Published in 2024, The List of Suspicious Things is the wonderful debut novel from Jennie Godfrey. It’s a story uncovering a mystery, filled with heartwarming characters, but also violence against women; hearing the story through Miv, a teenage girl, allows you to follow the story through innocent yet inquisitive eyes. The story is set […]
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Fundamentally is Younis’ debut, published in February this year. The work is already attracting a heap of positive attention: Younis has been selected as part of this year’s line-up of debut authors to watch by the Guardian and Fundamentally is currently shortlisted for 2025’s Women’s Prize. A brilliantly sharp and moving work, Fundamentally follows Nadia,
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The Color Purple was first published in 1982 and won critical acclaim with the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Award for Fiction. It was later adapted into a film with the same name in 1985 and 2023 and has been regularly debated due to the themes of violence and domestic abuse, and
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The 50th anniversary edition of The Peregrine (first published in 1967) is a truly magnificent piece of nature writing. Written in diary form over the course of a single Winter, Baker takes the reader through his almost daily pursuit of peregrines around the Essex coast and nearby woodlands. Through the diary style, Baker encourages us
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High Peak Bookstore & Cafe has a good feeling as soon as you arrive; the sound of birds flitting in and out of bird boxes, and a heart warming sign on the door “Welcome to our lovely bookshop and cafe; A place for everyone”. You enter into the wildlife and nature section with lots
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I’d heard so many great things about this book. Quite simply, it is fantastic. The very many awards and shortlists support that feeling and include (but not limited to): Waterstones Debut Prize 2024, Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize 2024, Authors Club prize for debut fiction, shortlisted in the Nero awards for debut fiction, shortlisted for the
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Published this year (2025), Broken Biscuits and Other Male Failures is Farrer’s second book after the award winning Cold Fish Soup. Broken Biscuits is a series of essays (but this reads excitingly like short stories) based around his life with the subject being musing on his failures to meet the assumed cultural ideals of manliness.
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Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones was first published in 2006 and is a fictional tale based on the 1980s Bougainville Island civil war. It follows the life of Matilda, a teenage girl living with her mother, and her journey through life, in tension and under threat, with heroism and betrayal, love and loyalty all woven
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For our first Books and Brews review it is local favourite, House of Books & Friends. If you’re in the centre of Manchester we’d highly recommend a quick parallel side-step from the pains of Market Street to the safe haven that is the House of Books & Friends. Established at the end of 2022
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A Winter Book is a collection of short stories from the creator of the Moomins, Tove Jansson. I’d started this book when it was much colder, truly Winter. But having finished it on a March Sunday, Spring is on its way; the sky is clear and the sounds of grass cutting seem to form a
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