Whilst we’ve all got our fingers crossed for more sunshine this July, one thing we don’t have to cross our fingers for is a good book. July is coming in hot with indie fiction for every taste! We’ve got wild historical re-imaginings, an exciting new queer fantasy, Golden Age crime, and many more unmissable reads in this month’s fiction highlights.
Mary and The Rabbit Dream
By Noemi Kiss-Deaki
Galley Beggar Press | 9781913111533 | PB | Out 11th July | £10.99
Mary Toft was just another eighteenth century woman living in poverty, misery and frequent pain.
Mary Toft was the kind of person overlooked by those with power, forgotten by historians.
Mary Toft was nothing.
Until, that is, Mary Toft started giving birth to rabbits…
In Mary and the Rabbit Dream, the sensational debut novelist Noemi Kiss-Deaki reimagines Mary’s strange and fascinating story — and how she found fame when a large swathe of England became convinced that she was the mother of rabbits.
Mary and the Rabbit Dream is a story of bodily autonomy, of absurdity, of the horrors inflicted on women, of the cruel realities of poverty and the grotesque divides between rich and poor. It’s a book that matters deeply — and it’s also a compelling page-turner. A story told with exquisite wit, skill and a beautiful streak of subversive mischief.
Above Us the Sea
By Ania Card
Dead Ink | 9781915368515 | PB | Out 11th July | £10.99
It’s after a night in Cardiff’s loudest gay bar that Toni first lays eyes on Gav, a retired Welsh boxer, and his boyfriend Karol, an aspiring Polish photographer. The trio soon fall into an intimate, ambiguous love triangle.
After a tragic event at a beach in Swansea, the trio are ripped apart, and Toni escapes to London, becoming caught between a convenient, loveless relationship and an illicit, lustful affair. Lost halfway between the British future she has always wanted, and the Eastern European past she has been running from, Toni can only wonder where and with whom she really belongs.
Above Us The Sea is an ode to the tangled remains of lost loves and the imprints left by grieving souls, yearning for connection. This is a story of aching and emerging, intimacy and distance, set against an increasingly hostile landscape.
Yoke of Stars
By R.B. Lemberg
Tachyon Publications | 9781616964184 | PB | Out 16th July | £14.99
In the School of Assassins, Stone Orphan waits for a first assignment. After their first kill, they will graduate, and attain the coveted cloth of bone. But instead of a commission, Stone Orphan gets an inquisitive linguist, Ulin.
Ulin has heard the Orphan Star’s song of despair, mirroring her own, and drawing her to the School of Assassins. But Ulin is far more interested in learning Stone Orphan’s language than deciding whom she wishes to kill. Unable to contain their curiosity, Stone Orphan offers to exchange stories with Ulin to help her decide the fate of three men.
In R. B. Lemberg’s newest, lyrical Birdverse novella (The Four Profound Weaves; Geometries of Belonging), an assassin and a linguist negotiate their very different languages, past betrayals, and an unexpected bond. By turns, Stone Orphan and Ulin narrate tales of love, suffering, exile, and self-determination, and two hurt souls find hope in each other through a radical act: listening.
Lace
by Catrin Kean
Honno Welsh Women’s Press | 9781912905744 | PB | Out 18th July | £9.99
In the early 1900s in Wicklow, Ireland, the lives of six year old Mary and her siblings are torn apart when their father dies leaving the family penniless. Mary’s mother is forced to travel to Dublin to find work. She places her children in an orphanage for a short stay, which turns into
years.
Many years later Mary settles in Cardiff with her Welsh/Bajan husband Louis, and is thrilled at the arrival of their first child, Teresa. But the birth of the baby dredges up long hidden memories that Mary must confront before she can bond with her daughter.
The Woman in the Portrait
By Juliet Jacques
Cipher Press | 9781917008020 | PB | Out 18th July | £11.99
In 1920’s Berlin, the recovered diaries of transgender model Heike expose her as the mysterious muse and subject behind Christian Schad’s best-known painting. After signing her Gender Recognition Certificate, a trans woman channels the offbeat glamour of a forgotten movie star at a Brighton gay bar. A well-known journalist finds herself under public scrutiny after taking a private BDSM game out onto the streets of Soho. Transfixed by the psychic power of monuments, an artist crowdfunds to build a tribute to victims of austerity, only to find himself the subject of a political backlash.
Taking us on a smart, funny, and deeply political ride through art, sex, and discovery, The Woman in the Portrait collects the short fiction of ground-breaking transgender writer Juliet Jacques. Showcasing both previously published and unpublished works, these stories offer an era-spanning tour through culture, politics, and community, presented with Jacques’ trademark originality, insight, and humour.
Celina
By Catherine Axelrad & Philip Terry
Les Fugitives Ltd | 9781739778378 | PB | Out 18th July | £12.99
In the late 1850s, Celina, a young girl aged fifteen, takes up work as a maid for the Hugo family in Guernsey. There she encounters the delicate balance between the professional and the personal, and the obligations upon her as her livelihood is at stake. Celina navigates a life of hardship and loss, but not without crucial moments of pleasure and pride.
In a voice full of the innocence of youth, yet studded with fine observations about her surroundings, her perspective offers a nuanced, potentially challenging portrait of the man and the artist.
Axelrad’s fictional account is based on cryptic notes found in Hugo’s diaries as well as letters from his wife.
The Case of the Busy Bees
by Clifford Witting
Galileo Publishing | 9781915530455 | PB | Out 18th July | £10.99
Work was mounting up, Detective Inspector Charlton did not feel too well and he could have done without Mr Otto Bajornsen. Yet had not this untidy, smiling man come on his fact-finding trip to Downshire, the affair of the Busy Bees might have had a very different conclusion. Even as he sat talking in Charlton’s office in Lulverton, the wheels were being set in motion and Mr Theophilus Mildwater, curator of the Monk Jewel Museum, was anxiously reporting the loss of Exhibit 115, a valuable — and dangerous — tomahawk.
The Words That Remain
By Stenio Gardel & Bruna Dantas Lobato
New Vessel Press | 9781954404120 | PB | Out 18th July | £14.99
A letter has beckoned to Raimundo since he received it over fifty years ago from his youthful passion, handsome Cicero. But having grown up in an impoverished area of Brazil where the demands of manual labor thwarted his becoming literate, Raimundo has long been unable to read. As young men, he and Cicero fell in love, only to have Raimundo’s father brutally beat his son when he discovered their affair. Even after Raimundo succeeds in making a life for himself in the big city, he continues to be haunted by this secret missive full of longing from the distant past. Now at age seventy-one, he at last acquires a true education and the ability to access the letter. Exploring Brazil’s little-known hinterland as well its urban haunts, this is a sweeping novel of repression, violence, and shame, along with their flip side: survival, endurance, and the ultimate triumph of an unforgettable figure on society’s margins. The Words That Remain explores the universal power of the written word and language, and how they affect our relationships.
Glória
By Victor Heringer, translated by James Young & Sophie Lewis
Peirene Press | 9781908670854 | PB | Out 23rd July | £12.99
From the author of The Love of Singular Men comes a book about three brothers with a dark inheritance. The Alencar Costa e Oliveira family talk to each other in inside jokes, often saying the opposite of what they mean, or repeating the same sentence until it acquires new meaning. But the family has another characteristic: none of them has ever died of illnesses or accident -they all die of acute melancholy. Gracefully and wisely, Heringer traces the story of the brothers and the Gloria neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro.
Interesting lot of books, thanks for posting.