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A funny, astute and propulsive debut that looks at the world of relationships and romance — through the eyes of a woman whose attic creates her an endless supply of husbands You wait ages for The One, then 203 come along at once... One night Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. All the evidence - from photos to electricity bills - suggests he's right. Lauren's attic, she slowly realises, is creating an endless supply of husbands for her. There's the one who pretends to play music on her toes The one who's too hot (there must be a catch) The one who makes a great breakfast sandwich The one who turns everything into double entendres ('I'll weed your garden') And the one who can calm her unruly thoughts with a single touch But when you can change husbands as easily as a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one? And how long should you keep trying to find out?

What begins as an eccentric English love story turns into one of the most dramatic adventures ever recorded... Maurice and Maralyn couldn't be more different. He is as cautious and awkward as she is charismatic and forceful. It seems an unlikely romance, but it works. Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maralyn has an idea: sell the house, build a boat, leave England — and its oil crisis, industrial strikes and inflation — forever. It is hard work, turning dreams into reality, but finally they set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway there, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. On their tiny raft, their love is put to the test. When Maurice begins to withdraw into himself, it falls upon Maralyn to keep them both alive. Filled with danger, spirit, and tenderness, this is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive — not just at sea, but in life. **A Waterstones Book You Need To Read in 2024**

Summer is coming to a close on Long Island, and Alex is no longer welcome. A misstep at a dinner party, and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources and a waterlogged phone, but gifted with an ability to navigate the desires of others, Alex stays on Long Island and drifts like a ghost through the hedged lanes, gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarified world that is, at first, closed to her. Propelled by desperation and a mutable sense of morality, she spends the week leading up to the end of the holidays moving from one place to the next, a cipher leaving destruction in her wake.

One family's search for a better life: an immersive, kaleidoscopic debut for fans of Half of a Yellow Sun, Homegoing and Pachinko India, 1898. Pirbhai is thirteen when he steps into a dhow on the vague promise of work; his family is suffering and he will do anything to help. The boat takes him to labour for the British on the East Africa railway. He has no money, no voice, no power - and will make impossible choices in the name of survival. Sonal is fierce and loving, always willing to fight for what she believes in. When Pirbhai walks into her father's shop, weathered but not broken from his time on the railway, she knows he is part of her future. Together they set out for a new life in Uganda. So begins the story of their family. Parents, children and grandchildren will scatter across the world, fleeing the brutality of Idi Amin, forging new lives in London, marching for equality in 1990s Canada, searching for a safe mooring. But under everything lies a secret. And one day, a letter arrives that will fan its embers into a flame.

Alice wants to go home to die but is not certain when this will be. Her three daughters are divided on whether she stays or goes, and tasked with realising her dream of a house in Nigeria, conflict stirs and old wounds rise to the surface. Meanwhile their father wanders the flames of purgatory, unable to pass into the light. Will Alice get back home and complete the circle of her life, or will London be her final refuge? Melissa, to her mother's regret, is long separated from Michael who has moved on to new love. Yet he still wonders if he will ever know anyone the way he knew Melissa, and she in turn is nostalgic for their once safe haven. Held together by their two children, it seems their own circle is not quite broken. Set against the shadows of Grenfell and a country in crisis, these ordinary people are faced with fundamental questions about who they are, what they want and where, and with whom, they want to be.

Multi-prizewinning and internationally acclaimed Yan Lianke — 'China's most controversial novelist' (New Yorker) — returns with a campus novel like no other following a young Buddhist as she journeys through worldly temptation To tell the truth, religious faith is really just a matter of believing stories. The world is governed by stories, and it is for the sake of stories that everyone lives on this earth. Yahui is a young Buddhist at university. But this is no ordinary university. It is populated by every faith in China: Buddhists, Daoists, Catholics, Protestants and Muslims who jostle alongside one another in the corridors of learning, and whose deities are never far from the classroom. Her days are measured out making elaborate religious papercuts, taking part in highly charged tug-of-war competitions between the faiths and trying to resist the daily temptation to return to secular life and abandon the ascetic ideals that are her calling. Everything seems to dangle by a thread. But when she meets a Daoist student called Mingzheng, an inexorable romance of mythic proportions takes hold of her. In this profoundly otherworldly novel, Chinese master Yan Lianke remakes the campus novel in typically visionary fashion, dropping readers into an allegorical world ostensibly far from our own, but which reflects our own questions and struggles right back at us. ** Beautiful edition illustrated throughout with beautiful original papercuts **

Atwood's first new fiction publication since The Testaments, this deeply personal collection includes a stunning sequence that follows a married couple as they travel the road together, the moments big and small that make up a long life of love — and what comes after The stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords. They feature beloved cats, a confused snail, Martha Gellhorn, George Orwell, philosopher-astronomer-mathematician Hypatia of Alexandria, a cabal of elderly female academics, and an alien tasked with retelling human fairy tales. The glorious range of Atwood's creativity and humanity is on full beam in these tales, which by turns delight, illuminate and quietly devastate.

