ABOUT US
Division Dialogue, spearheaded by Sharmaine Lovegrove, is home to a variety of phenomenal stories from illuminating voices often excluded from the mainstream.
Established first as an English language bookshop in Berlin in 2009, Dialogue Books was reignited as part of the Little, Brown Book Group in July 2017. In 2023, Dialogue Books was reincarnated once again as its own division within the wider Hachette UK Group.
Innovation, Inspiration and Inclusion are the focus of our venture, with dynamic originality across all areas of our publishing, from receiving manuscripts to connecting with consumers; at Dialogue, we are committed to revealing new worlds through our narratives as we open up publishing to all across society. We continue to build its foundations upon the idea that through storytelling, a dialogue is created to engender a more inclusive, nuanced conversation about experiences in our world that come before, after and next.
We shine a spotlight on stories by, about and for readers from LGBTQI+, disabled, working-class, Black, Asian and marginalised communities. We have a clear focus on distinctive, cross-genre titles that spark a conversation across fiction and non-fiction on our commercial imprint, Renegade Books, and our literary list, Dialogue Books.
At Dialogue, we publish across the spectrum, from international bestsellers and book club favourites to future classics, with an abundance of prize nominations to our name and adaptations of some of our most successful books in production for TV and film. We are committed to reaching a broader and richer readership, and our range of conversation-sparking, ground-breaking and gamechanging work is published with every reader in mind.
OUR IMPRINTS
Sparking the Conversation
Dialogue Books is our literary imprint, where we publish across fiction, non-fiction and poetry. Grounded in our activist principles of Inclusion, Innovation and Inspiration, we are home to exceptional writing by authors who boldly illuminate the world around us. This premise unites Dialogue authors from Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah to Brit Bennett, Clint Smith to Lisa Ko and Liv Little to Paterson Joseph.
Books That Break Rules
Renegade Books is Dialogue’s commercial imprint, where we publish the very best fiction and non-fiction for mass-market audiences. We are dedicated to radical inclusion, pairing commercial prowess with our activist core. What we do is inherently political – we believe that books can change the world, and our tagline is ‘books that break rules’, which sums up our rebellious spirit. We’re an imprint with a difference: publishing stories for everyone and publishing them boldly. Our promise is to break the mould, reach readers that mainstream publishing has neglected and forge new routes to market, with a laser focus on high-potential commercial hits.
Sharmaine Lovegrove
Managing Director
Sharmaine.Lovegrove@dialoguebooks.co.uk
Hannah Chukwu
Editorial Director, Dialogue Books
Hannah.Chukwu@dialoguebooks.co.uk
Christina Demosthenous
Publisher, Renegade Books
Christina.Demosthenous@dialoguebooks.co.uk
Saida Azizova
Assistant Editor, Renegade Books
Saida.Azizova@dialoguebooks.co.uk
Quarterlife
Devika Rege
23/01/2025 9780349705132
A groundbreaking portrait of a nation on the cusp of a new age.
When the Bharat Party comes to power after a divisive election, Naren, a jaded Wall Street consultant, is lured home. With him is Amanda, a restless New Englander eager to find purpose through a teaching fellowship in a Muslim-majority slum. Meanwhile, Naren’s charismatic brother Rohit, an amateur filmmaker, sets out to explore his roots and befriends the fiery young men of the Hindu nationalist machine. As they embrace the new India, they become aware of an increasingly
fraught milieu, slipping into brutal debates and confusing love affairs and careening toward a festive night when all of Mumbai is on the streets – where the simmering unrest erupts.
‘A landmark novel’ (Indian Express) astounding in its ambition and precision, Quarterlife announces Devika Rege as a writer of exceptional talent.
Greatest of All Time
Alex Allison
30/01/2025 9780349704548
A beautifully tender novel about queer love, coming-of-age and becoming a man in the masculine world of sport.
Samson Kabarebe will one day be the name on everyone’s lips. At only eighteen, it’s clear he is destined to join the greats in the pantheon of football gods. Set to change the fortunes of a relegation-threatened Premier League team, he takes the place of another striker – a homegrown star, our narrator. Our narrator knows he should feel slighted, yet he’s drawn to Samson’s ebullience, his talent, his petulance and his beauty.
As their relationship grows, our narrator must grapple with the confines of masculinity, the isolation that comes from the threat of scandal and the fragility and power of an athlete’s body, underscored by Allison’s examination of how much of ourselves we sacrifice in the pursuit of greatness
Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line
Elizabeth Lovatt
06/02/2025 9780349704616
ThankYouforCallingtheLesbianLine is a brilliantly original exploration of queer history based on call logs from a 90s lesbian phone helpline.
