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: Dusk by Robbie Arnott (out now)
Heather: Gliff by Ali Smith (out now)
Joanna:We Solve Murders by Richard Osman (out now)
Kasey: Dusk by Robbie Arnott (out now)
Molly: Grace & Marigold by Mira Robertson (out now)
Nadia: The Empusium by Olga Tokarczuk (out now)
Rose: Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner (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
& MORE BOOKS WE LOVE
Greta & Valdin by Rebecca K Reilly
Vladivostok Circus by Elisa Shua Dusapin
We All Lived in Bondi Then by Georgia Blain
Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez
So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan
Roman Stories by Jhumpa Lahiri
Question 7 by Richard Flanagan
Take What You Need by Idra Novey
Ordinary Gods and Monsters by Chris Womersley
The Wren, The Wren by Anne Enright
I’d Rather Not by Robert Skinner
Natural Beauty by Ling Ling Huang
Crook Manifesto by Colson Whitehead
Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy
Kick the Latch by Kathryn Scanlan
The Librarianist by Patrick deWitt
Heart of the Grass Tree by Molly Murn
Honeybees & Distant Thunder by Riku Onda
Thirst for Salt by Madelaine Lucas
I’d Rather Not by Robert Skinner
In Ascension by Martin MacInnes
Between You and Me by Joanna Horton
Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry
A Sunday in Ville d’Avray by Dominique Barbéris
Salt and Skin by Eliza Henry-Jones
Shrines of Gaiety by Kate Atkinson
Liberation Day by George Saunders
When I Sing Mountains Dance by Irene Solá
Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here by Heather Rose
This Devastating Fever by Sophie Cunningham
Scattered All Over the Earth by Yoko Tawada
All That's Left Unsaid by Tracey Lien
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Isaac and the Egg by Bobby Palmer
Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan
Here Goes Nothing by Steve Toltz
Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
Meshi by Katherine Tamiko Arguile
Cold Enough For Snow by Jessica Au
Chai Time at the Cinnamon Gardens by Shankari Chandran
Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson
White on White by Aysegul Savas
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
When Things are Alive They Hum by Hannah Bent
The Sentence by Louise Erdrich
Harlem Shuffle by Colson Whitehead
The Girls I’ve Been by Tess Sharpe
Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro
One Hundred Days by Alice Pung
The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen by Krissy Kneen
A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing by Jessie Tu
No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr.
One Day I’ll Remember This by Helen Garner
The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
Room for a Stranger by Melanie Cheng
The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone by Felicity McLean
Exploded View by Carrie Tiffany
The History of Bees by Maja Lunde
First Love by Gwendoline Riley
Boy Swallows Universe by Trent Dalton
Museum of Modern Love by Heather Rose
When the Night Comes by Favel Parrett
Anything is Possible by Elizabeth Strout
Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
Nevermoor: The Trials of Morrigan Crow by Jessica Townsend