Bathroom salesman Matt is at a crossroads. He has lost his job, he is about to be made homeless and his girlfriend has left him.

He wants his luck to change and he wants things to go back to how they were. Out of the blue he is offered a job that comes with a free luxury apartment. He hopes this might be enough to tempt her back.

But, as events unfold, it starts to dawn on him that perhaps she didn’t leave of her own accord after all…?

The Long Shoe – Bob Mortimer – 9781398548084

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‘For years I’d known exactly who I was to Gabe. It was a long story but I could tell it confidently, like a bartender sharing a recipe for her signature cocktail. Now things were so jumbled, I didn’t know where to begin…’

When Julia’s first-love-turned-close-friend Gabe, a successful indie musician, dies unexpectedly aged 29, Julia is launched into an intercontinental quest to recover the possessions he left with friends and acquaintances across the world.

The search for these items leads Julia to Elizabeth, the last woman Gabe loved, in an interaction that leaves Julia with more questions than answers. Both women, it turns out, have something to hide, and soon find themselves engaged in a complex dance of withholding and revelation. Together, the two must reconcile their conflicting memories of Gabe and who he was to each of them…and who they now are to each other.

From the Emmy Award-winning writer behind Hacks and Parks and Recreation, Loved One is a wise, witty and profoundly moving coming-of-age story with a powerful love at its heart, set to become an instant classic.

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Unmoored by her mother’s sudden death, Frances has never felt so diminished, or so old. She’s painfully aware that strangers no longer look at her the same way – and that she’s now, at thirty-two, older than the great aunt for whom she was named, who was killed in the seventies under mysterious circumstances involving an extramarital affair.

Her husband, Ben, will do anything to help Frances regain her vivacity and sense of purpose. So when Frances suggests that they open their marriage, Ben complies. Over the next two years, they explore their sexualities and latent kinks; they navigate jealousy, betrayal, desire, and obsession; they defend their choices – and their new identities – to confused friends.

They do all of this together, as a team. But when Ben finds himself falling in love with another woman, just as Frances realizes she’s ready to settle down and have a baby, they are forced to confront the consequences of their experiment.

Skin Contact – Elisa Faison – 9781399748599

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A quest, a literary thriller and a love story,this novel spans the past, present and future to ask profound questions about who we are and where we are going. 2014: A great poem is read aloud and never heard again. For generations, people speculate about its message, but no copy has yet been found.

2119: The lowlands of the UK have been submerged by rising seas. Those who survive are haunted by the richness of the world that has been lost. Tom Metcalfe, a scholar at the University of the South Downs, part of Britain’s remaining archipelagos, pores over the archives of the early twenty-first century, captivated by the freedoms and possibilities of human life at its zenith.

When he stumbles across a clue that may lead to the great lost poem, revelations of entangled love and a brutal crime emerge, destroying his assumptions about a story he thought he knew intimately.

What We Can Know – Ian McEwan – 9781529959208

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One day in 1968, at the height of the Biafran civil war, Ijeoma’s father is killed and her world is transformed forever. Separated from her grief-stricken mother, she meets another young lost girl, Amina, and the two become inseparable.

Theirs is a relationship that will shake the foundations of Ijeoma’s faith, test her resolve and flood her heart. From Ijeoma’s childhood in war-torn Biafra and through the perils and pleasures of her blossoming sexuality, Okparanta takes us on a journey through thwarted hopes and wrong turns and into the everyday joys and sorrows of marriage and motherhood.

Under the Udala Trees – Chinelo Okparanta – 9781847088383

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Throughout the vast American West, nature is being vicitimized by a Big Government / Big Business conspiracy of bridges, dams and concrete.

But a motley gang of individuals has decided that enough is enough. A burnt-out veteran, a mad doctor and a polygamist join forces in a noble cause: to dismantle the machinery of progress through peaceful means – or otherwise.

A classic tale of rebellion, camaraderie, and environmental justice–a prescient, comic masterpiece of destructive mayhem and outrageous civil disobedience that speaks to us today

The Monkey Wrench Gang – Edward Abbey – 9780141187624

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Their childhood was yours. They want it back.

Guinevere’s late mother, Edith Sharpe, needs little introduction. Bestselling author of the unendingly successful Ninth City series, her books brought so much joy and inspired the imagination of countless children the world over.

Guin’s childhood with her mother, brother Ennis and her actor father was a blissful, bohemian affair. It was filled with continuous laughter and surrounded by artistic types in their Vermont barnhouse. At least, this is the story Guin presents as she prepares for the press tour for her upcoming memoir about life in the Sharpe family. Now estranged from her brother and her parents long dead after a devastating fire, strange events threaten the veneer of serenity and familial harmony Guin is keen to project.

Ennis, now a notorious artist with a troubled past, announces a new installation. It’s his first since a disastrous last show one year prior. And simply entitled Mother. And Guin can’t help but worry that the truth behind their idyllic childhood is about to blow her world apart.

The Children by Melissa Albert – 9781037201011

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Louisiana, 1869. The Civil War might be over, but former slaves Coleman and June have yet to find the freedom they’ve been promised. Two years ago, the siblings were separated when their old master, Mr Harper, took June away on a hair-brained scheme to Mexico, to escape the new reality of the post-war South.

Coleman stayed behind to serve the Harper family, clinging to the hope that Mr Harper would one day bring June back to him. When an unexpected letter from Mr Harper arrives, summoning Coleman and the Harper family to Mexico, Coleman believes his prayers have been answered. But what he cannot know is the tangled truth of June’s tribulations and Mr Harper’s true intentions.

As Coleman and June separately navigate a perilous, parched landscape to find their way back to each other, they learn quickly that freedom isn’t always given – sometimes, it must be taken by force.

Amity by Nathan Harris – 9781035404698

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Think your family is dysfunctional? Meet the Flynns.

For the three Flynn daughters, it’s been disastrous since their parents opened up their marriage. Abigail, the eldest, is dating an ex-soldier several years her senior nicknamed ‘War Crimes Wes’.

Louise, the middle child, maintains a secret correspondence with an online terrorist. And the brilliant youngest, Harper, is being sent to a wilderness reform camp due to her insistence that someone – or something – is monitoring the town’s citizens. Casting a shadow across their lives is Paul Alabaster, a nefarious local billionaire.

Rumours of corruption circulate, but no one dares dig too deep. No one except Harper, whose obsession with Alabaster’s machinations sends the family hurtling into a criminal conspiracy – one that may just, finally, bring them closer together.

Lost Lambs – Madeline Cash – 9781529946130

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When Daphne notices an older gentleman following her around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she doesn’t expect it to be Eddie – her former stepfather.

Married to her mother for a short time when Daphne was nine, she hasn’t seen Eddie for many years; not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives.

Meeting again now, Daphne and Eddie feel that time has fallen away.

Their earlier relationship was brief but had a profound impact on both of them. Together, they consider not only their past, but the joys of the present and their commitment to face the future together.

Whistler by Ann Patchett – 9781037206498 – The new international bestseller from the author of Tom Lake.

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