With warmth and humour, Elizabeth Lovatt reimagines the women who both called and volunteered for the Lesbian Line in the 1990s, whilst tracing her own journey from accidentally coming out to disastrous dates to finding her chosen family. With callers and agents dealing with first crushes, break-ups, sex, marriage, loneliness and illness (or needing to know the name of a gay bar), this is a celebration of the ordinary lives of queer women.
Steeped in pop culture and grounded in relevant theory, Thank You for Calling the Lesbian Line is a timely and vital exploration of how lesbian identity continues to remake and redefine itself and where it might lead us in the future.
A House for Miss Pauline
Diana McCaulay
27/02/2025
9780349704272
A beautiful, compelling novel about identity and legacy, from an award-winning author.
Miss Pauline, a rural Jamaican woman, builds herself a house from the stone ruins of a plantation. But her quiet ascent to security and a stone-strong home of her own is about to crumble, when the stones of that house begin to grind and sound back at her. On the brink of her 100th birthday, afflicted with these night terrors, Miss Pauline is forced to reckon with her life. With a sense of foreboding in
her bones, she questions the rightness of her actions and sets off on a journey that will change everything. Written in a lyrical, accessible, emotional style, inflected by Miss Pauline’s aphorisms and by local patwa, A House for Miss Pauline tells a powerful story that asks important questions about who owns the land on which our identities are forged.
Lambing Season August Lamm
06/03/2025
9780349704890
A brilliant subversion of the sardonic millennial voice, which asks how to build a life of meaning when facing unexpected physical limits.
Lambing Season follows a young woman, a newly disabled illustrator, as she comes to terms with a body that can no longer produce art. Desperate for stability in the wake of her diagnosis, she follows an impulse to move to rural Wales and become engaged to a near stranger, a misanthropic airplane pilot living in a rundown house to save money while
attending flight school. Putting immense faith in the redemptive power of marriage, the pair are united by their recklessness and little else.
Piercing, thoughtful and wickedly funny, Lambing Season marks the arrival of an extraordinary new literary talent.
A History of the World in Six Plagues
Edna Bonhomme
13/03/2025
9780349704364
An original, revolutionary new social and scientific history, examining the role that confinement has played in fostering and hindering epidemics.
A History of the World in Six Plagues is a timely examination of the role that confinement has played in fostering and hindering epidemics.
In a rare blend of rigorous research and truly compelling storytelling, Dr Edna Bonhomme traces the long history of viral outbreaks under conditions of social confinement – the plantation system, colonial camps,
imprisonment, quarantine, factories – and reveals how these enclosed spaces fuel epidemics.
This is a book about the complicated histories of movement and stagnation, and about the time we live in, with a focus on the racialised history of several key epidemics from the impact of cholera on the plantation economy to HIV/AIDS outbreaks in US prisons.
Stage Fright
Sarvat Hasin
27/03/2025 9780349703114
One week, every three years. Two women come together to test the endurance of their bond and to ask: what if?
2013, England. Ava and Aliya meet at university. Ava is here for Emily Brontë and Brideshead Revisited. Everything disappoints her until: Aliya. For Aliya, this is the first time she has been away from her parents who live in Pakistan and the sense of freedom is overwhelming.
When they meet, there’s an immediate spark. While everyone else is getting drunk on love, life, sex, drugs, they are getting drunk on each other. They move in together, become twin-like, wife-like in their devotion. But
as they leave university and enter the real world, something breaks.
Fast forward three years and Aliya is married to a sensible man in finance, settled and writing a novel about her university years. When Ava finds out about the novel, she is desperate to know how Aliya has written their story.
What did she mean to Aliya? And how does their story end?
Just Beneath the Soil
Clint Smith
03/04/2025
9780349704487
Clint Smith, author of NYT Bestseller How the Word is Passed, continues his exploration of public memory through reckoning with the legacy of World War II.
Clint Smith continues his exploration of public memory and trains his expert eye on a new time period: World War II. With his poetic, effortless prose, he brings us along as he interrogates what it means to have a ‘Western perspective’ on the most consequential and brutal global event of the past century. He spends time with one of the last Navajo Code Talkers, a survivor of the infamous boarding schools for Native children. He sits
with the still-living Korean ‘comfort women’ who were subjected to sexual slavery at the hands of the Japanese military. He remembers his great uncle, a Black American veteran who signed up to fight for a country that subjected him to racial terror. He asks, why do we lift Germany up as an exemplar of remembrance for their willingness to build memorials, monuments and museums dedicated to the Holocaust? And should we?
