SEASON HIGHLIGHTS


horse owner returns to take on the local football club and, as he prepares to mastermind a rise through the leagues, scandal, sex and sabotage ensue. “With her talent for boisterous plots and dialogue, Cooper delivers feisty fun ...Cooper shoots again and scores”, said the Daily Telegraph. Now in paperback.


Jesmyn Ward Let Us Descend Bloomsbury Publishing, 9 May, pb, £9.99, 9781526666765


Sagas, romance & historical


An Oprah’s Book Club Pick, Ward’s fourth novel tells of an enslaved girl


in the years before the American Civil War, from the rice fields of the Carolinas to the slave markets of New Orleans and a Louisiana sugar plantation. “An extraordinary novel... the writing is both lyrical and sharply controlled”, said the Guardian. Now in paperback.


Elodie Harper The Temple of Fortuna Apollo, 9 May, pb, £9.99, 9781838933630


Sagas, romance & historical


Final part of Harper’s Wolf Den trilogy follows The House with


the Golden Door. Amara has travelled far in life, from a lowly slave in a Pompeii brothel to a powerful courtesan in Rome. Now, the year is AD 79, and the rumblings of Mount Vesuvius may yet change everything. “[A] remarkable trilogy... a thrilling conclusion to one of the best historical fiction trilogies since Hilary Mantel”, said the Times. Now in paperback.


Richard Osman The Last Devil To Die Penguin, 9 May, pb, £9.99, 9780241992401


Adventure, crime & horror


Fourth in the record- breaking


Thursday Murder Club series. The gang learn that an old friend in the antiques business has been killed, and a dangerous package he was protecting has gone missing. They spring into action, encountering art forgers, online fraudsters and drug dealers. But with so much trouble on their tail, has their luck finally run out? Now in paperback.


Scribner, 16 May, hb, £20, 9781398528918


General fiction


An artist once tipped for greatness after graduating from art


school in London is now an undocumented migrant in upstate New York, where he sleeps in his car and delivers groceries during the pandemic. There he comes across a former lover from his art school days, now very wealthy, and a reckoning that has been decades in the making is set in motion. Third part of a loose trilogy that began with White Tears and Red Pill.


Miranda July All Fours Canongate Books, 16 May, hb, £20, 9781838853440


General fiction


The multi-talented July—filmmaker, artist and author of


non-fiction, short stories and a well-received first novel The First Bad Man—returns with this tale of a 45-year-old artist determinedly upending her life. Thirty minutes into a drive from LA to New York City, she spontaneously leaves the freeway, checks in at a motel and reinvents herself. A superlead for Canongate with UK author visits planned.


Lucy Caldwell Openings Faber & Faber, 16 May, pb, £14.99, 9780571382750


General fiction


Third collection of short stories (Multitudes,


Intimacies) from the brilliant Northern Irish author, these 13 stories explore motherhood and marriage, love and longing. Caldwell won the 2021 BBC National Short Story Award, and her most recent novel These Days, which I loved, won the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction.


Caleb Azumah Nelson Small Worlds Penguin, 16 May, pb, £9.99, 9780241996041


General fiction


The eagerly awaited follow-up to his début, Open Water,


which scooped both the Costa First Novel Award and Début of the Year at the British Book Awards. A coming-of-age story set over the course of three summers in Stephen’s life, from London to Ghana and back again, which tells of fathers and sons, faith and friendship. “An uplifting symphony of a summer read”, said the Times. Now in paperback.


Anne Enright The Wren, The Wren Vintage, 16 May, pb, £9.99, 9781529922905


General fiction


Hari Kunzru Blue Ruin


12


Latest from the Booker Prize-winning Irish author tells


of a mother, Carmel, and her headstrong daughter, Nell, as the latter prepares to make her


The Bookseller Buyer’s Guide Fiction


beginning with her début Ariadne, which was followed by Elektra, and most recently Atalanta, each selling in over 20 territories. Now she turns her attention to the goddess Hera who, with her brother Zeus, plots to overthrow their father, the ancient Titan Cronos, to jointly rule Mount Olympus.


own way in the world, while the shadow of Carmel’s famous father, an Irish poet, falls across both their lives. “Shards of brilliance flash in every direction... Damn, Enright can write”, said the Times. Now in paperback.