On a sweltering day in 2007, Italian writer Livia Manera Sambuy encounters a photograph of Princess Amrit Kaur in a Mumbai museum. The picture is arresting, gorgeous - but the caption will change Livia's life forever. It claims that the Punjabi princess sold her jewels in occupied Paris to save Jewish lives, only to be arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp where she died within a year. It's a sensational story - and for Livia, the beginning of a compulsive search for the truth as she delves into the history of the British Raj, the diamonds and sapphires of the twentieth-century aristocracy, and the lives of extraordinary figures: bankers, jewellers, explorers and spies. Past and present converge when Livia travels to meet Bubbles, the princess's daughter, now in her eighties. Striving to reconnect Bubbles with the elusive woman who abandoned her in 1933, Livia unearths a strange and complicated family history; one that diverges unexpectedly from the story that she set out to uncover. Filled with glamour and terror, beauty and sorrow, In Search of Amrit Kaur is an engrossing detective story, a kaleidoscopic history lesson, and a moving portrait of mothers, lovers and daughters across the century, seeking personal freedom.

Accessible, lively new biography of an under-served female writer, from a bestselling, acclaimed literary biographer Published to celebrate Katherine Mansfield's centenary, this is a compact but comprehensive new portrait of her life, work, relevance and wonderfully inspiring personality Restless outsider, masher-up of form and convention, Katherine Mansfield's short but dazzling career was characterised by struggle, insecurity and sacrifice ? alongside a glorious, relentless creative drive and openness. She was the only writer Virginia Woolf admitted being jealous of, yet by the 1950s was so undervalued that Elizabeth Bowen was moved to ask, 'Where is she ? our missing contemporary?' Now, looking back over the hundred years since her death, it is evident how vital Mansfield was to the Modernist movement and how strikingly relevant she is today, helping us to see differently, to savour and to notice things. In this dynamic and perceptive study, Claire Harman takes a fresh look at Mansfield's life and achievements side by side, through the form she did so much to revolutionise: the short story. Exploring ten pivotal works, we watch how Mansfield's desire to grow as a writer pushed her art into unknown territory, and how illness sharpened her extraordinary vitality: 'Would you not like to try all sorts of lives ? one is so very small.' Inventive, intimate and informative, All Sorts of Lives is the perfect introduction for those who aren't familiar with Mansfield's work and, for those who are, it offers a new way of viewing and celebrating her and her legacy.

An elegantly jubilant and personal new collection celebrating love, life and creativity from award-winning poet and Booker Prize-shortlisted novelist, John Fuller In this personal and characteristically brilliant new collection from John Fuller, an abundance of memories abound. From "those once endless years" of a childhood in wartime - tasting of Granny's chicken soup, twizzers and cherry-go-rips - to the pattern of family and friendships, important milestones are brought to vivid life. In 'Before We Met - and After' a sequence of recollections cherish a wife on her eightieth birthday; 'In Whose Head' a piece by Schumann is revisited through advancing years; and in 'Keeper of the Fire' and 'In Memory of John Bayley' late poems of remembrance memorialise lost friends. These are poems of being and time, full of lyric feeling and Fuller's distinctive wit and lightness of touch. Alive with the clang and sway of the "chosen colours of daily family life", together they form a resonant gathering of poems that celebrate, with thoughtfulness and joy, "the feel and length of our lives".

The collection of a lifetime from the bestselling novelist, poet -- and cultural phenomenon Before she became one of the world's most important and loved novelists, Margaret Atwood was a poet. Dearly is her first collection in over a decade. It brings together many of her most recognisable and celebrated themes, but distilled -- from minutely perfect descriptions of the natural world to startlingly witty encounters with aliens, from pressing political issues to myth and legend. By turns moving, playful and wise, the poems gathered in Dearly are about absences and endings, ageing and retrospection, but also about gifts and renewals. They explore bodies and minds in flux, as well as the everyday objects and rituals that embed us in the present. Werewolves, sirens and dreams make their appearance, as do various forms of animal life and fragments of our damaged environment. Dearly is a pure Atwood delight, and long-term readers and new fans alike will treasure its insight, empathy and humour.

