Unsere Heldin befindet sich im Jenseits. Sie lebt im Hotel der Untoten und hat einen Arm zu wenig, dafür aber eine Krähe zu viel. An ihren Namen kann sie sich nicht erinnern, ebenso wenig an ihre Kindheit – mochte sie Erdbeereis? Hatte sie einen grünen Spielzeuglaster? Seit der »großen Katastrophe« befindet sie sich im Reich der Namen- und Geschichtslosen, und doch zeigt sie keine Resignation. Im Gegenteil, denn eine kostbare Erinnerung ist ihr geblieben: Die Erinnerung an eine Person. Mit ihr. In den Dünen. Also macht sie sich mit Krähe und ohne Arm auf den Weg nach Westen, ans Meer, auf die Suche nach dem, was sie eigentlich ist. Und auf die Suche nach dem, was man früher wohl Liebe nannte. Es währt für immer und dann ist es vorbei ist ein hinreißend skurriler, witziger und ergreifender Streifzug durch eine Welt ohne Gewissheiten. Eine Welt, die der unseren gar nicht so unähnlich scheint und in der sich aber die Frage, was uns im Kern ausmacht, auf haarsträubend einleuchtende Weise beantworten lässt.

Hailsham seems like a pleasant English boarding school, far from the influences of the city. Its students are well tended and supported, trained in art and literature, and become just the sort of people the world wants them to be. But, curiously, they are taught nothing of the outside world and are allowed little contact with it. Within the grounds of Hailsham, Kathy grows from schoolgirl to young woman, but it’s only when she and her friends Ruth and Tommy leave the safe grounds of the school (as they always knew they would) that they realize the full truth of what Hailsham is. Never Let Me Go breaks through the boundaries of the literary novel. It is a gripping mystery, a beautiful love story, and also a scathing critique of human arrogance and a moral examination of how we treat the vulnerable and different in our society. In exploring the themes of memory and the impact of the past, Ishiguro takes on the idea of a possible future to create his most moving and powerful book to date.

A story of sisters separated by hundreds of years but bound together in more ways than they can imagine 2019: Lucy awakens in her ex-lover’s room in the middle of the night with her hands around his throat. Horrified, she flees to her sister’s house on the coast of New South Wales hoping Jess can help explain the vivid dreams that preceded the attack—but her sister is missing. As Lucy waits for her return, she starts to unearth strange rumours about Jess’s town—tales of numerous missing men, spread over decades. A baby abandoned in a sea-swept cave. Whispers of women’s voices on the waves. All the while, her dreams start to feel closer than ever. 1800: Mary and Eliza are torn from their loving home in Ireland and forced onto a convict ship heading for Australia. As the boat takes them farther and farther away from all they know, they begin to notice unexplainable changes in their bodies. A breathtaking tale of female resilience, The Sirens is an extraordinary novel that captures the sheer power of sisterhood and the indefinable magic of the sea.

A family on a remote island. A mysterious woman washed ashore. A rising storm on the horizon. Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers. But with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants, packing up the seeds before they are transported to safer ground. Despite the wild beauty of life here, isolation has taken its toll on the Salts. Raff, eighteen and suffering his first heartbreak, can only find relief at his punching bag; Fen, seventeen, has started spending her nights on the beach among the seals; nine-year-old Orly, obsessed with botany, fears the loss of his beloved natural world; and Dominic can’t stop turning back toward the past, and the loss that drove the family to Shearwater in the first place. Then, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman washes up on shore. As the Salts nurse the woman, Rowan, back to life, their suspicion gives way to affection, and they finally begin to feel like a family again. Rowan, long accustomed to protecting her heart, begins to fall for the Salts, too. But Rowan isn’t telling the whole truth about why she set out for Shearwater. And when she discovers the sabotaged radios and a freshly dug grave, she realizes Dominic is keeping his own dark secrets. As the storms on Shearwater gather force, the characters must decide if they can trust each other enough to protect the precious seeds in their care before it’s too late—and if they can finally put the tragedies of the past behind them to create something new, together.

A disarming novel that asks a simple question: Can gentle people change the world? In this charming and truly unique debut, popular Irish musician Ronan Hession tells the story of two single, thirty-something men who still live with their parents and who are…nice. They take care of their parents and play board games together. They like to read. They take satisfaction from their work. They are resolutely kind. And they realize that none of this is considered…normal. Leonard and Hungry Paul is the story of two friends struggling to protect their understanding of what’s meaningful in life. It is about the uncelebrated people of this world — the gentle, the meek, the humble. And as they struggle to persevere, the book asks a surprisingly enthralling question: Is it really them against the world, or are they on to something?

Unsere Heldin befindet sich im Jenseits. Sie lebt im Hotel der Untoten und hat einen Arm zu wenig, dafür aber eine Krähe zu viel. An ihren Namen kann sie sich nicht erinnern, ebenso wenig an ihre Kindheit – mochte sie Erdbeereis? Hatte sie einen grünen Spielzeuglaster? Seit der »großen Katastrophe« befindet sie sich im Reich der Namen- und Geschichtslosen, und doch zeigt sie keine Resignation. Im Gegenteil, denn eine kostbare Erinnerung ist ihr geblieben: Die Erinnerung an eine Person. Mit ihr. In den Dünen. Also macht sie sich mit Krähe und ohne Arm auf den Weg nach Westen, ans Meer, auf die Suche nach dem, was sie eigentlich ist. Und auf die Suche nach dem, was man früher wohl Liebe nannte. Es währt für immer und dann ist es vorbei ist ein hinreißend skurriler, witziger und ergreifender Streifzug durch eine Welt ohne Gewissheiten. Eine Welt, die der unseren gar nicht so unähnlich scheint und in der sich aber die Frage, was uns im Kern ausmacht, auf haarsträubend einleuchtende Weise beantworten lässt.

Piranesi’s house is no ordinary building: its rooms are infinite, its corridors endless, its walls are lined with thousands upon thousands of statues, each one different from all the others. Within the labyrinth of halls an ocean is imprisoned; waves thunder up staircases, rooms are flooded in an instant. But Piranesi is not afraid; he understands the tides as he understands the pattern of the labyrinth itself. He lives to explore the house. There is one other person in the house—a man called The Other, who visits Piranesi twice a week and asks for help with research into A Great and Secret Knowledge. But as Piranesi explores, evidence emerges of another person, and a terrible truth begins to unravel, revealing a world beyond the one Piranesi has always known.

The first anthology devoted to women’s friendship drawn from fiction, diaries, poetry, and letters. As Marilyn Robinson writes in her 1980 novel Housekeeping, “having a sister or friend is like sitting at night in a lighted house.” Bringing together work by more than 100 writers, the Book of Women’s Friendship explores the rich subject of friendship between women from every its particular intensity and miraculous ease, its tendency to wax and wane, its role not only as a comfort and a privilege, but as vital to our health. Editor Rachel Cooke excerpts novels, poems, diaries, letters, comics, and graphic novels about women’s friendship, placing work from a diverse array of artists in conversation across time and place. From Jane Austen to Edith Wharton and Virginia Woolf, from Dolly Alderton to Sarah Waters, and from Zadie Smith to Meg Wolitzer, The Book of Women’s Friendship celebrates and investigates friendship between women from first encounters to final goodbyes, from falling out to making up again.