Berlin’s underground, where techno rattles buildings still scarred with the violence of the last century. There, nineteen-year-old Nila finds her tribe. In their company she can escape the parallel city that made her. The public housing block packed with refugees and immigrants. There the bathrooms are infested with silverfish and the walls outside are graffitied with swastikas. Escaping into the clubs, Nila tries to outrun the shadow of her dead mother, once a feminist revolutionary; her catatonic, defeated father; and the cab-driver uncles who seem to idle on every corner. To anyone who asks, her family is Greek, not Afghani.

And then Nila meets American writer Marlowe Woods. His literary celebrity, though fading, opens her eyes to a world of patrons and festivals, one that imbues her dreams of life as an artist with new possibility. But she finds herself drawn further into his orbit and ugly, barely submerged tensions begin to roil and claw beneath the city’s cosmopolitan veneer. Everything she hopes for, hates, and believes about herself will be challenged.

Good Girl – Aria Aber – 9781526679109

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A wildly funny and razor-sharp exploration of love, family, religion and the decisions we make in pursuit of belonging.

‘By normal, you mean like you? A slag with a saviour complex?’ Nadia is an academic who’s been disowned by her puritanical mother and dumped by her lover, Rosy. She decides to make a getaway, accepting a UN job in Iraq.

Tasked with rehabilitating ISIS women, Nadia becomes mired in the opaque world of international aid, surrounded by bumbling colleagues. Sara is a precocious and sweary East Londoner who joined ISIS at just fifteen. Nadia is struck by how similar they are: both feisty and opinionated, from a Muslim background, with a shared love of Dairy Milk and rude pick-up lines.

A powerful friendship forms between the two women, until a secret confession from Sara threatens everything Nadia has been working for.

Fundamentally – Nussaibah Younis – 9781399623940

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Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies.

First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She is kept company by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter. In America, Elizabeth’s two daughters have built new lives for themselves.

There’s Shirin, a flamboyantly high-flying event planner in Houston, who considers herself the family’s future. And Seema, a dreamy idealist turned bored housewife languishing in Los Angeles. And then there’s the other granddaughter, Bita, a disillusioned law student in New York trying to find deeper meaning by giving away her worldly belongings.

When an annual vacation in Aspen goes wildly awry and Shirin ends up being bailed out of jail by Bita, the family’s brittle upper class veneer is cracked wide open and gossip about them spreads like wildfire. Soon, Shirin must embark upon a grand quest to restore the family name to its former glory. But what does that mean in a country where the Valiats never mattered to anyone? And, will reputation be enough to make them a family again?

Spanning from 1940s Iran into a splintered 2000s The Persians is an irresistible portrait of a unique family in crisis that explores timeless questions of love, money, art and fulfilment. Here is their past, their present and a possible new future for them all.

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The Persians – Sanam Mahloudji – 9780008589066

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It’s 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is well and truly over.

Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel’s life is as it should be: led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep-as a guest, there to stay for the season… Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: sleeps late, wakes late, walks loudly through the house and touches things she shouldn’t. In response Isabel develops a fury-fuelled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house -a spoon, a knife, a bowl- Isabel’ suspicions spiral out of control.

In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to desire – leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva – nor the house in which they live – are what they seem.

Lauréat du Women’s Prize 2025.
Nommé pour le Book Prize 2024

The Safekeep – Yael van der Wouden – 9780241999776

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In the nineties, Lydia was one half of a teen pop group. Their image was sexy, edgy, girly yet ‘in control’. The reality was very different. Now, thirty years later, with #MeToo revelations a daily reality, a famous ex-lover resurfaces with a slick, self-serving apology, demanding forgiveness. Suddenly, Lydia is overwhelmed with memories of a harmful time in her life that refuses to leave her in peace. Meanwhile,

Joyce has never left home and the suffocating grip of her mother, Betty. For decades their lives have intertwined, even wearing matching dresses and make-up, as they follow a rigid daily routine. A single misstep can send Betty spiralling, so Joyce stays inside the tracks. But something unfamiliar is rising inside Joyce – a whispered what if…

Against the faded backdrop of a once-grand seaside resort, Lydia and Joyce are trapped in worlds of their own making. But as they both confront their pasts – the toxic men, the forgotten dreams, the twisted expectations – fate is about to throw them together, as they wrestle with the question: Can we ever truly take flight on broken wings?

