1Q84 The Complete Trilogy
The year is 1Q84. This is the real world, there is no doubt about that. But in this world, there are two moons in the sky. In this world, the fates of two people, Tengo and Aomame, are closely intertwined. They are each, in their own way, doing something very dangerous. And in this world, there seems no way to save them both. Something extraordinary is starting.
The Wind- Up Bird Chronicle
|
Best of Friends
A profound novel about friendship. I loved it to pieces’ MADELINE MILLER
CHOSEN AS A BOOK OF 2022 BY THE GUARDIAN, OBSERVER, DAILY MAIL AND FINANCIAL TIMES
A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people – from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction
Fourteen-year-old Maryam and Zahra have always been the best of friends, despite their different backgrounds. Maryam takes for granted that she will stay in Karachi and inherit the family business; while Zahra keeps her desires secret, and dreams of escaping abroad.
This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls’ childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine.
Three decades later, in London, Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world, both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition.
Best of Friends is a novel about Britain today, about power and how we use it, and about what we owe to those who’ve loved us the longest.
Dottie
By the winner of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Literature
A searing tale of a young woman re-discovering her troubled family history and finding herself in the process.
In post-World War II England, 17-year-old Dottie Badoura Fatma Balfour knows nothing of her family origins, and little of their history – or the abuse her ancestors suffered as they made their home in Britain. But Dottie knows what her family means to her, and in the wake of her mother’s death, she’s determined to keep the family together. She takes responsibility for her younger siblings, Sophie and Hudson.
But as Sophie drifts from man to man, and the confused Hudson is absorbed into a world of crime, Dottie is forced to consider her own needs. Feeling rootless in England, she seeks a space for herself and an identity through books and begins to clear a path through life. Gradually, Dottie gathers the confidence to take risks, to forge friendships and to challenge the labels that have been forced upon her.
For readers of Jhumpa Lahiri and Zadie Smith, Dottie is a deeply compassionate portrait of a second generation immigrant, a masterful examination of poverty and racism, and a psychologically nuanced story of family and survival.
The Hatmakers
Cordelia comes from a long line of magical milliners, who weave alchemy and enchantment into every hat. In Cordelia’s world, Making – crafting items such as hats, cloaks, watches, boots and gloves from magical ingredients – is a rare and ancient skill, and only a few special Maker families remain.
When Cordelia’s father Prospero and his ship, the Jolly Bonnet, are lost at sea during a mission to collect hat ingredients, Cordelia is determined to find him. But Uncle Tiberius and Aunt Ariadne have no time to help the littlest Hatmaker, for an ancient rivalry between the Maker families is threatening to surface. Worse, someone seems to be using Maker magic to start a war.
It’s up to Cordelia to find out who, and why . . .
Featuring gorgeous black-and-white illustrations throughout by Paola Escobar.
‘An utterly charming adventure full of wildness, wit, magic and heart’ Anna James
‘Absolutely wonderful’ Emma Carroll
‘A cosy magical adventure peppered with charming detail’ The Bookseller
Matilda (Movie Edition)
“A true genius . . . Roald Dahl is my hero” David Walliams Matilda’s parents have called her some terrible things, but the truth is she’s a genius and they’re the stupid ones. Underestimating Matilda proves to be a big mistake as they, along with her spiteful headmistress, Miss Trunchbull, soon find out when Matilda discovers she has a very special power.
The League of Gentlewomen Witches
Charlotte Pettifer belongs to a secret society skilled in witchcraft.
When rumours of the Amulet of Black Beryl start to circulate, Charlotte is determined to find the jewel before it falls into the wrong hands.
Which is what happens when the evil Lady Armitage reaches it first.
Demanding the help of rakish pirate, Alex O’Riley, Charlotte sets off to find the jewel.
There’s just one problem: pirates and witches are sworn enemies.
But little do they know, sparks are about to fly . . .
