Today in Bookish and Literary History, January 1

 1660 First entry in the diary of English civil servant Samuel Pepys

1816 Nutcracker by ETA Hoffman

It is a literary fairy tale from 1816 by the German author E. T. A. Hoffmann, in which a young girl's favorite Christmas toy, the Nutcracker, comes alive and, after defeating the evil Mouse King in battle, whisks her away to a magical kingdom populated by dolls.

1818 Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

It tells the story of Victor Frankenstein, a young scientist who creates a sapient creature in an unorthodox scientific experiment that involved putting it together with different body parts.

1887 The Canterville Ghost by Oscar Wilde - Ireland ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The story is about an American family who moved to a castle haunted by the ghost of a dead English nobleman, who killed his wife and was then walled in and starved to death by his wife's brothers. It has been adapted for the stage and screen several times.

1887 Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and Other Stories by Oscar Wilde - Ireland

The main character, Lord Arthur Savile, is introduced by Lady Windermere to Mr Septimus R. Podgers, a chiromantist, who reads his palm and tells him that it is his destiny to be a murderer. Lord Arthur wants to marry, but decides he has no right to do so until he has committed the murder.

1887 The Sphinx Without a Secret by Oscar Wilde - Ireland

In love with a mysterious woman, Lord Murchison one day follows her in order to learn her secrets. But when, after the lady’s death, her secret is revealed, Murchison is left to ponder its meaning.

1887 She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard - UK

The story is a first-person narrative which follows the journey of Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey to a lost kingdom in the African interior. They encounter a native people and a mysterious white queen named Ayesha who reigns as the all-powerful "She" or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". Haggard developed many of the conventions of the lost world genre which countless authors have emulated.

1888 The Selfish Giant by Oscar Wilde - Ireland

The children loved to play in the Giant’s garden, but when he returned after years away, he said, “What are you doing here?” and the children fled. This is the classic story of a giant whose gloomy outlook and self-centered ways are changed by a remarkable tiny child.

1888 A House of Pomegranates by Oscar Wilde - Ireland

It is a collection of fairy tales written by Oscar Wilde, published in 1891. It is Wilde's second fairy tale collection, following The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888). He said of the book that it was "intended .neither for the British child nor the British public.”

1893 A Woman of No Importance by Oscar Wilde - Ireland

It is "a new and original play of modern life", in four acts, first given on 19 April 1893 at the Haymarket Theatre, London. Like Wilde's other society plays, it satirises English upper-class society. It has been revived from time to time since his death in 1900, but has been widely regarded as the least successful of his four drawing room plays.

1891 Salomé by Oscar Wilde - Ireland

The play depicts the attempted seduction of Jokanaan (John the Baptist) by Salome, stepdaughter of Herod Antipas; her dance of the seven veils; the execution of Jokanaan at Salome's instigation; and her death on Herod's orders.

1896 The Fisherman and His Soul by Oscar Wilde - Ireland

The poem about a man that falls in love with a mermaid only to lose his soul. And how his soul must win him back again.

1954 The Amen Corner by James Baldwin - US

The play addresses themes of the role of a church in an African-American family and the effect of a poverty born of racial prejudice on an African-American community.

1955 Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin - US

Notes of a Native Son is a book of ten essays written by James Baldwin, first published in 1955. It was his debut nonfiction book, and it explores deep and personal themes, especially focusing on race, identity, and the Black experience in both America and Europe.

1956 Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin - US ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (My Review)

The book concerns the events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a Parisian gay bar. While he deals with his difficulties with men, he is engaged to an American woman who is travelling in Spain.

1957 Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin - US ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The short story focuses on themes of suffering, forgiveness, and music's beneficial power. Sonny's Blues is told through the eyes of an unknown narrator, examining into the relationship between two brothers: Sonny, a jazz musician struggling with addiction, and the narrator, an educator dealing with his own inner challenges.

1960 The Weirdstone of Brisingamen by Alan Garner - UK

The novel, set in and around Macclesfield and Alderley Edge in Cheshire, tells the story of two children, Colin and Susan, who are staying with some old friends of their mother while their parents are overseas. Susan possesses a small tear-shaped jewel held in a bracelet: unknown to her, this is the weirdstone of the title. Its nature is revealed when the children are hunted by the minions of the dark spirit Nastrond who, centuries before, had been defeated and banished by a powerful king. The children also have to compete with the wicked shape-shifting sorceress Selina Place and the evil wizard Grimnir, each of whom wishes to possess the weirdstone. Along the way Colin and Susan are aided by the wizard Cadellin Silverbrow and his dwarf companions.

1961 Nobody Knows My Name by James Baldwin - US

The topics covered in the essays vary from literary criticism, desegregation, homosexuality, life in U.S South, police brutality and French intellectual life.

1963 The Moon of Gomrath by Alan Garner - UK

It is a fantasy story by the author Alan Garner and the sequel to The Weirdstone of Brisingamen.

1963 Up the Junction by Nell Dunn - UK

Up the Junction is a 1963 collection of short stories by Nell Dunn that depicts contemporary life in the industrial slums of Battersea and Clapham Junction.

1964 Blues for Mister Charlie by James Baldwin - US

The play is loosely based on the Emmett Till murder that occurred in Money, Mississippi, before the Civil Rights Movement began.

1964 Nothing Personal by James Baldwin - US

James Baldwin’s critique of American society at the height of the civil rights movement brings his prescient thoughts on social isolation, race, and police brutality to a new generation of readers.

1965 Elidor by Alan Garner - UK

Elidor is a children's fantasy novel by the British author Alan Garner, published by Collins in 1965. Set primarily in modern Manchester, it features four English children who enter a fantasy world, fulfill a quest there, and return to find that the enemy has followed them into our world.

1965 Going to Meet the Man by James Baldwin - US

It is composed of eight short stories, “The Rockpile,” “The Outing,” “The Man Child,” “Previous Condition,” “Sonny’s Blues,” “This Morning, This Evening, So Soon,” “Come Out the Wilderness,” and “Going to Meet the Man.” The stories follow the everyday lives of black men and women from the 1930s-50s, addressing themes of racism, sexuality, drug addiction, lynching, and more.