Memories from the Dancefloor
Damian Kerlin
05/06/2025 9780349704654
Unravels the hidden history behind LGBTQ+ nightlife, colourfully told by the community that lived it.
Memories from the Dancefloor excavates archives of communal memory to uncover why the gay bar holds such significance and what can be done to save their rapid decline.
From the macho-men at Clapham’s Two Brewers to the nautical sauna in Limehouse, from disco at Studio One to dark rooms in Vauxhall railway arches, the gay bar has long been a place of joy, solidarity and sexual expression.
Weaving together stories of the vastly
changing nature of LGBTQ+ nightlife, the joys and sorrows that it can bring – and a truly wide sense of history, without losing the fun – Kerlin’s interviewees pay homage to the family and community gay bars create, nurture and serve. A lifeline for some, a home for all.
Expansive, vivacious, curious and celebratory, join Damian on the dancefloor as he uncovers the stories of epic nights and memories that have lasted a lifetime.
Jamaica Road
Lisa Smith
12/06/2025
9780349703572
A transformative love story about two best friends who fall for each other, fall apart and try to find their way back together in their tight-knit BritishJamaican community.
South London, 1981: Daphne is the only Black girl in her class. All she wants is to keep her head down. The easiest way to survive is to go unnoticed.
Daphne’s attempts at invisibility are upended when a boy, Connie Small, arrives from Jamaica. Connie is the opposite of small: lanky, outgoing, unapologetic. Daphne tries to keep her distance, but Connie is magnetic. As they navigate growing up in a rapidly changing city, their friendship shifts into something more complicated. When Connie reveals he’s
in England illegally, Daphne realizes she is dangerously entangled in Connie’s fragile home. Soon, long-buried secrets threaten to tear them apart permanently.
Spanning one tumultuous decade, from the shipyards of the Thames to the beaches of Montego Bay, Jamaica Road is a deftly plotted, emotionally expansive debut about the family you’re born with, the family you choose and the limits of what true love can conquer.
Attention Seeker Amber
Medland
12/06/2025 9780349704135
The definitive book on ADHD, unveiling the truth about the history of ADHD and what it means to have ADHD in the UK today.
Amber Medland cuts through the noise online and reclaims the narrative of ADHD to uncover the reality of how it affects individuals from early childhood to old age. Structured around three themes – Self, Society and the Attention Economy – the book moves from chapters on diagnosis, education and the gendered experience of ADHD to chapters on family, employment, addiction and prisons.
The book closes with an inspiring anticapitalist manifesto. Medland asks, in the current attention economy, what can the neurotypical reader learn from a life spent managing one’s attention in radically different ways?
The Good, the Black and the Boujee:
The Story of Britain’s New Black Middle Class Symeon Brown
19/06/2025 9780349702490
A
groundbreaking non-fiction book about the Black elite and the new, emerging Black middle class.
The Good, the Black and the Boujee will be a memoir-led exploration of two of the most high-profile and vocal but unrecorded groups in the UK – the Black elite and the new, emerging Black middle class. Over the past twenty years the expansion of the middle classes has reinvented Britain’s old model of class. In that time Black Britons have quietly risen to the pinnacle of some of the nation’s most visible industries despite the dominant media narratives.
The Life and Times of Ota Benga
JJ Bola
26/06/2025 9780349702124
The highly anticipated new novel from JJ Bola, depicting the remarkable true story of Ota Benga.
In 1904, Ota Benga, a young Congolese ‘pygmy’– a person of petite stature – arrived from central Africa and was featured in an anthropology exhibit at the St. Louis World’s Fair. Two years later, the New York Zoological Gardens displayed him in its Monkey House, caging the slight 103-pound, 4-foot 11-inch tall man with an orangutan. The attraction became an international sensation, drawing thousands of New Yorkers and commanding headlines from across the world.
We follow our protagonist from the very beginning of his story in the DRC, through his journey to the US, Ota Benga’s captivity, the international controversy it inspired and his efforts to adjust to American life.
Written in Bola’s beautiful, thoughtful prose, it is a novel of both unimaginable pain and hope.
