Fourth Estate

Butter

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

Fresh Complaint

AN OBSERVER BOOK OF THE YEAR

The first-ever collection of short stories from Jeffrey Eugenides, the bestselling author of Middlesex, The Virgin Suicides and The Marriage Plot, explores characters in the midst of personal and national emergencies.

Kendall has failed as a poet, and now embezzlement seems like his next-best career option. Rebecca has failed to find customers for her mouse figurines, now the bailiffs are coming for her husband. Diane has failed to meet ‘the one’, but is thrilled to have found her path to motherhood through a turkey baster.

With his trademark humour, compassion and complex understanding of what it is to be human, Jeffrey Eugenides’ stories elevate muddling through into something triumphant.

The Marriage Plot

The new novel from the bestselling author of Middlesex and The Virgin Suicides.

Brown University, 1982. Madeleine Hanna, dutiful English student and incurable romantic, is writing her thesis on Jane Austen and George Eliot – authors of the great marriage plots. As Madeleine studies the age-old motivations of the human heart, real life, in the form of two very different men, intervenes.

Leonard Bankhead, brilliant scientist and charismatic loner, attracts Madeleine with an intensity that she seems powerless to resist. Meanwhile her old friend Mitchell Grammaticus, a theology student searching for some kind of truth in life, is certain of at least one thing – that he and Madeleine are destined to be together.

But as all three leave college, they will have to figure out how they want their own marriage plot to end.

Middlesex (Collins Modern Classics)

Introducing the Collins Modern Classics, a series featuring some of the most significant books of recent times, books that shed light on the human experience – classics which will endure for generations to come.

So begins the breathtaking story of Calliope Stephanides and her truly unique family secret, born on the slopes of Mount Olympus and passed on through three generations.

Growing up in 70s Michigan, Calliope’s special inheritance will turn her into Cal, the narrator of this intersex, inter-generational epic of immigrant life in 20th century America.

Middlesex won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Stressilient: How To Beat Stress And Build Resilience

’…short, sharp guide to managing your mind.’ THE SUNDAY TIMES STYLE

‘If I could inject it, I would.’ REFINERY29

‘Brilliant’ THE TELEGRAPH

Manage your mind. Handle your emotions. Concentrate on what matters in life.

So many of us feel stressed in our daily lives but lack the ability to respond to life’s hurdles effectively and overcome these challenges. We can build resilience to stress by taking action to live our lives in a more meaningful way.

The answer is to become stressilient.

Dr Sam Akbar will show you how. As a clinical psychologist with over ten years of experience, Dr Sam draws from her own professional expertise to provide sensitive and realistic guidance to feel calmer, less stressed, and more resilient to life’s challenges.

From understanding how your brain works, managing your emotions and challenging your thought-processes, to opening up your perspective and having more self-compassion, Stressilient offers an indispensable, easy and effective go-to guide to help you get from surviving to thriving.

Mrs March

‘Nastily good fun’ Metro

SET TO BECOME A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING ELIZABETH MOSS

Shirley Jackson meets Ottessa Moshfegh meets My Sister the Serial Killer in a brilliantly unsettling and darkly funny debut novel full of suspense and paranoia

George March’s latest novel is a smash hit. None could be prouder than Mrs. March, his dutiful wife, who revels in his accolades and relishes the lifestyle and status his success brings.

A creature of routine and decorum, Mrs. March lives an exquisitely controlled existence on the Upper East Side. Every morning begins the same way, with a visit to her favourite patisserie to buy a loaf of olive bread, but her latest trip proves to be her last when she suffers an indignity from which she may never recover: an assumption by the shopkeeper that the protagonist in George March’s new book – a pathetic sex worker, more a figure of derision than desire – is based on Mrs. March.

One casual remark robs Mrs. March not only of her beloved olive bread but of the belief that she knew everything about her husband – and herself – sending her on an increasingly paranoid journey, one

A razor-sharp exploration of the fragility of identity and the smothering weight of expectations, Mrs. March heralds the arrival of a wicked and wonderful new voice.

Magpie

'Completely, terrifyingly BRILLIANT’

Marian Keyes, author of Grown Ups

‘I didn’t want it to end’

Lisa Taddeo, author of Three Women and Animal

‘Magnificent: I read it in one sitting’

Kate Mosse, author of The City of Tears

When Marisa meets Jake, everything falls into place. But then their new lodger Kate arrives.

Something isn’t right about her. It’s the way she looks at Jake, keeps her toothbrush right next to theirs and constantly asks questions about the baby they are trying for. Or maybe it’s all in Marisa’s head. That’s what Jake thinks. And she trusts him, doesn’t she?

