Mary is struggling with her memory. She does not have too few recollections but too many, including some that are downright absurd. She has many memories of her childhood: going to parties and on school trips, walks with her father and family dinners. She remembers world events too: the falling of the Twin Towers and the Iraq War. But the most conc...

Two women meet in an unassuming coffee shop in Belfast; they seem an unlikely pair. Clara is young, inquisitive, optimistic for what the meeting holds. Christina is older, in her seventies, still glamorous, still quick. She is working on her fifth novel but no one yet knows of its existence. Clara is there to interview Christina, for her own book,...

LONGLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2026 Things are different since Tony Ward landed back in town. The West Dublin gangland has changed. His old mentor is dead, and his best pal Kenny Boyle is on the straight and narrow.After five years keeping quiet across the way, Tony is keen to reinstate himself, and when the opportunity arises to work side by side...

When the stones of her home begin to rattle and call out to her in the quiet of the night, Pauline Sinclair knows she will not live to see her 100th birthday. From educating herself through stolen books to becoming one of the most successful ganja farmers in the area and raising a family, Pauline has lived a life on her own terms in Mason Hall, a r...

Paris, 1777. The philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau receives a mysterious letter from a foreign visitor, Gavin Mulvany, asking whether the great man will take walks with him. Against his better judgement, Rousseau agrees. Might this stranger, who claims to be from the twenty-first century, be the true friend that Rousseau has been searching for his...

Discover the haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic tale of female friendship and intimacy set in a deserted world. Deep underground, 39 women are kept in isolation in a cage. Aboveground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus? Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time and o...

SHORTLISTED FOR THE WELLCOME BOOK PRIZELONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTIONA captivating story of botany, exploration and desire, by the multimillion copy bestselling author of Eat Pray LoveEverything about life intrigues Alma Whittaker. Her passion for botany leads her far from home, from London to Peru to Tahiti, in pursuit of tha...

In the days after her mother's death from breast cancer, Oksana, a young queer poet, decides to return her mother's ashes to their working-class hometown in Siberia. It is a journey home that will take her through the raw, almost dreamlike emotions of early grief through to an acceptance of the wound that death leaves behind. As she navigates the r...

South London, 1981: Daphne is the only Black girl in her class. All she wants is to keep her head down, preferably in a book. The easiest way to survive is to go unnoticed. Daphne's attempts at invisibility are upended when a boy named Connie Small arrives from Jamaica. Connie is the opposite of small in every way: lanky, outgoing, and unapologetic...

For weeks, she has been saying it will be their special day. One last, perfect day with her children before she returns to work after maternity leave. What's the worst that can happen? Unfolding across 24 hours, Natural Disaster is a novel about the absurd, frustrating, hilarious, precarious, bittersweet, sometimes astonishing challenge - literal,...

It is summer 1939 and the social event of the year is about to take place: Rose Birkett, a flighty beauty with a penchant for breaking engagements and hearts, is finally getting married, and the whole village - especially her parents - breathes a sigh of relief. By autumn, however, summer weddings seem a distant memory as war reaches Barsetshire. W...

Wildly inventive and magnificently surreal, The Smiths: A Novella recounts the impact of an unconventional pop group from Manchester on one man's life. Taking the form of a flâneuring journey through the landscape of memory, our anonymous protagonist is accompanied by the iconic French actress Carole Bouquet, who becomes his guide and interlo...

London, 1835. Nineteen-year-old Kate Hogarth falls in love with the young journalist Charles Dickens. In the early days, Charles is infatuated with his bride and Kate delights in her new life. But as he finds fame as a novelist and they rise through the ranks of Victorian society, Kate becomes increasingly aware of his frustration that real people...

Jack Middleton likes to imagine himself a country squire. At weekends he retires to Laverings Estate with his wife, Catherine. He may be pompous, and they may seem ill-matched, but the couple are devoted to each other. When Jack's widowed sister, Lilian, and her two stepchildren arrive to spend the summer in the neighbouring house, he dreads the in...

Craiglockhart War Hospital, Scotland, 1917, and army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers. Under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen, as well as mute Billy Prior, who is only able to communicate by means of pencil and paper. Rivers's job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet th...

Vi Liu's life is a mess. Having dropped out of college, she's stuck in a job she hates at a local hotel. Her ex-boyfriend has blocked her and she's lashing out at her family and co-workers. One night, drunk outside a drag club, she stumbles across a mysterious sentient blob. She takes it home, where she feeds it a diet of sugary cereal and reality...

Four of Thornton Wilder's most acclaimed works, adapted for BBC Radio - plus bonus material exploring his life and careerThornton Wilder is one of America's most important literary figures. He won the Pulitzer Prize three times - for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth - and is the only person to be...

The Elvis Oke of Chris Abani's novel is a child left to fend for himself in the urban jungle of Lagos, Nigeria. He has a talent for Elvis impersonations (hence the name) and wants to make it big so he can escape his violent and tumultuous life. In a place where angels fear to tread and only fools rush in, Elvis searches for redemption and a small p...

Available in audio for the first time is Aotearoa New Zealand's first Booker Prize-winning novel, The Bone People by Keri Hulme. With narration and original taonga puoro music by Ruby Solly, this powerful and mesmerising book tracks the complicated relationships between three outcasts: Kerewin, an artist estranged from her family and art; a mute bo...

'Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America . . . 'So speaks the mysterious stranger at a Lahore cafe as dusk settles. Invited to join him for tea, you learn his name and what led this speaker of immaculate English to seek you out. For he is more worldy than yo...

Brought to you by Penguin.**SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2025**A spellbinding story of two young people whose fates intersect and diverge across continents and years—an epic of love and family, India and America, tradition and modernity, by the Booker Prize-winning author of The Inheritance of LossWhen Sonia and Sunny first glimpse each o...