An
A–Z of Chinese Food: (Recipes Not Included)
Jenny Lau
23/01/2025
9781408748398
A delectable anthology that serves up Chinese flavour beyond just its taste. Perfect for fans of Takeaway, MidnightChicken and Crying in H Mart.
Jenny Lau always found herself sitting between cultures, connected to both east and west. Hungry to understand herself, she threw herself into researching the Chinese food of her heritage. The result is An A–Z of Chinese Food – a surprising, unputdownable and deliciously enriching anthology that uses food to explore who we are and how we relate to the world.
From A is for Authentic, breaking down our assumptions of who ‘owns’ what cuisine, to R is for Rice Cooker, a humorous entry from the point of view of a hard-working kitchen appliance that has seen a family through its ups and downs, An A–Z of Chinese Food will change the way you think about, see and eat food.
The Ick
Holly McCulloch
06/03/2025
A hilarious,
9781408748855
heartwarming romantic comedy
about a girl with a chronic case of the ick –can she get over it and find love?
Gem is chronically single, with a chronic case of the ick. Every man she meets seems perfect until she notices something … and is completely, irrevocably put off.
When she claims it’s her intuition, her housemate Shanti tells Gem that she’ll pay her to take part in her study: is intuition real?
Cue Atlas. On paper, he passes with flying colours. But, as soon as she sees Atlas in person, Gem gets hit by the ick. A huge bag
makes him look like a turtle. This, combined with his ridiculous name, means he already has two strikes against him. But thanks to Shanti’s study, Gem breaks all her own rules – going on a second date, a third, and even a fourth, until she starts losing count.
Can Gem do the impossible and actually start falling for Atlas? And what happens when he finds out she’s being paid to date him?
The Manor of Dreams
Christina Li
13/03/2025
9781408748930
An unputdownable sapphic gothic novel about the dangerous secrets of a crumbling Hollywood Hills mansion and the intertwined fates of the two Chinese-American families fighting to inherit it.
Vivian Yin is dead. The trailblazing starlet was the first Chinese actress to win an Oscar –but at what should have been the peak of her career, she became a recluse, her life shrouded in mystery.
Now, her daughters, Lucille and Renata, and her granddaughter, Lily, are gathered for the reading of her will, expecting to inherit the sprawling California garden estate Vivian hadn’t left in years.
Instead, the house is passed on to someone
else: Elaine Deng and her daughter Nora. Lucille and Renata are shocked – they haven’t spoken to Elaine for decades. Not since the tragedy that fractured all of their lives.
Vying for the estate, both families move into the crumbling, vine-covered manor. As Vivian’s daughters sift through the remnants of her life, looking for clues about her death, they discover they are being haunted by something far more sinister than their memories ...
The Impersonators
Angela Chadwick
13/03/2025
A
9780349131054
thrilling and unputdownable high-concept
novel about two out-of-work actors who set up an agency – then things go horribly wrong ...
Lucy White has spent ten years trying to make it as an actor, but now that she’s in her early thirties, auditions have dried up and she’s been dropped by her agent.
On her last night in London, Lucy’s best friend and fellow jobbing-actor Jack mentions he’s been hired to impersonate the grandson of a rich family friend in order to keep the nursing home staff on their toes.
Lucy can’t help but feel there might be an
untapped market for impersonation services and so, clutching at an opportunity, she and Jack set up an agency supplying actors who can step into people’s lives to maintain any pretences or mistruths they’ve been spinning.
Despite her moral qualms, Lucy is starting to enjoy the work. But when a well-heeled older woman, Zelda, hires them to deceive her former partner, things begin to spiral rapidly out of their control ...
Save Your Breath
Kandi Steiner
20/03/2025 9781408749647
The latest Kings of the Ice novel from the Number One Amazon Bestselling Author and TikTok sensation Kandi Steiner.
Save Your Breath, a fake engagement hockey romance, is the fourth book in the Kings of the Ice, a series of interconnected standalones following a team of professional hockey players and the women who bring them to their knees. A sports romance aficionado, Kandi Steiner has over 230k followers across social media platforms and Kings of the Ice are previously self-published, digital bestsellers with over 25,000 ratings on Amazon.
The Gatsby Gambit: A Great Gatsby murder mystery
Claire Anderson-Wheeler
03/04/2025
9781408748510
At your peril, you are cordially invited to summer at the Gatsby West Egg Mansion, with the most illustrious – and the deadliest – guest list.
