Summer Reads

Widely heralded as a "masterful" (The Washington Post) and "essential" (Slate) history of the modern American metropolis, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law offers "the most forceful argument ever published on how federal, state, and local governments...

'A delicious, diverse, genre-bending gothic, as smart as it is spooky' --  Chloe Benjamin During your three years at Catherine House you will have no contact with those in the outside world.Each of our students has been selected as someone who belongs...

An old adage says there are really only two stories: a man goes on a voyage, and a stranger arrives in town. This is the third: a woman breaks the rules . . .Set in a thinly disguised sixteenth-century England, Megan Campisi's The Sin Eater is a...

When violinist Anna Sun accidentally achieves career success with a viral YouTube video, she finds herself incapacitated and burned out from her attempts to replicate that moment. And when her longtime boyfriend announces he wants an open relationship...

The result of three decades of exhaustive research, Payne’s monumental biography of the seminal civil rights leader is packed with fresh insight gleaned from countless interviews and testimony with figures who knew Malcolm X intimately. Winner of the...

(Available after 3-20 days)Leila has made it most of the way through Armstead Academy without having a crush on anyone, which is something of a relief. As an Iranian American, she's different enough; if word got out that she liked girls, life would be...

In the dark beside me, she smelled of sweat and sunshine and vanilla and on that thin-mooned night I could see little more than her silhouette, but even in the dark, I could see her eyes - fierce emeralds. And not just beautiful, but hot too. BEFORE...

One of Betches' 7 Books by Black Authors You Need to Read This Summer One of Elite Daily's Books Featuring Interracial Relationships You Should Read In 2020One of Marie Claire's 2020 Books You Should Add to Your Reading List When a Nigerian woman falls...

AN INSTANT #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERBeautiful World, Where Are You is a new novel by Sally Rooney, the bestselling author of Normal People and Conversations with Friends.Alice, a novelist, meets Felix, who works in a warehouse, and asks him if he’d...

(Available after 31 September 2021)'Thubron on top form. Richly detailed, immaculately written and full of insights and encounters that bring a complex corner of the world to life'  -- Michael PalinA dramatic and ambitious new journey for our greatest...

A Good Morning America Book Club Pick and New York Times Bestseller!From debut author Asha Lemmie, "a lovely, heartrending story about love and loss, prejudice and pain, and the sometimes dangerous, always durable ties that link a family together."...

An attempt on an ageing billionaire's life unlocks a lifetime of dark secrets in the sixteenth electrifying case for Paris' maverick Inspector Gamache. On their first night in Paris, the Gamaches gather for a family dinner with Armand's godfather,...

With her uncanny ability to provoke a profound emotional reaction in her readers, Picoult delivers another slice of brilliantly affecting storytelling with this story of a plane crash survivor at a crossroads in their life. Jodi Picoult's stunning...

Illuminating and absorbing, Black Spartacus is a definitive new biography of Toussaint Louverture – a revolutionary slave hero, military mastermind and the first leader of the independent Black state of Haiti. Winner of the Wolfson History...

This stunningly illustrated and deeply researched volume unravels the multi-layered story of Ravenna – once the capital of the Western Roman Empire and the cultural and political hub of early medieval Europe. Shortlisted for the Wolfson History...

McCarthy’s ground-breaking and at times shocking volume charts the history of British working mothers, and the evolution of public attitudes towards female breadwinners in the last hundred years. Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize 2021 A...

From the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria to the Windrush papers, Burning the Books charts the extraordinary history of hostility towards knowledge, and of those who have fought to preserve it.  Shortlisted for the Wolfson History...

Based on a true story, A Room Made of Leavesbuilds an evocative narrative of oppression and desire amidst the harsh realities of an Australian penal colony.   It is 1788. When twenty-one-year-old Elizabeth marries the arrogant and hot-headed soldier...

Relating the extraordinary story of a Japanese woman who defied social conventions to forge her own path in life, Stranger in the Shogun’s City is also a fascinating window on the birth of Tokyo as a modern metropolis. Shortlisted for the Baillie...

In this riveting biography, veteran journalist Zachary D. Carter unearths the lost legacy of one of history's greatest minds. John Maynard Keynes's vibrant, deeply human vision of democracy, art, and the good life has been obscured by technical debates,...