1967 The Magic Toyshop by Angela Carter - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (My Review)

It follows the development of the heroine, Melanie, as she becomes aware of herself, her environment, and her own sexuality.

1967 The Owl Service by Alan Garner - UK

The Owl Service is a low fantasy novel for young adults by Alan Garner, published by Collins in 1967. Set in modern Wales, it is an adaptation of the story of the mythical Welsh woman Blodeuwedd, an "expression of the myth" in the author's words.

1968 A Kestrel for a Knave by Barry Hines - UK

Set in Barnsley England, the book follows Billy Casper, a young working-class boy troubled at home and at school, who finds and trains a kestrel whom he names "Kes".

1968 Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone by James Baldwin - US

Leo Proudhammer, an African-American actor who grew up in Harlem and later moved into Greenwich Village, has a heart attack while on stage. This event creates the present tense setting for the novel, which is mostly narrated in retrospect, explaining each relationship with a story from the actor's life.

1969 One Day When I Was Lost by James Baldwin - US

Son of a Baptist minister; New York City hustler; honor student; convicted criminal; powerful minister in the Nation of Islam; father and husband: Malcolm X transformed himself, time and again, in order to become one of the most feared, loved, and undeniably charismatic leaders of twentieth-century America. No one better represents the tumultuous times of his generation, and there is no one better to capture him and his milieu than James Baldwin. With spare, elegant, yet forceful dialogue and fresh, precise camera directions, Baldwin breathes cinematic life into this controversial and important figure, offering a new look at a man who changed himself in order to change the country.

1969 Heroes and Villains by Angela Carter - UK

In a post-apocalyptic world, Marianne inhabits an enclave of relative civilisation as the daughter of one of the "Professors", academic survivors of the unnamed global disaster, whose enclave is guarded by a soldier caste. At the beginning of the novel, Marianne has lost her brother and mother, and only her father survives. However, she has become tired of the sedentary lifestyle and runs away from the enclave to join Jewel, an articulate and intelligent leader of a barbarian tribe, but then becomes concerned at her chattel status in a society that has rigid patriarchal concepts of what constitutes appropriate gender roles. Marianne becomes pregnant after Jewel sexually assaults her but she then sexually assaults an intellectually disabled male tribal member. Ultimately Jewel dies, and Marianne plans to become tribal leader.

1972 The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter - UK

This picaresque novel is heavily influenced by surrealism, Romanticism, critical theory, and other branches of Continental philosophy. Its style is an amalgam of magical realism and postmodern pastiche. The novel has been called a theoretical fiction, as it clearly engages in some of the theoretical issues of its time, notably feminism, mass media and the counterculture.

1972 In the Ditch by Buchi Emecheta - UK ⭐⭐⭐

In the Ditch is the debut novel of writer Buchi Emecheta. The book is partly autobiographical and was inspired by Emecheta's personal experiences as a Nigerian woman who experienced poverty as a single mother. She stated that she felt the book was "[her] sixth child" and was born after she decided to write what she knew, basing her work on her real life experiences.

1972 Surfacing by Margaret Atwood - CAN

The novel, grappling with notions of national and gendered identity, anticipated rising concerns about conservation and preservation and the emergence of Canadian nationalism.

1973 Red Shift by Alan Garner - UK

It is a 1973 fantasy novel by Alan Garner. It is set in Cheshire, England, in three time periods: Roman Britain, the English Civil War and the present.

1974 Second Class Citizen by Buchi Emecheta - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (My Review)

Often described as semi-autobiographical, the novel entails the story of Adah, the major book character, Nigerian woman who overcomes strict tribal domination of women and countless setbacks to achieve an independent life for herself and her children. She moved from Nigeria to London, where she faced hard living conditions and a violent marriage to Francis. The novel explores the themes of gender and marriage, religion and immigration.

1974 If Beale Street Could Talk by James Baldwin - US

Harlem, the black soul of New York City, in the era of Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles. The narrator of Baldwin''s novel is Tish nineteen, and pregnant. Her lover Fonny, father of her child, is in jail accused of rape. Flashbacks from their love affair are woven into the compelling struggle of two families to win justice for Fonny. To this love story James Baldwin brings a spare and impassioned intensity, charging it with universal resonance and power.

1976 Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood by James Baldwin - US

Four-year-old TJ spends his days on his lively Harlem block playing with his best friends WT and Blinky and running errands for neighbors. As he comes of age as a “Little Man” with big dreams, TJ faces a world of grown-up adventures and realities. Baldwin’s only children’s book, Little Man, Little Man celebrates and explores the challenges and joys of black childhood.

1976 The Bride Price by Buchi Emecheta - UK ⭐⭐⭐

The Bride Price was the first novel Emecheta wrote, but its original version was lost when her husband threw the manuscript on the fire – which act of destruction proved to be the last straw in an abusive marriage that she subsequently left.

1976 The Stone Book Quartet by Alan Garner - UK

It is a set of four short novels by Alan Garner and published by William Collins, Sons, from 1976 to 1978. Set in eastern Cheshire, they feature one day each in the life of four generations of Garner's family and they span more than a century.

1976 The Devil Finds Work: Essays by James Baldwin - US

Published in 1976, it is both a memoir of his experiences watching movies and a critique of the racial politics of American cinema.

1977 The Slave Girl by Buchi Emecheta - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐

The Slave Girl is set in colonial Nigeria, in the early 1900s, and tells the story of Ogbanje Ojebeta who, following the death of her parents, is sold into domestic slavery. "She finds solace among her fellow slaves but learns the painful lessons of what it means to be owned by another. As Ojebeta grows into a woman, she longs for freedom and for a family of her own. She realizes that she must ultimately decide her own destiny, and when the opportunity arises, makes a choice that we as modern readers might find surprising.”

