We just now learned that a celeb like Kendall Jenner actually uses an unofficial books consultant. Specifically an unofficial books consultant named Ashlea Gonzalez, whose job it is to curate hot, new literary picks for the model-millionaire to be seen out and about with.

Shocking stuff.

Gonzalez is a senior talent agent, whose debut poetry collection Fake Piñata was published in 2024. Anyway, you don’t have your own literary consultant for high-brow FaceTime book brainstorms, you’ve got us. Reading is in trouble again! Get to it.

Villa Coco (Andrew Sean Greer)

This is it, the summer’s most gorgeous novel. The American writer Andrew Sean Greer, known for his prize-winning 2017 book Less, has helpfully categorised the book himself as a ‘charm novel’. Think Gerald Durrell, Nancy Mitford or something like Stella Gibbons’ Cold Comfort Farm, a stone-cold classic. The criteria: eccentric characters, shenanigans, a dash of wisdom, funny stories.

Villa Coco is beautiful and charming, without being at all shallow, and the same can be said of its iconic cast of characters. ‘Giovedi’, as he’s swiftly nicknamed, is a young American archivist who lands at the door of the 90-odd-year-old Baronessa, in Guadagnino-like Tuscan hills, in order to catalogue her treasures. He learns his Italian from the cook, refined taste from a refined guest of the villa and the art of conversation from a principessa and, of course, his new employer herself. Then there’s the handsome cousin Giacomo-Giacomo. Age vs youth, old world vs new, moxy vs melancholy, it’s all here. As delicious as a Neapolitan sfagliotelle.

• Out now / Buy it here

A Violent Masterpiece (Jordan Harper)

If it’s crime thrills you’re after, Jordan Harper’s excellent, epic neo-noir A Violent Masterpiece is a great way to celebrate America’s 250th. This plotty page-turner is set in a Los Angeles of grime, heat and glitter. We follow Jake Deal, a tattooed, live-streaming nightcrawler; Kara Delgado, a private concierge fixer with a missing friend, and Doug Gibson, a public defence lawyer, as they get mixed up in the brutality of the city’s filthy-rich.

The detecting here is of the hard-boiled variety, keeping a long lit tradition alive. Harper writes about night-time drives through neighbourhoods like Inglewood and Encino, Eagle Rock and Beverly Hills with all the passion and precision of a nature writer studying their chosen habitat. The taco trucks, the gas stations, the shoot-outs, all lit up by “cop car cherries”. Concerned by big ideas about who wins, who loses and why, Harper chews up all manner of contemporary scandals and spits them back at us in his upturned LA that’s teeming with creepy-crawlies.

• Out now / Buy it here

Underdogs (Louise Powell)

Louise Powell is a working-class writer from Middlesbrough, with nine plays and an essay in Kit de Waal’s excellent Common People anthology under her belt. For her first novel, she’s taken inspiration from her childhood memories of racing greyhounds with her family at County Durham’s ‘flapping tracks’ i.e independent racetracks. The story in Underdogs follows ten-year-old George and his dad Reg, who has been out of work for a while. That’s why he’s willing to take a gamble secretly racing a greyhound for Bertie, the gold-covered, larger-than-life local god who’s half-banned from the tracks himself for rinsing out the bookies with his dogs.

Powell writes in a lovely, lilting North East dialect - which is “fuller” “summat”, “nowt” and “bairns” “an all”. And with small, commonplace tragedies on almost every page, you’re rooting not just for the father and son pair but the rest of the community, to make good. The betting ring and race scenes at the “meetins” swallow you whole in the sights, sounds and smells and Powell has a generous eye for detail: the CV on teabag box cardboard, the “boo-kay” of flowers, Bertie and Reg sharing physical scars, the colours of notes of cash flying around. Honestly, there’s a line of dialogue from young George, who can’t believe the size of a Dairy Milk chocolate bar, that’ll break your heart. An author to watch.

• Out now / Buy it here

The End of Everything (M John Harrison)

The End of Everything is an unsettling, near-future dystopia that’s not for the squishy-brained reader who needs everything spelled out. If you’re willing to, instead, space out and go with the weirdness, though, it’ll stick with you. For those who haven’t heard of M John Harrison, he’s an 80 year-old speculative fiction stylist, who lives in Shropshire. He’s been compared to J.G. Ballard and John Wyndham and this latest book has something of the vibes of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik.

At the outset, we follow Philip Tennent, a beachcomber on the Kent coast by the Channel, and his semi-reclusive aunt Marnie. There has been some sort of crisis about a decade earlier in this strange new world and Harrison pulls off the trick of fully realising this slightly slanted England of his, while conveying the sheer fuzziness with which the population relates to the shift. Social dynamics are off, one’s sense of time is warped and ‘artefacts’ are emerging from the sea. Philip and Marnie look for clues in diary entries and old emails, with one particularly striking horror motif which Harrison shapes out of shadows and a thrilling, bravura section mid-way through that’s amongst the best things you’ll read all year.

• Out now / Buy it here

Sail Away Land (Ben Pester)

While we’re wigging out with The End of Everything, Ben Pester’s new collection Sail Away Land, published by Granta, pairs quite nicely with it. You might remember his terrific, must-read novel The Expansion Project from 2025; these short stories share that creeping sense of alienation and dislocation employed to great effect in both that book and the M John Harrison above, but they also expand on the altogether tricksier domestic, emotional side of things.

A few of the surreal-AF stories, including the opener ‘Around the time of my promotion’, dig deeper into this confusing collision of work selves and personal lives. Others take social cues and daft experiments to their logical, uncanny conclusions: an indulgent, courses-long dinner at a bougie restaurant in ‘Catmint’ or a guy who is too polite not to help a stranger with a shed in ‘You, Me and Russell Palomet’. We’re still giggling to ourselves at where some of these stories end up. Stepdads? Briefcases? WTF? But Pester shows, in something like ‘An improvement in the light’, that he can still his over-active imagination and deliver a miniature masterpiece when he feels like it. We’ll read anything he writes.

• Out now / Buy it here

Short Circuit (Wolf Haas)

What a gem. German writer Wolf Haas’s Short Circuit, translated into English by Jamie Bulloch, is a twisty, turny treat that’s just over 200 pages. A funeral orator named Franz Escher - nudge, nudge - and a man on the run from the Italian mafia named Elio Russo are both reading books... about each other. The literary equivalent of, say, MC Escher’s Drawing Hands.

The less we spoil the better, really, except that: this is very much a book of two halves (cryptic, we know) and if you fuck with Calvino, Borges, high-concept puzzles, Lynchian mysteries or the history of art, you’ll quickly have a face like a particularly pleased monocle-wearing emoji. The audiobook scenes had us outta our seats. You’ll race through this in one afternoon, then want to read it all over again. Genius and fun, no mean feat.

• Out now / Buy it here

Son of Nobody (Yann Martel)

This one’s a title we didn’t quite get to in Spring. But whatever, it’s our list and this book will be jammy for those tropical rainy days when you need something with substance. And Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody is an extremely ambitious novel. The Life of Pi author has constructed a fictional lost epic poem of the Trojan War, focusing on a commoner named Psoas, and then built a Nabokovian footnote structure around it to tell the story of the Canadian academic who discovers and reconfigures the fragments. Phew.

There’s not much Pale Fire-esque silliness here, though. Son of Nobody is much more earnest an undertaking, reaching for grand themes of love, loss, family and heroism. (When he gets there, he gets there). Our scribe, Harlow Donne has left his wife Gail and daughter Helen behind for a year-long scholarship in the libraries of Oxford. There’s some high-fan-fiction retellings of Helen of Troy’s ‘abduction’ and the whole horse of it all, with musings on connections to the New Testament and clever, at-points brutal symmetries between the two stories. Sumptuous stuff if you’re a sack of wine who’s into classical Greece, with a side of class consciousness you might not be expecting.

• Out now / Buy it here

Sky City (Jacqueline Crooks)

Reddit asks ‘Is Sky City, Wood Green the maddest estate in London?’ Author Jacqueline Crooks, who once lived in a flat in the complex above the North London shopping centre, would probably answer: hells yeah. Her protagonist, a mixed-race young woman named Jaycee, in Crooks’ semi-autobiographical novel Sky City, looks down at the courtyards, walkways and crowds in the early 90s and feels alien -distanced by her childhood trauma. Through lyrical language, weaving in and out of past and present, Jaycee finds some solace in DJ Macca’s radio sets, soft, live-alone routines and phone calls to her hyper, mile-a-minute old friend in New York, Ella-G.

This is heavy but ultimately hopeful stuff, shot through with shape-shifting imagery, sometimes urban, sometimes natural, sometimes Sun Ra-style cosmic, sometimes musical. The sea is “cold water electricity” on her head or “she’s missed a break-beat, fallen through boom-bap time". As with Powell, Crooks is deliberate about her delicate charges, whether that’s the girls’ sugar highs as stress responses, an obsession with an old record cover or Ella-G’s maxim on needing to “quantify, quantify” how much a person cares about her. When one of Jaycee’s breakthroughs bursts tentatively from the page, it’s cathartic, well-earned and will no doubt be inspiring for anyone who feels stuck, tired and bored of themselves.

• Out 6th August / Order it here

Queenie Is Working On It (Candice Carty-Williams)

Candice Carty-Williams’ 2019 debut Queenie became both a bestseller and a Channel 4 TV series of the same name. So no surprise that she’s back with a follow-up, Queenie Is Working On It, which sees her British-Jamaican protagonist all grown up at the age of 33, kinda. Queenie Jenkins is still something of a hot mess, living in London and working as a journalist for the Black women-owned publication The Good Sis.

She’s got more than a ‘TFL man’ situationship, run-ins with an ex, cringey racist editors and nightmare Jane Austen-themed hen-do to deal with; there’s also her ticking biological clock and the ‘no thanks’ fertility appointments she’s attending as a single woman. In relatable and conversational style, Carty-Williams brings us along for Queenie’s goofy, awkward and genuinely upsetting romantic and workplace escapades, various layers of family dysfunction and explores the pitfalls of so much main character syndrome. Not the most subtle writing, sure, but stuffed full of talking points.

• Out now / Buy it here

• Wimmy Road Boyz author Sufiyaan Salam picks his 6 favourite road trip stories

It’s almost hard to believe that David Nicholls’ heartbreaking love story One Day came out in 2009, given the numerous adaptations and cultural status it holds. The 2024 Netflix adaptation starring Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod caused the whole nation to collectively swoon, root for and cry over the mismatched but soul-destined couple. Now, the novel is heading for another adaptation, heading to London’s West End for a musical.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the film, series, read the book, or been subjected to a friend haphazardly attempt to recall the plot, One Day follows the lives of Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley who meet and spend the night together as students on 5th July (St Swithin's Day) in 1988 and follows the ups and downs of their tangled lives across the next twenty years.

The musical is coming down from Edinburgh where it ran in the Lyceum Theatre. It had a pretty starry team behind it, with playwright David Greig wrote the book (he’s also the theatre’s artistic director), Amanda Sudano and Abner Ramirez responsible for the songs, and Max Webster – whose West End credits include Life of Pi and The Importance of being Ernest – directing.

Two bona-fide West End stars are in the leading the cast, with Jamie Muscato (current Emcee in Cabaret), and Sharon Rose (who you might recognise from Hamilton) taking on the roles of Dexter and Emma. The whole musical will be moving into the Garrick Theatre, starting its run on November 17th and currently has performances scheduled until March 14th.

One Day the musical will be taking over from the West End revival of Mel Brooks' The Producers, which will be wrapping up its run in September.

Anyone who is a fan of industry gossip (read: everyone) will be interested to know the lore behind this show; it drew some controversy in its early Edinburgh run as critics weren’t invited to the run, as the team wanted to keep the reviews (and presumably opinions) fresh for the London transfer. Whilst mysterious, it does mean there’s no real chatter about whether the adaptation is worth a watch, but given the creative team and cast behind it and the fact that the original run was extended by two weeks, it’s looking promising.

Tickets are already on sale, with prices starting at £30 and ranging up to £110 for the smack-bang-in-front-of-the-stage seats.

• Picturehouse Cinema is opening up its biggest London venue for another legendary all-nighter

If there was ever proof that Wimbledon has more to offer than two weeks of tennis and … that Windmill museum, Wimbledon BookFest's newly unveiled 2026 programme is it.

Leading the charge is bestselling novelist Maggie O'Farrell, who tops a line-up packed with literary heavyweights, cultural commentators and household names set to descend on south-west London this October.

The Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait author, currently promoting her brilliant new book Land, will be among the headline attractions when the festival returns from 15th to 25th October this year, alongside Matt Haig, Elif Shafak, Robert Harris, Caitlin Moran, Marina Hyde, Meera Syal, Mary Beard and many others.

For O'Farrell fans, the appearance is likely to be one of the hottest tickets of the festival. Few contemporary writers have achieved her rare blend of critical acclaim and mainstream popularity, with the Oscar-winning movie adaptation of Hamnet bringing a whole new audience to her sublime work.

There’s a distinctly international flavour to this year’s line-up too, with writers appearing from Turkey, Ireland, South Asia and South Korea. The festival also continues partnerships with both the Lahore Literature Festival and Seoul WOW Book Festival.

One of the standout events will see Elif Shafak making one of the first public appearances following the publication of her new novel, In One Brief Moment All Eternity. The Turkish-British author returns to Wimbledon following the selection of The Island of Missing Trees as the 2026 Merton Big Read title.

Beyond the big-name authors, the festival blurs the boundaries between literature, entertainment and live performance — music fans can look forward to appearances from Guy Garvey and Rachael Stirling, while the Chineke! The orchestra will deliver live performances as part of the programme. The storytelling platform Seanchoíche and The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast will also host events at the festival.

Bargain tickets for younger readers

As Wimbledon BookFest approaches its 20th anniversary, organisers are placing particular emphasis on younger readers. The festival has announced a new £10 Under 30s ticket scheme for visitors aged 16 to 29, while expanding its schools programme as part of the National Year of Reading.

A major new initiative, the Merton Big Read for Schools, will see every Year 8 pupil in the borough receive a copy of the graphic novel adaptation of Lord of the Flies. The festival has also appointed its first Children's Laureate, acclaimed young adult author Nathanael Lessore.

“Wimbledon BookFest’s 2026 programme continues our commitment to showcasing diversity of voices and storytelling, connecting communities and offering places for open conversations,” Festival director Fiona Razvi said.

“London is the crossroads of culture, and we are so pleased to include so many writers from across the world in our autumn programme.

‘In the National Year of Reading, it seems more important than ever to have spaces that showcase the value of shared storytelling, that can nourish the soul and offer much needed social connection.”

For tickets and more info, visit wimbledonbookfest.org.

• Wimmy Road Boyz author Sufiyaan Salam picks his 6 favourite road trip stories

I’m speaking to Sufiyaan Salam the day after Arsenal have won the Premier League. The night before, he’s been out near the Emirates stadium, where he saw “old people in wheelchairs, young people swigging beers and Jeremy Corbyn mingling with kids in pyjamas, whose parents had woken them up to celebrate.”

“Everyone was singing, I almost got hit by a firework, it looked like an early start to Eid celebrations” he laughs, describing a scene not unlike that in his debut novel, Wimmy Road Boyz. The story follows three brown boys cruising down Manchester’s curry mile in a white bimmer, in pursuit of a wild night out. But with the trio nursing heartbreak, secrets, grudges and a whole lot of feelings, there’s trouble ahead.

Born in Blackburn, the book was inspired by Salam’s own experiences on the curry mile, aka Wilmslow Road, where cars cruise up and down.

“I'd been going there my entire life. I went on this one night out, just me and two other brown guys. I was going through heartbreak, but I didn't know how to tell them. The next day, I thought ‘it'd be funny if those guys also had something that they were struggling with, the three of us having this fun night on the surface, but actually needing to talk to each other.”

• Buy Wimmy Road Boyz here

Wimmy Road Boyz explores British Asian culture — which Salam quite rightly asserts is just British culture — masculinity and nuanced, honest characters as a counter to the trope of the good immigrant. It’s not your typical novel, either, reading like a cross between a book, a screenplay and a music video. As an animator who has worked on music videos for the likes of Grouplove, with a BAFTA-nominated short film, Magid / Zafar, that tracks.

All this from an author who can’t even drive – “not legally, at least.” In lieu of (legal) experience behind the wheel, these are the stories that inspired Salam’s genre-bending surefire bestseller.

1. Pierrot le Fou (1965)

Speaking to Salam from his position underneath a poster of the Jean-Luc Godard film A Woman Is A Woman, it’s perhaps no surprise that he chose Godard’s New Wave classic as his first road trip must-see. He watched it in the dingy basement of a bar in Manchester, where they were screening a season of films starring actress Anna Karina.

“Pierrot le Fou is typical ‘60s Godard. It’s basically a Bonnie and Clyde love story; two criminals want to get a better life for themselves, rob someone and run away in a cool car. Most of the film, they’re just bored and drifting. It’s almost like what would happen after Bonnie and Clyde if it didn’t end in tragedy?”

Salam appreciates the film which he says “is constantly ripping up the rules. The actors will be looking at the camera or coming out of frame. It doesn’t do anything that it's meant to do. I don't even understand the characters, they’re so selfish and we still just love them.”

2. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)

Salam calls this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “brutal” but also “McCarthy’s most optimistic novel, which maybe says more about how dark everything else he did was. Imagine Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, but it’s all horrible,” he laughs.

“It's post-apocalyptic, there's cannibals, but this father and son are on the road trying to survive. It's violent, but it's so beautifully written. The son is quite a tender kid, despite the horrors of the world. He doesn’t remember life before, whereas his dad still remembers the real world. We swing between horrible set pieces where people are being killed to moments of the dad comforting the son.”

Salam first came to The Road during the pandemic, when everyone was searching to understand the time we were living through.

“It was weirdly comforting, because it's way worse than what was actually going on. I was stuck in a flat in Manchester, but I wasn’t having to run away from cannibals. I read it in a feverish couple of nights – what else was there to do? The pandemicness of it really affected the reading experience.”

3. I'm Thinking Of Ending Things (2020)

Although I’m Thinking Of Ending Things is based on a 2016 novel, it’s the Netflix film adaptation that Salam chooses for his third road trip story.

“I didn’t love the book as much, but the film is interesting, innovative and divisive. You get double Jesse/ Jessie (Plemons and Buckley), who go on a road trip to see his parents at their remote farm. Half of the movie is them driving through a horrible blizzard, stuck in this car.”

Salam loves the surreal nature of the film, where the characters are more like ciphers.

“There are purposeful continuity errors the whole way through, lines misattributed and personalities changed. It has the feeling of a mental breakdown”

That abstractness was a big influence on Wimmy Road Boyz, where characters mask their true thoughts.

4. Catch Me Daddy (2014)

Salam’s next pick is an alternative road trip.

“It’s about this South Asian girl, Laila, who’s on the run from her dad. She's with her white boyfriend, who’s not great, driving away in a caravan through the Yorkshire moors. In a similar way to Pierrot le Fou, it’s Bonnie and Clyde, but stylistically it’s absolutely wild. It’s like an American Western set in Yorkshire, but it's also this dark, horrible Greek tragedy.”

Salam’s picks all veer away from the stereotypical American road trip movie, which are about “driving towards freedom. With Catch Me Daddy, I'm interested in these people driving towards destruction, being trapped in a car or trying to escape life, but destiny won't allow you to. Laila is someone who would never normally fit in this type of movie, so the movie has to bend out of shape as a result of her and her struggle.”

5. Sirāt (2025)

This Oscar-nominated Spanish film starts with a father looking for his lost daughter. What follows could have been quite cutesy, an older man connecting with ravers to learn the importance of community. But as Salam puts it, “this movie descends into hell. There’s Islamic allegories going on in the background,” with Sirat referring to a bridge in Islamic theology that souls cross on the Day of Judgement. But for Salam, this film is a warning against going into the desert. “There’s nothing good to be found there, Western man.”

“In the background, shit’s going down. There’s some kind of civil war or global conflict, and as much as the film has a new take on the ravers, where they're not just idiots, they're also very much these white hippies who are doing their thing whilst real-world conflict is going on. Every single person is punished horrifically. It feels like the desert itself is the main villain and the main hero as well.”

Watching the film at Curzon Bloomsbury was “a powerful experience,” according to Salam, “especially from a sound point of view. I was feeling all the music in a crazy way. When things are going wrong, they go wrong so loudly. I love when cinema is just a visceral experience.”

6. Withnail and I (1987)

For his final choice, Salam picks a flick he watched for the first time in lockdown.

“I watched Withnail and I with a bunch of friends in Manchester. I had a projector, but the sofa didn't face the wall, so I had a bean bag. I was 22 so I didn’t really have back problems then.”

The film in question follows Richard E Grant and Paul McGann as two out of work actors needing a holiday.

“They drive to the Lake District, but it descends into alcoholic darkness. It begins lightly, but then becomes a different thing. The genre of the film goes on a journey the same way the characters do, which is a fun way of storytelling.”

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If you’d have asked me only a few years ago, I would’ve told you that I wouldn’t dare touch a romantasy novel. I’d say: “What do you mean by a book full of swords and smooches?” There’s a good reason for my apprehension, though. I worked fervently amongst the shelves of Waterstones during the 50 Shades craze, selling book after book. It haunted my dreams, and so I swore to actively avoid anything ‘spicy’.

Yet, as an avid follower of many book-related social media accounts, I noticed the shift that brought romantasy to the fore – and BookTok hasn’t let me down yet. In recent years, romantasy has gone from being a somewhat underappreciated mix of two genres to one of the most popular. You’ll see titles storming up the bestselling book charts and ripping through avid book clubs' must-read lists. In its simplest form, it’s fantasy with a romance vein, but the genre offers so much more.

Full of ambition, magic, mystery and some sexy bits, it’s actually really hard to pick out just 10 books you should read, but I’ve done it anyway. Of course, there are many (so many) other things to learn on your romantasy journey, like discovering what tropes you really like. To smut or not to smut, being one of the biggest. Then there’s world-building, conflict, enemies-to-lovers, forced proximity, special abilities, and even dragons, if you want. With opportunity abundant, here are the 10 I’d recommend everyone should read. At least once.

10. THRONE OF GLASS (SARAH J. MAAS)

Amongst the great writers of the romantasy genre, you’ll find one name that has really garnered the attention and love of many online (and off), Sarah J. Maas. While her famed ACOTAR series will feature later on in our list, the Throne of Glass series came first and in my personal opinion, it’s one of her greatest.

Celaena Sardothien is an assassin with a complicated past. Liberated from prison and handpicked to fight for her freedom, she enters a competition against other miscreants to become the King’s champion. But, the King of Adarlan is not a man she wants any dealings with.

Celaena’s journey is anything but simple with an expansive world full of intense characters. It also wouldn’t be romantasy without some sizzling courtships. I’ve read all eight books in the series and while Tower of Dawn is a personal favourite, it’s important to start at the very beginning.

• Out now / Buy it: £4.98

9. FOURTH WING (REBECCA YARROS)

In Fourth Wing, Violent Sorrengail joins the Basgiath War College, forced by her mother to train to become a dragon rider. Magic, dragons, fantasy, epic world-building, and, of course, a lot of romance culminate in a series that has been hyped up a lot on TikTok. That may be a good thing or a bad thing, but you know where I sit considering the recommendation.

If you’re wondering about the balance of genres, it’s light fantasy and heavy romance with an intense tension that builds throughout.

It’s sometimes compared to Harry Potter, given its school setting and coming-of-age tales, but only if Hogwarts had dragons, epic battles, and villains that are arguably worse than Voldemort. Known as the Empyrean series, there are two more to read, with Yarros already planning for book 4.

• Out now / Buy it: £4.98

8. CARAVAL (STEPHANIE GARBER)

A tale of two sisters, Tella and Scarlet, as they embark on an epic journey to witness Caraval, a performance that only happens once-a-year. And it’s a pretty big deal, worthy of a story, considering the sisters have never left the tiny island they grew up on. Only they’re not just there to watch. Tella is to be part of the main event, whether she likes it or not. With dangerous games twisting their already unusual reality into even more chaos, the sisters have to navigate a high-stakes game that threatens to destroy everything.

Described as “Magic. Mystery. Adventure,” there’s a light romance in the first book that acts more as a sub-plot. But with three books in the series, it gets spicier as you go. Garber has even written a spin-off series, Once Upon a Broken Heart (OUABH), based in the same universe, so reading Caraval marks your first introduction to a long vein of epic storytelling.

• Out now / Buy it: £7.00

7. OUR INFINITE FATES (LAURA STEVEN)

With so many books populating the romantasy genre and more on the way, the struggle to find an original idea becomes even greater. For Our Infinite Fates, it’s the uniqueness of its storyline that makes it an excellent read (if not as well executed as I might’ve hoped for).

Evelyn is killed before she’s 18, every single time, by the same person, Arden. Unfortunately, she has also fallen for him. Only, in her current life, she’s desperate to stay alive to help save her sister, but that means living past 18.

The only way to fight against it is to head into a hellscape to try and break the curse. The tagline: “They’ve loved each other in a thousand lifetimes. They’ve killed each other in every one.”

• Out now / Buy it: £5.48

6. POWERLESS (LAUREN ROBERTS)

When you search for Powerless on Amazon, it comes under the subheading “TikTok Made Me Buy It!” and I did just that. In Ilya, either you’re an Elite, possessing powers that make you extraordinary, or you’re Ordinary.

And while Ordinary citizens are ostracised, Paedyn Gray manages to convince Prince Kai Azer that she’s worth saving, even though she has to lie about who she is and take part in the intense and jaw-clenching Purging Trials to show off her skills.

It’s a deadly Hunger Games-esque twist of a tale with the ever-appreciated enemies-to-lovers trope sizzling throughout. And if you love this first one, you’ll begin to notice a trend with romantasy books: they’re often part of a series. This one’s a trilogy starter, meaning you can grab Reckless and Fearless when you’re done.

• Out now / Buy it: £4.97

5. SILVER ELITE (DANI FRANCIS)

In Silver Elite, you’re not allowed to have a psychic gift. Only Wren Darlington, a powerful psycho Mod, most certainly does. And while she’s been really good at hiding it, she makes a mistake that lands her in the enemy’s training program, Silver Block.

She can’t let on who she is, but she also can’t stop her feelings when Cross Redden, her ruthless commander, turns up. Well, it’s a spicy storm with lots of slow-burn will they, won’t they?

As an almost flip-reverse to the Powerless trilogy, as well as being compared to Fourth Wing, it’s a great read if you’re looking for something full to the brim with romantasy tropes and easy to consume. Plus, there’s a sequel, Broken Dove, that just hit the shelves on 12th May.

• Out now / Buy it: £5.48

4. QUICKSILVER (CALLIE HART)

Unlike a lot of the entries here, Quicksilver is strictly recommended for 17+, rather than YA, because of how violent and, well, adult it is. Saeris Fane is hiding a lot about herself, and she finds herself tossed into the unforgiving lands of Yvelia… and into Fae warrior, Kingfisher. And it’s the way that Hart writes Kingfisher into the book which borders on unforgettable.

It’s as full of battles as it is earth-shattering passion, but if you’re not into the rom-side of things as much as you are the fantasy then this one might be a step too far. As seems to be the case with the genre, it’s divisive. But it’s always worth dipping your toe in different worlds to determine what it is you like about them. If you do like it, there’s the sequel Brimstone to dive into next. Considering it’s her romantasy debut, it’s definitely worth a read.

• Out now / Buy it: £14.87

3. THE WOLF KING (LAUREN PALPHREYMAN)

Inspired by the Scottish Highlands, humans and werewolves are divided, and the war rages on when a princess is kidnapped by a werewolf alpha. As the clans fight amongst the wild mountains, it’s like if Outlander turned into a romantasy novel. Though it’s also not to be confused with Wolf King on Netflix, an adaptation of the Werewolf novels.

If you’re after a fast-paced fantasy that’s full of slow-burn romance and you’re especially intrigued by a worldbuilder heavily influenced by Scotland, then this one’s for you. And you can follow Princess Aurora through the trilogy, and this tri doesn’t just relate to the number of books, but to a love triangle that ripples throughout.

• Out now / Buy it: £10.36

2. THE SERPENT AND THE WINGS OF NIGHT (CARISSA BROADBENT)

Carissa Broadbent sounds like the name of someone in a romantasy novel, but it is, in fact, the author of many great titles in the genre. And her Crowns of Nyaxia series is most certainly worth a read, spanning six books (two yet TBA) with two optional standalones full of vampires, gods, magic, monsters, and intrigue.

Coined on her Instagram as “#1 NYT bestselling author of books with magic & kissing”, that’s certainly what you’ll get. Serving as book one, The Serpent and The Wings of Night follows Oraya, an adopted human daughter with a vampire king for a dad, competing in the Kejari to fight her way to the top. Only, surprise, surprise, there’s a romance that threatens to throw her off course.

• Out now / Buy it: £4.46

1. A COURT OF THORNS AND ROSES (SARAH J. MAAS)

Step into almost any bookstore and browse the shelves of the romantasy genre, and you’ll quickly notice the vibrant spines of the A Court of Thrones and Roses series. ACOTAR, for short. For many, this is where Maas really demonstrates her world-building expertise, introducing readers to 19-year-old Feyre Archeron and the faerie land of Prythian.

This is possibly one of the genre’s most prominent examples of the major tropes you can enjoy, including enemies-to-lovers, as well as fated mates. If you’re yet to read it, you’ll start at the series’ namesake.

Once you’ve read all five in the series, you’ll be pleased to hear book 6 and 7 are already scheduled for release on October 27, 2026 and January 12, 2027, respectively. So, now is as good a time as any to get into the ACOTAR series and start your romantasy journey.

• Out now / Buy it: £4.98

• The best books of 2025
• 10 new non-fiction books to super-charge your winter reading
• 10 must-read winter fiction books to get you through the cold snap

Travelling to a new country is always exciting, and whilst you're obviously there for the culture – the galleries, the museums, the architecture, if most people are being totally honest, it's just as much about going to a supermarket, hunting down a restaurant in a cave you saw on TikTok, and mostly, drinking your way through each new stop. Luckily for anyone planning a trip to Belgium, there’s a new Guidebook from CAMRA which will help plan your journey, purely based on the best of the country’s beers.

Spending the night with a nice Belgian blonde is probably quite an idyllic way to spend an evening abroad for most men, and CAMRA’s fully revised version of the Good Beer Guide Belgium showcases over 1,500 beers and 400 brewers for you to explore.

As well as beers, brewers, and blenders, most importantly the book shares the top 650 places to actually sit down and enjoy them. The book explores all regions of Belgium, including Brussels, Antwerp, Flanders, Brabant (Flemish and Wallonian), Luxembourg and Liege, with useful travel tips and recommendations on what to eat and where to stay. All this really means is that you can be one of the few people who can confidentially claim you didn’t use ChatGPT to plan your trip.

Beer is as historic and culturally important as the somewhat more traditional tourist activities, which is probably one of the reasons the guidebook is in its ninth iteration, this time with two forewords. The first has been written by Tim Webb, original creator and long-time curator of the guide, and the other by Yvan De Baets, co-founder of the famous De La Senne Brewery in Brussels.

The ninth edition has been written by beer and travel guide writer Tim Skelton, set to be published on 14th May. On writing the book, Tim explained: "I’ve lived in Benelux for over 30 years, visited Belgium more than 100 times, and thought I knew everything about the country. But researching this new edition of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide Belgium still led me to find undiscovered beer-y gems that I’d never previously been aware of." Sounds like you could almost out-expert a local…

• London is getting a Biscuitorium inside one of the fanciest food halls

This season’s non-fiction sweep is so rich and varied it could easily be plugged into Portlandia’s iconic ‘Did You Read It?’ sketch. You know, the one where Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein rapidly trade magazine article subjects back and forth.

'Did you read that thing about how artists through history paid the bills?' 'Of course. But did you read that thing about the Gen Z girls who got into metal detecting?' 'I did read that.' 'Did you read John Robins memoir.. (Yes)' 'Did you read Patrick Radden Keefe on.. (Yes)' Did you read.. Did you read.. Did you read...?

Shortlist Pick: Thirst (John Robins)

Most comedian’s books simply do not need to exist. OK they’re funny enough but it’s usually some glossed over origin story, a few lists of sketches or stand-up that never made it to air and a smattering of ultimately disappointing anecdotes about other famous people. Thirst feels like a book that needs to exist: for John Robins and for its readers. One half of Radio 5Live’s Elis & John show (with Elis James. Robins also presents a podcast named How Do You Cope?), he has structured this book around twelve drinks that changed his life, from a stubby at Scouts camp through to Wood’s Old Navy Rum and White Russians. Mostly because he’s a recovering alcoholic.

Robins is, sensibly, writing about some of the lowest points in his life from the scar not the wound but his honesty together with his ability to laugh at himself is infectious and inspiring. No, it’s not all funny. The sheer detail and intensity he brings to the recollections of his nirvana-like pub visits, his crying-on-the-toilet days and the small wins and fails in-between is quite something, though. Not to mention he’s quoting bloody Philip Larkin, Neko Case and Simone Weil throughout. Robins generously and unabashedly throws every mantra, wise word and toolkit that’s ever helped him into Thirst. If you’re currently addicted to something, this might just unlock part of it - surely the best use of a funnyman there is.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Edge of Space-Time (Chanda Prescod-Weinstein)

Don’t let the main title of Chanda Prescod-Weinstein’s The Edge of Space-Time spook you: the subtitle is the delightful ‘Particles, Poetry and the Cosmic Dream Boogie’. And, in fact, the whole point of her book is to bring curious non-scientists into the big questions we still have about the universe. An associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of New Hampshire, Prescod-Weinstein researches dark matter, the Big Bang and neutron stars in addition to Black feminist science studies.

Here, as she dives into gravity, relativity, electromagnetism, cosmic boundaries, event horizons and quantum field theory, she tells readers not to worry if things feel fuzzy, dropping in silly-to-complex diagrams and her own, inclusive, personal real-world experiences. Prescod-Weinstein’s project requires deploying all sorts of literary, cinematic and pop culture references in order to expand the metaphors we use when we think about space and physics. From ones you might expect - Christopher Nolan movies, Trekkies are well-served - to ones you might not: Drake vs Kendrick, Missy Elliott, Sun Ra, even the Electric Slide. Jordan Peele’s Us helps with gravitational lensing, Alice in Wonderland with the stretching of space-time. Imagination-expanding and utterly unique.

• Out now / Buy it here

What The Bouncer Saw (George Bass)

You’ve never read a memoir like this before. Within about the first ten pages, security guard George Bass has told us his hourly wage and the exact amount, down to the pence, of his latest water bill. So refreshing and so true to the running internal monologue of millions of people. What The Bouncer Saw colours in the lines of the years long cost-of-living crisis, letting us feel the tension and stress over food prices, mortgage rises and energy bills day after day. A rare takeaway coffee is half an hour’s wages, the small Christmas bonus will go to the dentist...

As Bass does campus security for Canterbury University, we also get a term’s worth of student stories that are wild, funny and heart-breaking - if you’ve ever lived in halls, you’ll recognise the fights, fire alarms and wayward guests - and Bass lets us in on his own tales of sex, drugs and techno from his teen and twentysomething days. As he and his longterm partner Jess try to stay afloat and stay joyful with their daughter Rose, we see how his watchful security mindset creeps in to his home life. One genuinely shocking element: just how much university guards are now called on to cover, whether that’s parking duties, gritting, cleaning, frontline mental health support, dealing with endless Amazon and food deliveries. Remarkable.

• Out now / Buy it here

Cosmic Music: The Life of Alice Coltrane (Andy Beta)

From White Rabbit Books, Andy Beta’s biography of Alice Coltrane is pretty special. One-of-one doesn’t quite do her justice: musician, composer, bandleader, harpist, pianist, guru… This book is one to cancel all your plans and really sink into, rich and textured as it is with many decades’ worth of stories and reflections on making music and finding transcendence. Beta weaves Alice’s story into an oral history of 20th century jazz legends, from the clubs of ‘Motor City’ Detroit and Paris to the famous sessions and performances in New York City and Long Island, where two geniuses - Alice and John Coltrane - made house.

Journey in Satchidanada, Alice Coltrane’s fourth album, has become an undeniable touchstone in the recent and much overdue re-evaluation of her place in music history. Yet there’s so much more “cosmic music” to dig into, spiritual jazz and beyond, in her own discography and in the John Coltrane records made during their time together. Alice Coltrane lived many lives, culminating in her leading an ashram in the hills of California, and this book is devoted to understanding and celebrating all of them.

• Out now / Buy it here

If We Tolerate This (Daniel Trilling)

If We Tolerate This is a short, sharp look at how we got here, here being Reform consistently on over 25% in the polls and worryingly successful in the locals. It’s from Daniel Trilling, who writes for the LRB, The Guardian and the New York Times. And, sure, we open with a survey of the “fanatics” - Farage, Yaxley-Lennon, Musk et al and their emotive allure - but Trilling swiftly and wisely moves on to analyse two other distinct groups within Britain’s establishment: the Tory “opportunists” - most notably Johnson and then Sunak - and the Labour “cowards” in Starmer’s government. He argues that they have made the far-right “respectable” through mimicking hateful rhetoric, copying hard-line policies and failing to be honest with the public about immigration.

Alongside this central thesis, Trilling alights on many interesting nuggets and questions: for instance, who most represents the working class between MPs Lee Anderson and Hannah Spencer? Are we loyal to a system in which Reform only needs to get to that “magical 32%” of the electorate to gain power? How can we combat Ben Goldsmith’s nature-loving eco-fascism? And should we start preparing the bulwark for Danny Kruger’s plans to directly appoint judges and push laws through without parliamentary votes?

• Out now / Buy it here

A People’s History of Football (Mickaël Correia, Jean-Christophe Deveney, et al.)

