Summer is here! We hope you all made the most of the recent heatwave and for July, we've got an incredible line-up for you. We've chosen six books that span continents and decades, from a right person, wrong time love story to a Paris dinner party that implodes in real time.
There's a Booker Prize winner that will make you seriously hungry, a debut that asks who really owns a family's grief, a novel that gave us the magic of reading like a kid again and a thriller told entirely through the eyes of men.
We’re so excited to announce that we have two podcast interviews coming your way with two of the authors of our July selections. We had a wonderful chat with Freya Bromley, author of A Real Piece of Work and not only did we have so much fun diving into the book but, she gave us some brilliant recommendations. Then we also have an interview coming with Nicci Cloke, author of Her Many Faces. If you don’t follow the podcast, we’ve got a couple of episodes up with the writers of our previous picks, Frida Slattery as Herself and Waiting On A Friend and you can check them out here on Spotify and Apple Podcasts too.
Onto the books!
Our Hardback Picks
A Real Piece of Work by Freya Bromley
Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie. The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one everyone in her family who has an opinion about the book – and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her. It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants.
But now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake. Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame. As her parents and three remaining siblings prepare to spend the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death together on the isolated island of Lundy, Nola knows this is the perfect opportunity to convince her accuser to pull the complaint before it causes irreparable damage – but first, she must discover who made it.
Why we chose it: We love books that explore grief, and this is one of the best we've read this year. A Real Piece of work probes what happens when someone in your family writes about the worst thing that ever happened to you all? Who gets to tell that story and what about the people who'd rather it stayed private?
What we loved most about this one is how Freya Bromley juggles two things at once: the story of a family trying to process grief that’s tender, raw and relatable but balanced with wit and humour, with a mystery of who the anonymous complainer could be that doesn’t stray into thriller territory. It’s the story of a complicated family, even more complicated sisters and the way grief can bind us together and pull us apart. We have a podcast episode with Freya coming to you this month and we adored chatting to her. Listen out for more soon!
The Children by Melissa Albert
Guinevere Sharpe has two childhoods.
In one, she lives in the wooded shadow of her family's isolated Vermont farmhouse; in the other, the pages of her mother’s world-famous Ninth City books, where her magical adventures have made her a household name. In reality, Guinevere's childhood isn't the enchanted idyll her mother’s readers imagine: she and her older brother are growing up near-feral, unwashed and underfed, escaping each day to the lichen-clotted woods they’ve made their playland. As Edith Sharpe’s books explode into epic popularity, the threats of a rural childhood give way to the escalating perils of fame—until the night it all goes up in flames, leaving Edith’s series unfinished and her children the sole survivors.
Now an adult coasting on her mother's name, Guinevere is mid-promotion for a ghostwritten memoir when her estranged brother, an artist who has until now spurned his family's legacy, announces an upcoming installation titled Mother. As rumors swirl around a death connected to his last show, unsettling recollections from Guinevere’s childhood begin to surface. Her public facade starts to crack, forcing her to confront the questions she's spent the last twenty years running from: What really happened the night of the fire? And what dark history lies behind their mother’s creative genius?
Wise to the mythic weight childhood memories gather over time, The Children whispers to you from the hallway outside your bedroom, lights flickering as you turn the pages of a book that didn't seem so scary a moment ago. It's a story for anyone who's ever revisited an old favourite and found it cast in a darker light, the line separating magic and memory blurring as the gap widens between the authors we imagined and the people they turn out to be.
Why we chose it: We’ve not read anything like this in years. After captivating a devoted young adult audience with The Hazel Wood, Melissa Albert makes her move into adult fiction, and what a cracking debut it is.
A big reason why we chose this one is that it gave us the same joy we remember from reading as a kid. It's a hard-hitting family story, but the magical realism running through it gave us a hint of nostalgia for the way we used to escape into other worlds through the books we grew up with. It explores family, legacy, and what it means to grow up in the shadow of a parent who turned your childhood into something the whole world thinks it owns.
Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Two young women meet in Paris in this decades-spanning tour de force about the enduring power of young love and the poignant heartbreak of missed chances—perfect for fans of One Day and Normal People.
Erica and Laure meet on the steps of the Sacré-Coeur in Paris, 1978. Erica is a student, relishing her first summer abroad before beginning university at home in England. Laure is studying for her PhD at the Sorbonne, drinking and smoking far too much, and sleeping with a married woman. The moment the two women meet, the spark is undeniable, but their encounter turns into far more than a summer of love. It is the beginning of a relationship that will define their lives and every decision they have yet to make…
Erica and Laure’s love story spans decades, marriage, children, secret trysts, and the agonizing changes—both personal and political—that might mean they can be together, after all. But when life brings them within touching distance again, will they be brave enough to seize a future together?
Beautifully capturing young love and all its complexities, Almost Life is a story of longing for the paths not taken, and the almost lives we live.
Why we chose it: Dare we say it, Almost Life might just be the book of the summer. There's been a lot of buzz around it, and having read it, it is completely worth all the praise. Kiran Millwood Hargrave's prose is gorgeous, and she uses it to tell a decades-spanning story of two women who keep choosing other paths over each other. Right person, wrong time doesn't begin to cover it. What makes it so incredible is you’re not just watching the characters change over the years, but the world around them, the way social attitudes shift slowly and then all at once for women like Laure and Erica. It's packed with a ton of yearning and one that will stay with you.
