TEN NOT TO MISS Ten titles not to miss Highlights of the Season
Adelle Stripe Base Notes White Rabbit, 13 February, hb, £20, 9781399608602
Biography & Memoirs
“Her perfume fills the air; it is the familiar
scent of Rive Gauche… She keeps the black and blue bottle on her bedside table that is always coated in talcum.” Beginning with this favourite perfume of her mother’s, Stripe tells her life story through the scents that have infused it. Each chapter of this fragrant and fabulous episodic memoir has a signature base note; including Giorgio Beverly Hills, the scent of the elite hairdressing competitions her mother entered; and Old Spice; a mouldy bottle of which she gave to her father in 1996, and he was still using years later.
Victoria Amelina Looking at Women, Looking at War William Collins, 13 February, hb, £20, 9780008727505
Biography & Memoirs
When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022,
award-winning Ukrainian novelist, essayist and poet Amelina was busy writing a novel, taking part in her country’s literary scene and parenting her son. The invasion transformed her into someone new: a war crimes reporter and chronicler of the actions of heroic women like herself. Posthumously published (Amelia was killed in a Russian missile strike in June 2023), this most courageous of books combines memoir and reportage with unedited notes and fragments, and photos by award-winning Ukrainian journalist Julia Kochetova. The powerful introduction by Margaret Atwood concludes: “This is her voice: fresh, alive, vivid, speaking to us now.”
Ian Leslie John and Paul Faber, 27 March, hb, £25, 9780571376117
Biography & Memoirs
More than friends, rivals or collaborators,
Lennon and McCartney were intimates almost from their first meeting in Liverpool as teenagers in 1957 until the former’s murder. In 43 enthralling
chapters, each named from a different song, Leslie draws on his previous books on aspects of human behaviour to get under the skin of two truly gifted musicians; beautifully and movingly charting the intense relationship between them. My superfan husband, who has read dozens of biographies of the band, says this is possibly the best book on the Beatles he has ever read.
Philippe Sands 38 Londres Street Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 3 April, hb, £25, 9781474620741
Law The final book in a loose trilogy that
began with Sands’ Baillie Gifford Prize winning East West Street, this is the enthralling story of the events which led up to the 1998 arrest in London of Chilean dictator, Augusto Pinochet. Entitled after an infamous street address in Santiago, it disturbingly connects mass murder and crimes against humanity in South America with the atrocities of the 1940s and those of our own times. As ever, Sands is brilliant at drawing the threads of intersecting stories together in a blend of memoir, history, detective story and courtroom drama.
Frances Ryan Who Wants Normal? Fig Tree, 24 April, hb, £18.99, 9780241629437
Biography & Memoirs
”No one really talks about it. No one really
talks about what it is to be a disabled woman, especially a young one.” Part memoir, part manifesto, this trail-blazing disabled girl’s guide explores six facets of life: education, careers, body image, health, relationships and representation. Full of warmth, humour and honesty (as well as hard-hitting statistics), it draws both on Ryan’s own experience, as well as interviews with more than 50 of Britain’s best-known women and non-binary people with mental and physical health conditions, including Jameela Jamil, Rosie Jones, Fearne Cotton, Tanni Grey-Thompson and Katie Piper.
Paul Lamb Of Thorn & Briar Simon & Schuster UK Adult Non-Fiction, 3 April, hb, £20, 9781398535039
Biography & Memoirs
Living in a wagon and travelling the
South West of England, Lamb is an itinerant hedge layer, working alone and by hand to maintain and restore hedgerows, from the end of each summer until birds begin to nest the following spring. His book follows the rhythm of the seasons as he shows how the British countryside is defined by these ancient but diminishing boundaries and ecological treasure troves. Deserved attention on ancient yet still essential crafts has been drawn by a number of books in recent years, and this is a welcome and wonderful addition to that genre.
Robert Macfarlane Is a River Alive? Hamish Hamilton, 1 May, hb, £25, 9780241624814
Conservation & the Environment
“I wish to say plainly
and early that this book was written with the rivers who run through its pages.” Boldly and persuasively recasting rivers as living beings, but also ones that can die, this epic exploration courses from Ecuador to southern India, and then to Quebec, and to Cambridge and the clear-watered stream who flows unnamed from the spring that rises at Nine Wells Wood, a mile from Macfarlane’s home. Described as his most personal and poetic book yet, it is a marvellous, perspective- shifting work that answers a resounding “Yes” to the question of its title.
Plestia Alaqad The Eyes of Gaza Macmillan, 17 April, hb, £16.99, 9781035070251
Biography & Memoirs
In September 2023, Alaqad was a recent
graduate with dreams of becoming a journalist. By the end of that November she had become internationally know as the “Eyes of Gaza”, with millions of people profoundly moved by her social media posts depicting daily life in Gaza following Israel’s invasion and bombardment. This diary- memoir charts her first-hand experiences during the first 45 days following 7th October 2023, including the horrors and the indomitable spirit of the men women and children of her homeland. It also serves as a powerfull call to action for the rest of the world as the war continues.
Lucy Easthope Come What May Hodder & Stoughton, 15 May, hb, £20, 9781399736213
Health, Self-Help & Parenting
We all know that at some point
in life, we will experience pain, uncertainty and loss, whether through widowhood, redundancy, a life-changing diagnosis, pregnancy loss or a pandemic. How can we best weather such storms, and cope with whatever comes next? In this follow-up to her extraordinary first book, When the Dust Settles, emergency planner and remarkable human being Easthope—whose daily work involves supporting the survivors of major disasters—distils for us what she has learned about how to carry on during and after terrible times, offering a roadmap for resilience in the face of adversity.
February 2025–July 2025 09
Rob Cowen The North Road Hutchinson Heinemann, 17 April, hb, £22, 9781529152432
Social & Local History
The author of Common Ground returns
with a genre-blending and profoundly personal book in which he charts a 400-mile journey along the Great North Road. Running like a backbone through Britain for the past 2,000 years, it has provided an ancient trackway, a Roman road, a pilgrim path, a coach route and now the A1. What’s more, Cowen himself has never lived farther than 15 miles away from it. Moving through history, place, people and time, it also becomes an alluring story of coming to terms with time past and time passing, and roads “that lead us to where we find ourselves”.
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