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Rose Ruane – Birding – 9781472157997 – 14,90 €

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Deidre is a victim of her family, her society and her history. She feels free of all obligations, moral and practical, until the police take her back to her family home… In a Cape Town where water is rationed and has to be collected from trucks each day, with the consequences of apartheid and the ending of it still evident, Deidre lives from day to day in squalor, borrowing, persuading, cadging her way from the water trucks to the bar, testing the tolerance and pity of everyone she knows.

Then she is contacted by the police, and taken to the house where she grew up and where she lost her leg in a shattering explosion while still young. Faced with what is found there, she has to accept the truth of her past, and of her older brother. Then she must confront herself and her responsibility, and what it truly is to be a victim.

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Karen Jennings- Crooked Seeds – 9781739104788 – 14,90 €

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A civil servant is offered a lucrative job in a mysterious new government ministry gathering ‘expats’ from across history to test whether time-travel is feasible. Her role is to work as a ‘bridge’: living with, supporting and monitoring expat ‘1847’ – Commander Graham Gore, a former Victorian polar explorer. Gore, an adventurer by trade, soon adjusts to this bizarre new world of washing machines, feminism and Spotify; and during a long, sultry summer the pair move from awkwardness to friendship to something more.

But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, Gore and the bridge are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures. Can love triumph over the histories that have shaped them? And how do you defy that history when it is living in your house?

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The Ministry of Time – Kaliane Bradley – 9781399726368

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1951, Singapore. Ten-year-old Josephina kills her abuser.  This event becomes the defining moment in the lives of Josephina, her daughter Sithara, and her granddaughter Annie.

The effects cascade through generations as Annie sets out across the world to discover what happened to fracture her family.  Set in Sri Lanka, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia and London, Amma is a novel about how the past lives with us forever, and wherever we are.  Written in sensuous, vivid prose, Amma is a story of the rich history and unknown future of the Sri Lankan diaspora –  and of one family desperately trying to find peace.

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Amma – Saraid de Silva – 9781739260149

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All Joseph wants is to be let into Tartuffe’s world. All Ettie wants is to escape it.

The year is 1920. The place is a remote farmhouse in Provence, home to the reclusive painter Edouard Tartuffe and his niece, Ettie.

Into this strange, silent house walks Joseph: a young journalist hoping to write an article about Tartuffe. But the more he entangles himself in the peculiar household, the more Joseph’s curiosity grows…

Ettie cooks and cleans for her uncle. She prepares his studio, scrubs his paintbrushes, and creates the perfect environment for him to work. She has never gone further than the local village.

She is sharp-eyed and watchful. But beneath her cool exterior, Joseph senses something simmering. Ettie, Joseph and Tartuffe circle each other throughout the hot, crackling summer, until finally they collide.

The Artist is about two people grabbing the other by the hand and pulling each other into life.

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The Artist – Lucy Steeds – 9781399819572

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Born a vagabond, Tibb Ingleby has never had a roof of her own. But her mother has taught her that if you’re not too bound by the Big Man’s rules, there are many ways a woman can find shelter in this world. Now her ma is dead in a trick gone wrong and young Tibb is orphaned and alone.

As she wends her way across the fields and forests of medieval England, Tibb will discover there are people who will care for her, as well as those who mean her harm. And there are a great many others who are prepared to believe just about anything.

And so, when the opportunity presents itself to escape the shackles society has placed on them, Tibb and her new friends conjure an audacious plan: her greatest trickerie yet. But before they know it, their hoax takes on a life of its own, drawing crowds – and vengeful enemies – to their door…

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A Little Trickerie – Rosanna Pike – 9780241646069

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