FictionFictionBen Lerner<\/p>\n
A middle-aged writer returns to his college town<\/a> to record the final interview with his 90-year-old intellectual mentor. But he\u2019s broken his phone, and doesn\u2019t seem able to confess that it\u2019s not recording \u2026 this anxiety dream of a beginning leads us into a series of sharp insights into family, memory, inheritance and storytelling \u2013 all that it means to be human, and how smartphones are changing our sense of the world at every level.<\/p>\n FictionMaggie O\u2019Farrell<\/p>\n Following Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait<\/a>, O\u2019Farrell\u2019s latest historical novel has a personal connection. Inspired by an Irish ancestor who drew up maps for the English in the aftermath of the great famine, it builds into a multigenerational tale of folklore, migration and the meaning of home.<\/p>\n FictionCaro Claire Burke<\/p>\n A social media influencer pushing a confected olden-days lifestyle of babies, baking and prairie dresses wakes up in the actual olden days \u2013 to dirt, poverty and domestic abuse. Critics have argued about a lack of political depth in this buzzy tradwife debut<\/a>, but there\u2019s no denying the power of the high-concept hook \u2013 or the furious energy of the voice.<\/p>\n FictionDouglas Stuart<\/p>\n In the much-anticipated new novel<\/a> from the Booker-winning Shuggie Bain<\/a> author, young Cal returns from art school to his childhood home on the Hebridean island of Harris, and his fervently religious father, John. Both men are keeping secrets in a heartfelt and gorgeously wrought tapestry of faith, isolation, community and gay love.<\/p>\n FictionGwendoline Riley<\/p>\n Riley excels at dysfunctional family relationships, but is on gentler form here with the story of a long friendship<\/a> between two prickly souls: Putnam, ageing out of relevance, and Laura, making her precarious way through midlife. It\u2019s a wry take on the comforts of comradeship and the frustrations of other people, with the prose \u2013 as ever \u2013 sharp as a knife.<\/p>\n FictionAngela Tomaski<\/p>\n An irresistible old-fashioned comfort read<\/a> about the slow demise of an eccentric family trapped in a crumbling stately home, as seen through their possessions and mementoes when the house is sold off, ready to be turned into a hotel. Romantic misadventures, dastardly characters, lost boys and lashings of atmosphere: it\u2019s all here.<\/p>\n FictionImani Thompson<\/p>\n Thompson\u2019s buzzy debut follows Yrsa, a Black PhD student who embarks on a series of killings targeting men, each murder reminiscent of the violence more typically inflicted on women. A serial-killer thriller<\/a> with a side of feminist theory, Thompson\u2019s alchemical fusion of racial politics and \u201cweird girl\u201d fiction feels genuinely fresh.<\/p>\n FictionMelissa Albert<\/p>\n A bestselling children\u2019s author writes her own kids into her much-loved fantasy series \u2013 then dies in mysterious circumstances. As adults, Guin and Ennis must reconcile to confront their traumatic legacy. Set between an isolated house in the woods in 1990s Vermont and present-day New York, this slippery investigation into the price of creativity is a dark fairytale.<\/p>\n FictionAndrew Sean Greer<\/p>\n A sunny holiday read about a young American falling for the delights of Italy when he takes a job as assistant to a 92-year-old aristocrat at the eponymous mansion in the Tuscan hills. Full of eccentric characters, it\u2019s a love letter to friendship and discovery.<\/p>\n FictionFrances Crawford<\/p>\n This slow-burn crime debut set in 1979 Glasgow begins when 12-year-old Janey, walking her dog Sid Vicious, comes across a body. Told in alternating chapters from Janey and her Nana, it\u2019s a pitch-perfect depiction of time and place.<\/p>\n FictionSeamus O\u2019Reilly<\/p>\n A major new TV series about the Troubles is to be filmed in Derry \u2013 but its Hollywood star has gone missing. The first novel from the author of the tragicomic memoir Did Ye Hear Mammy Died?<\/a> is a sparkling ensemble portrait of a city still dealing with its difficult past.