bestsellers...
In no particular order, the booka bestsellers are...
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Wolf Hall
Hilary Mantel
£18.99From one of our finest living writers, Wolf Hall is that very rare thing: a truly great English novel, one that explores the intersection of individual psychology and wider politics. With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, it peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society, moulding itself with great passion and suffering and courage.
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The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
£7.99It's 1946 and author Juliet Ashton can't think what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - by chance, he's acquired a book that once belonged to her - and, spurred on by their mutual love of reading, they begin a correspondence. When Dawsey reveals that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, her curiosity is piqued and it's not long before she begins to hear from other members. As letters fly back and forth with stories of life in Guernsey under the German Occupation, Juliet soon realizes that the society is every bit as extraordinary as its name.
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The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Stieg Larsson
£7.99Forty years ago, Harriet Vanger disappeared from a family gathering on the island owned and inhabited by the powerful Vanger clan. Her body was never found, yet her uncle is convinced it was murder - and that the killer is a member of his own tightly knit but dysfunctional family. He employs disgraced financial journalist Mikael Blomkvist and the tattooed, truculent computer hacker Lisbeth Salander to investigate. When the pair link Harriet's disappearance to a number of grotesque murders from forty years ago, they begin to unravel a dark and appalling family history. But the Vangers are a secretive clan, and Blomkvist and Salander are about to find out just how far they are prepared to go to protect themselves.
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The Secret Scripture
Sebastian Barry
£7.99Nearing her one-hundredth birthday, Roseanne McNulty faces an uncertain future, as the Roscommon Regional Mental hospital where she's spent the best part of her adult life prepares for closure. Over the weeks leading up to this upheaval, she talks often with her psychiatrist Dr. Grene, and their relationship intensifies and complicates. Told through their respective journals, the story that emerges is at once shocking and deeply beautiful. Refracted through the haze of memory and retelling, Roseanne's story becomes an alternative, secret history of Ireland's changing character and the story of a life blighted by terrible mistreatment and ignorance, and yet marked still by love and passion and hope.
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A Life Like Other People's
Alan Bennett
£12.99Alan Bennett's "A Life Like Other People's" is a poignant family memoir offering a portrait of his parents' marriage and recalling his Leeds childhood, Christmases with Grandma Peel, and the lives, loves and deaths of his unforgettable aunties Kathleen and Myra. Bennett's powerful account of his mother's descent into depression and later dementia comes hand in hand with the uncovering of a long-held tragic secret. A heartrending and at times irresistibly funny work of autobiography by one of the best-loved English writers alive today.
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The Wisdom of Donkeys
Andy Merrifield
£7.99When Andy Merrifield made his first trip to America aged ten, he vowed that one day he would leave his native Liverpool and live in New York. He eventually got there, but his dream quickly turned sour. In 2003, weary of city life and fed up with university teaching, he moved to central France and embarked upon a journey of the soul, walking amid the ruins and spectacular vistas of the Auvergne. This book is the story of that slow pilgrimage, on which his only companion is Gribouille, a tender and intelligent donkey with soft, thick fur on his brow and calm, dark eyes. Shadowed by Robert Louis Stevenson, who 130 years earlier trekked through another part of the region with the donkey Modestine, Merrifield gradually settles into the purposeful pace of his journey, allowing him to confront himself, as well as the larger mysteries of existence.
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The Tent, the Bucket and Me
Emma Kennedy
£10.99Growing up in the Seventies, we were on the brink of the modern age. But despite a brave new world of Casio hand-held calculators and digital watches, one thing remained the same: the family holiday. For the Seventies child, summer holidays didn't mean the joy of CentreParcs or the sophistication of a Tuscan villa. They meant being crammed into a car with Grandma and heading to the coast. With just a tent for a home and a bucket for the necessities, we would set off on new adventures each year stoically resolving to enjoy ourselves.For Emma Kennedy, and her mum and dad, disaster always came along for the ride no matter where they went. Whether it was swept away by a force ten gale on the Welsh coast or suffering copious amounts of food poisoning on a brave trip to the south of France, family holidays always left them battered and bruised. But they never gave up. Emma's memoir, "The Tent, the Bucket and Me", is a painfully funny reminder of just what it was like to spend your summer holidays cold, damp but with sand between your toes.
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Backwards in High Heels
Sarah Vine & Tania Kindersley
£14.99A book for women who never got around to perfecting the art of domestic divinity but would quite like to be able to cook supper for six without having a nervous breakdown; who never quite mastered Cosmo's 101 ways to please your man, but don't want the embarrassment, not to say inconvenience, of him running off with a 19-year-old Russian supermodel. It's your mother, your best friend, your guru and your shrink wrapped up in book form, with jokes.It's the antidote to every stupid, boring, reductive magazine article you've ever read, or every silly, hair-twirling, chick lit confection about girls called Arabella who marry bankers and live in Gstaad.
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The Rough Guide to Girl Stuff
Kaz Cooke
£13.99"The Rough Guide to Girl Stuff" is packed with everything a girl needs to know to get her through the teen years. From friends, body changes, clothes school stress, exercise and sex to smoking, embarrassment, dieting, guys, drinking, drugs and heartbreak. Not to mention how to beat bullies and mean girls, earn money, find new friends and get on with your family. Written by award winning author Kaz Cooke, in extensive consultation with medical, psychological and practical experts; "The Rough Guide to Girl Stuff" provides a wealth of practical tips and non-judgemental advice for teens (and their parents)."Girl Stuff" is split in to four key themes: Body, Head, Heart and On the Go and each chapter includes facts, hints, inspiring lists, hundreds of quotes from real girls, and details of websites and books for useful tips if you want to find out more. Designed to be a friend through the teenage years, "The Rough Guide to Girl Stuff" will be your best friend through every change and challenge.
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The Gruffalo
Julia Donaldson
£5.99"A gruffalo? What's a gruffalo?"
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"A gruffalo! Why, didn't you know? He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws."
A rhyming story of a mouse and a monster. Little mouse goes for a walk in a dangerous forest. To scare off his enemies, he invents tales of a fantastical creature called the Gruffalo. Imagine his surprise when he meets the real Gruffalo!
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