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'Delightfully subversive, I loved it' RED

The darkly funny new novel from Polari Prize-shortlisted author Crystal Jeans, inspired in part by Dickens' Great Expectations...

It's 1924, and the village of Skimpole is full of secrets.

When Anastasia's mother dies, she must move in with 'the Aunt' - a writer, too fearsome for a first name, who lives in a dilapidated mansion with her dogs.

But mysteries abound: who wrote the raunchy love letters she discovers in the Aunt's bedroom, signed 'Big Willy'? Why do the villagers hate the Aunt so much? And how did Anastasia's father, who passed before she was born, really die?

When the Aunt's friends arrive at the house one summer, wreathed in cigarette smoke and an air of debauchery, Anastasia may be closer to finding answers - but the truth will turn her world upside down...

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BY THE BESTSELLING, PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE HANDMAID'S TALE

'Atwood has never written better than in this novel of glittering breadth and dark, eerie depths' SUNDAY TIMES

'As smart as anything Atwood has written, and she is always smart' NEW YORK TIMES

Zenia is beautiful, smart and greedy, by turns manipulative and vulnerable, needy and ruthless, a man's dream and a woman's nightmare. She is also dead. Just to make sure, Tony, Roz and Charis, who first met and suffered her as university students in the sixties, are there for the funeral. But five years on, as the three women share an indulgent, sisterly lunch, the unthinkable happens; Zenia is back.

'Atwood's plotting is masterful, and her humor is razor-edged, sexy, and raucous' WASHINGTON POST

'Vividly written, acutely observed and very possibly the most intelligently tongue-in-cheek novel of the year' SALMON RUSHDIE

'An absorbing, high-speed read, the prose burnished with the author's characteristic verve, wit and insight' INDEPENDENT

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'A work of genius' Philip Hoare
'One of the best things I've read in many many years' Hilton Als
'Beautifully provocative ... the most compelling exploration of life, death, love and resistance that I've read for a very long time' Eimear McBride

A story of loss and grief, sex and love, and refusing to relinquish dreams
He said he would understand if it was too much for me, that I could leave him, that I was young, I should be living, I said to him, I am living.

Johnny Grant faces stark life decisions. Seeking answers, he looks back to his relationship with Jerry Field. When they met, nearly thirty years ago, Johnny was 19, Jerry was 45. They fell in love and made a life on their own terms in Jerry's flat: 1, Nova Scotia House. Johnny is still there today - but Jerry is gone, and so is the world they knew.

As Johnny's mind travels between then and now, he begins to remember stories of Jerry's youth: of experiments in living; of radical philosophies; of the many possibilities of love, sex and friendship before the AIDS crisis devastated the queer community. Slowly, he realizes what he must do next--and attempts to restore ways of being that could be lost forever.

Nova Scotia House takes us to the heart of a relationship, a community and an era. It is both a love story and a lament; bearing witness to the enduring pain of the AIDS pandemic and honouring the joys and creativity of queer life. Intimate, visionary, and profoundly original, it marks the debut of a vibrant new voice in contemporary fiction, and a writer with a liberating new story to tell.

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Shy

by Max Porter

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