Freshly twenty-one and sporting a daring new bob, Greta Gatsby – younger sister to the infamous Jay – is finally free of finishing school. An idyllic summer stretches ahead of her at the Gatsby Mansion, the jewel of West Egg.
But when Greta arrives at the secluded whitestone estate bathed in the late-afternoon light, she isn’t the only visitor. Jay is hosting an intimate gathering of New York’s fashionable set: Daisy and Tom Buchanan, along with his
brother Edgar, Nick Carraway and Jordan Baker.
That evening, the guests enjoy a candelabralit dinner party. That night, they dance to the lilt of the gramophone. The next morning, one of them is missing.
Murder has come to West Egg, the warm breeze tainted by scandal, betrayal and secrets. Turning sleuth isn’t how Greta meant to spend her summer – but what choice does she have when one of them could be next?
Possibility
Sareeta Domingo
24/04/2025 9781408748763
A best-in-class novel about changing your life, learning to love yourself – and what it really means to be free.
Anika Lapo spends her thirtieth birthday in hospital. She is shocked to discover it’s not dying she’s afraid of – her real fear is being known for the life she has led.
The evening before emergency surgery, she opens her diary for the first time in thirteen years, manifesting that tomorrow’s surgery will save her. The next day, Anika wakes up after a successful operation. A hunger for life is sparked in her; a desire to be her fullest self.
Every night, Anika writes in her diary … How tomorrow she’s going to nail the job interview, tell her friends how she really feels, and finally, blissfully connect with the man she has longed for – and lusted over – from afar: morning show radio host Cam Seidu. Every day, the words in her diary come true. Anika finally feels like her truest self … But what if she was enough all along?
Bad Friend: Why Friendship Breakups Hurt and How to Heal
Michelle Elman
08/05/2025 9781408749456
A groundbreaking book that removes the stigma from friendship breakups and sparks a muchneeded conversation around friendships, making us question everything
We live in a society that heroises romantic love over platonic love. Just look at the language we have for each stage, from seeing each other to dating, to getting engaged and married.
Yet research shows that a person will have on average seven to ten romantic relationships in their lifetime and twenty-nine friends – so why is the conversation on love far greater than the conversation on friendship? When only six of these friendships will stand the
we have been taught.
test of time, this means that the average person will experience the ending of twentythree friendships.
As someone who has gone through a dozen friendship breakups, Michelle Elman began to think she was A Bad Friend. But what if you aren’t the problem?
Bad Friend is for anyone who has ever been hurt by a friend but it’s also the book to reassure you that you’re not a bad one.
A Fate Forged in Fire
Hazel McBride
25/05/2025 9781408749081
The first book in the Bonded To Beasts duology – a fast-paced, seductive series that flawlessly blends searing romance, political intrigue, elemental magic and, of course, dragons.
Born to rule. Blessed by fire. Broken by desire.
Once a territory built on matriarchal rule and values, Tìr Teine has grown frail from a long line of fruitless kings who have allowed an oppressive religion to infect the land.
The first queen in centuries and gifted with fire magic, Aemyra Daercathian has been waiting for the current king to die, so she can bond to his dragon, claim her birthright and save her people.
But when her ambitious plan is foiled, she
is thrust into a game of vicious politics and into the hands of her dragon-riding adversary, Prince Fiorean.
Cold, arrogant and and blindly supportive of his corrupt family, Fiorean is everything Aemyra despises. But as chaos and war engulf the royal court, they find themselves reluctantly entwined and forced to forge an uneasy alliance – one that quickly ignites into something more dangerous than either of them expected.
Palm Meridian
Grace Flahive
29/05/2025
9781408748879
A lesbian retirement resort. A long-lost love. An end-of-life
It’s 2062 in Florida, and Palm Meridian Retirement Resort is thrumming with anticipation. Today is Hannah’s last day on earth. Tomorrow, as the sun burns the dew off the lawns, she’ll close her eyes for the very last time.
But tonight, she’s throwing an end-of-life party: the palm trees are strung with fairy lights and a disco ball glitters above the dancefloor.
Hannah may have less than twenty-four hours
to live, but she hasn’t given up on love yet. Amongst the guest list is Hannah’s long-lost love, Sophie. It’s been forty years but Hannah has never forgotten Sophie’s throaty laugh, her bright eyes, the way her dark hair shimmied down her back ... Tonight could be the night that changes everything.
If Sophie shows, how can Hannah say goodbye all over again? And when a devastating secret comes to light, is there enough time to fix the mistakes of the past?
