Anna is smart. Smarter than you, probably. But when she falls for the beautiful, enigmatic Caden, her need to get under his skin, to truly know him becomes overpowering.
Anna’s new life in Cambridge is full of promise – she’s the top student in her PhD cohort, she has great friends and she has met an exhaustingly attractive man – but something is a little off. Perhaps it’s the routine violence of her lab work with animals, or maybe it’s something to do with her boyfriend’s icy reserve but it seems there is a kind of menace hiding beneath the Cambridge dream.
When Anna and Caden’s lives become tightly entangled, her obsession with Caden’s seemingly ever-present ex-girlfriend reaches a dangerous pitch… Just how far will she go to satiate her curiosity?
Penang, 1971. When Suyin Lim is offered the opportunity of a lifetime – a place as a trainee nurse in London’s Bethnal Green Hospital – she jumps at the chance to leave her job as a seamstress and unite with her sister, who left for the same path a year before.
However, without warning her sister returns to Penang, a shadow of her former self and Suyin is forced to leave without any answers. Suyin soon finds herself starting a new life in London, falling in love with the vibrant city and its people and as she immerses herself in the gruelling but rewarding work of caring for her patients, she begins to understand what she really wants out of life . . .
FIND ME AFTER by A. Connors is an enthralling speculative YA thriller with a slow-burn romance inspired by A Connors own experiences of epilepsy.
After suffering an epileptic seizure, Kyle finds himself caught in The Stillness: a liminal alternative world populated by those who are stranded between life and death. There, he meets his real-world crush, Farah, who is also unconscious back home, and Ciu, who’s been in a coma for months.
As they get to know each other in The Stillness, they must face the possibility of forgetting each other in the real world.
The teens hatch a dangerous plan to escape but must evade an unexpected enemy, who has developed frightening powers in The Stillness. The way back to life is fraught with danger. And time, for both of them, is running out…
Full of terror and heartbreak – FIND ME AFTER explores a vividly imagined alternate reality, and Kyle’s journey is sure to give you goosebumps.
Adam Connors is a former physicist and former child who likes writing stories and building unlikely, poorly thought through gadgets with his sons. He started his career as a physicist, building part of the Large Hadron Collider in CERN. He has also sold encyclopaedias in Chicago, worked for an investment bank, taught physics in Sudan, fitted emergency Wi-Fi in the refugee camps in Greece, and now works as an engineering manager in the Google Research team. He lives in Hertfordshire with his partner, two sons, and a dog named Rosie. Adam is represented by Kate Shaw at the Shaw Agency
A delightful read that offers escapist vignettes of interconnected lives.
The Yeonnam-dong Smiley Laundromat is a place where the extraordinary stories of ordinary residents unfold. Situated at the heart of rapidly gentrifying district of Seoul, it’s a haven of peace and reflection for many locals.
And when a notebook is left behind there, it becomes a place that brings people together. One by one, customers start jotting down candid diary entries, opening their hearts and inviting acts of kindness from neighbours who were once just faces in the crowd.
But there is a darker story behind the notebook, and before long the laundromat’s regulars are teaming up to solve the mystery and put the world to rights.
Instantly capturing the hearts of Korean readers, this is a novel about the preciousness of human relationships and the power of solidarity in a world that is increasingly cold, fast-paced, and virtual.
Kim Jiyun was born in 1992 and raised in Seoul. She studied at Dankook University, majoring in creative writing for four years. She also attended the Korean Broadcasting Writers’ Association training centre to learn how to write for screen, and later completed a drama course. One day, while walking down the noisy streets of Hongdae at night, she suddenly saw a laundromat with soft yellow lights on, and that gave her the first sentence of Yeonnam-dong’s Smiley Laundromat, her first novel. She now writes full time.
It’s 1981 in the suburbs of Blackburn and, as Rafi’s mother reminds him daily, the family moved here from Pakistan to give him the best opportunities. But Rafi longs to follow his own path. Flamboyant, dramatic and musically gifted, he wants to be a Bollywood star
Twenty years later, Rafi is flying home from Australia for his best friend’s wedding. He has everything he ever wanted: starring roles in musical theatre, the perfect boyfriend and freedom from expectation. But returning to Blackburn is the ultimate test: can he show his true self to his community?
Iqbal Hussain is a writer from Blackburn, Lancashire and he lives in London. His work appears in various anthologies and on websites including The Willowherb Review, The Hopper and caughtbytheriver. He is a recipient of the inaugural London Writers’ Awards 2018 and he won Gold in the Creative Future Writers’ Awards 2019. In 2022, he won first prize in Writing Magazine’s Grand Flash competition and was joint runner-up in the Evening Standard Short Story Competition. In 2023, his story I’LL NEVER BE YOUNG AGAIN won first prize in the Fowey Festival of Arts and Literature short story competition. He was also Highly Commended in the Emerging Writer Award from The Bridge Award. NORTHERN BOY is his first novel. He is represented for publishing by Robert Caskie.
Mark Wolfe, a brilliant if self-thwarting technical writer, lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Sushila, and their toddler daughter. His half-brother Geoff, born and raised in the UK, is a desperate young football agent. He pulls Mark across the ocean into a scheme to track down an elusive prospect known only as “Godwin” – an African teenager Geoff believes could be the next Messi.
Narrated in turn by Mark and his work colleague Lakesha Williams, the novel is both a tale of family and migration, and an international adventure story that implicates the brothers in the beauty and ugliness of football, the perils and promises of international business, and the dark history of transatlantic money-making.
