Publisher: Penguin Publication Date: February 2025 Currently I am taking part in my local library’s ‘Book Bingo’ challenge for 2025. One of the categories within the challenge, to read 12 books over 12 months, is to read a book from a genre I would never normally read. Susan Barker’s book ‘Old Soul’ definitely fits that … More Old Soul by Susan Barker
Publisher: Doubleday Published: 6th March 2025 Sophie Haydock’s ‘The Flames was one of my favourite books of 2022. I was utterly captivated by the world of artist Egon Schiele and the depiction of 20th Century Vienna. Even more so, the female muses that Schiele painted and was inspired by were characters that were instantly memorable. … More Madame Matisse by Sophie Haydock
Publisher: Collins Publication Date: September 2024 I started using the Children’s Almanac on the 1st of January 2025 with my seven-year-old son and it has been such a delight. As a home educator, sometimes thinking about what topics we will cover or focus on at specific points in time can feel a bit arbitrary. What … More The Children’s Almanac 2025 by Collins Kids
Publisher: Picador Publication Date: 6th February 2025 The Boy from the Sea is a novel that is set in Ireland in the 1970s. It opens prophetically with the arrival of a single baby boy, cast adrift and alone. The baby washes up ashore in a makeshift style float much to the interest and shock of … More The Boy From the Sea by Garrett Carr
Publisher: Picador Publication Date: October 2024 This has been my first read of a novel by Alan Hollinghurst and I am so pleased I decided to select this for one of my December reads. Having had a bit of a bumpy reading year, I have found that I have been picking up books reading a … More Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst
Published: October 2024 Publisher: Granta Books I know we should not judge a book by its cover however this non-fiction text by Sarah Clegg really does ask to be picked up and read! It is a beautiful book that is perfect for the darker months of winter and the current festive season. The text explores … More The Dead of Winter: The Demons, Witches and Ghosts of Christmas by Sarah Clegg
Publication Date: 1st August 2024 Publisher: Jonathan Cape Evie Wyld is just simply a great writer!This book is a haunting read that is so beautifully and evocatively written the characters and the feelings you have whilst reading it stay with you for a long time. That feels like a cliché to write but it is … More Evie Wyld ‘The Echoes’
Published: September 2023 Publisher: Allen and Unwin This novel centres around Alice, a young indigenous woman, who on the surface has the most perfect life. She has just given birth to a beautiful baby girl called Dawn and is married to Steve, her charismatic white husband whose academic focus is the study of Mohawk … More And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott
Publisher: Sphere Publication Date: 8th February 2024 Loosely based on the pioneering female palaeontologist Mary Anning the reader is introduced to the brilliant Ada Winters, who in 1824, combs the beaches of Lyme Regis in search of fossils and new scientific discoveries. Born into poverty, she scrapes by with her mother Edith, selling the curiosities … More The Bone Hunters by Joanne Burn
Publisher: Penguin Publication Date: 25th January 2024 Miss Austen investigates is centred round the title’s eponymous heroine and famous 18th Century writer who, on a winter’s evening, attends with her family an engagement party only to discover the body of a local milliner who has been beaten to death in a cupboard. This shocking … More Miss Austen Investigates by Jessica Bull
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