Michael Joseph

Vintage Jamie, Together was born out of the need to get together again after the awful lockdowns and restrictions. Jamie is helping you spend less time in the kitchen and more time with your family and friends but still coming up with fabulous meals – think home-made garlic bread, chicken, bacon and sausage puff pie, tuna carpaccio and some divine, rather lethal, cocktails.  “Celebrate the power that food has to bring people together, remember the immense joy it can bring, and, more than anything, bank those memories with your loved ones.”  Need I say more?

This is the new bible for weekend cooking. There’s something for every occasion, with handy get-ahead tips so you don’t spend all evening in the kitchen ― Good Food

Easy, seasonal recipes. Featuring everything from delicious home-cooked curries, to simple meal prep, it makes for the perfect dinner-party bible. With 130 delicious recipes to delve into, you’ll be spoilt for choice. ― Sunday Express

Weidenfeld & Nicolson

Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s tragic death at the age of 55 left thousands of readers devestated that there wouldn’t be any more in the Cemetry of Forgotten books series which began with the Shadow of the Wind, but he did leave us a gift – before his death he wrote 11 short stories set in Barcelona.

The City of Mist introduces some new characters but to my great joy, it brings back some of the much loved favourites. It’s a bit of a tease as it leaves you dying for more but what a glorious parting gift from the master of the atmospheric!

The stories are mysterious, imbued with a sense of menace, and told with the warmth, wit, and humor of Zafón’s inimitable voice. A boy decides to become a writer when he discovers that his creative gifts capture the attentions of an aloof young beauty who has stolen his heart. A labyrinth maker flees Constantinople to a plague-ridden Barcelona, with plans for building a library impervious to the destruction of time. A strange gentleman tempts Cervantes to write a book like no other, each page of which could prolong the life of the woman he loves. And a brilliant Catalan architect named Antoni Gaudí reluctantly agrees to cross the ocean to New York, a voyage that will determine the fate of an unfinished masterpiece.

Imaginative and beguiling, these and other stories in The City of Mist summon up the mesmerizing magic of their brilliant creator and invite us to come dream along with him.

a posthumous parting gift from Ruiz Zafón to his millions of fans. The whole point of his oeuvre, so perfectly realised in his Cemetery of Forgotten Books series, is that he thickly layers gothic Barcelona detail on to tragic, romantic and mysterious narratives. – The Guardian

As well as allusions to the Forgotten Books novels themselves, there’s everywhere evidence of the storytelling skill and intoxicating tropes – Faustian pacts, fateful meetings, labyrinthine architecture and nested stories – that made Zafon such a phenomenon. – Daily Mail

The Dickens of Barcelona… A flamboyant farewell from a grand contemporary writer. –  Sydney Morning Herald

Ruiz Zafón’s visionary storytelling prowess is a genre unto itself.—USA Today

Picador

“There will be holes in the children’s education, a generation that’s forgotten or never learnt how to go to a party, people of all ages who won’t forget to be afraid to leave the house, to be afraid of other people, afraid to touch or dance or sing, to travel, to try on clothes – whisht, she thinks again, hush now. Walk.”

Sarah Moss writes so beautifully and so personally that you feel she may be reading your throughts. As in her previous novel, Summerwater, she examines the themes of isolation and claustrophobia – this time during the Covid pandemic – by unpacking the thoughts of a small community in the Peak District during the course of a single day.

At dusk on a November evening in 2020 a woman slips out of her garden gate and sneaks up the hill. Kate is in the middle of a two-week quarantine period, but she just can’t take it any more – the closeness of the air in her small house, the confinement. And anyway, the moor will be deserted at this time. Nobody need ever know.

But Kate’s neighbour Alice sees her leaving and Matt, Kate’s son, soon realizes she’s missing. And Kate, who planned only a quick solitary walk – a breath of open air – falls and badly injures herself. What began as a furtive walk has turned into a mountain rescue operation . .

Moss writes so compassionately about human frailty while her own work is as close to perfect as a novelist’s can be – The Times

The Fell may only run to 180 pages, but all of lockdown life is here, from everyday negotiations over simple things like offering someone a plate of biscuits, to major philosophical questions around rights and responsibilities. – The Scotsman

Harper Collins

I do love fiction based on true characters and this novel is a testament to the young American heiress, Mary Jane Gold, who in the early days of German occupation of France took unthinkable personal risks to smuggle artists and intellectuals out of war-torn Europe.

Wealthy, beautiful Nanee was living in Paris when German tanks rolled across the border and instead of taking the first transport back home to the United States she decided to join the resistance.  She moved to Marseille and became known as the Postmistress delivering information to those in hiding and using all of her charms and foreign allure to hide those hunted by the Nazis and deliver them to safety.

Photographer Edouard Moss escaped Germany with his young daughter only to be interned in a French labour camp. Could Nanée get them out of France to the safety of America?

