Book of the Month
December 2024
Friends of Dorothy by Sandi Toskvig
The funny, wise and brilliant new novel from the star of QI and the author of Between the Stops - an instant Sunday Times bestseller.
After much searching, the happily married young couple, Amber and Stevie think they have found the perfect spot in Grimaldi Square. Despite the rundown pub across the way, the overgrown garden and a decidedly nosy neighbour, number 4 is the house of their dreams. Stevie, a woman who has never left anything to chance, has planned everything so nothing can spoil their happiness. But ... upstairs in their new home, seated on an old red sofa is the woman they bought the place from - eighty-year-old foul-mouthed, straight-talking, wise-cracking Dorothy - who has decided that she's not going anywhere. It turns out that Dorothy will be only the first in a line of life-changing surprises.
Text and image from Waterstones:
https://www.waterstones.com/book/friends-of-dorothy/sandi-toksvig/9780349018997
November 2024
The Specimens by Mairi Kidd
Edinburgh, 1828. Two women - one rich, one poor - must navigate life against a frenzied backdrop of medical discovery, mob mayhem, and murder.
The home Helen shares in the slums of the Old Town with her lover William Burke could hardly be more different from Susan's dreams of an affluent existence as the wife of Robert Knox, one of the foremost anatomists of the day. But as people begin disappearing, these two very different women face an impossible choice. Should they protect what lives they have or tell the truth about what they know? This is the story of the notorious serial killings of Burke and Hare, told for the first time through the eyes of two very different women, whose stories explore the depths of the human heart in a perilous, vulnerable world.
October 2024
We Solve Murders by Richard Osman
Steve Wheeler is enjoying retired life. He does the odd bit of investigation work, but he prefers his familiar habits and routines: the pub quiz, his favourite bench, his cat waiting for him when he comes home.
His days of adventure are over: adrenaline is daughter-in-law Amy’s business now.
September 2024
The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty
Shortlisted for the Hugo Awards 2024
Amina al-Sirafi has survived backstabbing rogues, vengeful merchant princes, several husbands, and one actual demon to retire peacefully with her family to a life of piety, motherhood, and absolutely nothing that hints of the supernatural.
But when she’s offered a job no bandit could refuse, she jumps at the chance for one final adventure with her old crew that will make her a legend and offers a fortune that will secure her and her family’s future forever.
Text taken from https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-adventures-of-amina-al-sirafi/shannon-chakraborty/9780008381387
Aug 2024
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
‘The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.
There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation's imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can't resist writing back.’
Text from Waterstones.com
July 2024
Politics On the Edge by Rory Stewart
Over the course of a decade from 2010, Rory Stewart went from being a political outsider to standing for prime minister - before being sacked from a Conservative Party that he had come to barely recognise.
Tackling ministerial briefs on flood response and prison violence, engaging with conflict and poverty abroad as a foreign minister, and Brexit as a Cabinet minister, Stewart learned first-hand how profoundly hollow our democracy and government had become.
Cronyism, ignorance and sheer incompetence ran rampant. Around him, individual politicians laid the foundations for the political and economic chaos of today. Stewart emerged battered but with a profound affection for his constituency of Penrith and the Border, and a deep direct insight into the era of populism and global conflict.
Uncompromising, candid and darkly humorous, Politics On the Edge is his story of the challenges, absurdities and realities of political life and a remarkable portrait of our age.
Text taken from https://www.waterstones.com/book/politics-on-the-edge/rory-stewart/9781529922868
June 2024
The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
The geriatric sleuths of the Thursday Murder Club are faced with their most dangerous case yet when the disappearance of a highly dangerous package sends the body count spiralling in Osman's irresistible fourth crime caper.
You'd think you would be allowed to relax over Christmas, but not in the world of the Thursday Murder Club.
On Boxing Day, a dangerous package is smuggled across the English coast. When it goes missing, chaos is unleashed. The body count starts to rise - including someone close to the Thursday Murder Club - as our gang face an impossible search and their most deadly opponents yet.
With the clock ticking down and a killer heading to Cooper's Chase, has their luck finally run out? And who will be 'The Last Devil To Die'?