• Winner of the Jock Campbell Award from the New Statesman

1977 The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter - UK

The book is set in a dystopian United States where civil war has broken out between different political, racial and gendered groups. A dark satire, the book parodies primitive notions of gender, sexual difference and identity from a post-feminist perspective. Other major themes include sadomasochism and the politics of power. Carter described the book as feminist black comedy.

1978 The Cement Garden by Ian McEwan - UK (2026 Award-Worthy Book club Read in August)

In the arid summer heat, four children—Jack, Julie, Sue and Tom—find themselves abruptly orphaned. All the routines of childhood are cast aside as the children adapt to a now parentless world. Alone in the house together, the children’s lives twist into something unrecognizable as the outside begins to bear down on them.

1979 Just Above My Head by James Baldwin - US

Just Above My Head is James Baldwin's sixth and last novel. The stark grief of a brother mourning a brother opens this stunning, unforgettable novel. Here, in a monumental saga of love and rage, James Baldwin goes back to Harlem, to the church of his groundbreaking novel Go Tell It on the Mountain, to the forbidden passion of Giovanni’s Room, and to the political fire that enflames his nonfiction work. Here, too, the story of gospel singer Arthur Hall and his family becomes both a journey into another country of the soul and senses—and a living contemporary history of black struggle in this land.

1979 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories by Angela Carter - UK (2026 Award-Worthy Book club Read in December)

The Bloody Chamber is a collection of short stories by English writer Angela Carter. The stories are all based on fairytales or folk tales.

• Winner of the Cheltenham Festival Literary Prize

1980 The Moonlight Bride by Buchi Emecheta - UK ⭐⭐ (My Review)

Two Nigerian girls overhear some elders making secret preparations for a marriage.

1981 Dying, in Other Words by Maggie Gee - UK

Dying, in Other Words is the debut novel of English author Maggie Gee, variously described as surrealist and modern gothic.

1981 A Good Man in Africa by William Boyd - UK

In the small African republic of Kinjanja, British diplomat Morgan Leafy bumbles heavily through his job. His love of women, his fondness for drink, and his loathing for the country prove formidable obstacles on his road to any kind of success. But when he becomes an operative in Operation Kingpin and is charged with monitoring the front runner in Kinjanja’s national elections, Morgan senses an opportunity to achieve real professional recognition and, more importantly, reassignment.

1981 The War of the End of the World by Mario Vargas Llosa - Peru

It is a fictionalized account of the War of Canudos conflict in late 19th-century Brazil.

• Winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature
• Winner of the PEN Translation Prize for Prose for Helen R. Lane

1982 An Ice-Cream War by William Boyd - UK

An Ice-Cream War is a black comedy war novel by Scottish author William Boyd.

• Nominated for a Booker Prize

1982 On a Woman's Madness by Astrid Roemer - Surinam

On a Woman’s Madness tells the story of Noenka, a courageous Black woman trying to live a life of her own choosing. When her abusive husband of just nine days refuses her request for divorce, Noenka flees her hometown in Suriname, on South America's tropical northeastern coast, for the capital city of Paramaribo. Unsettled and unsupported, her life in this new place is illuminated by romance and new freedoms, but also forever haunted by her past and society’s expectations.

• A Finalist For The 2023 National Book Award For Translated Literature

1982 Double Yoke by Buchi Emecheta - UK

Set on the campus of a Nigerian university, Double Yoke tells the story of two undergraduates who must confront the conflicting demands of tradition and modernity.

1982 Destination Biafra by Buchi Emecheta - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (My Review)

It is considered to be Emecheta's personal account of the Biafra War.

1982 Union Street by Pat Barker - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

It describes the lives of seven working-class women living on Union Street and how they respond to the changes brought about by deindustrialisation.

1984 Blow Your House Down by Pat Barker - UK

A serial killer stalks prostitutes with profound and unexpected consequences in this riveting novel from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Ghost Road.

1985 Light Years by Maggie Gee - UK

Lottie Lucas is the luckiest person she knows. She has looks, money, three houses and a teenage son she adores … So why is her husband Harold walking out on her?

1985 Evidence of Things Not Seen by James Baldwin - US

The book covers the Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, often called the Atlanta child murders, and examines race relations and other social and cultural issues in Atlanta.

1985 Every Day Is Mother's Day by Hilary Mantel - UK

It was inspired in part by Hilary Mantel's own experiences as a social work assistant at a geriatric hospital which involved visits to patients in the community and access to case notes, the loss of which play an important part in the novel.

1985 Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson - UK

A pleasure boat company is transformed when the proprietor, Noah, is chosen by the "One True God" to put "sunny" faith back in the world and women back in the kitchen.

1986 Vacant Possession by Hilary Mantel - UK

It continues the story from her first novel Every Day is Mother's Day and is set some ten years later with the same cast of characters.

1986 Liza's England by Pat Barker - UK

In Liza's England, Liza Garrett is the first child in town born in the twentieth century--whose life in many ways mirrors the turmoil of England itself. The tough, severe, but very real and recognizable world of women is put to the most strenuous tests, and Liza, at eighty-four, is proof that loyalty, fortitude and humor survive.

1987 The Passion by Jeanette Winterson - UK

First published to great acclaim in 1987, this arresting, elegant novel from Jeanette Winterson uses Napolean’s Europe as the setting for a tantalizing surrealistic romance between an observer of history and a creature of fantasy.

• Winner of  the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize

1988 Grace by Maggie Gee - UK

Paula Timms, a writer, begins a novel about the murder of an anti-nuclear activist, while Grace, her aunt, returns to the town of her childhood.

1988 Eight Months on Ghazzah Street by Hilary Mantel - UK

It tells the story of an Englishwoman, Frances Shore, who moves to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia to live with her husband, an engineer.

1989 The Man Who Wasn't There by Pat Barker - UK

It is the story of a 1950s latch-key kid and his search for a father.