<\/p>\n FictionFrancis Spufford<\/p>\n In a London on the brink of the second world war, an ambitious young woman working in the City stumbles into a magical realm of angels, time travel, possible worlds \u2013 and a fascist conspiracy to assassinate Winston Churchill and usher in a Nazi future for Britain. Packed with adventure and romance, this delightful fantasy<\/a> has teeth \u2013 a very grown-up pleasure.<\/p>\n FictionLuke Kennard<\/p>\n As part of a psychology experiment, a struggling actor agrees to appear in university lectures zipped into a large black leather bag with only his feet sticking out, and see how the students react. From this premise, Kennard spins a charming and comical discourse<\/a> on the absurdity of modern life, riffing on everything from the perilous state of the arts to masculinity and the disappearing horizon of adulthood.<\/p>\n FictionHelen Bain<\/p>\n A lyrical, impeccably researched reimagining of the final year in the marriage of Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes, as seen by their friends and neighbours in the small Dartmoor town they escape to from London. With multiple narrators and a reverse chronology, it\u2019s an ambitious and impressively achieved debut<\/a>, and a luminous portrait of the effect literature\u2019s most famous couple had on the people around them.<\/p>\n FictionPatmeena Sabit<\/p>\n A family saga, a whodunnit and an investigation into assimilation in the US: this kaleidoscopic debut<\/a> about the community response after an Afghan-American teenager is found drowned in a canal at the wheel of the family car keeps the reader guessing, with gossip, prejudice and contradictory accounts pulling in all directions.<\/p>\n FictionFrancesca de Tores<\/p>\n Alexander Selkirk, 18th-century privateer and the real-life inspiration for Robinson Crusoe, is marooned on an island in the South Pacific with only a Bible and a cask of booze for company. What follows is a fantastically fresh, gripping adventure story<\/a> and psychological journey combined, as over the years he develops his survival skills and faces up to his isolation.<\/p>\n FictionMadeline Cash<\/p>\n This exuberant comic saga<\/a> about a dysfunctional American family features childish parents, precocious daughters, church shenanigans, conspiracy theories and a nefarious local billionaire. With snappy dialogue, absurd flights of fancy and a heartwarming centre, it\u2019s a feelgood treat for fans of The Bee Sting<\/a>.<\/p>\n FictionJem Calder<\/p>\n A romance for the doomscroll era<\/a>, Calder\u2019s debut follows a poet-barista and a wannabe author, stumbling towards an intimacy that\u2019s almost wholly mediated by the digital world. All the textures of modern London life \u2013 expensive flatshares, overpriced coffees, emotional avoidance \u2013 are rendered with deadpan precision.<\/p>\n FictionElizabeth Strout<\/p>\n The author who brought us Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge introduces us to Artie Dam, a fifty\u00adsomething teacher struggling to make sense of his troubled marriage and a changing United States, in her wise and tender 11th novel<\/a>.<\/p>\n FictionSufiyaan Salam<\/p>\n Set over one chaotic night on Manchester\u2019s Curry Mile, Salam\u2019s debut is a turbo-charged coming-of-age novel following three young British-Pakistani men hurtling towards trouble in a white BMW. Written in slangy, rhythmic prose that feels somewhere between Trainspotting, hip-hop and Shakespeare, it is volatile and completely alive<\/a> \u2013 an adrenalised portrait of gen-Z masculinity.<\/p>\n FictionAli Smith<\/p>\n Against a backdrop of political breakdown, Smith is an ever more essential voice: wise, playful, profound. This story of two estranged sisters finding their way back to each other explores childhood, family and our relationship to history, whether that\u2019s the first world war or contemporary Gaza, setting a spirit of resistance and the ways we comfort each other against apathy and state repression.<\/p>\n FictionMadeleine Dunnigan<\/p>\n In the long hot summer of 1976, a troubled teenager at a progressive boarding school for boys begins a dangerous affair. This charged and unusual debut is a powerful excavation of shame, desire and pent-up emotion.<\/p>\n FictionLisa Owens<\/p>\n A frazzled mother of two little boys is determined that her last day of maternity leave with them will be fun, spontaneous, perfect – but things don\u2019t go to plan in this sharply observed and deeply relatable comedy of life with small children. Bring snacks.