I don’t know what it is about this week, but it has come to my attention that three of my absolute auto-buy authors are releasing new novels on Thursday. Is this the week books come out for the summer holiday market? Maybe! I will be teaching all summer so I won’t have holiday reads this year but a book is itself a holiday, is it not? A little escape into another world. ANYWAY. These first four are books I haven’t read, but by authors I love. Maybe you should buy them! Maybe you should buy one of their previous books instead! I have read none of them but I want to and I will!
The Household by Stacey Halls
Stacey Halls writes smart gothic historical fiction, often about Northern women. This hits a lot of my buttons. This one is actually set just outside Victorian London (another fave setting for me) and is about a group of fallen women (yes please!) coming together to a creepy house (yum) but also something AWFUL is probably going to happen to a nearby rich person (plug it into my veins).
The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas
Scarlett Thomas wrote my favourite book on writing (Monkeys With Typewriters) and also a generous handful of weird, extremely high concept novels I was obsessed with in my twenties. This looks like it’s going to be basically White Lotus but in a book and perhaps even more weird? Yes.
My Favourite Mistake by Marian Keyes
MARIAN KEYES, lads. The queen. My absolute number one for commercial fiction, for buying my mother in law, for reading on day of release. When Grownups came out I was breastfeeding and fully mad and my husband bought me it both on hardback and kindle so that I could read on my phone during the night feeds. I went to London for a friend’s birthday dinner (my first time in a different city to the baby, I think) and read the end of it on the train home, full of milk and champagne and lobster macaroni cheese. MARIAN KEYES. I read The Break when I went to a friend’s wedding in Romania, drinking beer in a cafe on the square. I read Watermelon when I was a teenager, first approaching adult life, I read Rachel’s holiday when I was an undergraduate and I was definitely meant to be reading Hamlet, I read This Charming Man on my lunch hours of the worst job ever. Marian. Fucking. Keyes. I’m taking a day off for this one.
Also, last week, we had -
The House of Mirrors by Erin Kelly
Erin Kelly writes banging thrillers with cool, interesting elements. My favourite so far is The Skeleton Key, which is about a treasure hunt and a canal boat and a wonderful prize and a dreadful secret and an awful family and a brilliant community. This one is about a long prison sentence and a grown up child with a dangerous temper and a vintage clothes shop and a dark secret from 1997. I read one of her previous books on the volcanic sands of a beach in Santorini, which would be a great match (the hammock in my garden will have to do, this year).
And, for luck, here are a few more I have my eye closely on, coming later in the spring -
Strange Bodies by Tom de Freston
I am not objective on this one - Tom is a friend of mine, and this is a memoir of a time I watched him (and his wife Kiran, who the novel is addressed to) go through- the loss of multiple pregnancies. Tom’s writing is enchanting - he is primarily a visual artist but the energy, intelligence and heart he brings to the stories of his life (which he weaves into art history) create fascinating, delicately beautiful narratives. I got an early copy yesterday and I have so far only read the first chapter, clicking next episode on cartoons for my daughter with one hand to buy myself more minutes. I am abandoning my current read (The Dog Of The North by Elizabeth McKenzie, excellent) to finish it immediately.
Burial Plot by Elizabeth MacNeal
No personal connection here - I just bloody loved The Doll Factory, and I hear this is great. This is another classy historical fiction about the underworld of 1800’s London. Yes, yes, yes.
Things Don’t Break On Their Own by Sarah Easter Collins
I am perhaps even less objective about this book than about Strange Bodies - Sarah is a former student of mine. BUT I promise I would tell you ANYWAY, this exciting debut absolutely bangs. It is about SISTERS and SECRETS and WOMEN and PAIN and GUILT and SURVIVING. Featuring a blisteringly awkward dinner party, the unsolved mystery of a missing child from decades ago, and calling into question the very nature of memory, this novel sings its way through its many twists and turns. We are drawn into a fractured family, seeing the story through various perspectives until the mystery is untangled. I absolutely loved this book, with its tight, compulsive plotting and heart-achingly real characters. Gorgeous.
What are you looking forward to reading this summer?
I just read an advance copy of The Persephone Code by Julia Golding and LOVED it - so up your street with the Regency era gothicness. Also just read The Pairing by a Casey McQuiston which is going to be THE hot hardback in my world this summer, I think.
I LOVE Stacey Halls so much. Such great readable historical fiction, she is an auto buy author for me too. This list looks deliciously good.