Books outside of our comfort zone

***THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** 'The read of the summer' SUNDAY TIMES 'A richly drawn page-turner' OBSERVER 'Beautifully written, immersive' THE TIMES 'Our favourite TJR novel yet' COSMOPOLITAN 'I absolutely adored this' BRYONY GORDON READERS ARE SAYING... 'So emotional by the end that I could hardly speak' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Melted my heart by the end' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Taylor Jenkins Reid is the master of a really great love story' - Reader Review, 5***** 'Taylor Jenkins Reid's best book yet' - Reader Review, 5***** An epic novel set against the backdrop of the 1980s space shuttle program about the extraordinary lengths we go to live and love beyond our limits. In the summer of 1980, Joan Goodwin begins training to be an astronaut at Houston's Johnson Space Centre, alongside an exceptional group of fellow candidates. As the new astronauts prepare for their first flights, Joan finds a passion and a love she never imagined and begins to question everything she believes about her place in the observable universe. Then, in December of 1984, on mission STS-LR9, everything changes in an instant. Atmosphere is a soaring story about the transformative power of love - this time among the stars. 'Is there a popular fiction writer alive who conveys falling in love better than Taylor Jenkins Reid?' DAILY MAIL 'Thrilling ... heartbreaking ... uplifting. ... I loved it' KRISTIN HANNAH, author of The Women 'NASA? Space missions? The 80s? This is a collection of all the things I love. ... Thrilling' ANDY WEIR, author of Project Hail Mary and The Martian 'Packs a hefty emotional punch' MAIL ON SUNDAY 'Breathtaking' HEAT 'Unputdownable' GRAZIA

A 'haunting, compelling, and brilliant'(The Times) novel about a group of students who, under the influence of their professor find their lives changed forever, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch Truly deserving of the accolade 'modern classic', Donna Tartt's novel is a remarkable achievement - compelling and elegant, dramatic and playful. Under the influence of their charismatic Classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality, their lives are changed profoundly and for ever as they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill. 'A haunting, compelling, and brilliant piece of fiction ... Packed with literary allusion and told with a sophistication and texture that owes much more to the nineteenth century than to the twentieth' -The Times

The New York Times bestselling author of Dark & Shallow Lies delivers another chilling supernatural thriller filled with murder, romance, and a decades long mystery that haunts a small Florida town. The perfect blend of Natasha Preston, Krystal Sutherland, and Delia Owens, with a paranormal twist. Mount Orange, Florida, is famous for two things: Cerulean freshwater springs, ideal for free divers who aren't afraid of lurking gators. And the gruesome cold case murder of best friends, Bailey and Celeste, twenty years ago. Bailey and Celeste's murders cast a permanent darkness over sunny Mount Orange. Tru has always lived in that shadow. Now she's supposed to head to FSU in the fall with her boyfriend, but those unsolved murders -- and the death of her own sister -- invade her every thought. It’s only in the shadowy deep of Hidden Glen Springs that she can breathe. When a strange girl named Rio rolls into town, hell-bent on figuring out who killed Bailey and Celeste, Tru can't resist entangling herself in the thrill of solving the decades old mystery any more than she can resist a strangely familiar, aching attraction to Rio. As the summer heat ignites, so does the spark between Tru and Rio...along with their other-worldy connection to Bailey and Celeste. But when someone begins stalking them, the girls become convinced the killer is back in town. And if they keep digging into the past, Tru and Rio know this time, it could be their blood that makes the springs run red.

"I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life and stir with an uneasy, half-vital motion." A summer evening's ghost stories, lonely insomnia in a moonlit Alpine's room, and a runaway imagination--fired by philosophical discussions with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley about science, galvanism, and the origins of life--conspired to produce for Marry Shelley this haunting night specter. By morning, it had become the germ of her Romantic masterpiece, "Frankenstein." Written in 1816 when she was only nineteen, Mary Shelley's novel of "The Modern Prometheus" chillingly dramatized the dangerous potential of life begotten upon a laboratory table. A frightening creation myth for our own time, "Frankenstein" remains one of the greatest horror stories ever written and is an undisputed classic of its kind.

“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.” Ulysses is one of the finest examples of modernist literature ever published, exploring a single uneventful day in the life of Leopold Bloom, an ordinary salesman who lives in Dublin, and also features his wife Molly, and a writer, Stephen Dedalus. Heavy structural and thematic parallels are drawn between Ulysses and Homer’s Odyssey, and Joyce makes heavy use of stream of consciousness to portray the characters’ psyches in greater detail, making it a difficult but extremely rewarding read. James Joyce was an Irish writer, poet, and literary critic considered to be one of the most important authors of the 20th century for his unique modernist style of writing. His most well-known books include Ulysses, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Finnegan’s Wake, and he was an influence on writers as varied as Cormac McCarthy, John Updike, and Jorge Luis Borges.