<\/p>\n FictionErin Somers<\/p>\n An adultery novel for millennials. Which is to say that the cheating occurs almost entirely inside the head of our heroine, Cora, a young mother who has fled New York with her husband Eliot for the Hudson Valley where, at a local playgroup, she meets the object of her lustful fantasies: fellow Brooklyn transplant Sam. A razor-sharp study of modern motherhood and marriage that skewers its cast of high-minded, downwardly mobile hipsters as they navigate middle age.<\/p>\n FictionTayari Jones<\/p>\n \u200bSet in the American south during the civil rights era, the new novel from the author of An American Marriage follows two motherless girls as they set out to find their way in the world. A richly imagined tale of female friendship and found families.<\/p>\n Fiction paperbacksFiction paperbacksVirginia Evans<\/p>\n This much-loved novel<\/a> is made up of letters sent and received by Sybil Van Antwerp, a seventysomething retired lawyer living in Maryland, USA, whose spiky, often funny correspondence adds up to a moving, compelling reflection on a life.<\/p>\n Fiction paperbacksBenjamin Wood<\/p>\n Longlisted for the Booker prize, this short, profound novel<\/a> tells the story of Thomas, who trawls the seashore for shrimp with a horse and cart and dreams of more. A mysterious American could make his dreams a reality \u2013 but is the future he\u2019s offering too good to be true? An atmospheric dive into inner worlds and the transcendent possibilities of creativity.<\/p>\n Fiction paperbacksDaniel Kehlmann,translated by Ross Benjamin<\/p>\n Kehlmann uses a fictionalised account of the life of 20th-century film director GW Pabst to explore questions of vanity, complicity and moral collapse in this brilliantly dark page-turner<\/a> which was shortlisted for the International Booker. Returning from Hollywood to Austria to see his ailing mother, can the man who made Pandora\u2019s Box continue to make art under the Nazis, and at what cost?<\/p>\n Fiction paperbacksLily King<\/p>\n A 1980s campus love triangle deepens into a poignant story of friendship and loss<\/a> in King\u2019s tear-jerking follow-up to Writers and Lovers.<\/p>\n Fiction paperbacksAddie E Citchens<\/p>\n In the fictional Mississippi town of Dominion, a charismatic preacher and his golden-boy son preside over a community thick with repression and simmering violence. Told from the perspectives of the long-suffering women around them, it\u2019s a rich, southern gothic exploring the excesses of unchecked male entitlement.<\/p>\n NonfictionNonfictionLena Dunham<\/p>\n The creator of Girls reflects on her sudden fame after being hailed as the voice of a generation, and what happened next \u2013 namely chronic illness, addiction and heartbreak. The dark side of celebrity is laid bare<\/a> in this compulsively readable memoir.<\/p>\n NonfictionDaisy Fancourt<\/p>\n Can Gauguin treat gout and Beethoven lower your blood pressure? Psychobiologist Fancourt sets out the very real physiological effects of art and culture in this inspiring call<\/a> for us to lean into aesthetic experiences as a form of medicine.<\/p>\n NonfictionDeborah Lutz<\/p>\n Emerald Fennell\u2019s hallucinatory adaptation of Wuthering Heights invited us to consider Emily Bront\u00eb in one light; Lutz\u2019s painstaking account<\/a> shows her in quite another. Far from the eccentric, isolated genius, Lutz\u2019s Bront\u00eb is grounded in her material reality, from everyday household tasks to illness and grief.<\/p>\n NonfictionAlan Bennett<\/p>\n The latest instalment of the inimitable critic and playwright\u2019s diaries runs from 2016 to 2024<\/a>, hardly a period of rest and relaxation. But ordinary life goes on as Bennett, now 92, reflects on Brexit, the pandemic and the distant past.<\/p>\n NonfictionKeza MacDonald<\/p>\n An affectionate portrait of the people who bought us Super Mario and Animal Crossing combines deep research, extensive interviews and serious fun<\/a>. MacDonald, the Guardian\u2019s video games editor, positions the Japanese company as a \u201ctoymaker\u201d with very different priorities from the tech giants that dominate the rest of our digital lives.