Here are six new titles that we have been enjoying during our summer holidays:
by Claudia Piñeiro, translated by Frances Riddle
£12.99
Set in: Argentina
Fifteen years after killing her husband’s lover, Ines is fresh out of prison and trying to put together a new life. Her old friend Manca is out now too, and they’ve started a business – FFF, or Females, Fumigation, and Flies – dedicated to pest control and private investigation, by women, for women. But Senora Bonar, one of their clients, wants Ines to do more than kill bugs – she wants her expertise, and her criminal past, to help her kill her husband’s lover, too.
This is Pineiro at her wry, earthy best, alive to all the ways we shape ourselves to be understandable, to be understood, by family and love and other hostile forces.
by Sanaka Hiiragi, translated by Jesse Kirkwood
£14.99
Set in: A Japanese tale set in a magical realm
In a cosy photography studio in the mountains between this world and the next, someone is waking up as if from a dream. A kind man will hand them a hot cup of tea and gently explain that, having reached the end of their life, they have one final task.
There is a stack of photos on their lap, one for every day of their life, and now they must choose the pictures that capture their most treasured memories, which will be placed in a beautiful lantern. Once completed, it will be set spinning, and their cherished moments will flash before their eyes, guiding them to another world.
But, like our most thumbed-over photographs, our favourite memories become faded with age, so each visitor to the studio has the chance to choose one day to return to and photograph afresh.
Extraordinarily moving and wise, this is a beautiful Japanese tale about the people that make us and the moments that change us.
by Elif Shafak
£18.99
Set in: Iraq, London & Turkey
This is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers, and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.
In the ruins of Nineveh, that ancient city of Mesopotamia, there lies hidden in the sand fragments of a long-forgotten poem, the Epic of Gilgamesh.
In Victorian London, at the edge of the dirt-black Thames, Arthur’s only chance of escaping poverty is his brilliant memory. When his gift earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, Arthur’s world opens up far beyond the slums, with one book soon sending him across the seas: Nineveh and Its Remains.
In 2014 Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptised with water brought from the holy sit of Lalish in Iraq. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon Narin and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.
In 2018 London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage when an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.
A dazzling feat of storytelling that spans centuries, continents and cultures, entwined by rivers, rains, and waterdrops.
The Voyage Home
by Pat Baker
£20
Set in: Ancient Greece
The exhilarating follow-up to Pat Barker’s The Women of Troy and The Silence of the Girls
After ten blood-filled years, the war is over. Troy lies in smoking ruins as the victorious Greeks fill their ships with the spoils of battle. Alongside the treasures looted are the many Trojan women captured by the Greeks – among them the legendary prophetess Cassandra, and her watchful maid, Ritsa. Enslaved as concubine – war-wife – to King Agamemnon, Cassandra is plagued by visions of his death – and her own – while Ritsa is forced to bear witness to both Cassandra’s frenzies and the horrors to come.
Meanwhile, awaiting the fleet’s return is Queen Clytemnestra, vengeful wife of Agamemnon. Heart-shattered by her husband’s choice to sacrifice their eldest daughter to the gods in exchange for a fair wind to Troy, she has spent this long decade plotting retribution, in a palace haunted by child-ghosts.
As one wife journeys toward the other, united by the vision of Agamemnon’s death, one thing is certain: this long-awaited homecoming will change everyone’s fates forever.
by Kate Atkinson
£22
Set in: Yorkshire
Ex-detective Jackson Brodie is staving off a bad case of midlife malaise when he is called to a sleepy Yorkshire town, and the seemingly tedious matter of a stolen painting. But one theft leads to another, including the disappearance of a valuable Turner from Burton Makepeace, home to Lady Milton and her family. Once a magnificent country house, Burton Makepeace has now partially been converted into a hotel, hosting Murder Mystery weekends.
As paying guests, a vicar, an ex-army officer, impecunious aristocrats, and old friends converge, we are treated a fiendishly clever mystery; one that pays homage to the masters of the genre-from Agatha Christie to Dorothy Sayers.
Brilliantly inventive, with all of Atkinson’s signature wit, wordplay and narrative brio, Death at the Sign of the Rook may be Jackson Brodie’s most outrageous and memorable case yet.
by Harriet Constable
£16.99
Set in: Venice
A dazzling historical debut set in eighteenth-century Venice, about the woman written out of the story of one of history’s greatest musical masterpieces.
Anna Maria may have no name, no fortune, no family. But she has her ambition, and her talent. Her best hope lies in her teacher, Antonio Vivaldi. Soon she is his star pupil. But as Anna Maria’s star rises, not everyone is happy. Because Anna Maria’s shining light is threatening to eclipse that of her mentor…
She will leave her mark, whatever it takes. And her story will be heard.