Text taken from: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-last-devil-to-die/richard-osman/9780241992401
May 2024
The House of Mirrors by Erin Kelly
One of them has killed before.
One of them will kill again.
In the sweltering summer of 1997, straight-laced, straight-A student Karen met Biba - a bohemian and impossibly glamorous aspiring actress. A few months later, two people were dead and another had been sent to prison.
Having stood by Rex as he served his sentence, Karen is now married to him with a daughter, Alice, who runs a vintage clothing company in London. They're a normal family, as long as they don't talk about the past, never mention the name Biba, and ignore Alice's flashes of dark, dangerous fury.
Karen has kept what really happened that summer of '97 hidden deep inside her. Alice is keeping secrets of her own. But when anonymous notes begin to arrive at Alice's shop, it seems the past is about to catch up with them all ...
April 2024
Someone to Watch Over Me by Yrsa Sigurdardottir
A young man with Down's Syndrome has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people, but a fellow inmate at his secure psychiatric unit has hired Thora to prove Jakob is innocent.
If he didn't do it, who did? And how is the multiple murder connected to the death of Magga, killed in a hit and run on her way to babysit?
March 2024
None of this is true by Lisa Jewell
Celebrating her 45th birthday at her local pub, podcaster Alix Summers crosses paths with an unassuming woman called Josie Fair. Josie is also celebrating her 45th birthday.
They are, in fact birthday twins. A few days later, Alix and Josie bump into each other again, this time outside Alix's children's school. Josie has been listening to Alix's podcasts and thinks she might be an interesting subject for Alix's series. She is, she tells Alix, on the cusp of great changes in her life. Alix agrees to a trial interview. Josie's life appears to be strange and complicated, and although Alix finds her unsettling, she can't quite resist the temptation to keep digging.
Slowly Alix starts to realise that Josie has been hiding some very dark secrets, and before she knows it Josie has inveigled her way into Alix's life - and into her home. Soon she begins to wonder who is Josie Fair? And what has she done?.
Text taken from: https://www.waterstones.com/book/none-of-this-is-true/lisa-jewell/9781804940204
February 2024
In The Blink of An Eye by Jo Callaghan
In the UK, someone is reported missing every 90 seconds. Just gone. Vanished. In the blink of an eye. DCS Kat Frank knows all about loss.
A widowed single mother, Kat is a cop who trusts her instincts. Picked to lead a pilot programme that has her paired with AIDE (Artificially Intelligent Detective Entity) Lock, Kat's instincts come up against Lock's logic. But when the two missing person's cold cases they are reviewing suddenly become active, Lock is the only one who can help Kat when the case gets personal.
AI versus human experience. Logic versus instinct. With lives on the line can the pair work together before someone else becomes another statistic?
In the Blink of an Eye is a dazzling debut from an exciting new voice and asks us what we think it means to be human.
Text taken from: https://www.waterstones.com/book/in-the-blink-of-an-eye/jo-callaghan/9781398511194
January 2024
The Wager by David Grann
The author of the acclaimed Killers of the Flower Moon unspools the thrilling true story of the wreck of the eponymous eighteenth-century British vessel and the extraordinary claims made by two different groups of survivors that resulted in a nerve-jangling court martial.
On 28th January 1742, a ramshackle vessel of patched-together wood and cloth washed up on the coast of Brazil. Inside were thirty emaciated men, barely alive, and they had an extraordinary tale to tell. They were survivors of His Majesty's ship The Wager, a British vessel that had left England in 1740 on a secret mission during an imperial war with Spain.
While chasing a Spanish treasure-filled galleon, The Wager was wrecked on a desolate island off the coast of Patagonia. The crew, marooned for months and facing starvation, built the flimsy craft and sailed for more than a hundred days, traversing 2,500 miles of storm-wracked seas. They were greeted as heroes… But were they!
Text taken from: https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-wager/david-grann/9781471183706
December 2023
Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody.
White lies...
When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song.
Dark humour...
But as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
Deadly consequences…
What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.
Text taken from: https://www.waterstones.com/book/yellowface/rebecca-f-kuang/9780008532772