<\/p>\n NonfictionMichael Pollan<\/p>\n After feeding our heads with a bestselling book about psychedelics, author and journalist Pollan returns with an exploration of consciousness itself. He asks who has it (plants? AI?), how it feels and what it actually consists of. He may not come up with definitive answers, but delivers mind-boggling insights <\/a>along the way.<\/p>\n NonfictionNamwali Serpell<\/p>\n Novelist and critic Serpell zooms in on the Beloved author\u2019s craft in this series of 12 essays, rich with material from the archives. Edits, hesitations and revisions tease out<\/a> the humour and fallibility of one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century.<\/p>\n NonfictionLuke Barley<\/p>\n Forester and ranger Barley tells the beguiling story of Britain\u2019s mature woodlands \u2013 now reduced to fragments, but still more than capable of enchanting us \u2013 and how living alongside them shaped our culture and language.<\/p>\n NonfictionGis\u00e8le Pelicot<\/p>\n Pelicot became an icon of courage and resilience during the trial of 51 men, including her husband, accused of extraordinary sexual crimes against her. This painful but riveting memoir tells the story<\/a> of how her life as she knew it was shattered, and what it took to start building a new one.<\/p>\n NonfictionPaul Fischer<\/p>\n The golden era of late-20th century film-making is evoked in documentary detail by screenwriter and author Fischer as he tells the story of how three relative outsiders \u2013 Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg \u2013 came to dominate cinema as we know it.<\/p>\n NonfictionThomas W Laqueur<\/p>\n Can you spot the pooch in a Picasso? The canine in a Canaletto? In this deeply researched and beautifully illustrated book, art historian Laqueur argues that the presence of dogs<\/a> in a series of canonical western paintings is no mere afterthought.<\/p>\n NonfictionCaroline Bicks<\/p>\n Granted exclusive access to Stephen King\u2019s personal archive, literary academic Bicks sifts through<\/a> annotated drafts, scrutinising revisions, comments and disagreements with editors. Her close reading reveals the master of horror\u2019s obsessions, his pedantry \u2013 and alternative versions of some of his most loved stories.<\/p>\n NonfictionCal Flyn<\/p>\n The author of Islands of Abandonment<\/a> returns with a vivid and visceral tour of Earth\u2019s wildest places, from the bottom of the ocean floor to lava-filled calderas. But this is an exploration<\/a> of an intellectual territory too \u2013 namely, our idea of \u201cwilderness\u201d, and the often destructive role that has played.<\/p>\n NonfictionKimberl\u00e9 Crenshaw<\/p>\n The legal trailblazer who developed the concept of intersectionality \u2013 the notion that discrimination on the basis of race, class and gender can intersect and compound \u2013 recounts her formative years<\/a> in Ohio and subsequent career fighting injustice.<\/p>\n NonfictionPatrick Radden Keefe<\/p>\n Asked by grieving parents to investigate their vulnerable son\u2019s death, New Yorker journalist Radden Keefe uncovers a world of terrifying criminality and extraordinary police incompetence \u2013 or worse \u2013 lurking beneath London\u2019s gilded surface. A tour de force<\/a> of contemporary storytelling.<\/p>\n NonfictionDaniel Okrent<\/p>\n He may have transformed American musicals, but he didn\u2019t always have the easiest relationship with the people around him \u2013 or himself. From Oscar Hammerstein to Barbra Streisand and Lin\u2011Manuel Miranda, Sondheim mentored, collaborated and fell out spectacularly with all sorts of people, as Okrent shows<\/a> in this definitive, gossipy biography.<\/p>\n NonfictionDoireann N\u00ed Ghr\u00edofa<\/p>\n The acclaimed author of A Ghost in the Throat used the archives of Our Lady\u2019s Hospital, Cork \u2013 and her vivid imagination \u2013 to bring the experiences of long-forgotten psychiatric patients to life. The result is a book<\/a> of \u201cextraordinary formal and ethical force\u201d, according to our reviewer.<\/p>\n NonfictionEmily Wilson<\/p>\n The translator of the Odyssey and Iliad, whose unfussy, sometimes surprising choices have inspired both acclaim and disapproval, sets out her philosophy of translation in a series of fascinating essays<\/a>.