From Pluto Press, A People’s History of Football is a labour of love that spins football on its head(er). First written by Mickaël Correia and Jean-Christophe Deveney in French and gorgeously illustrated by Italian comic artist Lelio Bonaccorso, the English edition of this graphic novel has been translated by Fionn Petch. As we flit from medieval English folk football to the pan-African championships. Bonaccorso, who has worked with Marvel and DC, gives each chapter its own distinct colour palette, with sepia tones for the older sections: we always know if we’re in Stalinist Russia or ‘70s Brazil. The throughline to the stories? The people, the fans, the players, the streets.

And the stories are truly incredible, including the Austrian player who defied the Nazis their propaganda match win to the Russian brothers who ended up in the gulag for beating official police teams. And did you know which player first started dribbling with the ball and why? Or just how big women’s football was in the 1920s? A wonderful gift for anyone who’s about to become obsessed with this summer’s World Cup.

• Out now / Buy it here

London Falling (Patrick Radden Keefe)

If you read non-fiction, you’ll know the work of Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer at The New Yorker and author of Say Nothing and Empire of Pain. London Falling is his propulsive, meticulous account of the mysterious death of nineteen year-old Zac Brettler. In 2019 Zac, who had been posing as the son of a Russian oligarch, fell to his death from a block of luxury apartments overlooking the Thames. This tragedy for his family then transformed into a maze of confusion, contradictory stories, London underworld figures and police force failures as they tried to find the explanations behind Zac’s death.

The book illuminates some shockingly murky depths of the city that might shift your opinion of the capital - we’ve all heard stories about crooks, con men, ghost flats and shell companies but this narrative makes it all real and unavoidable. It explores the links between dirty money, criminal activity, Russian oligarchs and the glossy lives of their families, with keen insights into why we might lie at different points of a life. Keefe’s reporting gets closer to important answers in the mystery but he never forgets that he’s telling the sad story of one young man who found himself in circumstances he couldn’t control.

• Out now / Buy it here

Things We Found In The Ground (Eleanor Bruce, Lucilla Gray)

It doesn’t get much more wholesome than this. Ellie and Lucie are two cousins and Gen Z ‘detectorists’ who, stuck with family in Lincolnshire during the pandemic, caught the metal detecting bug hard and eventually set up their @romanfound Instagram account to document their finds. Their tales of trudging through fields, bogs and up stormy hills in search of coins, badges and all manner of jewellery, toys and accessories from throughout history, including yes some Roman denarii, are lovely to escape into. Even when they’re soaked through and only picking up disappointing Coke ‘can slaw’, bits of lead and shotgun shells.

This is a conversational, welcoming and charming joint memoir that introduces the subculture, the gear and the camaraderie and competition of group digs to new audiences. Plus, of course, the terminology and tactics - from beep deciphering and ‘gridding’ to the official definition of ‘treasure’. Things We Found.. also serves as a way in to histories of both the county and coinage, currency and monarchs, touching on religion, trade, war, fashions and plagues. The most heart-warming bit? The ways Ellie and Lucie’s hobby leads to encounters with locals of all ages, including birdwatchers, artefact sorters, the ‘lady of the manor’ who gives them permission to dig her land and bakers of excellent cakes.

• Out now / Buy it here

Making Art and Making A Living (Mason Currey)

Cereal, bread, ice cream, tinned fish. Just some of the appetising, low-cost, low-effort diets of artists, writers and musicians struggling to get by on art alone. Mason Currey, who put out the brilliant book Daily Rituals in 2013 and writes the newsletter Subtle Manoeuvres, returns to the lives of artists through history, this time focusing on how they paid the bills. Inspiring and with a strong point of view - in the sense that we can perhaps learn something from this moany, stubborn, alternative lot - Currey gives us a sense of the combination of luck, circumstance and individual choice which dictated how names including Joyce, Kafka, Van Gogh and Woolf spent their time and money.

Making Art.. is full of amusing and consoling anecdotes, diary entries and letters from artists asking friends and family for money. There’s a great chapter on FDR’s Federal Art Program in the ‘30s and early ‘40s and at one point Currey compares poet Alexander Pope’s Homeric translation subscription service to Substack writers today. Haydn’s prince-pleasing, Godard’s compulsive stealing, John Cage’s game show winnings, even Pessoa blowing his inheritance — this isn’t exactly advice as such but it certainly shows how many ways there are to (just about) make a creative life.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Age of Alchemy (Kit Chapman)

This romp through the history of alchemy takes as its focal point how the traditions and writings of craftsmen, physicians, charlatans, ‘professors of secrets’ and other early innovators shaped modern chemistry. The author Kit Chapman is a lecturer at Falmouth University, who you might know from his 2019 book Superheavy, on the race to make elements with atomic numbers over 100 with particle accelerators. Here, he’s more concerned with ideas around the transmutation of base metals into gold, the search for immortality through the Philosopher’s Stone, the four humours, questionable potions and lotions and the Mercury-Sulfur theory.

This is an accessible book that’s stacked with intriguing asides - like the esoteric chemistry Easter Egg in the Baldur’s Gate game series - and characters’ stories you’ll want to explore further, like Mary ‘the Jewess’, Paracelsus, Ibn Sina and Jabir from the Islamic Golden Age and Pope Clement VII, who did proto-clinical trials of posions and antidotes on prisoners. Chapman argues that the emperor Diocletian inadvertently made alchemy into the mysterious dark art when he ransacked the workshops of Alexandria, leaving only scraps of ‘recipes’ behind. He also reinstates a number of overlooked - or simply unlucky - early chemists who prioritised experiments, process and sharing knowledge over hidden tricks and magical thinking. Fascinating stuff.

• Out now / Buy it here

• 10 more must-read non-fiction books to kickstart 2026

It’s springtime and literary fiction is quite literally in vogue this season, making a neat counterpoint to the sheer volume of BookTok tat, both on the shelves and keeping parts of the publishing industry afloat in the year 2026.

We’re just here to tell you what’s good. Because listen, we’ve all been burned by those too-glowy blurbs before, haven’t we? Any glow found in the list below is well-earned by the authors.

Shortlist Pick: Wimmy Road Boyz (Sufiyaan Salam)

In Wimmy Road Boyz, you’re right there with Immy, Khan and Haris in the bimmer, in the rain, on the tarmac: they’re twentysomething mates driving around for one big night out. This Joycian trip along and around Manchester’s Wilmslow Road is the first novel from 27-year-old Sufiyaan Salam, a writer and former animator from Blackburn and it’s an intoxicating piece of maximalism from Merky Books. Laugh-out-loud funny - even days later - and high energy, it’s peppered with pop culture references (music, film, Riz Ahmed), bravura surrealist tangents and experiments with the page that just feel right. We swoosh in and out of these rich, messy, sometimes desperate interiors and back into the warmth and relief these boys provide each other.

The characters and proprietors of Wimmy Road, or the ‘curry mile’, from the sweet shop Bossman to a feminist poet, are joyfully realised in full. Salam deftly brings in the perspectives of the women in Immy, Khan and Haris’ lives, while still centering on the “boydem”. He also fearlessly reclaims the ‘p’ word from the haters. He interrogates how these young, brown, Muslim men use it in their own heads and spaces versus how they encounter the slur out in the world. At times dripping in that dry Gen Z nihilism, Wimmy Road Boyz is full of new ideas and beautifully earnest where it really counts. A new Northern masterpiece.

• Out 28th May / Buy it here

Transcription (Ben Lerner)

Transcription isn’t the kind of novel that you finish reading, not really. The more it percolates in your mind, the more sure you become that its author, the American writer Ben Lerner, is a bit of a genius. Because this is a potent and elegantly restrained text - at just a slim 130 pages in length - that rewards both concentrated mulling over and multiple readings. (Huh, you’ll say.)

The story: A writer visits his ninety-year-old mentor, an erudite academic and raconteur named Thomas, intending to record their conversations for a magazine piece. But he drops his phone in the hotel sink just beforehand and doesn’t admit it. Transcription is posing big questions about how technology - old and new - gets mixed up in our most ancient rituals with emotional, relational puzzles inside the allusions, near-repetitions and sensory images. The novel turns more than one potentially perilous fictional corner but Lerner is always in control. Quite stunning.

• Out now / Buy it here

Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke)

It takes quite a bit to shock us and we were sho-ocked by how far Caro Claire Burke pushes and pulls her story in Yesteryear, her dark debut novel. This is the ‘tradwife wakes up in 1855’ book, which is a dynamite conceit so, yes, a movie adaptation with Anne Hathaway in the lead is already in the works. But this isn’t a lazy spin on a hot-take gimmick. Burke takes all her ideas around Natalie, her conservative, good Christian wife and mother who lives on a farm in Idaho with her big, healthy family, and follows them through to their logical, sometimes brutal conclusions.

Yesteryear is a page-turner and a real ride, pitching from comedy to horror and back again. Is Natalie really in the 1850s or is she, duh, in some reality TV show? The shortcuts to authenticity we all take to please the internet and the ‘maze’ of choice for modern women are both laid bare amongst the handmade soap, chicken coops and sourdough starters. This is a savage state-of-the-world satire that implicates everyone, including readers who couldn’t wait to devour this book. Gulp.

• Out now / Buy it here

John of John (Douglas Stuart)

Douglas Stuart, who won the Booker Prize in 2020 for Shuggie Bain, is back this spring with John of John, a bittersweet story about a family tangled up in secrets, set in the ancient, windswept Outer Hebrides. Cal (short for John-Calum) returns from studying textiles, pretty young men and the Edinburgh nightlife on the mainland to the Harris croft, the family loom, his pious father John and his mischievous grandmother Ella. Stuart draws his picture of awe-inspiring landscapes and the claustrophobia of uncompromising churchmen and gossipy neighbours so tenderly, it’s as if his fictional settlement of Falabay has always existed.

John and Cal both do weaving work, from their shed at home, for a mill on the Isles, priding themselves on their ability to discern the most minute differences in hues, whether that’s shells, woollen jumpers or congregants’ hair and dress. And Stuart returns to this precise distinction of colour masterfully in a couple of dramatic moments for the Macleods. With loss, shame and despair threatening to overwhelm the community, Stuart offers enough hope and grace to spiral further and further outwards.

• Out 21st May / Buy it here

On The Calculation of Volume IV (Solvej Balle)

The unexpected cliffhangers get us every time with these books. If you’re not up on it, On The Calculation of Volume is Danish writer Solvej Balle’s hit seven-title series following book dealer Tara Selter and her time loops in the 18th of November. We’re now on Book 4 of the English translations by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, with the fifth installment due to be published this November. Quiet, philosophical and with a calming, distant tone of voice, there is just something about the rhythms of Balle’s writing, the way she moves between routine and pops of colour, that pulls you deeper into the sheer everydayness of the mystery.

Balle has her literary container in the form of the repeated day and she challenges herself further in IV, sticking mostly to a deserted house in Bergen, Germany, which has become a refuge for all our time loopers — or is it tracers? That’s one of the debates the expanded cast of characters sinks into: how to name things in their strange reality. A book that feels gentle enough until you encounter an echoed detail or decision in your own life that makes you stop and think again.

• Out now / Buy it here

Communion (Jon Doyle)

Anything inspired by Michael Sheen is alright in this house. Communion, the debut novel from working-class Welsh writer Jon Doyle, does just that. Doyle takes as his setting his hometown: referred to only as ‘the actor’ in the book, Sheen staged a Passion of the Christ play, with non-actors, in the streets of Port Talbot over the Easter of 2011. In Communion’s telling, we follow Mack O’Brien who, at 30, has returned to his parents’ house from a seminary. He’s just started working security at the town’s emblematic steelworks when the unions decide to stage a walkout timed to the Passion.

Communion splices lyrical language and dreamlike sequences with blunt, commonplace violence and some exhilarating action. Mack is nearly always moving, on his walks, on his rounds, as he reckons with the path that’s expected of him, his family heritage formed by men in the blast furnaces of South Wales, wrestling his own ideas about finding purpose and the future of Port Talbot. Doyle has a keen sense for the kinds of memorable, cinematic images which this unique project of the town’s Passion play affords him as a writer and he does not waste them. One to watch.

• Out now / Buy it here

I Want You To Be Happy (Jem Calder)

Another brilliant debut, Jem Calder’s I Want You To Be Happy is one for those of the Sally Rooney crowd who don’t mind things slanting even more painfully honest than usual. Twenty-three-year old Girl (Joey) meets mid-30s Guy (Chuck) in this contemporary London-set novel that’s readable and relatable but also craftier than it first appears. Chuck’s a WFH lead copywriter at an agency (“I’m a creative”) while Joey works at an indie coffee shop, has crumbs in her bed and writes poetry on the side. Which is to say: the dialogue and the details are all on point. The gap between Chuck’s inner monologue and what he says out loud, in particular, is comical, frustrating and, at points, incredibly sad.

It’s a novel that’s very concerned with the concept of ikigai and in a good way i.e how what we like to do, what we’re good at, what will pay us and what the world needs can intersect to form some sort of life. And, of course, how that might shift as we get older, whether that’s down to comparing ourselves to our peers or nudges, encouraging or otherwise, from romantic relationships. This one might even save a reader or two from crummy situationships: a worthy cause.

• Out 21st May / Buy it here

The Palm House (Gwendoline Riley)

The Palm House, the latest from prize-winning British author Gwendoline Riley, is a short, unsentimental look at midlife melancholy that’s free from any easy explanations or bombastic revelations. It centres around an undefined friendship between Laura, our narrator, and Edmund Putnam, an older deputy editor of a serious culture magazine who’s referred to exclusively by his surname throughout. And “said Putnam” is the metronome of this novel. We follow Laura’s own disorientation as a result of her grouchy, polemical sort-of-mentor being knocked off his own, usually sure and solid, course after he resigns his post to escape a grubby new boss.

This is the sort of good London fiction - full of Soho pubs, the Thames and dilapidated aristocratic apartments near Sloane Square - that makes us a bit nostalgic. It’s also stacked with well-observed details on precarity, passivity and privilege, from the stern, matter-of-fact way Putnam talks to other people’s children to the preening mannerisms of the theatre actor Laura has a fling with. By the close, something important has shifted, with little fanfare, of course.

• Out now / Buy it here

Boyhood (David Keenan)

Hold onto your hats. David Keenan, the Scottish writer best known for 2017’s cult classic This Is Memorial Device, is back with this big, bold, ambitious offering from White Rabbit Books. And it’s easy to see why Irvine Welsh is a fan. Boyhood is a shape-shifting, multi-stranded, art-as-life epic; it takes as its starting point the disappearance of a young boy outside a football match in late 1970s Glasgow. Keenan’s charming pulp fiction creations include a gypsy hardman quoting the ancient Greek soldier Xenophon, a poetry-loving German gymnast in pre-war Paris, a sleazy councillor obsessed with Mexican ruins and a naive burlesque dancer taking a tour of French cathedrals. (There should be a new Bechdel test but for working-class with niche intellectual interests — Keenan would nail it).

Oh, and don’t forget the secret service operative who can ‘remote view’ any location in his mind. Moving and horrifying in equal measure, Boyhood’s motifs - black magic, invisible horses, honey traps - recur and warp across timelines, like we’re in the hands of some composer of a precisely constructed piece of music, who is just toasted enough to keep outdoing himself note after note. David Keenan is a writer who can find filth everywhere and beauty anywhere.

• Out now / Buy it here

Into The Wreck (Susannah Dickey)

The days leading up to a funeral can be, let’s say, hard to predict. Into The Wreck, the new novel from Susannah Dickey, an author and poet from Derry, Northern Ireland, gets at this confusion and chaos from five perspectives: the siblings who have just lost their semi-estranged father Thomas, twentysomething Anna, teens Gemma and Matthew; their mother Yvonne and Yvonne’s cousin Amy who is staying at the house.

With the kids in particular, Dickey captures something of the maelstrom of competing emotions, memories and fixations, from the profound to the ridiculous, as their brains remember/forget/remember to transform ‘is’ into ‘was’. There are some perfectly distilled lines in this book, for sure. Distractions work until they don’t, well-laid plans are dashed and one by one, the characters have eerie encounters with a seemingly real but supernatural-tinged wreck that’s washed up on shore.

• Out now / Buy it here

• 10 must-read non-fiction books to kickstart 2026

If your idea of a good weekend in London involves books, a bit of culture and somewhere decent to sit down with a drink, this might be worth pencilling in.

The North London Book Festival is back from 23 to 26 April, taking over Alexandra Palace for four days of readings, talks, workshops and general literary wandering about.

It’s a fairly broad church; you’ve got big names, newer voices and a mix of genres that doesn’t lean too heavily in one direction. Among those appearing this year are Alan Hollinghurst, Tessa Hadley, Natalie Haynes and Michael Rosen, who will also be marking his 80th birthday with readings and performances.

There’s also a solid mix of newer and contemporary voices, including Natasha Brown, Ben Aaronovitch and Rachel Parris, alongside writers like Laura Bates and Jeffrey Boakye.

The festival opens on the 23rd of April with Kadiatu Kanneh-Mason introducing her book To Be Young, Gifted and Black, with live music from Braimah and Konya Kanneh-Mason alongside it. It sets the tone for the rest of the weekend, which mixes straight-up author talks with panels, Q&As and a few less standard events.

It’s not just aimed at serious readers either. There’s a decent family offering, with events designed to get kids involved without it feeling like homework. Think creative workshops, storytelling sessions and the chance to dress up as historical figures with Kate Pankhurst, plus sessions with Onjali Q. Raúf and poet Simon Mole.

Away from the talks, there’s the usual festival extras. A bookshop run by Waterstones means you can pick something up on the day and get it signed, and there’s food and drink on hand, so you can make a proper afternoon of it rather than rushing between sessions.

The whole thing also runs alongside Alexandra Palace’s children’s book award, which adds a bit more activity around the site, plus some extra events and performances.

We suggest you pick a couple of talks you actually care about, leave some time to wander, and you’ll probably come away with at least one book you didn’t intend to buy. You can book tickets for the talks you wish to attend here.

• Two of the world's best new hotels are in London

In the understatement of the century, it’s fair to say we owe a lot to William Shakespeare. Without his poetic turns of phrase and proliferation of plays, British culture today would not only be lacking some top-notch quotes, but an entire pantheon of artistic expression meted out through literature, theatre and art.

So why not celebrate Shakespeare’s contribution to British history and culture on the day of his presumed birth (and uncannily, death) on April 23rd? The UK’s capital and once home of the playwright has a plethora of ways to big up the Bard, many of which go further than simply watching one of his productions on stage (though you definitely should...)

Here are six ways to enjoy Shakespeare’s Day in London in 2026.

1. Take a tour of Shakespeare’s London

Walk in the footsteps of the world’s most famous playwright by retreading his steps around the UK capital with a dedicated guided tour. Visit the sites of playhouses he performed at, watering holes he drank at and appreciate the modern day landmarks erected in his honour.

For a truly immersive experience, book with Shakespeare’s London Tours who use trained actors as guides, performing for you on the streets of the city while reciting famous excerpts and espousing anecdotes. Prefer to keep the fourth wall in place? Opt for a self-guided tour of London via this handy map from the City of London which will lead you to all his favourite hotspots, at your own pace.

2. Watch a play at The Globe

Though it might not be the original structure built by Shakespeare’s playing company The Lord Chamberlain’s Men back in 1599 (that one burnt down in 1613) its modern day reincarnation is its spitting image – and probably a lot safer.

Experiencing a performance here is unlike any other and a must-do for any fan, whether you’re watching from the wooden benches in the eaves or being pulled into the drama in the pit. 2026 is hosting all the hits – Much Ado About Nothing, Love’s Labour’s Lost, As You Like It – though if you’re visiting on Shakespeare’s Day in April you’ll be graced with one of his best, A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream.

3. See old copies of Shakespeare’s manuscripts at the British Library

Though it’s believed none of Shakespeare’s original manuscripts still exist, some of the earliest printings of his plays are on display in the The Treasures Gallery in the British Library.

The Gallery is free to enter, and, along with the author’s First Folio (a collection of his 39 plays) and a print of the play Sir Thomas More (which is thought to have Shakespeare’s writing on), it houses over 200 of the library’s oldest and most precious works including original lyrics by the Beatles and a copy of the Magna Carta.

4. Tuck into a Shakespeare-themed afternoon tea at the Swan

Afternoon tea probably looked a little different in Jacobean times, but we’re pretty sure if he were about today, Shakespeare would be into it. Soak up views of the Thames while nibbling on an array of mini sandwiches at Swan, the official restaurant of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Salmon, chicken, roast beef and egg and cress sandwiches are served on playfully-designed crockery and pave the way for sweets featuring titles – and inspiration – from Shakespeare’s most famous scripts. ‘My crown is in my heart, not on my head’ from King Henry VI materialises on the plate as Victoria sponge cake topped with a golden chocolate crown, while ‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day’ from Sonnet 18 is in fact a Rose petal and mead tart draped in English Rose syrup.

Vegetarian, gluten-free and vegan menus are available, as are plentiful tea choices; sapphire earl grey, dragonwell green and Egyptian mint among them.

5. Visit ‘Shakespeare’s Window’ in Southwark Cathedral

William Shakespeare was one of Southwark Cathedral’s (then known as St. Saviour’s Church) most well-known parishioners. Head to the South Aisle to discover an extravagant three-light stained glass window depicting numerous characters from his plays including Puck, Othello, Lady Macbeth and Hamlet.

The striking and intricately-designed aperture fills the wall above a memorial sculpture of the playwright reclining on a bankside meadow in front of the Globe and Winchester Palace. Visiting on Shakespeare’s Day is a particularly good idea, as every year the Cathedral runs the Shakespeare and his Theatrical Contemporaries Tour, where an experienced guide takes you on a tour of the historic building, detailing its significance to not only Shakespeare, but playwrights from across the ages (Shakespeare's brother Edmund and playwrights John Fletcher and Philip Massinger are buried there).

6. Take the Shakespeare trail through the V&A

Shakespeare is so ingrained in British culture that London’s museums don’t need a dedicated exhibition, the playwright is simply woven into their existing ones. At the historic Victoria and Albert museum in Kensington, you can experience the British Galleries anew by following the ‘Shakespeare’s Magic’ trail which guides you through various displays while explaining their link to the author.

Reliefs of cupid, grand pieces of furniture such as The Great Bed of Ware and delicate items of jewellery and embroidery are all re-contextualised in light of the poet. Use this page to guide you. If, however, you’re gagging for a dedicated space celebrating the Bard, there’s not long to wait.

A new arts centre is due to open in Shoreditch later this year on the site of the old Curtain Playhouse, which, alongside spaces for offices, housing, a roof terrace and leisure facilities, will also host the ‘Museum of Shakespeare’. Details are sparse, but expectations can be justifiably high.

• 14 genuinely good “third places” in London to work, read, or meet mates (without getting fleeced)

Around 1.4 million tickets for Oasis’ 2025 reunion tour were sold in the UK alone, and if you were among the attendees, you’ll want to know about a new book the Gallaghers have coming out.

Oasis Live ’25 Opus is a behind-the-scenes photographic retelling of the tour, with pics from pro photographer Simon Emmett.

There are four editions of the book, and they veer into truly wild territory. But it’s all based on the idea the reunion of Oasis really was something special.

“When I saw the reaction to the photo, it was obvious to me that this wasn’t a single event. The photograph was the beginning of something,” says Emmett of his first photo of the Gallagher brothers back together.

“I felt strongly that this needed to be documented. There was no facade, this was genuine. We watched the crowd having the time of their lives, but the band and the crew are also having equally as good a time. That’s what was so magical about it.”

Feel the same way? It’s time to prepare your wallet.

• The 16 best Oasis songs of all time, ranked

The basic edition of Oasis Live ’25 Opus is a £65 hardback book, the Live Forever Edition. It’s a large, coffee-table-ready 336 page slab, and 33.6cm tall.

But if you’re willing to spend as much as some fans spent on actual Oasis gig tickets on a book, check out the Wonderwall Edition.

This one costs £350, comes with a presentation case and weighs somewhere in the region of 12kg — 24 times the weight of the basic version.

It’s 47cm tall and has 648 pages, so clearly features a load more content than the standard edition. It comprises more than 1000 photos.

That’s not the end either. The Glory Edition is an even larger version, limited to 3000 copies. It’s 62cm tall, leather-bound, and has a 10-inch vinyl record on its cover — one with actual audio etched onto it.

It’s a collector’s item with a certificate of ownership, a 21.5kg monster that will set you back £1250.

Or if you have £12000 lying around you can pick up the Oasis Live ’25 Opus Supernova Edition.

This version is limited to 100 copies, and some of you will struggle to lift this thing. It’s an 82cm tall book that weighs around 40kg, with an “acrylic encased cover” and 12-inch vinyl mounted up front, bearing a voice note from photographer Simon Emmett. And it ships in an actual flight case. With wheels.

The very first print of this Supernova Edition is set to be auctioned off at the Legends Ball at Grosvenor house on November 19th, with the funds going to the Teenage Cancer Trust.

All editions of Oasis Live ’25 Opus are available to pre-order now for publisher Opus, set to start shipping in May.

• The BIG London gig list 2026: Your guide to this year's very best shows, festivals and concerts

If you’re after something a bit calmer than the usual London weekend chaos, this might be one to bookmark. Books in the Park is returning to Beckenham Place Park on Saturday, the 25th of April, bringing a full day of author talks, workshops and low-key festival energy to one of south London’s better green spaces.

Now in its third year, the event has quietly built a reputation as a more relaxed alternative to the city’s bigger literary festivals. It’s free to enter, easy to wander in and out of, and spread across the park rather than crammed into a single venue, which makes it feel more like a day out than a formal programme you have to stick to.

There’s a mix of adult and children’s authors appearing across the day, alongside writing workshops, guided walks and interactive events designed to get people involved rather than just sitting and listening. A pop-up bookshop will be running on site too, so if something catches your interest, you won’t have to wait to pick it up.

One of the standout moments this year is a special event dedicated to David Bowie, marking ten years since his death. Bowie famously spent time living in Beckenham, so it’s a fitting place to host a discussion around his life and legacy, with two authors and long-time fans leading the session.

Away from the talks and workshops, the park’s regular Food and Farmers Market will also be running, which means you can pad out the day with something decent to eat and drink without having to leave the site. If you do book tickets for any of the individual sessions, you’ll also get a small bonus, 10% off at the Mansion Café and The Homestead Café when you show your ticket.

While the festival itself is free to enter, most of the talks and workshops are ticketed individually, with some discounted options available. The money raised doesn’t just cover the event; profits go back into community projects, including literacy initiatives and workshops for children in under-resourced schools, which gives the whole thing a bit more purpose than your standard weekend event.

It’s a simple setup, but that’s kind of the appeal. Turn up, wander around, dip into a talk if you fancy it, grab some food, maybe leave with a book you didn’t plan on buying.

The event is at Beckenham Place Park on Saturday, the 25th of April.

• Dua Lipa is officially curating Southbank’s London Literature Festival

You’ve collected every star, moon and shine in the Super Mario Games. You’ve visited the Universal Studios theme park, you’ve bought a Switch 2 and you’ve lined up IMAX tickets for this year’s big Super Mario Galaxy movie cinema release. What next for the die-hard Nintendo fan?

Picking up one of the best books about Nintendo, that’s what.

A gaming juggernaut more than a century old, Nintendo is one of the few major video game companies to be richly covered in literature, despite the company’s own reluctance to speak openly about its inner workings, or to document its own fascinating history. Thankfully, journalists, enthusiasts and specialist publishers have done that job for the Japanese giant, meaning the making of Mario, the lore of Link and the… yarns of Yoshi are all ready and waiting among the pages of an incredible line-up of tomes.

From reportage to coffee-table sized art books, we’ve pulled together our absolute favourite books about Nintendo, covering some of the best writing and little known facts about the singular gaming force.

The best books about Nintendo

• The best Nintendo Switch 2 games

London’s Southbank Centre is like the cool kid of cultural spots in the capital, teaming up with big starry names on a semi-regular basis now, and the latest announcement is another slam dunk. Barely a month after Harry Styles was confirmed as the curator of Meltdown Festival, Dua Lipa was announced as this year's curator of the London Literature Festival.

This year marks the Southbank Centre’s 75th anniversary, so it’s not entirely surprising that they’re planning to pull out all the stops. Dua Lipa will be curating the lineup of the 19th annual London Literature Festival, which is set to take place from 21st October, running until 1st November. She’ll also be popping up at the Royal Festival Hall on 24th-25th October.

Lipa is no stranger to perusing the paperbacks, having founded the Service95 Book Club back in 2023. Each month, she selects a book she loves and sits down with the author to chat on the book club’s accompanying podcast.

As well as being a big reader, Lipa frequently advocates for marginalised readers who face barriers to books like bans and incarcerations. Later this year, she’ll be bringing her love for literature to an even bigger stage, curating a line-up of her favourite established and emerging writers.

For those not in the know, the London Literature Festival runs every year with a completely stacked programme of events and even performances, all celebrating the written and spoken word. We don’t yet have the schedule for 2026’s festival, but we’re in for a range of events from workshops to readings to live talks from authors. If previous years are anything to go by, we’ll also be in for live performances, discussions, and even a smattering of slam poetry.

Speaking about curating the lineup, Dua Lipa said: ‘Reading has anchored me through every chapter of my life – from being the new kid at school in a new country to finding quiet refuge on tour. Curating the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival is a dream come true.

I’m thrilled to indulge one of my greatest obsessions: books and the brilliant minds behind them. I can’t wait to dive into the imaginations of some of my favourite authors in one of London’s most iconic cultural spaces.’

• London is getting a new restaurant where absolutely nothing is wasted

Did you know there’s a museum dedicated to Charles Dickens in London? Well there is, and it’s about to display a new selection of the author’s clothes and other rarities.

One eye-opening oddity is the collar Dickens is believed to have been wearing when he suffered the stroke that killed him in 1870. After his death the collar then went to British actor Bransby Williams, who starred in a couple of early film adaptations of Dickens works.

What else? You can check out a pair of Dickens’s black stockings, his shaving gear and a locket containing a snippet of his son Henry’s hair. And more.

It may all sound a bit ordinary, but such artefacts of Dickens’s are apparently a real rarity.

“Among all of the many qualities, passions and character quirks of Charles Dickens, we know that he was a real dandy,” says museum deputy director Emma Harper.

“This makes it all the more frustrating that so few items of his clothing survive but renders our collection of clothing and accessories especially precious.”

These pieces of personal attire will go on show at the Charles Dickens Museum from Wednesday, March 11th.

Fine and dandy

The site of the museum itself is dripping in history too. It’s at 48 Doughty Street, nearby Russell Square tube station. This is where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839.

It has been open to the public as a museum for more than a hundred years now, since 1925.

Adult tickets cost £13.58 including fees, or it's £8.33 for children, while those under the age of six get in for free. Or you can become a museum member for £40 a year.

It’s open Wednesday to Sunday, from 10am to 5pm, with last entry at 4pm each day.

The site is decked out largely as it would have been when Dickens lived there. And when you’re done you’ll also be just a short stroll from the Foundling Museum and The Postal Museum, should you want to have a truly museum-packed day.

• You can visit these 12 iconic London landmarks for free thanks to the National Lottery

We’ve got all the non-fiction food groups covered in this World Book Day 2026 edition of our book round-ups.

You’ve got a slab of protein-rich ‘artificial biological intelligence’ to really sink your teeth into, for greens there’s a Gordon Brown biography, some spicy Russian history and a takedown of capitalism, and over in comfy carbs, the life of a space scientist and Albion’s national myths, both made super accessible.

For dessert? A crunch of Nintendo and a lick of De La Soul.

Feast on these words.

Living In A D.A.I.S.Y. Age (Austin McCoy)

Stick 3 Feet High And Rising on and crack open this heartfelt, joyous, always astute De La Soul book. Absolute bliss. It’s from Austin McCoy, an assistant professor of history at West Virginia University who specialises in, amongst other topics, hip-hop culture. This is part De La Soul history, part cultural commentary on hip-hop’s place in America for the past 50 years and part memoir from McCoy who writes thoughtfully and vulnerably about what the music has meant to him through different chapters of his own life.

You get deep dives into individual tracks, albums, samples and collaborations with explorations into Black masculine nerd-dom, creative expression and freedom, East Coast vs West Coast beefs, middle aged rappers and renewal and, of course, all the record label and music streaming battles which De La Soul have conquered. Plus an in-depth Listening Guide for further discoveries and connections. McCoy takes this all seriously, as he should. A dream read for new, one-time or long-time fans of Posdnuos, Trugoy, Maceo and Prince Paul.

• Out now / Buy it here

Super Nintendo (Keza Macdonald)

If you’ve dipped out of gaming (or haven’t played much since you were a kid) then Super Nintendo, from The Guardian’s video games editor Keza Macdonald, will really energise you to get back into them. With Macdonald’s 1-50 rundown of the best Nintendo titles at the end, she spends most of the book weaving a history of the secretive company and reflections on the innovations of iconic games and consoles with her many interviews with the famous names behind them like Shigeru Miyamoto (who still oversees the movies and theme parks), Takashi Tezuka, Eiji Aonuma and Masahiro Sakurai, plus former Nintendo president, the late Satoru Iwata.

The book is a great mix of insight into the serendipity, genius, teamwork and all-nighters that went into the greats - Mario, Zelda, Pokémon, Super Smash Bros - and plenty of love for the likes of WarioWare, Pikmin, in-Zelda fishing games, Nintendo’s bizarro toys and all manner of other spin-offs, side projects and half-forgotten lore. We also get Macdonald’s own contagiously enthusiastic personal memories and interviews with the types of super-fans who build shrines to hanafuda playing cards in their gardens. Who are we to yuck their yum, eh?

• Out now / Buy it here

Finding Albion (Zakia Sewell)

Finding Albion is real special. A mix of travelogue, folk culture compendium and post-colonial analysis, the 6 Music DJ Zakia Sewell takes us on a journey around both the pagan wheel of the year and around the British Isles in search of a new, much needed alternative spirit for the country. This is exactly the kind of open-hearted, clear-sighted riposte we need to the nationalist “flag shaggers” (our words, not hers) who are singularly obsessed with us defeating the Nazis and not much else.

Sewell finds new significance in folk music, ‘pre-consumerist’ customs and neo-traditions as varied as morris dancing, midwinter brussel sprout fights, fire breathing, poaching, crafting, wassailing, May Day and masquerades. The chapter on the Notting Hill Carnival, its origins and the interplay between Britain and colonised countries and islands, is a standout. Less prescriptive and much more imaginative than an old-school love of crown, country, military and empire, and with a lens that pre-dates Christianity to go back to pagans, Druids and Welsh myth cycles, this book’s message is complicated but ultimately hopeful.

• Out 19th March / Order it here

On the Future of Species (Adrian Woolfson)

When you give your science book a title like this, you gotta live up to it. And Adrian Woolfson, co-founder of biotech company Genyro, sure does. He takes us through pivotal and recent developments in molecular biology and synthetic genomics and argues that we’ve already taken meaningful steps towards reaching ‘Artificial Biological Intelligence’. In other words not just sequencing - or reading - DNA and the human genome, but writing it too. Woolfson explores the likely impacts on medicine, food security and even the potential to create new synthetic species, touching on all manner of wild experiments and milestones involving yeast, E.coli, nematode worms, artificial moss, de-extincted dire wolves and yes, humanised mice.

Woolfson has a welcome and (rare for STEM intellectuals) respect and admiration for the humanities and how art, music and literature can inspire, counter and explain scientific breakthroughs. Of course, recent innovation in AI has played a seismic role in biological engineering but look — analysing huge datasets of amino acids in order to help eradicate diseases is precisely what AI should be deployed for, not just replacing business software. While intentionally avoiding “abhorrent” eugenics ideologies, he briefly nods to the difference between Deaf culture and communities and say, diseases such as cancer. Woolfson ends with his ‘Manifesto for Life’: let’s get that global regulatory body up and running sharpish, lads. Fascinating, terrifying, fascinating, terrifying.

• Out now / Buy it here

Gordon Brown: Power With Purpose (James Macintyre)

It’s OK if you have a political crush on Gordon Brown, we do too. Those stirring speeches in favour of a united United Kingdom! In case there’s any doubt, political journalist and former senior producer for Question Time James Macinytyre spells it all out in this terrific biography: the most consequential and redistributive chancellor of the past fifty years, who almost halved child poverty and made strides towards eradicating pensioner poverty, the force behind the cancellation of $100 billion of global south debt and the most popular Labour figure as of 2024.

With interviews with Brown himself, Tony Blair, Alastair Campbell, Neil Kinnock, Ed Balls, Nick Clegg, aides, MPs, family and friends, there’s plenty of astute and timely analysis of both personal details - his faith, his habits, his marriage and his relationship to the Murdoch media - and his mistakes, including not doing more to block the Iraq war and the lack of regulation of the financial sector in the run up to the 2007-08 recession. As Macintyre stresses, it’s perhaps his time since being PM that has best shown the world the character of this man: thinking deeply about devolution frameworks, working with the UN and the WHO on education and health financing and still, still campaigning against child poverty. If there’s one biography Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves should be reading right now, they could do much worse than this one.

• Out now / Buy it here

Starchild (Maggie Aderin)

Maggie Aderin seems like she’d be So Much Fun on a night out, star-gazing or otherwise. The dame, space scientist and presenter of The Sky At Night (amongst other things) is funny and candid in this memoir. Starchild takes us from Aderin’s childhood in and around London, watching The Clangers, Star Trek and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Then it’s through Imperial and UCL to working on the Gemini South telescope in Chile and the James Webb Space Telescope before moving into science communication. Everything here is accessible but budding telescope enthusiasts especially will get a kick out of all the geeky details.

Throughout, Aderin touches on family, relationships, health, her experiences of racism in the industries she’s worked in and beyond. And some of the details of her incredible life will be extremely reassuring to any younger space-inclined readers, in particular: she has dyslexia and ADHD! She got a D in her physics A-Level because she took too many subjects! Her PhD was in mechanical engineering! Hella inspiring.