1989 Fludd by Hilary Mantel - UK

The novel is set in 1956, in Fetherhoughton, a dreary and isolated fictional town somewhere on the moors of northern England. The people of the town seem benighted, but are portrayed by Mantel with sympathy and affection. The plot centres on the Roman Catholic church and convent in the town and concerns the dramatic impact of the mysterious Fludd, who is apparently a curate sent by the bishop to assist Father Angwin, a priest who continues in his role despite privately having lost his faith.

• Winner of the Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize

1989 Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems by James Baldwin - US

All of the published poetry of James Baldwin, including six significant poems previously only available in a limited edition

1989 Sexing the Cherry by Jeanette Winterson - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (My Review)

In a fantastic world that is and is not seventeenth-century England, a baby is found floating in the Thames. The child is rescued by the Dog Woman, a murderous gentle giant who names her newfound trophy Jordan and takes him out for walks on a leash. When he grows up Jordan, like Gulliver, travels the world, but finds that the strangest wonders are spun out of his own head. The strangest wonder of all is Time. Does it exist? What is its nature? Why does every journey conceal another journey within its lines? What is the difference between seventeenth-century Jordan and twentieth-century Nicholas Jordan, a navel cadet in a warship? And who are the Twelve Dancing Princesses?

1990 The Family by Buchi Emecheta - UK

A Jamaican girl joins her parents in London at age eleven and makes formidable adjustments and choices to overcome the limitations of her family life.

1992 Once in Every Life by Kristin Hannah - US

Tess Gregory’s brilliant career as a research scientist hides her longings for a husband and child. Though deaf, she is a free spirit—a woman full of life and love. She is struck down all too soon, but for Tess, a new life begins at death, in post-Civil War America. She is now Amarylis Rafferty, wife and mother of three—and she can hear. Shocked and disoriented by her new surroundings, she is drawn into the heartache burdening the family, especially her husband, Jack.

1992 A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel - UK

It is 1789, and three young provincials have come to Paris to make their way. Georges-Jacques Danton, an ambitious young lawyer, is energetic, pragmatic, debt-ridden--and hugely but erotically ugly. Maximilien Robespierre, also a lawyer, is slight, diligent, and terrified of violence. His dearest friend, Camille Desmoulins, is a conspirator and pamphleteer of genius. A charming gadfly, erratic and untrustworthy, bisexual and beautiful, Camille is obsessed by one woman and engaged to marry another, her daughter. In the swells of revolution, they each taste the addictive delights of power, and the price that must be paid for it.

1992 Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson - UK

Winterson chronicles the consuming affair between the narrator, who is given neither name nor gender, and the beloved, a complex and confused married woman.

• Winner of Lambda Literary Award

1992 Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales by Angela Carter - UK

Once upon a time fairy tales weren't meant just for children, and neither is Angela Carter's Book of Fairy Tales. This stunning collection contains lyrical tales, bloody tales and hilariously funny and ripely bawdy stories from countries all around the world- from the Arctic to Asia - and no dippy princesses or soppy fairies. Instead, we have pretty maids and old crones; crafty women and bad girls; enchantresses and midwives; rascal aunts and odd sisters.

1993 Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh - Scotland

Trainspotting is the novel that first launched Irvine Welsh's spectacular career―an authentic, unrelenting, and strangely exhilarating episodic group portrait of blasted lives.

• Longlisted for the 1993 Booker Prize

1993 The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood - CAN

Roz, Charis, and Tony—university classmates decades ago—were reunited at Zenia’s funeral and have met monthly for lunch ever since, obsessively retracing the destructive swath she once cut through their lives. A brilliantly inventive fabulist, Zenia had a talent for exploiting her friends’ weaknesses, wielding intimacy as a weapon and cheating them of money, time, sympathy, and men.

• Winner of the 1993 Trillium Book Award
• Shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction

1993 The Eye in the Door by Pat Barker - UK

Pat Barker's brilliant antiwar novel, Regeneration, was widely hailed as a masterpiece and was named by the New York Times Book Review as one of the four best novels of 1992. Now Pat Barker returns to the World War I era with The Eye in the Door.

• Winner of the Guardian Fiction Prize

1994 A change of climate by Hilary Mantel - UK

It is set in Norfolk in 1980, and concerns Ralph and Anna Eldred, parents of four children, whose family life threatens to disintegrate in the course of one summer, when memories which they have repressed fiercely for twenty years resurface to disrupt the purposive and peaceful lives they have tried to lead since a catastrophic event overtook them early in their married life.

1995 Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery by Jeanette Winterson - UK

In these ten intertwined essays, one of our most provocative young novelists proves that she is just as stylish and outrageous an art critic. For when Jeanette Winterson looks at works as diverse as the Mona Lisa and Virginia Woolf's The Waves, she frees them from layers of preconception and restores their power to exalt and unnerve, shock and transform us.

1995 An Experiment in Love by Hilary Mantel - UK

Hilary Mantel's magnificent novel examines the pressures on women during the early days of contemporary feminism to excel--but not be too successful--in England's complex hierarchy of class and status.

1995 The Blue Afternoon by William Boyd - UK

Los Angeles 1936. Kay Fischer, a young, ambitious architect, is shadowed by Salvador Carriscant, an enigmatic stranger claiming to be her father. Within weeks of their first meeting, Kay will join him for an extraordinary journey into the old man's past, initially in search of a murderer, but finally in celebration of a glorious, undying love.

• Winner of Los Angeles Times Book Prize

1995 The Ghost Road by Pat Barker - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Set in the closing months of World War I, this towering novel combines poetic intensity with gritty realism as it brings Pat Barker’s Regeneration trilogy to its stunning conclusion.

• Winner of the 1995 Booker Prize

1995 Lost Children by Maggie Gee - UK

Alma wakes one ordinary morning to find her world has fallen apart. Her beloved teenage daughter Zoe has run away from home. On the landing is a curt note that explains nothing. What on Earth has caused her to leave so suddenly? What can she have done to Zoe to make her run away?

