198 x 129 mm

First and Forever by Lynn Painter (Penguin) — return to the beloved, chaotic romance of Liz and Wes in this highly anticipated chapter of their story. As they navigate the messy transitions of growing up and staying together, Painter delivers her signature blend of witty banter, cinematic romantic gestures, and heartfelt vulnerability. It is a sparkling, emotional tribute to first loves and enduring connections.

Irving Stone’s celebrated biographical novel of Vincent van Gogh — an immersive, passionately researched account of the painter’s obsessive genius, poverty, and tragic life. The definitive fictional portrait of van Gogh, which has introduced generations of readers to one of art history’s most transcendent careers.

Ottessa Moshfegh’s Booker-shortlisted debut — Eileen Dunlop, consumed by misanthropy and dark fantasies in 1960s Massachusetts, until a glamorous colleague changes everything. Cool, precise, and wickedly funny: the novel that announced a major and discomforting new voice in American fiction.

Margaret Atwood’s underrated 1979 novel — three people in Toronto navigating a suicide’s aftermath, failing marriages, and emotional paralysis. Precise, unsentimental, and rich in Atwood’s characteristic irony, this portrait of small cruelties and accumulated distances is one of her most accomplished works.

Ottessa Moshfegh’s debut story collection — self-destructive, deluded, and occasionally monstrous narrators rendered with the cool precision and dark humour that defines her best work. An excellent introduction to one of contemporary fiction’s most discomforting original voices.

Colum McCann’s powerful novel inspired by Roma poet Papusza traces a young woman whose extraordinary talent brings her into collision with Nazism, Stalinism, and cultural exploitation. A lyrical, morally complex meditation on the costs of being translated across cultures and worlds.

Circe by Madeline Miller (Bloomsbury) — the daughter of Helios, possessed of a gift for witchcraft she discovered by accident, given the interior life and psychological completeness that Greek mythology denies her. Miller transforms a witch into a woman and a woman into one of the most fully realised characters in contemporary fiction — ancient and completely contemporary, faithfully mythological and entirely original. Published by Bloomsbury.

Love, Mom by Iliana Xander (Michael Joseph) — a novel in the form of letters from a mother to a daughter: advice, memory, nostalgia, and the particular quality of love that expresses itself as worry, as instruction, as the desire to prepare someone for the world’s disappointments while hoping those disappointments never arrive. Warm, funny, and ultimately moving — a portrait of a mother-daughter relationship in the only voice a mother has. Published by Michael Joseph.

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson (Michael Joseph) — a true crime author at a family holiday gathering when someone turns up dead, applying his own logical methodology to the problem and discovering that real-world murder investigation is rather less neat than its literary equivalent. A witty, inventive, genuinely clever mystery that plays knowingly with genre conventions while delivering a genuine puzzle. Published by Michael Joseph.