Joseph O’Neill lives in New York and teaches at Bard College. He is the author of four novels, NETHERLAND which was developed as a feature by Sam Mendes and Christopher Hampton (longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008), THE DOG, THIS IS THE LIFE and THE BREEZES, as well as a memoir, BLOOD-DARK TRACK. His short stories have been published in the New Yorker and Harper’s, and his literary criticism has appeared in the Guardian, the New York Times, the Irish Times, the Atlantic, Granta and other publications.
It’s a familiar trope: angry men berating each other in kitchens as pots furiously boil, sauces burn and a giant slab of beef rests in the background. The dominant view of a professional kitchen is one of chaos and pent-up fury – a gladiatorial contest of male ego. Why then do we also hear the misogynistic refrain that women ‘belong in the kitchen’ if, in a professional context, they’re all but erased from them?
A Woman’s Place is in the Kitchen is the story of Sally Abé’s rise to become an award-winning chef in the brutal world of restaurant kitchens; how a girl from the midlands who used to cook herself Smash to get by is now one of the most successful fine-dining chefs working today.
More than that, Sally’s story is also a stirring manifesto – drawing back the curtain on restaurant kitchens to show how she is endeavouring to change them for the better. Filled with stories of Michelin-starred food, the relentlessness of kitchens, as well as the hope for the future of the culinary landscape, Sally’s memoir is set to become a classic.
Sally Abé is a fine-dining chef at the top of her profession. She has worked in some of the best establishments in the UK, including Claridge’s and the Ledbury, and she retained a Michelin star at the Harwood Arms gastropub. She currently runs the Pem, named after the suffragette Emily Wilding Davison, which boasts a majority female staff in the kitchen. She is constantly working to get women into the hospitality industry and create fair, safe and happy living standards across the UK. She is represented for publishing by Rachel Neely at Mushens Entertainment.
Alex is a normal, everyday kid, living in a normal, everyday city. Axel is a monster-slaying hero, living in a world of magic. Unfortunately, when the two boys mysteriously swap places, each of them ends up being mistaken for the other.
With zero experience of heroism, Alex is thrust into an epic quest to defeat the evil Felonius Gloam, who has stolen the Book of Lifetales and is using it to unravel the very fabric of the world of Aërth.
Meanwhile, Axel is faced with double maths, a gran who’s six months behind on the rent, and a crucial chess tournament he’s got to win – when he doesn’t even know how to play.
Can the two boys complete their Impossible Quests and find a way back to their own lives, or will they both discover they don’t have a life to come back to . . . ?
Sam Copeland is an author, which has come as something of a surprise to him. He is from Manchester and now lives in London with two smelly cats, three smelly children and one relatively clean-smelling wife. He is the author of the bestselling CHARLIE CHANGES INTO A CHICKEN series (the first book of which was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize) and is being adapted for TV, Uma and the Answer to Absolutely Everything and Greta and the Ghost Hunters. With Jenny Pearson, he has also written TUCHUS & TOPPS INVESTIGATE: THE UNDERPANTS OF CHAOS and TUCHUS & TOPPS INVESTIGATE: THE ATTACK OF THE ROBOT LIBRARIANS. Despite legal threats, he refuses to stop writing.
For over a decade, the Lancasters were celebrity royalty, with millions tuning in every week to watch their reality show, Living with the Lancasters.
But then an old video emerges of one of their legendary parties. Suddenly, they’re in the spotlight for all the wrong reasons: witnesses swore they’d seen missing teenager Bradley Wilcox leaving the Lancaster family home on the night of the party, but the video tells a different story
Now true crime investigator and YouTuber Tom Isaac is on the case. He’s determined to find out what really happened to Bradley – he just needs to read between the Lancasters’ lies . . .
Because when the cameras are always rolling, it won’t be long until someone cracks.
L.C. North studied psychology at university before pursuing a career in Public Relations. Her book club thrillers – THE UGLY TRUTH and CLICKBAIT – combine her love of psychology and her fascination with the celebrities in the public eye. When she’s not writing, she co-hosts the crime thriller podcast, IN SUSPENCE. She lives on the Suffolk borders with her family. L.C. North is the pen name of Lauren North. She is represented by publishing by Amanda Preston at LBA Books.
This is the tale of four women.
Popo: brilliant, vulnerable and stuck. She’s determined to free herself from the traps of her past.
Mana Lala: a devoted mother – her only connection to her man is their little boy, and she will do anything to keep them close.
For Doris, well he’s glorious and once she’s licked him into shape, her husband presents an opportunity to climb the social ladder. She’s heard the awful stories, but she’s sure they won’t be hers.
Rosie just wants to mind her business, her lover, Etty, and her store.
Four lives, connected and controlled by one man: the notorious, charismatic gangster Boysie Singh. Pull up a chair and let these women tell of the man they believed could love, help or free them, and how some of them survived to tell a tale at all.
Ingrid Persaud was born in Trinidad. Her debut novel, LOVE AFTER LOVE, won the Costa First Novel Award 2020 and the Author’s Club Best First Novel Award 2021. She also won the BBC National Short Story Award in 2018 and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2017. She read law at the LSE and was an academic before studying fine art at Goldsmiths and Central Saint Martins. Her writing has appeared in several newspapers and magazines, including Granta, Prospect, Five Dials, the Guardian and National Geographic. She is represented for publishing by Zoe Waldie at RCW Literary Agency.
