Literary Fiction

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Trespasses

In 1970s Northern Ireland, as the Troubles bring violence and fear to everyday life, Cushla Lavery tries to build a future beyond the narrow confines of her small Catholic community. She teaches young children at a parochial school and helps run her family’s pub, all while caring for her troubled mother. One evening, she meets Michael Agnew, an older, married Protestant barrister known for defending IRA members. Despite the religious divisions and social dangers surrounding them, Cushla begins a passionate affair with him. But their private relationship unfolds against a landscape where loyalties are fiercely policed and even the smallest actions can have devastating consequences. When a young pupil’s father is brutally attacked, Cushla becomes caught in a chain of events that threatens the people she loves. Tender and unflinching, Trespasses explores forbidden love, sectarian hatred, and the impossible choices faced by ordinary people living through extraordinary violence.

United Kingdom 2022

Salt Slow

In her brilliantly inventive and haunting debut collection of stories, Julia Armfield explores bodies and the bodily, mapping the skin and bones of her characters through their experiences of isolation, obsession, love and revenge. Teenagers develop ungodly appetites, a city becomes insomniac overnight, and bodies are diligently picked apart to make up better ones. The mundane worlds of schools and sleepy sea-side towns are invaded and transformed, creating a landscape which is constantly shifting to hold on to its inhabitants. Blurring the mythic and the gothic with the everyday, salt slow considers characters in motion – turning away, turning back or simply turning into something new entirely.

United Kingdom 2022

The List

One anonymous post. One devastating accusation. One month until the wedding. Ola Olajide has built her career exposing powerful men accused of misconduct. As a successful journalist at Womxxxn magazine, she knows exactly what women should do when allegations surface—and what happens when they stay silent. Now, just weeks before her wedding, Ola wakes up to a message that threatens to destroy the future she has imagined: her fiancé, Michael Koranteng, has appeared on a viral online list of men accused of abusive behaviour. Until now, Ola and Michael have been the couple everyone admires. But as the allegations spread, their carefully curated love story begins to unravel. Ola must decide whether to stand by the man she loves or risk becoming the very kind of woman she has spent her career criticising. Meanwhile, Michael insists he is innocent, and the relentless online speculation leaves little room for uncertainty. Sharp, unsettling, and impossible to dismiss, The List explores what happens when the court of public opinion delivers its verdict before all the facts are known. Yomi Adegoke delves into the collision between feminism, accountability, loyalty, and the unforgiving machinery of social media. When the internet decides who you are, can the truth still save you?

United Kingdom 2023

Western Lane

Eleven-year-old Gopi lives in England with her father and two older sisters following the death of her mother. Struggling to express their grief, the family turns to squash, and Gopi gradually becomes consumed by the sport. The discipline of training provides structure and a way to connect with her father, but it also distances her from her sisters. As Gopi develops into a talented player, she discovers how competition, repetition, and physical movement can express emotions that words cannot. Maroo’s restrained prose captures the quiet complexities of family relationships, the isolation of grief, and the experience of growing up within a Gujarati immigrant family. Western Lane is a moving exploration of how people mourn differently and how shared routines can become a language of love and survival.

United Kingdom 2023

There Are Rivers in the Sky

There Are Rivers in the Sky

In There Are Rivers in the Sky, Elif Shafak weaves together the lives of three characters connected by water, memory, and the ancient city of Nineveh. In Victorian London, Arthur, a gifted boy born into poverty, develops a fascination with the Epic of Gilgamesh. In nineteenth-century Ottoman Mesopotamia, Narin, a young Yazidi girl, faces the threat of displacement as her community’s traditions and homeland come under pressure. In contemporary London, Zaleekhah, a hydrologist struggling with personal loss, becomes drawn into the histories of the Tigris and its surrounding landscapes. Moving across centuries and continents, the novel explores the enduring connections between human lives, ancient civilizations, and the natural world. Through its interwoven narratives, Shafak examines environmental destruction, cultural heritage, religious persecution, and the transformative power of water as a source of life, memory, and renewal.

Iraq United Kingdom 2024

A Thread of Light

A Thread of Light

London, 1941. As German bombers descend on the city, two women find themselves caught in a different struggle: the fight for Indian independence from British rule. Ruby, a lonely air raid warden, becomes involved with the India Forum, a group campaigning for India’s freedom. She has her own reasons for joining the movement, but her growing attraction to Satyajit, a charismatic and potentially dangerous freedom fighter, forces her to question her loyalties. Meanwhile, Kitty, an Indian lawyer who has left her family in Bombay to build a life in Britain with the man she loves, risks everything to help Indian men challenge wartime conscription. As their lives intersect, political tensions, personal betrayals, and the threat of violence push both women towards decisions that could change their futures forever. Set against the Blitz and India’s independence movement, A Thread of Light uncovers a lesser-known chapter of British wartime history. Through its intertwined stories of love, sacrifice, and resistance, the novel explores the complicated relationship between colonial power and freedom, asking what people are willing to risk for their beliefs and the people they love.