But Marisa knows something is wrong, and she is determined to find out why, even if it costs her everything.

'A very elegant, tense, literary thriller'

Sarah Vaughan, author of Anatomy of a Scandal

‘Utterly engrossing, a thick sense of dread unfurling from every page’

Refinery29

‘I literally couldn’t put this down’

Sara Collins, author of The Confessions of Frannie Langton

‘A compelling, twisting read’

Matt Haig, author of The Midnight Library

‘Sharp, twisty … Impossible to put down’

Daily Mail

‘A pulse-quickening tale’

Stylist

‘Sharp and sinister’

Mail on Sunday

‘A pacy, stylish thriller’

Observer

‘Scintillating’

The Sunday Times, Thriller of the Month

‘A compassionately crafted psychological drama’

Harper’s Bazaar

‘I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough’

Prima Magazine

‘Be prepared for a sleight-of-hand-twist that will leave you gasping’

Red Magazine

Sunday Times bestseller 06/09/2021

Lean Fall Stand

A WHITE REVIEW BOOK OF THE YEAR

The highly anticipated new novel from the Costa-award winning, three-times Booker-longlisted author of Reservoir 13.

Doc Wright could be two steps or two miles from his team. In an ice storm, distance loses meaning. No one can see. No one answers their radio. All he can do is keep going, but something has gone wrong inside his head.

Back home, he is the only one who can explain what happened to them in Antarctica. But after what changed on the ice, everything has lost its meaning. Now his wife, Anna, must become his carer. Now he must find a new way to be in the world. All he can do is try to tell his story - even if words fail him.

'The most gripping piece of writing I've read in a long time: Sit. Read. Applaud' Jarvis Cocker

'Extraordinarily tense and atmospheric' Telegraph

'Exceptional... I absolutely loved it' David Nicholls, author of Sweet Sorrow

'Gripping, moving, magnificent' Kamila Shamsie, author of Home Fire

Do Not Disturb: The Story Of A Political Murder And An African Regime Gone Bad

AN ECONOMIST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021

A new book from the award winning author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz,Do Not Disturb explores the controversial career of Paul Kagame and the legacy of the Rwandan genocide

‘A withering assault on the murderous regime of Kagame, and a melancholy love song to the last dreams of the African Great Lakes’ John Le Carre

Do Not Disturb is a dramatic recasting of the modern history of Africa’s Great Lakes region, an area blighted by the greatest genocide of the twentieth century. This bold retelling, vividly sourced by direct testimony from key participants, tears up the traditional script.

In the old version, an idealistic group of young rebels overthrows a genocidal regime in Kigali, ushering in an era of peace and stability that makes Rwanda the donor darling of the West, winning comparisons with Switzerland and Singapore. The new version examines afresh questions which dog the recent past: Why do so many ex-rebels scoff at official explanations of who fired the missile that killed the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi? Why didn’t the mass killings end when the rebels took control? Why did those same rebels, victory secured, turn so ruthlessly on one another?

Michela Wrong uses the story of Patrick Karegeya, once Rwanda’s head of external intelligence and a quicksilver operator of supple charm, to paint the portrait of a modern African dictatorship created in the chilling likeness of Paul Kagame, the president who sanctioned his former friend’s murder.

Girl In The Walls

She doesn’t exist. She can’t exist.

‘A uniquely gothic tale about grief, belonging and hiding in plain sight’ Jess Kidd, author of Things in Jars

’Those who live in the walls must adjust, must twist themselves around in their home, stretching themselves until they’re as thin as air. Not everyone can do what they can.

Elise knows every inch of the house. She knows which boards will creak. She knows where the gaps are in the walls. She knows which parts can take her in, hide her away. It’s home, after all. The home her parents made for her. And home is where you stay, no matter what.

Eddie calls the same house his home. Eddie is almost a teenager now. He must no longer believe in the girl he sometimes sees from the corner of his eye. He needs her to disappear. But when his older brother senses her, too, they are faced with a question: how do they get rid of someone they aren’t sure even exists?

And, if they cast her out, what other threats might they invite in?

My Fourth Time, We Drowned: Seeking Refuge On The World's Deadliest Migration Route

WINNER OF THE ORWELL PRIZE 2022

The Western world has turned its back on refugees, fuelling one of the most devastating human rights disasters in history.

