What we're reading this month
There’s always a lovely big pile of books to be read in our house, but here’s what we’re actually in the middle of reading right now.
Brigands & Breadknives
Travis Baldree £9.99
Fern has weathered the stillness and storms of a bookseller’s life for decades, but now, in the face of crippling ennui, transplants herself to the city of Thune to hang out her shingle beside a long-absent friend’s coffee shop.
What could be a better pairing? Surely a charming renovation montage will cure what ails her!If only things were so simple . . .
It turns out that fixing your life isn’t a one-time prospect, nor as easy as a change of scenery and a lick of paint. A drunken night sees the rattkin waking far from home in the company of a legendary warrior, an imprisoned chaos-goblin with a fondness for silverware, and an absolutely thumping hangover. As together they fend off a rogue’s gallery of ne’er-do-wells trying to claim the bounty the goblin represents, Fern may finally reconnect with the person she actually is when nothing seems inevitable .
Days of Light
Megan Hunter £9.99
Easter Sunday, 1938. Ivy is nineteen and ready for her life to finally begin.
In the idyllic Sussex countryside, her sprawling, bohemian family and their friends gather for lunch, awaiting the arrival of a longed-for guest. It is a single, enchanted afternoon that ends in tragedy. Days later, at a funeral, Ivy is kissed by the man she will marry, and grieves with the woman who will become the love of her life.
And this is only the beginning . . .
Chronicling six pivotal days across six decades, Days of Light moves through the Second World War and the twentieth century on a radiant journey through a life lived in pursuit of love and in search of an answer.
Sail Away Land
Ben Pester £14.99
Sail Away Land is the space where we might go when we’re no longer alive (sometimes only temporarily). In this uncommon and disarming collection, the characters go ‘there’ with or without knowing it. Maybe they have been living there all along without noticing - just like they hadn’t really noticed that everyone is carrying a shiny black suitcase.
These stories are about normal things - losing the people we’re closest to, forgiving them, finding love and managing to hold onto it - but also about going to parties through a door in the back of a colleague’s head, housebreaking in search of a sister’s ghost, and asking the strangers in the kitchen to resurrect you at midnight. Like brilliant and strange anxiety dreams in prose, the stories in Sail Away Land are full of temporal weirdness, life and non-being, psychological acuity, imagination and wit, all while being effortlessly, seductively readable and incredibly moving.
Seek Immediate Shelter
Vincent Yu £10.99
One ordinary morning, in an unexceptional town, every mobile phone lights up with the same emergency alert. In this compelling, darkly funny and moving debut novel, each of Vincent Yu’s utterly relatable, flawed characters is given a choice: in the face of mutually assured destruction, do we reach for grace and mercy or do we hold on to hate and fear? Eighteen minutes later the town learns via text that it was a false alarm and the question changes. Can we forgive each other for what’s been said and done when the world didn’t actually end?
The Mercy Step
Marcia Hutchinson £10.99
Set in 1960s Bradford, The Mercy Step follows Mercy, a precocious young child facing a world far too big for her small body. She lives with her Windrush-generation parents in a crowded household where her mother’s attention is stretched between church and family, and her father’s temper is something to be endured or avoided.
Feeling like an outsider within her own home, Mercy retreats into books and the companionship of her beloved doll, Dolly, while learning early how to navigate the flaws and failings of the adults around her. Yet Mercy is nothing if not resilient. Armed with humour, style and fierce imagination, she quietly begins to plot her escape from a traumatic childhood.
Raw and deeply affecting, Mercy’s story is one of Black British culture, childhood, family and survival in 1960s Britain. Critical to understanding these untold stories, Marcia’s debut is not to be missed.