1996 Strandloper by Alan Garner - UK

Based on the true story of William Buckley, an 18th-century man from rural England, this unique novel begins with a young William preparing for the annual festival known as Shick-Shack Day. William has been chosen as the village's Shick-Shack—an ancient fertility figure—but when the local landowner discovers the celebration in the church, William is arrested, tried, and banished to Australia. Arriving in the strange continent, he escapes and wanders for more than a year before he is discovered by a group of Aborigines who believe him to be Murrangurk, the great hero, lawgiver, and healer of their people. Later William is spotted by English colonialists, granted a full pardon, and allowed to return to England where me must encounter the life he left behind.

1997 Enduring by Ian McEwan - UK

The calm, organized life of science writer Joe Rose is shattered when he sees a man die in a freak hot-air balloon accident. A stranger named Jed Parry joins Rose in helping to bring the balloon to safety, but unknown to Rose, something passes between Parry and himself on that day—something that gives birth to an obsession in Parry so powerful that it will test the limits of Rose's beloved rationalism, threaten the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drive him to the brink of murder and madness.

1999 Antarctica by Claire Keegan - Ireland

From the title story about a married woman who takes a trip to the city with a single purpose in mind—to sleep with another man—Antarctica draws you into a world of obsession, betrayal, and fragile relationships. In "Love in the Tall Grass," Cordelia wakes on the last day of the twentieth century and sets off along the coast road to keep a date, with her lover, that has been nine years in the waiting. In "Passport Soup," Frank Corso mourns the curious disappearance of his nine-year-old daughter and tries desperately to reach out to his shattered wife who has gone mad with grief.

1994 My Own Country by Abraham Verghese - US ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

The book is non-fiction, based on Verghese's own experiences in dealing with AIDS patients in East Tennessee in the early stages of the epidemic.

• Winner of Lambda Literary Award

1994 Head Above Water by Buchi Emecheta - UK

Buchi Emecheta's autobiography spans the transition from a tribal childhood in the African bush to life in North London as an internationally acclaimed writer.

1995 Waiting for the Moon by Kristin Hannah - US

She doesn't remember who she is or how she came to the mansion on the isolated Maine coast. Lost in a strange world filled with even stranger faces, Selena finds comfort in a man whose eyes reflect her own aloneness.

1998 The Tennis Partner by Abraham Verghese - US

When Abraham Verghese, a physician whose marriage is unraveling, relocates to El Paso, Texas, he hopes to make a fresh start as a staff member at the county hospital. There he meets David Smith, a medical student recovering from drug addiction, and the two men begin a tennis ritual that allows them to shed their inhibitions and find security in the sport they love and with each other. This friendship between doctor and intern grows increasingly rich and complex, more intimate than two men usually allow. Just when it seems nothing can go wrong, the dark beast from David’s past emerges once again—and almost everything Verghese has come to trust and believe in is threatened as David spirals out of control.

2000 The New Tribe by Buchi Emecheta - UK

In this poignant, heartwarming story of Chester's journey through childhood, Buchi Emecheta weaves together a tale of love and acceptance while illuminating the vital importance of self-discovery.

2000 Xerxes by Jonathan Buckley - UK

A rich and unsettling novel about storytelling, evil and fakery.

2001 The PowerBook by Jeanette Winterson - UK

Ali writes stories on email for anyone who wants them. She promises “freedom just for one night,” but she does not do so without a warning: the story might change you. Ask for an epic love story and you will get one, but Ali will be cast in it, too, and the lines between the real and imagined may blur. Plucking characters from history and myth, Winterson journeys through time and stops in London, Paris, and Capri, all the while melding the language of love with that of computers. In The PowerBook she has found a brilliant conceit through which to showcase her increasingly bold voice.

2001 Art and Lies by Jeanette Winterson - UK

Set in a London of the near future, its three principal characters, Handel, Picasso and Sappho, separately flee the city and find themselves on the same train, drawn to one another through the curious agency of a book. Stories within stories take us through the unlikely love affairs of one Doll Sneerpiece, an 18th century bawd, and into the world of painful beauty where language has the power to heal.Art & Liesis a question and a quest: How shall I live?

2001 Border Crossing by Pat Barker - UK

The novel explores the controversial issue of children who have committed murder, in particular the aftermath after their sentence is served out. A tense psychological thriller, Border Crossing investigates the crimes of particularly violent children, the notion of evil and the possibility of redemption.

2001 Number9Dream by David Mitchell - UK

Number9Dream is the international literary sensation from a writer with astonishing range and imaginative energy—an intoxicating ride through Tokyo’s dark underworlds and the even more mysterious landscapes of our collective dreams.

2002 Distant Shores by Kristin Hannah - US

Elizabeth and Jackson Shore married young, raised two daughters, and weathered the storms of youth as they built a family. From a distance, their lives look picture perfect. But after the girls leave home, Jack and Elizabeth quietly drift apart. When Jack accepts a wonderful new job, Elizabeth puts her own needs aside to follow him across the country.

2002 My lover's lover by Maggie O'Farrell - UK

When Lily moves into Marcus's flat, she is intrigued by signs of his recently departed ex-lover. A single dress left hanging in the wardrobe, a mysterious mark on the wall, the lingering odour of jasmine.

Who was this woman? What exactly were the circumstances of her sudden exit? And why won't Aidan, Marcus's flatmate, answer any of her questions? It doesn't take long for Lily's curiosity to grow into an all-pervading obsession.

2002 The Philosopher Fish: Sturgeon, Caviar, and the Geography of Desire by Richard Adams Carey - US

An updated new edition of Richard Adams Carey’s illuminating journey across the globe to uncover the secrets of the sturgeon.

2002 The White Family by Maggie Gee - UK

This ground-breaking novel tackles the taboo subject of racial hatred, as it looks for the roots of violence within one British family.

