business but strange things keep happening. Her phone rings and there's no one there. Somebody taps at her door. In the basement, something unpleasant is lurking ... What connects these two women and can they ever escape it?

Accidental Heroes is a heart-stopping thriller about ordinary men and women who embark on a journey they will never forget.

On a beautiful May morning at New York’s JFK Airport, a routine plane departs for San Francisco. Security agent Bernice Adams finds a postcard of the Golden Gate Bridge bearing an ambiguous message. Who left the postcard behind, which flight is that person on, and what exactly does the message mean? Her supervisor dismisses her concerns but she is compelled to contact Homeland Security.

As the flight takes off each of the passengers is looking forward to reaching San Francisco, whether it’s for a family reunion, a wedding, or a new way of life. But as it emerges, there’s someone on the flight planning something terrible and these strangers’ lives entwine as they come together to help to avert a tragedy at the eleventh hour.

Danielle Steel combines intense action with stories of emotionally rich, intertwined lives. As the plane bears down on its destination of San Francisco, the futures of these strangers will be changed forever by a handful of accidental heroes.

'If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.' The first of J. D. Salinger's four books to be published, The Catcher in the Rye is one of the most widely read and beloved of all contemporary American novels. 'The handbook of the adolescent heart' The New Yorker

An uncanny literary thriller addressing the painful legacy of lynching in the US, by the author of Telephone Percival Everett's The Trees is a page-turner that opens with a series of brutal murders in the rural town of Money, Mississippi. When a pair of detectives from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation arrive, they meet expected resistance from the local sheriff, his deputy, the coroner, and a string of racist White townsfolk. The murders present a puzzle, for at each crime scene there is a second dead body: that of a man who resembles Emmett Till. The detectives suspect that these are killings of retribution, but soon discover that eerily similar murders are taking place all over the country. Something truly strange is afoot. As the bodies pile up, the MBI detectives seek answers from a local root doctor who has been documenting every lynching in the country for years, uncovering a history that refuses to be buried. In this bold, provocative book, Everett takes direct aim at racism and police violence, and does so in a fast-paced style that ensures the reader can't look away. The Trees is an enormously powerful novel of lasting importance from an author with his finger on America's pulse.

Dit is 1987 en die 19-jarige Leon Labuschagne is ’n tronkbewaarder by Pretoria Sentraal Gevangenis en werk bedags as laksman. Hy word in hegtenis geneem vir die moord op sewe lede van die Diepsloot-karatespan na ’n voorval van padwoede. Hierdie moorde vind plaas op die laaste dag van ’n uitmergelende paar dae waarin hy 32 mans gehang het, 21 in die voorafgaande 72 uur. Die verantwoordelikheid val op sy “hotshot” prokureur, Johann Weber SC, om met ’n verdediging vorendag te kom wat sy kliënt van die galg sal red – hierdie keer as ’n gevangene wat teregstaan op moord. Hy stel ondersoek in na die 32 mans wat gehang is (werklike gevalle in die SA regsgeskiedenis). En dis hierdie SA geskiedenis wat Chris Marnewick in sy boek inwerk. Weber is ’n driftige teenstander van die doodstraf, en kom algaande agter onder watter traumatiese omstandighede die jong Leon elke dag gewerk het in Pretoria se berugte tronk: hy het oor die jare vriende geword met die gevangenes terwyl hy uiteindelik ook deel moes wees van hulle teregstelling. Soos die hofverrigtinge vorder, bied dit aan Johann die kans om die hele stelsel van halsmoorde onder verhoor te neem. Hy vra die vraag: Hoe kan iemand ’n dubbele rol van vriend en laksman speel, as ’t ware die herder en ook die wagter wees?

Audrey Zhou left Hickory Grove, the tiny central Illinois town where she grew up, as soon as high school ended, and she never looked back. She moved to New York City and became the person she always wanted to be, complete with a high-paying, high-pressure job and a seemingly faultless fiancé. But if she and Manhattan-bred Ben are to build a life together, in the dream home his parents will surely pay for, Audrey can no longer hide him, or the person she's become, from those she left behind.

But returning to Hickory Grove is . . . complicated. Over the course of one disastrous week, Audrey's proximity to her family and to Kyle, her unrequited high school crush, forces her to confront the past and reexamine her fraught connection to her roots before she undoes everything she's worked toward and everything she's imagined for herself.

But is that life really the one she wants?