15 New Books To Get Stuck Into This Month
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Gwen John: Art & Life In London & Paris by Alicia Foster
One of the most significant British artists of the 20th century, Gwen John made her life and work within the heady art worlds of London and Paris. This critical biography demolishes the myth of John as a recluse and puts her amid a cultural milieu that included James McNeill Whistler, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Maude Gonne. Art historian, curator and novelist Alicia Foster draws on previously unpublished archival sources to explore John's many relationships with artists and writers, including her affair with Auguste Rodin, passionate friendships with Jeanne Robert Foster and Vera Oumancoff, and correspondence with the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and her Slade compatriot and fellow painter Ursula Tyrwhitt. With over 120 illustrations, the book offers a lively and meticulously researched portrait of John as a vital and compelling figure in 20th-century art history.
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August Blue by Deborah Levy
August Blue is the new novel from the twice Booker-shortlisted author of Hot Milk and Swimming Home. At the height of her career, concert pianist Elsa M Anderson – former child prodigy, now in her 30s – walks off the stage in Vienna, mid-performance. Now, she is in Athens watching as another young woman, a stranger but uncannily familiar – almost her double – purchases a pair of mechanical dancing horses at a flea market. Elsa wants the horses too, but there are no more for sale. She drifts to the ferry port on the run from her talent and her history. So begins a journey across Europe, shadowed by the elusive woman who bought the dancing horses. A dazzling portrait of melancholy and metamorphosis, August Blue uncovers the ways in which we seek to lose an old story, find ourselves in others and create ourselves anew.
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Pineapple Street by Jenny Jackson
Pineapple Street in Brooklyn Heights is one of New York City's most desirable residences, and home to the glamorous and well-connected Stockton family. Darley, the eldest daughter, has never had to worry about money. She followed her heart, trading her job and her inheritance for motherhood – but ended up sacrificing more of herself than she ever intended. Sasha is marrying into the wealthy Stockton family, who are worlds apart from her own. She feels like the outsider, trying to navigate their impenetrable traditions and please her new mother-in-law – plus her hesitancy to sign a pre-nup has everyone questioning her true intentions. Georgiana, the youngest, is falling in love with someone she can't (and really shouldn't) have – and is forced to confront the kind of person she wants to be. Witty, escapist and full of heart, with a cast of loveable flawed characters, Pineapple Street is a beautifully observed novel about the complexities of family dynamics, while also asking the age-old question: can money buy you happiness?
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A Life of One's Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs
A few years into her marriage and feeling societal pressure to surrender to domesticity, Joanna Biggs found herself longing for a different kind of existence. Was this all there was? She divorced without knowing what would come next. Newly untethered, Joanna returned to the free-spirited writers of her youth and was soon reading in a fever, desperately searching for evidence of lives that looked more like her own, for the messiness and freedom, for a possible blueprint for intellectual fulfilment. In A Life of One's Own, Mary Wollstonecraft, George Eliot, Zora Neale Hurston, Virginia Woolf, Simone de Beauvoir, Sylvia Plath, Toni Morrison and Elena Ferrante are all taken down from their pedestals, their work and lives seen in a new light. Biggs wanted to learn more about the conditions these women needed to write their best work and how they addressed the questions she herself was struggling with: is domesticity a trap? Is life worth living if you have lost faith in the traditional goals of a woman? In exploring the things that gave their lives the most meaning, readers will find fuel for their own singular intellectual paths.
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Yellowface by RF Kuang
RF Kuang’s latest is a literary thriller that explores ambition, greed and white privilege. Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars. But Athena’s a literary darling and June Hayward is a nobody. Who wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks. When June witnesses Athena’s death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena’s just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese labourers during World War I. So what if June edits Athena’s novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? Doesn’t this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That’s what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree. But June can’t get away from Athena’s shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June’s (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
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The Three of Us by Agbaje Williams Ore
A nice house, carefree life, doting husband and best friend who never leaves your side. What more could you ask for? There's just one problem: your husband and best friend love you, but they hate each other. Set over a single day, husband, wife and best friend Temi toe the lines of compromise and betrayal. Told in three parts, three people's lives, and their visions of themselves and one another begin to slowly unravel, until a startling discovery throws everyone's integrity into question. Full of intrigue, wit and a healthy dose of wealth and snobbery, The Three of Us is part-suburban millennial comedy of manners and part-domestic noir that will leave you wondering: whose side are you on?
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The Guest by Emma Cline
Emma Cline is the Sunday Times and New York Times bestselling author of The Girls. Her newest novel is The Guest. Summer is coming to a close on Long Island and Alex is no longer welcome. One misstep at a dinner party and the older man she's been staying with dismisses her with a ride to the train station and a ticket back to the city. With few resources, but a gift for navigating the desires of others, Alex stays on the island. She drifts through the gated driveways and sun-blasted dunes of a rarefied world, trailing destruction in her wake. The Guest captures the heat and potential danger of a summer that could go either way for a young woman teetering on the edge.