• Out now / Buy it here

Escape From Capitalism (Clara E. Mattei)

Escape From Capitalism, from Italian academic and professor of economics at the University of Tulsa Clara E. Mattei, is one of those joining-the-dots must-reads that manages to make sense of our upside-down world. Mattei patiently and meticulously explains the brutal impacts of so-called ‘pure economics’, and related decisions around inflation, interest rates, unemployment levels and austerity, on our everyday lives. Her overarching thesis? No economics is ever a pure rational science, it’s always a political decision. (Speaking of Gordon Brown, Mattei has a lot of thoughts around the role of independent central banks in all of this.)

Mattei brings her abstract ideas to life at every turn. The book shines a light on how liberal economists and far-right fascists worked together to defeat nascent alternatives to capitalism in the era of Mussolini and Gramsci and the shocking current-day economic dependency of Palestinians in Gaza on Israeli corporations and banks. Don’t let this get you depressed, instead let this get you angry: this is designed as both a rallying cry and an intellectual backbone for future radical movements.

• Out now / Buy it here

Rasputin (Anthony Beevor)

Ugh, the man, the myth, the legend indeed. Grigori Rasputin was the ‘moujik’ peasant and holy mystic who enthralled Tsar Nicholas II and, especially, Tsaritsa Alexandra. Anthony Beevor, the historian famous for his Stalingrad account in particular, wants to get into the nitty gritty of all the accusations, all the sordid stories here. The result is both impressively credible, with a huge range of sources and perspectives, and incredibly readable. Beevor argues that Grigori may well have had an outsized effect on history by driving a wedge between the imperial family and conservative elites at a time of brewing revolution in early 20th century Russia.

Rasputin, also known as Our Friend, Grishka and assorted other monikers, had a unique effect on people’s demeanors - St Petersburg society ladies especially - and even some people’s health, notably the young Tsarevich Alexei, who suffered from haemophilia. His healing powers towards the latter - coincidence? hypnosis? - became the source of his power over the Empress. At a certain point he was effectively hiring and firing prime ministers and high-ranking church officials. An unputdownable account of a unique figure in history.

• Out 12th March / Order it here

Hard Streets (Jacqueline Riding)

Jacqueline Riding’s Hard Streets is a fascinating and incredibly moving study of working-class lives in ‘Charlie Chaplin’s London’, AKA South London, mostly around Lambeth, Kennington and Walworth in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Riding’s approach is clever: she uses the life of another successful working-class son of Lambeth, the sculptor George Tinworth, from Chaplin’s parents’ generation, together with a staggering number of voices and stories from the ordinary people who lived in places like East Street, Kennington Cross, York Road and New Cut alongside the soon-to-be world-famous comedian.

As Riding traces Chaplin’s upbringing, one of poverty, precarity, street sellers, pubs and music halls, she widens out the view at every opportunity - who else was arrested the same day as his father and for what minor crime? Which other women had to submit to the workhouse alongside his mother and why? We get the full context behind the Little Tramp and that momentous speech at the end of The Great Dictator, from the Chartists, Charles Booth and Keir Hardie to Fred Karno and the lives of working-class entertainers. A tribute to stubborn resilience in the face of hardship as well as the creative spark, comedy and community. South Londoners will dig it.

• Out now / Buy it here

A Vast Horizon (Anna Thomasson)

This collage-like book offers up a couple of magic tricks. First, a rather alluring (turning serious) group portrait of the ‘artists and lovers’ of the subtitle, the painters, photographers and poets including Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Man Ray, Lee Miller and Eileen Agar, taking as a focus point, a summer holiday in the South of France in 1937. Second, a jolt of inspiration as we follow their playful collaborations, from beach combing, jewellery making, postcard collages, food, fights, conversation and modelling for photographs and paintings.

Split into three main sections - pre-war, World War II and post-war, Thomasson is interested in the bohemian, anti-bourgeois life as opposition to fascist order and filling in the gaps surrounding some of the lesser known members of this set, including poet Paul Éluard’s wife Nusch and model and dancer Ady Fidelin. The vignettes on how they each spent the war - Lee Miller pushing towards the front lines, Éluard in hiding after publishing resistance poetry, Picasso painting in Occupied Paris - are well chosen and poignant.Nothing is ever straightforward and simple here, though: by the time this lot were undressing each other in ‘37, Picasso had already painted Guernica.

• Out 26th March / Order it here

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If you’ve ever lingered a little too long over a wristwatch in a shop or felt your pulse quicken at the sight of a perfectly balanced dial, TASCHEN’s Ultimate Collector Watches is your new bible.

Just released, this two-volume XL edition book is a sprawling, 960-page love letter to the world of horology, celebrating the artistry, engineering, and sheer creativity behind 100 of the most iconic wristwatches ever made.

From classic Patek Philippe dress watches to experimental independent creations by F.P. Journe and Roger W. Smith, the book covers everything a collector could dream of, and then some. Every timepiece is presented in meticulous detail: close-up photography captures the gleam of polished metal, the textures of exotic straps, and the craftsmanship of intricate movements. Archival sketches, designer interviews, and historical insights add depth, showing not just what these watches look like, but why they matter.

The selection spans eras and styles, from early aviator pieces that charted the skies to modern marvels that push technical boundaries. There’s a real sense of narrative here: each chapter isn’t just a catalogue entry, it’s a story of design, innovation, and the personalities behind the watches.

Whether you’re drawn to Rolex’s timeless Oyster Perpetual, Audemars Piguet’s audacious Royal Oak, or offbeat, limited-edition creations that have become collectors’ holy grails, this book makes every mechanical tick feel thrilling.

The photography is sumptuous, almost cinematic, and the layout lets you appreciate every detail without feeling overwhelmed. The standard edition offers the same wealth of content in a more compact format, while the XL two-volume set is pure coffee-table indulgence, guaranteed to turn heads and spark conversations.

For anyone who loves watches as much for their artistry as their utility, Ultimate Collector Watches is a must-have. It’s a reminder that wristwatches are about more than telling time: they’re about heritage, design, innovation, and a little magic on your wrist.

At nearly a thousand pages of sheer horological awe, it’s the kind of book that rewards slow, appreciative browsing, or hours of getting lost in the mechanics, history, and elegance of a perfectly designed watch. It will no doubt look cracking on the coffee table, too.

• Uniqlo x JW Anderson is back with a brighter, breezier take on British prep style this SS26

The Jeffrey Preston Bezos-owned Washington Post just killed its entire books section, to which we say boo, hiss and WTF.

Perhaps the billionaire class is getting antsy about fiction because one of the most talked about books of 2026 so far is George Saunders’ mind-bending new novel Vigil, in which various ghosts try to get an oil exec to repent for his sins on his deathbed?

Perhaps not.

Either way, stick a chic V sign up to our tech overlords by reading these ten new books at your leisure.

City Like Water (Dorothy Tse)

Dorothy Tse’s matter-of-fact magical realism is, wonderfully, the perfect, precise tool for conveying how contemporary Hong Kong slipped into its current political climate. In her short, spiky 85-page novella, City Like Water, Tse navigates us through trippy, slippery encounters with a dream logic that shifts and splinters but just about holds through classroom memories, hotels with sealed off rooms and floors, housewives and police battling over lotus roots..

Known for her first novel, Owlish in 2023, in which a professor falls in love with a mechanical ballerina, with this book, Tse is doing something very tricky: capturing the sensations of those caught up in terror, people disappearing, people in hiding, people left behind, a little sister floating away on an umbrella. Translated by Natascha Bruce, Tse has a brilliant handle on the specifics that stick in the mind, too, whether that’s a maze of bricks, “tasteless time” or toe cleavage.

• Out 12th March / Order it here

All Them Dogs (Djamel White)

What a debut. All Them Dogs takes place in Djamel White’s beautifully lived-in and scuffed-up world of West Dublin in the years just before the pandemic. Tony Ward has just returned to town after five years in England and he goes straight to work for local big boss Angus Lavelle, as an enforcer alongside Flute Walsh. But what sets this apart from your usual crime and drug-filled coming-of-age tale is White’s interest in, as he puts it, the ‘upper’ working class suburbia — the sparkling kitchens and kids studying at college that co-exist with the dealers and the pitbulls and the estates.

We get right inside Tony’s head as he gasses himself up, waiting for the rage needed to carry out what he needs to do. And there’s some really touching details — his Ma staring into space, the tidbit that he’d once considered studying fashion — alongside a queer romance that more than complicates things inside this violent, macho hierarchy. The denouement is quite astounding, too. If this doesn’t get at least a prestige TV adaptation, we’ll eat our Air Max 97s.

• Out 26th March / Order it here

Helen of Nowhere (Makenna Goodman)

Fuck yes. This is already one of our favourite books of the year and it’s only February. Makenna Goodman makes the novel genuinely thrilling again as she masterminds us through Helen of Nowhere’s six ‘acts’ and a heady mixture of perspectives and audiences. As you’re reading, you’ll think to yourself ‘did she just... are we... is this...?’ and you’re fully with Goodman for the entire ride. Just to be clear: this is literary experimentation of the non-annoying variety. So it’s no wonder her high-profile fans include Sheila Heti and Rachel Cusk.

The less we say the better but the premise is: an unnamed professor is viewing a house in the countryside, which includes the estate agent — or ‘realtor’ in Vermont-speak — telling him stories about the previous owner, Helen. The book pokes and prods ideas about reputation, creative work, nature and what we owe our partners, colleagues and neighbours. But it’s not all heads-on-sticks, with plenty on sex, swimming, beauty and ageing too. Just read it.

• Out now / Buy it here

Lost Lambs (Madeline Cash)

The highest praise we can give this very funny American novel Lost Lambs is that these characters, the Flynn family, are characters you can laugh at and laugh with, ones that you root for and kinda love by the end. Put it this way —if Madeline Cash found herself at a cosmic cocktail party with Muriel Spark, the Coen brothers, Loren Bouchard and JD Salinger, nobody would need to be rescued.

The Flynns are Bud and Catherine (exploring nonmonogamy in their marriage) and their three wayward daughters, Abigail (exploring being a hot, thin teenager), Louise (exploring following instructions from her chatroom boyfriend) and Harper (exploring how not to end up bored when you’re twelve and the smartest person in town). There’s family chaos, school chaos, church chaos and a mystery involving the shady local billionaire who throws mysterious parties. Throughout, the iconic Flynn girls continue to be their absolute best selves and every time the plot gets more bizarro, one of them is there to make things even screwier. An instant classic and a comic novel about family you could recommend to just about anyone.

• Out now / Buy it here

Eradication (Jonathan Miles)

Fables are so back. We’ve been predicting this trend for a while: as the world gets scarier, meta-ironic splodges of pop culture looping back in on themselves just don’t seem quite so clever. American writer Jonathan Miles’ entry into this canon, Eradication, sees schoolteacher Adi heading for the remote Isla Santa Flora in the Pacific to see about some goats and birds and plants on behalf of an eco foundation.

The story that follows could be seen as an allegory for corporations playing god with nature, for the treatment of immigrants, or any number of other readings. In fact, you might feel the urge to immediately re-read it. The interplay of the moss, basalt and (remaining) cloud forest of the island with the ugly human instincts which have arrived there is deftly conducted, the meditations on failing to ‘save’ something hit with real impact and the final pages are just about as satisfying as you can get.

• Out now / Buy it here

Vigil (George Saunders)

George Saunders, who found mainstream literary fame with his Booker Prize-winning masterpiece Lincoln in the Bardo in 2017, seems to be quite enjoying the wide range of reactions to his latest novel, Vigil. Similarly interested in liminal spaces between life and death, self and ego, Vigil is a valiant effort to take on the subject of the world-building, and possibly world-destroying, fossil-fuel billionaires. Hey, at least he isn’t hiding out in historical fiction or intimate family dramas like most big-name novelists. He’s really going for it!

Saunders hones in on one oil tycoon in particular, his KJ Boone, who is lying in a bed dying in his Dallas mansion when a supernatural spirit, Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine is sent to comfort him in his final hours. Jill is joined by all manner of other apparitions who have something to say to Boone, not all of it comforting. It’s A Christmas Carol meets A Matter of Life and Death meets Twitter but much sillier, lighter and less straightforward than a simple climate change morality play. Saunders is endlessly inventive and when Vigil sings, it really sings. One to play-fight with your friends about.

• Out now / Buy it here

My Bags Are Big (Tibor Fischer)

Or, 'Crypto Bros Have Feelings Too, Mate'. We like a protagonist with a strong but slightly warped worldview and Dan, Tibor Fischer’s sixty-year-old crypto trader, Catford-born, currently living in Dubai, certainly has that. He’s preoccupied with people’s Big Moments, luckiness and unluckiness, who’s winning, who’s losing, and most importantly whose ‘bags’ of Bitcoin, Ethereum and other coins and tokens are big, bigger and biggest.

The novel clips along — you could easily read this in one sitting — in large part down to Dan’s hustle-propelled, crime-adjacent life story (past and present) and a cast of eccentric characters with delicious names like Math Cat, NotGuilty, Disaster Dimitri and My Big Cousin. There’s real feeling bubbling beneath all the new money trinkets, though, as Dan can’t seem to decide if he’s ultimately a sadsack or if he, with his beat-up Citroen and his eggs in multiple baskets, is above it all. Sneaks up on you.

• Out now / Buy it here

He’s The Devil (Tobi Coventry)

Delicious, an absolute breath of putrid air. This camp, pulp-y queer horror debut from Tobi Coventry takes place in an unnamed city where ‘good boy’ Simon finds himself, all of a sudden, living with a sexy stranger named Massimo in his nice, clean flatshare. He’s The Devil is both very cinematic and very interior; less surprising when you know that Coventry is a book-to-screen scout who’s produced a horror short named Blood Rites.

We get some tour de force scenes and literary set-pieces — the bathroom... the bedroom... the woods... a houseboat... and one night in which Simon turns very naughty at his job at a restaurant. With a series of exquisite reveals, driving both the emotional arcs and the horror plot in the final pages, Coventry is always fully in control, even as his little demons spiral out.

• Out now / Buy it here

Sisters In Yellow (Mieko Kawakami)

What if Michael Corleone was a Japanese teen girl rookie? Stick with us here as Sisters In Yellow, from best-selling author Mieko Kawakami, is that and so much more. It’s the mid-90s and we follow fifteen-year-old Hana and the much older Kimiko as they leave Hana’s unreliable mother behind in a suburb of Tokyo to set up a dive bar called Lemon. As Hana drifts further and further away from the traditional world of IDs, rules and regular jobs, she encounters all sorts of alternative counter-structures offering security, money and a sense of family.

Mieko Kawakami is a true maestro, here translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio, as she patiently reveals the mechanics behind bar hostesses, sugar daddies, low-level scams and the network of people involved in all this nightlife underworld to Hana and her friends. There are a few moments which will make your blood run cold as you read. The anxieties racing through our narrator’s brain rarely let up and the female relationships here are just as complex and shape-shifting as anything in Ferrante. Plus, more power to Kawakami for laying out the actual numbers of every last sum of money that Hana consumes herself over: earnings, outgoings, savings, shares, buy-ins and, of course, losses. If that isn’t life, we don’t know what is.

• Out 19th March / Order it here

Glyph (Ali Smith)

The excellent Scottish writer Ali Smith is back with another very topical novel, Glyph. This is a standalone read but also “family to Gliff”, the dystopia she put out in 2024, which is, in fact, discussed by two characters in this book who’ve read it. When you’re Ali Smith, you can do that. Glyph focuses on two sisters, Petra and Patricia (known as Patch), and Smith elegantly weaves in and out of the present day, childhood memories, conversations, thoughts and meta-fictions concerned with families, ghosts, imaginations and in-jokes.

This is also an “anti-war novel” with stories from WWI, WWII and current wars including Gaza. Some themes and motifs, including the figure of the horse, as per the cover artwork from Edvard Munch’s The Pathfinder, appear across the two homophonically-titled books. Smith is in conversation with myth, saints and truth-telling here. Her characters contemplate communicating with the dead and how to not become dead to other people’s suffering, with nods and winks to AI, asylum hotels, flags, education and the police state. Lovely stuff.

• Out now / Buy it here

Want more great reads? Try...

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Sometimes Fairytales feel a little like fairy-stales as you hear the same stories in just a slightly different adaptation time and time again. London’s latest interactive show is setting this preconception straight, with a muder-mystery true-crime twist on a classic children’s tale. Little Red Riding Hood is getting a sultry film-noir style glow up.

Called Once Upon a Crime, the immersive show gives the audience the power, with real-time voting allowing them to decide the ending.

Rather than the tale you know, the new show brings a gritty noir mystery spin, with scandalous secrets and moral mazes for something a little more unique. Blending the fantastical fairy stories with immersive theatre, the show is a 60-minute spectacle, fast paced and definitely not your normal family friendly field trip. Expect a lot of dark humour, tension, terrifying twists, and a whole load of tricks as Little Red falls under a cloud of suspicion which she will have to argue her way out of.

Unlike a traditional procedural show where a stoney-faced and usually mustachio’d detective runs through his reasoning before delivering the final verdict, the live-voting means each audience will be left to determine the suspect’s fate. And according to the team behind the show, it’s not just an either-or, guilty or innocent choice, but a story with several possible endings instead. The detective will put forward a range of different theories and suspicious suspects, steering the audience across several different outcomes.

You’ll be interrogating iconic fairytale characters, with a good dose of dark humour, and clever twists that will keep you guessing. As an audience member, you’ll be able to steer the story, voting throughout the show as the story unfolds. Even though the story is at the heart of the production, it’s not scaling back on all the bells and whistles, with atmospheric lighting and sets bringing the production value you’d want from a London show.

The whole show is taking place at the Shaw Theatre over in King’s Cross on 10th April. Rather than set seats, the audience is divided into different zones, with Zone A closest to the stage, and Zone C being the furthest away. There are no set seats within these zones though, so you may want to head there early to scope out and snap up the best spot. Tickets start at £33 for Zone C, with the most expensive tickets priced at £42. You can see all the ticket options and book to see the show via their website.

• Billy Elliot the Musical is officially heading back to London’s West End

When Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights hits cinemas on February 13th, it’ll mark the latest in a long line of adaptations of Emily Brontë's only novel.

By some estimations (thanks, Wikipedia), there have been 16 movie adaptations and 10 TV adaptations of Wuthering Heights. Admittedly, some of these adaptations have been looser than others, but the fact remains that Heathcliff and Cathy have been well represented on whatever-sized screen you choose to get your entertainment from.

Indeed, Wuthering Heights stands in stark contrast to a number of other classic novels that have either never been adapted or have simply never received the full cinematic treatment.

Whether it’s because they’ve been deemed unfilmable, the recalcitrance of the original author (or their estate), or the simple whims and pitfalls of the Hollywood system, none of these acclaimed books has been acted out for a paying cinema audience.

In most cases, that’s a crying shame. In others, though, we can totally understand why they remain bound to the paper format.

Which of these unfilmed novels would you most like to see adapted? Let us know in the comments section below.

• The 50 best horror books: The scariest books ever printed

If you’ve ever watched Notting Hill and thought, yes, but it just needs a little more stationery, you’re in luck. This Valentine’s Day season, romance is officially back on the shelves at The Notting Hill Bookshop in London.

On the 3rd of February, the famous West London spot will host Rose & Prose, a one-day LEGO Botanicals pop-up designed to help Brits rediscover the lost art of the love letter. The idea is simple: step inside one of cinema’s most iconic meet-cutes, slow down, and put some actual words to your feelings, no emojis, no AI prompts.

Helping guests along is actor and author Caroline Quentin, who’ll be popping in throughout the day to write bespoke Valentine’s messages for visitors. Whether you’re loved-up, awkwardly infatuated or simply out of practice, she’ll make sure you leave with something heartfelt, handwritten and ready to give.

The event lands alongside new research suggesting that while Britain still considers itself a nation of romantics (80% of us, apparently), many struggle to articulate how they feel. A survey of 2,000 UK adults by the LEGO Group found that when it comes to romance, we’re more likely to quote books, films and songs than write something original ourselves.

Top of the list of borrowed lines was Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility classic, “My heart is, and always will be, yours,” followed by Pixar’s Finding Nemo with “I look at you, and I’m home,” and Arwen’s all-timer from The Lord of the Rings: “I would rather spend one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone.” Heavy stuff.

Music and poetry featured heavily too, with Aerosmith, Robert Browning and Emily Brontë all proving that when in doubt, someone else has already said it better.

Despite that, many younger Brits admit they’ve never written a love letter at all. More than a third of Gen Z and over a quarter of millennials say they wouldn’t know where to start, or would simply feel too awkward trying.

Alongside the prose, Rose & Prose also offers a modern twist on the traditional Valentine’s bouquet. Some visitors will receive LEGO Botanicals sets, a flower gift that doesn’t wilt after three days. Unsurprisingly, 69% of people say flowers that last would make the ideal Valentine’s present.

As Quentin puts it, “Can an emoji really convey as much heartfelt meaning as a thoughtful love letter? Will a quick text be remembered as long as a deeply felt sentiment penned in a card? I’m so happy to be joining the LEGO Group to bring back proper love letters.”

If you can’t make it to Notting Hill, LEGO is also launching a digital message builder, offering pre-written Valentine’s lines for cards, captions, DMs and even voice notes, paired with gift suggestions inspired by the 65% of Brits who say shared experiences matter most.

In other words: romance isn’t dead. It just needs better words and some plastic bricks.

• The Treehouse by Wildsmith facial at Liberty London is as good for your soul as it is your skin

The Deptford Literature Festival is returning to South London this year, and most of its activities take place on March 28th.

This event is hosted at the Deptford Lounge, which is just a short stroll from Deptford train station, and this will be the fifth year the festival has taken place.

It consists of more than 30 events, across poetry, talks, social events for aspiring writers and more, as well as events geared towards a much younger audience.

The Deptford Literature Festival begins on March 21st, but Saturday 28th is the one not to miss if you want to experience the festival’s headliner events.

Some of the sessions will have BSL, British sign language, interpretation. And if you can’t attend in person events are also staged online.

What's on

At the time of writing, the full programme is not available to download from the festival’s website. But check back soon, and for the time being here are some of the key events happening at Deptford Lounge:

Poets Sarah Howe, Erica Hesketh and Karen Downs-Barton read their work and talk about their latest collections in Mother Tongue: Poetry, Family + Inheritance.

Younger attendees aged 8-11 are encouraged to come along to Putting It In A Letter, in which Stephen Lightbown shows kids how to begin writing poetry in the form of a letter addressed to themselves.

In the Writing Comedy session, Nathanael Lessore “explores identity, internet personas, and the power of comedy” in teen fiction, intended for those ages 12 and up.

And Natty Kasambala hosts Navigating Culture: Black Male Writers on Britain Today. This will see Jimi Famurewa, Derek Owusu and Aniefiok Ekpoudom discuss life working as a Black writer in Britiain.

For the youngest among the crowd there’s also How to Tame a Mummy Monster, a story-time session with Rochelle Falconer, author and illustrator. It’s intended to those aged 4 to 6.

Tickets will be available to book from the London Writers Centre website as they become available.

• Our 25 most anticipated fiction books for 2026

A new destination for travel lovers has opened in the heart of Marylebone. Travellers Tales is presented as more than a bookshop; it’s a carefully curated world of large-format photography volumes, expert travel guides, rare editions, and novels that transport you to every corner of the globe.

Shelves are arranged to encourage exploration, inviting visitors to linger over images, maps, and stories that spark curiosity, reflection, and a desire to journey further.

The space is designed to feel like a home for ideas, where browsing and discovery take precedence over shopping. Comfortable seating, natural light, and knowledgeable staff create an environment where a single photograph, sentence, or map can ignite an entire adventure. And when the spark of wanderlust hits, Travellers Tales doesn’t just stop at inspiration, its in-house team, with decades of collective travel expertise, can craft fully bespoke journeys.

From Arctic expeditions and conservation-focused safaris to culinary tours of South America, private vineyard escapes in Europe, and design-led adventures in Asia, each itinerary is meticulously tailored, blending insider knowledge with personal vision to create seamless, unforgettable experiences.

Travellers Tales aspires to be a cultural hub. Across the year, it will host salons, intimate author readings, talks with photographers, historians, and artists, and immersive events that celebrate travel, storytelling, and human creativity.

There’s also a carefully considered gifting collection, leather-bound journals, artisan stationery from Florence, rare books, and bespoke travel registries, all with luxury wrapping, perfect for those who want to give the gift of adventure.

The shop carries a conscience, too. Supporting literacy through BookTrust and championing conservation efforts through WildAid, marrying a sense of wonder with responsibility. In a city where travel inspiration is increasingly reduced to algorithms and scrolling feeds, this bookshop offers a tactile, unhurried alternative: a space where reading, dreaming, and planning collide in ways that feel intimate, personal, and inspiring.

Whether you’re seeking a conversation, a carefully chosen volume, or a fully tailored adventure, this is a space where imagination meets the real world, and where every visit feels like the start of something extraordinary. Found in the cultivated streets of Marylebone, you can check out one of London's more interesting literary additions at 87 Wimpole Street.

• The best books of 2025
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A lot of pressure on fiction these days, huh? Can’t be too long or metaphorical or the English students will give up.

Can’t be too slow or uneventful or it might be the last book someone reads before fully succumbing to the TikTok vortex. Can’t be written by anyone but a white man because that’s too woke again.

For the time being, with all that very much ignored, here’s the fiction we’re most anticipating in the year ahead.

(Prefer non-fiction? Check out our 25 most anticipated non-fiction books for 2026...)

Vigil (George Saunders)

The first of the 2026 big-hitters in fiction. Not only has the American writer George Saunders mastered the short story (from CivilWarLand in Bad Decline onwards) and the novel (Lincoln In The Bardo), he’s also a contagiously enthusiastic teacher and lover of fiction, whether it’s through classes or his Substack or his gorgeous book about classic Russian writers. Vigil, his latest, takes place in Dallas where an oil tycoon, who says he has no regrets, is dying and it features a cast of "otherworldly visitors”. We’ll read anything Saunders writes.

Out 27th January (Bloomsbury)

Helen of Nowhere (Makenna Goodman)

This Fitzcarraldo title from Vermont-based writer and editor Makenna Goodman comes in at a tight 160 pages and it sounds - delightfully - like something of an intellectual haunted house tale. The premise: a “disgraced” professor is being shown around a lush countryside property and the estate agent is telling him stories about the previous owner, Helen, and how she lived her life there. When the sun goes down things - as they so often tend to do - get wiggy.

Out 29th January (Fitzcarraldo)

The Persian (David McCloskey)

A spy thriller from former CIA analyst David McCloskey, The Persian is set to be a page-turner full of clandestine meetings, dastardly deceptions and international espionage. The difference with your run-of-the-mill globe-trotting spy novel: McCloskey’s not afraid to get stuck into some extremely current geopolitics. Our hero is, in fact, a Persian-Jewish dentist who finds himself in Iran, spying for Mossad and getting caught by Iranian security forces.

Out 29th January (Swift Press)

Glyph (Ali Smith)

The first thing you must do before reading Glyph by Ali Smith is to read Gliff by Ali Smith. This January release is, very curiously, a companion piece to, or “family to”, her 2024 book of the same(ish) name. The acclaimed Scottish author of, amongst other things, the Brexit-infused Seasonal Quartet, is back with what’s described as an anti-war novel. We follow two sisters, Petra and Patch, from the made-up ghosts of their childhood to an estrangement later in life.

Out 29th January (Hamish Hamilton)

The True, True Story of Raja The Gullible (And His Mother) (Rabih Alameddine)

We first heard about this book from Lebanese writer and painter Rabih Alameddine last year when it was released in the US - it won the National Book Award for 2025 - and now yay, it’s arriving here. As you can probably tell from that perfect title, this is a darkly comic narrative, told in a non-linear fashion. Alameddine begins with a gay 60-odd year-old philosophy teacher living with his aging mother in a tiny Beirut flat and opens up to encompass more than half a century of Lebanon’s political and military history.

Out 5th February (Corsair)

Lost Lambs (Madeline Cash)

This debut novel looks fun. Lost Lambs promises “magical nihilism” as per Lena Dunham’s blurb and a brutally funny take on a very dysfunctional American family. The writer, 29-year-old Madeline Cash, has a collection of shorts titled Earth Angel and she founded Forever Magazine together with Anika Jade Levy, author of Flat Earth, one of our faves of 2025. Lots of hipster soft power here.

Out 5th February (Transworld)

He’s The Devil (Tobi Coventry)

Another debut, He’s The Devil comes from Tobi Coventry, a book-to-screen scout living in Rye. It’s a flat-share horror story that sounds part fever dream, part wet dream. The set-up: tidy, neurotic and all-round good boy Simon has to contend with a stranger moving into his living space and bringing all kinds of mess along. Jodie Harsh says it’s Stephen King/ Ottessa Moshfegh/ John Waters energy. Our kind of drama.

Out 12th February (4th Estate)

My Bags Are Big (Tibor Fischer)

Son of Stockport Tibor Fischer broke out in the early ‘90s with his short stories and Booker-nominated novel Under The Frog. Lately he’s been immersed in the world of Bitcoin and the like for this Dubai-set satire of money, masculinity and well, the crypto bro mindset. Should deliver nicely in the schadenfreude department.

Out 18th February (Salt)

Look What You Made Me Do (John Lanchester)

The latest from John Lanchester, author of 2012’s Capital, has a multiple-pepper-symbol spicy idea at the heart of it: Kate is a North London Boomer who’s in a decades-long marriage to Jack. She starts watching a buzzy new TV show Cheaters, created by a young writer named Phoebe, when she begins to suspect, from all the details about the characters, that it’s based on her own life. Black Mirror for the middle classes, sounds glorious.

Out 12th March (Faber)

Sisters in Yellow (Mieko Kawakami)

You might know Japanese writer and poet Mieko Kawakami’s name from her 2019 bestseller Breasts and Eggs. This March we’re getting an English translation, from Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio, of her 2023 book Sisters in Yellow. What sounds at first like a fun hang - two women, teenage Hana and the older Kimiko, open a dive bar in a Tokyo suburb in the 90s - is of course much darker and more complicated, with Kawakami unravelling the knotty twists of friendship and betrayals.

Out 19th March (Pan Macmillan)

Wimmy Road Boyz (Sufiyaan Salam)

Wimmy Road Boyz is set to be a high, high, high-energy debut from Sufiyaan Salam, a writer and former animator from Blackburn. Set over the course of one night in and around Manchester’s ‘Curry Mile’, we strap in with three twentysomething rude-boi mates named Immy, Khan and Haris looking for a wild night out. Salam was the winner of Merky Books’ New Writers Prize in 2024, winning a publishing contract with Stormzy’s imprint: this coming-of-age book is the result.

Out 28th March (Merky Books)

On The Calculation of Volume IV (Solvej Balle)

The 2025 English translation of Volume III of Solvej Balle’s On The Calculation of Volume series ended on quite the cliffhanger - how dare they - so we’re keen to snap up the next installment of this time loop literary phenomenon. Slight spoiler alert ahead: our scrappy little group, who have been experiencing the 18th November over and over again in III, has now expanded as Tara, Henry, Ralf and Olga encounter some more time loopers. There’s seven books in total and six have already been published in Danish so expect a steady drip-drip in translation from Faber.

Out 9th April (Faber & Faber)

Communion (Jon Doyle)

Port Talbot in South Wales holds a very particular place in Welsh cultural history and it’s here that Jon Doyle, who lives in the town, has set his first novel. His protagonist Mack O’Brien has returned to Port Talbot after a decade at a seminary and Communion sees him caught up in labour strikes against job cuts at the steelworks and contending with a woman from his past, who once swore him to secrecy over a confession.

Out 2nd April (Atlantic)

Son of Nobody (Yann Martel)

We still think about Life of Pi, a book that came out in 2001, from time to time. Strange, really. The Canadian author of that bestseller, Yann Martel, has a new one coming in April and it’s one for the sack-of-wine scholars among us. A classics prof is rooting through papyri in the Bodleian library at Oxford when he discovers a lost account of the Trojan War from a commoner named Psoa of Midea. We are seated.

Out 2nd April (Canongate)

The Palm House (Gwendoline Riley)

The Palm House is a title that’s popping right now in the fiction previews. Gwendoline Riley is a British novelist and short story writer, much admired for her prose style and precise observation, and as such she’s been a regular fixture on fiction prize shortlists for the past 20 years or so. Her next book is intriguing, eavesdropping on two old friends Laura and Edmund who meet up in old London pubs and are dealing with grief, precarity and a nightmare media boss.

Out 2nd April (Picador)

Transcription (Ben Lerner)

Another much-hyped title this year is the novella Transcription. It’s from the American author, essayist and critic Ben Lerner, who made his name with Leaving The Atocha Station and The Topeka School in the 2010s, and its concerns are memory, technology and the connections between friends and mentors. The inciting incident involves dropping a smartphone in a hotel sink before a big interview so expect a sideways look at what the phones are doing to us.

Out 9th April (Granta)

Yesteryear (Caro Claire Burke)

In a list full of genius premises, this might be our favourite. A social media Trad Wife named Natalie is busy posting her faux-idyllic farmhouse life with her cowboy husband when one day she wakes up to find herself a Trad Wife in, wait for it, 1805. This is Caro Claire Burke’s first book; she’s a writer who co-hosts a culture and politics podcast called Diabolical Lies. And yes, a Yesteryear movie with Anne Hathaway in the lead is already in development - in the meantime, this one will be blowing up BookTok come spring.

Out 9th April (4th Estate)

Welcome To The Chaoskampf (Jane Flett)

“The year that Florida fell into the sea, I killed a man and joined a cult and ran away to Mexico. I ate human flesh for the first time.” That’s a tease from the second book from Jane Flett, a queer Scottish author based out of Berlin. Look, we’ve got New Orleans, we’ve got climate disasters, we’ve got a boxer named Marcy and we’ve got a doomsday cult of “degenerate filmmakers”. What more could you possibly want.

Out 14th May (Doubleday)

John of John (Douglas Stuart)

Last year we had Muckle Flugga, this year John of John - in the micro genre of a father-and-son living on a remote Scottish island, we mean. The Glasgow-born Douglas Stuart, award-winning for Shuggie Bain, is back with a story set on the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides which, we can confirm, is rugged, beautiful and exquisitely short on phone signal. The son, John-Calum or Cal, ends up broke after art school, returns to Harris and to his Presbyterian sheep farmer father John.

Out 21st May (Picador)

Land (Maggie O’Farrell)

Maggie O’Farrell is the author du jour for book clubs both sides of the Atlantic, on account of Chloe Zhao’s film adaptation of her much-loved 2020 novel Hamnet, starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley. So her next book Land, arriving in June, is an Event. This is another historical novel, set in Ireland in 1865. Here, O’Farrell is using the Ordnance Survey project, which set out to map the whole of the country, as a way in to exploring the famines, social crises and tensions with the British military during the mid nineteenth century.

Out 2nd June (Knopf)

Sail Away Land (Ben Pester)

This is a treat. London-based writer Ben Pester, one of our discoveries of 2025 for his brilliant novel The Expansion Project, has a short story collection with Granta due this summer. As with his previous cerebrally surreal work, Pester is concerned with temporal and spatial confusion, ghosts and resurrections. The ‘Sail Away Land’ refers to a space we go to when we’re no longer alive, “sometimes only temporarily”.

Out 4th June (Granta)

Cool Machine (Colson Whitehead)

We love that between 2015 and 2020 New York novelist Colson Whitehead tackled big injustices against African Americans with style and grace, including the slave trade (in The Underground Railroad) and abuses in reform schools (in The Nickel Boys) winning two Pulitzer Prizes along the way. We also love that since then, Whitehead has turned his attention to a trilogy of incredibly entertaining Harlem-set crime novels, following fence and furniture salesman Ray Carney from the 1960s. Cool Machine is the last book in the series, set in the Reagan-era Harlem of the 80s.

Out 21st July (Doubleday)

The Newer World (Sebastian Barry)

Another literary sequel, Irish author Sebastian Barry’s The Newer World, which will be published this September, takes up the saga of the McNulty family - initially based on a fictionalised version of one of Barry’s ancestors - which have populated many of his previous books. Here we’re in northwest Tennessee in the mid nineteenth century and the focus is on the enslaved Tennyson Bouguereau, who works in the tobacco fields, his sister Rosalee and a lost chance at freedom.

Out 10th September (Faber)

Exit Party (Emily St John Mandel)

Emily St John Mandel’s excellent Station Eleven made us all think about what skills we’d have to offer in a post-pandemic apocalypse - memorising Shakespeare is key - so we’re stoked for her next slice of speculative near-future fiction. Exit Party opens in 2031, amid an American Civil War, with characters Ari and Gloria joining in celebrations to mark the declaration of a Republic of California and then jumps forward in time as Ari looks back, years later, from Paris. We can already taste that sweet, sweet futuro-melancholy.

Out 17th September (Picador)

The Rouse (China Miéville)

You might need to start your Goodreads training now for the next speculative epic from the Arthur C. Clarke and Hugo Award-winning China Miéville: it runs to 1,264 pages and he’s been working on it for the past twenty years (in and around publishing his ‘New Weird’ fiction and a book with Keanu Reeves). Details are few and far between, aside from the fact that the ambitious story spans decades and continents but the blurb is thus: ‘forced to investigate a devastating personal tragedy, an ordinary woman stumbles on dark conspiracies, and provokes the attention of uncanny forces’. *Rubs hands with glee*.

Out 17th September (Picador)

Want more great reads? Try...

• The best books of 2025
• 10 new non-fiction books to super-charge your winter reading
• 10 must-read winter fiction books to get you through the cold snap

Any attempt to predict which of the following 25 books will best reflect the year ahead is obviously foolish, so we won’t even try. Instead, we’ll just say that we trust the brains of their writers enough to include them here.

