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When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead

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When You Reach Me

11-13 years

Welcome re-release of ingenious prize-winning time travel mystery

‘Our apartment door was unlocked when I got home from school that Friday, which was strange.’ Nothing appears to have been stolen from 12-year-old Miranda’s home but she subsequently discovers a cryptic note, informing her that someone she loves is in mortal danger. In order to avoid catastrophe, Miranda must turn detective cum scientist and challenge her own received notions of the nature of time. A 2010 Newbery medal winner, When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead is an inventive time travel mystery set in 1970’s New York, ideal for canny young sleuths in search of an invigorating read.

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A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell

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A Dance to the Music of Time

An extraordinary literary marathon

A Dance to the Music of Time by Anthony Powell is a 12-volume sequence of novels that has been lauded as one of the greatest works of 20th century English literature. The books start in the late 1920s and take us up to the 1960s, feature a huge cast of characters and offer a remarkable vision of changing social history, a deftly sustained narrative, some wonderfully memorable characters and a stark vision of the impact that time wreaks on our lives.

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10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak

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10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World

A beautiful and campaigning novel short-listed for the Booker Prize 2019

Tequila Leila, a Turkish prostitute in her 40s, lies murdered in a rubbish bin. Her brain, for the first ten minutes and thirty-eight seconds after her death is still working – remembering, sensing, calling up memories and sensations from her life. 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak tells not just the story of one woman’s life through these disjointed recollections but conjures a beautiful but unsettling portrait of Istanbul and its shifting population.

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The Witches of St. Petersburg by Imogen Edward-Jones

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The Witches of St. Petersburg

Intriguing tale of black magic, forgotten Russian princesses and Rasputin

Russia is divided and trouble is brewing. Revolution is bubbling angrily beneath the surface. The poor are starving and desperate, yet in the Imperial court of Tsar Nicolas II the aristocracy live a life of senseless decadence and wanton excess. Two mysterious sisters burst into the Romanov Court. Princesses Anastasia and Militza arrive from the tiny impoverished backwater of Montenegro and, thanks to their socially aspirational father the ‘Goat King’, are married off to wealthy Russian aristocrats. The Witches of St. Petersburg by Imogen Edwards-Jones is ideal beach reading: gripping, entertaining and gossipy.

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Our Souls At Night

A tender, contemplative novel about a late life relationship

This is the first book I have read by Kent Haruf, and it won’t be the last. It’s one of those tender, contemplative books in which nothing much happens but through which you feel your life has been immeasurably enhanced.

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Clear by Carys Davies

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Clear

More than words

Winner of the Ondaatje Prize 2025, and Wales Book of the Year, the captivating Clear by Carys Davies is one of our favourite recent reads, devoured as a one-sitting treat. Set on a far-flung Scottish island in 1843, it tells the tale of John Ferguson, a man of God, sent to evict Ivar, the island’s last remaining tenant farmer. When an accident upon his arrival leaves John incapacitated, Ivar takes him in and tends him. They share no common language, life experience or world view, but in Davies’ touching story of solitude and human connection, a tentative companionship is born.

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Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood

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Goodbye to Berlin

Observing the downfall of a nation

‘I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking’, starts Goodbye to Berlin by Christopher Isherwood, an autobiographical collection of loosely connected stories from the author’s time living in Berlin during Hitler’s rise to power. Observing is indeed what he does: the decadent nightlife, the discontent and poverty of the working class, and most chillingly, the sinister beginnings of persecution of Jews. It’s a dark but also comical book with the author playing a supporting role to an eccentric gallery of characters. A quirky and notable classic.

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Colony by Annika Norlin

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Colony

Disillusioned by her job and city life, and suffering from a serious case of burnout, Emelie decides to ‘check out’ for a while. She packs her tent and sleeping bag, turns off her phone, and seeks refuge in a little clearing deep in the Swedish forest. Once there, Emelie stumbles upon an unusual group of people who have taken ‘escaping it all’ to a whole new level. Curious, she befriends one of them and is drawn into a bizarre, cult-like existence. Colony by Annika Norlin, a bestseller in Sweden, is both a charming and disturbing portrait of misfits; both funny and creepy, and really enjoyable.

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After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys

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After Leaving Mr Mackenzie

Down and out in Paris and London

A curiously sad autobiographical novel, After Leaving Mr Mackenzie by Jean Rhys is an episode in the itinerant life of Julia Martin, a thirty-something woman leading a precarious existence in Paris and London between the wars. Hers is a life of cheap hotels, booze, and financial dependence on unsuitable men, who invariably let her down. When her ex-lover in Paris cuts off her weekly allowance, the penniless Julia decides to muster her fading magic and head back to London, in hopes of finding love, solvency, and reconnection with her estranged family.

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The Place of Tides by James Rebanks

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The Place of Tides

The perfect antidote

Both memoir and bibliotherapy for troubled minds, The Place of Tides by James Rebanks takes a step out of time and place, transporting us to a remote Norwegian island just south of the Arctic Circle. Here, burnt out and disillusioned with life, Rebanks spends a restorative ‘eiderdown season’ with a marvellous woman named Anna. Upholding an ancient island tradition, Anna nurtures wild eider ducks as they nest and lay eggs, collecting the precious down they leave behind to make duvets. The days are still, the work simple and repetitive, a balm for Rebanks’ spirits as he uncovers the story of Anna’s long island life and learns some valuable lessons.

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