OUR PICKS

Here are our latest recommendations. This is where you can learn more about what we’re reading and loving and what you, our customers, are buying.

WHAT WE'RE READING

Gavin: Our Evenings by Alan Hollinghurst (out now)

Heather: A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enríquez (out now)

Joanna: We are the Stars by Gina Chick (out now)

Kasey: The Elements of Marie Curie by Dava Sobel (out now)

Molly: Intermezzo by Sally Rooney (out now)

Nadia: Some Strange Music Draws Me In by Griffin Hansbury (out now)

Rose: A Sunny Place for Shady People by Mariana Enriquez (out now)

OUR TOP 10 BESTSELLERS FOR OCTOBER

BOOKS WE LOVE

Antiquity by Hanna Johansson

Antiquity centres an unnamed narrator who becomes obsessed with an older artist. When she is invited to spend a summer with this artist and her teenage daughter, our narrator becomes envious of the attention the daughter receives from her mother. With a hazy and intoxicating prose, reminiscent of long, indefinable summer days, jealousy becomes obsession and desire. It is deeply unsettling and demonstrates the immoral and perverse lengths humans can go to to feel seen and loved. NADIA

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney

The death of their father, instead of bringing the two Koubek brothers together, seems to only make it harder for them to relate to each other. But they are each falling into unconventional relationships and in doing so begin to live more intensely in the world, exploring intimacy, desire and self-awareness. This is Rooney at her best, becoming more experimental with language but keeping her trademark intensity of focus on interpersonal relationships. Absolutely stellar. Rose

The Safekeep by Yael van der Wouden

This incendiary novel left me thunderstruck by the sheer heft and scope of the events the author is attempting to excavate within these pages. Set in post World War 2 Holland, Isabel’s tightly-wound existence in her family house is set aflame by the unexpected and unwanted arrival of her louche brother’s fiancé, the wild Eva. How these two seemingly irreconcilable women find a meeting place is both thrilling and confronting. I could not put this book down. Gavin

The Coast Road by Alan Murrin

In the 90s in Ireland there was no such thing as divorce. Colette Crowley dared to leave her husband and run off to Dublin with a married man. This story is about her return to her small hometown and her husband and children. Both heartbreaking and empathetic, Alan Murrin has beautifully conveyed the limitations put on women only a generation ago. Jo

Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner

Sadie Smith, a spy-for-hire, is undercover on an assignment at a radical farming collective in a remote corner of France. Seductive, manipulative, ruthless and oh so funny, it’s an utter delight to be on this trip with the morally ambiguous Smith. And whilst this book is marketed as an espionage thriller, it really doesn’t become that until late in the second half. At its core is the crisis of self that Smith finds herself in as she engages (through hacked emails of course) with the philosophies of one of the group’s leaders. This book has it all - a treatise on human history, the unmooring of our protagonist and an all-out action finale. Propulsive and satisfying. Heather

Dusk by Robbie Arnott

Once again, Arnott has written the Tasmanian wilderness onto the page in startling and mesmerising detail. A brother and sister, while joining the hunt for a puma haunting the highlands, find new ways to love each other, to understand the allure of the country, to reckon with what it means to be a newcomer or alien against ancient understanding and belonging. Beautiful prose. Deep excavations of colonialism handled lightly. MOLLY

Scaffolding by Lauren Elkin

Elkin is preoccupied with situation rather than storytelling in her debut novel, Scaffolding, with an immersive and compelling focus on the minutiae, on the repetitive and maddening sounds of the apartment, and on her protagonist’s inner contemplations. I was left reeling after closing the covers for the final time, wondering what I’d just read, but knowing that it was something special. Admittedly, I picked it up for the cover, but I stayed for the expressive and beautiful prose. This one’s for you if you’re a fan of Rachel Cusk, Sheila Heti or Ali Smith. Kasey