There’s been a run of books with Paris in the title lately and my only real criticism is that this one wasn’t really set in Paris but nonetheless it’s an excellent WW11 read.  Its harrowing and page-turning with brave, warm characters filled with conviction and passion for art in all its forms and of course, there’s a wonderful romance…

Clayton’s book celebrates courageous acts, large and small, within the vast Resistance network from forgers, lookouts, drivers, mapmakers, innkeepers with secret rooms. And “The Postmistress of Paris” is an homage to the courage of creative acts, to the refuge of art and its reminder, or insistence, on our shared humanity. – The San Fransisco Chronicle

Fans of Kate Quinn and Kristin Hannah will want to dive right into The Postmistress of Paris. – BookPage

I loved The Postmistress of Paris, a novel of so many layers–a suspense story, a love story, and a story about the purpose of art.– Lisa Scottoline, New York Times bestselling author

Hodder & Stoughton

I confess I put off starting this book – did I really feel like reading about Covid for entertainment?  – but I should have known that Jodi Picoult would manage the topic cleverly and so unexpectedly.  She dealt with a side of Covid I hadn’t heard about based on research she conducted herself.  She took me to the glorious Galapagos Islands which have long been on my bucket list and she took my breath clean away with her FANTASTIC twist!

Diana O’Toole is one of those people who sets goals and makes things happen. She plans to be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art auction world. She’s an associate specialist at Sotheby’s now, but her boss has hinted at a promotion if she can close a deal with a high-profile client. She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend, Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose on their romantic getaway to the Galápagos.

But then Covid hits New York and on the eve of their departure, Finn breaks the news that his leave has been cancelled – all doctors have to report for duty to fight the virus.  He convinces her to go since it would be a shame for their non-refundable trip to go to waste. And so, reluctantly, she goes.  Almost immediately, Diana’s dream vacation goes awry. Her luggage is lost, the Wi-Fi is nearly nonexistent, and the hotel they’d booked is shut down due to the pandemic. In fact, the whole island is now under quarantine, and she is stranded until the borders reopen. Completely isolated, she must venture beyond her comfort zone to explore the wonders of paradise on her own.

In the Galápagos Islands, where Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was formed, Diana finds herself examining her relationships, her choices, and herself—and wondering if when she goes home, she too will have evolved into someone completely different…

A smart and emotional page-turner that makes space for individual life crises in the face of a global one. – Irish Times

If there’s anyone who can tackle the pandemic, it’s Jodi Picoult… With one humdinger of a plot twist, it’s another fantastic, clever read from Picoult.  – Women and Home

Harvill Secker

I love books set in the late 1700’s/ early 1800’s.  It was a time when absolutely anything was possible. Curses and superstitions were very real.  If you could discover a rhinoceros, surely a mermaid was feasible?  Pandora is set in that time.  Atmospheric, intriguing, mysterious and SO evocative… the sights and smells (euuuww the smells!)… Pandora will take you straight there…

Living in London in 1799 is hard.  Making a living in London is hard.  Being an orphaned young woman in the care of an unscrupulous uncle is hard but Dora Blake is determined to change the course of her life through her jewellery design.  When a mysterious Greek vase is delivered to what used to be her parents’ famed shop of antiquities, Dora is intrigued by her uncle’s suspicious behaviour and enlists the help of Edward Lawrence, a young antiquarian scholar. Edward sees the ancient vase as key to unlocking his academic future and admission to the illustrious Society of Antiquaries. Dora sees it as a chance to restore the shop to its former glory, and to escape her nefarious uncle.

But what Edward discovers about the vase has Dora questioning everything she has believed about her life, her family, and the world as she knows it.  Prepare to be gripped!! (And dont you love the cover?  Apparently its the same illustrator who did the cover for The Binding)

Not available on Kindle yet

Jacana

What a wonderful way to start the new year – a local debut novel written in a fresh voice by a young South African while she was working in China!

Christopher is many things.

It’s a book about a contemporary young graduate grappling with the complexities of living in this country.  Pregnant with twins, Vuyo is mourning the death of her Scottish-born husband and has come home to her family homestead in rural Eastern Cape.

It’s a book about the two generations of strong-willed January women who came before her as well as their partners and the lives they lived.

It’s a book filled with the evocative and distinctive landscapes of the Eastern Cape – the hills, the fields and the rivers as they flow into the sea.

It’s a book set over the course of one Easter weekend which like the patron saint, Christopher, follows its characters on their journeys of self-discovery and healing.

It’s a book about different cultures, different generations, different expectations and different dreams and about how understanding what went before, helps explain where we are now.

Mostly, it’s a book full of hope written with warmth and wit.  I thought it was a beautiful, insightful and moving book about growing up in this complicated land we call home.  Please read it.