All That Glitters

Our Waterstones Book of the Year 2018, now available in paperback, is the ultimate contemporary, coming-of-age romance. Capturing the zeitgeist with all the skill and subtlety of her debut, Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney’s Normal People follows the intersecting story of Marianne and Connell as they navigate the changing landscape of their relationship into adulthood. Both a study of how one person can irrevocably shape another, and a profound examination of love, power and influence, it is the novel of our time.

Award-winning crime fiction stalwart, Chris Brookmyre, and anaesthetist Dr Marisa Haetzman, have paired up under the pseudonymous guise of Ambrose Parry to deliver a vividly-drawn historical thriller, set in 19^th-century Edinburgh. As the body count rises in the city’s Old Town, a medical student with everything to prove and a housemaid with everything to lose find their lives intertwining as they hunt for answers. The perfect read for fans of Andrew Taylor, The Way of All Flesh is a thriller that’s unafraid to get its hands dirty, peeling back the veneer of well-heeled Edinburgh society to reveal the rotten heart beneath.  

Welcome to the salt-stained, haddock-scented shores of Eerie-on-Sea and the mysterious corridors of the Grand Nautilus Hotel, where people tell stories of legendary sea-monster, the Malamander. Here 12-year-old Herbert Lemon - an official Lost-and-Founder - is employed to restore lost possessions to their rightful owners. But when he collides with lost girl Violet Parma, he finds himself in very fishy waters indeed. Echoing Lemony Snicket in its blend of quirky humour, gothic storytelling and suspense-filled drama, Malamander is children’s storytelling at its nautical best.  

Echoes of Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale and Shakespeare’s King Lear haunt the pages of Sophie Mackintosh’s Man Booker Prize-longlisted, dystopian debut. Kept far from the outside world, on an isolated island, Grace, Lia and Sky grow up learning harsh lessons about the world of men and their own capacity for cruelty. Their father, the autocratic King, abruptly goes missing, three men wash up on their shore, and the walls built between the girls and the outside world begin to crumble. Told in brilliantly clear prose, The Water Cure is a transporting, otherworldly novel that lingers long in the imagination.