This list of Shortlist’s most anticipated non-fiction, biography and memoir coming in 2026 includes books about fictional space and real space, wild Yellowhammers and wild Pikachu, AI companions, supremacist survivalism and cosmic jazz.

Something for everyone then. Enjoy!

Love Machines (James Muldoon)

The AI companion subreddits are booming right now and the stories get wilder by the day. The ChatGPT ‘memory’ resets alone are brutal. Enter, this new book from James Muldoon, a researcher at the Oxford Internet Institute. He charts the rise of chatbot boyfriends, AI therapists, digital resurrections and the fakest of friends through interviews with users, developers and yes, the actual chatbots. AI agents are out here scrambling both minds and hearts already.

Out 15th January (Faber)

Rasputin (Antony Beevor)

Speaking of love machines, Russia’s greatest, Grigori Rasputin, gets the biography treatment from military historian Antony Beevor, author of definitive accounts of Stalingrad and the collapse of the Third Reich. Subtitled ‘And The Downfall of The Romanovs’, Beevor digs into the myths surrounding the mad-monk-mystic-peasant’s eventual relationship and power over Tsar Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra. Royals, debauchery, corruption, revolution? Can’t wait to get our hands on this one.

Out 12th March (Orion)

Escape From Capitalism (Clara E. Mattei)

Italian economist Clara E. Mattei is putting out her next anti-austerity ‘manifesto’ with Penguin and we love to see it. Here, she’s debunking the neutral, non-political, pseudo-scientific sheen that has been cast over economics, so as to make any criticism of methods and outcomes appear childish and uninformed. One of those ‘how the world really works’ books on inflation, growth and national budgets, Escape From Capitalism looks set to be an excellent tool to prep you for spicy dinner party debates.

Out 22nd January (Penguin)

Empire of Madness (Khameer Kidia)

From Khameer Kidia, a doctor and anthropologist at Harvard Medical School, comes this study of our individualised Western approach to mental health care. With over a decade of fieldwork behind him, Kidia argues that we need to rethink this focus on symptoms and start to look at the underlying causes of mental illness, including debt, housing, culture and colonialism, as well as ideas around healing from other parts of the world.

Out 3rd February (Random House)

Super Nintendo (Keza Macdonald)

We recently got beat by an eight year-old kid playing Mario Kart on the Switch 2 and it was a blast, which is to say: after 136 years, Nintendo still has the juice. The Guardian’s video games editor Keza Macdonald has written a love letter to Nintendo’s games, consoles, characters and creators. Super Nintendo features interviews with developers and gamers via deep dives into Zelda, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Pokémon and the rest. Oh and Charlie Brooker says it’s “a great book”, so.

Out 12th February (Guardian Books/ Faber)

Starchild (Maggie Aderin-Pocock)

The space scientist and The Sky At Night presenter Maggie Aderin-Pocock is fast approaching National Treasure Status so now’s a fine time for her memoir. Starchild will trace her life from watching stop-motion sci-fi animation The Clangers in the 70s, through to working on the James Webb and Gemini telescopes and how she got to where she is today. Expect plenty of moon talk and real talk throughout.

Out 19th February (BBC Books/ Penguin)

Cosmic Music (Andy Beta)

From White Rabbit Books and music journalist Andy Beta, we’re getting a comprehensive, full-length account - apparently the first!? - of the life of spiritual jazz musician Alice Coltrane. She composed, she sang, she played the piano, she played the harp, she was a Hindu leader, she was John Coltrane’s wife… If you don’t know Journey In Satchidananda, World Galaxy, Universal Consciousness and the rest, you’ve almost certainly heard music influenced by her discography. What a treat.

Out 19th March (White Rabbit Books)

Finding Albion (Zakia Sewell)

You might have heard DJ Zakia Sewell presenting on BBC 6 Music and NTS Radio. We say this only with affection - her upcoming book Finding Albion sounds very 6 Music. Finding Albion is all about the myths, legends, folk songs and folklore still alive on this wet and windy island. And Sewell has previous form as chronicler of these stories: she’s written for the wonderful Weird Walk zine and she made a four-part BBC Radio 4 doc on this very subject in 2020.

Out 19th March (Hodder Press)

The Beginning Comes After The End (Rebecca Solnit)

You know what would be really nice? To be able to just call Rebecca Solnit up whenever, to shoot the shit and also to check if we can still be hopeful about *gestures around* everything going on out there. Slightly impractical, sure, so it’s reassuring that Solnit is putting out both essays and books at a steady rate. This next edition looks to continue the themes of last year’s No Straight Road Takes You There, with an Antonio Gramschi quote to whet our appetites on the publisher’s website: “An old world is dying; a new world is being born; now is the time of monsters.” Gulp.

Out 26th March (Granta)

London Falling (Patrick Radden Keefe)

It’s a testament to the talents of Patrick Radden Keefe - one of the best investigative journalists on the planet, author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing - that even those of us who don’t usually favour true crime are anticipating London Falling. It’s the story of 19 year-old Zac Brettler who fell to his death from the balcony of a Thames-side luxury flat and how he had been posing as the son of a Russian oligarch, getting mixed up with underworld gangsters in the capital.

Out 7th April (Picador)

Things We Found In The Ground (Eleanor Bruce & Lucilla Gray)

Maybe it’s down to Mackenzie Crook’s Detectorists but metal detecting has long been one of our fave niche subcultures. So this account of how two Gen Z cousins in Lincolnshire reconnected over the thrill of buried treasure looks very charming. Ellie and Lucie post the artifacts they’ve uncovered - Roman coins, Bronze Age axes - on their joint Insta @romanfound. More of this wholesome energy going into the New Year, please.

Out 9th April (HarperNorth)

A People’s History of Football: A Graphic Chronicle (Mickaël Correia and JC Deveney)

This history of football ‘from below’ via Pluto Press was published a few years ago but this April it’s getting a graphic novel-style update from illustrator and comic book artist Lelio Bonaccorso, who has worked with Marvel and DC. A People’s History.. takes in the feudal origins of the beautiful game and focuses more on workers, activists and the impact of say, wartime Munitionettes on the evolution of football, than the billionaire owners of the top clubs.

Out 20th April (Pluto Press)

Thirst: The Twelve Drinks That Changed Me (John Robins)

Here’s a comedian’s memoir that, unlike most, looks to have a very clear reason for being. John Robins does a pretty damn funny podcast/ Radio 5 Live show with his mate Elis James and he’s popped up on Taskmaster and Mock The Week. He hasn’t had a drink since 2022 and this is the story of his complicated, but no doubt relatable, relationship to alcohol. Honestly, he had us with the book cover.

Out 7th May (Viking)

What The Bouncer Saw (George Bass)

This one caught our attention. It’s the story of a full-time university campus security guard, George Bass, who earns ‘just above the minimum wage’ working four days on, four days off. Bass is also a feature writer for the likes of the FT and The New York Times so we’re intrigued to see how he crafts his own account of professional safety, student shenanigans and making ends meet in a seemingly permanent cost-of-living crisis. Must-read potential.

Out 7th May (Corsair)

The Book of Birds (Jackie Morris & Robert Macfarlane)

True to Robert Macfarlane’s epiphanies about nature in last year’s wonderful Is A River Alive? this compendium of birds tries to answer the question not "what" but more, “who is that bird?”. The 49 species here are all illustrated by the beautiful watercolours of Jackie Morris, Macfarlane’s collaborator on The Lost Words, and are all currently endangered or in decline. A field guide of songs and spirits as much as nests and habits.

Out 7th May (Penguin)

The Beautiful Death of Ozzy Osbourne (Keith Kahn Harris)

What a title! It still seems a little unreal but on 5th July 2025, the original line-up of Black Sabbath played a live-streamed concert at Villa Park in Birmingham. It was titled Back To The Beginning, featured an all-star line-up of supporting acts and made £140 million for charity. Then a few weeks later on 22nd July, Ozzy Osbourne departed. We’re sure there will be many more books to come but this one, from metal writer Keith Kahn Harris, looks at the lessons that metal might have when it comes to love, politics and yes, death.

Out 4th June (HarperNorth)

The Next Fix (Kojo Karam)

Kojo Karam’s last book Uncommon Wealth was really fantastic and he’s covered the ‘War on Drugs’ for years in various forms so we’d expect the same of his upcoming book. Here he's reporting on the current state of the global drugs trade, the pharmaceuticals industry and the shifting boundaries between the two spheres in terms of the science, the politics and the money. Karam is a professor of law and political economy at Loughborough University and an informed, eloquent commentator on race, institutions and drug policy amongst other topics. A fascinating angle on newsworthy stories.

Out 23rd June (John Murray)

The Art of Star Wars: Andor (Phil Szostak)

Plenty has been written about just how timely Andor’s story feels and just how good the Tony Gilroy Disney+ show is compared to the rest of the Star Wars movie and TV output this past decade. This new ‘Art of’ title from Abrams Books goes behind-the-scenes of Andor’s two seasons with concept art, production design and interviews and images on the FX, creatures, ships, props and costumes. That coffee table does look a bit empty now.

Out 9th July (Abrams Books)

The Castle (Jon Ronson)

For a while Jon Ronson was so goddamn prolific you’d be forgiven for occasionally skipping a book or podcast series of his. The Castle, though, is not a skippable track. At first glance, it all sounds classic Ronson: a rich tycoon, weird parties in a castle in a forest, confused young men acting out, convicted murderers on his trail. The difference with this real-life story is that the writer sets out to uncover this particular mystery because his son Joel gets mixed up in it.

Out 20th August (Viking)

End Times Fascism (Naomi Klein & Astra Taylor)

Naomi Klein is another public intellectual we’d quite like a private hotline to bling. Again, like in the Solnit case, we must make do with her next book. After 2023’s delicious Doppelganger, this one is titled End Times Fascism (gulp) and is co-written with Canadian documentary maker, writer and activist Astra Taylor. The scope is wide: tech oligarchs, climate deniers, religious extremists, bunker-building and rocket ship-obsessed billionaires, all of which fall under Klein and Taylor’s label of “supremacist survivalism”. On the other side? No less than “the fight for the living world.” Should be a future classic.

Out 15th September (Allen Lane)

The Steps (Sylvester Stallone)

We’re suckers for a rags-to-riches celebrity memoir, so why not Rocky himself? Sylvester Stallone’s book is set to span his whole life, from a difficult childhood to his later Hollywood years, but with a particular focus on the years between when the actor arrived in NYC in 1969, through the writing and making of Rocky and culminating in the film winning Best Picture at the 1977 Oscars. Just love to root for the underdog.

Out 29th September (Seven Dials)

More (Gillian Anderson)

Not many details on this one at this stage but it sounds like Jean Milburn - we mean, Gillian Anderson - is returning with a follow-up to Want, her anthology of hundreds of anonymous sexual fantasies from women around the world. Anderson and her publishers Bloomsbury put out the call early last year for “even more daring” contributions to this second edition, though with quite a short submission window. So those Mulder and Scully fanfics will have to wait.

Out September (Bloomsbury)

Letters To Our Sons (Stephen Graham & Orly Klein)

We see you Stephen Graham, you are really doing the most. Not satisfied with changing the conversation and winning all the awards with Adolescence, the show he co-created with writer Jack Thorne, Graham is back later this year with a book compiled of letters of advice and wisdom written from fathers to sons. He’s co-editing Letters To Our Sons with psychologist Orly Klein and the contributions portal for this one is still live until 12th January. So any dads, step-dads and father figures, get in there.

Out 6th October (Bloomsbury)

Sleeping Beauties (David Byrne)

Another title that’s still quite mysterious for now. It’s a book from Talking Heads frontman and music legend David Byrne about art and ideas, though, so we’re locked in for wherever this goes. Why ‘sleeping beauties’? In his public talks, Byrne has shown an interest in ideas and innovations that have been overlooked or lost throughout history but which have been or could be ripe for revival or rediscovery. Let his Sword of Truth fly swift and sure.

Out October (Canongate)

Untitled Memoir (Angela Rayner)

Depending on how Angela Rayner’s potential comeback and political ambitions play out in 2026, this book could well turn into a literary bid for Prime Minister. The Guardian got the scoop in December that Rayner was working on a memoir, written with the help of a ghostwriter and with the MP planning to narrate the audiobook herself. In terms of the scope, it’s set to take in her childhood growing up in poverty in Stockport, her union and Labour Party career, her stint as Deputy PM and her resignation last year. Don’t count her out just yet.

Out second half of 2026 (Bodley Head)

Want more great reads? Try...

• The best books of 2025
• 10 new non-fiction books to super-charge your winter reading
• 10 must-read winter fiction books to get you through the cold snap

Plenty of new books which garner near-universal praise turn out to be annoyingly mediocre or downright trash.

Not so these ones.

Take our word on Shortlist’s 2025 picks for the best books of the year, across fiction, non-fiction, memoir and biography with sci-fi, music, comedy, history, nature and politics all covered. We've read them all so you don't have to — but you really should, as these are enlightening and entertaining in equal measure.

Get stuck in.

FICTION

Perfection (Vincenzo Latronico)

This is a brutally funny book, a future classic. Anna and Tom are a millennial couple, digital creatives living in Berlin, chasing a very specific dream: unique, ethical, cosmopolitan culture before it tips into ugly, identikit gentrification. In just 120 pages, Perfection somehow captures in words and vibes what we all see in images day in, day out: curated, dissociated lives, lived for the camera or the style or the anecdote. Foyles’ Fiction Book of the Year for good reason.

• Buy it here

The Wax Child (Olga Ravn)

Read this for the writing, read it for the witch trial hysteria, read it for the Nordic folklore, seriously just read it. Olga Ravn’s retelling of a series of real-life accusations and trials in 17th century Denmark is a suspenseful and mystery-filled masterpiece with confessions, betrayals and curses. Based on Ravn’s play HEX and translated beautifully here by Martin Aitken, The Wax Child is a rich, complex and heady brew.

• Buy it here

The Expansion Project (Ben Pester)

The best literary sci-fi gets at how societal and technological change makes us feel, without needing to painstakingly predict exactly how our gadgets and interfaces and meta-bodies will be transformed. That’s what Ben Pester’s The Expansion Project does so successfully. Tom Crowley works at the Capmeadow Business Park and loses his kid on ‘bring your daughter to work day’, thus triggering a series of strange encounters, disorienting journeys and existential crises. On the Debut Fiction shortlist for the Nero Book Awards and rightly so.

• Buy it here

Slags (Emma Jane Unsworth)

Slags is just so, so easy to recommend: it’s make-you-snort funny, while tenderly getting into some crunchy themes, features a campervan road trip that stirs up family and teenage memories (ugh, classic) and its thoroughly lived-in characters, sisters Sarah and Juliette, have real, slightly disappointing lives and in their youth, went to real schools on real buses. You can never have too many mouthy broads in literature. A big thumbs up.

• Buy it here

What We Can Know (Ian McEwan)

Ian McEwan’s latest is still making us sad, months after we read it. He’s that good. If you’re ready for your face to feel funny, it’s well worth it. What We Can Know moves between a near-future archipelago, 100 years from now, and a 2010s literary dinner party in the countryside. An academic tries to piece together the dynamics of a group of friends and family in order to find a lost poem that has become a symbol of climate discourse. As is McEwan’s way, the central mystery is quietly devastating. Deservedly on plenty of best-of-the-year lists.

• Buy it here

The Deserters (Mathias Enard)

Reading The Deserters will spoil other fiction for you. Mathias Enard, translated from French to English by Charlotte Mandell, tells two stories in parallel, one very specific, emotional and cerebral, the other more universal, immediate and visceral, both dealing with war, conflict and 20th century Europe. The precise, near-cinematic way he approaches the minutiae of a soldier moving through nature, with its overlooked beauties and unforeseen dangers, in particular is phenomenal.

• Buy it here

The Catch (Yrsa Daley-Ward)

This is probably the book which got us the most in terms of the mood it created this year. The Catch picked us up and enveloped us in a kind of David Lynch-esque headspace while reading. Twins Clara and Dempsey are both living in a magical realist London - one ultra successfully, one not so - when they encounter a doppelganger of their late mother. Dark, unpredictable and inventive, Yrsa Daley-Ward gets you right in the feels with her debut novel. A writer to watch.

• Buy it here

Muckle Flugga (Michael Pedersen)

We can never resist a good lighthouse story and this is a doozy. From Edinburgh Makar (Poet Laureate) Michael Pedersen, who clearly love-love-loves words, Muckle Flugga is a wild, weird tale of a father (The Father), a son (Ouse), the son’s imaginary friend/spirit (Robert Louis Stevenson) and an outsider (Firth) who comes to the remote Scottish island and upsets the rather delicate balance. A scene with a Russian, a monkey and some pumpkin punching is still making us laugh. Magic.

• Buy it here

NON-FICTION, MEMOIR & BIOGRAPHY

The Secret Painter (Joe Tucker)

This might be our favourite book of 2025. The “secret painter” of the title is screenwriter Joe Tucker’s uncle Eric Tucker, a seemingly regular bloke from Warrington who unloaded trucks, drank a lot of pints, went to the bookies, lived with his mother in a terraced house and… died leaving hundreds and hundreds of very accomplished, very alive paintings of the people, pubs and neighbourhoods which made up his life. Joe Tucker has a light touch when it comes to thinking about place, class, art and value when it comes to his uncle. This book is laugh-out-loud funny, sensitive to everyday victories and tragedies and a testament to never counting anyone out. Unbelievably moving.

• Buy it here

Is A River Alive? (Robert Macfarlane)

The golden rule is that the answer to questions in headlines is usually “no” but the excellent nature writer Robert Macfarlane makes a mighty compelling case for “yes” in Is A River Alive? The prose is elegant, searching and transportive, the characters he meets are unique and quietly heroic and the adventures, to the Ecuadorian cloud forests of Los Cedros and the Mutehekau Shipu river rapids in Canada, are thrilling and awe-inspiring. A modern masterpiece.

• Buy it here

Indignity (Lea Ypi)

We’ve seen quite a few semi-fictionalised memoirs and biographies in the past few years, and Lea Ypi’s account of tracing her grandmother’s life is one of the most fascinating. She constructs a life story from family tales, photographs, historical accounts and declassified archives of informants’ reports about Leman Ypi’s daily comings and goings in post-World War 2 Albania, turning to fiction to make sense of it all. After searching through material covering the fascists, communists and monarchists across these pivotal decades in the region, Ypi reflects on memory, grief, legacy and dignity, personally and philosophically.

• Buy it here

Night People (Mark Ronson)

Mark Ronson paints such a picture of hip hop DJing in 90s Manhattan that you can almost smell the sweat and the booze in those clubs. Night People hones in on the scenes, the characters and the spots that gave him his early music education and by the end of it, you’ll be nostalgic for certain lost to time side-rooms you’d never even heard of. Biggie, Q-Tip and Jay-Z all show up but it’s boy Ronson’s obsession with spinning records that really lights this music memoir up. No notes.

• Buy it here

How To Defeat The Far Right (Nick Lowles)

A very British, very contemporary take on this question, HOPE Not Hate’s founder Nick Lowles has given us a survey of the past 25 or so years of work fighting fascism, racism and xenophobia on the streets of places like Burnley, Oldham and Barking and Dagenham. Lowles has example after example of real-world campaigns, thorny challenges and hard-won insights into what works and what doesn’t. An absolute must-read.

• Buy it here

The Message (Ta-Nehisi Coates)

Ta-Nehisi Coates does a couple of remarkable things for a public intellectual to do in his latest book, The Message. He returns to his most known and consequential work, The Case For Reparations, and admits what he now believes he got wrong in his arguments. And he takes all the credits he has been awarded by the media, by his peers, by institutions for that work and his subsequent books and spends them almost entirely on a single issue: Palestine. The Message opens with Coates’ visit to Dakar, Senegal, in search of some imagined ancestral home, moves back to US book banning and the spectre of Confederate heroes in South Carolina before recounting his 10-day trip to Palestine and what he learned there about race, colonialism, violence and the many uses of stories.

• Buy it here

Baltic: The Future of Europe (Oliver Moody)

If the only time you encounter the Baltic states is the Eurovision Song Contest, you need to read this book. The Times’ Berlin bureau chief Oliver Moody put out this survey of the culture, history, politics and foreign policies of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as well as looking at Finland, Poland and the Baltic sea itself, this Spring. It’s comprehensive without being dull, incredibly well-sourced and includes multiple scenarios of how the next decade might play out for Europe if and when Putin expands his war.

• Buy it here

El Generalísimo (Giles Tremlett)

A difficult book to put down, this hefty Franco biography has a hell of a lot to tell us about the current moment we’re living in. From the weaponisation of religion to alliances between dangerous figures in different countries, the threads might have changed a bit since the mid 1930s but the playbook, depressingly, has not. Giles Tremlett follows the caudillo through his military career in Morocco, through to the Spanish Civil War and beyond to his long, hard reign. A great winter read.

• But it here

THE BEST OF THE REST

Want the low down on everything else we read this year? Here's our seasonal picks from throughout 2025:

Fiction:

• 10 new fiction books you need to read in 2025
• 10 must-read fiction books to see you through spring
• 10 new fiction books for summer to get you through the heatwave
• 10 seriously good new fiction books for Autumn reading
• 10 must-read winter fiction books to get you through the cold snap

Non-fiction:

• 10 new non-fiction books to soup-up your brain in 2025
• 10 new non-fiction books you need to read this Spring
• 10 new non-fiction books for school’s-out reading this summer
• 10 new non-fiction books to read for your Autumn reset
• 10 new non-fiction books to super-charge your winter reading

It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas, and for many people, that’s a feeling closely associated with ennui.

For anyone not totally enamoured with the traditional Christmas trappings, being force-fed this festive period’s saccharine form of joy can feel a bit like being compelled to eat a second Christmas dinner. It’s the same old diet of the same old chintzy films and TV shows, as tired as the jokes in a Christmas cracker.

The only way around it, short of cutting off all contact with the outside world and placing your phone in a Faraday box for a week, is to feed your head with something a little more nourishing.

These eight books all have Christmas at their core, in one way or another, but all go about their business in a slightly different way. Some are dark twisted tales or murder mysteries. Others deal with dysfunctional families for a more authentic Christmas experience. Still others are just as rosy-cheeked as the usual Christmas fare, but attempt to tell their stories from a fresh angle.

Whatever your tastes, if you’re seeking something fresh to read this Christmas, you’ll probably find something to enjoy in the following list.

• 10 new non-fiction books to super-charge your winter reading

We’re close to the end of the pre-Christmas work crunch. Close to hours and hours of unfettered, unstructured time. For reading? Right? Once you’ve finished eating and boozing and being merry and bright, that is.

If you feel like getting extra-curricular with your time off, these ten smart reads across music, film, tech, politics and history will expand your mind, reinvigorate your attention span and fill you up with ideas to take with you into 2026.

It's your antidote to festive lethargy and the brain rot of holiday social media scrolling.

1. How to Live an Artful Life (Katy Hessel)

A gorgeous book, structured around the days and months of the year. It comes from Katy Hessel, she of The Story of Art Without Men. Each date gets a page here with a short, snappy instruction, a quote from an artist, some thoughts and prompts from Hessel, and then a two or three line artist bio.

The artists are both living and dead, some of whom Hessel has interviewed directly for one of her projects, or else those she has sought out via previous interviews, diaries and letters. Nan Goldin, Vanessa Bell, Hilton Als, Louise Bourgeois... If you like Maria Popova’s Brain Pickings blog (now The Marginalian), you’ll like this.

With some reproduced artworks for inspiration and some pages encouraging you to scrawl a few thoughts down, this isn’t a workbook exactly, more something to dip into and mull over for the rest of the day. The months are keyed into specific themes - memory for November, joy in December, "how to start" in January - which makes the book feel more of a journey than a random assortment of wisdom. Get the index tabs ready.

Out now

2. El Generalisimo (Giles Tremlett)

Giles Tremlett’s unputdownable biography of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco is a fascinating portrait of a man of contradictions. Brutal, cautious, politically mercurial for most of his ascent, hell-bent on absolute power. We see how the military man who eventually came to view himself as a crusading saviour of Spain, answering only to God and history, grew up in the shadow of the ‘disaster’ of losing Cuba in 1898 and was shaped by the Two Spains present in his family home.

The telling of the Spanish Civil War here is focused on Franco himself: his decisions, his indecisions, how he later spun his actions. Franco didn’t arrive in Morocco until after the Army of Africa uprising, which began the coup against the Republic. His political ideologies continued to shift until deep into the War and he took bold gambles such as choosing Toledo over taking Madrid.

The stories surrounding both the brutality of his regime from the outset and the relationships with Mussolini and Hitler from as early as 1936 are frequently jaw-dropping. Tremlett continues his meticulous study of the dictator, and his key allies, through World War II, Franco’s long reign through to his death in 1975.

Out now

3. The Uncool (Cameron Crowe)

The Uncool gives you everything you could possibly want from a Cameron Crowe memoir. The one-time teen Rolling Stone writer and director of cult classics like Almost Famous gives us ‘happy/sad’ family memories; a sense of limitless teenage obsession; sketches of underground music mags and the weirdos who run them and yes, lots and lots of hanging out with rock stars in the middle of the whole Riot House scene through the 60s, 70s and beyond.

It’s Led Zeppelin, it’s Bowie, it’s Brian Wilson, it’s a cabinet of unpublished Lester Bangs record reviews. And it’s taping the Allman Brothers Band off the radio on New Year’s Eve with his dad, his mother’s philosophical aphorisms, seeing Tiny Dancer live with his sister Cindy in San Diego. “It’s all happening.”

This is a book to treasure, full of rock and romance and what it was like to be there. (Once you’ve read this, if you’re looking for another dose of that Cameron Crowe magic, do seek out his one-season-only TV show Roadies from 2016. You won’t regret it. The soundtrack alone!)

Out now

4. Auto Biography (Mat Watson)

An A-Z of cars from YouTuber Mat Watson, whose carwow channel has over 10 million subscribers. Auto Biography is a neat gift for a petrolhead. Written in a chatty, silly tone, Watson’s love for all the tiny details of driving fast cars, cheap cars, small cars, any kind of cars really, comes across in his top tens, his pop culture references and his honesty about press trip mishaps, relationships with brands and general thoughts on the industry.

With potted histories of car makers (Tesla, BYD, Rolls Royce..) and funny asides into automotive history — especially all the vintage Enzo Ferrari and Ettore Bugatti quips and shenanigans — Watson also shares insights into his YouTube stunts, like his drag race of Bentleys from different generations. He’s passionate about everything from the old canary yellow Ford Fiesta Mk1 (nicknamed ‘the Banana’) he drove around Walsall as a teen to all the hypercars he poses next to in photos. Oh, and TIL that when kids draw cars they always make them ‘Rosso Corsa’ red.

Out now

5. Hunger Inc. (Kayleigh Garthwaite)

Kayleigh Garthwaite’s Hunger Inc. sees the writer and organiser visit 90 organisations across six countries to report on "building solidarity beyond the food bank." Garthwaite’s message is nuanced but straightforward: greenwashed, corporate-sponsored food banks should not exist. We need to address the root causes of hunger and poverty. Not doing so is leading to the return of Victorian-style malnutrition in rich-but-unequal countries like the UK, while we can still honour the work of volunteers who help people to eat in the short term via charitable food aid schemes.

It features conversations with Toronto’s Nourish East End, the BEES Co-op in Belgium, West Virginia’s Voices of Hunger and campaigners working on ‘Right To Food’ towns and cities in the UK. Garthwaite offers clear calls to action around pivoting to cash-first schemes, exploring UBI, expanding universal free school meals, rights-based legislation and addressing housing and job security.

Compassionate, clear-eyed and full of practical solutions - from Scotland’s plans for "public diners" to community-run fridges in San Francisco - Garthwaite shows it’s possible to change course.

Out 20th December

6. Lynchian (John Higgs)

This slim 100-odd page volume was published pretty damn quickly by Orion Books following David Lynch's death in January. It serves as an excellent intro or refresher to the dreamworlds of the director, and borrows from Lynch’s books, interviews, his doc The Art Life and longer biographies.

John Higgs thoughtfully considers the auteur through a series of lenses: childhood suburbia, transcendental meditation, painting and fine art, the individual vs society, even his addictions to coffee, sugar and cigarettes.

The quotes, the anecdotes and the lists of projects he could never get made will all leave you wanting to immediately watch or re-watch his films and, of course, Twin Peaks. Higgs is especially brilliant in the closing chapters, arguing nobody else can successfully mimic Lynch’s style because it’s about the process, not just the iconic images, and about the state of mind he allows to come forth in his audience. Bob’s Big Boy forever.

Out now

7. Incel (Katherine Denkinson)

This is the book to read if you want a deep dive into how incel culture, niche social media, mass shooters and figures like Andrew Tate have all been flattened into one single "manosphere" by irresponsible tabloid news. Katherine Denkinson, who has both reported on these phenomena and worked in mental health herself, is precisely the right person to pull apart these threads. She explains the links between them and situates the misogyny, the cries for help, the slang and the threats into a comprehensive analysis.

Denkinson waded through the internet to reach and talk to those who identify as incels, members of online subcultures who are being infiltrated by far-right, misogynistic messaging. And people who are trying to provide positive, offline role models for teen boys, like Progressive Masculinity.

This will be an illuminating read for parents in particular. It brings nuanced looks at autism, gender and empathy and fantasy gaming communities, not to mention a whole host of new acronyms and site names to keep tabs on. You’ve heard of 4chan but how about Soyjack, Gab, Terrorgram, groyping and Kiwi Farms? Food for thought on digital diets and beyond.

Out now

8. Mother of Capital (Matthew Costa)

Australian political economist Matthew Costa’s book Mother of Capital is a survey of “this shitty rent business” over eight centuries. It focuses on England but covers its global implications, both then and now. An engaging mix of theory and history, Costa uncovers a lost tradition of critiques of rent (in the broader economic sense, not just what you pay for your one-bed flat every month) from theological arguments by dissident priests to "the Norman Yoke" to the 17th century Levellers, Diggers and beyond. (Reading some of the Digger intellectuals is equal parts exhilarating and depressing…)

Costa expertly argues rent gave birth to capital as he traces the transformation from tributary - as in tributes paid by peasants to lords, the Church and the Crown - to capitalist rent relations between the classes.

He traces the impact of post-Black-Death competition between tenant farmers and lords’ tenures, the creation of a new yeoman leaseholder and wage labourer classes and the enclosures of common lands for specialised, profit-motivated farming. As for the future, he explores what this lens can offer to debates around the so-called death of capitalism and the rise of "techno-feudalism" happening today. Brilliant.

Out 20th December

9. The Curious Case of Mike Lynch (Katie Prescott)

A twisty-turny corporate thriller, The Curious Case of Mike Lynch charts the rise, fall and tragic death of British tech CEO Mike Lynch. Written by The Times technology business editor Katie Prescott, the story opens with Lynch growing up in Essex, an early interest in Bayesian probabilities and his first few computing businesses in and around Cambridge.

Then, how he built Autonomy, sold to HP in 2011 for £6.7 billion and became embroiled in fraud trials that continued essentially for the rest of his life. The story behind the story has been painstakingly stitched together from over 100 interviews with former colleagues, investors, lawyers and executives and years' worth of recordings and documents. It’s a real ride.

Lynch was a huge personality. He invested in companies like Darktrace and Luminance, and there are plenty of juicy details on his relationships with entrepreneurs, the City, Wall Street and the UK and US establishments. But it’s the central scandal, the cast of main characters and the surprise of Lynch’s acquittal in 2024, that propel the book forward.

Why did HP reportedly take just 18 days to look into Autonomy’s books? How much was it really worth? And - back to probability - what are the chances of both Lynch and his former VP of Finance Stephen Chamberlain being killed in two different accidents, in two different countries, on the same weekend? Stranger than fiction.

Out now

10. The End (Joel Wainwright)

In December 1860, Karl Marx wrote to Friedrich Engels that Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, published the year before, is “the book which contains the natural-historical foundation of our outlook”.

Ohio State University professor Joel Wainwright argues Marx was influenced in his thinking Darwin's landmark work, specifically on the ideas in his Capital volume 1.

Wainwright takes us through Marx’s ideas before and after he read Darwin, focusing on competition, material exchange, adaptation, technology and surplus population. He adds contextual evidence about how, where, when and with whom these thinkers were operating, in the 1860s in particular.

Later, Wainwright looks at what reading these two colossal writers together can tell us about how we got here and how we can face climate breakdown, whether that’s the day-to-day business of strikes and boycotts or ideas such as degrowth and new economic networks. Absorbing stuff.

Out now

For someone who had a worryingly close shave last year, Queen guitarist Sir Brian May shows little sign of slowing down.

From gracing the stage with backflipping pop star Benson Boone at Coachella and the O2, to lending his regal lead guitar playing to a recent single by retro rockers The Struts, May’s busy schedule isn’t filled with the sort of activities you’d expect from someone who suffered a stroke last summer — one severe enough to leave him temporarily unable to use his left arm.

“I’m doing pretty good right now, but it did slow me down for a while, I have to confess,” May concedes, as he details some of the lifestyle changes he has since adopted.

“I still work ridiculous hours, but I sleep more now. I don’t know if it’s a post-Covid thing, but I just have these times where I have to switch off — like a machine that’s run out of battery.”

May formed Queen in 1970 alongside legendary frontman Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor, with bassist John Deacon joining a year later. The four-piece went on to become one of the biggest-selling acts of all time, thanks to stadium anthems like “We Will Rock You” and “We Are the Champions”.

Despite Mercury’s death in 1991, Queen’s music has endured in a way many of their contemporaries haven’t. Recently named the most played rock act of the 21st century on UK radio and TV — ahead of the likes of U2 and Oasis — it’s a feat that can’t be fully explained by the success of 2018’s Oscar-winning biopic Bohemian Rhapsody.

Hot space

That enduring legacy has also allowed May to continue exploring new creative avenues of his own. For his latest project, the 78-year-old has put his iconic Red Special guitar to one side and combined two of his earliest loves: space and the world of 3D photography.

We caught up with Brian at the launch of his new book Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3D at the Museum of Brands in Notting Hill. Years in the making, it’s a coffee-table tome created by May alongside astronomer Professor Derek Ward-Thompson, exploring the universe through mesmerising stereoscopic renderings of galaxies previously only seen as flat ‘mono’ images.

May famously dropped out of the astrophysics PhD he was studying at Imperial College in the early ’70s in order to gig with an early version of Queen, eventually completing his doctorate decades later.

His interest in 3D imagery stems even further back. “I used to enjoy having Weetabix as a kid for breakfast, and when you opened the packet in those days, you always got a toy or something really cool,” he explains.

“I once got this card with two images of a hippopotamus with its mouth open and a 3D viewer, and it felt like I could kind of disappear down his throat.

“I just couldn't believe the reality of it. I felt like I actually touched this animal, and I've been hooked ever since. Basically, you’re using your two eyes for the purpose for which they were made.”

He has since gone on to found his own London Stereoscopic Company, whose publishing arm has released several books — including a stereo picture-led retrospective of Queen’s career — brought to life using Owl viewing glasses that he personally designed.

"Pushing the boundaries further than they’ve ever been pushed"

This new effort seems particularly special to the guitarist. Both accessible and beguiling, he hopes the book will be an entry point for people curious about what may lie beyond our own planet.

Key to bringing the cosmos alive in the book are the incredible 3D images created by Finnish astro-photographer J-P Metsavainio, whose mosaic of the Northern Milky Way was created over twelve years and required 1,500 hours of exposure.

“It’s pushing the boundaries further than they’ve ever been pushed by anyone. With everyday objects — like a pen or something — you can make a 3D picture very easily, but it gets harder as you get further away from your object.

“J-P has a technique where he applies data to that image to create the parallax differences you would otherwise only get if you were standing with your eyes thousands of light years apart. It’s incredible.”

Good company

While May has lived to tell the tale after his health crisis, 2025 has been a year where several musical titans have sadly fallen — none more seismic for the rock world than the death of Ozzy Osbourne back in July, just weeks after the Prince of Darkness fronted Black Sabbath one final time at the huge Back to the Beginning concert.

May was in attendance in support of his old pal and fellow guitar slinger Tony Iommi, and admits the event brought bittersweet memories flooding back of the similarly star-studded Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley, which took place following his bandmate’s death over three decades ago.

“I was just very happy to be there,” Brian explains. “Tony is a very, very dear friend of mine and has been for so many years, so I saw some of it through his eyes, I suppose, and I felt like I needed to be there.

“I enjoyed it all, I must say. And it was wonderful to see Ozzy rise to that occasion and make it. It was clearly an amazingly emotional experience for him and for the audience.

“I think a lot of people were quite critical of Sharon for kind of pushing him to do it. But in my opinion she was right, ’cause that’s the way he would have wanted to go.

“I had a little chat with him immediately after the show, and it was clear he had not an ounce of energy left in him. He had given everything to that performance.”

While a steady stream of anecdotes about Ozzy’s rock ’n’ roll bat-biting hijinks emerged following his passing, Brian’s abiding memory of the singer is an altogether more wholesome one.

“I’ll tell you a strange thing. For some reason — this is odd — but every time my first wife and I had a baby on the way, we were with Ozzy, and I don’t know why that happened. Each time, he put a hand near my wife’s tummy and said, ‘It’s gonna be a boy,’ or ‘It’s gonna be a girl,’ and every time he was right!

“So, what can I tell you? Maybe Ozzy had some kind of sixth sense. It was very memorable, and I often think about it.”

Knighting the next generation of rock

One of the standout performers at Sabbath’s swansong was Yungblud, whose show-stealing rendition of Ozzy’s signature tune “Changes” led many to compare his stage presence to that of Mercury.

May has been a long-term admirer and supporter of the punk pop star and reveals plans had been afoot for him to perform with Yungblud during the Sabbath gig.

“It didn’t work out because of his schedules, and it’s fine. I didn’t need to push myself for anything, but I would like to have been up there, I guess, for Ozzy and Tony. But sometimes these things are meant to be and sometimes not.”