• Shortlisted For The 2002 Orange Prize For Fiction

2002 Haweswater by Sarah Hall - UK

A remote village is threatened by industrialization and by a scandalous love affair in this debut novel by the author of Burntcoat and the Man Booker Prize finalist The Electric Michelangelo

2003 Double Vision by Pat Barker - UK

In the aftermath of covering 9/11, English war reporter Stephen Sharkey and photographer Ben Frobisher leave New York and part company. Stephen returns to the devastating discovery of the end of his marriage; while on assignment in Afghanistan Ben is killed. Retreating to the English countryside to write a book questioning the role of the war reporter and photographer Stephen enters into complicated relationships with Ben’s widow Kate, a sculptor, her disturbing and sinister young studio assistant, and a young au-pair. Set far from the literal theatre of war, Double Vision is nonetheless a novel about its representation and effects as Pat Barker once more lays bare the complexities of desire and violence.

2003 Between Sisters by Kristin Hannah - US

Tender, funny, bittersweet, and moving, Between Sisters skillfully explores the profound joys and sorrows shared by sisters, the mistakes made in the name of love, and the promise of redemption—all beautifully told by acclaimed author Kristin Hannah.

2004 Small Island by Andrea Levy - UK

Told in these four voices, Small Island is a courageous novel of tender emotion and sparkling wit, of crossings taken and passages lost, of shattering compassion and of reckless optimism in the face of insurmountable barriers---in short, an encapsulation of that most American of experiences: the immigrant's life.

• Winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction
• Winner of The Orange Prize for Fiction: Best of the Best
• Winner of The Whitbread Novel Award
• Winner of The Whitbread Book of the Year Award
• Winner of the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

2004 The Things We Do for Love by Kristin Hannah - US

Years of trying unsuccessfully to conceive a child have broken more than Angie DeSaria’s heart. Following a painful divorce, she moves back to her small Pacific Northwest hometown and takes over management of her family’s restaurant. In West End, where life rises and falls like the tides, Angie’s fortunes will drastically change yet again when she meets and befriends a troubled young woman.

2004 The Distance between Us by Maggie O'Farrell - UK

Gripping, insightful and deft, THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US by Maggie O'Farrell is a haunting story of the way our families shape our lives, from the award-winning author of HAMNET.

• Winner of the Somerset Maugham Award

2005 Martha and Hanwell by Zadie Smith - UK

Here Zadie Smith brings us two of her short stories both perfect examples of her storytelling gift.

2005 War Talk by Pat Barker - UK

Taken from Pat Barker's celebrated Regeneration, this extract charts two encounters in a time of war the developing friendship of Wilfed Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, and the unexpected romance of Billy Prior and Sarah Lumb.

2006 The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell - UK

In the middle of tending to the everyday business at her vintage-clothing shop and sidestepping her married boyfriend’s attempts at commitment, Iris Lockhart receives a stunning phone call: Her great-aunt Esme, whom she never knew existed, is being released from Cauldstone Hospital—where she has been locked away for more than sixty-one years.

2006 Magic Hour by Kristin Hannah - US

In the rugged Pacific Northwest lies the Olympic National Forest—nearly a million acres of impenetrable darkness and impossible beauty. From deep within this old growth forest, a six-year-old girl appears. Speechless and alone, she offers no clue as to her identity, no hint of her past.

2007 The Stone Gods by Jeanette Winterson - UK ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (My Review)

On the airwaves, all the talk is of the new blue planet - pristine and habitable, like our own 65 million years ago, before we took it to the edge of destruction. And off the air, Billie and Spike are falling in love. What will happen when their story combines with the world's story, as they whirl towards Planet Blue, into the future? Will they - and we - ever find a safe landing place?

2007 Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan - Ireland

A masterful portrait of a country wrestling with its past and of individuals eking out their futures, Walk the Blue Fields is a breathtaking collection from one of Ireland’s greatest talents, and a resounding articulation of all the yearnings of the human heart.

2008 A Leopard-Skin Hat by Anne Serre - FR

A quintessential early novel about an intense friendship, by the winner of the 2020 Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle.

• Shortlisted For The International Booker Prize

2009 Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese - US

Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon. Orphaned by their mother’s death and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution.

2009 My Driver by Maggie Gee - UK

The novel is set in Uganda in the lead-up to the 2007 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kampala.

2009 The Battle of the Sun by Jeanette Winterson - UK

Jack is the chosen one, the Radiant Boy the Magus needs in order to perfect the alchemy that will transform London of the 1600s into a golden city. But Jack isn't the kind of boy who will do what he is told by an evil genius, and soon he's battling to save London in an epic and nail-biting adventure featuring dragons, knights and Queen Elizabeth I.

2009 Midsummer Nights by Jeanette Winterson - UK

An anthology of opera-inspired stories by some of the most acclaimed writers of modern fiction includes new work by Kate Atkinson, Alexander McCall Smith, Ruth Rendell, Anne Enright, and many more

2009 The Lion, the Unicorn and Me by Jeanette Winterson - UK

In this beautiful retelling of the story of the very first Christmas, the humble donkey is chosen above all other animals to carry Mary to Bethlehem. As his journey unfolds, he is touched by the magic and mystery of the Nativity...With sparkles of originality, humour and warmth, the Christmas story is reborn.

2009 The Dangers of Smoking in Bed Written by Mariana Enríquez - Argentine

Welcome to Buenos Aires, a place of nightmares and twisted imaginings, where missing children come back from the dead and unearthed bones carry terrible curses.

• Shortlisted For The International Booker Prize

2010 The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell - UK

It is a gorgeous and tenderly wrought story about the ways in which love and beauty bind us together. It is a gorgeous inquiry into the ways we make and unmake our lives, who we know ourselves to be, and how even our most accidental legacies connect us.

