Top Summer Reads

When the daughter of Helios discovers the company of mortals and the power of witchcraft, the threatened Gods banish her to the deserted island of Aiaia. Standing as a woman alone, enraptured by the mortal Odysseus and pitted against the mightiest Olympians, Circe must either choose the mortal realm or take her place amongst the gods.

Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine in her rigidly timetabled, carefully controlled, intentionally isolated world until it is shattered by a stranger, an act of kindness and the IT guy from work…the one with a big heart.

Elizabeth Gilbert, who brought us ‘Eat Pray Love’, is back with ‘Big Magic’. Her mantra for living life creatively and without fear definitely is a life motto which continues to resonate.

Anna Fox is a recluse with a penchant for drinking wine in the daytime, watching old movies and keeping an eye on the neighbours. But when the perfect family moves in across the way, Anna sees something out of her window that she wasn’t supposed to see…

At a cliff-side mansion on the Italian Riviera, a young man and a summer visitor engage in psychological maneuvers and feigned indifference as they embark on a six week romance which changes nothing and everything at the same time.

Why turn lemons into lemonade when you just could just learn to stomach lemons a little better? In this bestselling, generation -defining self-help guide, blogger Mark Manson both educates and entertains his way along life’s uncertain journey with the academically supported argument that money is great but true wealth lies in experience and caring about what you do.

On Winston Churchill’s first day at the office, Adolf Hitler’s army invaded Holland and Belgium. The fortnight that followed saw the evacuation of Dunkirk followed by a relentless Nazi bombing campaign which lasted a further year.

Using previously secret intelligence reports and diaries, Larson paints a narrative non-fiction masterpiece of Winston the family man and Churchill the Prime Minister.

Feeling like part of the future, Anna Wiener left a New York publishing house for a Silicon Valley start-up, swapping business casuals for company-branded t-shirts.

But as she scrolled through the valley in the shadow of tech, Wiener soon began to question her faith in arrogant young men with unscrupulous attitudes to privacy, bizarre extravagances and regular casual sexism.

Riding the rails with a rucksack (and a fiance) Monisha Rajesh travels tracks twice the circumference of the earth, rounding the globe on eighty remarkable railways.

The wondrous fable of a farmer turned bookbinder in a world where books are a dangerous thing and binding them is a calling which arouses fear, suspicion and prejudice.

Why is someone only deemed ‘a good immigrant’ when they’re successful in an Olympic race, win a baking contest or become a conscientious doctor?

This culturally and emotionally diverse collection of essays explores what brings immigrants to the UK, why they stay and how they feel when they are told to ‘go home’ again.

On an isolated estate in the Scottish Highlands, a group of old friends upholding a tradition of festive times gone by, get snowed in at a hunting lodge.

But one old acquaintance will never ‘be forgot’ when the New Year ushers in a dead body and a house full of ‘trusty friends’, each one now a murder suspect.

If every progressive idea was once considered radical and dangerous — the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, marriage equality for homosexuals — what does 200,000 years of human history tell us about whether we’re wired for competition or cooperation? Rutger Bregman investigates.

In the Summer of 1940, Vivian Morris arrives in New York with a sewing machine and an adventurous spirit. Taking work as a playhouse seamstress, Lily transforms the down-at— heel showgirls into glamorous goddesses whilst pursuing her own promiscuous lifestyle… until a personal error causes professional scandal.

Growing up in a mansion with an absent mother and distant father, Danny Conroy and his sister Maeve develop an unbreakable bond. But when their father brings home Andrea a dark fairytale begins…

In this insightful exploration of what it’s like to be a person of colour living in 21st Century Britain, Reni Eddo-Lodge exposes the omission of black history from our classrooms, whitewashed feminism and the inherent links between class and race in a world of white dominance.

1967. China’s Cultural Revolution. Red Guards beat a man to death as his young daughter Ye Wenhie watches: an event which will shape her future and the future of the planet.

Forty years later, a Beijing police investigation into a group of scientists leads to an immersive online game controlled by three suns and an extinction-level threat to humanity.

Something unseen is out there and seeing it will drive you to despicable violence. In this horror-thriller, Marlorie and her two children set out from their riverside home on an odyssey, seeking safety. But someone or something is watching them…

When Lara Jean’s private, unsent love letters to all the boys she’s ever loved get mailed, she’s forced to confront her crushes face to face.

Populated by wealthy tourists and eccentric billionaires, the only city on the moon can be a tough place to live if your job as a porter barely pays the rent. To make ends meet, Jazz Bashara smuggles contraband...until she thinks she’s spotted the perfect crime.