‘The thing to remember about this story is that every word is true. If I never told it to a soul, and this book did not exist, it would not cease to be true. I don’t mind at all if you forget this. The important thing is that I don’t.’
On a hot still morning on a beautiful beach in Jamaica, Decca Aitkenhead’s life changed for ever.
If, like us, you’ve been completely gripped by the crime dramas that broadcasters have been firing out of late, you’ll need some literary equivalents so that you can take things at our own pace, and step away if you need to (but not for long. Nothing is quite as compulsive as a crime read). Here, for you, are some of our best crime novels, paired with the telly that we’ve been watching (and discussing) of late. We wanted to put BBC One’s new Sunday night drama Undercover in there, but good luck finding a comparison for something so ridiculously compelling… Read more…
When we published Mainlander last year, we knew that we had something special in our hands, written by an author who had always made us laugh both off and onscreen in The Thick of It and VEEP (to name but two of the brilliant shows Will writes for). When we heard word that Jesse Armstrong, a fellow screenwriter (on The Thick of It and VEEP) we knew that we had to get them into a studio together.
There’s been some speculation about when exactly the 400th Anniversary of Shakespeare’s death is, but we are probably certain that today is the day. In celebration, HarperCollins have pulled together a veritable HUB in homage to the Bard. Read more…
On the cover of We Are Not Such Things are three boys, about five or six years old, dressed in smart Sunday best. The photograph is faded, but the boys are clear-skinned and bright-eyed, drowning slightly in their little rumpled suits. One of these boys – the one on the right, looking away from you and into the distance – is Easy Nofemela. Many years after this photo was taken, he would stand in a Cape Town courtroom, accused, among others, of the brutal murder of a young white American woman called Amy Biehl. The state lawyer would assert his view that Amy’s murder could not have been committed with a political objective, that ‘It was wanton brutality, like a pack of sharks smelling blood. Isn’t that the truth?’ And Easy, a man now, responded ‘No, that’s not true, that’s not true. We are not such things.’ Read more…
IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO START AGAIN. AND AGAIN.
From the multi-million-copy bestselling author Jonas Jonasson comes another freewheeling madcap adventure… Read more…
Apart from being the Queen’s 90th birthday (move aside, Your Majesty), today also marks the 200th anniversary of Charlotte Brontë’s birth! To celebrate, we’ve decided to grace you with a chapter from Jane Eyre – arguably her most important novel and the one she’s most famous for. Read more…
Our theme for this month is CRIMIN4L, which we’re sure you’ll know by now, so we’ve teamed up with Killer Reads to bring you two (two!) competitions.
Competition number one: Fill in the form below to win this AMAZING (and beautifully designed) collection of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo reissues. These reissues have introductions from the likes of Lee Child, Jonathan Franzen, Val McDermid, Lars Kepler and Jo Nesbø. Read more…