2012 Heft by Liz Moore - US

Arthur Opp weighs 550 pounds and hasn’t left his rambling Brooklyn home in a decade. Twenty miles away, in Yonkers, seventeen-year-old Kel Keller navigates life as the poor kid in a rich school and pins his hopes on what seems like a promising baseball career. The link between this unlikely pair is Kel’s mother, Charlene, a former student of Arthur’s. Told with warmth and intelligence through Arthur and Kel’s own quirky and lovable voices, Heft is the story of two improbable heroes whose connection transforms both their lives.

2012 Jimi Hendrix Live in Lviv by Andrey Kurkov - Ukrain

A Murakami-esque ode to the revered cultural capital of western Ukraine, filled with a charming cast of eccentrics who together make up the beating heart of the city.

• Longlisted for the International Booker Prize

2013 The House of Tides by Hannah Richell - UK

A sweeping and resonant novel about a British family's long-held secrets, for anyone who loved the drama of Rosamunde Pilcher's The Shell Seekers or the lush settings of Kate Morton's novels.

2013 Pyre by Perumal Murugan - India

A devastating tale of innocent young love pitted against chilling savagery, Pyre conjures a terrifying vision of intolerance.

2014 The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem - Palestine

The book takes place in the 48 hours following the total disappearance of all Palestinian Arabs within Israel. The reason for the disappearance is never learned.

• Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize

2017 In Memory of Memory by Maria Stepanova - Russia

An exploration of life at the margins of history from one of Russia’s most exciting contemporary writers

• Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize
• Winner of the MLA Lois Roth Translation Award

2017 The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara - Argentine

This subversive retelling of Argentina’s foundational gaucho epic Martín Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths.

• Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2020

2017 God’s Children Are Little Broken Things by Arinze Ifeakandu - Nigeria

In nine exhilarating stories of queer love in contemporary Nigeria, God’s Children Are Little Broken Things announces the arrival of a daring new voice in fiction.

2018 Homeless by Jane Bow - CAN

A woman caught breaking into a Century stone house won't tell her name. Police cannot charge her. The judge remands her to a psychiatric ward for assessment. She meets Dr. Elaine Price. Their sessions lead both women deep into the uncertain terrain of identity, where living on the street is just one form of homelessness and laws do not always deliver justice. Dr. Price writes Homeless so that, if her crime is ever uncovered, her children might understand.

2018 Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree - India

In northern India, an eighty-year-old woman slips into deep depression after the death of her husband, and then resurfaces to gain a new lease on life. Her determination to fly in the face of convention – including striking up a friendship with a transgender person – confuses her bohemian daughter, who is used to thinking of herself as the more modern of the two.

• Winner of the 2022 International Booker Prize
• Winner of the 2022 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation in its English translation
• Shortlisted for the 2021 Émile Guimet Prize for Asian Literature

2019 Reservoir Bitches: Stories by Dahlia de la Cerda - Mexico

A debut collection of gritty, streetwise, and wickedly funny stories about Mexican women who fight, skirt, cheat, cry, kill, and lie their way to survival.

• Longlisted for the 2025 International Booker Prize

2019 The Forester's Daughter: Faber Stories by Claire Keegan - Ireland

Claire Keegan’s mesmeric story takes us into the heart of the Wicklow countryside, and of the farming family of Victor Deegan, with his ‘three teenagers, the milking and the mortgage’.

2020 Simpatia by Rodrigo Blanco Calderón - Venezuela

Simpatía is a suspenseful novel with unexpected twists and turns about the agony of Venezuela and the collapse of Chavismo.

• Longlisted For The 2024 International Booker Prize

2020 Not a River by Selva Almada - Argentine

As uneasy and saturated as a prophetic dream, Not a River is another extraordinary novel by Selva Almada about masculinity, guilt, and irrepressible desire, written in a style that is spare and timeless.

• Shortlisted For The 2024 International Booker Prize

2020 When We Cease to Understand the World Written by Benjamín Labatut - Chile

When We Cease to Understand the World is a book about the complicated links between scientific and mathematical discovery, madness, and destruction.

• Shortlisted for the 2021 International Booker Prize
• Shortlisted for the 2021 National Book Award for Translated Literature

2020 Is Mother Dead by Vigdis Hjorth - Norway

A cat and mouse game of surveillance and psychological torment develops between a middleaged artist and her aging mother, as Vigdis Hjorth returns to the themes of her controverdsial modern classic, Will and Testament

• Longlisted for the International Booker Prize

2020 Happy Stories, Mostly by Norman Erikson Pasaribu - Indonesia

Playful, shape-shifting and emotionally charged, Happy Stories, Mostly is a collection of twelve stories that queer the norm.

2021 A New Name: Septology VI-VII by Jon Fosse - Norway

The Other Name follows the lives of two men living close to each other on the west coast of Norway. The year is coming to a close and Asle, an aging painter and widower, is reminiscing about his life. He lives alone, his only friends being his neighbor, Åsleik, a bachelor and traditional Norwegian fisherman-farmer, and Beyer, a gallerist who lives in Bjørgvin, a couple hours’ drive south of Dylgja, where he lives. There, in Bjørgvin, lives another Asle, also a painter. He and the narrator are doppelgangers—two versions of the same person, two versions of the same life.

• Winner Of The 2023 Nobel Prize In Literature
• Longlisted For The 2020 International Booker Prize
• 2022 International Booker Prize, Finalist
• 2022 National Book Award, Finalist
• 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award, Finalist

2021 A Town Called Solace by Mary Lawson - CAN

A Town Called Solace, the brilliant and emotionally radiant new novel from Mary Lawson, her first in nearly a decade, opens on a family in crisis. Sixteen-year-old Rose is missing. Angry and rebellious, she had a row with her mother, stormed out of the house and simply disappeared. Left behind is seven-year-old Clara, Rose’s adoring little sister. Isolated by her parents’ efforts to protect her from the truth, Clara is bewildered and distraught. Her sole comfort is Moses, the cat next door, whom she is looking after for his elderly owner, Mrs. Orchard, who went into hospital weeks ago and has still not returned.