<\/p>\n NonfictionSathnam Sanghera<\/p>\n What made one of the greatest pop stars of his generation tick? George Michael superfan Sanghera, best known for his books on the British empire, tries to get to the bottom of a man of contradictions: a supreme musical perfectionist who fired 12 saxophonists before he found the perfect rendition of the solo in Careless Whisper, Michael\u2019s personal life was anything but carefully orchestrated.<\/p>\n NonfictionMark Haddon<\/p>\n The Curious Incident \u2026 author revisits his childhood and adolescence in Northampton. This work of personal archaeology<\/a> unearths \u201ca near-total absence of love or affection\u201d, and exposes the roots of his ongoing anxiety and self-harm. The extraordinary illustrations keep the reader alive to the absurdity and poignancy of it all.<\/p>\n NonfictionGuy Cuthbertson<\/p>\n In the autumn of 1960, a sensational trial provided ample material for both newspaper columns and what we might now call water-cooler conversations. Cuthbertson\u2019s book focuses less on the scandalising content of Lady Chatterley\u2019s Lover, and more on the case\u2019s reverberations across the wider culture \u2013 from comedy to music.<\/p>\n NonfictionHoma Katouzian<\/p>\n The Islamic Republic and its politics can be hard for outsiders to parse, but an understanding of how the regime came into being is essential for anyone hoping to understand the current conflict. In the thoroughgoing history, Iranian historian Katouzian offers a much needed guide, \u201cclear and free of preconceptions\u201d, according to our review.<\/p>\n NonfictionBelle Burden<\/p>\n This story of betrayal by an unfaithful husband and the subsequent destruction of a marriage was an instant bestseller when it was published in January. But the plot has thickened after reporting by the New Yorker suggested a more complicated emotional and financial picture. Burden says \u201cI stand by everything I wrote,\u201d and so far the furore seems only to have added to the appeal of her can\u2019t-look-away book.<\/p>\n NonfictionLiam Byrne<\/p>\n What can a thoroughly conventional politician \u2013 a former New Labour minister, no less \u2013 tell us about how to defeat the insurgents promising radical change? Byrne, who remains an MP in a constituency where Reform is in the ascendant, manages to approach the subject with \u201crigour and originality\u201d, writes our reviewer.<\/p>\n NonfictionPeter Ormerod<\/p>\n Is listening to David Bowie a religious experience? That might explain the devotion he inspired among generations of fans. In this survey of how spirituality influenced the rock god\u2019s oeuvre, Ormerod argues that we\u2019ve been missing a key part of his appeal.<\/p>\n Nonfiction paperbacksNonfiction paperbacksKathy Burke<\/p>\n Actor and comedian Burke tells the story of her childhood, teenage years and the prejudice and kindnesses she experienced as she met with increasing acclaim. As our reviewer put it, this memoir<\/a> \u201chas its painful moments, but the joy radiating from it is palpable and invigorating\u201d.<\/p>\n Nonfiction paperbacksSuzanne O\u2019Sullivan<\/p>\n Can diagnoses \u2013 from ADHD to chronic Lyme disease \u2013 sometimes do more harm than good? In this humane, well-informed book<\/a>, neurologist O\u2019Sullivan seeks not to dismiss suffering, but to understand the trade-offs that come when a medical label is applied to complex, distressing experiences.<\/p>\n Nonfiction paperbacksSarah Wynn-William<\/p>\n The book Meta were so keen you didn\u2019t read<\/a> that they banned its author from doing any promotion. Wynn-Williams \u2013 a former senior adviser at Facebook \u2013 had a ringside seat during its transformation from a way to catch up with friends into a catalyst for revolutions, riots and political upheaval.<\/p>\n Nonfiction paperbacksLaura Spinney<\/p>\n One tongue to rule them all? Not quite, but proto-Indo-European, the common ancestor of English, Hindi, Irish and Greek, is the most extensively reconstructed language for which there are no written records. Spinney travels to its birthplace on the Asian steppe to tell a remarkable story<\/a> of trade, migration and conquest.<\/p>\n Nonfiction paperbacksArundhati Roy<\/p>\n