His enthusiasm for Yungblud isn’t shared by another of his protégés, The Darkness, with frontman Justin Hawkins and his guitarist brother Dan becoming embroiled in an online feud with the Doncaster singer-songwriter after accusing him of being inauthentic.

“Obviously, I love The Darkness — Justin and Dan I both love,” May explains diplomatically. “But to me, I would go so far as to say that Yungblud is the future of rock and roll, just because he has that quality that you can’t learn.

“You can’t go to rock star school to become Yungblud — it has to be in you. He’s got a great voice, incredible passion, and wonderful connection with the audience — he kills! I think he’s amazing.”

Rumours persist of new Queen music being on the way featuring Adam Lambert on vocals for the first time, with Taylor recently revealing they have been in the studio recording with the former American Idol runner-up. May is keeping shtum on that front, but his familiar lead guitar tone will be gracing the airwaves this holiday period on a new Christmas song.

No stranger to Yuletide playlists thanks to Queen’s ’80s hit “Thank God It’s Christmas”, May is hoping for another assault on the festive charts with “Praise Your Name”, a gospel-tinged single recorded with long-time collaborator Talia Dean that features a trademark May solo.

Speaking of the track, which he also helped produce, May says, “We’ve been secretly working on this since before last Christmas — it’s been worth the wait,” adding, “Watch this space — there’s much more to come.”

Islands in Infinity: Galaxies 3-D, published by the London Stereoscopic Company, is available now from here.

Praise Your Name by Talia featuring Brian May is available to download here.

• The best rock albums of all time, ranked

Book lovers, your season is here — is there any better time of the year than winter to just say 'no!' to the outside world, grab a new read and retreat under the covers for a cover-to-cover reading binge? Whether you're on the hunt for Christmas wishlist ideas, or just need an infusion of the fantastical to see the year out, we've got you covered.

For your winter reading, allow us to present titles from big hitters like Thomas Pynchon, Salman Rushdie and Olivia Laing, some superb homegrown talent including Claire-Louise Bennett, Sam Hughes (AKA qntm) and Cynan Jones, plus unmissable picks from a quartet of highly original Danish and American writers.

And when it comes to genres, there’s something for everyone: clever dystopian sci-fi, a wild detective story, witch trials reimagined and a romp around the scenester parties of New York.

The Eleventh Hour (Salman Rushdie)

Following 2024’s Knife, Rushdie’s meditations on the infamous public attack on him and its aftermath, we get five short stories, all concerned in one way or another with death. This is the author’s ‘late’ period and he knows it: in fact one of the stories here, about an honorary professor named S.M. Arthur, who ends up haunting his old college buildings, is named just that. Whimsical and reflective in equal measure, this is a satisfying addition to the shelf if you’re a long time reader of Rushdie’s work. Here, he’s preoccupied with legacy, dialogue, censorship and, at times, still, aiming for the immortality of fables.

The Musician of Kahini muses on Pather Panchali, takes swipes at the billionaire class and infuses supernatural music into a tale of gurus, cults and excess. Oklahoma is a slippery, literary look at disappearances, “unfinished men” and unfinished endings, inspired by Kafka. The Man In The Piazza is a mythic account of an everyday “judge with the authority of Solomon” competing with a personification of “our language” itself, in which arguing is temporarily outlawed. But it’s In The South, the opener, that really hits. We start comical. Two elderly men live next door to each other, bumbling about, griping, generally annoying each other. And then when the “puff of air” arrives, it becomes suddenly, indescribably moving, while also getting at something tricky - when personal tragedy collides with something much, much bigger. Gorgeous.

• Out now / Buy it here

Shadow Ticket (Thomas Pynchon)

No gentle reflections for Thomas Pynchon. His first novel in over a decade, and given that he’s 88, it could be his last major work. Shadow Ticket is a lively as hell caper, with rat-a-tat-tat banter that crackles and shimmers. This is what he does, like it or lump it and it’s perfect for Noirvember or the long, cold Christmas break. Hicks McTaggart is our hard-boiled Depression-era private detective, who is soon posted out of M’waukee into all sorts of trouble: think bowling alleys, pineapples (hand grenades), goons, stiffs, patsies, glamorous tomatoes (hot girls), jazz hepcats and a cheese heiress he’s supposed to track down, for starters. An heiress whose father is the ‘Al Capone of Cheese in Exile’.

Hicks ends up in various nightlife spots and fascist outposts around early 1930s Europe - Budapest, Fiume - with this cast of tricks, commies, jewel thieves, vaudeville mentalists, lounge lizards and Nazi Youth. The character names alone, honestly: I mean, Skeet, Stuffy, Vumvum and don’t forget Glow del Tripforth del Vasto, the autogyro pilot. As usual in one of Pynchon’s shaggy dog stories, you’ll do well to remember what Hicks is even doing there in the swirl. And then, there it is, just when you least expect it, a couple of paragraphs of perfect moral clarity amongst all the swagger and blather. That’s all a writer of this calibre needs. Yes, yes, yes.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Silver Book (Olivia Laing)

Olivia Laing, most famous for her non-fiction work including 2016’s The Lonely City, has turned once more to fiction to reimagine the production of two films by directors Federico Fellini and Pier Paolo Pasolini. Laing gets at these two icons of cinema via the maestro behind the maestros, the genius costume designer and art director Danilo Donati, over a specific, intense period of work between 1974 to 1975, and via her creation, a red-headed Englishman named Nicholas, who Dani picks up as his lover and apprentice in Venice.

This is a transportive, sensual story, full of ornately decorated villas and palazzos, as well as the inventive methods, cheapo materials and blood, sweat and tears that went into the props, sets and costumes on these films: “a cinema of paper and scissors” from the Cinecittà art department. You can get lost in these sections alone - there’s a decadent description of Danilo cooking an epic New Year’s feast which is to die for. Laing, though, dances elegantly between these worlds of sumptuous creativity and the world-weary melancholy that rests beneath them. As we reach the final act, the real life events which The Silver Book is based on begin to catch up with the film-makers and their collaborators, with a noirish plot involving missing film reels, blackmail and a brutal murder. Magnifico.

• Out now / Buy it here

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye (Claire-Louise Bennett)

Big Kiss, Bye-Bye is the latest from Claire-Louise Bennett, the author of Pond and Checkout 19, via Fitzcarraldo. And it’s a bit of a pearl. Bennett, who grew up working class in Wiltshire and moved to Galway, Ireland 20-odd years ago, takes an unnamed woman and pressures her from every angle, as she evaluates and re-evaluates her relationships, past and present from a rural hidey-hole.

There are some quite breath-taking, virtuosic sections here, that make you want to note down the quotes as you go, particularly when our narrator spirals out over a letter from an old English teacher. As the woman tries to pin words onto uncategorisable dynamics, Bennett squeezes out subtleties from flower deliveries, gossipy swims, cosy fire-building and something as nonchalant as resting a hand on a white tablecloth. The insights are pretty devastating in their pin-point accuracy too: people aren’t comforting you for you, but to smooth things over for them, for one. Masterful.

• Out now / Buy it here

Flat Earth (Anika Jade Levy)

Wait, though, this is funny... ? And depressing? Our narrator Avery, in the zippy, trippy Flat Earth, is young, dumb and not afraid to dish out zingy one-liners about men, women and Manhattan. Oh, and she hates Mary Gaitskill, so don’t even think about the comparison. Avery flits between sceney parties, pretentious art openings staffed by ‘gallerinas’ and poetry readings in decrepit rent-controlled mansions. She’s generally making a tit out of herself, kiki-ing with all sorts, trying to get her dates to pay for everything and not really writing her “book of cultural reports” for grad school as she is supposed to be doing. Meanwhile, her best friend is making a celebrated documentary about conspiracy theorists, getting married and just all-round succeeding at life.

The reports, scattered throughout the narrative of Flat Earth, are some of the wittiest, most unhinged parts of the book: we learn early on that NYC has run out of Adderall and the effects are... not good.

Taking in beauty, ageing and creative competition alongside dating apps, male fertility, precarious housing and the climate, Anika Jade Levy’s debut novel puts an ultra-cynical spin on the long lineage of the hot-mess.

• Out now / Buy it here

Pulse (Cynan Jones)

Welsh writer Cynan Jones’ book of six short stories feels like a classical collection if ever there was one: thematically linked, stylistically minimalist and the title story, about a family whose house is in danger from trees downing a power line, was first published in The New Yorker. These tales of various unnamed men taking on the elements and both wild and farmed animals are not for the faint-hearted or squeamish - Cow in particular is a tough read - as this is very much not the pretty-pretty countryside that tourists visit. This is the real, everyday countryside where nature is dangerous and hard, unavoidable and untameable.

Digging in and around vulnerability and masculinity throughout, Jones’ grammar and styling slow you right down as you read, pulling you under and fixing you in place, sometimes uncomfortably so. Peregrine, the solid, short opener, sets the tone with quiet, practical action, paired with the protagonist’s secrecy and haunting regrets and a moment of sheer terror; White Squares, concerned with a father and son, is short but poignant - just perfect, in fact - and Stock is supremely measured with a hell of an ending.

• Out now / Buy it here

Bad Bad Girl (Gish Jen)

Gish Jen’s Bad Bad Girl is very much its own thing. A memoir-slash-novel-slash interview between the author and her late mother, Loo Shu-hsin, who repeatedly tells Jen she thinks too much, says too much and shouldn’t write anything. The author of nine novels, who has taught at Harvard and NYU Shanghai, Jen writes in the foreword that she intentionally avoided the subject matter of her mother until now. Heart-breaking, difficult-to-read but incredibly honest and compelling, the story begins in 1920s Shanghai, with the cruelty of Jen’s grand-mother towards the bright and ambitious Loo Shu-hsin.

Following both Jen’s mother and father’s families, we then move through the Japanese assault on Shanghai, the Communist Revolution and, more personally, the start of a new family in America - Gish Jen and her brothers and sister. The many cultural and familial differences between China and the West are investigated, in particular the “number one son” who studies and the eldest daughter who helps. The rhymes between generations are sometimes blunt, clear and unchanging and at other times, twisted and complicated.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Wax Child (Olga Ravn)

I’ve never read anything quite like The Wax Child. From Olga Ravn, the Danish poet and novelist who broke out with her 2021 book The Employees, this is a fictional retelling of real life 17th century witch trials which magics together historical records, Nordic folklore and old spells and curses based on grimoires and black books.

Yes, you get the gossip, the who told who, the who saw what, the confessions and the hysteria you’d expect from any version of this kind of story. You also get a deftly drawn and exquisitely sad contrast between the moments when the women are talking together, supporting one another, and those in which the men are discussing the women’s fates. You might well come away wishing to start again as a ‘gill woman’ or ‘herring queen’, carding wool and hanging out with a group of witchy pals.

And oh the language, the poetic, propulsive language, you can sink into its rhythms like fingernails pushed into wax. It’s a maximalist dream-scape-nightmare-scape where the very identity of the narrator complicates and confuses the suspense and mystery surrounding the accusations. Spooky season might be over but this is a must-read.

• Out now / Buy it here

There Is No Antimemetics Division (qntm)

If There Is No Antimemetics Division sounds like a really, really good SCP Foundation story, that’s because it was. This clever bit of sci-fi from qntm, the online handle of writer and software developer Sam Hughes, was serialised on the collaborative writing site from 2015 to 2020. And this is one big, glorious mind-fuck with high-octane set-piece after high-octane set-piece as Marie Quinn and her co-workers at the Organisation encounter, fight and contain Unknowns i.e. gnarly, gross, can’t-be-explained-rationally monsters, some of which like to eat the operatives’ memories in order to erase the fact they exist.

Incredibly imaginative and not afraid to make some bold storytelling choices, qntm gives us not just cold, sterile, mysterious buildings, with secure containment units and research labs but also oozing, glooping, disgusting germs and skulls and spiders and slug-things. It’s as biological as it is abstract, with its memeplexes, counter-memes and mnestic memory drugs - it’s always someone’s “first day” - as well as some genuinely memorable nasties. I’d love to see Christopher Nolan or Jordan Peele get their hands on this dysto-horror.

• Out now / Buy it here

On The Calculation of Volume III (Solvej Balle)

This series of books from Danish writer Solvej Balle has become something of an instant classic in recent years, as it’s been translated into English. With its first volume on the 2025 International Booker Prize shortlist, and translated here by Sophia Hersi Smith and Jennifer Russell, this is the third edition of seven in total, with six already published in Denmark. At the start of book three, we find bookseller Tara Selter, having relived the eighteenth of November for 1143 days (or is it 1144) when she meets Henry Dale, a fellow traveller stuck in the same time loop.

Balle’s eerily placid yet musical writing weaves in and out of Tara’s interior disassociations and maelstroms as she rediscovers being remembered and challenged. I don’t want to say much more about the plot, which is not really the point, as Balle uses her “container of time” to prod around into how her characters spend their hours and days, how much of it really carries over and what our responsibilities to each other are. Whether it’s Tara losing track of her count and becoming consumed by quotidian urban sounds, or Henry’s theory of Homo abruptus and his trips away from the city, there’s real pain beneath the detached mantras of the time-looped.

Out now / Buy it here

From The Mandalorian and Grogu movie to Ryan Gosling's Starfighter movie, there's a whole lot of Star Wars on the horizon — so what better time than now to look back and reflect on the best Star Wars books in the saga, the root of much of the inspiration for the latest generation of silver screen takes?

While there’s a wealth to choose from, we’ve done our best to whittle the list down to a select ten. Tricky, it was. Got a bad feeling that you will disagree with some of our choices, we do.

Honourable omissions include Michael A Stackpole’s X-Wing trilogy, Drew Karpyshyn’s Dark Bane novels, Claudia Gray’s Leia-centric Bloodlines, and the always readable Tales shorts (particularly Bounty Hunters). Regardless, here are the ten best stories from a galaxy far, far away…

10. The Rising Storm (Cavan Scott)

The High Republic era has largely been a success from a storytelling perspective, resisting the urge to have it be simply ‘What was Yoda doing 300 years ago’ (although he does appear), and instead using it as an opportunity to reveal the Jedi in their heyday, and with it an all-new cast. As tempting as it was to have Charles Soule’s series opener Light Of The Jedi in this list, it’s Cavan Scott’s The Rising Storm that gets our nod.

Very much the Empire Strikes Back of the series, before this, you could have been forgiven for not fully buying the Nihil as a credible threat to the Jedi. That all changes here, bringing in a level of chaos that turns the series into essential reading for any Star Wars fan, all the while adding new layers to characters like Avar Kriss and Elzar Mann. If Light Of The Jedi piqued your interest, then The Rising Storm made the series a must-read.

• Buy it here

9. From A Certain Point Of View: A New Hope (Various authors)

As a hook, it’s certainly a strong one: 40 stories, each retelling a small part of the story of A New Hope, only coming from the perspective of someone else in the scene. The authors included here appear to have been given free rein, and indeed, the tone varies wildly from the more straightforward (Gary Whitta’s opener, ‘Raymus’, has the ill-fated Captain Antilles filling the narrative gap between the end of Rogue One and the beginning of A New Hope) to the downright bizarre (Nnedi Okorafor’s ‘The Baptist’ finally gives the trash-compactor monster both a voice and a name).

While it’s fascinating on its own basis to see events at first hand that are only mentioned or observed from afar in the films (Madeleine Roux’s ‘Eclipse’ has Breha Organa planetside during the destruction of Alderaan, and Kieron Gillen’s ‘The Trigger’ puts comics favourite Doctor Aphra in the wrong place at the wrong time as the Imperials follow Leia’s bogus lead to Dantooine), the real attraction of this volume is the selling of Star Wars’ strengths: with such a real and lived-in universe, showing a new perspective reveals yet more layers to the saga.

• Buy it here

8. Dark Disciple (Christie Golden)

While the premature decision to can the Clone Wars TV series meant we never saw this storyline on TV (as originally intended), Christie Golden’s treatment of it makes it very much more than the next best thing. After one Count Dooku atrocity too many, a desperate Jedi Council tasks maverick knight Quinlan Vos with assassinating the Sith Lord, who brings along Dooku’s former acolyte Asajj Ventress for the ride.

Both Vos and Ventress are fan-favourite characters, and seeing the impact they have on each other is fascinating – one struggles to shrug off the darkness he has been plunged into, while the other reacts with confusion to the newfound light. While we would have liked to see this play out on the screen, the novel format allows for much greater exploration of their dynamic, propelling the story along to a fiery conclusion. The recent return of Ventress and the unconfirmed status of Vos (brief Kenobi mention aside) undercut the ending of this a bit, which is a shame, but that’s hardly the book’s fault.

• Buy it here

7. Traitor (Matthew Stover)

The New Jedi Order series was as true a game-changer for Star Wars as it was possible to be. Introducing a formidable enemy in the form of the Yuuzhan Vong, a race of religious eco-fanatics who existed outside the Force, they underlines their evil credentials by killing Chewbacca, before laying waste to all manner of classic Star Wars locations, most notably Coruscant.

Among a sea of worthy candidates, Traitor gets our pick for best book of the series. Focusing on the fate of Jacen Solo post-capture, his experiences with both his captors and the mysterious Vergere have ramifications for not just the war, and our understanding of the Force, but the direction of the books in general. Star Wars has always been more like cowboys in space than anything else, but this is the most truly science fiction it has been. And it’s all the better for it.

• Buy it here

6. Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader (James Luceno)

There have been some decent Vader-heavy offerings among the Disney canon novels (Paul S Kemp’s Lords of the Sith springs to mind), but the best glimpse into the fallen Jedi’s psyche remains James Luceno’s Dark Lord: The Rise of Darth Vader.The closer of an unofficial trilogy of sorts with Luceno’s Labyrinth of Evil and Matthew Stover’s Revenge Of The Sith adaptation, this is a Vader yet to truly shed his Anakin Skywalker identity. Taking place immediately after the prequel trilogy, Vader is tasked with beginning the hunt for Jedi survivors of Order 66, all the while struggling to reconcile himself with what he has become.

• Buy it here

5. Darth Plagueis (James Luceno)

Are there any other fictional universes that can generate so much momentum from a few lines of dialogue? Ever since Palpatine regaled the story of Darth Plagueis the Wise, fans speculated. And here, they got their answer. It’s to James Luceno’s credit as a storyteller that this extremely long peek behind the curtain at the eponymous Sith Lord in no way lessens the character’s gravitas – nor that of Darth Sidious, with this story serving just as much as an origin tale for him as it does the tale of his master.

The sheer level of plate-spinning here is incredible – Luceno manages to keep the narrative going while showing the hand that Plagueis and Sidious had in all manner of events taking place in the Expanded Universe, knitting together sources as disparate as Dark Horse’s Star Wars: Republic comics, the Star Wars: Bounty Hunter videogame, and Luceno’s own Cloak Of Deception. Incredibly, knowledge of none of the above is necessary to enjoy this book - even without a degree in Wookieepedia, this is one series of revelations that doesn’t disappoint.

• Buy it here

4. Dark Apprentice (Kevin J Anderson)

I’ve tried to resist the temptation to always go with the opening book in a series. Luckily, Anderson’s writing style means you don’t lose much by starting on the second book of his Jedi Academy trilogy. Essentially, it’s wish fulfilment in a tin, pitching Luke Skywalker exactly where readers imagined him being in the closing credits of Return of the Jedi (and where, to date, the new canon has mostly left unrevealed): showing him in the midst of resurrecting the Jedi Order.

The narrative balances the best of Star Wars, flipping between Luke attempting to safeguard his new academy from the machinations of long-dead Sith Lord Exar Kun, and renegade Imperial warlord Admiral Daala running amok in the galaxy. All the while, Leia attempts to reconcile her leadership position in the New Republic with parenthood, and Han does… Han things. The series introduces a number of characters who become Expanded Universe mainstays, and for pure compulsive readability, there are few other Star Wars books to match it.

• Buy it here

3. Tarkin (James Luceno)

Post-Disney takeover, certain characters have seen a much greater focus than they originally had. While they haven’t always benefited from this closer scrutiny (we’re looking at you, Boba Fett), this Tarkin-centric novel gives the Grand Moff the due he has always deserved, and then some.

Focusing on his tough upbringing on the planet Eriadu (surely a contender for the most right-wing planet in the galaxy) and his rise up the ranks of the Republic and Empire, he very much stands up to the scrutiny. Ruthless in the extreme and extreme in his methods, Luceno makes it clear that Tarkin is just as much of a monster as Vader – the only difference is he has others to do his dirty work for him. The excellence of this book is in showing how his upbringing and environment – not to mention his reactions to the universe around him – turned him into the monster he becomes.

• Buy it here

2. Lost Stars (Claudia Gray)

Commencing immediately after Palpatine’s proclamation of the Galactic Empire, Lost Stars follows two young Imperial recruits (with more than a hint of chemistry between them) as they ascend the ranks of the galaxy’s new order. However, as their new employers’ atrocities become impossible to ignore, one of them defects to the Rebellion, prompting a star-crossed romance across enemy lines.

In one sense, this is Star Wars’ answer to Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, with the action taking place during pivotal events on planets like Hoth, Bespin and Jakku, and all manner of familiar faces from the films being encountered. It’s not the cameos that make it arguably the best of the canon Star Wars novels, however; as Andor is currently proving on Disney+, they’re no substitute for beautifully crafted storytelling. Seeing their interactions with the likes of Darth Vader, Tarkin and Han Solo is a nice touch, but the focus on the two main characters is never lost. We live in hope of a sequel one day.

• Buy it here

1. Heir to the Empire (Timothy Zahn)

The place where it all started, showing that there was an appetite for quality storytelling in a world after the Return of the Jedi. In Grand Admiral Thrawn, Timothy Zahn created an adversary that even a change in canon couldn’t kill – not to mention characters like Mara Jade, Joruus C’Baoth, Gilad Pellaeon and more.

But it was more than just new characters and a new storyline; for all intents and purposes, this was Episodes VII-IX – from a certain point of view, at least. For fans whose last experience of the saga had been the films, this scratched an itch and then some. If this and the rest of the trilogy hadn’t been as good as it was, the chances are we may not have had more books, so we really do owe Zahn a debt. The fact that he has returned for more excellence (the Specter Of The Past/Vision Of The Future two-parter reaches the same standard, as do Outbound Flight and his two Disney canonified Thrawn trilogies) is something we should be thankful for.

• Buy it here

• The best Star Wars movies: ranked in order of brilliance

Time to open up a fresh pack of exercise books and write your name in all your clothes. Summer’s over, kids, and we have your new curriculum.

This autumn’s non-fiction shelves are stocked full of music memoirs, alternative histories of Britain and, a little more seriously, guides to fighting against out-of-control AI and the far-right. And OK, fine, we’ll get the substitute teacher in and allow an afternoon of horror movies.

Night People (Mark Ronson)

Mark Ronson’s coming-of-age New York City memoir is incredibly fun. So much so that it’ll make you unbelievably jealous you weren’t there, crate-digging, kissing promoters’ asses and staring in awe at iconic club DJs yourself. Because yes, this is about the producer’s DJ days in the side rooms, lounges, raves and superclubs of 90’s downtown Manhattan and beyond.

Alongside peeks at the drugs and afterparties of it all, and perfect anecdotes about everyone from Biggie and Jay-Z to Q-Tip and Fatman Scoop, there’s also an obsessive’s descriptions of the equipment, the booths, the lighting, the ambience, the record fairs and crucially, how to get people to stay in the hip-hop side room of a major club without blasting through all your bangers too early.

Ronson’s also funny and honest about the ways he skipped the standard years practising in his bedroom and playing dive bars, as well as the fact of being a white boy playing mostly Black music. With a Questlove-esque love of the artform, there’s a QR code at the back of the book to the corresponding 20-hour playlist which really delivers as an accompaniment to Night People.

• Out now / Buy it here

How To Defeat The Far Right (Nick Lowles)

How was the BNP’s Nick Griffin defeated? What happens to a town in the years after race riots? And what can be done about the prospect of Nigel Farage in government? Nick Lowles, the founder of the anti-racism and anti-fascist group HOPE Not Hate is one of the best-placed people to answer these questions. This book serves as a survey of the last 25 years of lessons from the frontlines of election campaigns and community work in places like Bradford, Oldham and Barking and Dagenham. If you’re feeling despair at the rise of Reform, read this.

Lowles gets into the nitty gritty of going undercover, running offline petitions, publishing ‘tabloid newspapers’, finding local heroes, increasing civic pride and many more tactics in HOPE not Hate’s toolbox, including when to counter-protest and when not to. These are hard-won insights and Lowles isn’t afraid to detail where and when he has clashed with the Labour party and other organisations. One of the must read-iest of the must-reads on tackling the far right in the UK today.

• Out now / Buy it here

Surround Sound (Mark Kermode and Jenny Nelson)

Probably the only film critic in the UK that’s genuinely a household name, Mark Kermode has interviewed, hung out with and yes, played music for so many directors and composers over the years that this book of ‘the stories of movie music’, co-written with producer Jenny Nelson, is a treasure trove of quotes and anecdotes. Surround Sound intentionally doesn’t get too technical in terms of musical composition and jargon so it’s perfectly beginner and non-musician-friendly.

We do get a potted history of canonical 20th and 21st century composers, with the writers inserting lesser known female composers into their rightful spots in the timeline - soundtrack selections from the likes of Brazil, Eyes Wide Shut and Drive My Car, insider peeks into the process from Abbey Road studio engineers and, of course, a run through of some of the greatest collaborations, from Spielberg and Williams to Nolan and Zimmer, Miyazaki and Hisaishi. They cover so, so many titles and people, this is a perfect place to start if you want to discover new films, scores and soundtracks to seek out for yourself.

Want a sneak peek? Read Shortlist’s chat with Mark Kermode himself on a few underrated soundtracks.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Discovery of Britain (Graham Robb)

From the writer of 2007’s The Discovery of France, Graham Robb once again combines his geography-focused cycling trips and meticulous, contrary historical research in this take on Britain. If you’d like a linear kings and battles history go elsewhere as Robb is more interested in overlooked details, coincidences and accidents of history and digging up evidence that questions or subverts what we’ve all been taught to think about this country. The chapter on the pre-Romans Iron Age map is quite mind-blowing and the many details on various local accents, spellings, surnames and customs are wonderful.

Robb mines his personal life - the various places he grew up, was schooled and now lives - alongside his concept of travelling through time on his bike via roads, rivers, shires and hill forts. He has the superb ability of taking a single off-kilter subject (say, boarding schools and playing cricket) and widening it out to illuminate something much larger. And for those who like the classics, yes, he does touch on King Arthur, the Norman Conquest and the Spanish Armada. In his own way.

• Out 2nd October / Buy it here

Eviction: A Social History of Rent (Jessica Field)

I had never heard of ‘Cardboard City’, a West Yorkshire estate in Oulton, outside Leeds. But by the time I finished reading Jessica Field’s moving account of the residents who fought to keep their homes there, I felt like I’d visited Wordsworth Drive and Sugar Hill Close myself and had a cup of tea with them all. From Verso Books, this is a masterful mix of the personal, oral history of the estate where Field’s family lived for more than a decade and sharp analysis of the wider trends of rent and housing laws, the financial ruin of housing and tenants’ rights, and activism over the past 150 years.

Oulton was a National Coal Board estate that began its life as post-war, prefab housing for miners in the local pits. Field traces how the Coal Board actually beat Thatcher to it with the mass sell-off of these properties to exploitative private companies 50 years ago, weaving in wider impacts of evictions and neglect on communities, work, health and children. She links the 1915 Glasgow rent strikes to the recent New Era, Focus E15 and Save Our Homes LS26 campaigns, pointing out that 80% of rising market rates are rarely “Affordable Rent”. Field eloquently describes evictions for tenants as “holes punched through their lives at frequent but unpredictable intervals”. Well said.

• Out now / Buy it here

Horror’s New Wave (Blumhouse, Dave Schilling)

Remember when Steven Spielberg told Tom Cruise he was saving cinemas? We hope he said the same thing to iconic producer Jason Blum, otherwise known as the guy who finds, produces and supports unique, low-budget horror films, gets them proper theatrical studio releases and rakes in the cash for all concerned. This oral history of the last 15 years of Blumhouse is packed with Hollywood lore - Blum’s mobile office van, the fact he passed on The Blair Witch Project in the ‘90s - and picks out 19 films to focus on from big culture-defining movies like Paranormal Activity, M3GAN, Get Out and Five Nights At Freddy’s to smaller, pandemic-era releases, you may have missed, like The Invisible Man. (I have a soft spot for The Visit).

Together with behind-the-scenes photographs, character designs and storyboards we get interviews with directors including Jordan Peele, James Wan and M. Night Shyamalan and actors like Ethan Hawke, Jamie Lee Curtis and Alison Williams. From in-the-room-where-it-happens details on working with Jim Henson Creature Shop animatronics and snappy histories of killer robots and Universal monsters to candid conversations on the commercial aspects of film producing, this is a treasure trove of kill counts for horror fans.

• Out October 23rd / Buy it here

Equality Is A Struggle (Thomas Piketty)

Famous French economist Thomas Piketty has influenced everything from TV shows (Fleishman Is In Trouble) to party manifestos (Jeremy Corbyn). Here, he collects a selection of his regular, short essays for the newspaper Le Monde, covering the years 2021-2025, with a new, 40-odd page essay outlining his ideas on ‘ecological socialism’. (This functions as a good primer if you don’t know his work).

Yes, there are graphs and yes, there is a whole run of columns on French pensions - which are more interesting than you might first think. His arguments on all manner of topics including Trump, BRICs countries, a potted history of the House of Lords, Macron (who he does not like at all), tariffs (which he sees as an opportunity) and the environment add up to more than the sum of their parts. And his repetition of statistics on obscene wealth inequality, say, or the importance of investment into education in 20th century America really ground them into your memory. Piketty gives us fresh eyes with which to look at politics and economics in the UK, Europe and the US. Essential reading.

• Out now / Buy it here

Against The Machine (Paul Kingsnorth)

The title may sound like a run-of-the-mill anti AI screed, but Against The Machine is much wider, weirder and deeper than that. Based on Kingsnorth’s essays published on his Abbey of Misrule Substack, he draws on ideas from writers and thinkers such as Simone Weil, Oswald Spengler, Craig Calhoun, Iain McGilchrist and James C. Scott to build his own definition of “the Machine”, how we got here and how we can respond. The Machine is not just technology in the sense of addictive smartphones and terrifying AI, but also the idea of endless growth and progress, of Jeff Bezos types being rational and therefore right.

It’s unlikely you’ll agree with all of Kingsnorth’s representations and arguments in this book - especially when concepts such as ‘reactionary radicalism’ don’t map squarely onto ‘left’ and ‘right’ - but there’s lots of food for thought here about alienation, rootedness, the self, the past, religion and science. Like, if you’re trying to resist this all-encompassing “Machine” are you a cooked barbarian or a raw barbarian? In other words, are you inside the system or outside of it? One that wriggles around in your brain a while.

• Out now / Buy it here

Indignity (Lea Ypi)

Lea Ypi, if you haven’t heard of her already, is a philosophy professor at the LSE whose memoir Free: Coming of Age at the End of History was a must-read memoir back in 2021. Since then, she has patiently explained her views on capitalism, communism and her relationship to Albania to everyone from the FT to Cambridge colleges.

Now, with this ‘life reimagined’, Ypi blends recently unsealed secret state files with creative non-fiction to piece together a biography of her grandmother, Leman Ypi, tracing the evidence from the break-up of the Ottoman Empire through the geopolitics, intelligence campaigns and chaos of the Second World War and beyond. And the less I reveal here the better when it comes to the unique mysteries and questions surrounding this family and their associates. As the title suggests, Ypi is interested in exploring the idea of dignity as well as legacy, identity, responsibility and truth - or truths.

• Out now / Buy it here

Radical Abundance (Kai Heron, Keir Milburn, Bertie Russell)

You know those books which spend seven or eight chapters elegantly diagnosing a problem in our society and then add 10 pages on at the end with some solutions? This is precisely the opposite. Pluto Press’ Radical Abundance is from three writers who have real world experience in setting up new forms of institutions — they show their working and they cite their influences from around the world.

Most people have heard of public-private partnerships by now, but Heron, Milburn and Russell are interested in public-common partnerships (PCPs), which include community buy-in, and how they might function locally in urban development in North London, pharmaceutical production in France and via council farms in England’s agriculture sector. This is think tank-level stuff - there’s decision making diagrams! - but it’s all the more useful for it. And no relation to Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson’s Abundance, which does get a mention - that’s the liberal American version, this is the eco-socialist one.

• Out now / Buy it here

• 10 seriously good new fiction books for Autumn reading

New McEwan. New Tokarczuk. And a new fantasy from R.F Kuang. This autumn is shaping up quite nicely for true bookworms and performative males alike. Here’s our fiction edit of ten reads for your literary tastebuds to lick. One more to watch for: coming up in October is Thomas Pynchon’s first novel in 12 years, the Depression-era Shadow Ticket.

The Two Roberts (Damian Barr)

This is such a gorgeous novel, based on the real life stories of the Scottish artists Robert Colquhoun and Robert MacBryde who met and fell in love at the Glasgow School of Art in 1933. As Barr tells it, the two painters didn’t have family money or even a stable roof over their heads for much of their lives but found themselves for a brilliant moment in wartime London, with Francis Bacon, John Minton and Dylan Thomas in and around Muriel’s in Soho and the Fitzroy Tavern.

It’s the details that make this tragicomedy shine: the beautifully drawn leaving-home tales, the later hamming up of the Ayrshire accents, Bobby’s catty and flattering letters, the brilliant scenes at their Sunday Salons. The playful writing really sticks in your brain too: the school bullies who together look like the number 10, the art tutor standing ‘recklessly’ with his back to a statue of Hercules. And just as fascinating is digging into the Roberts’ artworks afterwards.

• Out now / Buy it here

What We Can Know (Ian McEwan)

One of autumn’s major releases, the new book from Ian McEwan is speculative and strange and suffused with such melancholy that it might make your cheeks feel funny by the end. It’s the 2120s, the UK is an archipelago of small islands and academic Tom Metcalfe is searching for a poem that the fictional poet Francis Blundy wrote for his wife Vivien in the 2010s.

As the poem is lost, it’s become a totem of climate change activists in the intervening decades, based on the accounts of a small group who heard it read aloud at the ‘Second Immortal Dinner’. The clash: Tom and his partner Rose’s students aren’t very interested in what was lost in our century, they want to talk about the present and the future instead. McEwan is masterly, measured and generous as he explores marriage, art, history and his speciality, how relationships can sour and alter after something irreversible occurs. What We Can Know keeps us guessing about its central mystery until the final pages. A quiet tour de force.

• Out now / Buy it here

Dwelling (Emily Hunt Kwivel)

Dwelling is the surreal take on the renting crisis you didn’t know you needed. American writer Emily Hunt Kwivel has brought together a cast of eccentric characters and eccentric animals into her bizarro, near-future world of house ‘add-ons’, mass New York City evictions, shoemakers and giant sleeping fish. Her hero in this warped fairy tale is 30-odd-year-old graphic designer Evie who ends up living in a giant cowboy boot - yes - in the fictional town of Gulluck, Texas. The combination of the genuinely dire circumstances Evie finds herself in with the deadpan humour and spicy nihilistic streak running through the book keeps you transfixed as we get stories of kids never leaving home, people with ‘laptop jobs’ learning trades and mental health care as a business, none of which are played straight. Funny, depressing, all at once.

• Out 22nd September

House of Day, House of Night (Olga Tokarczuk)

Time spent inside Olga Tokarczuk’s brain is such a trip. She’s the Polish Nobel Prize-winning author who’s not afraid to go on Dua Lipa’s book club and whose short story was the basis of the just-premiered Cold War-era film Winter of The Crow. The way Tokarczuk sees the world, the way she turns things inside out, sometimes literally, is so inventive and so endlessly curious, that books like this one imprint onto how you see just about everything.

Originally published in 1998, and here translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, House of Day.. tells the stories of a village in a valley in Lower Silesia, its history, seasons, flora, fauna and especially its inhabitants, both living and dead. It’s a constellation of folk tales, rumours, gossip, jokes and myths, taking in love, war, despair and everything in between. If you like a novel which labours over its characters’ preoccupations, you’ll love this, we are treated to exquisite passages on mushrooms, knives, saints, wigs, roofs and twins to name a few. Something very special.

• Out now / Buy it here

Katabasis (R.F Kuang)

Hell is a university campus in the chunky new bestseller from Babel and Yellowface author R.F Kuang. Cambridge PhD students Alice Law and Peter Murdoch head to the bad place to try to bring back their (nightmare) professor so that they can continue to progress in their Analytic Magick careers. Logical, right? The first half of this Dante-inspired journey is particularly unputdownable with plenty of chalk-drawn pentagrams, perpetual flasks, Liar Paradoxes and black cats. The pair come to encounter talkative Shades, tricksters, deities and a pair of dead showman magicians roaming the circles of Hell for blood to steal so they can return above ground.

This is one of the big fantasy books of the autumn and it’s impressively ambitious, jumping across cultures, myths and religions and between philosophical and literary arguments - it won’t shock you to learn that Kuang herself is doing a PhD at Yale. But if that all sounds like heavy going, it isn’t, Katabasis is also very readable. A fun ride for stormy nights.

• Out now / Buy it here

Jesus Christ Kinski (Benjamin Myers)

Jesus Christ Kinski is an experimental fictional inner monologue of actor… No, wait. Jesus Christ Kinski is the weirder, wilder cousin to books like Nick Hornby’s Dickens and Prince…OK, look, with Jesus Christ Kinski, you have to just go with it. It’s the latest from Benjamin Myers, author of Cuddy and The Gallows Pole (which Shane Meadows turned into a BBC mini-series) and it’s the result of Myers becoming absolutely obsessed with a YouTube video of German actor Klaus Kinski in his combative, one man performance as Jesus Christ in 1970s Berlin.

