Tangerine Dreams: Summer Reads to Fill Your Tote Bag
We all need a break now and then. And maybe especially now. Even if you can't quite get there yet, let these reads evoke the summery holiday feels for a couple of hours. Sit back, relax & read.
For that extra "headed to the beach" feeling, why not snap up our brand-new summery tangerine tote bag for all your book (and more) toting needs.
Gorgeous food to make and share, supporting a great cause.
In the Garden: Essays on Nature and Growing
Whether you're an avid allotment planter or a keen window-ledge herber, or completely mystified by the actual growing of things, these essays will entrance you.
David Annand, Peterdown
Satire's not dead in David Annand's deft hands: this is literal fan fiction in which Peterdown United supporter Colin goes all out to save his team, their ground & the town from high-speed gentrification.
Oana Aristide, Under the Blue
An absolute trip, with AI babies, pandemics and climate change very much front of mind. This exhilarating debut novel is great company for those in-between times while travelling, or for curling up with while staying still.
Jeremy Atherton Lin, Gay Bar: Why We Went Out
In, out, or still unsure about gadding about, this is a great read whether you're coming home & coming down right now, remembering past glories (& glory holes), or just looking for a great read.
Percival Everett, Damned If I Do
Tall tales where a man walks into a cafe, wild goose car chases, good fishing stories, even a writer thinking about writing… this collection by an American master has everything to reel you in & feed you up.
Kaitlyn Greenidge, Libertie
Completely, utterly absorbing. Kaitlyn Greenidge plunges you into fully-realised worlds: the Civil War era in Brooklyn, at a rural Black college, and in middle-class Haiti, as one determined young woman moves through them. Phenomenal.
Ra Jarrar, Love is an Ex-Country
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas for a new generation, as queer Arab American trans femme Ra Jarrar travels through the muddled middle of the US, standing up to social media haters & finding love as he/she goes. Rip-roaring road tripping.
David Keenan, Monument Maker
KEENAN KLAXON! Lots going on here, as you'd expect, with a particular shout out to the secret initiatory cult that has its roots in macabre experiments in cryptozoology in pre-war Europe. Light summer fun.
Nina Mingya Powles, Small Bodies of Water
Winner of the inaugural Nan Shepherd Prize, Small Bodies of Water is a full body experience looking into "what are the edges of a body of water, where does it stop and where does it begin?" as Nina Mingya Powles told Katie Goh for The Skinny.
Nanjala Nyabola, Travelling While Black: Essays Inspired by a Life on the Move
As Ann Morgan writes, "Nyabola’s arguments are as fearless and intrepid as her journeys have been" in these wide-ranging essays – ranging in the sense of the places to which Nyabola travels, and of her exhilarating style relating her expansive perceptions.
Leone Ross, This One Sky Day
A novel in which pumpums go on their own adventures across the islands of Popisho is a holiday season must-read. Dive into the gorgeousness of this kaleidoscopic look at a community on the eve of a wedding, where secrets will out.
Anita Sethi, I Belong Here: A Journey Along the Backbone of Britain
Whether you're walking the Pennines or not, this is a moving, thoughtful and engaging consideration of who gets told they can walk and why that matters, with some great journeying reflections on the way.
Rivers Solomon, Sorrowland
A truly wild & rewilding book, no holds barred science fiction that takes on Church and state through the eyes & mind of a teenage mother becoming something… else, protecting her kids and her self-knowledge at all costs. A full-body read.
Jeff VanderMeer, Hummingbird Salamander
Clever, cinematic, compassionate cli-fi from a sci-fi master. Follow the taxidermied hummingbird on the trail of corruption and conspiracy as Jane puts together the pieces on why she's facing an urgent crisis that reflects our own. Gripping.
Samantha Walton, Everybody Needs Beauty: In Search of the Nature Cure
Lush with careful observations of experiences close and far, from suburban verges to Lourdes and icy mountains, Samantha Walton not only attends to how we're sold our own need for connection, but offers rich alternatives. A gift.
Venetia Welby, Dreamtime (signed pre-orders available for 1 Sept)
Cli-fi… with cats. And quests. And yearning, as Sol crosses half the world to find her father, a US marine stationed in Okinawa, amid poisoned, rising seas, where ghosts of both pasts and futures await.