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Service by Sarah Gilmartin
When Hannah learns that famed chef Daniel Costello is facing accusations of sexual assault, she's thrown back to the summer she spent waitressing at his high-end Dublin restaurant – the plush splendour of the dining rooms, the wild parties after service, the sizzling tension of the kitchens. But Hannah also remembers how the attention from Daniel soon morphed from kindness into something darker. Now, the restaurant is shuttered and Daniel is faced with the reality of a courtroom. His wife Julie is hiding from paparazzi lenses behind the bedroom curtains. Surrounded by the wreckage of the past, Daniel, Julie and Hannah are all forced to reconsider what happened at the restaurant. Their three different voices reveal a story of power and complicity, of the lies that we tell and the courage that it takes to face the truth.
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Big Swiss by Jen Beagin
This is a novel about a sex therapist’s transcriptionist who falls in love with a client while listening to her sessions. Greta liked knowing people’s secrets. Until she met Big Swiss. Big Swiss – that’s Greta’s nickname for her – is tall and from Switzerland. Greta can see her now: dressed head to toe in white, that adorable gap between her two front teeth, her penetrating blue eyes. Well, that’s how Greta imagines seeing her: they haven’t actually ever met in person. Nor has Greta ever been to Switzerland. Greta and Big Swiss are not in the same room or even the same building. Greta is miles away, sitting at a desk in her own house, wearing only headphones, fingerless gloves, a kimono, and legwarmers, transcribing this disembodied voice. What Greta doesn’t know is that she’s about to bump into Big Swiss in the local dog park. A new – and not entirely honest – relationship is going to be born – one that will transform both their lives.
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A House for Alice by Diana Evans
After 50 years in the wilderness of London, Alice wants to live out her days in the land of her birth. But her children are divided on whether she stays or goes. In the wake of their father's death, the imagined stability of the family begins to fray. Meanwhile, youngest daughter Melissa has never let go of a love she lost and Michael, in return, even within the sturdy walls of his marriage to Nicole, is haunted by the failed perfection of the past. As Alice's final decision draws closer, all that is hidden between Melissa and her sisters, Michael and Nicole, rises to the surface. Set against the shadows of a city and a country in turmoil, Diana Evans' ‘ordinary people’ confront fundamental questions. How should we raise our children? How to do right by our parents? And how, in the midst of everything, can we satisfy ourselves?
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Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
Elodie is the baker's wife. A plain, unremarkable woman, ignored by her husband and underestimated by her neighbours, she burns with the secret desire to be extraordinary. One day a charismatic new couple appear in town – the ambassador and his sharp-toothed wife, Violet – and Elodie quickly falls under their spell. All summer she stalks them through the streets: inviting herself into their home, eavesdropping on their coded conversations, longing to be part of their world. Meanwhile, beneath the tranquil surface of daily life, strange things are happening. Six horses are found dead in a field, laid out neatly on the ground like an offering. Widows see their lost husbands walking up the moonlit river, coming back to claim them. A teenage boy throws himself into the bonfire at the midsummer feast. A dark intoxication is spreading through the town and, when Elodie finally understands her role in it, it will be too late to stop.
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The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
This is the second novel by Naoise Dolan, author of Exciting Times. Luke and Celine are set to marry in a year’s time. The best man, Archie, is meant to want to move up the corporate ladder and on from his love for Luke; yet he stands where he is, admiring the view. The bridesmaid, Phoebe, Celine’s sister, has no long-term aspirations beyond smoking her millionth cigarette and getting to the bottom of Luke’s frequent unexplained disappearances. Then there’s the guest, Vivian, who methodically observes her friends like ants but with the benefit of some emotional distance. As the wedding approaches and these five lives intersect, each character will find themselves looking for a path to their happily ever after – but does it lie at the end of an aisle?
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Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy
In her first novel for over a decade, Claire Kilroy takes readers deep into the early days of motherhood. Exploring the clash of fierce love for a new life with a seismic change in identity, she vividly realises the raw, tumultuous emotions of a new mother, as her marriage strains and she struggles with questions of love, autonomy and creativity. As she smiles at her baby, Sailor, while mentally composing her own suicide note, an old friend makes a welcome return – but can he really offer a lifeline to the woman she used to be?
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Small Worlds by Caleb Azumah Nelson
This is an expansive novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from Caleb Azumah Nelson, the bestselling, award-winning author of Open Water. Set over the course of three summers in Stephen's life, from London to Ghana and back again, Small Worlds is an exhilarating and expansive story about the worlds we build for ourselves. The one thing that can solve Stephen's problems is dancing. Dancing at church, with his parents and brother; dancing with his friends, somewhere in a basement with the drums about to drop; dancing with his band, making music which speaks not just to the hardships of their lives, but the joys too; dancing alone, at home, to his father's records, uncovering parts of a man he has never truly known. Stephen has only ever known himself in song. But what becomes of him when the music fades, when his father begins to speak of shame and sacrifice, when his home is no longer his own? How will he find space for himself: a place where he can feel beautiful, a place he might feel free?
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Mrs Porter Calling by AJ Pearce
London, April 1943. Emmy Lake is an agony aunt at Woman's Friend magazine, doing all she can to help readers as they face the challenges of wartime life. With her column thriving and a team of women behind her, Emmy finally feels she’s on the up. But when the glamourous new owner arrives, everything changes. Charming her way around editor Guy Collins, Emmy quickly realises the Honourable Mrs Cressida Porter plans to destroy everything readers love about the magazine. With her best friends by her side, Emmy must work out how she can bring everyone together and save Woman's Friend before it's too late.
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