The Books We’re Excited About For 2022
People Person by Candice Carty-Williams
People Person is the follow-up to Candice Carty-Williams’ phenomenally successful debut, Queenie. Dimple Pennington is 30, and her life isn't really going anywhere. An aspiring lifestyle influencer with a terrible and wayward boyfriend, Dimple's life has shrunk to the size of a phone screen. And despite a small but loyal following, she's never felt more alone. That is, until a dramatic event brings her half siblings Nikisha, Danny, Lizzie and Prynce crashing back into her life. When they're all forced to reconnect with Cyril Pennington, the absent father they never really knew, things get even more complicated.
Released April 2022
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Young Mungo by Douglas Stuart
From Booker-prize winner Douglas Stuart (Shuggie Bain) comes this page-turning second novel, a vivid portrayal of working-class life and a highly suspenseful story of the dangerous first love of two young men: Mungo and James. Protestant Mungo and Catholic James live in the hyper-masculine and violently sectarian world of Glasgow's housing estates. They should be sworn enemies, and yet they become best friends as they find a sanctuary in the pigeon dovecote that James has built for his prize racing birds. As they find themselves falling in love, they dream of escaping the grey city, and Mungo works hard to hide his true self from all those around him. But the threat of discovery is constant and the punishment unspeakable. Imbuing the everyday world of its characters with rich lyricism and giving full voice to people rarely acknowledged in literary fiction, Young Mungo is a gripping and revealing story about the bounds of masculinity, the push and pull of family, the violence faced by so many queer people, and the dangers of loving someone too much.
Released April 2022
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You Made A Fool Of Death With Your Beauty by Akwaeke Emezi
Amazon Studios has already bought screen rights to Akwaeke Emezi’s (Freshwater, Pet, The Death of Vivek Oji) new novel You Made a Fool of Death With Your Beauty in a seven-figure deal. It's the opportunity of a lifetime: Feyi is about to be given the chance to escape the city's blistering heat for a dream island holiday: poolside cocktails, beach sunsets and elaborate meals. And as the sun goes down on her old life our heroine also might just be ready to open her heart to someone new. The only problem is, she's falling for the one man she absolutely can't have…
Released June 2022
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The Candy House by Jennifer Egan
It's 2010. Staggeringly successful and brilliant tech entrepreneur Bix Bouton is desperate for a new idea. He's 40, with four kids, and restless when he stumbles into a conversation with mostly Columbia professors, one of whom is experimenting with downloading or "externalising" memory. Within a decade, Bix's new technology, Own Your Unconscious – which allows you access to every memory you've ever had, and to share every memory in exchange for access to the memories of others – has seduced millions. But not everyone. In linked narratives, Egan spins out the consequences of Own Your Unconscious through the lives of multiple characters whose paths intersect over several decades. Intellectually dazzling and extraordinarily moving, The Candy House is a bold, brilliant imagining of a world that is likely only moments away.
Released April 2022
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To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
From the author of the classic A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise is a bold novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, about lovers, family, loss and the elusive promise of utopia. In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love whomever they please (or so it seems). In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the Aids epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father. And in 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him – and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearances. These three sections come together, as recurring notes and themes deepen and enrich one another. What unites these characters are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human: fear, love, shame, need and loneliness.
Released January 2022
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Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes
We can’t wait for Marian Keyes’ newest deep dive back into the lovable Walsh family. Twenty-five years after the iconic, 1.5 million-copy bestseller Rachel's Holiday burst onto the scene, Rachel's back. Back in the 90s, Rachel Walsh was a mess. But a spell in rehab transformed everything. Life became very good, very quickly. These days, Rachel has love, family, a great job as an addiction counsellor – she even gardens. Her only bad habit is a fondness for expensive trainers. But with the sudden reappearance of a man she'd once loved, her life wobbles. She'd thought she was settled. Fixed forever. Is she about to discover that no matter what our age, everything can change?
Released in February 2022
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At The Table by Claire Powell
To Nicole and Jamie, their parents seem the ideal couple: a suburban double act, happily married for more than 30 years. So, when Linda and Gerry announce they've decided to separate, the news sends shockwaves through the siblings' lives, forcing them to confront their own expectations and desires. Hardworking – and hard-drinking – Nicole pursues the ex she unceremoniously dumped six years ago, while people-pleasing Jamie fears he's sleepwalking into a marriage he doesn't actually want. But as the siblings grapple with the pressures of 30-something life, their parents struggle to protect the facade of their own relationship, and the secrets they've both been keeping. A gripping yet tender depiction of family dynamics, love and disillusionment, At the Table is about what it means to grow up – both as an individual and as a family.
Released March 2022
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Free Love by Tessa Hadley
From Tessa Hadley, bestselling author of Late in the Day and The Past, comes a compulsive new novel about one woman's sexual and intellectual awakening in 1960s London. While London comes alive with the new youth revolution, the suburban Fischer family seems to belong to an older world of conventional stability: pretty, dutiful homemaker Phyllis is married to Roger, a devoted father with a career in the Foreign Office. Their children are Colette, a bookish teenager, and Hugh, the golden boy. But when the 20-something son of an old friend pays the Fischers a visit one summer evening, and kisses Phyllis in the dark garden after dinner, something in her catches fire. Newly awake to the world, Phyllis makes a choice that defies all expectations of her as a wife and a mother. Nothing in these ordinary lives is so ordinary after all, it turns out, as the family's upheaval mirrors the dramatic transformation of the society around them. Daring and sensual, Free Love is a compulsive exploration of love, sexual freedom and living out the most meaningful version of our lives.
