Michael Joseph

I do love Jamie Oliver and I love his new book not just because its all in one pan (yay) but also because he wrote such a sweet dedication it to his number One, Jools, his lovely and no doubt long-suffering wife!

You may know that over the course of his 20-year career he has sold over 46 million books worldwide,  and has reached an estimated 67 million TV viewers across 182 territories; but what you may not have heard is his ambitious goal to halve the level of UK childhood obesity by 2030, and improve everyone’s health and happiness through food.  I like the chap!

One is all about quick and easy meals, using eight ingredients or less, cooked using just one pot, pan or tray and requiring minimal prep and washing up.  It’s a no-brainer!

With a twinkle in my eye, I want to position this book as one that is absolutely dedicated to the art of minimal washing up – you cook each recipe in just one pan or tray. Cooking is many thanks to many people and the most wonderful pursuit, but when it comes down to everyday pressures it seems that, time and time again, convenience rules.  So, One is my homage to making your life simpler and more convenient when it comes to getting good food on the table. – Jamie Oliver

Please watch Jamie telling you about the book himself.

Jacana

This is such a powerful little book.  Its only 124 pages but it packs such a punch.  It’s also unlike anything else you’ve read.  It’s a fable about the Ebola epidemic, written in the style of African oral traditions, in which everyone has a voice from the most senior government minister to the lowly bat; the hard-working medical staff to the grandmother who adopts an orphan; the student turned gravedigger to the grieving lover.  And it’s all beautifully and lyrically overseen by the wise old Baobab tree who mourns the state of the earth while providing hope for the future. Part fable, part documentary, part environmental contemplation, part dialogue, part social commentary, part medical observation, part reflection on humanity’s place in the world, In the Company of Men is a book about the strength and the fragility of life but most of all, it’s about the courage of ordinary people  It’s heartbreaking and challenging and utterly extraordinary.

Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction 2022

This novel, elegiac and sorrowful, is also an affirmation of the cycle of life and nature’s important place in it. – Maaza Mangiste, author of The Shadow King

an all-too-resonant parable for our time. – Harper’s Bazaar

Resonant, unflinching…As personal and humane as it is biblically grand…a timely testament to the destructive powers of pandemics. – Publishers Weekly

[A] powerful, poetic ode to life in a country of ancient customs, ravaged by death…A magnificent and essential text. – Le Figaro Madame

Borough Press

A book about handbags – whats not to love?!  So, if you know your Birkin from your Selleria, if Louis-Vuitton and Prada excite you, this book’s for you!

Ava Wong is a strait-laced, hard-working, rule-abiding Chinese American lawyer with a successful surgeon as a husband, a young son, and a beautiful home – she’s done everything right, she’s built the perfect life. But beneath this façade, Ava’s world is crumbling…

Winnie Fang is Ava’s enigmatic college roommate from Mainland China, who abruptly dropped out of both college and Ava’s life under highly mysterious circumstances. Now, twenty years later, the shy, awkward girl Ava once knew has been replaced with a confident woman of the world, dripping in luxury goods, including a coveted Birkin in classic orange. The secret to her success? Winnie has developed an ingenious counterfeit scheme that involves importing near-exact replicas of luxury handbags and now she needs someone with a U.S. passport to help manage her business – someone who’d never be suspected of wrongdoing, someone like Ava…

Swift, surprising, and sharply comic, Counterfeit is a stylish and feminist caper with a strong point of view and an axe to grind. Peering behind the curtain of the upscale designer storefronts and the Chinese factories where luxury goods are produced, Kirstin Chen interrogates the myth of the model minority through two unforgettable women determined to demand more from life.

A con artist story, a pop-feminist caper, a fashionable romp . . . Counterfeit is an entertaining, luxurious read—but beneath its glitz and flash, it is also a shrewd deconstruction of the American dream and the myth of the model minority. . . . Chen is up to something innovative and subversive here. – The New York Times

A startling, gleeful look at the American Dream and what counts as real in a world obsessed with image – The Washington Post

If you appreciate a good caper, you’ll want to pick up Kirstin Chen’s novel about two Asian American women who turn a counterfeit handbag scheme into a big business. The book is written as a confession, which helps readers get to know protagonists Ava and Winnie, and how their lives detoured toward crime. Counterfeit is fast-paced and fun, with smart commentary on the cultural differences between Asia and America. – Time magazine, Best Books of Summer 2022

Propulsive and captivating . . . A provocative story of fashion, friendship, and fakes (in more ways than one), with characters that both subvert and capitalize on the model-minority myth. No surprise that the sly feminist caper was the subject of a fierce eight-way bidding war for TV rights. – Vogue, The Best Books of 2022

Harvill Secker

Looking for something gentle and charming and warm with some unexpected twists?   Small Miracles is the book for you!