Our Paperback Selections
Taiwan Travelogue by Yang Shuang-Zi
A bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history, and power
May 1938. The young novelist Aoyama Chizuko has sailed from her home in Nagasaki, Japan, and arrived in Taiwan. She’s been invited there by the Japanese government ruling the island, though she has no interest in their official banquets or imperialist agenda. Instead, Chizuko longs to experience real island life and to taste as much of its authentic cuisine as her famously monstrous appetite can bear.
Soon a Taiwanese woman―who is younger even than she is, and who shares the characters of her name―is hired as her interpreter and makes her dreams come true. The charming, erudite, meticulous Chizuru arranges Chizuko’s travels all over the Land of the South and also proves to be an exceptional cook. Over scenic train rides and braised pork rice, lively banter and winter melon tea, Chizuko grows infatuated with her companion and intent on drawing her closer. But something causes Chizuru to keep her distance. It’s only after a heartbreaking separation that Chizuko begins to grasp what the “something” is.
Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, this novel was a sensation on its first publication in Mandarin Chinese in 2020 and won Taiwan’s highest literary honour, the Golden Tripod Award. Taiwan Travelogue unburies lost colonial histories and deftly reveals how power dynamics inflect our most intimate relationships.
Why we chose it: Taiwan Travelogue, this year’s International Booker Prize winner, is a thoroughly deserving choice. Yang Shuang-zi and translator Lin King have created something truly special. This is more than just a novel; it’s a real sensory experience.
Set in 1930s Taiwan, the book blends reflections on colonialism, power, and translation with a tender queer love story between two women with a unique structure. Rich in atmosphere, it immerses you in the sights, sounds, and flavours of Taiwan, through its vivid depictions of food and place. The descriptions of Taiwanese cuisine are especially vivid and mouthwatering - this book will make you hungry!
Just a Little Dinner by Cécile Tlili (translated by Katherine Gregor)
In tired, hot Paris at the end of August, a group of friends, who’d rather still be at the sea, meet for a dinner in one couple’s apartment.
Taking us behind the shutters of the Sixth Arrondissement, with a cast of characters that both delight and repel, fractured relationships, manipulation, bad behaviour and desperation are all laid bare in this very contemporary take on a Parisian huis clos story.
What starts as just a little dinner ends up having monumental consequences for everyone.
Paris, the end of August. Four people sit down to dinner in a Sixth Arrondissement apartment: Étienne, a status-conscious lawyer; his younger girlfriend Claudia, who feels perpetually out of her depth; Johar, a woman on the cusp of becoming CEO of the company where Étienne works; and Johar's husband Remi.
Over the course of one sweltering evening, the novel moves between each character's perspective — their hidden motivations, private humiliations, and unspoken desires. What starts as just a little dinner ends with consequences none of them will recover from easily.
Shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt du Premier Roman and winner of the Prix Littéraire Gisèle Halimi for women's writing, Just a Little Dinner is a taut, devastating study in power, gender, and the violence that lives just beneath polished surfaces.
Why we chose it: We read this book last summer and if you've been feeling the heatwave in the last week, you'll be able to immerse yourself into the setting of this one.
Set over one sweltering August night in Paris, the story shifts between four perspectives, giving us insight into their hidden motivations and feelings towards each other. Johar's storyline was the one we couldn't stop thinking about: a woman on the verge of the top job, watching the men around her silently recalibrate in real time.
You'll feel like you were sitting at that table the whole time, with the secret advantage of knowing exactly what everyone is thinking as it all unravels.
Her Many Faces by Nicci Cloke
When four wealthy and influential members are poisoned at London’s most exclusive private club, a young waitress is arrested. As her personal life and upbringing are picked over, her obsession with online conspiracy theories is exposed.
After the murder accusation, five men begin to question how well they really knew her. To each of them—her father, a reporter, her former lover, her friend, and her lawyer—she is someone entirely different. But which is the true face of Katherine Cole? And is she a killer?
The truth about who Katherine is, and what exactly she has done, lies somewhere between these five male perspectives. The searing laser of the male gaze has never been more dangerous, as Katherine’s trial grips the nation and theories and perceptions about her spiral out of control.
What follows is a chilling kaleidoscope of a thriller, both a smart courtroom drama and a frightening examination of how one woman can be so ruthlessly deconstructed by the men who know her best—and just what happens when she decides to speak out at last.
Why we chose it: We were intrigued by the structure of the storytelling in Her Many Faces, and it absolutely delivered. Katherine Cole is on trial for poisoning four men, and we hear from everyone except her: her father, her childhood friend, her lover, her lawyer, a journalist who thinks he's already figured her out. They all believe they know exactly who she is. None of them do.
At its heart, this is a book about how women are seen, the way we are picked apart in the media, and just how we can be different versions of ourselves to different people.It's a thriller that is fast paced, had us glued to the pages and one we think you can devour in just a few sittings. Our podcast episode with Nicci will be with you in July and we learned lots of different facts on the threads of this one. Stay tuned!
And that's a wrap on our July selections! Which one is calling your name?