In August 2018, Sally Hayden received a Facebook message. 'Hi sister Sally, we need your help,' it read. 'We are under bad condition in Libya prison. If you have time, I will tell you all the story.' More messages followed from more refugees. They told stories of enslavement and trafficking, torture and murder, tuberculosis and sexual abuse. And they revealed something else: that they were all incarcerated as a direct result of European policy.

From there began a staggering investigation into the migrant crisis across North Africa. This book follows the shocking experiences of refugees seeking sanctuary, but it also surveys the bigger picture: the negligence of NGOs and corruption within the United Nations. The economics of the twenty-first-century slave trade and the EU's bankrolling of Libyan militias. The trials of people smugglers, the frustrations of aid workers, the loopholes refugees seek out and the role of social media in crowdfunding ransoms. Who was accountable for the abuse? Where were the people finding solutions? Why wasn't it being widely reported?

At its heart, this is a book about people who have made unimaginable choices, risking everything to survive in a system that wants them to be silent and disappear.

MORE PRAISE

'Compassionate, brave, enraging, beautifully written and incredibly well researched. Hayden exposes the truth' OLIVER BULLOUGH

'Blistering' LINDSEY HILSUM

'The most riveting, detailed and damning account' CHRISTINA LAMB

'One of the most important testaments of this awful time in life's history. It is both heartbreaking and stoic. I cry reading any page of it' EDNA O'BRIEN

Still Life

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

‘Sheer joy' Graham Norton

‘Utterly beautiful … filled with hope’ Joanna Cannon, author of Three Things About Elsie

’A gorgeous, generous story of kind hearts and kindred spirits’ Daily Mirror

From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of the families we forge and the friendships that make us.

1944, Italy. As bombs fall around them, two strangers meet in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa and share an extraordinary evening.

Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner a 64-year-old art historian living life on her own terms. She has come to salvage paintings from the wreckage of war and relive memories of her youth when her heart was stolen by an Italian maid in a particular room with a view. Ulysses’ chance encounter with Evelyn will transform his life – and all those who love him back home in London – forever.

Uplifting, sweeping and full of unforgettable characters, Still Life is a novel about beauty, love, family and friendship.

‘THE most beautiful book … it will stay with me a long time’ Sara Cox, BBC Two’s Between the Covers

‘Extraordinary . . . my book of the year’ Liz Nugent, author of Our Little Cruelties

‘Moving, wise, poetic and funny’ Daily Mail

‘Winman’s pages teem with boisterous, exuberant life’ Sunday Times

Early Morning Riser

‘Gorgeous. Very, very funny in a knowing wry way but so tender, so beautiful. I loved all the characters.’ Marian Keyes

But he has also slept with nearly every woman in Boyne City. Jane sees Duncan's old girlfriends everywhere – at restaurants, at the grocery store and his ex-wife, Aggie, still has him mow her lawn.

But everything changes with one tragic accident. Now her life is permanently intertwined with them all and she knows she will never have Duncan to herself.

But is it possible that a deeper kind of happiness is right in front of her eyes?

Let Me Tell You What I Mean

Twelve early pieces never before collected that offer an illuminating glimpse into the mind and process of Joan Didion.

Mostly drawn from the earliest part of her astonishing five-decade career, the wide-ranging pieces in this collection include Didion writing about a Gamblers Anonymous meeting, a visit to San Simeon, and a reunion of WWII veterans in Las Vegas, and about topics ranging from Nancy Reagan to Robert Mapplethorpe to Martha Stewart.

Here are subjects Didion has long written about – the press, politics, California robber baronsac, women, the act of writing, and her own self-doubt. Each piece is classic Didion: incisive and, in new light, stunningly prescient.

I Hate Men

The feminist book they tried to ban in France

But what if mistrusting men, disliking men – and yes, maybe even hating men – is, in fact, a useful response to sexism? What if such a response offers a way out of oppression, a means of resistance? What if it even offers a path to joy, solidarity and sisterhood?

In this sparkling essay, as mischievous and provocative as it is urgent and serious, Pauline Harmange interrogates modern attitudes to feminism and makes a rallying cry for women to find a greater love for each other – and themselves.

Brown Girls

ONE OF THE MOST ANTICIPATED BOOKS OF 2022 IN THE NEW YORK TIMES, GUARDIAN, INDEPENDENT, GLAMOUR, STYLIST, INEWS, SUNDAY TIMES STYLE, LITERARY FRICTION PODCAST AND MORE.

A fiercely poetic coming-of-age novel following a group of young women of colour in Queens, New York.

