Make it stand out
Previous Picks & Recommendations
from 2024 & 2025
July 2024 picks
June 2024 Favourites!
MAY 2024 PICKS
APRIL 2024
THE FAMILIAR is out (in hardback) this month - and it’s a fantastic historical fiction laced with magic, set towards the end of the Inquisition’s hold over Europe, and with a brilliant, fierce protagonist and a range of remarkable characters. Given that anything written by Percival Everett has thus far been genius, JAMES is eagerly anticipated - a re-telling of Huckleberry Finn that no doubt uses a fair bit of humour to blast the very notion of slavery. For kids, this month the delight of Henderson’s THE BOY, THE WITCH & THE QUEEN OF SCOTS is out! :)
Both BOTANICAL SHORT STORIES and AN ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE THING have a gardening theme and look intriguing in quite different ways, as does Gabor Mate’s new book, THE MYTH OF NORMAL. With recommended reads HOW THEY BROKE BRITAIN (James O’Brien), DIVINE MIGHT (Natalie Haynes), and MUSIC IN THE DARK (Sally Magnusson) all out in paperback, and plenty excellent fiction (see the list!), April is full of great reads of all kinds…
March 2024 was an exciting month for me - and I’m quite sure there will be excellent books for everyone to enjoy! With Tana Hunter’s new novel, THE HUNTER, coming out, and a newly discovered work by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, my month is made already: two superb writers, two intriguing novels. I’d also recommend GHOST PAINS (short stories) and FRAY (which I read just recently: it’s a haunting meditation on our environment & loss) - not to mention several excellent non-fiction titles, including Jon Snow’s book, Anna Funder’s WIFEDOM (all about Orwell’s missus) in paperback, Moss’s TEN BIRDS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD, and the essential Nussbaum: JUSTICE FOR ANIMALS: OUR COLLECTIVE RESPONSIBILITY.
FEBRUARY 2024
As I write this, I’m avidly reading HARD BY A GREAT FOREST - a brilliant debut from a Georgian author, it’s full of pathos, humour, and slightly bonkers insight into relationships, chaos, and the upending emotional trauma and practical obstacles of im/migrants who’re fleeing war and more… I’m also excited that the paperback edition of THE LAST WITCH IN SCOTLAND is coming out at the end of this month… that the third of the Jonas Flynt series is out (A GRAVE FOR A THIEF), and another installment of the DI Shona Oliver story is also available (THE GATHERING STORM). Both IN ASCENSION and OUR HIDEOUS PROGENY (a ‘thrilling gothic adventure’ with Frankenstein influences…) sound intriguing - but so do all my other picks: there are just too many to read, so choices must be made! ;)
My picks for January 2024 included THE VULNERABLES which is a beautiful, sharp book about a writer, a parrot, and a lazy student getting stuck together in lockdown; YOU DREAMED OF EMPIRES (from the brilliant writer of SUDDEN DEATH), is apparently a hallucinatory tale about the colonisation of Mexico compressed into one day; and THIS LITTLE PIGGY, the second in the DI Filson series from the prolific and almost-local(!) JD Kirk . . . You’ve plenty more to choose from, but these are some titles to ponder!