Zofia Nowack’s Book of Superior Detecting
Piotr Cieplak
26/06/2025 9781408748213
Meet the most unforgettable heroine since Eleanor Oliphant: Zofia, the Polish mother who pretends to be a cleaning lady in order to discover what really happened to her missing son.
Zofia’s troubled son, Janek, is missing. She leaves her native Warsaw and arrives in London to investigate whether a famous writer, Steve, had something to do with the disappearance.
To fund the operation, headstrong Zofia has borrowed a lot of money and been forced to take cleaning jobs – a professional trajectory she finds very much beneath her. Zofia’s heavy-handed, DIY investigation soon yields
some results: Steve does have skeletons in his closet. Two are of particular interest: he stole Janek’s novel and published it as his own, and he’s now dating Janek’s ex-boyfriend ...
Steve and Zofia soon join forces to unravel this mystery. There’s an unsolved murder, a stolen book and a missing boyfriend – all that before Zofia and Steve even begin to face the fact that they both played a part in creating this almighty mess.
The Body in the Kitchen Garden: Hill
House Vintage Murder Mystery Book 2
Paula Sutton
10/07/2025 9780349703794
The next delightfully cosy, quirky and twist-packed instalment in Paula Sutton’s unmissable ‘cottage core murder mystery’ series – perfect for fans of Janice Hallett and Richard Osman.
Antique-hunting Daphne Brewster is back for more sleuthing in Book 2 of Paula Sutton’s beloved murder mystery series. Return to the picturesque village of Norfolk’s Pudding Corner – a glorious haven of golden fields, winding cobbled lanes and ... murder.
PAPERBACKS
Advocate: A voice from the margins
Lennina Ofori
16/01/2025 9780349702209
Part-memoir, part-manifesto, Advocate demonstrates how we can all be a voice for change in an increasingly divided world.
Lennina Ofori is a force of nature: a teen mother, a supportive older sister, a PhD student, a support system, a working woman, a survivor. Above all, she is an advocate. She has spent her life working for those relegated to the margins. In Advocate, she lends her voice to them.
Weaving in her own story, from her beautiful family to her hardest struggles, Ofori analyses intersections familiar to many – race, class and gender. From the teachings of bell hooks
to government reports, Ofori makes accessible topics that are so often ignored and uses her unique perspective to become a daring voice for active change and emboldening hope in modern life.
Advocate is a tale of personal resistance, but also a manifesto for action. With great candour and wit, Ofori will call you to make change not just for your own sake, but for those in the margins.
Top Doll
Karen McCarthy Woolf
16/01/2025 9780349703473
The complex, lyrical, hilarious and completely wonderful debut novel by award-winning poet and campaigner, Karen McCarthy Woolf.
When reclusive billionaire Huguette Clark dies age 104, she leaves behind a suite of New York apartments, a meticulously upkept California mansion, at least one Monet and her vast collection of antique dolls. Having barely been outside for fifty years, the elusive Clark spoke to few – in this highly unreliable, semi-fictional miniature epic, the dolls tell all.
Theirs is a tale that takes us from their lavish Park Avenue home back in time to the slave plantations of Virginia and the palaces of Imperial Japan via the addictive hedonism of 1930s queer LA.
Joyfully irreverent, Top Doll is a story of love, betrayal, Barbies and, ultimately, what it means to be human.
Winter Animals
Ashani Lewis
23/01/2025
9780349703312
A seductive debut about the power of youthful idealism from an exciting young award-winning writer.
In one of America’s Happiest Cities, thirtyeight-year-old Elen is trapped under the shadow of the snow-capped Cascade Mountains. Her husband has left her. Her belongings are in the boot of her car. Her days are filled mostly with silence and drinking. When she meets four English teenagers in an empty bar, she is enamoured.
Luka, Clover, George and Lyn are wealthy squatters, drifting between ski resorts and breaking into empty Airbnbs. When they bring Elen into their fold – and into their
This Love
Lotte Jeffs
13/02/2025
messy, entangled relationships – she senses a violent secret that fuels the four’s neverending disappearing act.
She doesn’t understand what they want from her, but how can she leave when she has nowhere else to go?
A dark meditation on the dangers and seductive power of youthful idealism and the slippages between friendship and love, Winter Animals is an extraordinary debut examining freedom, friendship, desire and excess.
9780349703176
Spanning ten years, This Love is a gorgeous novel about queerness, overcoming loss and choosing your own family.