Times are tough for the order of the Sisters of Saint Philomena which is down to its three last nuns. The place that Sisters Margaret, Bridget and Cecilia call home is in dire need of repairs and, with no savings and no new recruits, they are facing the prospect of having to sell up and leave behind the friends and neighbours in the parish community that they love.

That is, until ninety-year-old Cecilia takes a lottery ticket and a series of small miracles begins to unfold…

Such a dear book about ordinary people, doing the best they can and how important belonging to a community is to the human condition.

The perfect feel-good read for fans of AJ Pearce, Rachel Joyce, Katie Fforde and Joanna Cannon, as well as Sister Act and The Vicar of Dibley

Hutchinson Heinemann

Did you grow up watching Wimbledon in the 80’s?  You will LOVE this book!  It’s like a step back in time.  All the great names come rushing back – McEnroe, Bjorg, Graaf, Navratilova – and Carrie Soto (who I must tell you feels so real you want to Google her just in case!)

The year is 1994 and Carrie is 37 years old.  She retired 6 years ago as the TOP player in the world, having shattered all the records and won all the Slams. She’s sitting in the stands of the US Open with her father – who used to be her coach – when a young British player threatens her record and in an instant Carrie decides to come out of retirement for one last year to reclaim it!

Such a fab read for tennis lovers.  All the background info – the tournaments, the players, the locker room, the media, the fans, the pressure, the emotion – and so much more.  Sexism and racism in sport, public persona vs private insecurities, the toll that high-level sport takes… it’s an ace of a read!

Carrie Soto . . . is like other sports novels in which underdogs punch, volley, bat and birdie their way to victory or additional defeat, but it goes beyond this to explore sexism and racism in the tennis world in the 1990s. . . . This novel will grab you. You’ll tear through blow-by-blow descriptions of championship matches on some of the most famous tennis courts in the world. . . – The Washington Post

Reid writes about the game with suspense, transforming a tennis match into a page-turner even for readers who don’t care about sports. . . . A compulsively readable look at female ambition. – Kirkus Reviews

Come for the King Richard–level attention to the art of the game; stay for the more personal soap operas unfolding off the court, and the final score. – Entertainment Weekly

seriously inspiring – Cosmopolitan

The books in Reid’s famous women quartet stand alone. . . . But each of the books centers a vibrant protagonist managing the tensions between her glamorous life in the public eye and the pressures she feels in private . . . with Reid meticulously collecting minute yet meaningful details to help build immersive worlds – TIME

faber & faber

This book absolutely stole my heart!  Three generations of women living under one roof:  9-year old Swiv, her very pregnant Mum and her feisty Grandma Elvira.

Swiv has been expelled from school and Grandma is taking care of her while her preoccupied and exhausted Mum is at work but this is problematic on two fronts – the education Grandma offers is definitely not on any school curriculum and Grandma’s health is failing so the roles are very often, poignantly, switched.

Quirky Grandma Elvira is the star of the show. Despite the horrors that life has thrown at her, she manages to wring the joy out of every situation, making friends wherever she goes and surprising everyone with her eccentricities and crazy antics.  Fight Night is told mostly from Swiv’s perspective. There’s a very real sense of a race against time – the imminent arrival of Swiv’s baby sibling plus the battle to keep Grandma alive – as these three charming characters face life’s greatest challenges together.  I loved it!

Watch my review on instagram here

I doubt I’ll read a better novel – Big Issue

Go Grandma Elvira! – Margaret Atwood

Wickedly funny and fearlessly honest – The New Yorker

A love letter to our brave and brilliant matriarchs- Glamour

As compelling and hilarious and indecently sad as life can be – Financial Times