You might have seen Kinski in the Werner Herzog films Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, or else Italian B-movie giallos and spaghetti westerns (he made a lot of movies) and Myers’ approximation of his thoughts is cerebral, funny and thrilling. Like Susan Sontag’s diaries but ten times dirtier and ten times angrier, his Kinski swings between self-mythologising and sneering at peers and their projects. We also get a meta ‘intermission’ of Myers’ writing process in West Yorkshire; it’s the sort of thing you’d usually find on authors’ Substacks but here the mid-life literary crisis acts as a nice counterpoint to the rage of Klaus. One of one.

• Out 23rd October

Pick A Colour (Souvankham Thammavongsa)

This debut novel from Laotian-Canadian writer Souvankham Thammavongsa, who published a short story collection back in 2020, is a day in the life of Ning, a former boxer turned nail salon owner. Of a piece with Sayaka Murata’s Convenience Store Woman and the Wim Wenders’ film Perfect Days - both brilliant - Pick A Colour illuminates the life of a service worker woman whose customers barely look at her and who bitches about them with her colleagues (her ‘girls’, all fake-named Susan) in her own language as she pampers them with mani-pedi’s. Thammavongsa has been very strict with herself in terms of the prose here, with a staccato rhythm, no-nonsense narrative voice and a tone that circles between ennui and contentedness, and it really pays off. Topical themes such as ratings culture and the threat of violence are dealt with through dry wit and short, sharp shocks and the close is all the more affecting for the restraint.

• Out 25th September

Muckle Flugga (Michael Pedersen)

Not technically Autumn fiction but we missed this debut novel from Scottish Makar (national poet) Michael Pedersen over the summer and it’s excellent. This is the tale of a father and son who live on the - very real - remote island north of the Shetlands, keeping the lighthouse, and a jaded, suicidal writer Firth who turns up to paint some gannets, disrupting the tense and rugged semi-harmony in the process. And who can resist a lighthouse saga?

Pedersen’s lyrical, maximalist style is best digested slowly, so as not to miss any of his magic, and he does a great line in characters who act both extremely oddly and fully themselves when alone on this island. There’s a lot of being rather than doing captured here, whether it’s 19 year-old Ouse talking to the ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson or terrifying dreams about the wreckers who preyed on unfortunate ships. The kind of awe-inspiring book that makes you want to make the long, hard trek up there yourself. And say the title over and over again.

• Out now / Buy it here

Helm (Sarah Hall)

The second almost-undescribable book on our list, Sarah Hall’s Helm is the multi-stranded story of the only named wind in the UK, the Helm wind that blows down Cross Fell in Cumbria. This is no easy, breezy read as the twice Booker Prize-nominated author cycles through time and perspectives including the wind itself or as Hall puts it, ‘Helmself’. It’s worth the effort, though.

Helm is as much about our relationships with each other, as with the nature and weather of the Eden valley with human protagonists ranging from a disfigured Christian demon slayer and a Victorian proto-metereologist to a modern day field station scientist. Some result in a kind of grace or success, others in mystery and Hall seems to be impressing on us that a phenomenon like the Helm wind is ultimately unknowable, best simply felt and respected rather than measured, tamed or studied.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Other Girl (Annie Ernaux)

Another Nobel Prize-winning author from Fitzcarraldo Editions, the French writer Annie Ernaux is especially well-known for The Years, a version of which ran on the West End earlier this year. This short work could be categorised as fiction or non-fiction, in fact as with much of her work it’s a blend of both. It takes the form of a letter Ernaux wrote to her sister, who died aged six from diphtheria before Annie was born, in which the writer imagines her sister’s life, her relationship to their parents and various ‘what if’ scenarios that could have transpired. Translated here by Alison L.Strayer, Ernaux’s excavation of her own feelings in The Other Girl is very much part of her wider literary project. She poses herself emotionally knotty questions such as why the loss was never talked about, she speaks to relatives about their memories of her sister and revisists old photographs of the family. You could read this in an hour or so but it will stay with you a long time.

• Out 25th September

• The 41 greatest villains of literature: best literary villains revealed

Frankenstein has seen a lot of reboots and different versions, but Guillermo del Toro’s version is officially getting a theatrical release.

On Monday, Netflix announced that the big-budget flick is getting a limited release in theatres starting on October 17th, ahead of its Netflix air date on November 7th.

At the trailer’s initial release, Netflix didn’t confirm whether the film would be getting a theatrical release, just stating that it would premiere globally on Netflix in November. Whilst Netflix had previously remained tight-lipped, del Toro had suggested that Frankenstein would get some time in cinemas. Netflix’s three-week theatrical run is one of the longest theatrical releases to date from the streamer.

It stars Oscar Issac, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth, Felix Kammerer, David Bradley, Lars Mikkelsen, Christian Convery, with Charles Dance, and Christoph Waltz. The film’s official description reads: “Oscar-winning director Guillermo del Toro adapts Mary Shelley’s classic tale of Victor Frankenstein, a brilliant but egotistical scientist who brings a creature to life in a monstrous experiment that ultimately leads to the undoing of both the creator and his tragic creation.”

According to del Toro, he will be adapting segments of the book that have never been done before. Talking to Den of Geek, he revealed that: “To this day, nobody has made the book”, even “chickening out” himself for years until now. So, it's shaping up to be something, er, memorable.

Whether you catch it in cinemas or from the comfort of your own home, it’s landing just in time for spooky season. We can already smell the Pumpkin Spice.

• Netflix's latest crime drama is greenlit for season 2

Prepare yourselves, linguistic traditionalists, because the English language just got a serious internet injection. The hallowed halls of the Cambridge Dictionary have swung open their doors to a new wave of words, and anyone over the age of 20 will probably need a translator. Terms like "skibidi," "broligarchy," "inspo," and "delulu" have officially sashayed into the dictionary, confirming what many of us already suspected: the TikTok generation is here, and they're taking over our vocabulary.

For those scratching their heads and wondering what a "skibidi" even is, we have you covered. It originates from YouTuber DaFuq!?Boom!’s viral "Skibidi Toilet" series. The dictionary defines this delightful nonsensical word as something that can mean "cool" or "bad," or simply be used as a joke.

There was also a reference to it in the popular Little Big song “Skibidi” that predates the above, but didn’t become as common until the YouTube series.

Other notable newcomers include "broligarchy," which, as the name suggests, refers to powerful groups of men in tech (think Bezos, Musk, Zuckerberg, and their quest for political influence).

Then there's "tradwife," a snappy shorthand for a "traditional wife". We've also got "inspo" (your daily dose of inspiration) and "delulu" (short for delusional, often used to describe those with an unwavering, perhaps unrealistic, belief in their own success). And for the fashion-forward, "lewk" is now officially recognised as a "particular style, fashion, or outfit, especially one that is unusual and impressive."

Colin McIntosh, Cambridge Dictionary’s Lexical Programme Manager, seems to be having a grand old time with all of this. "It’s not every day you get to see words like skibidi and delulu make their way into the Cambridge Dictionary," he said. "We only add words where we think they'll have staying power. Internet culture is changing the English language, and the effect is fascinating to observe and capture in the Dictionary.”

While some might be raising an eyebrow, there's no denying that these terms have been circulating online for a hot minute. And let's be real, this isn't the first time internet slang has crashed the dictionary party. Who can forget "emoji" and "clickbait" joining Merriam-Webster's in 2015?

• Suffer from sleep apnoea? No problem — blow into... a conch?

Edinburgh Fringe is the finishing school festival for a thousand Taskmaster comedians, the womb from which some of the best plays, musicals, and performances of the last decade have sprung from. And this year is shaping up to be no exception, with stand-up, immersive light shows, and life-sized puppets already taking over Scotland's historic city.

But much like eating out in London, or navigating a dating app, it can be hard to know what to pick with the sheer number of options out there. So, whether you’re heading up to the Fringe or just want to sound culturally savvy amongst your sophisticated friends, here are our top five picks at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

1. Comedy: Celya AB: Work in Progress

Progress shows are often more fun than their professional counterparts. With more experimentation, more trial and error, these are a great way to see comedians at their best and most raw. Celya AB is one of the funniest comedians on the scene right now; if you love silly yet razor-sharp observational comedy, this is a must-see.

• Dates: 14th-24th August
• Location: Monkey Barrel Comedy (The Hive)

2. Play: Seating Plan, Izzy Radford

Fairly new on the scene, this is Radford’s Fringe debut, and her scarily relatable play Seating Plan is evocative of Richard Curtis’ Four Weddings and a Funeral heyday - a bit like Bridget Jones if it were written by Miranda Hart. If you’re looking for a funny, bittersweet performance which perfectly encapsulates modern dating dilemmas, missed opportunities, and idiosyncratic characters you can’t help rooting for, this is a great one to catch.

• Date: 1st-25th August
• Location: Gilded Balloon Patter House

3. Books: Tim Key: L.A Baby!

We love a bit of Tim Key, especially after chatting to him about his new book, L.A Baby!. And any Tim Key fans will be happy as there’s a double helping of Tim available at this year’s Fringe, as he’s performing a stand-up comedy show called Loganberry alongside chats about the book.

That’s right, Key is double dipping at the Fringe this year, delivering trademark wit as well as deranged tales and poems from his time in L.A.

• Date: 1st-14th August (L.A Baby!) 31st July-17th August (Loganberry)
• Location: Monkey Barrel Comedy (L.A Baby!), Forth at Pleasance Courtyard (Loganberry)

4. Musical: Nerds: The Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs Comedy Musical

We’re not sure any logline has sold a show more than “If South Park and the IT Crowd had an affair, Nerds would be the unapologetic lovechild they put up for adoption to avoid a scandal”, which is what this show promises. Fast, funny, and full of self-described “shit wit” this is a raucous re-imagining of modern times.

Imagine an alternative world where Bill Gates and Steve Jobs face off in a rap battle. It’s highly silly and seriously clever. If you’ve enjoyed Six, Operation Mincemeat, or this show's self-adopted parents, South Park and The IT Crowd, this might be your bag.

• Dates: 1st-25th August
• Location: Cowbarn at Underbelly, Bristo Square

5. Drag: Count Dykula

If you’ve ever inhabited the brilliant world of the Soho Theatre, you’ll probably have heard the name Count Dykula - and if you haven’t, then you definitely should. Fake blood, fake boobs, and real bats, it’s a whole load of laughs and that elusively perfect blend of theatre, music, and the completely bizarre.

If you want a powerhouse of queer culture wrapped in a comedically gothic drag extravaganza (which, granted, is a very specific desire) then this is one to have on your radar.

• Date: 1st - 25th August
• Location: Ace Dome at Pleasance Dome

• London's The Globe announces upcoming season of shows — and it's not all Shakespeare

We just scrolled past a tweet about some research saying that AI chatbots are turning all our brains and memories and capacity to think for ourselves to mush. We didn’t click on it but we did double-take on some diagrams of brains that looked quite legit. This could have been yesterday, it could have been two weeks ago, who can say...

To counteract all this, we’re keeping our grey matter going with ten of the best non-fiction releases to dig into this summer.

The Haves and Have-Yachts (Evan Osnos)

We have a new found respect for Flo Rida, having read this book of essays from The New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos. He follows the rapper between a bar mitzvah in Chicago to a corporate gig in New York whilst reporting on the big money ‘private’ gigs that are keeping a lot of musicians going. This is in the most fun section of his book on the ultrarich - How To Spend It - which also goes into excruciating detail on gigayachts from captains, crew, designers and salesman and lays out the tactics of Silicon Valley doomsday preppers (get a motorbike, buy land in New Zealand).

Elsewhere, there’s a particularly illuminating piece on how three Getty heiresses got into a spat with their trust fund wealth manager. Plus bonkers tales about chaos machine Guo Wengui and white collar criminals, a look at what went wrong for Zuck and Facebook, as well as a short take on who gets to be ‘elite’, who ends up a ‘counter elite’ (say, a Luigi Mangione) and who gets to rail at ‘the elites’ from Trump to Tucker Carlson. These essays were written between 2016 and 2024 so each one features an update on the cast of characters. Osnos covers a lot of ground to detail this new Gilded Age from the comparisons to the Vanderbilts and Carnegies of old to the new(ish) money of sheikhs, emirs, Greenwich, Connecticut and exclusive Monaco clubs.

• Out now / Buy it here

Tart (Slutty Cheff)

There’s a scene in this memoir from an anonymous female chef based in London where she could go home with someone or she could go get a doner kebab. She gets the kebab. After starting out telling stories about restaurants and relationships on Instagram in her mid-twenties, Slutty Cheff is now no less than a Vogue columnist and Tart is just the right mix of adrenaline-crunching shifts in fine dining kitchens, zany, drug-fuelled interludes with various shitbags and real feeling, anxieties and friendships. It’s Anthony Bourdain meets Bridget Jones meets Samantha Jones.

Slutty Cheff piles on the food and sex metaphors with glee, there’s lots of talk of thighs and cream and juices and meat and aww, artichoke hearts. And she does a great job of bringing you into both the terror of sweaty, macho, out-of-control double shifts and the bliss of sitting on the pavement with a pint and a cigarette at the end of one. The comparisons with boring office jobs are especially brutal. This’ll make you feel guilty next time you ask how long your starter’s gonna be.

• Out now / Buy it here

Tree Hunting (Paul Wood)

An absolutely gorgeously constructed book from Penguin’s Particular Books imprint, Tree Hunting features maps from Neil Gower and sees Paul Wood (no relation) run down his top 1,000 trees in towns and cities around Britain and Ireland. This is not pocketable but it would make a fine guide to keep on the bookshelf and consult before any trips, as well as around your own neighbourhood. Each tree is named - old names, local names, recent names and Wood’s own names - with short Tree City histories, plus very accessible info on characteristics, the best times of year to see, nearby statues or buildings and stories or myths related to artists, writers, kings, queens and circus elephants.

After reading it, you really do walk down your everyday street with a new lens. Did I know that Manchester was once stuffed full of poplars and is now more of a foxglove city? I did not. Am I sure I’ve seen the Platform 1 Giant Redwood at New Cross Gate station in South East London? I am not. Most of all, Wood wants us to remember that trees are individual, they have character and we should not just protect them but celebrate them too.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Fiery Spirits (John Rees)

If you want a chunky slice of history to chew over this summer, may I push in front of you John Rees’ brilliant The Fiery Spirits. This title from Verso Books charts the course of parliamentary opposition to the monarchy from the 1620s, through the English Civil War between the Cavaliers and Roundheads and right up to the king-killing of Charles I and revolution. Rees focuses in on a small group of radical MPs, their allies and how their speeches and actions influenced and were influenced by popular protests in London and throughout the whole ‘riotous’ country.

The Fiery Spirits is a scholarly, meticulous piece of work but it’s also genuinely thrilling to read - right down to the details of which committees the likes of Henry Marten and William Strode were on - considering we know where it’s all heading. (Oliver Cromwell). There’s accusations of treason, religious clashes, prison time in the Tower, a sticky end for an earl and angry merchants marching over to Westminster with weapons night after night. Superb.

• Out now / Buy it here

I Love You, Byeee (Adam Buxton)

The follow up to the comedian/TV trickster/podcaster’s Ramble Book, this one also has a lot of delightful rambles, and indeed very entertaining sub-rambles. A mix of funny ha-ha and heartfelt, Buxton gets the levels right with memories of The Adam & Joe Show’s Toytanic-based competition, lovely stories of digitising his memories of his mum, glimpses of lost projects he never got to make on TV, hanging out with Radiohead and Travis, and stand-up style scorecards of fights with his wife.

This is a very honest book from an all-round good egg, now a dad in his mid-50s, who - as he admits himself in his self-deprecating advice for budding ‘creatives’ - got very lucky. Intriguingly, this comes a couple of months before the release of Buxton’s first actual album Buckle Up, produced by Metronomy’s Joe Mount. Oh, and the audiobook features a chat with Joe Cornish, some jingles and a bonus chapter on Bowie in the 90s.

• Out now / Buy it here

A Duel of Bulls (Pete Carvill)

Subtitled Hemingway and Welles in Love and War, A Duel of Bulls is a slim, gorgeously strange book that takes as its starting point the love that both Ernest Hemingway and Orson Welles had for bullfighting and for Spain. Pete Carvill, who writes about boxing and sport for The Independent, makes it clear that this is strictly creative non-fiction. He’s read a bunch of biographies of both the famous writer and the famous director but he’s not looking for pinpoint historical accuracy. He’s more interested in their psyches and relationships, including when they encountered each other through the decades, firstly in a 1930s Manhattan recording studio, where the two men came to blows.

There are many fabulous quotes, meetings and details here - so much so, I found myself wondering 'WWOWD?' (or What Would Orson Welles Do?) after reading this. Carvill’s interested in exploring the two men’s masculinity, self-mythologising and their feelings towards fame, their families, war, money, artistry and ageing with flair in the dramatisation of key moments of crisis and clarity. We follow them to Seville, Paris, Venice and Havana as they navigate two adventurous, tumultuous lives. A beaut of a book.

• Out now / Buy it here

Reframing Blackness (Alayo Akinkugbe)

Reframing Blackness is a short, precise intro to what writer, researcher and curator Alayo Akinkugbe calls ‘A Black History of Art’, from Stormzy’s Merky Books. That’s also the name of Akinkugbe’s excellent Instagram page that kicked off this project for her - and she has a fab podcast, A Shared Gaze, too. This is not simply a survey of important and influential black artists, though you will find plenty of those mentioned and analysed here — it’s also a discussion about black sitters and models you probably overlooked in Old Masters, the missing stories that we aren’t taught at school and university and that we don’t see in public museums, and the current work of curators to redress this balance in the UK, Europe and the US.

The book features the work of artists you’ve probably heard of - Yinka Shonibare, Sonia Boyce, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye - with 40+ reproductions of paintings, photography and installations within the pages, but for me there were also new discoveries too, including some artists who have ‘remixed’ famous works (the Titian!) to quite literally reframe our gaze. Akinkugbe also champions exhibitions and spaces that centre art by, about and for black, African and diaspora artists, from London and New York to Rotterdam and Cape Town, interspersed with her personal stories, including searching for the only painting of a black woman in the Louvre, Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s 1800 Portrait of Madeleine. My only complaint: I want more of this.

• Out now / Buy it here

The Absence (Budgie)

Budgie - real name Peter Clarke - has written a quietly intense music memoir for White Rabbit Books. Budgie is best known as the drummer for Siouxsie and the Banshees and one half of and multi-instrumentalist for the band The Creatures (also with ex-wife Siouxsie Sioux). He drummed on The Slits’ debut record Cut, hung out during The Cure sessions, the list goes on: the post-punk and alt-pop tour and studio tales here from London to Berlin to LA to Japan are tantalising and heart-breaking in equal measure.

The melancholic throughline is not surprising for the time and the industry - Budgie reflects on love, loss, addiction, abuse, turbulence - but here it’s both very honest and trying to be generous to all concerned. The addition of sketches of Clarke’s - mostly self-portraits, drawn through the decades, brings us further into the inner workings of his mind and there’s a wealth of detail on composing, drumming, arranging and experimenting in the studio, with Budgie’s recollections of making the Banshees albums Kaleidoscope, Juju, A Kiss in the Dreamhouse and more.

• Out now / Buy it here

Fatherhood (Augustine Sedgewick)

There have been a load of books written about motherhood - the question of it, the experience of it, the existential challenges of it - in the past five to ten years so I’m hoping Augustine Sedgewick’s book Fatherhood kicks off a similar trend. If I was being cheeky, I’d say this is a grand history of all the ingenious ways great men and great thinkers have come up with to make being a father about anything other than cooking, cleaning and caring related chores. But that would be rude to this thoughtfully written series of explorations of where ideas of fatherhood have come from and which personal and political crises have formed them, from the consequences of Socrates’ pig nose to Henry Thoreau’s complex feelings towards the cedar wood used to make pencils.

Sedgewick, who has also written a history of coffee, takes us from Babylonian kings and the Ten Commandments, through Plato’s Republic, Saint Augustine’s Original Sin, Henry VIII’s obsession with having a son, right up to the invention of the ‘dad’ in the mid to late 20th century. He looks at how figures including Thomas Jefferson, Darwin, Freud and Bob Dylan thought of their own fathers, how they treated their own children and what impact all that had on their era-defining work and lives. Sedgewick’s ultimate answer, which came from a chat with his young son, is very sweet.

• Out now / Buy it here

L.A. Baby! (Tim Key)

It’s Tim Key Summer over here: his indie film The Ballad of Wallis Island is a sleeper hit at the cinemas and he’s back at Edinburgh Fringe this month, too. Shortlist ed-in-chief Gerald Lynch had a nice chat with Key recently and he’s also read this cracking anthology of the comedian/poet/actor’s stint in Hollywood, filming an under-wraps sitcom (possibly but possibly not a spin-off of The Office named The Paper) while staying in an AirBnb for three months.

The review: “it’s hilarious — bite-sized chunks of lunacy, self-aggrandizing and self-effacing in equal measure, as the lines between Tim’s real-world experience and the exaggerated ramblings of his comedy shadow increasingly merge.”

Key says, helpfully, that some of it is real and some of it’s not. So that clears that up, then.

• Out now / Buy it here

• 10 new fiction books for summer to get you through the heatwave

If you thought Superman had a troubled history of cinematic misfires and reboots, spare a thought for the Fantastic Four.

After an infamously unreleased low budget Roger Corman treatment in 1994, two coolly received noughties movies, and the total car crash that was Josh Trank’s 2015 reboot, Matt Shakman is about to have another go with The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

Thankfully, there’s every chance that – like James Gunn’s Superman – the 2025 version of the Fantastic Four finally gets the formula right.

Early footage is hugely encouraging, capturing the wide-eyed kitschy charm of the property in a way that none of the previous iterations managed.

It helps that you’ve got the internet’s daddy, Pedro Pascal, leading Marvel’s first family this time around, alongside a trio of respected character actors (Vanessa Kirby, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and Joseph Quinn).

Perhaps more significantly, this is the first Fantastic Four movie made by Marvel Studios. Forget the multiverse – this version of the Fantastic Four might just be the saviour of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Those not familiar with those earlier failed cinematic treatments – as well as those who have chosen to forget – might want to swot up on their Fantastic Four lore. Thankfully, on April 4, 2024 (the freshly dubbed “4-4 Day”), Marvel set out five issues to get us all prepared for The Fantastic Four: First Steps.

They’re all available to read on the Marvel Unlimited comic subscription service, which runs a seven-day free trial. We’ve followed these recommendations up by picking out a couple of other issues to help get you up to speed. Click through our picks below...

Want more Fantastic Four action? Don't miss...

• Fantastic Four First Steps' Ralph Ineson on his planet-devouring Galactus role, his mate Lex Luthor, and splitting the galactic G

Don’t do it. (Shakes head). Don’t leave it till you get to the airport/train station/in-law’s house. You’ll make bad reading choices. (Sad, patronising smile). You always do.

Instead, pick up a book from this finely-honed edit of summer fiction, including the latest from big-hitters Irvine Welsh and Stephen King and a whole heap of fantastic first books from young British writers with thrillers, sci-fi and lush, literary epics all covered.

Men In Love (Irvine Welsh)

Irvine Welsh is back to remind us he is a WRITER. Men In Love is another title in the Trainspotting Literary Universe, this time picking up just after the first book ended with Mark Renton making off with all of Sick Boy, Spud and Begbie’s cash. Oof.

These characters are still such a good hang. We spend time inside their heads in Leith, London and Amsterdam as they pinball around jobs, the dole, prison, drugs, raves and yes, their love lives. There’s so much life and wit and humour and danger in every line. Welsh is a master who can do it all, mixing quotes from Romantic poets with his trademark Scots dialect and some of the most misogynist, racist, homophobic slurs and jokes collected in one place. (Similar to It’s Always Sunny on TV, Welsh draws his characters so strongly, these rightfully stay as part of the fabric of the time and place).

The most laugh-out-loud funny fiction I’ve read in a long time - there’s a running gag about a Cadbury’s Flake that had me in stitches - it’s at times disgusting, at times profound bringing together themes of class, betrayal, repentance, sex and infidelity, fathers and father figures. The whole book is full of people running full speed into each other in various ways, which by the end of the chaos makes you want to go out and get fucked up and make mistakes yourself. Stick some Iggy Pop on and crack this open.

• Out 24th July / Buy it here

The Catch (Yrsa Daley-Ward)

Yrsa Daley-Ward has written a brilliant memoir (The Terrible), some poetry (bone), a sort of self-help book (The How) and she collaborated on Beyonce’s visual album Black Is King. But The Catch is somehow, actually her fiction debut and it’s from Stormzy’s Merky Books imprint.

It’s a great London novel of buses, bedsits, hotels and open mic nights, following 30-year-old twin sisters Clara (a trendy author) and Dempsey (an anxious work-from-home bod) through a tale of ghosts (or is it doppelgangers or is it gothic doubles?)

Switching between perspectives, Clara is so mean and Dempsey is such an overthinker, it’s a juicy dynamic even before you throw in the rest of the complicated cast with Daley-Ward, who now lives in LA, zooming in on literary types, petty criminals and wellness gurus. The only book in this summer batch which crept into my dreams while reading it, The Catch is dark and disorienting and sad and funny. This isn’t tied down by any one tone or genre, it’s entirely its own thing.

• Out 10th July / Buy it here

The Expansion Project (Ben Pester)

Labelled part of a wave of ‘Severance lit’ by The Sunday Times, Ben Pester’s book is a melancholy slice of sci-fi, with shades of Kazuo Ishiguro, glimmers of Philip K. Dick’s Ubik. This is his first novel, after a short story collection titled Am I In The Right Place? which, to be honest, could also serve as a subtitle to this one.

The premise: A copywriter named Tom Crowley takes his kid to Bring Your Daughter To Work Day at the Capmeadow business park and loses her. What follows is a series of accounts of tired employees, tasks that don’t make sense and people who really need to go on mute during meetings. Pester carefully captures something specific of the alienation and disintegration that comes from ever-expanding ‘work’, all while making his central family story touching without veering into sentimental. Never has the phrase “I’m on the stairs” filled me with such dread.

• Out 14th August / Buy it here

Saraswati (Gurnaik Johal)

Another first book - it’s a particularly good season for them - is Saraswati. This is West London writer Gurnaik Johal’s ambitious, multi-generational, interconnected story of seven distantly related characters in India and the Desi diaspora. Full of folklore and mythology from various regions and religions of India and South Asia, the focus is on the ‘lost’ holy river of the title.

The plotlines - whether it’s Hindu nationalist politics or male social media influencers - are confidently constructed, the character dynamics are crunchy with short, punchy emotional beats and, with scenes taking place in a Canadian forest, a remote farm in Punjab, icy mountain lakes and the depths of the ocean, this is a summer read you can really sink into. He’s as interested in an old world of fables and legacies as a new world of DNA kits, eco-activism and vaccine warfare. This book is on Waterstones’ Debut Fiction Prize shortlist for good reason: Gurnaik Johal is the real deal.

• Out now / Buy it here

Slags (Emma Jane Unsworth)

Born in Bury and now living in Brighton, you might know self-described “ex-barmaid” Emma Jane Unsworth from her second book Animals, which was made into a film starring Holliday Grainger and Alia Shawkat.

Sticking with the one word theme, Slags is a kind of arrested development, coming-of-age story as two sisters in their late 30s/early 40s take a week-long campervan trip around Scotland. Whipping between the lochs, walks, campsites and creepy B’n’Bs and the teen obsessions of their Mancunian schooldays, we get loads of relatable stuff about sex - as you’d imagine - the hook-ups, the clinics, the affairs, the Simpsons underpants. (Side note: for anyone who grew up in Greater Manchester, this must be how posh people feel every time they read a book: the 135 bus! Pilsworth!)

Unsworth also digs into the sticky, tricky clash between the workaholic hot mess and the sensible mum of two with dog, cat and husband waiting back home - as Vice once memorably put it, when your life choices become an eff you to the other side. And yet, this perfectly balanced tragicomedy is very funny, very silly, true-to-life and not heavy going at all, even when our slags get serious. Movie adaptation when?

• Out now / Buy it here

Never Flinch (Stephen King)

For this detective thriller, Stephen King said he wanted to try something different - and 65 books in, frankly he can do what he likes - and go all-in on plot. And there’s a lot of it, with two main strands: a serial killer in the fictional Buckeye City is trying to avenge a wrongly accused man Alan Duffery, who was killed in prison, by killing 13 innocent people, while a women’s rights activist named Kate McKay is being stalked from town to town on her controversial US speaking tour.

What links these two cases is fan favourite private investigator Holly Gibney, from Mr Mercedes, the Bill Hodges trilogy and other King works. Now, this isn’t god-tier Stephen King but he has such an instinct for drama - here, an iconic scene in an abandoned ice hockey rink - he has interesting things to say about addiction and careless ‘invincibility’ complexes, and the way he brings together his large cast of supporting characters - assistants, police chiefs, roadies, Alcoholics Anonymous members, asshole firefighters - is seriously satisfying.

• Out now / Buy it here

False War (Carlos Manuel Álvarez)

In Cuban writer Carlos Manuel Álvarez’s interconnected stories set in Miami, Cuba, Mexico City and elsewhere, the prose is so immediate, so vital, you feel like you’re right there with the characters, wandering around town thirsty on a baking day or breaking into a house at night and raiding the fridge.

In False War, we ride along with immigrant characters - who are all at varying stages of their journeys - including Fanboy, Barber, Instrumentalist, Juan, Elis and Rodriguez through first days, earthquakes, flatshares, nights out and prison stints.

Translated here by Natasha Wimmer, Álvarez isn’t afraid to follow his impulses on pace or tone, whether that takes him to mystery, grief or comedy: there’s a particularly virtuosic section where Fanboy gets lost in the Louvre. Álvarez has been writing fiction and essays about Cuba for over a decade and in 2020, he was arrested in Havana for being part of San Isidro, protesting against government censorship. If you want a book that feels quite like nothing you’ve read before, try this.

• Out 28th August / Buy it here

Groundwater (Thomas McMullan)

John and Liz have just moved to a rustic lakeside house when they have her sister Monica, her husband Harrie and their two kids Ciara and Finn to stay. Before all the furniture has arrived. Tensions arise. Groundwater, though, is a cut above the usual story of a middle-class couple falling apart when they have family to stay. The main pairing are quiet and introspective, this being set during the slow, ruminative end of summer, which gives Thomas McMullan space to muse on his themes of legacy, competition and our relationship to material possessions, as John and Liz second guess one another, withholding their private struggles and mangling their feelings when they do try to share them.

Groundwater moves between languid and downright creepy as a sequence of low-stakes drama unfolds by the lake. There’s a mysterious warden named Sweet who knew the old inhabitants and three students from a nearby campsite who bring their loud opinions and romantic squabbles into the mix. McMullan has written a beautiful, poetic coda as a counterweight to each chapter which makes the gentle sense of a breaking of the clouds all the more potent when it arrives.

• Out 17th July / Buy it here

Sunstruck (William Rayfet Hunter)

A second Merky Books title, and another first novel on the Waterstones shortlist, Sunstruck takes a Saltburn-style premise - our unnamed narrator is a young, mixed-race, working-class guy who goes to visit his university friend Lily’s wealthy family in the South of France.

There’s a debauched midsummer party, a secret gay romance with her brother Felix and a tantalising sense that he could somehow fit into the world of the Blake family and their hangers-on. (Plus crucially he doesn’t magically know the names of all the wines, trees and stones he encounters in his descriptions of ‘the Chateau’).

British-Jamaican writer William Rayfet Hunter lets this web of delicate relationships play out in the aftermath, allowing for a deeper look at dating dynamics when there’s a power imbalance. So that’s back to the real world of London: Lily and Felix’s bougie creative careers, the protagonist’s shabby flatshare in Tooting with his friend Jazz - who calls him WhiteBoy - and their black friendship circles at Notting Hill Carnival. It’s an intense, slightly stressful mix of lust, drugs, spats, confusion, subterfuge and waiting for the shoe to drop... so... most people’s early twenties, then.

Oh, and the ending? Chef’s kiss. Sunstruck does what Saltburn could never.

• Out now / Buy it here

Gunk (Saba Sams)

Straight off her award-winning short story collection Send Nudes, we have Saba Sams’ excellently titled Gunk. Set in Brighton, where Sams grew up, it’s a love triangle of sorts between club manager Jules, young newbie Nim and the drug-addled Leon. Sams - who is now in her late 20’s - is interested in complicated, undefined relationships (friends? employees? surrogates?) and self-sufficiency versus codependency: who we live with, how much we let other people care for us, what’s transactional and what’s not.

In Gunk, she explores this through a young marriage with a power imbalance, largely conducted in and around a skanky student nightclub and the very early days of parenting a newborn baby in a nontraditional family setup. She’s also very interested in bodies, particularly when it comes to pregnancy and mothers, which is where we get some of her boldest writing. Nicely weird stuff from a writer with lots of potential.

• Out now / Buy it here

• Exclusive: Tim Key on Hollywood humour, Partridges and pigeon suits — and his new book L.A. Baby!

Tim Key is on the cusp of becoming that rarest of things — a British comedian who breaks through in Hollywood.

That’s if he can finish signing the mountain of books piled up in his agent’s office first.

“The trick is to not add loads of words,” he says — fair, given the rest of the ones printed in it are already from his own hand. In front of Tim sits 1,000 copies of his new book, L.A, Baby!, which sees his pandemonious poet alter-ego take on the recent challenges of real-Tim’s actual life — a stint filming a prestigious new sitcom in Tinsel Town.

As you’d expect, it’s hilarious — bite-sized chunks of lunacy, self-aggrandizing and self-effacing in equal measure, as the lines between Tim’s real-world experience and the exaggerated ramblings of his comedy shadow increasingly merge.

And there’s no slowing down — his film The Ballad of Wallis Island is proving a slow-burn hit, there’s more Alan Partridge on the way, a new Edinburgh show cooking and, of course, a semi-sequel to the US Office that is poised to make Tim Key a household name on both sides of the Atlantic.

But first, 500 more signatures, and a sit down chat with Shortlist…

Shortlist: Hello Tim! We’re here to talk a little bit about your excellent new book, L.A. Baby!. Bit more of an international jet-setting vibe with this one than we've seen previously…?

Tim Key: Ha, yeah, true. I guess it's the fish out of water tale, moving to LA, and then that kind of feeling of, well, it wasn’t plain sailing, trying to manage a new life, the dislocation of being in a new city.

SL: Have you moved to L.A.? Is that part of your actual life now?

Tim Key: No, I went there to film last September, and was there for three months. The first three weeks were quite discombobulating. And I turned to the old poetry just to kind of stay sane. So I'd be doing some filming and then trying to work out my way around LA, getting used to the new city. But then in the evenings, going to bars and starting to write stuff about it. That always is a good settler for me, that I can kind of use that as a little crutch while I'd find my feet, and then it kind of got out of hand and became a book.

SL: Is the L.A. project [Tim has been cast in ‘The Paper’ a new spin-off of the US The Office starring Domhnall Gleeson] something you can talk about?

Tim Key: It’s now filmed, but I haven't seen it, so there's a limit to what I can say about it. But it was, you know — it's fun. It was kind of... it was enjoyable, just it takes some time when you go to a new place to kind of, you know, work out exactly how to live your new life.

SL: Where were you living? Was it basically what we see from the book?

Tim Key: Yeah — so the book, some of it is real, some of it is not real. There's no kind of dispelling that in interviews because that's part of the book, you just read it and go, ‘I don't know what's real here’. A lot of it is! So where I was living, I described that. I kind of went up into the hills and, you know, found a really nice AirBnb, near a reservoir, and got into a sort of new system, a new way of life. I was running around the reservoir, and then having a Japanese lager out on the roof terrace, doing a little bit of writing, and then picked up in the morning and off to work again.

SL: Hopefully not shitting your pants, as suggested in the book…?

Tim Key: That would definitely be the dream, yep that was featured in one of the poems. Yeah, again, fine line between reality and make believe! You tell me!

SL: So, how's Hollywood treated you? How does it feel compared to working in British TV and film?

Tim Key: It's different. I don't know, because we just made this film [The Ballad of Wallis Island], so I've been promoting the film, and watched the film a lot. I guess the main difference is, with the film, you're just completely and utterly hooked into the film. With that one in particular it was our film — me and Tom [Basden] wrote the film, and Griff [James Griffiths] directed it. So you have this kind of real, complete love of the film. It’s your everything, really. It's your world when you're doing it.

Whereas this one is like, more like a job — you go in, you get picked up, you go to work. It's other people and it’s their passion, they're the people who drive the love of the project. You go in and you try and do your best to make it work.

With our film, it's a different thing — you don't ever stop thinking about it, and you're responsible for everything about it. You're responsible for the film, the tone, all of that, but then also for other people to go to work. That all rests with you, really.

SL: Would you say there's a big divide between British and American humor? As a comic who's working in it, what's your opinion of that?

Tim Key: No, I don't think so. The bigger distinction is between stuff that I'm making myself, that I've written, or being in someone else's. All of the stuff that you made yourself, you have to stand by it, you have to love it. There's loads of American stuff that I love and loads of English stuff that I love. But also there's tonnes that no matter where it’s from, American or English or any other country, not everything is going to be to your taste. So I don't think it's cut down international lines. It's just what floats your boat, really.

SL: We loved seeing you in Mickey 17 — we remember seeing the trailer and being like, ‘...is that Tim Key?’ How was that, to be featured in a big sci fi film? It's not something we've seen you do before.

Tim Key: Yeah, it felt a bit incongruous to me when I watched it! But oh it was great. Me, and a lot of my friends, have got careers that are kind of quite idiosyncratic in a way. So have stuff like Wallis Island where you work for years, and eventually you find yourself filming it. But then you also have something where director Bong [Joon Ho] gets in touch and says, ‘Would you like to play a pigeon?’ That's a really fun, distracting part of your career, because you can just sort of go, ‘obviously, yes, that'll be fantastic’, and then just spend five days in that environment.

