Bloomsbury

Like so many of us, Johann Hari was finding that constantly switching from device to device and tab to tab was a diminishing and depressing way to live. He tried all sorts of self-help solutions–even abandoning his phone for three months–but nothing seemed to work. So Hari went on an epic journey across the world to interview the leading experts on human attention–and he discovered that everything we think we know about this crisis is wrong.

We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to exert enough willpower over our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit. Hari found that there are twelve deep causes of this crisis, from the decline of mind-wandering to rising pollution, all of which have robbed some of our attention. In Stolen Focus, he introduces readers to Silicon Valley dissidents who learned to hack human attention, and veterinarians who diagnose dogs with ADHD. He explores a favela in Rio de Janeiro where everyone lost their attention in a particularly surreal way, and an office in New Zealand that discovered a remarkable technique to restore workers’ productivity.

Crucially, Hari learned how we can reclaim our focus–as individuals, and as a society–if we are determined to fight for it. Stolen Focus will transform the debate about attention and finally show us how to get it back.

“The book the world needs in order to win the war on distraction.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again

“Read this book to save your mind.”—Susan Cain, author of Quiet

The point is, society has in the past changed itself for the better — equal rights for women is a good example — and, with regard to technology, it could do so again. But, as Hari demonstrates, it is only by solving the attention crisis in the first place that we can collectively shape a better society. Right now, we are too fractured, too frenzied, to understand what needs to be done. – Michele Magwood, Business Day

Head of Zeus

Two years together.
Twenty years apart.
One day to change their story.

2000. Benjamin’s world is turned upside down the night he meets Clara. Instinctively, he knows that they are meant for each other, but a devastating mistake on their last night at university will take their lives in very different directions.

20 years later, Clara has a high-profile job and a handsome husband. But despite the trappings of success, she isn’t happy, and she knows that a piece of her heart still belongs to Benjamin, the boy she fell in love with years earlier. The boy whose life she fears she ruined.

When a bombing is reported in the city where they first met, Clara is pulled back to a place she tries not to remember and the first love she could never forget. Searching for Benjamin, Clara is forced to confront the events that tore them apart. But is it too late to put right what went wrong?

Across the miles and spanning decades, Charlotte Rixon’s The One That Got Away is a sweeping, romantic story about growing up, growing apart, the people who first steal our hearts, and the surprising, winding roads that love can take us on.

A suspenseful, explosive story of intense first love gone wrong, and twenty years spent wondering “what if things had been different?”— Lovereading

faber & faber

Wild, wacky and completely off the wall… I’d love to know what you think of this book!

Greta lives with her friend Sabine in an ancient Dutch farmhouse in Hudson, New York. The house, built in 1737, is unrenovated, uninsulated, and full of bees. Greta spends her days transcribing therapy sessions for a sex coach who calls himself Om. She becomes infatuated with his newest client, a repressed married woman she affectionately refers to as Big Swiss, since she’s tall, stoic, and originally from Switzerland. Greta is fascinated by Big Swiss’s refreshing attitude toward trauma. They both have dark histories, but Big Swiss chooses to remain unattached to her suffering while Greta continues to be tortured by her past.  When they accidentally meet in real life, an explosive affair ensues.  Although Big Swiss is unaware of Greta’s true identity, Greta has never been more herself with anyone. Her attraction to Big Swiss overrides her guilt, and she’ll do anything to sustain the relationship…

Bold, outlandish, and filled with irresistible characters, Big Swiss is both a love story and also a deft examination of infidelity, mental health, sexual stereotypes, and more—from an amazingly talented, one-of-a-kind voice in contemporary fiction.

What begins as a jokey, almost cynical critique… veers for a while into thriller terrain, and winds up a kind of delayed coming-of-age story about a woman who has relied on her wits and her tragic upbringing to deflect real feeling. That Greta begins healing in a town full of alleged healers is part of the book’s irony — and its charm. – Washington Post

Wild…hilarious…so good. —Cosmopolitan

A laugh-out-loud bad romance for Gen Xers and an ode to misfits who just want to belong. —Oprah Daily *

Always interesting…too fun to stop. —Vanity Fair

A strange and seductive book that will stick with me. Big Swiss is a visceral and confronting reading experience that made me laugh and think too much (the right amount?) about sex and death and honesty, and why we’re all so bloody obsessed with trauma —Monica Heisey, author of Really Good, Actually

Hodder & Stoughton

Maame (ma-meh) has many meanings in Twi – used as a term of endearment, it means the woman, the responsible one, the mother, often before her time.  Madeline Wright used to love being called Maame, now she hates it.  ” It made me lonely and it made me sad. It made me responsible and guilty.  It made me someone, if given the choice, I wouldn’t want to be.”

