A sort-of princess, who is not quite a nun, builds a dog from bones to save her sister from an evil prince, because yes, this is simply the way things are done around here. Picking up a delightful cast on route—an acerbic necromancer, a demon chicken, a bumbling fairy godmother Read more…
In 1830’s plague-ridden Canton, a peasant boy with a mysterious ‘gift’, is whisked away from certain death. His saviour and patron, an imperious Oxford lecturer, brings him to England and oversees the boy’s induction into the mysterious art of silverwork. The boy, now a young man named Robin Swift, is Read more…
An intimate work of feminist realism that doesn’t pull its punches. Told in the form of letters from its middle-aged, female narrator, M, it considers the terrible savagery of the human ego, and the atrocities it commits against itself and those it is closest to. Why do we live so Read more…
Strap in for an epic journey, following a female aviator (inspired by Amelia Earheart) who disappears while attempting to become the first person to fly a circle around the Earth, intersecting both poles. The novel soars through a landscape rich with complex characters and intimate perspectives on historical events, spanning Read more…
A strange, quiet book, where the speculative elements are painted so lightly, you won’t realise you’re reading sci fi until you’ve been sucked into a story about love, family and community in a forgotten West Country village. Jem runs a small rural Inn, serving brew to a smattering of locals Read more…
This debut novel, originally self-published via a kickstarter campaign, has since become a critically acclaimed series, totalling four novels and a short story. Unusual in its tone and pacing, the story follows the multi-species crew of The Wayfarer, a tunnelling ship, contracted to build wormholes in space. Books in this Read more…
A young, peasant girl, starving to death in small village, is confronted with the stark ignominy of her fate: She is nothing and she will die nothing. The girl refuses. In a devastating act of will, she pitches herself into a new destiny, one that will upturn the boundaries of Read more…
There have been many pandemic books written since COVID, and this is one of them. Drawing on the themes of terror, political incompetence and social collapse, End of Men does something a little different with this device, using it to poke around in some ’what-ifs’ of current gender politics. The Read more…
If you haven’t read, A Memory Called Empire, I strongly suggest you put it at the top of your reading list and line A Desolation Called Peace up next. An ambassador from a small mining station is trying to avoid becoming political lunchmeat, when her handler—and one-time lover—from the heart Read more…
It’s halloween, and watching from an upper window, Jen sees her son kill a man. Her loving teenage boy barely looks at her, as tight-lipped and apparently indifferent, he is cuffed and taken away. At some point later that evening, shell-shocked and devastated, Jen falls asleep, and when she wakes, Read more…