A brilliant, towering, puzzle-box novel about perfect summers and forbidden knowledge, somewhere in the mad interstice of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and A.S. Byatt’s Possession. Summer, 1993, and university student Alex Lane finds himself at the end of the summer term, broke and without plans. When offered the chance to join students – including beautiful, mercurial Ella – clearing out Solace House, a Victorian residence left by reclusive hoarder Edwin Flayne, he accepts. Initially the house seems ordinary, if slightly mad. But sorting through junk, they discover Flayne’s journals detailing his obsession with his missing mother, his discovery of strange place Bewise, and his belief in another parallel realm, with coded instructions for reaching it. One of the students becomes increasingly obsessed with the house’s secrets and gaining forbidden knowledge – assuming they’re willing to sacrifice everything and everyone.

A group of astronauts fight to return to their loved ones when their journey goes off-course in this mind-bending sci-fi thriller from the creator of the hit Netflix series Manifest and the bestselling author of The Warehouse. Ryan Crane wasn’t looking for trouble—just a cup of coffee. But when he spots a gunman emerging from an unmarked van, he leaps into action and unknowingly saves John Ward, a billionaire with presidential aspirations, from an assassination attempt. As thanks for Ryan’s quick thinking, Ward rewards him with the chance of a lifetime: to join a group of lucky civilians accompanying three professional astronauts on the first manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. A devoted family man, Ryan is reluctant to leave on this two-year expedition, but with the encouragement of his loving wife—and an exorbitant paycheck guaranteeing lifetime care for their disabled son—he crews up. Little could Ryan know that this mystifying journey would forever change his life and the lives of his crewmates. Just when their space adventure seemingly ends, it shockingly begins.

A group of astronauts fight to return to their loved ones when their journey goes off-course in this mind-bending sci-fi thriller from the creator of the hit Netflix series Manifest and the bestselling author of The Warehouse. Ryan Crane wasn’t looking for trouble—just a cup of coffee. But when he spots a gunman emerging from an unmarked van, he leaps into action and unknowingly saves John Ward, a billionaire with presidential aspirations, from an assassination attempt. As thanks for Ryan’s quick thinking, Ward rewards him with the chance of a lifetime: to join a group of lucky civilians accompanying three professional astronauts on the first manned mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. A devoted family man, Ryan is reluctant to leave on this two-year expedition, but with the encouragement of his loving wife—and an exorbitant paycheck guaranteeing lifetime care for their disabled son—he crews up. Little could Ryan know that this mystifying journey would forever change his life and the lives of his crewmates. Just when their space adventure seemingly ends, it shockingly begins.

Discover a world of enchanted contracts, faerie intrigue and French toast, in this delightful debut packed full of wit, charm, adventure and heart, with a dash of magical bureaucracy and a sprinkling of romance. When Poppy Hill was a child, she was stolen from her family's Montana homestead and taken 'Otherside' to the land of the fae, where she spent more than a century as a cook in the Wild King's castle. Now back in the human world, she works for a company that brokers faerie bargains, checking for loopholes in their contracts. But when a bargain that Poppy is negotiating goes disastrously wrong, she must return to the world she grew up in to try to rectify her mistake, facing danger, intrigue and a pesky ex-boyfriend along the way.

From the Giller-shortlisted author of Glorious Frazzled Beings comes a beguiling debut novel humming with sensuality, intelligence, and a tinge of the absurd.After years of shouldering the childcare and housework, trying to keep her creative life and career alive, and managing her husband’s existential anxieties, the once whimsical Sarah is too burned out to dream. Most days, all she can muster is an imaginary version of her husband Trevor, one who actually listens to her, an almost-IRL replica of the husband in the picture-perfect image of their family she crafts online. Meanwhile, Trevor is caught in a downward spiral of his own. Strangled by his fear of artistic mediocrity and mounting sexual frustration, he fantasizes about the early college days when their romance was still athrill with seductive possibility.When both Sarah and Trevor secretly stumble on an auteur porn film based on the ancient Greek myth of Ariadne and Dionysus, they are immediately sucked into a dizzying maze of obsession, betrayal, and duplicate selves echoing backwards in time. With the arrival of a brilliant, alluring new student in Trevor’s university class, the line between fantasy and reality is increasingly blurred, threatening to collapse the walls of their mythology forever.With startling psychological insight, a sly sense of humour, and all the peculiar twists of a fairytale, Variations on a Dream is a fearless exploration of the lengths we will go to save what we believe to be a dream come true.

