16th May 2025
Books Spotlight Discover
Titles in this Discover preview are to be published in June 2025 Previews
An offering of fresh, powerful and diverse books will set the summer alight
Our expert, their picks
Natasha Onwuemezi
Natasha is a freelance writer, editor and strategist with more than 10 years’ experience working across print and digital. She guest edits the Black Issue of The Bookseller, an annual focus on Black writers and publishing professionals.
Lina Scheynius, Saskia Vogel (trans) Diary of an Ending Prototype Publishing, 12th, £12.99, PB, 9781913513757
Blending diary, essay and photography, Diary of an Ending is photographer Scheynius’ raw, intimate meditation on love, heartbreak, art and healing. With unfiltered honesty, she traces the emotional fallout of a break-up, combining extracts from her diary with reflective essays, exploring ideas about art and photography, sex and passion, the act of diary-making, destructive relationships, motherhood and home.
Rickey Fayne The Devil Three Times Fleet, 12th, £20, HB, 9780349127217
This dazzling debut novel in the tradition of Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison follows a family in West Tennessee who are courted by the Devil. He first appears to a woman and her twins in 1845 and over the decades returns to their tangled family tree, with each generation facing its own heartaches, challenges and fears. Steeped in the spiritual traditions of the Black diaspora, this title blends supernatural lore, history and heart to explore survival, sacrifice and redemption.
Grace Spence Green To Exist as I Am: A Doctor’s Notes on Recovery and Radical Acceptance Wellcome Collection, 5th, £18.99, HB, 9781800814486
At 22, Spence Green’s life was transformed by a spinal cord injury. One moment she was caring for patients; the next, she became one herself. To Exist as I Am traces her journey from medical student to disabled doctor and activist, exploring what it means to heal, to depend on others and to embrace life fully. This powerful memoir redefines independence, resilience and the deep strength found in care and connection.
Cecilie Lind, Hazel Evans (trans) Girlbeast Prototype Publishing, 26th, £12, PB, 9781913513771
Bold and brilliant, Girlbeast is the electrifying Danish sensation soon to hit the big screen. With razor- sharp, poetic prose and a gripping, provocative plot, Lind reimagines the Lolita narrative for the #MeToo era – exploring power, sexuality and female agency in a world that both idolises and undermines girlhood. Unsettling yet empowering, this novel – which won both the Danish Critics Prize for Literature (2023) and the Native Language Prize (2020) – is an exploration of consent, identity and rebellion.
Renay Richardson, Arisa Loomba Human Resources Profile Books, 5th, £18.99, HB, 9781800816220
Based on the hit podcast, Human Resources is a powerful and eye-opening exploration of how the transatlantic slave trade shaped modern-day Britain. From everyday objects to national institutions, it reveals the hidden histories behind places, practices and commodities we often take for granted. Bold, accessible and deeply thought-provoking, this book uncovers how slavery is not a footnote in British history, but is woven into the social fabric of the present.
F
rom surreal short stories and moving memoirs to bold reimagin- ings of gender and genre, this month’s Discover line-up brings a world of ideas to the page – and, in
some cases, to the screen. South Korea contin- ues its literary boom with two striking titles: To the Moon (Bloomsbury Publishing) by Jang Ryujin, a compulsive tale of friendship and ambition, and Broccoli Punch by Lee Yuri (Heloise Press), a wildly inventive short-story collection where grief, love and pop culture collide in vegetal form. On the big-screen front, GRQ by Steven
Bernstein (Fly on the Wall Press) delivers a taut thriller of greed and downfall, soon to be adapted into a star-studded film written and directed by the man himself. And Girlbeast
(Prototype Publishing), the provocative Danish bestseller by Cecilie Lind, will soon roar into cinemas with its fearless exploration of power, girlhood and sexuality. Non-fiction highlights include deeply
personal writing from medical professionals: doctor and disability activist Grace Spence Green’s memoir To Exist As I Am (Wellcome Collection) redefines what it means to heal and care, while The Mind Electric (Virago Books) by neurologist Pria Anand investigates the mysteries of the human brain. Rounding out this month’s preview are
powerful works on sex, gender and history from Jules Gill-Peterson, Juliana Gleeson, Cassandra Jules Corrigan and Anne Carson – these are books that challenge, illuminate and refuse to let go.
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Spotlight: Discover
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