It's very interesting watching an enormous film being made. It's very nice working with director Bong, he is fantastic. It’s the sort of thing which doesn't happen that often — maybe every two or three years, something like that happens where you go, ‘Oh, that's extremely fun.’ You don’t have to go through the long drawn out decision making with your agent, you just go, ‘that's 100% a yes’.

SL: So how was the pigeon suit?

Tim Key: The Pigeon suit was a handful. I never got to the bottom of why I was wearing it. When you read a script, you're looking for any clue as to how long a time commitment they might be. With that, it just said ‘pigeon man’, then you find yourself for the fourth time at the studios with another costume fitting, and gradually, the pigeon has kind of been formed around you — compared to other actors who aren't dressed as a pigeon would have not had to go to the studio four times…

SL: How's your approach differ when you're performing a scripted role as opposed to a role you’ve created yourself or performing your own stand up? Do you have a preference?

Tim Key: They're very different. It's usually the one that you kind of haven't done for a while, that you've yearned to do. I finished my live show, and then just sort of packed that away a couple of years ago, and then did more sort of writing and stage. But it is funny. I think some people do just get attracted back into it, like a moth to a flame, where you can't resist. I develop a lot of my stuff at [North London comedy club] The Bill Murray. You start to think ‘I'm quite into the idea of walking along the canal to the Bill Murray and just doing a new hour’ and seeing what, if anything, I've got.

So I kind of feel I'm condemned to continue to do that. It's an interesting journey. At the start. It's very exciting because you haven't read the stuff before or you haven't performed the stuff before. The audience has no idea what you're about to do. Then it's challenging to hammer it into shape. And then in the final stages, you have a show and you’re just trying to stay alive in it and just perform it as well as you can every night. And then it ends. It’s a very different discipline to something where you go on set, and after six days, you're finished. Stand-up is definitely more demanding, emotionally, because you're judged on it. It's you saying ,’Well, this is where I am at this precise moment’. Whereas there's all sorts of other factors when you're on camera, you might not have written it. There's no knowing how close to the heart of that project you are, whereas a live show is plainly obvious to everyone. This is this person's show. This is what he thinks is funny.

SL: We've seen you a few times at the Bill Murray, and you've had us crying with laughter. There was a time we saw you recently, and there was a line in one of your poems about sitting and wearing your favorite ‘eating t-shirt’. We felt very…

Tim Key: … seen! Ha!

SL: Obviously, poetry is a big part of your stand up and, of course, your books. Where was the genesis of that idea to draw the two together? Is poetry something you’ve always been interested in?

Tim Key: This is, like, about 20 years ago. I got on the underground and forgot my book to read, and I had a little notepad and I had a pen. I don't know why I had these things, but I just wrote, then, a poem, then I wrote three or four more and got my destination, and then on the way home, wrote another five on a small notepad. And then the next day, back on public transport, and wrote another five and basically filled up that book. Never told anyone I was doing that, and never read any out.

Maybe about six months later, I had the chance to perform them, and literally just read them out. Before that I'd tried to do stand-up and it had gone very badly, and I'd kind of aborted that project. I was out. But then a friend of mine wanted to do a stand-up night. And so we all chipped in. And then he asked me if I would do some stand-up. I said, ‘That's not happening’, but I said I'd read out some poems.

So I had this little notepad, and the gig was in his lounge. It was called Live In Green’s Lounge. I climbed through the window of his lounge, and I was now wearing a suit. I had a can of lager. I had Soviet lounge music playing, and I had my poems. And so from six months before having an act that I had aborted and abandoned that was terrible, now I had a fully formed act immediately, which became my act for the next 20 years.

The poems were a huge part of that. They're kind of fundamental to it, and they allow me to, you know, talk around them. There's a lot of stuff I do that's kind of more similar to stand-up, I suppose. But then I always have these poems going through which I can come back to. I don't think I'll ever drop them, because I think they add something to the sort of colour of my act.

SL: We’re talking about a 20 year stand-up career now, but how has that evolved? What has changed, what has remained constant for you when you are on stage?

Tim Key: It’s always a big moment when you do your first Edinburgh show, your first hour, because it focuses the mind — it is completely petrifying. You're setting yourself up as someone to be judged. It's a big call to decide to book out a room and invite 50 people to sit in front of you. It's quite arrogant stuff! So it has to go well. And it did take me a couple of swings to get it right.

Honestly, it’s such a horrific process — in all of them, there's bits where you feel completely bereft and like it's so bleak because you think you've blown it. I remember in 2011 — that's probably one of my best shows — the walk home after the first night was horrific because it hadn't gone how I’d wanted it to go, I hadn’t worked it out exactly. It just takes work, and you've got to be really passionate about it and really want it to be amazing, and then just try and get as close as you can do that.

But it's difficult. If you feel like it's not quite there, then you can be in quite a desolate place, I think.

I would say there wasn't necessarily one moment where, where it evolved. I feel like I got into a swing of things, where I was making Edinburgh shows every two years, and was just absolutely petrified about the idea of my next one not being as good as my last one. And that sort of drives you forward. I don't know how healthy it is. I guess it makes you think more creatively, and it makes you try and work out why you're doing your next one.

When I look back on it, particularly back in my 30s, I feel very lucky to have done those shows, and they were very, very fun. But also, I remember them being quite tough to do. You make a lot of sacrifices to do them.

SL: When you're living a 20-years-plus stand-up career and your stand-up persona is purposefully ambiguous in terms of overlap with your real-world self, do you ever get worried that the two will merge?

Tim Key: No — to answer that doesn't lift the curtain, because I don't know exactly what the answer is! When I started, it was like a character, my stage persona. I used to wear a really ill-fitting suit, and I used to drink, and I literally played it drunk. I’d burp and things, and then you gradually flatten out. I wore a suit that fitted once, and a short haircut, I think because I was filming, and a friend said that's really good to do that. She liked the idea that suddenly I was a bit more dignified on stage. So I think I lent into that, I now try to wear a suit that fits. I mean, there's still a certain dishevelment about it, and immediately my shirt gets covered with beer and all of that stuff.

I wouldn't begin to be able to describe what my on stage persona is. Definitely the two have met halfway a little bit. There's more of me on stage, but still a healthy distance, you know, between the two. There's probably moments where I'm talking to someone and I'm on stage, it's quite similar to how I would be talking to someone that I didn't know very well, but it's definitely more of a frisson on stage. You're entertaining, and you're sort of playing, and there's more of a game happening on stage, which would be terrifying if that character was unleashed in real life.

SL: You've worked with lots of comedy greats over the years, whether that's Steve Coogan or the Taskmaster crew. Is there anyone who's had a particular influence on what you do, and maybe someone that you've now had the privilege to work with since?

Tim Key: Oh, definitely — I was a huge fan of Steve Coogan and that whole band of people like from The Day Today, and Knowing Me, Knowing You. It’s a fairly obvious answer, but Steve Coogan is the answer. I mean, it's kind of ‘pinch yourself’ stuff, even now. I was watching him on TV and listening to him on the radio in about 1993— it's insane really that about 15 or 20 years later, I'm sat next to him in a soundproof radio studio, being a part of the latest Alan Partridge incarnation.

I've met Chris Morris more recently, I met Harry Hill more recently, and Frank Skinner — people who I really, really loved and admired and laughed at tonnes. When you think of Harry Hill's TV shows and stuff, and then all of what Frank obviously still does, but like all of the Fantasy Football League and Unplanned and all of that — I'd laugh like a drain to all of that stuff. It sort of normalizes itself after a while. The first person you see when you go to Edinburgh the first time and you see someone across the courtyard. That's the first time where you're like, really, genuinely star struck. And then it's possible to meet someone like Johnny Vegas 15 years ago, and for it not to be quite so weird, because you work in his world. But still, it's interesting, because, you know, I loved Johnny Vegas, and now suddenly you're talking to him on a level. It's kind of a mad thing.

SL: Sidekick Simon is the best thing to happen to the Alan Partridge character since putting him in a motor home. How involved are you in that character?

Tim Key: No, not involved. They've got a very well-oiled machine, which is largely the Gibbons brothers, Neil and Rob who write it, and Steve, who also writes it. I just sort of come in and have these scripts, and they're beautifully economical and funny.

When you start shooting it, there's this additional round of rewriting. You see it go through Steve Coogan's, well, Alan Partridge's machinery one last time before it goes in front of the camera. It's all very fascinating. I know what my role is, I am the water carrier! It would be chaos if I went in there saying I've got some decent ideas for Sidekick Simon. Simon is sort of petrified, and just wants everything to be okay, and my actual person, Tim Key, can just slot in with that in the same way really. I don't want to ruin Alan Partridge!

SL: What’s next for Tim Key — not only in terms of projects, but is there anything else you’d like to tackle creatively?

Tim Key: The book is the next thing, and then the film is kind of having a longer life than we’d ever dream of for it. So it's sort of weirdly still going — we’re going to Munich tomorrow to launch it in Germany. Then a new show in Edinburgh. And then I kind of feel like I have this Autumn before me — I want to write my new radio show, and slow down slightly, I think? Maybe go on holiday? And I know that's not necessarily, like, a scoop,

But I'm thinking in quite medium terms with things. I'd like to make another film that would be great. But there's no expectation from me that I'll be shooting a film next year. If me and Tom get to make another one, and it's in three years or five years, that would be just amazing.

I'm very lucky, I have a lot of people I collaborate with, and so I'd like to keep working with Tom, I'd like to keep working on my radio show, and I'd like to keep working with Emily [Juniper, illustrator] on books. After this live show maybe there'll be a moment where I have a bit of space, but I'm not sure — I always think that, and then two months later, I'm waddling up to the Bill Murray to sort of go again. Sometimes when everything's happening, when you're doing live stuff, book stuff, film stuff, you obviously have moments where you're thinking, I do need this to end for a moment. So I feel like a pause is probably my main ambition!

Tim’s anthology of poems L.A. Baby! is available to buy on Friday 4^th July via Utterandpress.co.uk/. Tim will be at the Edinburgh International book festival on 15^th August as well as at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 10^th-17^th July.

• 10 New Fiction Books You Need to Read in 2025

Is there a secret goldmine collecting dust on your bookshelf? As more and more of the media we consume is made up of bits and bytes, rare book collecting has never been more popular, with people seeking out the tactile wonder of tomes steeped in history.

First editions, signed copies, rare manuscripts and hard-to-come-by copies of mega-popular franchise instalments — whether you’re a prospective seller, a die-hard collector or just a curious bookworm, there’s loads to look out for.

• 10 Must-Read Fiction Books To See You Through Spring
  
• 10 New Non-Fiction Books You Need To Read This Spring

We sat down with Hannah Clevett, Rare Books Business Manager for World of Books, to get 12 expert tips on what to look for when hunting rare books — and how to care for them. Read on for her advice.

1. Look for books published before 1970:

Some people, when they talk about rare books, they’re looking for pre-ISBN. So any book that doesn't have an ISBN is a pre-ISBN or a rare book. But we do have books that are post 1970 on our shelves within the rare book department. But as a general rule, we say pre-1970 because then you've got the ISBN, the bar codes coming in, more mass produced items from that point.

If it's got an ISBN, you can just search for the ISBN on the web. Online, you just Google the ISBN and it will come up with the exact item that you've got. Whereas, with rare books, you have to do a little bit more digging. What's the publisher? What's the year? Who is the illustrator? It's a little bit more involved for someone looking for those items.

2. …But age doesn’t necessarily equal rarity:

Don't assume because it's old, it's worth something. Don't assume because it's old, it's going to be rare either. If you take something like the Bible, for instance, that has been printed millions of times over, over the course of history. It basically follows the same principle as the scarcity vs rarity test used in Economics.

3. The earlier the edition, the better:

When you have a rare book first thing to do is open up and get the publisher information, — what you're looking for is an early edition. So if it says First Edition, first UK edition, first American edition, you know that they're the first so the chances are, if it's a new author as well, it’s probably going to be a smaller printer, therefore fewer of them are out there. Dracula, Frankenstein, Jekyll and Hyde, those classic horror titles, don't come up very often. So the older those are, probably the more sought after and the more valuable they could be.

Throughout history, you see the old books change — following the First and Second World War, paper quality goes down massively. And actually, those books become rarer, even though they're not as old, because their paper deteriorates so easily. Sometimes, if you just dog-ear a corner, if you just fold the page, it just disintegrates into your hands, because the paper quality isn't quite right. So over the years, they just are not protected.

4. Early editions of popular series and authors are always worth hunting:

There are rare popular titles that people will always want, like Enid Blyton books, the James Bond series, Lord of the Rings, Jane Austen books. They might not be worth hundreds, but old editions people want because it's getting closer to the time they were originally published.

So Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, for instance, if they're published by Allen & Unwin, they're the original publishers that published it. So you can imagine how many times that book has been published. There are certain titles and publishers that go together really well. Jane Austen, published by Macmillan. If you get an early edition of a James Bond published by Jonathan Cape, that’s likely to be sought after.

5. Know your illustrators:

The illustrator is really key as well. Alice in Wonderland, you want John Tenniel as the illustrator, because that's the one that everybody sees on every bit of merch you get at the British Library. Jane Austen's illustrator that everybody looks for is Hugh Thompson, which is quite a good indicator of rarity.

6. A big name author doesn’t necessarily mean a big payday:

A first edition Charles Dickens, people go,”Wow! How much is that worth?” In reality? Probably £30 or £40. That’s because he was so prolific in his own time. He was really famous, and he actually published in magazines and periodicals first. I remember the first time, as a valuer, I held a first edition, I thought, “Oh my God!” But when I valued it, I was so disappointed. But! It still sold overnight, no matter what value, because somebody wants that first edition difference.

7. James Bond books are great for collectors:

James Bond is the one thing that people really want. Even paperback copies of James Bond go for a lot of money, and people buy them, no matter what the price.

There are some in particular that are midway through the series or much later, and can go for £400 pounds. Sure, most of the time you're looking at a couple of quid, but some of them can be worth hundreds, so it's just knowing the market for that. But also, what is special about that particular title? You know it's a copy of Moonraker, but why is that particular edition special? And it just takes a little bit of research. Within the space of one publishing year, a valuation can swing from £4 to £400, for instance. So the more you filter when you're looking for a valuation, the better.

8. Don’t judge a rare book by its cover:

In the room where all of our high value items are stored there are some surprising things in there. There's the most boring book about reinforced concrete, and that is worth thousands of pounds. That’s down to the author that wrote it and the time that it was released. I think it is a book from the late 1950s, I believe, and if you think about how much factual books change over time, if you want a snapshot of what was happening in the industry at that time, that is the book that you want nowadays. I mean, all of us questioned it, but it is genuinely worth that much!

9. A rare signature elevates value:

We had a beautiful first edition of Relativity by Einstein that we recently sold at auction — that had so many interested parties, just because it was a first edition in unusually good condition. And we also sold a book signed by Einstein, and that is going to capture people's imagination. That's going to cut through because, how many of those are out there? He wasn’t sitting signing in Waterstones every Saturday. So a signature from somebody like that back then it's going to be worth an awful lot of money.

10. Learn how to spot a fake:

If you've got a book that is signed by one person to another, if that then comes with a letter where that person says, “I'm gifting you my book”, the value goes up so much because you can much more easily track its providence.

If you think a book is signed, even if it is modern, check its authenticity. Hold it up to the light. Check for indentations, because any pen you use is going to indent with the page no matter what the paper quality is. Hold it up if it's dated. If it’s from 1880 and it looks like it's written in a biro, maybe that's not right! Google the signature — Wikipedia is fantastic for this. If they've got a signature recorded from somebody famous, they'll have it on there. But just Google other examples, other items would have been listed and sold over time.

Although it's very easy to copy signatures, so look for certain quirks unique to an author — know that ‘A’ of ‘Albert Einstein, for instance, or the ‘F’ of ‘Florence Nightingale’. They're quite unique characters. And also look for patterns in signatures — are they all in pencil? Is your example in pen? If they obviously always use a pencil, why is yours in pen? The key is to question it. Question everything, be cynical, because then you get to the bottom of it.

11. Modern series — including comics — can also have high value:

The obvious one is Harry Potter. If you've got one of the first two or three Harry Potter books that are an early or first edition hard back, they’re going to be worth more. Even a series that eventually sold millions, the first book in any series is going to be a smaller print run. So even if you're looking at a series like Hunger Games, or anything that's really hit off with movies, that sort of thing, there’s value in early editions.

Also books that are signed by authors who don't necessarily do many book signings, can be quite sought after and worth a little bit more money. Authors that are no longer with us can no longer sign, so what you've got is what you've got.

Folio Society does a lot of special editions, but there's often only 500 copies, and it comes with a little certificate in it to say it's one of 500 numbered editions. Those are always going to keep their worth throughout time, even if they're only five years old.

Comics increasingly have value too, especially if you know what issue a new character was introduced in. They are going to be the copies that are worth a little bit more. But I would say condition is almost more important with a comic because they are so fragile, their loose paper gets so damaged. If you have some and you want to keep them in really nice condition, put a bit of card in with the issue so it stays straight. That'd be my top tip, because they just can crumble and get damaged so easily.

In the last 10 years or so, especially since Marvel and DC have grown massively, they're always going to be sought after. But also keep an eye out for little kids’ comics from the Second World War, as they're popular as well. People might remember them from their childhood, having their pocket money and going out and buying them. And if you have a series, sell them together!

12. Found a rare book? Take care of it!:

If you're looking to sell it, there are so many marketplaces out there that you can sell rare books through, depending on how special it is. You might want to take it to auction as well. But if you want to treasure it and want it to be part of your collection, you'll want to look after it, so keep it away from direct sunlight, or too much air damage. We have all of our high value items in closed cabinets for a reason. If you think about how books are stored in archives and libraries and museums, they are kept away from direct sunlight and air.

Make sure there's no mould anywhere near it, because mould spreads like wildfire, and can even ruin the rest of your collection.

We want these books to carry on living. If you're talking about rare books, they've had such a history, whether it's from the 1950s or 1550s. I think that is what we're all that's what we're all in the game for. That's why we care about books.

• Looking to sell your books? Get an extra 15% on top of the value of your trade-ins with World of Books when you enter code FU15Y49HR32BNC9D

Main Image credit: UCG / Contributor — Getty Images

Our non-fiction book picks for Spring include titles on the mess of the manosphere, the future of the Baltics and the emotional lives of The Beatles.

We also see the return of the mighty nature writer Robert Macfarlane, explore two very different memoirs focusing on fatness and, well, Google searches, and we get schooled in the new concept of ‘moral ambition’ by Rutger Bregman that might just up-end your life.

Read on for the titles to expand your noggin' over the next few months.

• Looking for new fiction? Check out 10 must-read fiction books to see you through Spring

1. John & Paul: A Love Story In Songs(Ian Leslie)

There are two types of people: people who watched the Peter Jackson documentary Get Back and thought “well, that could have been done in two hours” and people who thought “I want more”. This gorgeous joint bio of the two Beatles is for the "more, please" group.

Ian Leslie’s previous books have looked at deceit, curiosity and conflict so you can see the appeal of Lennon and McCartney. John & Paul focuses on the actual songs, the sounds, the experiments, the albums and the performances, all through the lens of their relationship, emotional lives and shifting dynamics from when they meet at a 1957 fete in Liverpool through to Lennon’s death in 1980.

Leslie deconstructs the interlocked cliched personas of ‘Lennon’ and ‘McCartney’, showing again and again how Paul was tortured, artistic and a genius and how John had a secret, sentimental “soppy” side. He writes beautifully about the creative process behind individual tracks, focusing each chapter around one song: the sections around Strawberry Fields Forever, Penny Lane and A Day in the Life is dynamite.

There’s some creative license with his psychological insights and decoding of literary, autobiographical and personal lyrics but it’s all there to be picked over. And if you’ve read accounts of The Beatles before, the look at the post-”divorce” animosity and reconciliation through their solo projects feels particularly fresh. Actually, I might stick Get Back on again...

• Out now / Buy it: £25

2. Greedy Guts(Gina Tonic)

One of the chapters in this collection of essays from Gina Tonic is named “The Time My Mam Gave Me a Short Back and Sides”. Which gives you a sense of the vibe. Ciders, pills and panic attacks here, lads.

This is a set of bolshy, honest essays about growing up as a working-class fat woman in the Welsh Valleys then coming-of-age on Tumblr and in Manchester flatshares. You might know Tonic as a senior editor at Polyester Zine and co-host of their podcast - she also launched The Fat Zine in the pandemic.

Her funny-sad tales of dancing on stage at Fat Pride, fingering in the toilets at clubs and dealing with fat fetishists are broadened out to make wider points about biases in healthcare, “good fatties” and “bad fatties” on social media and the history of the fat liberation movement.

This is an accessible entry point into these worlds and an essay in which Tonic deconstructs a troll’s message to her, line by line, is really affecting. Then, of course, she goes on to explain with glee how she worked out exactly who the troll was, with the help of internet sleuthing and a few of her mates. More memoirs like this one please.

• Out now / Buy it: £20

3. Is A River Alive?(Robert Macfarlane)

Robert Macfarlane is our literary Attenborough and he’s also so much more than that. Is A River Alive? is another masterpiece, another beautiful and thought-provoking book on nature after his last, astonishing project Underland. It also feels like something of a culmination of Macfarlane’s adventures, as though in his interviews with many artists, activists, scientists and indigenous peoples over the years, he was working towards this.

Over the course of three journeys - to the cloud-forests of Los Cedros in Ecuador, the polluted ghost rivers of Chennai, India and down the rapids of the Mutehekau Shipu/Magpie river in Canada - Macfarlane is asking big, bold questions about the anima or aliveness of natural ‘more-than-human’ phenomenon, the legal personhood and ‘Rights of Nature’ of rivers and forests, alongside witnessing what rivers and seas offer to people who are grieving and transforming themselves.

This thrilling, romantic, pragmatic, genre-defying book couldn’t come at a more important time for our rivers.

• Out 1st May / Buy it: £25

4. CTRL HATE DELETE(Cécile Simmons)

OK, this is your post-Adolescence read right here. This is a serious survey of the manosphere and the “anti-feminist backlash” online and off from Andrew Tate to trad wives. Researcher Cécile Simmons has immersed herself in these online subcultures and here she joins the dots between groups you may have heard of, from pick-up artists and red-pilled wellness influencers to anti vaxxers, webcam scammers and crypto grifters.

Some trends, like the ‘rolling coal’ trucker protests, might be totally new to you but Simmons knits it all together in a way that makes sense, while exploring the reasons behind real feelings of insecurity and loss of control.

How is Johnny Depp connected to Saudi Arabia? What are Rumble and SubscribeStar? Why is eating meat so important to some influencers? CTRL HATE DELETE answers these questions and honestly, it’s a lot if you’re not used to hanging out in these corners of the internet.

This book is both terrifying and hopeful, slightly on the academic side but with plenty of real world, social media and pop culture examples to jump off from. The second half features the people who are fighting back, from movements like Movember to IRL men’s circles to the YouTubers like ContraPoints who debate male supremacists online.

• Out now / Buy it: £9.99

5. Baltic: The Future of Europe(Oliver Moody)

A billboard went up recently that read ‘Ever heard of Riga, Tallinn or Vilnius? If we abandon Kyiv, you will.’ It could have been an ad for this superb book on the Baltic countries, written by Oliver Moody, the Berlin bureau chief for The Times. With potted histories of the last century or so of Estonia, Finland, Latvia, the Baltic sea itself, Lithuania and Poland, Moody covers war, politics, foreign policy, language, business and even national myths from the Krolle Bolle of the Danish island of Bornholm to Latvia’s Bear-Slayer.

Moody is extremely well-sourced with current and former heads of state, prime ministers, security and military experts providing the commentary on what western Europe can learn from eastern Europe alongside insight into the full Putin playbook of disruption and disinformation over the past decade. Moody gets the adrenaline going in the last few chapters especially as he games out multiple scenarios on how war in the Baltics might be triggered (we see you, Suwalki Gap) and how the Baltics, Europe and NATO might respond. This should be mandatory reading, honestly.

• Out now / Buy it: £25

6. Moral Ambition(Rutger Bregman)

Historian Rutger Bregman once told a group of billionaires to their faces that they need to start paying more tax so it’s clear he just does not have time for anyone’s BS. His new big idea, Moral Ambition, is a cross between intellectual self-help (that “won’t make your life easier”) and a Malcolm Gladwell-style series of stories on a theme. He is not afraid to zoom out. It has graphs and lists and spells things out so clearly you start to think - is this all a bit simple? - until you look at how the world is run. Perhaps not. And Bregman starts with the timely question: would you have actually joined the resistance in World War Two?

Building on David Graeber’s theory of Bullshit Jobs - a lot of people work in office jobs that serve no real purpose - and perhaps Alain de Botton’s idea on underused “human capital” - Bregman argues that many talented people are wasting their lives in corporate, non-impactful or harmful jobs and careers while others retreat into making minimal impact only, growing vegetables in their allotments.

He wants us instead to be both idealistic and ambitious about winning, at scale. So once he has named the concept, to start the conversation, and outlined the basic case, he gives us some fascinating inspiration in the form of individuals and small groups from abolitionists, civil rights organisers, suffragettes, lawyers, inventors and philanthropists, ending on what he believes are the big challenges and moral issues facing humanity. So, you know, get on it.

• Out now / Buy it: £20

7. Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age(Vauhini Vara)

One thing’s for certain: you’ve never read a book quite like Vauhini Vara’s Searches.

We get to see the novelist and journalist’s Google searches, her Amazon orders, her X (Twitter) interests, her chatbot queries and her Instagram photos. And not highly curated excerpts but nowhere-to-hide lists and lists of what Vara has typed into the internet, what she has bought and what advertisers think she is interested in.

These experiments combining memoir and commentary on modern tech are moving, incredibly personal and at times intentionally frustrating on account of the polite, banal chunks of ChatGPT text that thread through the narrative. But it all serves the themes she’s trying to push and pull at. A number of Vara’s articles including Searches and Ghosts, a story about her sister’s death from cancer, which was ‘co-written’ with ChatGPT and went viral in 2021, formed the basis of this book which is interested in Big Tech, AI bias, intimacy, grief and where exactly humans fit into the future of technological innovation.

• Out 1st May / Buy it: £16.99

8. Minority Rule: Adventures In The Culture War(Ash Sarkar)

Released in February and an immediate Sunday Times bestseller, Minority Rule is the first book from Novara Media’s Ask Sarkar, or @AyoCaesar as she appears in the social media culture war trenches. The thrust of what she’s outlining here focuses on how politicians, the right-wing media and the algorithms have all converged on a story of a minority elite of woke metropolitan progressives who get all the attention and hold increasing power in the UK. She explores how Piers Morgan, Dominic Cummings and yes, Matt Lucas’ Vicky Pollard from Little Britain, have all driven a wedge between “the white working class” and the rest of her expansive, Marxist definition of the working class.

Sarkar gets into the left’s mistakes, her own mistakes (debating whether Apu from The Simpsons is racist on Sky News, etc) and her feelings about idiotic advisers and too-chummy lobby journos with wit and candour. She also outlines some of the demographic panics that distract from organising around wages, workers’ rights, housing, inequality, anti-racism and public services, against an extractive ‘rentier’ class that doesn’t care. And her analysis of the 2011 riots in Tottenham and the summer-of-2024 riots, sparked by the violence in Southport, is fresh and fascinating.

• Out now / Buy it: £18.99

9. Secrets of Adulthood(Gretchen Rubin)

“More lawn, more mowing.” Secrets of Adulthood is a tonic that provides the dopamine hits of self-improvement cliches on Instagram but with a much higher level of quality.

This compact collection of aphorisms from Gretchen Rubin is organised by theme: adventure, relationships, creativity, dilemmas, procrastination, getting it wrong. The “brief and sharp” statements, with a selection of quotations from famous and not-so-famous writers, artists and philosophers up top, offer a mix of common sense, catchy advice and food for thought, to dip in and out of, without the trash ideology that comes along with a Jordan Peterson-type.

A nice gift for teens, students or just anyone going through it and in need of a nudge right now (including you).

• Out now / Buy it: £12.99

10. One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This(Omar El Akkad)

A slim volume, this is journalist Omar El Akkad’s attempt to contend with Israel’s war in Gaza. At this “weightless time” between the front pages and the history books, he is preoccupied with questions of who in the West carries on with their normal life and who feels they can’t.

El Akkad was born in Egypt, growing up in Qatar then Canada, and now lives in Oregon in the US. His consideration of moral ceilings and floors - for politicians, the media and individuals - doesn’t just grab you by the lapels, as the saying goes, it turns them inside out and shows you what you’ve really been wearing.

This isn’t straightforward reportage, though El Akkad does include scenes from his war reporting in Afghanistan and covering Guantanamo Bay. It’s more imagistic, poetic-but-lucid writing intended to stir us into action. He is concerned with the hypocrisy and cowardice of Western media and arts organisations on Palestine, the “hollow” at the centre of neoliberalism and how colonialism is intertwined with the climate crisis.

How much will we let things get worse rather than better? Ultimately, El Akkad believes that small acts - “throwing sand in the gears” - do matter in troubling times.

• Out now / Buy it: £16.99

Missed our earlier book lists this year? Check out:

• 10 New Fiction Books You Need to Read in 2025
• 10 New Non-Fiction Books to Soup-Up Your Brain in 2025

Rizzle Kicks finally made their much anticipated comeback last year, after taking a break from making music to work on themselves and figure some stuff out.

Now the dynamic duo, Jordan Stephens and Harley Sylvester, are performing at the upcoming Half Time Show presented by O2 during the Red Roses v France in the Guinness Women’s Six Nations fixture on Saturday 26 April 2025.

Tickets to catch the performance and support England are still available on the website if you would like to grab one for yourself.

The game will be played at the Allianz Stadium, which has a capacity of 82,000 people — a testament to just how much women’s rugby has grown in recent years.

We were fortunate enough to have a chat with Jordan and Harley before their big gig, where we spoke about everything from preparing for a momentous occasion like this to why women’s sport is so important.

We also got their picks for 5 non-fiction books you need to read right now, for those among us with an inquisitive mind...

Shortlist: How did the opportunity come up to perform at the Allianz Stadium for the half-time show?

Jordan Stephens: We just got asked! I gotta be honest with you, we just got asked!

Harley Sylvester: I think a lot of our themes around our recent album are around competition, and I think that might have been a reason why.

JS: We’re sporty fellows!

HS: Yeah, we’re big sporty guys.

JS: We also did an NFL half-time show, so we’re just basically trying to conquer all ball-handling sports.

SL: How did it feel to be asked to perform at an event like this?

HS: Women’s Rugby is on such an amazing trajectory at the moment, and we were just buzzing to be asked to be a part of it. I think it was a no-brainer to be honest.

JS: It’s a cool stadium [the Allianz Stadium].

HS: Yeah, it’s an amazing stadium, it’s just something we’re really happy and proud to be a part of.

SL: For a half-time show, can you talk about how you curate what to play and figure out what’s most appropriate to perform?

JS: We just kinda play the most popular songs really. It’s not the Super Bowl half-time show where we can we can stick in some kind of political message or anything. Ultimately, we’re there to give people a brief moment of fun whilst they take some respite from what is undoubtedly going to be an intense game. Ya know, we know what we’re doing, just gonna play our hits and one new song because we love it and then keep it moving. Watch the game.

HS: It is nice being able to test ourselves in unique situations, performance situations, as well. We’re used to being able to perform to a crowd of our fans, and we’re aware that most of people there are going to watch the rugby, so its a nice challenge for us to maybe go in and gain some new fans, play to a crowd who wouldn’t necessarily come to see us live at any point before. We like challenges, and we want to bring some joy and love to those in attendance.

SL: Was part of the decision as well to be a part of the growth of women's sports?

JS: Yes, yeah. Definitely, it’s really, really cool. I love that about the UK right now. Weirdly, I was chatting to someone about this the other day, and it’s probably my favourite aspects of sporting evolution right now, the more people involved and engaged in all sport, men or women, the better. I’m actually a bit afraid of how much sport people will be able to watch in a week as things continue to grow.

SL: You mentioned you won’t necessarily be performing for your fans, does that change the preparation or mindset at all?

HS: Not necessarily. You know what? I feel like I’m less nervous for it. You’d probably expect us to be more nervous, because we’re playing to an unexpected crowd but, for me, I feel more in a position where I’m ready to change people’s opinions or give people an experience they weren’t necessarily expecting.

People who usually come to our shows are fans; those are the shows I get more nervous doing. A show like this, I feel a lot more confident that I can win over some people and gain some new fans. I always say, I think you have to be a miserable person to watch a Rizzle Kicks gig and not have fun. Even if you’re not into our music, I think you would struggle to watch us perform and not enjoy it.

SL: In terms of how you prepared for shows in the past, before your break, do you follow a different process now?

JS: Just drink a cup of tea and try to relax. I mean, when we were teenagers, we’d probably be half cut, which isn’t the best idea. Both of us are now sober, so it’s more about staying calm, being around people we love, having a few mates with us and try to chill. Be tranquil.

HS: There was a realisation that we wanted to treat performances and ensure we’re giving the best show possible. People pay to see their favourite artists, so we want to make sure we give them that and are in the best shape possible. It means we’ve got to be healthy, eat clean, and drink clean. It’s extremely important to prepare well so we don’t let people down or disappoint them.

5 Non-fiction books you have to read according to Rizzle Kicks

As part of our chat and sit down with Rizzle Kicks, we also asked them for a cheeky Shortlist of their favourite non-fiction books that everyone has to read, which naturally included a shameless plug from Jordan regarding his book that released last August.

It was a quick list, but we’ve got them all below, along with a description for each one in case it takes your fancy...

1. Love in Exile by Shone Faye

Love in Exile is incredibly new, only releasing in February of this year, and the official description from Penguin reads:

“Shon Faye grew up quietly obsessed with the feeling that love was not for her. Not just romantic love: the secret fear of her own unworthiness penetrated every aspect and corner of her life. It was a fear that would erupt in destructive, counterfeit versions of the real love she craved: addictions and short-lived romances that were either euphoric and fantastical, or excruciatingly painful and unhinged, often both.

"Faye’s experience of the world as a trans woman, who grew up visibly queer, exacerbated her fears. But, as she confronted her damaging ideas about love and lovelessness, she came to realise that this sense of exclusion is symptomatic of a much larger problem in our culture.”

Buy here | £15.99.

2. Avoidance, Drugs, Heartbreak and Dogs by Jordan Stephens

The book written by half of Rizzle Kicks is all about what it means to be a modern man and the description reads:

“Diagnosed twice with ADHD, Jordan Stephens found his teens and twenties a whirl of career success and nurturing friendships but also a brutal pattern of self-harm, hedonism, destructive coping mechanisms and heartbreak. When he tried to live up to his own damaged expectations and his world exploded, he stepped away from his previous existence completely and allowed himself to explore the pain he'd repressed his entire life.”

Buy here | £10.99

3. The Bridge by Donna Lancaster

The Bridge is a nine-step plan that helps to heal trauma and self-acceptance. Here is the full description:

“Every single one of us is living with the aftershocks of heartbreak. Whether it's the sting of not fitting in at school or the pain of witnessing our parents' divorce, the end of our own marriage or the death of a loved one, to be human is to bear the wounds of all our losses and setbacks.”

Buy here | £9.99

4. Scattered Minds by Gabor Maté

Dr Gabor Maté is a Canadian physician, and his book, Scattered Minds, challenges what we think we know about attention deficit disorder. Here’s the description:

“Scattered Minds explodes the myth of attention deficit disorder as genetically based – and offers real hope and advice for children and adults who live with the condition.

“Gabor Maté is a revered physician who specialises in neurology, psychiatry and psychology – and himself has ADD. With wisdom gained through years of medical practice and research, Scattered Minds is a must-read for parents – and for anyone interested in how experiences in infancy shape the biology and psychology of the human brain.”

Buy here| £9.42

5. The Man Who Couldn’t Stop by David Adam

The rest of the books on this list were suggested by Jordan, with Harley stating he isn’t much of a reader anymore, but this was the book he called out for to feature on the list. The book is an in-depth look at OCD and the intrusive thoughts that come with it.

The description for the book reads as:

“David Adam--an editor at Nature and an accomplished science writer--has suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn't Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. In this riveting and intimate blend of science, history, and memoir, Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind and explains how they drive millions of us toward obsession and compulsion.”

Buy here | £9.99

• Missed our winter reads? Check out 10 new fiction books to read in 2025

Your spring book stack starts here. We’ve read a bunch of new fiction releases out now or due this season and put together this edit of ten must-reads.

The list includes heavyweights such as the return of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a fiendish murder mystery debut from Louise Hegarty and a stunning book exploring the impacts of war from French author Mathias Enard. Elsewhere, we have a road trip novel, some speculative near-future fiction and a book about one, long, strange night out.

• Missed our winter reads? Check out 10 new fiction books to read in 2025

We’ve also coincidentally got more than our fair share of midlife crises in the pages below - something for us all to look forward to.

1. Universality(Natasha Brown)

It takes some guts to take aim at columnists, publishers and literary festivals with your second book but that’s exactly what Natasha Brown has done. If that all sounds a bit insider-y, it’s actually far from it. This 150-odd page novella zips through a plot involving a stolen gold bar, an anti-woke icon, posh hippy activists, a Yorkshire countryside rave and a b*nker w*nker (or is he?). In other words, it’s having a lot of fun. Case in point, a lot of Brown’s cast of characters are having an argument in their head, not in fact with the person in front of them.

She gets stuck into questions of class, taste, cynicism-versus-idealism, internet rage-bait, bad dinner parties and, crucially, who exactly gets to be universal, who gets to speak on behalf of ‘the people’. To complete the full Universality experience, we recommend a trip to a bougie, self-congratulatory literary talk or at the very least reading a bunch of fawning, slightly scared reviews of this book.

