Staff Picks

  • Here and Now. A blue sky, with a blossom tree flowering around the edges. A bench sits towards the bottom on a hill

    Here and Now

    Marigold has spent her life taking care of those around her, juggling family life with the running of the local shop, and being an all-round leader in her quiet yet welcoming community. When she finds herself forgetting things, everyone quickly puts it down to her age. But something about Marigold isn’t quite right, and it’s…

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  • Fingersmith. A black cover covered in white keys.

    Fingersmith

    Fingersmith remains one of Sarah Waters’ most successful and best-loved novels. A beautiful hardback 20th Anniversary Edition – with lovely endpapers, a ribbon and a new afterword by this celebrated author. London 1862. Sue Trinder, orphaned at birth, grows up among petty thieves – fingersmiths – under the rough but loving care of Mrs Sucksby…

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  • windswept by annie worsley

    Windswept

    A few years ago, Annie Worsley traded a busy life in academia to take on a small-holding or croft on the west coast of Scotland. It is a land ruled by great elemental forces – light, wind and water – that hold sway over how land forms, where the sea sits and what grows. Windswept…

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  • Embroidering her truth

    Embroidering her Truth

    I felt that Mary was there, pulling at my sleeve, willing me to appreciate the artistry, wanting me to understand the dazzle of the material world that shaped her. At her execution Mary, Queen of Scots wore red. Widely known as the colour of strength and passion, it was in fact worn by Mary as…

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  • catcher in the rye

    A Catcher in the Rye

    ‘If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into…

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  • woman who brings the rain

    Woman Who Brings the Rain

    As precise and nuanced as Japanese calligraphy, the Woman Who Brings the Rain is a memoir of the author’s stay on the remote Hokkaido island in the far north of Japan, has at its heart the mountain, Yotei-san, the region’s iconic equivalent to Mount Fuji. As much about learning a language (with connotations of ‘reading’…

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