The stories in Emma Cline's stunning first collection consider the dark corners of human experience, exploring the fault lines of power between men and women, parents and children, past and present. A man travels to his son's school to deal with the fallout of a violent attack and to make sure his son will not lose his college place. But what exactly has his son done? And who is to blame? A young woman trying to make it in LA, working in a clothes shop while taking acting classes, turns to a riskier way of making money but will be forced to confront the danger of the game she's playing. And a family coming together for Christmas struggle to skate over the lingering darkness caused by the very ordinary brutality of a troubled husband and father. These outstanding stories examine masculinity, male power and broken relationships, while revealing - with astonishing insight and clarity - those moments of misunderstanding that can have life-changing consequences. And there is an unexpected violence, ever-present but unseen, in the depiction of the complicated interactions between men and women, and families. Subtle, sophisticated and displaying an extraordinary understanding of human behaviour, these stories are unforgettable.

A story of desire, love and language - and the meaning of home - told through conversations between two lovers A Chinese woman comes to London to start a new life - away from her dead parents, away from her old world. She knew she would be lonely, but will her new relationship with the Australian-British-German landscape architect bring her closer to this land she has chosen, will their love give her a home? A Lover's Discourse is an exploration of romantic love told through fragments of conversations between the two lovers. Playing with language and the cultural differences that her narrator encounters as she settles into life in a Britain still reeling from the Brexit vote, Xiaolu Guo shows us how this couple navigate these differences, and their romance, whether on their unmoored houseboat or in a cramped and stifling flat share in east London... Suffused with a wonderful sense of humour, this intimate and tender novel asks universal questions: what is the meaning of home when we've been uprooted? How can a man and woman be together? And how best to be a woman and a mother?

In this brilliant sequel to The Handmaid's Tale, acclaimed author Margaret Atwood answers the questions that have tantalised readers for decades. When the van door slammed on Offred's future at the end of The Handmaid's Tale, readers had no way of telling what lay ahead. With The Testaments, the wait is over. Margaret Atwood's sequel picks up the story 15 years after Offred stepped into the unknown, with the explosive testaments of three female narrators from Gilead. `Dear Readers: Everything you've ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we've been living in.' Margaret Atwood

FROM INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR AND 'QUEEN OF THE UNDEAD', ANNE RICE The Vampire Chronicles continue with a riveting, rich saga - part adventure, part fairy tale - of Prince Lestat and the story of how he came to rule the vampire world From his meticulously restored ancestral chateau high up in the mountains of France, Prince Lestat grapples to instil a new ideology of peace and harmony among the blood-drinking community. Accustomed to welcoming the Undead from far and wide, one night he awakes to news of a ruthless attack by a group of maverick blood-drinkers. After fleeing to investigate the terror, Lestat learns of several new enemies who despise his rule over the blood-drinking realm, and who are intent on disrupting the harmony he tries so hard to maintain. But is Lestat strong enough to take on such evil alone or will sacrifices have to be made? Will his cry for peace be heard in a world riddled with violence? An enthralling, spellbinding adventure that sweeps from the snowy French mountains to the verdant wilds of Louisiana, on to the far reaches of the Pacific's untouched islands and back to 18th-century St. Petersburg. Blood Communionis not just a compelling tale of a troubled leader, but a novel about the power of ambition, as well as a timely reflection on the struggle of individuals to find and defend their place in the world.

'The wit, intelligence and deep feeling of Wolitzer's writing are extraordinary.' Jeffrey Eugenides 'Greer didn't really know why Faith took an interest. But what she knew for sure, eventually, was that meeting Faith Frank was the thrilling beginning of everything. It would be a very long time before the unspeakable end.' Greer Kadetsky is a shy college student when she meets the woman who will shape her life. Faith Frank, dazzlingly persuasive and elegant, has been a pillar of the women's movement for decades, a figure who inspires others. Hearing Faith speak for the first time, in a crowded campus chapel, Greer - misunderstood yet full of longing for an ambition that she can't quite place - feels herself changed. And then, astonishingly, Faith invites her to make something out of this new sense of purpose, with a career opportunity that leads her down the most exciting and rewarding path as it winds towards and away from her meant-to-be love story with high school sweetheart Cory and the future she had always imagined. Expansive and wise, compassionate and witty, The Female Persuasion is about the spark we all believe is flickering inside us, waiting to be seen and fanned by the right person at the right time, and the desire within all of us to be pulled into the light.