Welcome to Insider Reading, where the booksellers of Mr B’s give you the lowdown on new and future releases. We are very lucky as booksellers to get to read books ahead of publication.
So here is a behind-the-scenes peek into what some of our booksellers are already raving about for the months ahead…
The Brightness by Chad Harbach (Nov 5th)
It’s been 15 years since Chad Harbach’s stunning campus novel The Art of Fielding was published and now we get to return to Westish College and follow a new generation of students. You don’t need to have read The Art of Fielding to enjoy The Brightness – it more than holds its own – but clever references to the previous novel will delight Harbach fans.
Principally, we follow Irma – an undergraduate who has won a scholarship to Westish and Pella, a former wild-child post-grad who is now engaged to Westish sports coach Mike Schwartz. A campaign by Irma and a couple of friends to highlight the more insidious side of the traditional start of term ‘frat parties’ (Westish believes itself to be immune from the sort of behaviour recently highlighted by the real life Cornell University scandal) ends up having much wider implications than any of them envisaged.
Although the novel is epic in length, the interactions between the characters are always lively and fascinating. Plot-wise, Harbach occasionally throws in a curveball (sorry, couldn’t resist!) just to keep you on your toes, whilst the themes of equality and identity are very urgent and timely. A perfect novel to hunker down with now the longer evenings are here. – Lucinda.
Red Skies by Charlotte Gneuss (out now)
A tense literary thriller of teenage heartbreak, secrecy and suspicion in 1970s East Germany. Karin’s parents are on the brink of divorce and, what’s more, her bad-boy artist boyfriend has not returned from his festival-going adventures. When the Stasi begin investigating his disappearance as suspicious – perhaps a defection to the West – Karin is drawn into a perilous game of subterfuge. Does she know more than she’s letting on? A fantastic debut for Charlotte Gneuß and newly-minted indie publisher Arboretum. – Rohan
Goodnight Silver by Abi Elphinstone (Oct 27th)
Goodnight Silver is a must read, heart pounding adventure set in the mountains of Mongolia. When Emmy’s family wins a trip to the Altai Mountains, she is sure something is going to go horribly wrong. She’s a pessimist after all. And it doesn’t take long for her fears to come true – separated from her family and guide during a massive blizzard, Emmy is well and truly lost in a cave. Until she realizes she’s not alone, but with another lost soul – a little snow leopard cub she’d do anything to help save.
Elphinstone’s new snowy story of survival is the perfect balance of adventure, survival, folklore, and big family emotions. The perfect next read for fans of Jasbinder Bilan and Jess Butterworth. – Hannah
Don’t You Miss It by Julia Pike (April 27th 2027)
Every summer, I need to read something gorgeous and escapist: preferably set beach- or lake-side, and featuring complicated characters navigating seismic life changes and knotty relationships. Think The Paper Palace, Slanting Towards the Sea, The Unwilding, etc. So when a proof of Julia Pike’s debut, Don’t You Miss It, landed on my doorstep, I was instantly intrigued. What better way to chase away the Autumn blues? With early buzz from Miranda Cowley Heller and Ella Risbridger, this has moved to the top of my TBR – I can’t wait to dive in! – Liv
Tell Me Something True by Michael Robotham (out now)
The new Michael Robotham is unputdownable! A gripping, slow-burn, atmospheric twisty Australian thriller. Perfect for fans of Liz Moore, Christ Whittaker or Colin Walsh.
Arlo Hackett has been released from prison after twelve years and with nowhere else to go he returns to his home town of Yulara to take care of his mother and fix his childhood home. Last time he was a free man, his brother Luke was charged with a horrible crime, and Arlo was found guilty as an accessory after the fact. And Yurala has not forgotten nor forgiven him: a town with angry policemen and hostile neighbours makes him unwelcome. And then Arlo finds a letter in his mother’s house that brings the past back. Moving and shocking. – Laura GM.
The Song of Stork and Dromedary by Anjet Daanje (out now)
Spanning 720 pages, this epic novel translated from Dutch and inspired by the life of Emily Brontë, inevitably begins on the bleak Yorkshire moors in the early 1800s. The story centres around the Drayden sisters, particularly Eliza May Drayden, author of the novel Haeger Mass – one written far ahead of its time, and immediately labelled a disgrace. Across eleven chapters, told from the perspectives of different characters from both before and after her death, we come to bear witness to Eliza’s legacy – from the gravediggers haunted by a terrible secret, to a woman who turns up in New York with a mysterious past, to Eliza’s obsessive biographer who is in possession of what might possibly be Eliza’s secret notebooks, to a photograph found of a woman in an old chest, and to the many lives intertwined with Eliza’s from one century into another.
It’s completely captivating and utterly absorbing, as Daanje shows us the thin veil between life and death, between what is real and what isn’t. It asks the question of how we can ever truly know another person, and how easily truth can be distorted according to ones needs. A gothic literary puzzle unlike any other, one that isn’t afraid to ask the big philosophical questions that plague us as much today as they did in the early 1800s. But it isn’t for the faint-hearted – it’s bleak, and utterly heartbreaking and I lost count of how many characters met their fate. But above all it is a tale of sisterhood, and of what women have to endure in the face of artistry and creativity. If Anjet Daanje doesn’t win all the awards for this, I don’t know what will – it’s a masterpiece and I can’t recommend it enough. – Emma.