The evenings might be getting that little bit shorter, but the sun is giving us a second wind of summer! Better late than never, right? Whether you’re part of the back-to-school rush, or you’re heading out to the park to bathe under the rays, or you’re taking advantage of the shorter evenings to sit in and chill, we have the perfect list of fiction titles to keep you occupied. Find these in your favourite bookstore, or order these in stock from your local sales rep.
Addicted After All by Krista Ritchie & Becca Ritchie
Berkley – US, 9780593639610, PB, £15.99, 5/9/2023
Perfect for fans of the hit TV show Euphoria, The TikTok sensation Addicted series continues with Addicted After All, now in a print edition with special bonus material!
Prepare for the worst, but hope for the best. That’s what Lily Calloway and Loren Hale try to do when his father schedules an ‘important’ meeting. The problem: after being swept into the public eye and battling their addictions, they’re not sure what the worst is anymore. In a sea of many changes — including Ryke and Daisy living with them — Lily realises that the best part of her fluctuating hormones might just be the worst. Her sex drive is out of control. Loren knows that she’s insatiable, but he’s not giving up on her. She’s too much a part of him. And as he carries more and more responsibility, some of the people that he loves doubt his resolve. Lily and Lo stand side-by-side to fight, one last time, for their happily ever after.
Perfect for readers searching for something between young adult and adult romance.
The Village Idiot by Steve Stern
Melville House Publishing, 9781685890773, PB, £14.99, 14/9/2023
Fans of Michael Chabon, Gary Shteyngart, Jonathan Safran Foer, Cynthia Ozick and Howard Jacobson will love this wild, effervescent, absinthe-soaked, partly-biographic novel that tells of the life of the extraordinary artist Chaim Soutine.
Paris, 1917. Amid the carnage of World War I, some of the foremost artists have chosen to stage a boat race. At the head of the regatta is Amedeo Modigliani, seated in a bathtub pulled by a flock of ducks. But unbeknownst to the competition, he has an advantage: his young friend, the immigrant painter Chaim Soutine, is hauling the tub underwater. Disoriented and confused Chaim stumbles through the events of his life, from impoverished beginnings in an East European shtetl to wild fun times with artists. But always on the horizon is a coming storm that threatens to sweep away Chaim…
The Village Idiot is an intimate peep into the artistic process of a painter genius, offering an indelible portrait of Paris in early 1900s, when it was the cultural centre of the universe.
Just Like Mother by Anne Heltzel
Verve Books, 9780857308436, PB, £9.99, 26/9/2023
Just Like Mother is a compulsive and feminist plot in which the author twists notions surrounding female bodies to create a terrifying story. If you’re a fan of Jessamine Chan’s The School for Good Mothers, Emma Cline’s The Girls and Christina Dalcher’s Femlandia, look no further.
The last time Maeve saw her cousin was the night she escaped the cult they were raised in. For the past two decades, Maeve has worked hard to build a normal life in New York City, where she keeps everything — and everyone — at a safe distance. When Andrea suddenly reappears, Maeve regains the only true friend she’s ever had. Soon she’s spending more time at Andrea’s remote Catskills estate than in her own cramped apartment. Maeve doesn’t even mind that her cousin’s wealthy work friends clearly disapprove of her single lifestyle. After all, Andrea has made her fortune in the fertility industry — baby fever comes with the territory. What worries Maeve is that the more she immerses herself in Andrea’s world, the more her long-buried memories flood to the surface. But confronting the terrors of her childhood may be the only way for Maeve to transcend the nightmare still to come…
Spine-chilling and sharp, Just Like Mother is a modern gothic from a fresh new voice in horror.
The Rituals by Rebecca Roberts
Honno Welsh Women’s Press, 9781912905867, PB, £8.99, 28/9/2023
A heartfelt novel exploring how we find the light when we are at our darkest place.
Gwawr is a celebrant who conducts non-religious naming ceremonies, weddings and funerals. She’s good at her job and proud of her reputation. However, someone is working behind the scenes, a saboteur trying to destroy her career. Only by revisiting the most difficult period of her life can Gwawr discover who is out to get her. Help comes from unexpected sources and with the support of her clients, friends and family, Gwawr learns important lessons about the nature of love, loss, and the importance of trusting others. The Rituals reaches right to the core with strong female characters that invite you in as though you were an old friend.
Motion Sickness by Lynne Tillman
Peninsula Press, 9781913512330, PB, £10.99, 7/9/2023
An unmissable new work from the acclaimed cult author of Weird Fucks.
For the narrator of Motion Sickness life is an unguided tour, populated with hotels and strangers, art, books, and films. Adrift in Europe, her life becomes a carousel of unusual encounters, where coincidences and luck shape la vita nuova. In London our narrator is befriended by an expatriate American Buddhist and her mysterious husband. In Paris she meets Arlette, an art historian obsessed with Velazquez’s painting ‘Las Meninas’. In Barcelona she meets two generations of Germans. She tours the hill towns of Italy in a London taxi with two surprising Englishmen in pursuit of art and Henry Moore. She buys postcards to send, but often tears them up, not sure of what the pictures mean. At once dreamlike and tough, hilarious and melancholic, Motion Sickness is a contemporary picaresque in which a young woman drifts and reinvents herself with every new encounter.
Beasts of England by Adam Biles
Galley Beggar Press, 9781913111458, PB, £10.99, 14/9/2023
Adam Biles’ anarchic sequel to Animal Farm is a warped fable; a state-of-the-farmyard novel about back-stabbers, truth-twisters and corrupt charlatans.
As this month’s chosen Book of the Month, keep an eye out for a full review coming soon!
Audition by Pip Adam
Peninsula Press, 9781913512415, PB, £10.99, 21/9/2023
This speculative novel is perfect for fans of The Employees.
The spaceship Audition is hurtling through towards an event horizon. Squashed immobile into its rooms are three giants: Alba, Stanley, and Drew. If they talk, the spaceship keeps moving; if they are silent, they resume growing. So they talk, and as they do, Alba, Stanley, and Drew recover shared memories of the injustices faced back on Earth by their former selves. Or are they constructing those selves from memory-scripts that have been implanted in them? At once speculative and grimly realistic, formally experimental and politically urgent, Audition asks how we live with each other’s violences, and what happens when systems of power decide someone takes up too much space.