When Mae and Ari meet their final year at the University of Leeds, their connection is magnetic. Mae, stubborn and no stranger to breaking hearts, needs Ari’s bright light to guide her out of her self-centred ways; Ari, vibrant, charming and reeling in the aftermath of a scandal in New York, clings to Mae as his grounding anchor.
As the years sweep by, the two traverse the tumult of life: toxic partners and hidden secrets, the heavy weight of grief and a
complicated, unignorable desire to start a family … If they can hold onto one another in the face of the relentless past and the inevitable future, they might discover how to build something beautiful out of their expansive, boundary-breaking love.
This Love is a vivid and epic tale of finding your soulmates, building an unconventional family and the limitless forms love can take.
Doing It All Ruby Russell
27/02/2025 9780349702162
A
call for single mothers
to take pride in their identity, and for society to recognise the value and respect the decisions of single mothers.
A feminist exploration of single motherhood and a passionate call to reclaim the power of mothering.
Nearly a quarter of UK families with dependent children are single-parent families, and around 90 per cent of single parents are women. Yet the single mother is still cast as victim or welfare queen, sexually irresponsible or too independent by half. Tracing a history through Victorian brothels, welfare rights activism and Black feminist
traditions of othermothering, Ruby Russell tells a different story: of motherhood defined not by marriage or men, but as a nexus of solidarity beyond the patriarchal status quo.
A personal quest for empowerment, Doing It All is also a fierce critique of the structures that leave single mums marginalised and exhausted – and a call to reclaim mothering as the life force of sustainable, connected and radically responsible communities.
Memory Piece
Lisa Ko
20/03/2025
9780349704340
The award-winning author of The Leavers offers a visionary novel of friendship, art, and ambition that asks: what is the value of a meaningful life?
In the early 1980s, Giselle Chin, Jackie Ong and Ellen Ng are three teenagers drawn together by their shared sense of alienation. ‘Allied in the weirdest parts of themselves’, they envision a future defined by freedom and creativity.
By the time they are adults, their dreams are murkier. As a performance artist, Giselle must navigate an elite social world she never conceived of. As a coder thrilled by the internet’s early egalitarian promise, Jackie must contend with its more sinister
shift toward monetization and surveillance. As a community activist, Ellen confronts the increasing gentrification and policing overwhelming her neighbourhood. As their friendship changes and ‘success’ becomes complicated, their sense of what matters must evolve.
Memory Piece is an innovative and audacious story of three lifelong friends as they strive to build satisfying lives in a world that turns out to be radically different from the one they were promised.
The Potting Shed Murder
Paula Sutton
03/04/2025 9780349703770
There’s death amongst the dahlias ... The totally gripping and delightfully quirky debut cosy crime novel by cottage-core queen and social-media sensation
Paula Sutton, the creator of Hill House Vintage.
Welcome to the sleepy village of Pudding Corner, a quintessentially English haven of golden cornfields, winding cobbled lanes ... and murder.
Daphne Brewster has left London behind and is settling into her family’s new life in rural Norfolk, planting broad beans and vintage hunting for their farmhouse.
But when the local headmaster is found dead in his potting shed, amongst his allotment cabbages, the village is ablaze: who would kill beloved Mr Papplewick, pillar of the
community?
When the headmaster’s widow points her finger at Minerva, Daphne’s new friend, Daphne vows to clear her name. Sneaking into the crime scene and chasing down rumours gets her into hot water with the local inspector – until she comes across a faded photograph that unearths a secret buried for forty years ...
They say nothing bad ever happens in closeknit Pudding Corner, but Daphne is close to the truth – dangerously close ...
Shanghailanders
Juli Min
01/05/2025 9780349704104
An ambitious debut that follows a Shanghai household backward in time, exploring their secrets, their losses and the ways a family makes and remakes itself across the years.
While the years rewind from 2040 back to 2014, Shanghailanders brings readers into the shared and separate lives of the Yang family, parent by parent, daughter by daughter, and through the eyes of the people in their orbit –a nanny from the provinces, a private driver with a penchant for danger, a grandmother whose memories of the past echo the present. As they build their lives in this old, futuristic city, we see Leo, his wife Eko and their daughters Yumi, Yoko and Kiko trip over
their own desires in bids to connect with one another, in their attempts to be a family. Though the world shifts and brings change for each of the Yangs, universal constants remain: love is complex and family will always be stubbornly connected by blood, secrets and longing.
Dazzlingly constructed and achingly resonant, Shanghailanders is an unforgettable exploration of everything that follows ‘happily ever after’.