‘Brown Girls flows like a late night FM-radio dedication to the crew, the block, and the mission. This book’s a gift’ Paul Beatty, author of The Sellout

Brown Girls dives deep into the lives of a group of young women of colour growing up in Queens, New York. Here, streets echo with many languages, subways rumble above dollar stores and the briny scent of the ocean wafts in from Rockaway Beach. Here, girls like Nadira, Gabby, Naz, Trish, Angelique, and many others, struggle to reconcile their immigrant backgrounds with the American culture they come of age in. Here, they become friends for life. Or so they vow.

In this bold debut told in a uniquely lyrical voice, Daphne Palasi Andreades paints a stunning collective portrait of the journey from girlhood to adulthood, set against a backdrop of race, class, and marginalisation in America today. Brown Girls is an unforgettable love letter to women of colour everywhere from a daring new writer.

‘Joyous, bittersweet, hilarious … a coming of age story for us all’ Nikesh Shukla, author of Brown Baby

‘A song of celebration, of mourning, of rage, of fierce living’ Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Starling Days

‘If you liked LUSTER try BROWN GIRLS’Sunday Times Style

‘Attracting huge amounts of buzz … a lyrical, urgent voice’ ipaper, Ten best books to read in 2022

‘A cracker of a first novel’ Glamour

‘A sensation in the US’ Guardian

‘Transporting … not to be missed’ Stylist

‘A daring debut … fearless’ New York Times

Together: A Manifesto Against The Heartless World

‘If I had to choose just one book that I want everybody of any age to read at this moment in time, this would be it’ Brian Eno

‘Clear-eyed, frank, wise and joyous!’ Andrew Sean Greer

‘If you read only one book this year, then this must be it’ Sarah Winman

There is so much to be afraid of in our current moment: climate catastrophe, the rise of a new fascism, a virus that has reshaped the way we live. But something better is possible.

We can choose to turn away from an uncaring world and instead build a world where we stand compassionately as one.

In Together, award-winning political thinker, author and poet, Ece Temelkuran provides an inspiring manifesto for change, reveals fresh possibilities for the better world we might want to live in, and gives us a new vocabulary for the political action that the 21st century asks of humankind.

Sea State: A Memoir

‘Sea State marks the arrival of a gifted and exciting new voice’ Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13

SHORTLISTED FOR THE GORDON BURN PRIZE

’It’s extraordinary. It takes you places so few books do’Observer

‘Acidic, addictive reporting with a fictional veneer. Sea State’s writing alone is worth the admission price’Financial Times

Tabitha Lasley left her job, her relationship and London, and headed to Aberdeen to meet offshore oil rig workers. She wanted to see what men are like with no women around. She soon finds out what she is like with no one else around, save for itinerant men who spend half their lives stranded in the middle of the sea. Alone, and contemplating the wreckage of her former life, she dives into a relationship with the first rig worker she meets, a reckless affair that lays them both bare.

‘She has the skill, a Joan Didion kind of skill, of inflecting non-fiction material subjectively, a habit of assessing situations via her nervous system’ Andrew O’Hagan, author of Mayflies

Fat Chance: The Hidden Truth About Sugar, Obesity And Disease

Sugar is toxic, addictive and everywhere. So what chance do you have of living sugar-free?

With busy lives and little time left for cooking we find ourselves relying on a diet of processed food. But this is what’s responsible for our chronically expanding waistlines, soaring levels of diabetes and a catalogue of diseases.

Dr Robert Lustig reveals the truth about our sugar-laden food:

- Why conventional low-fat weight loss advice won’t work: not every calorie is the same, and skipping lunch doesn’t mean it’s ok to eat dessert

- Why too much sugar can cause serious illness even if you are not overweight

- How the food industry is filling our diets with hidden sugars – and which foods you must cut out to avoid them

- How governments are complacent about, and even complicit in, exacerbating our food debacle

He will radically change the way you see your food and give you more than a fat chance of a healthier, happier and smarter life!

Purple Hibiscus

The limits of fifteen-year-old Kambili’s world are defined by the high walls of her family estate and the dictates of her fanatically religious father. Her life is regulated by schedules: prayer, sleep, study, prayer.

When Nigeria is shaken by a military coup, Kambili’s father, involved mysteriously in the political crisis, sends her to live with her aunt. In this house, noisy and full of laughter, she discovers life and love – and a terrible, bruising secret deep within her family.

This extraordinary debut novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, author of ‘Half of a Yellow Sun’, is about the blurred lines between the old gods and the new, childhood and adulthood, love and hatred – the grey spaces in which truths are revealed and real life is lived.