An epic and unforgettable love story begins in Saving 6, the third book in the international bestselling and TikTok-phenomenon The Boys of Tommen series, from Chloe Walsh. The power and pain of first love has never been more deeply felt than in Chloe Walsh's extraordinary stories about the irresistible Boys of Tommen, which will give you the ultimate book hangover. The reader reaction to The Boys of Tommen says it all! 'Absolute perfection. This book will ruin you' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'I have no words as to how heartbreakingly beautiful this book is and the talent of Chloe is unmeasured in my eyes' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'Chloe Walsh is a genius when it comes to creating characters and writing, making you feel every emotion' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ 'There's not enough stars to rate this book it is simply outstanding!' ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ......................... He's a boy who's lost. She's girl who might just be the home he's never had. The second born son in a broken marriage, Joey Lynch has spent a lifetime picking up the pieces of a family unravelling. When his older brother Darren skips town, twelve-year-old Joey finds himself thrown into the role of protector to his younger siblings and mother. Plagued by self-loathing, and furious with the world, he grapples with teenage life and his unwavering sense of duty to his family, while balancing precariously close to a life of addiction that threatens to swallow him whole. The only light in his sea of darkness is his boss's firecracker of a daughter who refuses to back down. A girl who just so happens to be his classmate. Aoife Molloy has never been backwards in coming forward. Her bubbly and self-assured nature has never led her astray. Until her first day of secondary school when she collides with a hot-headed boy who sparks a burning curiosity inside of her that only grows stronger by the day. Falling into a complicated friendship with her father's apprentice, Aoife works to unravel the secrets around Joey Lynch's life - while he desperately fights to keep her out. ......................... Want more of Joey, Aoife and the rest of The Boys of Tommen? Read the rest of the series so far: Binding 13 Keeping 13 Saving 6 Redeeming 6 Taming 7 - preorder Claire and Gibsie's story now!

WINNER OF Hugo Award for Best Novella Nebula Award for Best Novella Reddit Stabby Award for Best Novella British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novella SHORTLISTED FOR 2020 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award The Ray Bradbury Prize Kitschies Red Tentacle Award Kitschies Inky Tentacle Brave New Words Award Co-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic. Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them. There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works. Right? 'A fireworks display from two very talented storytellers' Madeline Miller, author of Circe 'An intimate and lyrical tour of time, myth and history' John Scalzi, bestselling author of Old Man's War 'Lyrical and vivid and bittersweet' Ann Leckie, Hugo Award-winning author of Ancillary Justice 'Rich and strange, a romantic tour through all of time and the multiverse' Martha Wells, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author of The Murderbot Diaries

THE ORIGINAL TEXT 'Shoot all the Bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a Mockingbird.' Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped in prejudice and hypocrisy.

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A GMA BOOK CLUB PICK • A NEW YORK TIMES BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR (SO FAR) A traditional American woman, a beautiful wife and mother who sells her pioneer lifestyle of raw milk and farm-fresh eggs to her millions of social media followers, suddenly awakens cold, filthy, and terrified in the brutal reality of 1855—where she must unravel whether this living nightmare is an elaborate hoax, a twisted reality show, or something far more sinister in this sensational debut novel. My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive. Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle. Her charming farmhouse is rustic, her husband a handsome cowboy, her six children each more delightful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers behind the scenes, her kitchen hiding industrial-grade fridges and ovens, her husband the heir to a political dynasty? What Natalie’s followers—all 8 million of them—don’t know won’t hurt them. And The Angry Women? The privileged, Ivy League, coastal elite haters who call her an antifeminist iconoclast? They’re sick with jealousy. Because Natalie isn’t simply living the good life, she’s living the ideal—and just so happens to be building an empire from it. Until one morning she wakes up in a life that isn’t hers. Her home, her husband, her children—they’re all familiar, but something’s off. Her kitchen is warmed by a sputtering fire rather than electricity, her children are dirty and strange, and her soft-handed husband is suddenly a competent farmer. Just yesterday Natalie was curating photos of homemade jam for her Instagram, and now she’s expected to haul firewood and handwash clothes until her fingers bleed. Has she become the unwitting star of a ruthless reality show? Could it really be time travel? Is she being tested by God? By Satan? When Natalie suffers a brutal injury in the woods, she realizes two things: This is not her beautiful life, and she must escape by any means possible. A gripping, electrifying novel that is as darkly funny as it is frightening, Yesteryear is a gimlet-eyed look at tradition, fame, faith, and the grand performance of womanhood.

Winner of the Polari Prize Shortlisted for the Gordon Bowker Volcano Prize ‘A gothic fairy tale, sublime in its creepiness’ – Florence Welch Our Wives Under The Sea is the haunting novel from Julia Armfield, the critically acclaimed author of Salt Slow. It’s a story of falling in love, loss, grief, and what life there is in the deep, deep sea. Miri thinks she has got her wife back, when Leah finally returns after a deep sea mission that ended in catastrophe. But it soon becomes clear 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. 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 realize that the life that they had might be gone. 'A wonderful novel, deeply romantic and fabulously strange' – Sarah Waters, author of Fingersmith 'Part bruisingly tender love story, part nerve-clanging submarine thriller' – The Times

THE MILLION-COPY BESTSELLER AND TIKTOK SENSATION 'A marvel' Marlon James Discover Ocean Vuong's lyrical and intimate coming-of-age novel. This is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read. Written when the speaker, Little Dog, is in his late twenties, the letter unearths a family's history that began before he was born. It tells of Vietnam, of the lasting impact of war, and of his family's struggle to forge a new future. And it serves as a doorway into parts of Little Dog's life his mother has never known - episodes of bewilderment, fear and passion - all the while moving closer to an unforgettable revelation. 'Reminded me that every word can be an incantation, and that beauty does hard and important work' Rebecca Solnit 'A tender exploration of violence, migration and language’ Guardian