Good Girl by Aria Aber

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Good Girl

A Berliner’s tale of identity, culture and fierce desire

Nila is nineteen, fizzing with hormones and the desire for an artistic life. She seeks sex, highs, beauty, and most of all, liberty. But as the daughter of Afghan refugees, Nila’s childhood has been marred by discrimination, poverty, and cultural expectation. In a hypnotic debut novel longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2025, Good Girl by Aria Aber recounts a pivotal year in Nila’s life, as feeling othered and misunderstood, she searches for self and freedom amongst the famously hedonistic denizens of the Berlin art scene.

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Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban

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Turtle Diary

Seeing the world through turtle-coloured glasses

Celebrating fifty years since publication, the exquisite modern classic, Turtle Diary by Russell Hoban, is a bittersweet story of loneliness, ennui and renewal in 1970’s London. It’s told through the alternate diary entries of soon-to-be acquaintances, William and Neaera, a forty-something bookseller and children’s author respectively. Both lead quiet, solitary lives, enlivened by regular visits to London Zoo, and both are drawn to its giant sea turtle aquarium, a wretchedly confining ‘glass box of second-hand ocean’. Compelled to set them free, they join forces and embark on a touching and richly metaphorical mission to release them into the open sea.

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The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke

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The Story of a Heart

The ultimate gift

A testament to love, altruism, and modern medicine, The Story of a Heart by Rachel Clarke is one of sixteen titles unveiled on the 2025 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction Longlist. In this compelling account of one child’s gift of life to another, Clarke introduces us to Max, a nine-year-old with a failing heart, and Keira, a girl whose heart will sustain him after her death in a car crash. With unfailing warmth and sensitivity, Clarke relays the story of two families during the bleakest moments of their lives, and the aftermath of their decisions. Alongside this, we learn the medical and cultural history of the heart transplant and the philosophical significance of ‘the chief mansion of the soul’.

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The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone

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The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan

A doting Nonna, a bewitchingly beautiful girl on the balcony across the street and the ‘pit of the dead’ below the courtyard. This is the world of Mimi, our 9-year-old hero in The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl From Milan by Domenico Starnone. First love, death, class and Neapolitan passion mix up beautifully in this coming-of-age story set in 1950s Italy.

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Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof

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Money to Burn

The cost of capitalism

Garlanded with glorious reviews and European literary awards, Danish publishing sensation, Money to Burn by Asta Olivia Nordenhof, is a strikingly unique proposition. The first in a planned septology, this ambitious and courageous novel is essentially a denunciation of late capitalism, told through the prism of a real-life tragedy (The 1990 arson attack on the Scandinavian Star ferry, which killed 159 people but was never satisfactorily explained). In this inspired tale, Nordenhof imagines the lives and loves of a middle-aged Danish couple, interlaced with a journalistic dissection of the disaster. How the two may be connected makes for galvanising reading.

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The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist

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The Visit of the Royal Physician

The madness of King Christian VII

There’s something special about novels based on real events, particularly when the story is crazy as that of the The Visit of the Royal Physician by Per Olov Enquist. It’s the late 1700s and the time of absolute rulers. In Denmark, a German doctor is hired to take care of the 16-year-old mentally disturbed King Christian VII. Within months, Struensee becomes the Queen’s lover and de-facto sovereign while living alongside King Christian. How was this possible? And was this Struensee’s intention all along? A wild journey into the madness of 18th century court life, revolutionary ideas and an absolute treat of a novel. Read full Review

Ex-Wife by Ursual Parrott

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Ex-Wife

Brilliantly pithy observations of 1920’s American womanhood

It’s the Roaring Twenties and Patricia is living the Jazz Age dream in New York. Hers is a cosmopolitan life of smoky nightclubs and cocktail parties, with the added bonus of a sexually liberated husband. But at the age of just twenty-four, Patricia finds herself unglamorously dumped, after her ‘theoretically modern’ husband, Peter leaves her. Apparently, any agreed sexual freedoms had applied only to him, and so, when Patricia reveals an amorous liaison, she is spurned and forced to build a new life as a not-so-merry divorcée. Labelled scandalous and sensational upon publication in 1929, Ex-Wife by Ursula Parrott portrays a generation eager for a permissive society but mired in double standards.

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Eurotrash by Christian Kracht

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Eurotrash

Filthy lucre and edelweiss

Originally published in German in 2021, it’s taken years for Eurotrash by Christian Kracht to make it into English translation, and mere weeks to bag a place on The Times Best Books of 2024 list. Witty, reflective, and frequently disturbing, Kracht’s semi-autobiographical tragicomedy stars the man himself, as a middle-aged Swiss writer embarking on a road trip around Switzerland with his elderly mother. Recently released from a mental institution, and potentially on her last legs, it could be both their final holiday together, and Kracht’s only chance to get her to confront the implications of their family’s Nazi past.

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Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami

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Record of a Night Too Brief

A mind-bending treat for Kawakami completists

One for Japanese literature obsessives, the fabulously titled Record of a Night Too Brief by Hiromi Kawakami is a trio of increasingly trippy stories, centred on women undergoing transformative (to say the least) life experiences. Originally published in 1996, Kawakami’s rising stardom blessed us with an English translation in 2017. In this gem from the Pushkin Press Japanese Short Story Collection, Kawakami considers convention and tradition alongside the strangests of plots, her seemingly everyday women plunged into surreal tales involving unending night, shape-shifting, and a family whose members are prone to vanishing.

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The Book Lover's European Bucket List by Caroline Taggart

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The Book Lover’s European Bucket List

Inspiration for your very own literary grand tour

How better to while away the lazy days of Twixmas than planning adventures for the coming year? The Book Lover’s European Bucket List by Caroline Taggart is a wonderful gift for wandering bibliophiles, a combination of practical guide and paean to European literature. One hundred literary landmarks are explored, from the heart of Shelley’s Rome to the contemporary Stockholm of Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy. Meticulously researched and littered with writers’ quotes, Taggart whisks us away to a continental idyll, where you can ‘linger over a coffee or a cognac and imagine you are waiting for Simone de Beauvoir’.

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