Seascraper was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize and, alongside Universality, was one of the shorter works on offer. Since then, this lovely svelte novel has won the Nero Book Award for fiction and been further nominated for the Walter Scott Prize (2026) for historical fiction, alongside the brilliant Helm. Seascraper is set in […]
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Sometimes books find you at the right place and time. It’s that time of year where the hustle and bustle has peaked and we are now in need of some peace and quiet. Leonard and Hungry Paul teaches everyone to break free from obligatory constraints and to operate in the peace of now; unshackle and
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Build a world that fits all the people in it. That was Robin Ince’s rallying cry when I went to see him talk about Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal at the Taproom in Stockport, hosted by the great Serenity Booksellers. And isn’t this notion so very important at this moment in time. 2025 has
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Firstly, if you get blurbed by Barack Obama, you’ve got my interest. Exhalation is a collection of nine science fiction short stories. These are not space opera type sci-fi but very much more about human nature simply extrapolated into a science fiction landscape, many of which have a similar appearance to where we are
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The Abundance by Amit Majmudar, first published in 2013, is a lovingly bittersweet story of first generation immigrant parents living in the American mid-west, and their strong ties to Indian culture that their children and grandchildren are trying to leave behind. Very early in the book you hear of the mother’s terminal illness and
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Twenty years in preparation Hall brings us a story of Helm, the only named wind in the UK. Naturally, this prompts the question, ‘Know any other winds?’. I had thought about Scirocco, the Mediterranean southerly that is also synonymous with Volkswagen’s squashed Beetle. But of course, there are others less tied to consumerism. Many of
In publishing it has been a year for highlighting the importance of rivers and water, from Robert Macfarlane’s Is a River Alive? to the release of the paperback edition of Elif Shafak’s There Are Rivers in the Sky. Joining these works in a triumvirate is Saraswati, the debut novel from award-winning short story writer, Gurnaik
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It’s great to find this aperitif sized delicacy in the library. A short story of approximately 50 pages So Late in the Day was first published in the New Yorker in 2022. The brevity means you can readily read this vignette in an afternoon. So Late in the Day follows an afternoon and evening with
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‘The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite’ Piranesi is the second novel from Susanna Clarke following Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (2004). Published in 2020, Piranesi is a swirling puzzle of a book. Written in diary form, the story is set in the mysterious House: there is only Piranesi and ‘The Other’
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We are well and truly into the 2025 Booker Prize season. What better way to recognise the literary quality that this prize highlights than to mention Small Things like These by the masterful short story writer, Claire Keegan. Published in 2021, Small Things like These won the 2022 Orwell Prize, as well as being shortlisted
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