• Out now / Buy it: £14.99

2. Flesh(David Szalay)

Remember when Danny Wallace became a Yes Man, saying yes to everything for a year? Well, David Szalay’s hero István is something of an “Okay” Man, going along with almost everything that’s put in front of him: jobs, affairs, even war. Szalay follows István from his start as an unsure, uncommunicative teen in Hungary, through stints in prison and serving in the Iraq War, ultmately landing him in London’s Chelsea working security for some extremely wealthy, well-connected people.

Taking in sex and intimacy, men’s friendships and father-son dynamics, the reader is required to work throughout to fill in some key story gaps, and even some heavy emotional beats, but this patience is rewarded towards the conclusion of István’s story. What plays out in the pages of Flesh is really quite haunting as we see the consequences of decisions and non-decisions through the years. This one stays with you.

• Out now / Buy it: £18.99

3. Fair Play(Louise Hegarty)

A bunch of friends rent a big country house on Airbnb for a joint NYE and birthday party with a murder mystery theme. So far, so millennial. But when one of the friends is found dead the next morning, this debut novel from Irish writer Louise Hegarty turns into something stranger that’s very tricky to pull off. Fair Play does for Agatha Christie-style detectives stories and really, actually thinking about death what Radiohead did with alternative rock and experimental ‘world’ music: leads you gently from one to the other with no complaints from the audience.

Clues, red herrings, money, love, secrets, it’s all packed in to this deftly constructed story. I don’t want to say too much more to avoid spoiling it, but if you like postmodern, meta narratives that get inside your head and still manage to honour the emotional heart of the characters, this is one to seek out.

• Out now / Buy it: £16.99

4. The Deserters(Mathias Enard)

It’s only April but I already know The Deserters will be one of the books of the year for me. The work of French author Mathias Enard, translated into English here by Charlotte Mandell, it’s a kind of study of conflict in Europe, approaching the subject from all sorts of expected and unexpected angles.

With parallel stories of a soldier deserting a war and the daughter of a concentration camp survivor learning about his life, it’s at times cerebral, at others visceral, concerned with the beauty and danger of both nature and humankind, sometimes highly specific and other times anonymous, examining the immediate aftermath of war alongside the ramifications down the decades. Poetic pages and old love letters will be followed by down-and-dirty descriptions of boots and guns and back again, with each mood enhancing the other. Just stunning.

• Out 8th May / Buy it: £14.99

5. Stag Dance(Torrey Peters)

Gosh, where to start. This collection of four stories from American writer Torrey Peters is precise, original, funny and fearless. Written across ten years, each one is an experiment in telling the lives of trans women ranging from speculative near-future fiction about hormone wars - which has a spectacular f*ck you ending - to secret boarding school shenanigans and subculture power dynamics.

The title story, which could be its own standalone novella, is set in a 19th century ‘pirate’ lumberjack camp, deep in icy winter woods and it’s a page-turner that will surprise you again and again. Jealousy, shame, mythical beasts, Las Vegas Strip sting ops, everything in Stag Dance feels genuinely fresh from the overarching desires down to all the details. And you won’t think about pigs the same way again.

• Out now / Buy it: £16.99

6. The Rest of our Lives(Ben Markovits)

Ben Markovits’ protagonist in The Rest of our Lives is 55 year-old Tom. He’s a law professor who is on leave, he’s married to Amy, he’s suffering from Long Covid and he has just dropped the youngest of his two kids Miri off at her college dorm in Pittsburgh. What follows is an All Fours-style crisis road trip from this midlife man’s perspective. He drives around the US to meet with friends, family, an old girlfriend — in other words he goes anywhere but home to the empty nest.

Markovits gives us a compellingly true to life mix of action and passivity from Tom, who narrates the book with a matter of fact, everyman tone as he decides who to confide in and when. And in the background hums the likes of Neil Young, John Mellencamp, the Bourne trilogy and Raymond Chandler. Tom takes in dive bars, pick-up basketball and sees how other people’s domestic lives have turned out, as he examines his own unrealised ambitions, the state of his marriage and what on earth to do next. A sympathetic portrait of all concerned.

• Out now / Buy it: £16.99

7. Dream Count(Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie)

Probably the biggest fiction release for spring, this is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s first novel in over ten years. The author of Americanah and Half of a Yellow Sun is back with a beautiful book which follows four Nigerian and Guinean women in America - travel writer Chiamaka, her lawyer friend Zikora, her banker-turned-student cousin Omelogor and her housekeeper Kadiatou - asking big questions about their lives and what they’re hoping for, from men in particular.

This is honest, heartfelt writing, including painful surveys through the characters’ past relationships. Adichie also gives herself space to explore themes of women’s bodies and health, childbirth, motherhood and sexual assault across the four women’s interconnected sections. Dream Count is very much the other half of the ‘lost men’ story of this decade and Adichie carefully weaves religion, money and the pandemic into the larger story. Considering this is almost 400 pages, you could easily sink into the reflections of Adichie’s characters for a whole weekend.

• Out now / Buy it: £20.00

8. Madame Sosostris and the Festival for the Broken Hearted(Ben Okri)

Ever read T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land? If not, we recommend reading it before picking up Ben Okri’s Madame Sosostris, which takes its title from a character in the 1920s modernist poem and themes from both the work and Eliot’s own life. The Booker Prize-winning Okri has incredible range - he wrote a beautiful poem on the Grenfell Tower tragedy in 2017. Here, he is in a playful yet contemplative mode as he uses a fantastical party in the woods in the south of France, with masks, costumes, music and a famous fortune teller, to examine two couples that might or might not be in crisis: Viv and Alan, Beatrice and Stephen.

Okri is also a playwright and at times this book feels like a play script, with heaps of witty dialogue and wordplay on romance and breakups, the popularity of tarot, yoga and astrology and the one thing every character is obsessed with: the future. The literary references don’t stop with Eliot, either: there’s plenty in here for Shakespeare heads too.

• Out now / Buy it: £14.99

9. Sister Europe(Nell Zink)

Sister Europe, a 1980 Psychedelic Furs album and now the title of American-writer-in-Germany Nell Zink’s new novel. Taking place over the course of one very weird night out in Berlin, this 200-pager starts out seeming like it’s intentionally put together a motley crew purely to clash with one another. But as Sister Europe unfolds, it subverts the stereotypes - a trans teenager, her art critic father, an Arab prince, the ageing hipster and a few more - and fully lets us into each of their heads. It’s funny too and full of erudite art, history and architecture references; Zink makes it crystal clear that these are often simply one character trying to impress another but you’ll end up sheepishly noting them down for yourself regardless.

And all throughout, in a superb Confederacy of Dunces-esque choice, the group is followed by a tragic policeman watching all these rich people flirt and yawn, itching to arrest someone for something, anything. The kind of book that’ll have you second guessing yourself the next time you have a conversation with someone you’ve just met.

• Out 24th April / Buy it: £14.99

10. Theft(Abdulrazak Gurnah)

From the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2021, Theft is quite a classically told tale of three teenagers coming of age in 1990s Zanzibar and mainland Tanzania. The interlocking stories of Karim, Badar and Fauzia follow the different struggles they encounter from how they’re treated by the adults in their lives to what opportunities are open to them.

There’s nothing showy in the language here but you always feel that you’re in safe hands with Gurnah and his storytelling in Theft. Old family feuds, small kindnesses and postcolonial politics all work as powerful forces on the shapes of their lives and while Badar, who progresses from servant to hotel staff, becomes our main focus as the book continues, there’s a lot of care for each of his characters. Understated but that’s no reason to overlook it.

• Out now / Buy it: £18.99

Nerds, bookworms, gather: your Prime Day has arrived.

For any fellow book lovers, get your nose out of your book and listen up because Amazon has made possibly their best announcement to date and announced its first ever dedicated book sale.

In a first-of-its-kind event, there will be hundreds of deals across thousands of physical books, eBooks, and even discounts to be had on Kindles, Audible, and more. You could say that Amazon have started a new chapter…

The sale will start on 23rd April - is it deliberately coinciding with the birthday of one of the most famous and prolific writers ever? (Ten points if you guessed it was Shakespeare). Well, probably not, but it’s a nice coincidence either way.

Who can participate?

The Amazon Book Sale is a brand new sales period dedicated solely to books. It will offer big savings on hundreds of digital and physical books, as well as reading subscription services. The best part? You don’t even have to have prime to participate. Although if you are an Amazon Prime member then you’ll just have the added benefit of your books arriving the next day.

When is it?

The Amazon Book Sale is running from 23rd April until Monday 28th April, so you’ll have to be fairly on it if you want to snap up the offers. Although, this five day offer feels quite generous when you compare it to Prime Day, which only runs for two days.

In true Amazon style, some early bird deals are already running from today (15th April). Any book aficionados will already be familiar with the 99p books that are frequently available online, so it’s worth having a look online to see if you can spot any live discounts. Further big deals are already running ahead of the book sale including the All-new Amazon Kindle Paperwhite(16 GB) available for £129.99 down from £160 and Kindle Scribe, which is down from £399.99 to £314.99, saving you a tidy £85.

If the current deals are anything to go by, the Amazon Book Sale is going to be the perfect opportunity to stock up and make your reading list a reality ahead of summer. And remember, there is no rule saying you have to finish your current unread books on your bedstand before you can buy more…

• London's best indie bookshop has officially been crowned

Main image credit: Thomas Barwick / Getty

Playing video games is a lot of fun, but if you want to dive even deeper into what is arguably the defining entertainment medium of the 21st century, why not spend some time reading about them, too.

We’ve pulled together a list of our favourite video game books, recent and past; a mixture of non-fiction, fiction and attention-demanding design-led books that look especially good on a coffee table.

Whether you want a deep dive on the state of the industry, a visual history lesson, an unputdownable love story, or just pages and pages of colourful retro screenshots to get all nostalgic over, you’ll find something in here worth diving into.

1. Gamish(Edward Ross)

If you’ve made your way through the likes of Watchmen and Saga, why not make your next graphic novel one that guides you through the history of video games? Comic artist and lifelong gamer Edward Ross combines his two passions in this beautifully illustrated and comprehensive love letter to interactive entertainment, from Pong all the way through to Pokemon Go.

Ross not only tells the story of games through his illustrations, but also analyses what it is that draws us to them. You won’t find a more enjoyable history lesson.

• £22 — Buy it here

2. Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment(Jason Schreier)

Every one of investigative journalist Jason Schreier’s books is worth reading, but we’re highlighting his most recent work here. Play Nice: The Rise, Fall, and Future of Blizzard Entertainment is a behind-the-scenes examination of Blizzard Entertainment, and how the company that was once beloved for giving the world Diablo and World of Warcraft became embroiled in a series of scandals and standoffs with parent company Activision.

If you follow the games industry at all, you’ll know that Activision Blizzard was eventually acquired by Microsoft for $69 billion, and in his book Shreier talks to more than 300 current and former employees to tell the full story of this more than three-decade saga.

• £25 — Buy it here

3. The Console Chronicles(Lost in Cult)

Lost In Cult’s lovingly put together video game history books remind you what’s so special about both gaming - and print media. After celebrating everything handheld in the first book of the series, The Console Chronicles is a celebration of the many boxes you’ve had plugged into your TV through the years.

Spanning what it identifies as the nine hardware generations, from the early days of the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo Switch’s arrival in 2017, The Console Chronicles combines impassioned personal essays and nostalgic musings about each featured console with photography, box art and vibrant illustrations, making for an impressively thorough tribute to 50 years of fun and technical innovation.

• £40 — Buy it here

4. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow(Gabrielle Zevin)

Given the popularity of video games, there are surprisingly few great novels about them, but Gabriella Slevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is an exception.

Slevin’s phenomenally successful novel - which is now being adapted into a film - about two childhood friends who reconnect and collaborate on a game that takes the industry by storm, is very accessible to non-gamers, but Slevin’s lifelong love of the medium is evident in her writing. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow is a story of love, friendship and fulfillment at its core, but it also shines a light on the benefits of play.

• £9.99 — Buy it here

5. Lost In A Good Game(Pete Etchells)

Part memoir, part history lesson, part science-backed retort to all the negative mainstream media coverage that has always followed video games, Pete Etchells’ Lost In A Good game is a must-read for anyone who cares about games and what they can do for us.

Etchells begins with a deeply personal account of how his late father’s motor neurone diagnosis led him to immersing himself in virtual worlds as means of escape, which serves as a jumping off point for a wide-ranging examination of gaming and its enduring appeal. The slightly strange blend of emotive storytelling and hard facts research might not work for everyone, but the author’s passion and knowledge is evident throughout.

• £9.99 — Buy it here

6. Tetris: The Games People Play(Box Brown)

The incredible origin story of Tetris has been told many times in various mediums, but cartoonist Brian “Box” Brown’s graphic novel brings it to life in a way few others have managed.

The author’s striking artwork introduces us to computer engineer Alexey Pajitnov, who created Tetris as a hobby alongside his day job of developing software for the Soviet Union. Tetris’ brilliant simplicity made it an instant hit, and it wasn’t long before a bidding war for the publishing rights took hold in Moscow, with the American entrepreneur Henk Rogers - whose lifelong friendship with Pajitnov remains the beating heart of the whole Tetris story - determined to emerge victorious.

If you want to understand why everyone wanted a piece of Tetris in the late ‘80s, and why the legendary puzzler endures to this day, read this book.

• £12.99 — Buy it here

7. Video Game of the Year(Jordan Minor)

Compared to film and TV, gaming is still a young medium, and one that has evolved rapidly in the last 40 or so years. Tech journalist Jordan Minor sets out to chart that remarkable journey in his book, Video Game Of The Year.

The premise is simple: Minor selects one game from each year, from the arrival of Pong in 1977, through to 2022 when the book was sent to the printers, and explains the significance of each one, with each featured game accompanied by original artwork that makes flicking through it a delight.

There are some pretty obvious picks, with it being impossible to overlook the likes of Super Mario Bros. and Final Fantasy VII in a book like this, but Minor gets a bit more leftfield with some of his 21st century selections. 2022’s remake of the subversive indie cult classic, The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe, makes for the perfect final say on just how far games have come.

• £19.99 — Buy it here

8. Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle That Defined a Generation(Blake J. Harris)

This one has been around for ages, but anyone interested in the video game industry is no doubt aware of the battle between Sega and Nintendo that dominated the ‘90s as much as Oasis vs. Blur. Blake J. Harris’ book is the most thorough account of how it all went down that you’ll find.

It remains very amusing that whether you swore allegiance to Mario or Sonic in the playground was a genuinely industry-shifting moment, and the result of a corporate slugfest that saw a plucky upstart take on the most established name in the game. The plumber and co would argue that they ultimately won the war, but after reading this book, which draws on hundreds of interviews with former employees of both companies, you’ll have a newfound respect for Sega and its hedgehog-led strategy.

• £17.75 — Buy it here

9. The Unofficial GBA Pixel Book(Bitmap Books)

Have a browse of Bitmap Books’ collection of books at your own risk, as every one of them would take pride of place on a coffee table, but we can only pick one for this list, and it has to be The GBA Pixel Book — also pictured at the very top of this article. It's a beauty.

This visually stunning tribute to Nintendo’s beloved handheld features more than 240 games from the system’s incredible library, spread across 300 pages of articles, images, maps and high-res pixel art. The book includes nearly 4,000 screenshots of the included games that fill entire pages, from Metroid Fusion to Mother 3, all captured during the assembly process, making it the ultimate collectors item for those with fond memories of the GBA era. Which, let’s face it, applies to anyone who owned one.

• £29.99 — Buy it here

10. Death by Video Game(Simon Parkin)

There are few people who write about video games more engagingly than Simon Parkin, (we also strongly recommend listening to his excellent podcast, My Perfect Console, if you don’t already), and in this book he explores the obsessive tendencies that video games have the potential to tease out of players, and why some people appear willing to enter into sometimes dangerously extreme relationships with their hobby.

Parkin’s starting point is a spate of deaths in gaming cafes in Taiwan, but the book is less interested in demonising the pastime than it is in getting to the heart of its uniquely powerful allure, which he does by drawing on a series of case studies, each concerning the impact a virtual world has had on someone’s real one. It’s really a book about people, then, and will make you think about gaming in ways you haven’t before.

• £4.97 — Buy it here

• 10 New Non-Fiction Books to Soup-Up Your Brain

Walk into any bookstore right now and you may notice something — the displays are filled with enticing and mysterious novels by Korean writers. They’re also topping Goodreads lists, becoming bestsellers, and getting shortlisted for the coveted International Booker Prize time and time again. But, why are they so popular?

Korean cultural exports right now are big business, whether that’s on our screens with the likes of Squid Game, in our ears with dozens of K-Pop stars dominating the charts, or in our bellies with Korean restaurants and recipes only growing in popularity in recent years. And Korean literature is just another example of that growing cultural cachet, with the stories themselves surreal and captivating in equal measure — whether it’s the sci-fi of Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny or the sorrow of Han Kang’s Humans Acts.

With such a literary trend, whittling down the books that are deemed ultimately important to read can be quite tricky — so we’ve done it for you.

In an attempt to give an overview of this fascinating literary culture, we’ve crossed genres in an effort to curate the ultimate Korean fiction reading list. You’re left with the novels of some of the world’s greatest writers, working in unison with translators to bring them to the English-language.

10. Cursed Bunny(Bora Chung)

A collection of ten short stories, Cursed Bunny straddles a multitude of genres from horror to fantasy to magical realism within its 250+ pages. They’re almost like fables and fairytales in that they each tackle real-life issues, but not in a way we’ve ever experienced. By masking the horrors under surrealism and magic, they’ll horrify as well as delight.

Each tale varies in length and theme from the sci-fi of Goodbye, My Love to the ghost story of Home Sweet Home. While they’re nightmarish in nature and will stick with you, it’s a truly unique place to start when it comes to Korean fiction.

• Out now / Buy it: £12.99

9. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop(Hwang Boreum)

The most light-hearted entry on this list, Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop is the tale of Yeongju, who leaves her old life behind to start a new one where she opens an independent bookshop. Nestled into a neighbourhood in Seoul, the bookshop slowly evolves — and so do the customers' lives that ponder the bookshelves day-to-day and drink the barista’s coffee.

It’s heart-warming, thought-provoking, and cosy to read as the people of the Hyunam-dong Bookshop learn to live their lives passionately - mirroring the passion Yeongju demonstrated by opening it in the first place.

• Out now / Buy it: £9.99

8. Whale(Cheon Myeong-kwan)

Character-driven tales are an incredibly popular aspect of Korean fiction and for Whale, they’re wildly unique. Cheon Myeong-kwan dares to address hard-hitting themes - so, fair warning. There’s Geumbok, determined to escape her past; her mute daughter Chunhui; a brickmaker who can speak to elephants; and a one-eyed woman who has a surreal control over honeybees.

Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2023, it’s an epic tale of adventure with a whirlwind plot. Whilst there is light and laughter, there are also moments of extreme darkness, sorrow, and violence.

• Out now / Buy it: £9.99

7. Human Acts

(Han Kang)

Han Kang’s debut novel tops our Korean fiction list, but this is another entirely different and beautifully written tale. Set in South Korea in 1980, a boy named Dong-ho is killed during a student protest. It’s then his grief-stricken mother that the focus is drawn to, depicting how her life unfolds in the wake of tragedy, as well as other characters all suffering with their own trauma.

It’s a controversial novel from the Korean author given its focus on the real-life events surrounding the Gwangju Uprising, but has been praised for its delicate take on the stories of the survivors and victims - navigating grief, guilt and every emotion in between - told across seven parts.

• Out now / Buy it: £9.99

6. Marigold Mind Laundry

(Jungeun Yun)

Away from the harrowing tales of Korea’s tumultuous past, another theme prominent in the Korean fiction world is that of whimsy, surrealism, and magic. In Marigold Mind Laundry, customers can visit Jiuen’s laundromat to become cleansed of all pain. Their troubles are stained onto garments, washed away, and ironed out, turning into mystical red petals.

In this novel, five customers visit with their own reasons for wanting to rid their minds of the sorrow that haunts them. By providing each customer with healing, Jieun is able to witness the transformation of the people that stepped into the Mind Laundry compared to the ones that left.

• Out now / Buy it: £12.99

5. If I Had Your Face(Frances Cha)

If I Had Your Face explores the modern world of Seoul, offering a cultural insight into the lives of four young women. Each character struggles with their own personal issues; from a woman who made a mistake with a client at her exclusive ‘room salon’; her flatmate, an orphan who wins a scholarship to an art school in New York; their neighbour, pregnant and unsure of her future; and Ara, a hair stylist with an unhealthy obsession with a K-Pop star.

The New York novelist depicts the daily struggle of these women as they try to navigate life in a society that challenges and overwhelms them. And each narrative offers a unique look at the cultural pressures in Korea that is sure to captivate.

• Out now / Buy it: £9.99

4. Pachinko(Min Jin Lee)

Though we’re focusing on Korean literature, the tale of Pachinko crosses borders as a Korean family makes their way into Japan. Starting in the early 1900s, Sunja becomes pregnant to a married wealthy stranger. To escape, she accepts a marriage proposal from a minister on his way to Japan and hopes to leave it all behind. But, in doing so, triggers events that impact four generations.

Unlike any other title on our list, Min Jin Lee’s tale of love and sacrifice has become a TV show, among the best Apple TV+ shows you can stream today, helping to popularise this geographical literary corner even further. While the characters are captivating, it’s the history you learn whilst lost in their relationships that is truly impactful.

• Out now / Buy it: £9.99

3. Almond(Won-pyung Sohn)

A deeply harrowing and emotional read, Almond follows Yunjae, a boy born with a brain condition that means he can’t feel emotions as well as he should. Instead, his mother and grandmother help him with post-it notes to remind him the appropriate time to smile, laugh, and express manners.

But, when he turns 16 on Christmas Eve, his world is torn apart and he’s left isolated. At school, he begins to get bullied by Gon, but with his reaction not matching the social norm, the pair somehow form a friendship in the midst of grief and loneliness. However, Gon eventually finds himself in danger and it’s not clear whether Yunjae will know how to be the hero he needs to be.

• Out now / Buy it: £10.99

2. Endless Blue Sky(Lee Hyoseok)

A heavy theme across a lot of Korean fiction is the Korean War, which is unsurprising considering its relatively recent history. And so, many Korean writers have their own personal experiences and harrowing tales to tell. In Endless Blue Sky though, Hyoseok Lee opts instead to tell the wonderful love story of Korean writer, Ilma, and Russian dancer, Nadia.

Set in the 1940s, it’s filled with passion, emotion, and some wonderfully eccentric characters that bring this book to life. It’s a contemporary period piece, too — a novel written at the time Lee Hyoseok himself lived in (passing away in 1942), and posthumously translated by Steven D. Capener.

• Out now / Buy it: £12.99

1. The Vegetarian(Han Kang)

Han Kang’s bold and brave first novel follows Yeong-hye, a home-maker who suddenly decides to become a vegetarian after some horrifying nightmares. While this choice may seem unnoteworthy, in South Korea it’s an act of subversion that spirals her into a bizarre world of Yeong-hye’s unravelling.

The Vegetarian is told in three parts and never from Yeong-hye’s own perspective, instead from that of her husband, brother-in-law, and sister. This unique approach has been praised for addressing gender roles in South Korea in an incredibly visual and thought-provoking way.

• Out now / Buy it: £9.99
• 10 new fiction books you need to read in 2025

There's a specific joy to reading a graphic novel. It lets you experience a complete story in much less time that it would typically take to read a conventional novel, but it gets your imagination working in a way TVs and movies just don't.

Starting out the wide world of graphic novels can be tricky, though, particularly when it still comes with a stigma in certain corners. And the fandom potholes are extremely deep at times, forever making you wonder If you're jumping into a saga that's actually a spin-off of a series you have no knowledge of.

Sound like a headache? We have some great starter graphic novels that are perfect for adults. There's nothing wrong with being older and reading Marvel if that's what you want to do, but we want to look a little wider.

To help you on your comic-book journey, we've picked out 22 graphic novels for adults that are well worth your time - from comics journalism, to dystopian sci-fi, and even one story featuring superheroes.

Update: Having just been wowed by Barry Windsor-Smith’s Monsters over a weekend binge-reading session, it’s about time we updated this list. Windsor-Smith’s dark and tragic tale is one of the most affecting graphic novels we’ve read in a long time, and easily earns its place on this list.

If we have added any of your favourites, remember to upvote or downvote to have your say.

Best graphic novels for adults

• The best horror books of all time, revealed
• Best Spider-Man comics: the greatest Spider-Man stories, ranked

SOMETHING MISSING FROM OUR SHORTLIST?

Tell us about it, and if enough people agree we'll add it in.

Additional writing: Gerald Lynch, Becca Caddy

Last we checked, celebs like Jacob Elordi and Joseph Quinn were still mooching around with books in their back pockets, so it’s safe to say reading fiction out-and-about is still a flex.

Or you can take the old-fashioned approach and stay cosy reading at home this winter until there's a chance to casually wedge your literary judgements into conversation at other people’s homes.

Just paraphrase these tidy reviews of ten of the most exciting reads for the start of 2025 to sound suitably middle and/or high-brow. You’ve got low-brow covered, right?

1. Picks & Shovels(Cory Doctorow)

Picks & Shovels reads like a 1980s Silicon Valley startup myth meets spy thriller. ‘Forensic accountant’ Martin Hench falls in love with both computers and girls, drops out of MIT and gets all mixed up in a bizarre war over desktop PCs, dot matrix printers and floppy disks.

Cory Doctorow writes about tech both old and new, and first came up with the term “enshittification” to describe how so much of the modern internet has decayed to the point of being almost unusable. Here, as well as making a fictionalised case study of a group of stone-cold enshittifiers, he adds everything from punk and feminism to organised religion into the heady stew of his ‘80s San Francisco. This is an origin story for the lead character but you don’t need to have read the whole series. You’ll race through it.

• Out now / Buy it: £20

2. Perfection(Vincenzo Latronico)

Perfection is a riot—if you’re a hipster who’s into self flagellation. Set mostly in Berlin, it follows couple Anna and Tom through sublets, sex parties, social media and serif fonts. And if you’re working from home, staring at a Monstera plant and thinking you need to pick up heirloom tomatoes for dinner right now, you will feel a little bit too seen by this 120 pager.

Italian writer Latronico, with the help of his translator Sophie Hughes, doesn’t just get the little details and ‘differences’ in aesthetics nailed-on, he also captures the self-delusions, disappointments and anxieties of city-dwelling millennial ‘creatives’ so precisely it ends up being really quite devastating. A must-read modern classic.

• Out 13th February / Buy it: £12.99

3. The Garden(Nick Newman)

Nick Newman is the pseudonym of children’s author Nicholas Bowling and there’s a gothic fable-like quality to this story set in an unknown time and place. We meet two elderly sisters, Evelyn and Lily, living in the kitchen and garden of a stately home by themselves while ‘monsters’ lurk out in the wasteland beyond. An unexpected visitor disrupts the sisters’ well-honed habits of farming, beekeeping, cooking and mending but The Garden remains all the more potent for how little we see and hear from the world outside the stone walls.

One for fans of Shirley Jackson with a climate dystopia spin that deepens the troubled psyches of the secluded sisters.

• Out 30th January / Buy it: £16.99

4. We Do Not Part(Han Kang)

South Korean author Han Kang is best known for her novel The Vegetarian and the fact she won no less than the Nobel Prize in Literature last year. We Do Not Part is a dual portrait of two isolated friends Kyungha and Inseon, a mood piece full of dread and an investigation of family tragedy and history.

Set between a heatwave in the city of Seoul and snowstorms in the forests of Jeju Island, Kang writes with extreme clarity and focus, inspecting and re-inspecting characters, images and atmospheres within a dream logic that weaves in and out of consciousness. Translated by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, this is a story that will seep under your skin.

• Out 6th February / Buy it: £18.99

5. Killing Time(Alan Bennett)

A 100-and-odd page novella from 90-year-old Alan Bennett that’s over almost as soon as it’s begun, you might have missed Killing Time at the end of 2024. But it’s worth seeking out as Bennett can achieve in a line or two what most writers spend pages and pages trying to describe.

What appears to be an everyday slice-of-life tale about a semi-posh council care home named Hill Topp House—which, gloriously, looks down on another care home, Low Moor, in all senses of the word—turns into a very wry, very dry account of how the residents and staff fare through the Covid years and what’s left from the lives they’ve lived. A right treat.

• Out now / Buy it: £10

6. Twist(Colum McCann)

Twist has everything you could want from a winter read: it’s epic and ambitious in its scope and framing and it’s emotionally generous and honest when it comes to its characters.

Through the eyes of McCann’s Irish writer-narrator Anthony Fennell, we follow one John Conway out to sea, setting off from modern-day Cape Town. Now, Conway is technically ‘chief of mission’ of the Georges Lecointe, an underwater cable repair vessel, so he’s not strictly a captain but he’s something of an Ahab type and, to complicate matters, his partner Zanele Ombassa is acting in a play thousands of miles away in London.

Alongside the portrait of Conway, who is a character for the ages, this weeks-long adventure gives McCann the canvas to combine the personal and the geo-political, as he considers the poetry and technology of how our digital messages to each other travel along ocean floors. Beautiful stuff.

• Out 6th March / Buy it: £18.99

7. Under the Eye of the Big Bird(Hiromi Kawakami)

Hiromi Kawakami’s fourteen interconnected speculative stories that make up Under the Eye of the Big Bird move backwards and forwards in time and it’s not clear where the world we’re living in fits in – if it does at all. The overarching theme is that humanity is slowly but surely becoming extinct so anything goes when it comes to potential solutions.

The Japanese author of 2001’s Strange Weather in Tokyo, translated here by Asa Yoneda, uses a detached, distant voice as she roves between viewpoints and experiments, some familiar—mutants, clones, AI—and some really fun, inventive ideas that I won’t spoil here. A dose of existential melancholy with just a tiny glob of hope.

• Out now / Buy it: £14.99

8. The Book of George(Kate Greathead)

The Book of George is an enjoyable American One Day meets classic Nick Hornby with a dash of Fleishman Is In Trouble. If that means nothing to you, let’s put it another way: this is the story of the life of an Average Joe everyman named George with very specific opinions on certain things (wedding toasts, rich people’s flats, short stories) and a passivity bordering on self-sabotage when it comes to others (what to get his girlfriend Jenny for Christmas, what to do with his life).

Divided into chapters based on George’s age, starting at 12-18 and finishing around the late 30’s mark, Kate Greathead’s book riffs on all the major events of the past twenty years or so without feeling too Forrest Gump-like as her characters grow up and fail to grow up in various ways.

• Out 30th January / Buy it: £14.46

9. Mothers and Sons(Adam Haslett)

American author Adam Haslett’s story of a mother and son, Ann and Peter, who barely see one another, has one of the most moving and well earned endings of any novel you’ll read this year. Haslett requires your patience as he digs beneath the surface of the two lives: Peter, a 40-year-old, kind-of-single lawyer who lives alone in Brooklyn, working overtime on asylum cases and Ann, a retired priest who has set up an idyllic, feminist retreat in the Vermont countryside with two other women.

Mothers and Sons is first-class literary fiction about listening and telling, what’s not said and what’s not heard and the emotional chaos of shame, grief and family secrets. You might need a lie down afterwards.

• Out 6th February / Buy it: £20

10. Greatest of all Time(Alex Allison)

The teenage narrator of Greatest of all Time isn’t the GOAT himself – instead he’s a home-grown English footballer who has stayed loyal to his Northern town and team. He finds himself switching between starting Premier League matches and sitting on the bench all because French-Rwandan player Samson Kabarebe has just swooped in and stolen his shirt number.

This is AFC Wimbledon fan Alex Allison’s second novel and it looks at queer lust, sex, stealth and confusion, in and out of the locker room, capturing the embarrassingly all-consuming experience of having a crush in your teens. There’s some lovely bittersweet scenes throughout including what it’s like playing FIFA as yourself, hiring your Dad as your manager and having a truly terrible time in the VIP section of the club.

• Out 30th January / Buy it £22

• 10 New Non-Fiction Books to Soup-Up Your Brain in 2025

The internet loves a success hack and it loves some quick maths, so here’s a little of both. If you read all ten of these non-fiction titles in the next couple of months, you’d be 67% of the way to the average number of books Brits read a year. Keep at it and you’ll blast through at least fifteen by summer and then for the rest of the year you’ll be ahead, above average, absolutely unstoppable. (In reading terms).

Or, you know, you could watch that TikTok about all the books everyone else is reading again.

Over the next few months in new non-fiction books, we’re getting sharp ideas about philosophy, music and the body, and how to avoid joining this century’s Hitler Youth, together with stories about polar exploration, early Silicon Valley, 90s Hollywood and F1 shenanigans. There’s no book about AI on this list (and many, many have been written) because honestly it’s moving way too fast. Get cracking.

1. Music as Medicine: How We Can Harness Its Therapeutic Power
(Daniel Levitin)

Bryan Ferry once sang “love is the drug” and now neuroscientist Daniel Levitin is hell bent on proving that no, music should be the drug we’re all thinking of. The author of the excellent Your Brain on Music is back with a book endorsed by both Paul McCartney and Neil deGrasse Tyson. It taps into cutting-edge science on how music can slow the spread of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, ‘cure’ PTSD, fight MS and repair our deepest, darkest memories. So hey, maybe that band really did save your life after all.

• Out 23rd January / Buy it: £22

2. The North Pole: The Story of an Obsession
(Erling Kagge)

Erling Kagge is the real deal: he was the first person in history to reach the North Pole, the South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest. (Oh, and he collects art). He made his trip to the Arctic in 1990 and this book is a mixture of memories of that expedition, thoughts on the psychology of adventurers and a history of polar writers, cartographers and explorers. Perfect reading for when you’ve rewatched Frozen Planet II and it’s still cold and dark out.

• Out 27th February / Buy it: £22

3. When The Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During The Last Golden Age of Magazines
(Graydon Carter)

It doesn’t get more inner circle than ex-Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter. You probably saw a version of him immortalised by Jeff Bridges in the 2008 film How To Lose Friends & Alienate People. Magazine editor’s memoirs are always bloody good fun for the catty, candid stories and portraits of famous politicians, artists, and movie stars… and don’t forget the hangers-on. After stints at his own satirical Spy mag, Time and Life, Carter presided over 25 years of New York City parties so the morsels will be juicy.

• Out 27th March / Buy it: £20

4. Open Socrates: The Case for a Philosophical Life
(Agnes Callard)

If you’re a fan of Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy, Agnes Callard’s look at the ancient Greek’s famous Socratic method will be a hit. It’s a good time of year for a high-brow historical instruction manual, especially as, when it comes to the classics, Gladiator 2 is the only recent pop-culture moment of note (and all it taught us was not to get into a Colosseum full of sharks). Callard explains how putting real effort into intellectual dialogues with the people around us can help us figure out modern life, love and even death. Jordan Peterson could never.

• Out 14th January / Buy it: £25

5. Source Code: My Beginnings
(Bill Gates)

While the world obsesses over every little, last Elon Musk tweet, cosy up with this memoir of another, slightly more benign billionaire. Bill Gates has written an account of his life up to the point of Microsoft’s first deal with Apple in the late 70s. An origin story of the pre-Clippy years, if you will. This one starts out in Seattle and takes in his family, his teenage love of coding and dropping out of Harvard to start what would become the tech giant.

• Out 4th February / Buy it: £25

6. The Secret Painter
(Joe Tucker)

An honest-to-god biography of a working-class man who isn’t a celebrity, TV writer Joe Tucker’s The Secret Painter tells the story of his slightly peculiar Uncle Eric and the five hundred paintings he kept secret in an attic in Warrington for most of his life. Until, that is, he decided to exhibit them. Enough to warm the cockles. More where this came from please.

• Out 30th January / Buy it: £18.99

7. The Message
(Ta-Nehisi Coates)

This is the serious non-fiction book to tackle this winter. Coates is an intellectual heavyweight in the States in particular and The Message takes all the moral authority he has accrued over the past decade or so, with landmark essays and books on the case for reparations for slavery and the Obama years, and uses it to shine a light on the tragedy happening in Gaza. Coates also travels to Senegal and South Carolina to analyse book banning, how countries get mythologised and the role of writing itself.

• Out 6th February / Buy it: £18.99

8. On The Grid: The Inside Track on Formula 1
(Luke Smith)

One for petrolheads, this is an insider’s account of more than ten years of F1 drama from The Athletic journalist Luke Smith. Smith distills the magic of the grid on race day as “the sounds, the smells, the tension, the glamour, the people”. His real-world characters include the Formula 1 drivers and the principal of each racing team, sure, but also the engineers, the pit crew and the fans. Plus he sprinkles in some history and some technology with those big personalities, too.

• Out 13th February / Buy it: £22

9. The Nazi Mind: Twelve Warnings From History
(Laurence Rees)

There’s no easy way to say this but it’s clear that some people who don’t know how to use the internet - both old and young - are coming away from it with distinctly Nazi-ish tendencies. Laurence Rees is a World War II expert, the former head of BBC History TV and a favourite author of one Volodymyr Zelensky. His new book examines why and how ordinary Germans obeyed the authorities, willingly committed crimes and tolerated Nazi rule via new research in psychology. Rees guides us through the signs to look out for in 2025’s leaders, from talk of ‘us’ and them’ to full-on fascism.

• Out 23rd January / Buy it: £25

10. Squatting London: The Politics of Property
(Samuel Burgum)

This one snuck out a couple of days before Christmas but it’s new enough for us. A Pluto Press book, Squatting London is an underground history of squatting scenes in the capital city which gets into gentrification, counter cultures, homeless shelters, raves and the Covid pandemic. Burgum chats to activists and academics about art, politics and making a home in the middle of a housing crisis.

• Out now / Buy it: £24.99