Kafka on the Shore
The opening pages of a Haruki Murakami novel can be like the view out an airplane window onto tarmac. But at some point between page three and fifteen–it’s page thirteen in Kafka On The Shore–the deceptively placid narrative lifts off, and you find yourself breaking through clouds at a tilt, no longer certain where the plane is headed or if the laws of flight even apply. Joining the rich literature of runaways, Kafka On The Shore follows the solitary, self-disciplined schoolboy Kafka Tamura as he hops a bus from Tokyo to the randomly chosen town of Takamatsu, reminding himself at each step that he has to be “the world¹s toughest fifteen-year-old.” He finds a secluded private library in which to spend his days–continuing his impressive self-education–and is befriended by a clerk and the mysteriously remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, whom he fantasizes may be his long-lost mother. Meanwhile, in a second, wilder narrative spiral, an elderly Tokyo man named Nakata veers from his calm routine by murdering a stranger. An unforgettable character, beautifully delineated by Murakami, Nakata can speak with cats but cannot read or write, nor explain the forces drawing him toward Takamatsu and the other characters. To say that the fantastic elements of Kafka On The Shore are complicated and never fully resolved is not to suggest that the novel fails. Although it may not live up to Murakami’s masterful The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Nakata and Kafka’s fates keep the reader enthralled to the final pages, and few will complain about the loose threads at the end. –Regina Marler
Dance Dance Dance
An assault on the senses, part murder mystery, part metaphysical speculation; a fable for our times as catchy as a rock song blasting from the window of a sports car.
High-class call girls billed to Mastercard. A psychic 13-year-old dropout with a passion for Talking Heads. A hunky matinee idol doomed to play dentists and teachers. A one-armed beach-combing poet, an uptight hotel clerk and one very bemused narrator caught in the web of advanced capitalist mayhem.
Combine this offbeat cast of characters with Murakami’s idiosyncratic prose and out comes Dance Dance Dance.
‘If Raymond Chandler had lived long enough to see Blade Runner, he might have written something like Dance Dance Dance’ Observer
Our Crooked Hearts
I couldn’t put it down’ Karen M. McManus
‘Every line reads like an incantation’ V.E. Schwab
SECRETS. LIES. SUPER-BAD CHOICES. WITCHCRAFT. This is Our Crooked Hearts – a gripping mystery crossed with a pitch-dark fantasy from Melissa Albert, global bestselling author of The Hazel Wood.
In our family, we keep our magic close, but our secrets closer . . .
Ivy’s summer kicks off with a series of disturbing events. As unnatural offerings appear on her doorstep, she’s haunted by fragmented memories from her childhood, suggesting there’s more to her mother, Dana, than meets the eye.
Dana’s tale starts the year she turns sixteen, when she embarks on a major fling with the supernatural. Too late she realizes that the powers she’s playing with are also playing with her.
Years after it began, Ivy and Dana’s shared story will come down to a reckoning between a mother, a daughter and the dark forces they never should have messed with.
‘Electrifyingly brilliant’ Katherine Webber
‘Riveting’ Angeline Boulley
Fritz and Kurt
“Extraordinarily touching” – The Jewish Chronicle
When everything is taken away from you, love and courage are all you have left.
In 1938, the Nazis come to Vienna. They hate anyone who is different, especially Jewish people.
Fritz and Kurt’s family are Jewish, and that puts them in terrible danger.
Fritz, along with his father, is taken to a Nazi prison camp, a terrible place, full of fear. When his father is sent to a certain death, Fritz can’t face losing his beloved Papa. He chooses to go with him and fight for survival.
Meanwhile, Kurt must go on a frightening journey, all alone, to seek safety on the far side of the world.
In this extraordinary true story, Fritz and Kurt must face unimaginable hardships, and the two brothers wonder if they will ever return home . . .
A retelling of the Sunday Times bestselling The Boy Who Followed his Father into Auschwitz, a Daily Mail and Sunday Express book of the year:
‘Shattering, astonishing’ Daily Mail
‘Extraordinary’ Observer
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
The Sunday Times bestselling debut novel from the prize-winning prodigy
Brilliant, heartbreaking and highly original, Ocean Vuong’s debut novel is a shattering portrait of a family, and a testament to the redemptive power of storytelling.
‘A marvel’ – Marlon James
This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family’s history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family’s struggle to forge a new future. And it serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog’s life his mother has never known – episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion – all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation.