You may have to register before you can download all our books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
An extraordinarily brave memoir about faith, family, shame and addiction - an Observer, New Statesman and Sunday Times Book of the Year Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of a minister in an evangelical Christian church. It was a childhood fraught with bitter family conflict and the fear of damnation. After a devastating loss of faith in his late teens, Matt began his search for salvation elsewhere, eventually becoming addicted to crack and heroin - an ordeal that stretched over a decade and culminated in a period of hopeless darkness. Recklessly honest, and as funny as it is grave, Original Sins is an extraordinary memoir of faith, family, shame and addiction. It's about looking for answers ...
Ciccio already has many problems: romantic failure, an older brother who seems intent on breaking the heart of every beautiful woman in São Paulo, a distant and larger-than-life father. When Ciccio finds, among the many of his father’s books that line the walls of their house, a troubling letter dated ‘December 21, 1931. Berlin’, his existential crisis only intensifies. It seems that his father once had a child with another woman – a German son whose fate remains unclear. Ciccio sets out on a mission to locate his lost half-brother, and to win the respect of his father. But as Brazil's military government cracks down on dissent, and rumours of arrests and disappearances spread, whil...
__________________________________________ 'One of the funniest, most finely achieved comic novels, even by her own standard ... I think it’s a masterpiece.' ALI SMITH ‘I think Nicola Barker is incapable of a dull page. [Her work] is unified by its spirit of adventure.’ KEVIN BARRY How long does it take to change the world? Could it happen in approximately twenty minutes? Charles, a forty-year-old teddy bear maker, is trying to sell his late mother's house, helped by his estate agent Avigail (who thinks Charles is an imbecile). The prospective buyers: the fearsome Wang Shu - who has no desire to make idle chit-chat - and her downtrodden daughter, Ying Yue. During the twenty-minute view...
'One of the greats' - Lucy Caldwell, author of Intimacies 'Comic brilliance' - Sinéad Gleeson, author of Constellations 'Ingenious' - The Irish Times 'Daring, funny, heartbreaking' - Observer Following the prize-winning Sweet Home, Wendy Erskine's Belfast is once again illuminated. Meet Drew Lord Haig, called on to sing an obscure hit from his youth at a paramilitary event. Meet Max as he recalls an eventful journey to a Christian film festival. And Mrs Dallesandro who dreams of being a teenager again as she sits in a tanning salon on her wedding anniversary. In these stories, Erskine's characters' wishes and hopes often fall short of their grasp. Brilliantly drawn, Dance Move is about the ...
Starting with Bad Behavior in the 1980s, Mary Gaitskill has been writing about gender relations with searing, even prophetic honesty. In This Is Pleasure, she considers our present moment through the lens of a particular #MeToo incident. The effervescent, well-dressed Quin, a successful book editor and fixture on the New York arts scene, has been accused of repeated unforgivable transgressions toward women in his orbit. But are they unforgivable? And who has the right to forgive him? To Quin’s friend Margot, the wrongdoing is less clear. Alternating Quin’s and Margot’s voices and perspectives, Gaitskill creates a nuanced tragicomedy, one that reveals her characters as whole persons—hurtful and hurting, infuriating and touching, and always deeply recognizable. Gaitskill has said that fiction is the only way that she could approach this subject because it is too emotionally faceted to treat in the more rational essay form. Her compliment to her characters—and to her readers—is that they are unvarnished and real. Her belief in our ability to understand them, even when we don’t always admire them, is a gesture of humanity from one of our greatest contemporary writers.
'Poignant' Sunday Times'Gripping.' Metro'Fascinating.' The Times'Enrapturing.' Red MagazineMiss Dilys Barltrop is a devoted member of The Panacea Society, a cult populated almost entirely by virtuous single women. When she strikes up a friendship with Grace - a new recruit - God finally seems to be smiling upon her. But Dilys is wary of her leader's zealotry, and fearful of those who watch her every move, hoping for a sign of the deep and terrible failings she struggles to keep hidden. Faith is supplanted by doubt, and as both women come to question what is true and fear what is real, Dilys will have to learn the true cost of absolute devotion...
From the acclaimed author of Immigrant, Montana comes a one-of-a-kind novel about memory, politics, a world of lies, and the ways in which truth can be not only stranger than fiction, but a fiction of its own. When a writer named Satya attends a prestigious artists’ retreat, he finds the pressures of the outside world won’t let up: the US president rages online; a dangerous virus envelops the globe; and the twenty-four-hour news cycle throws fuel on every fire. These Orwellian interruptions begin to crystallize into an idea for his new novel, Enemies of the People, about the lies we tell ourselves and each other. Satya scours his life for moments where truth bends toward the imagined, an...
Tackle the challenges of memoir writing and share your story. 'Cathy is the person who first told me to write about my mental health when I was nervous to do so. She is a great writer herself and this is brilliant.' - Matt Haig, author of Reasons to Stay Alive Why do we want to write and what stops us? How do we fight the worry that no-one will care what we have to say? What can we do to overcome the obstacles in our way? Sunday Times bestselling author Cathy Rentzenbrink shows you how to tackle all this and more in Write It All Down, a guide to putting your life on the page. Complete with a compendium of advice from amazing writers such as Dolly Alderton, Adam Kay and Candice Carty-Williams...
In this finely wrought memoir of life in postcolonial Pakistan, Suleri intertwines the violent history of Pakistan's independence with her own most intimate memories—of her Welsh mother; of her Pakistani father, prominent political journalist Z.A. Suleri; of her tenacious grandmother Dadi and five siblings; and of her own passage to the West. "Nine autobiographical tales that move easily back and forth among Pakistan, Britain, and the United States. . . . She forays lightly into Pakistani history, and deeply into the history of her family and friends. . . . The Suleri women at home in Pakistan make this book sing."—Daniel Wolfe, New York Times Book Review "A jewel of insight and beauty. ...
CHOSEN AS BOOK OF THE MONTH BY AFRORI BOOKS FEATURED ON BBC RADIO 4: OPEN BOOK 'It's hard not to fall for the main character . . . you can see the car crash coming, but you can't look away' CLAIRE FULLER 'A brilliantly crafted story about class and race, and the failure of society to catch children who fall through the cracks' INDEPENDENT Kai lives on a rural council estate in Somerset with his three older sisters, and his mum who is being led into an addiction by his troubled father. Kai adores three things: his dad, his friend Saffie and the school rabbit Flopsy - and is full of ambition to be the fastest runner in Middledown Primary. But Kai's natural optimism and energy collide with an adult world he doesn't understand. And when his life drifts towards an event that will change everything, will his love of nature and the wild rabbits in the woods provide him with the resilience he needs to overcome the odds? 'A heartfelt novel about poverty, race and trauma' GUARDIAN 'A brilliant debut; vivid and compelling' JENNI FAGAN