Ruth O`Loughlin, Publishing Manager
I’m recommending:
Childhood, Youth, Dependency: The Copenhagen Trilogy
Tove Ditlevsen
This is such an enjoyable read, I really don’t want it to end. A classic of auto-fiction and a really wonderful depiction of one woman’s life and her loves, desires, ambitions and struggles. A perfect companion to curl up with this autumn.
I’m looking forward to reading:
From Manchester with Love: The Life and Opinions of Tony Wilson
Paul Morley
It seems amazing that a book on Wilson hasn’t been published before, yet Paul Morley is really the only man to write the definitive story of this visionary and contradictory cultural hero. I can’t wait to become absorbed in this over the longer nights.
Libby Marshall, Assistant Editor
I’m recommending:
Childhood, Youth, Dependency: The Copenhagen Trilogy
Tove Ditlevsen
Funny and dark and absolutely riveting, this memoir reads almost like a Scandinavian Ferrante, charting Ditlevsen’s early life in twentieth-century Copenhagen. Completely unforgettable.
I’m looking forward to reading:
My Heart is a Chainsaw
Stephen Graham Jones
For my money, Jones is one of the greatest horror writers working today, and a new novel from him (especially at this time of year!) is cause for celebration.
Rachel Darling, Trade Marketing Coordinator
I’m recommending:
Tell Me I’m Worthless
Alison Rumfitt
I read this in proof and cannot recommend it highly enough – a debut novel that’s a risky and provocative (but also funny-as-hell) look at culture wars, transphobia and modern-day fascism filtered through the lens of a haunted house story, and the writing is just extraordinary.
I’m looking forward to reading:
Keeping the House
Tice Cin
I’ve seen a lot of buzz for Tice Cin’s Keeping the House as *the* best new London novel so that’s up next for me!
Stephen Page, Executive Chair
I’m recommending:
The Book of Form & Emptiness
Ruth Ozeki
Ozeki’s dazzlingly brilliant and humane new novel, her fourth, has at its heart a deep concern about our attraction to possessions and the damage that such addiction is inflicting on the planet. The plot revolves around a grieving mother who channels her sorrow into hoarding, her son who is drawn away from society, and a book that speaks to you, the reader. It’s original, sweeping and engrossing.
I’m looking forward to reading:
Burntcoat
Sarah Hall
Each of Sarah Hall’s novels and story collections is searingly vivid and affecting, driven by beautiful prose, original characters, and complex themes powerfully rendered. She is one of our best novelists, and I cannot wait to be drawn into her world again, this time set in a pandemic where a celebrated sculptor is making her final preparations in her bedroom, which sits aloft her studio where memories and desires abound.
Angus Cargill, Publishing Director
I’m recommending:
Winter Counts
David Heska Wanbli Weiden
This debut, a prize-winner in the US last year and just out in the UK, is as good a crime series opener as I’ve read for years, focused around the fascinating Virgil Wounded Horse, a reluctant enforcer on the Rosebud Reservation in contemporary South Dakota.
I’m looking forward to reading:
Mexican Gothic
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
And after a couple of excellent dark puzzle-reads recently – Piranesi and The Last House on Needless Street – I’m looking forward to Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, which I’ve just got a copy of.
Emmie Francis, Commissioning Editor
I’m recommending:
Small Things Like These
Claire Keegan
From the ‘yellow trees’ in October to the ‘long November winds’ and the ‘December of crows’, this is a tale that traverses through the bitterness that can be found at the end of any year. It’s brutally plain and pointillist at the same time. And yet it’s almost unbearably poignant and special. The heights and lows that Keegan takes us to – all in the space of 116 pages – are nothing short of life-altering.
I’m looking forward to reading:
When We Cease to Understand the World
Benjamín Labatut
Barack Obama couldn’t be wrong in putting the International Man Booker Prize-shortlisted title on his TBR pile. I’m interested in the messiness between fiction and fact (what Geoff Dyer has noted in this book as ‘imaginative extrapolations’), and I’ve long admired the translation work of Adrian Nathan West, so this ought to satisfy – I’ll hop on the ex-POTUS’s bandwagon.
Sophie Clarke, Executive Assistant
I’m recommending:
The Life of the Mind
Christine Smallwood
Published by Europa this October, this campus novel is interested in the ‘end times’ we may/may not live in. It’s dark, funny and startlingly precise. One for Ottessa Moshfegh fans.
I’m looking forward to reading:
Being You
Anil Seth
An exploration of consciousness and what it means to be a ‘self’. We take so much of our experience of reality for granted and I’m intrigued to learn more about what is actually going on . . . Being You sounds like a book that makes you see everything in a new light.
John Grindrod, Senior Consumer Marketing Manager
I’m recommending:
Sybil & Cyril
Jenny Uglow
A beautiful modernist art adventure, following artists Sybil Andrews and Cyril Power through the interwar period where they worked alongside surrealists and abstract artists in one of the most dynamic periods of creative change. Perfect for anyone who loved Martin Gayford’s Modernists and Mavericks.
I’m looking forward to reading:
Harlem Shuffle
Colson Whitehead
I can’t wait to read Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle, he plays with genre brilliantly as he has all the way back to The Intuitionist, and this just sounds so atmospheric and full of period detail and great characters.
AK Connor, Head of Pagesmith
I’m recommending:
High Risk
Ben Timberlake
I’m talking about this book to almost everyone I meet. It’s an odyssey into the neuroscience of addiction and life on the edge, as he tells the tales of his life in the SAS, as a medic, archaeologist, and later, as a heroin addict. It’s wild, funny, and thoroughly interesting from start to finish.
I’m looking forward to reading:
For me, it’s the personalised poetry collection I’ve created on pagesmithbooks.com. Choosing the themes of Women’s Voices and Well-being, it’s my gift to myself for the autumn evenings to come.