India United Kingdom 2025

The Book of I

In the year 825, a Viking raid leaves a remote Scottish island littered with the dead. Only three unlikely survivors remain: Martin, a young monk who escaped the massacre; Una, a beekeeper and mead maker freed from her abusive husband by the violence; and Grimur, an ageing Viking who survives being buried alive by his own companions. Stranded together on an island where trust seems impossible, the three begin building an unexpected life. Martin clings to his Christian faith, Una finds freedom in the rhythms of nature, and Grimur discovers that peace may offer something the battlefield never could. But can a fragile community survive when its members come from opposing worlds—and when the past refuses to stay buried? Set against the wild beauty of the Scottish coast, The Book of I blends brutal history with irreverent humour and surprising tenderness. David Greig explores faith, guilt, redemption, and the possibility of finding family in the most unlikely places. It is a story about what remains after destruction—and whether people who once stood on opposite sides can learn to live together.

United Kingdom 2025

The Original

A painting is burned to ashes. Years later, it mysteriously returns. And in a crumbling English country house, nothing—and no one—is quite what they seem. Oxfordshire, 1899. Grace Inderwick has spent most of her life as an unwanted guest in her wealthy uncle’s household. An outsider with a talent for copying paintings, she secretly turns her unusual skill into a way to earn money and imagine a life beyond the estate. But when her cousin Charles, presumed dead after disappearing at sea, suddenly returns, the family is thrown into turmoil. Some believe he is their long-lost relative; others suspect an impostor hoping to claim the family fortune. As Grace becomes entangled in the mystery, her own secrets threaten to surface. In a world where appearances can deceive and even love involves a kind of imitation, she must decide whom to trust—and who she wants to become. Atmospheric, witty, and full of Victorian intrigue, The Original explores the blurred boundaries between authenticity and deception, asking what makes a person truly original.

United Kingdom 2025

Stations

In a small Irish town in 1982, Róisín and Red form an intense bond as two sharp-minded teenagers who feel out of place in their own lives. Red is rebellious and troubled, while Róisín carries the pain of growing up with an absent father and a difficult home life. When Red’s encounter with the law forces him to leave Ireland for England, their connection survives across distance, becoming a fragile thread linking them through the years. Eventually, Róisín travels to London to visit her estranged father and finds Red again, moving into his squat in Pimlico. But the life he has chosen is darker and more complicated than she imagined, and the pair gradually drift apart. Even as their paths diverge, Róisín remains haunted by her unfulfilled passion for him. Moving between Ireland and London over decades, Stations explores first love, addiction, friendship, and the lasting consequences of youthful choices. It asks whether we can release the people who shaped us—and whether learning to love someone else begins with learning to love ourselves.

Ireland United Kingdom 2026

Sweet Pea

Sometimes, the family that saves us is the one we never expected to find. When Paulette arrives in England as a young girl, she leaves behind the grandmother who calls her Sweet Pea and teaches her that love and forgiveness should guide her life. Years later, at twenty-nine, Paulette seems close to everything she has dreamed of: a loving partner, a child, and a home of her own. But when tragedy shatters her plans, she is left to navigate grief and motherhood while trying to build a future for herself and her son, Bird. Then an unexpected encounter brings her face-to-face with Frank, the man responsible for the accident that killed the man she loved. Frank is struggling to raise his own young grandson, Nellie, alone. Despite the pain connecting their lives, Paulette finds herself drawn into the boy’s world, offering him the care and tenderness he desperately needs. As the children grow and the two families become intertwined, Paulette must confront the complicated boundaries between anger and compassion, justice and forgiveness. Set in 1970s England, Sweet Pea is a tender, emotionally rich story about motherhood, migration, grief, and the unexpected ways love can transform a life. It asks whether forgiveness means forgetting the past—or finding the strength to make room for something new.

United Kingdom Saint Kitts and Nevis 2026

The Squatters

Set in the affluent suburbs of Surrey, England, The Squatters follows Dalia Waheed, a second-generation immigrant who appears to have achieved the perfect life. Married to a British husband and surrounded by the comforts of an upper-middle-class community, Dalia nevertheless feels disconnected from the world she inhabits and longs to do something meaningful. While volunteering with a refugee resettlement organisation, Dalia meets Hajira, a heavily pregnant woman who has fled her home country with her husband in search of asylum in the United Kingdom. Moved by Hajira’s desperate circumstances and the inadequate accommodation provided to refugees, Dalia offers to help the couple find somewhere more suitable to live. What begins as a compassionate gesture soon spirals into a complicated conflict that threatens Dalia’s marriage, friendships, and place in her community. As tensions rise, she must confront the limits of her idealism and decide how much she is truly willing to sacrifice for another woman’s safety and dignity. Through the collision of these two families, Saba Brelvi explores displacement, belonging, motherhood, class privilege, and the moral responsibilities people have towards those seeking refuge. The novel asks difficult questions about compassion: whether it can survive when helping others threatens our own security, and what it really means to stand by our convictions.

United Kingdom 2026

My Husband and Other Rats

My Husband and Other Rats

Alison Solomon is facing a spectacular catalogue of midlife disasters. Her husband has left her for a younger woman, her elderly mother is struggling with dementia, and she has received a cancer diagnosis. As if that weren’t enough, a mysterious woman appears outside her house, and an actual rat seems to have moved into her kitchen. Encouraged by everyone around her to seek therapy, Alison embarks on a chaotic search for someone who can help her make sense of her unraveling life. With the support of sharp-witted friends, unexpected family revelations, and an eccentric rat catcher, she navigates heartbreak, grief, and the absurdities of everyday existence. Funny, tender, and refreshingly honest, My Husband and Other Rats explores the messiness of middle age, the resilience of women, and the possibility of finding laughter even when everything seems to be falling apart.

United Kingdom 2026