Released January 2022
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Our Wives Under The Sea by Julia Armfield
Our Wives Under The Sea is the debut novel from the critically acclaimed author of short-story collection Salt Slow. Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep-sea mission that ended in catastrophe. It soon becomes clear, though, that Leah may have come back wrong. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded on the ocean floor, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. To have the woman she loves back should mean a return to normal life, but Miri can feel Leah slipping from her grasp. Memories of what they had before – the jokes they shared, the films they watched, all the small things that made Leah hers – only remind Miri of what she stands to lose. Living in the same space but suddenly separate, Miri comes to realise the life they had might be gone.
Released March 2022
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Little Boxes by Cecilia Knapp
A coming-of-age story about friendship and love, loss and survival, Little Boxes is the debut literary fiction from the Young People’s Laureate for London. This is a story of sacrifice, violence and growing up different, told against the heat and claustrophobia of a seaside city in summer. After Matthew's grandfather dies suddenly, four friends struggle to face the trauma of their pasts in the wake of this fresh tragedy. Leah and Jay, a couple since their school days, find their relationship tested, while Nathan deals with a vast and unrequited love, and Matthew grapples with his sexuality. In the days that follow, Matthew begins to unearth his grandfather's past. He finds a different life, full of secrets, and discovers that he and his grandfather may have had more in common than he once thought.
Released March 2022
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Burning Questions, 2004-2021 by Margaret Atwood
From cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes this brilliant collection of essays which seek answers to ‘burning questions’ such as: Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories? How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating? And what do zombies have to do with authoritarianism? In over 50 pieces, Atwood aims her intellect and impish humour at our world and reports back on what she finds. The roller-coaster period covered in the collection covers the financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic. From debt to tech, the climate crisis to freedom; from when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to how to define granola, there’s almost no better questioner of the many and varied mysteries of the human universe.
Released March 2022
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At Certain Points We Touch by Lauren John Joseph
It's 4am and our narrator is walking home from the club when they realise it's 29th February – the birthday of the man who was something like their first love. Piecing together art, letters and memory, they set about trying to write the story of a doomed affair that first sparked and burned a decade ago. Ten years earlier, and our young narrator and a boy named Thomas James fall into bed with one another over the summer of their graduation. Their ensuing affair, with its violent intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power play, will initiate a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims – and culminate in terrible betrayal. At Certain Points We Touch is a story of first love and last rites, conjured against a vivid backdrop of London, San Francisco and New York – a riotous coming-of-age story that marks the arrival of a bold new writer.
Released March 2022
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The Maid by Nita Prose
Nita Prose’s new novel is already set to be a film starring SL favourite Florence Pugh, so it’s safe to say we’re looking forward to getting stuck into the book. Molly is all alone in the world. She's used to being invisible in her job as a maid at the Regency Grand Hotel. But Molly is thrown into the spotlight when she discovers an infamous guest, Mr Black, very dead in his bed. This isn't a mess that can be easily cleaned up. And so, Molly becomes embroiled in a hunt for the truth, learning who to trust as she navigates the secret underbelly of the Regency Grand Hotel. Escapist, charming, and featuring a truly original heroine, The Maid is a story about how everyone deserves to be seen, and how the truth isn't always black and white.
Released January 2022
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One Day I Shall Astonish The World by Nina Stibbe
Susan and Norma have been best friends for years, at first thrown together by force of circumstance (a job at The Pin Cushion, a haberdashery shop in 1990s Leicestershire) and then by force of character (neither being particularly inclined to make friends with anyone else). But now, 30 years later, faced with a husband seeking immortality and Norma out of reach on a wave of professional glory, Susan begins to wonder whether she has made the right choices about life, love, work, and, most importantly, friendship. Nina Stibbe's new novel is the story of the wonderful and sometimes surprising path of friendship: from its conspiratorial beginnings, along its irritating wrong turns, to its final gratifying destination.
Released April 2022
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Careering by Daisy Buchanan
Harri has poured her life into her job at Panache magazine, losing friendships, the love of her life, and increasingly, her sanity. She knows it will all be worth it when she gets the top job. Until she's side lined, passed over for promotion and forced into running 'a new venture', which everyone knows is code for 'being pushed out'. Imogen has had to hustle her whole professional life to cling onto an industry that favours the privileged. When Harri offers her a job, putting an end to her constant sofa-surfing, she feels like all her dreams are coming true. But her fairy-tale ending soon sours as she finds herself putting more and more of herself into writing for a company that doesn't care if she sinks or swims. Harri and Imogen both thought they loved their jobs, but it is becoming increasingly clear that their jobs do not love them. Together, they stage a rebellion the only way they know how. But what will the view look like from the other side?
Released March 2022
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