It’s fair to say that Maddie’s life in London is far from rewarding. With a mother who spends most of her time in Ghana (yet still somehow manages to be overbearing), Maddie is the primary caretaker for her father, who suffers from advanced stage Parkinson’s. At work, her boss is a nightmare and Maddie is tired of always being the only Black person in every meeting.

When her mum returns from her latest trip to Ghana, Maddie leaps at the chance to get out of the family home and finally start living. A self-acknowledged late bloomer, she’s ready to experience some important “firsts”: She finds a flat share, says yes to after-work drinks, pushes for more recognition in her career, and throws herself into the bewildering world of internet dating. But it’s not long before tragedy strikes, forcing Maddie to face the true nature of her unconventional family, and the perils—and rewards—of putting her heart on the line.

Smart, funny, and deeply affecting, Jessica George’s Maame deals with the themes of our time with humour and poignancy: from familial duty and racism, to female pleasure, the complexity of love, and the life-saving power of friendship. Most important, it explores what it feels like to be torn between two homes and cultures―and it celebrates finally being able to find where you belong.

“George paints in bold, bright strokes [and] lets dark moments commingle with light ones…George shows the details and scope of life with such confidence and joie de vivre, it’s easy to forget she’s a first-time novelist. By the end of Maame, Maddie still has questions and she’s still curious, but she knows how to find what she needs in the real world. If that’s not a modern hero’s journey, I don’t know what is.” —The New York Times

“By turns tender and comic, this portrait of a young woman’s journey to self-understanding is triumphant.” —People

“Lively, funny, poignant . . . Prepare to fall in love with Maddie. I did!” —Bonnie Garmus, bestselling author of Lessons in Chemistry

4th Estate

New York is slipping from twenty-four year old Cleo’s grasp. Her student visa is running out and she doesn’t even have money for cigarettes. But then she meets Frank. Twenty years older, Frank’s life is full of all the success and excess that Cleo’s lacks. He offers her the chance to be happy, the freedom to paint, and the opportunity to apply for a green card. She offers him a life imbued with beauty and art―and, hopefully, a reason to cut back on his drinking.

As Cleo and Frank dive head-first into a romance that neither of them can quite keep up with, they learn the hard way how spontaneous decisions can shape our entire lives and how imperfect relationships can be born of unexpectedly perfect evenings.

Beautiful people, love, abandonment, parental neglect, addiction, New York City and one of life’s big questions: how is it that one person can bring out the best in you and another the absolute worst?

‘A character driven epic thoroughly engrossing and entirely magnificent. It is thrilling to read a book that articles with nuance and compassion the way gender impacts every part of our lives. Sometimes you can just tell that a debut novel has been percolating and perfecting inside an author’s mind until it is ready to leap into-and ultimately change-the world’ – The Queer Conscience

“Mellors’ remarkably assured and sensitive debut … strongly evoke[s] Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life… At its core, it’s a novel about how love and lovers are easily misinterpreted and how romantic troubles affect friends and family. A canny and engrossing rewiring of the big-city romance.”―Kirkus Reviews

‘Coco Mellors sprightly, sophisticated novel opens like a quirky indie film… a stellar debut – smart, shrewd and deliciously melancholy’  – Daily Express

‘A tender, devastating and funny exploration of love and friendship and the yearning for self-evisceration. Coco Mellors is an elegant and exciting new voice’ – Pandora Sykes

Century

Oh my word – here’s a page-turner if ever there was one!  I’ve never read Harlan Coben before but I will certainly not miss the next one!  With over 80 million books in print worldwide, Harlan Coben is a number 1 bestselling New York Times author of thirty four novels! His books are published in 45 languages around the globe and he’s produced loads of Netflix TV dramas like Stay Close and The Five.

David and Cheryl Burroughs are happily married – living in a beautiful house in the suburbs with a three year old son named Matthew – when tragedy strikes one night in the worst possible way.

David wakes up to find himself covered in blood, but not his own – his son’s. And while he knows he didn’t murder his son, the overwhelming evidence against him puts him behind bars indefinitely.  Five years into his imprisonment, Cheryl’s sister visits him in prison with a photograph that a friend took on holiday at an amusement park. The boy in the background of the photo looks familiar – and despite being five years older, David realises it is unmistakably Matthew, and he’s still alive…. He absolutely has to get out of prison to find his boy and to discover the real story of what happened that devastating night.

Compelling… A fantastically breakneck prison break/fugitive adventure story – Observer

An enthrallingly tense read from start to finish – Heat

I Will Find You bristles with the irresistible storytelling nous that is Coben’s purview – Financial Times

You’ll lock yourself away so you aren’t interrupted while reading! – Prima

Rightly admired for his plotting, Coben pulls off some trademark twists – Sunday Times