Curandera Irenosen Okojie
29/05/2025 9780349700953
From an award-winning author comes this thrilling, experimental new novel exploring the darker elements of shamanism, desire, betrayal and friendship – across time and dimensions.
In the mountainous town of Gethsemane, seventeenth-century Cape Verde, a mysterious woman’s arrival sparks a series of strange events that will leave the town’s inhabitants changed: men sporadically blind in the afternoons, children disappearing and reappearing without warning and infertile women pregnant with the memories of past births.
In present-day London, a quartet are brought together by their fascination with ritual,
Swift River
Essie Chambers
miracles and a life beyond the mundane. Botanist Therese lives with Azacca, a soulful Haitian musician, Peruvian drifter Emilien, who is haunted by the past, and adventurous Finn, who is increasingly drawn to living life on the edge.
With the past and present beginning to blur into one, Curandera is a story of rebirth and redemption, a mythic tale of recalibrations across time.
05/06/2025 9780349703886
A debut novel of first friendships, family secrets and finding the courage to let go, told in a voice full of humour, irreverence and sass.
What if the price of moving forward is losing the only family you’ve ever known?
Summer, 1987. On the sweltering streets of the dying New England mill town of Swift River, sixteen-year-old Diamond Newbury is desperately lonely. It’s been seven years since her father disappeared, and while her mother is determined to move on, Diamond can’t distance herself from his memory. When Diamond receives a letter from a relative she has never met, she unearths long-buried
secrets of her family’s past and discovers a legacy she never knew she was missing. The more she learns, however, the harder it becomes to reconcile her old life with the one she wants to lead.
So begins an epic story spanning the twentieth century that reveals a much larger picture of prejudice and love, of devotion and abandonment – and will change Diamond’s life forever.
Youthjuice
E.K. Sathue
05/06/2025 9781408749241
American Horror Story meets The Devil Wears Prada in this outrageous, hilarious, indulgently nasty femgore novel for the Goop generation. You’ll never moisturise the same way again.
From Sophia Bannon’s first day on the Storytelling team at HEBE, a luxury skincare company based in New York City’s glitziest neighbourhood, it’s clear something is deeply amiss. But Sophia, pushing thirty with plenty of skeletons in her closet next to the designer knock-offs, doesn’t care. Though she leads an outwardly charmed life, she aches for a deeper meaning to her flat existence – and a cure for her brutal nail-biting habit. She finds it all
and more at HEBE, and with Tree Whitestone, HEBE’s charismatic, sinister founder and CEO.
Soon Sophia is addicted to her HEBE lifestyle, especially youthjuice, the fatty, soothing moisturiser Tree has selected Sophia to test in top secret. But the unsustainability of HEBE’s system is rapidly growing apparent, and Sophia is going to have to decide how far she’s willing to go to stay beautiful forever ...
Others Like Me: The Lives of Women without Children
Nicole Louie
12/06/2025 9781408748350
A bold look at why and how certain women do not have children.
A deeply personal exploration of childless and childfree women in their own words.
Others Like Me is the story of fourteen women around the world, from different walks of life, who don’t have children. It’s also the story of why Nicole Louie had to find these women and what they taught her. Part memoir, part exploration of childlessness through candid conversations, this book showcases the many ways in which people find fulfilment
outside of parenthood. And because the social expectation to procreate weighs the most on women, Louie focuses solely on them, their experiences and how they flourish outside of motherhood. In doing so, she upends the stereotypes that diminish women who are not mothers by choice, infertility, circumstance or ambivalence and offers reassurance and companionship on a path less known.
The Memo
Lauren Mechling & Rachel Dodes
19/06/2025 9780349703848
A one-of-a-kind, feminist high-concept novel that imagines a world where women are given secret memos to help them live their best lives.
Jenny Green is dreading her Class of 2007 reunion. While her friends are killing it, Jenny’s promising career as an artisanal baker went up in flames (literally) and her deadbeat, commitment-phobe boyfriend is cheating on her with their swishy-ponytailed neighbour. She feels like she didn’t get the memo ... As it turns out, she didn’t.
Begrudgingly back at university, she receives a text from an unlisted number: Jenny Green
– please collect your memo. Hidden on her old campus is a secret female-led organisation providing memos to select students; blueprints for success.
The first time around, Jenny didn’t receive hers. Now she’s being given a second chance –the opportunity to rewrite her past, undo her worst mistakes and fix her mess of a life. But at what price?
