It’s the year 2044, and the real world has become an ugly place. We’re out of oil. We’ve wrecked the climate. Famine, poverty, and disease are widespread. Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes this depressing reality by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia where you can be anything…
Category: First Read
Dead End by Rachel Lynch BLOG TOUR
When the seventh Earl of Lowesdale is found hanging from the rafters at Wasdale Hall, everyone assumes the aging, hard-partying aristocrat had finally had enough of chasing the glory of his youth. But when the coroner finds signs of foul play, DI Kelly Porter is swept into a luxurious world where secrets and lies dominate. At the…
Lullaby by Leïla Slimani
When Myriam, a mother and brilliant French-Moroccan lawyer, decides to return to work, she and her husband are forced to look for a caretaker for their two young children. They are thrilled to find Louise: the perfect nanny right from the start. Louise sings to the children, cleans the family’s beautiful apartment in Paris’s upscale…
The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by @kierstenwhite
Elizabeth Lavenza hasn’t had a proper meal in weeks. Her thin arms are covered with bruises from her “caregiver,” and she is on the verge of being thrown into the streets . . . until she is brought to the home of Victor Frankenstein, an unsmiling, solitary boy who has everything–except a friend. Victor is…
The Pirate (Bloodlands Collection #1) by Harold Schechter
In 1860, a sloop drifted into New York Harbour. Not a soul on board—just blood from cabin to deck. Looted coins led to Bowery thug Albert Hicks, the axe slayer who turned his shipmates into chum. His crimes were absolutely fiendish. His execution was pure ballyhoo. It drew nearly ten thousand bloodthirsty sightseers to the…
Parliament of Rooks: Haunting Brontë Country by Karen Perkins
In 2017, life expectancy in the UK is 81. In 1848 Haworth, it was 22. Nine-year-old Harry Sutcliff hates working at Rooks Mill and is forever in trouble for running away to the wide empty spaces of the moors – empty but for the song of the skylark, the antics of the rabbits, and the…
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez
From the moment Melquiades the gipsy walks into the jungle settlement of Macondo nothing is ever the same again. An appealing serpent, he brings knowledge and the tools of discovery to this protected Eden. With them the patriarch, Jose Arcadio Buendia, painstakingly reinvents man’s seminal discoveries. The only time his wife, Ursula, loses patience with…
A Manual for Heartache by Cathy Rentzenbrink
The wise and inspiring new book from the bestselling author of The Last Act of Love. When Cathy Rentzenbrink was still a teenager, her happy family was torn apart by an unthinkable tragedy. In A Manual for Heartache she describes how she learnt to live with grief and loss and find joy in the world…
The Rule of One (The Rule of One #1) by Ashley & Leslie Saunders
In their world, telling the truth has become the most dangerous crime of all. In the near-future United States, a one-child policy is ruthlessly enforced. Everyone follows the Rule of One. But Ava Goodwin, daughter of the head of the Texas Family Planning Division, has a secret—one her mother died to keep and her father…
Smoothie by Claudine Toutoungi
Tender, exuberant and deliciously dark, Claudine Toutoungi’s debut collection evokes the surreal humour of Matthew Sweeney and the candour of Emily Berry, while remaining disarmingly fresh in its blend of desire and dislocation. Roaming from metropolis to sculpture park to remote coastal town, Smoothie charts the wayward wanderings of a compelling cast of misfits –…
