Books for your spring reading list
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You’ll not be short of fantastic books to dive into with this varied selection of the latest fiction and non-fiction books from Vintage. This spring selection features some of the most exciting names in fiction including Monique Roffey, Susan Stokes-Chapman and Sarah Perry. There are also some fascinating non-fiction books that delve into the history of ‘cunning folk’, the story of Roman coins and a look at the world of NHS psychiatry.
And for your chance to win all 11 books, scroll down to find the link to our competition page.
The Shadow Key by Susan Stokes-Chapman
Meirionydd, 1783. Dr Henry Talbot has been dismissed from his post in London. The only job he can find is in Wales where he can’t speak the language, belief in myth and magic is rife and the villagers treat him with suspicion. When Henry discovers his predecessor died under mysterious circumstances, he is determined to find answers.
Linette Tresilian has always suspected something is not quite right in the village, but it is through Henry’s investigations that a truth comes to light that will bind hers and Henry’s destinies together in ways neither thought possible.
Order the bookCunning Folk by Tabitha Stanmore
Imagine: it’s 1600 and you’ve lost your precious silver spoons – or perhaps your neighbour has stolen them. Or maybe your child has a fever. Or you’re facing trial. Or you’re looking for love… What do you do?
In medieval and early modern Europe, your first port of call might very well have been cunning folk: practitioners of ‘service magic’. Neither feared (like witches) nor venerated (like saints), they were essential to everyday life, a ubiquitous presence in a time when the supernatural was surprisingly mundane. For people from all walks of life, practical magic was a cherished resource with which to navigate life’s many challenges.
Historian Tabitha Stanmore will transport you to a time when magic was used day to day as a way to navigate life’s challenges and to solve problems of both trivial and deadly importance.
Order the bookEnlightenment by Sarah Perry
From the author of The Essex Serpent comes a story of love and astronomy told over the course of 20 years through the lives of two improbable best friends.
Thomas Hart and Grace Macauley are fellow worshippers at the Bethesda Baptist chapel in the small Essex town of Aldleigh. Though separated in age by three decades, the pair are kindred spirits – torn between their commitment to religion and their desire for more. But their friendship is threatened by the arrival of love.
Order the bookHunted by Abir Mukherjee
It’s a week before the presidential elections when a bomb goes off in an LA shopping mall.
In London, armed police storm Heathrow Airport and arrest Sajid Khan. His daughter, Aliyah, entered the USA with the suicide bomber, and now she’s missing, potentially plotting another attack on American soil.
But then a woman called Carrie turns up at Sajid’s door after travelling halfway across the world. She claims Aliyah is with her son and she has a clue to their whereabouts. Carrie knows something isn’t adding up - and that she and Sajid are the only ones who can find their children and discover the truth.
On the run from the authorities, the two parents are thrown together in a race against time to stop their kids and prevent a catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen.
Order the bookThe Husbands by Holly Gramazio
You wait ages for The One… then 203 come along at once.
One night Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. All the evidence – from photos to electricity bills – suggests he’s right.
Lauren’s attic, she slowly realises, is creating an endless supply of husbands for her.
But when you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good-enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one? And how long should you keep trying to find out?
Order the bookMoneta by Gareth Harney
The extraordinary story of ancient Rome, history’s greatest superpower, as told through humankind’s most universal object: the coin.
When Gareth Harney was first handed a Roman coin by his father as a child, he became entranced by its beauty, its permanence and its unique power to connect us with the distant past. He soon learned that the Romans saw coins as far more than just money – these were metal canvases on which they immortalised their sacred gods, mighty emperors, towering monuments and brutal battles of conquest.
Moneta traces ancient Rome’s unstoppable rise, from a few huts on an Italian hilltop to an all-conquering empire spanning three continents, through the fascinating lives of 12 remarkable coins.
Order the bookPassiontide by Monique Roffey
Early one morning, at the close of St Colibri’s carnival, a young female steel-pan player is found dead beneath a cannonball tree. It is a discovery that will transform the lives of everyone on this small island.
As the days pass, this shocking event draws together four women. There’s Sharleen, a journalist with an eye for the real story. Her childhood friend Tara, the pink-haired, straight-talking star of the local activism scene. Gigi, the ‘notorious’ founder of the Port Isabella Sex Workers Collective. And Daisy, first lady of St Colibri, who is haunted by a disappearance in her own family decades ago.
Order the bookA Short Walk Through a Wide World by Douglas Westerbeke
Paris, 1885: Aubry Tourvel, a spoiled and stubborn nine-year-old girl, comes across a wooden puzzle ball on her walk home from school. She tosses it over the fence, only to find it in her satchel that evening. Days later, at the family dinner table, she is stricken by a mysterious illness. When a visit to a doctor only makes her worse, she flees to the outskirts of the city, where she discovers it is this very act of movement that keeps her alive.
So begins her incredible lifelong journey on the run from her condition. From the scorched dunes of the Calanshio Sand Sea to the shelves of an infinite underground library, we follow Aubry as she learns what it takes to survive and, ultimately, to truly live. But the longer she wanders, the more she understands that the world she travels through may not be quite the same as everyone else’s…
Order the bookThe Spoiled Heart by Sunjeev Sahota
Nayan Olak keeps seeing Helen Fletcher around town and on his daily run out to the Peaks. She’s come back to the old house at the end of the lane, with her teenage son, Brandon, though nobody seems to remember much about her.
Nayan is powerfully drawn to her, though he doesn’t quite know why.
He hasn’t risked love since he lost his young family in a terrible accident 20 years before. All his energy has gone into work at the union, trying to make the world better, fairer, as he sees it, as he would have wanted it for his son, and he’s now running for the leadership against accomplished newcomer Megha. It’s a huge moment for Nayan, the culmination of everything he believes. But as he grows closer to Helen, and to the possibility that their pasts may have been connected, much more is suddenly threatened than his chances of winning.
Order the bookWelcome to Glorious Tuga by Francesca Segal
London vet Charlotte Walker has taken up a fellowship on the tiny, remote island of Tuga de Oro to study the endangered gold coin tortoises. She can claim the best of reasons for this year in paradise – what better motivation than to save a species? – but the reality is more complex. For Charlotte has a secret that connects her to the island, and has finally determined to solve the mystery that has dominated her life.
But she will have little time for any of her declared or covert investigations. Inconveniently attracted to the new island doctor, Dan Zekri, Charlotte immediately finds herself the subject of local speculation and gossip. And not only do Tuga’s tortoises need attention but so do the island’s dogs and donkeys, not to mention the islanders themselves, determined to win Charlotte over with endless deliveries of cake until she relents and becomes vet to all their animals...
Order the bookYou Don’t Have to be Mad to Work Here by Dr Benji Waterhouse
Unlocking the doors to the psych ward, NHS psychiatrist Dr Benji Waterhouse provides a fly-on-the-padded-wall account of medicine’s most mysterious and controversial speciality.
You Don’t Have To Be Mad to Work Here explores complicated questions from both sides of the doctor’s desk. Why would anyone in their right mind choose to be a psychiatrist? Are the solutions to people’s messy lives really within medical school textbooks? And how can vulnerable patients receive the care they need when psychiatry lacks staff, hospital beds and any actual cures?
Order the bookWin this bundle of Vintage books
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