the bookshelves are seeing a new season of books. March’s Book of the Month is emblematic of the attractive literary fiction offering, as Elif Shafak’s sensitive and poetic There are Rivers in the Sky (Penguin) finds great future shelf-mates in Carys Davies’ Clear (Granta), Tom Lamont’s Going Home (Sceptre), Alex Schulman’s Malma Station (Fleet) and Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s Your Absence Is Darkness (MacLehose Press). There are plenty of debuts across the rest of fiction, which should increase that springtime feeling, with Ellie Keel’s The Four (HQ), Flora Carr’s The Tower (Penguin) and Hesse Phillips’ Lightborne (Atlantic) standing out from the crowd.
I
n non-fiction, it is a great month for serious subjects delivered in fresh and compelling ways. Highlights range from
Grace Blakeley’s pageturning Vulture Capitalism (Bloomsbury) and Sam Carr’s exploration of the taboo of loneliness in All the Lonely People (Picador) to the eye-opening nature writing essays gathered by Louise Kenward in Moving Mountains: Writing Nature through Illness and Disability (Footnote) and Pierre Novellie’s brilliantly funny memoir of diagnosis Why Can’t I Just Enjoy Things?: A Comedian’s Guide to Autism (Blink). The latter is joined by another excellent book reflecting on the experience of autism diagnosis, Paige Layle’s But Everyone Feels This Way: How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Life (Headline Home). Reissues of note skew to some
promising film and TV tie-ins. Everyday bookshop love for Mick Herron’s work has been cemented by the success of Apple TV+ series Slow Horses, starring Gary Oldman (
1), and there
Upcoming Previews
Literary
Elif Shafak There are Rivers in the Sky
Penguin, 6th, £9.99, 9780241988749
Shafak’s latest novel is a sweeping story connecting characters beside the River Thames in 19th-century London with a Yazidi community on the River Tigris in 2014, and contemporary London with Ashurbanipal, the king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 7th century BC. What touches them all is the power of water and the narrative heft of the classic poem The Epic of Gilgamesh. Each of the storylines stand in their own right, and many readers will have their favourite strands. However, as in Anne Michaels’ The Winter Vault, which this novel at times brought to mind with its sense for the myriad impacts of dams, canals and burying rivers, the effect of weaving together storylines creates parallels across time, raising questions around the repetition of violence, the persistence of hope and the frailty of human memory. I took to the charming character of King Arthur of the Sewers and Slums, born on the Thames in 1840, and the tragic romance of his awakening in Victorian London, but the darker contemporary stories intersecting with the recent history of Islamic State and our complicity in global events also linger long after reading. A rich read and one that is sure to provoke much discussion.
Paperback Book of the Month
must be high hopes for Baskerville’s reissues of Herron’s Zoë Boehm thrillers ahead of Apple’s forthcoming series Down Cemetery Road featuring Emma Thompson and Ruth Wilson. Tom Michell’s memoir The Penguin Lessons (Penguin) should see a resurgence around the release of the film adaptation starring Steve Coogan and similarly Shannon Pufahl’s On Swift Horses (4th Estate) will draw attention on the release of the film featuring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi and Will Poulter.
An enormous number of literary fiction titles and crime thrillers arrive with a definite sense that the bookshelves are seeing a new season of books
A final word must be reserved
for two presses with an eye for backlist gems. The British Library has excelled itself with Katherine Dunning’s 1934 novel The Spring Begins (Women Writers) and Aaron Worth’s gathering of pulp fiction in Spores of Doom: Dank Tales of the Fungal Weird (Weird Tales). Dean Street Press’s resurgence under Victoria Eade continues the work of the late founder Rupert Heath, preparing the first paper- back edition for David Tomlinson’s memoir Luckier Than Most.
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10th
January
New Titles: Fiction Covering titles published in April 2025.
10th
January
Discover Covering titles published in February 2025.
17th
January
New Titles: Non-Fiction Covering titles published in April 2025.
24th
January
Children’s Previews Covering titles published in April 2025.
31st
January
Paperback Preview Covering titles published in April 2025.
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FERHAT ELIK
Books
Paperback Preview: March
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