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What to read next?

from The Bristol Magazine February 2023

from The Bristol Magazine February 2023 , page 78

5 key marketing tools to help ...

The brilliant team at GloucesterRoadBooks let us in on some of the best –and most anticipated –books of the year so far...

Anote from the team: “Our primary aim is that the shop be a fascinating place to explore. Some of the subject sections are a little broader than they might be elsewhere –for instance our ‘Time and Place’ section encompasses books on History, Travel Literature, Geography and Reportage. We also have a significant focus on titles published by small independent presses. There are lots of really brilliant small publishers putting out incredibly exciting books, and we want to help get these out into the world. The stock is carefully chosen and constantly changing, so even if you pop in every week there will always be new books to find.”

Visit Gloucester Road Books’ website: gloucesterroadbooks.com. Follow them on Instagram: gloucester_rd_books and browse the collection in store: 184 Gloucester Road, Bishopston, BS7 8NU. Open Monday –Tuesday 9.30am –5pm; Wednesday –Saturday 9.30am –6pm

What July Knew by Emily Koch.

Published by Harvill Secker and released on 9 February

The third novel from Bristolbased Emily Koch is set squarely in the middle of the 90s and is guaranteed to deliver era nostalgia as well as suspense! Ten-year-old July knows she lost her mother to a car crash when she was very young, but a cryptic note slipped into her bag has left her questioning what really happened.

Victory City by Salman Rushdie.

Published by Jonathan Cape and released on 9 February

In fourteenth-century southern India, a young girl is visited by the goddess Parvati and tasked with a vital role in bringing about the rise of a great city, called Bisnaga –‘Victory City’. The girl’s life becomes intertwined with that of the fabled city, but fate can be fickle, and stories change...

Brutes by Dizz Tate. Published by Faber and released on 2 February

One of the most anticipated debut novels of 2023, Dizz Tate’s Brutes is a striking and tense experience. Set in Florida, it recounts the aftermath of the disappearance of the local preacher’s daughter on the local community, seen through the eyes of a group of teenage girls. Mesmerising and ambitious, Brutes confirms Tate’s soaring storytelling talent; evident when she won the 2018 Bristol Short Story Prize.

We’ll be welcoming Dizz Tate to the shop on 10 February at 7pm to discuss Brutes with our own Joe Melia.

The Private Lives of Trees by Alejandro Zambra - translated by Megan McDowell. Published by Fitzcarraldo Editions and released on 7 February

Zambra is a master of doing lots with very little. Here he gives us a man waiting with his young step-daughter for his wife to return home one evening, exploring his memories and his choices, and thinking about how the story of a life is constructed. Warm, clever and charming, this is consummate storytelling from a brilliant Chilean writer.

Still Pictures: On Photography and Memory by Janet Malcolm. Published by Granta Books and released on 2 February

This is a posthumous memoir by journalist and critic Janet Malcolm who died in 2021. Malcolm weaves her story around a selection of photographic snapshots depicting her family fleeing the Holocaust to their new life as Czech refugees in a Manhattan enclave, and also encompassing her experiences working as a critic and journalist in New York. In this brief and final book, Malcolm further explores her life-long interest on themes of memory and the complexity of autobiographical writing.