Abir Mukherjee Hunted Harvill Secker, 16 May, hb, £14.99, 9781787302723


Adventure, crime & horror


Best known for his Wyndham and Banerjee


crime series set in 1920s India, Mukherjee here delivers a “blistering” contemporary thriller which centres on Sajid Khan, detained by police in London after a bomb goes off in an LA shopping mall, and it transpires that the suicide bomber entered the US accompanied by Aliyah, Sajid’s daughter, who is now missing…


Monique Roffey Passiontide Harvill Secker, 16 May, hb, £18.99, 9781787303188


General fiction


In her first novel since the Costa Book of the Year-winning The


Mermaid of Black Conch, Roffey tells of four woman who spark a revolution on a Caribbean island after the body of a young female steel pan player is found beneath a cannonball tree. The author says of Passiontide: “Written with much thought, love and care, this is a book about women I’ve waited my whole life to write.”


Coco Mellors Blue Sisters Fourth Estate, 23 May, hb, £16.99, 9780008622992


General fiction


Mellors follows the success of her début Cleopatra and


Frankenstein with this New York- set tale of three sisters; strait- laced lawyer Avery, LA-based former boxer-turned-bouncer Bonnie and Lucy, a hard- partying model living in Paris, as they grapple with grief and addiction following the death of fourth sister, Nicky.


Jennifer Saint Hera Wildfire, 23 May, hb, £20, 9781472292209


Sagas, romance & historical


Saint made her name with retellings of the Greek myths,


Peter James They Thought I Was Dead: Sandy’s Story Macmillan, 23 May, hb, £22, 9781529031430


Adventure, crime & horror


Fans of James’ bestselling, 19 book-strong DS


Roy Grace series—now adapted for ITV starring John Simm— have long been obsessed with the Brighton copper’s wife, who, it was revealed in the first book, Dead Simple, had vanished without trace eight years previously. This is the standalone that reveals the real story behind Sandy Grace’s disappearance.


June


Isabel Allende The Wind Knows My Name Bloomsbury Publishing, 4 June, pb, £9.99, 9781526660336


Sagas, romance & historical


Allende braids together the stories of two children whose


lives are changed by war and immigration. In Vienna, 1938, Samuel’s father disappears during Kristallnacht and his mother puts him on the last Kindertransport train to England with his violin. Eight decades later, Anita Diaz and her mother flee El Salvador on a train bound for the US, only to be separated at the border. Now in paperback.


Rachel Cusk Parade Faber & Faber, 6 June, hb, £16.99, 9780571377947


General fiction


Latest from the truly original author of the Outline trilogy and


two striking memoirs, A Life’s Work and Aftermath. This new novel, “surges past the limits of identity, character and plot, to tell a true story—about art, family, morality, gender, and how we compose ourselves”, says Faber.


Ann Patchett Tom Lake Bloomsbury Publishing, 6 June, pb, £9.99, 9781526664297


General fiction


Latest from the author of The Dutch House is set on a


Michigan cherry farm during lockdown where Lara’s three grown-up daughters have returned to help with the harvest. This gorgeously written, poignant novel tells of the ferocity of first love, how it burns brightly and eventually out but always leaves a trace. Now in paperback.


Julia Armfield Private Rites Fourth Estate, 6 June, hb, £16.99, 9780008608033


General fiction


Speculative literary novel from the author of Our Wives


Under the Sea and short story collection Salt Slow, set in dystopian London drenched in the unceasing rain. Sisters Isla, Irene and Agnes gather at the house of their late, estranged architect father to clear his house, but is his inheritance theirs alone? One for fans of Emily St John Mandel.


Giles Kristian Arthur Bantam (Transworld), 6 June, hb, £16.99, 9781787635197


Sagas, romance & historical


The final part of Kristian’s Arthurian trilogy follows Lancelot


and Camelot, although Transworld stresses this works as a standalone too. “A powerful, dark vision of Arthur’s Britain, where magic has its limits and the worst monsters are human”, said the Times of the series.


Sairish Hussain Hidden Fires HQ, 6 June, pb, £9.99, 9780008297527


General fiction


Hussain’s second novel follows her Costa-shortlisted


début The Family Tree and is another beautifully observed multi-generational story which centres on the relationship between octogenarian Yusuf and his teenage granddaughter Rubi in present-day Bradford, while Yusuf’s sometimes faltering memory recalls an earlier tragedy, the Partition of


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