Crackling with intelligence and wit, a critical memoir about how nihilism might just get you through. ‘Here is how I I read Nietzsche. I read Nietzsche in bed, with a chest cold. I highlight things in green and draw exclamation marks in the margins. I text friends. You wouldn’t expect I could be having so much fun reading Nietzsche, I tell them. They are worried about their children, about lockdown, about money, about their marriages. I am reading Nietzsche, I repeat. I text them quotes from Nietzsche. They do not reply.’ Gemma Parker’s parents were impulsively itinerant, and her literary heroes were utterly committed to following their muse, dashing into foreign lands and up mountainsides. To write properly about nihilism, she herself surely needs to go to Paris! But she’s stuck – by a job, by children, then by Covid.  Nietzsche says that to be worth anything at all, art – and life – needs to break all rules and work itself out from scratch. As Parker reads the great philosopher’s work more deeply – and that of other celebrated nihilists Camus and Beckett – she gradually discovers a way of being free, even at home.  Both witty and wise, funny and profound, The Mother Is Restless opens up fresh ways of thinking about life, for fans of Rachel Cusk, Maggie Nelson and Olivia Laing.

Juliana Leite makes her English-language debut with a novel about one woman’s past and all of our futures Ever since the unnamed threat took over, 100-year-old Natalia has been stuck inside her Rio de Janeiro apartment, alone. Well, not entirely alone—her loved ones may be gone but they never really left her, plus she’s pretty sure there’s a spy watching her every move through the window. As she waits for the daily call from her daughter who lives halfway across the world, the old woman revisits scenes from her life. There’s her husband Vicente, who obsessively erased maps of Brazil; her best friend Sarah, the cookie seller; Jorge, who gave tarot readings for both humans and birds; and the comrades who joined her in resisting Brazil’s dictatorship, at least until they were forced into hiding. Exemplary Humans is an ambitious novel about the quirks of memory and the delights and horror of aging. “Masterful, crystalline prose… Leite’s novel is one to read and reread and grow old with.” —Bruna Dantas Lobato, author of Blue Light Hours “Juliana Leite writes about death and old age with the exuberance of a child who’s new to life.”—José Eduardo Agualusa, author of The Living and the Rest “Between the intimate and the social, full of the vastness of everyday life. As delicate as it is poignant, as poetic as it’s concrete, Exemplary Humans is a rare literary feat.”—Stênio Gardel, author of The Words That Remain

Eine wilde, wütende, witzige und spielerische Geschichte, die Fragen nach Identität, Zugehörigkeit, sexuellem Begehren und patriarchalischer ... auf den Punkt bringt. »Es tut mir leid, deine Mutter wurde getötet.« Mit diesen Worten beginnt Filas Reise von der Schweiz nach Italien. Von dem Land, in dem sie aufgewachsen ist, in das Land, das ihre Großmutter als junge Frau verlassen hat und in das ihre Mutter verschwunden ist. Fila zeichnet die Geschichte dieser beiden Frauen nach, zusammen mit ihren Erinnerungen und ihren Begegnungen auf dem feministischen Widerstandskämpferinnen, faschistischen Deserteuren und dem Geist einer jungen Bäuerin mit durchschnittener Kehle. Der Roadtrip auf den Spuren ihrer geheimnisvollen Mutter führt sie zum mutmaßlichen Mörder - und mitten ins Herz des faschistischen Zirkels, der das Land kontrolliert.  Favorita erzählt eine wilde, wütende, spielerische Geschichte, die Fragen nach Identität, Zugehörigkeit, sexuellem Begehren und patriarchalischer Gewalt gegen Mensch und Umwelt auf den Punkt bringt. Eine Lektüre, bei der man den Atem anhält und sich fragt, was zur Hölle man da gerade liest - ein Roman, der einen nicht mehr loslässt und noch lange nachwirkt.  

The iconic New Yorker and Vittles food writer asks: Why do we eat the way we eat now?Being into food - following and making it, queuing for it and discussing it - is no longer a subculture. It's become mass culture.The food landscape is more expansive and dizzying by the day. Recipes, once passed from hand to hand, now flood newspaper supplements and social media. Our tastes are engineered in food factories, hacked by supermarkets and influenced by Instagram reels.Ruby Tandoh's startlingly original analysis traces this extraordinary transformation over the past seventy-five years, making sense of this electrifying new era by examining the social, economic, and technological forces shaping the foods we hunger for today.Exploring the evolution of the cookbook and light-speed growth of bubble tea, the advent of TikTok critics and absurdities of the perfect dinner party, Tandoh's laser-sharp investigation leaves her questioning: how much are our tastes, in fact, our own?Discover All Consuming Bubble Tea | Critics | Recipes | Martha Stewart | Mob | Fast food | Hype queues | Nara Smith | Tiktok | Viennetta | Weekend supplements | Wife Guys | Cookbooks | Lobster | Influencers | Wellness elixirs | Entertaining | Keith Lee | Wimpy with Ruby Tandoh this autumn.