• Longlisted For The 2021 Booker Prize

2021 Second Place by Rachel Cusk - UK

Second Place, Rachel Cusk’s electrifying new novel, is a study of female fate and male privilege, the geometries of human relationships, and the moral questions that animate our lives. It reminds us of art’s capacity to uplift―and to destroy.

2021 White Nights Undiscovered by Gabriela Wiener - Peru

Alone in a museum in Paris, Gabriela Wiener confronts her complicated family heritage. She is visiting an exhibition of pre-Columbian artifacts, spoils of European colonialism, many stolen from her homeland of Peru. As she peers at countless sculptures of Indigenous faces, each resembling her own, she sees herself in them—but the man responsible for pillaging them was her own great-great-grandfather, Austrian colonial explorer Charles Wiener.

• Longlisted For The 2024 International Booker Prize

2021 Vengeance Is Mine by Marie NDiaye - FR

The heroine of Marie NDiaye’s new novel is Maître Susane, a quiet middle-aged lawyer living a modest existence in Bordeaux, known to all as a consummate and unflappable professional. But when Gilles Principaux shows up at her office asking her to defend his wife, who is accused of a horrific crime, Maître Susane begins to crack.

• A National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist

2021 The Bread the Devil Knead by Lisa Allen-Agostini - Trinidad

Alethea Lopez is about to turn 40. Fashionable, feisty and fiercely independent, she manages a boutique in Port of Spain, but behind closed doors she’s covering up bruises from her abusive partner and seeking solace in an affair with her boss. When she witnesses a woman murdered by a jealous lover, the reality of her own future comes a little too close to home.

2022 The Chosen by Elizabeth Lowry - US

One Wednesday morning in November 1912 the ageing Thomas Hardy, entombed by paper and books and increasingly estranged from his wife Emma, finds her dying in her bedroom. Between his speaking to her and taking her in his arms, she has gone.

2022 The Winners by Fredrik Backman - Sweden

The Winners returns to the close-knit, resilient community of Beartown for a story about first loves, second chances, and last goodbyes.

2023 Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson - UK

A captivating collection of ghost stories from “one of the most gifted writers working today” (New York Times), Night Side of the River is as ingeniously provocative as it is downright spooky.

2023 This Other Eden by Paul Harding - US

A novel inspired by the true story of Malaga Island, an isolated island off the coast of Maine that became one of the first racially integrated towns in the Northeast.

• Shortlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize
• Finalist for the Chautauqua Prize
• Finalist for the 2023 National Book Award for Fiction
• Shortlisted for the Mark Twain American Voice in Literature Award

2023 The Lock-Up by John Banville - Ireland

In 1950s Dublin, Rosa Jacobs, a young history scholar, is found dead in her car. Renowned pathologist Dr. Quirke and DI St. John Strafford begin to investigate the death as a murder, but it’s the victim’s older sister Molly, an established journalist, who discovers a lead that could crack open the case.

2023 I'm a Fan by Sheena Patel - UK

I stalk a woman on the internet who is sleeping with the same man as I am.

2023 Pearl by Siân Hughes - UK

A haunting debut novel inspired by the medieval poem of the same name

• Longlisted for The 2023 Booker Prize

2024 Spent Light: A Book by Lara Pawson - UK

A woman contemplates her hand-me-down toaster and suddenly the whole world erupts into her kitchen, in all its brutality and loveliness: global networks of resource extraction and forced labour, technologies of industrial murder, histories of genocide, alongside traditions of craft, the pleasures of convenience and dexterity, the giving and receiving of affection and care.

2024 Godwin by Joseph O’Neill - Ireland

The odyssey of two brothers crossing the world in search of an African soccer prodigy who might change their fortunes.

• Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award

2024 The Drowned by John Banville - Ireland

1950s, rural Ireland. A loner comes across a mysteriously empty car in a field. Knowing he shouldn’t approach but unable to hold back, he soon finds himself embroiled in a troubling missing person case, as a husband claims his wife may have thrown herself into the sea.

2024 The Four Sisters Overlooking the Sea by Naomi Kritzer - US

A 2024 science fiction short story by Naomi Kritzer.

• Winner of  Hugo Award for Best Novelette

2025 All the Noise at Once by DeAndra Davis - US

A Black, autistic teen tries to figure out what happened the night his older brother was unjustly arrested in this “propulsive” (Jas Hammonds, award-winning author of We Deserve Monuments), moving story about brotherhood, identity, and social justice.

2025 Miss Slappy Gets an Admirer by Carol Ervin - US

In Miss Slappy Gets an Admirer, Fin pursues Slappy Hughes while she blocks his advances, finds herself ensnared in an old ladies' club, pursues the elderly but gentlemanly Ed Wilcox, and experiences the best and the worst of her former hometown as everyone takes sides in a garbage war.

2025 Bitter Passage by Colin Mills - Australia

A nineteenth-century Arctic expedition descends into a chilling nightmare in a gripping and epic historical novel of discovery, rescue, deliverance, and survival by any means.

2025 The Garden by Nick Newman - UK

A darkly beautiful, eerie, hypnotic novel about two elderly sisters living alone at the edge of the world.

2025 Save the Date by Allison Raskin - US

When couples therapist Emma Moskowitz is unceremoniously dumped by her fiancé six months before their wedding, her world comes crashing down: her thriving private practice, her status as a popular online creator, even her book deal all hinge on the fact that Emma is an expert when it comes to romantic relationships. Not to mention her heart is ripped in half.

2025 Happy After All by Maisey Yates - US

When a romance author meets a mysterious stranger, love is the last thing she expects to find in a funny and heartfelt novel about second chances by a New York Times bestselling author.

2026 Behind These Four Walls by Yasmin Angoe - US

From the author of Not What She Seems, Yasmin Angoe’s thriller explores revenge, morality, corruption, and wealth as a woman sets out to uncover the truth behind her friend’s disappearance and expose the powerful family behind it.

2026 Inviting Hugh Grant by SYLVIA GRANT - JAMAICA

I inherited a manor, stalked Hugh Grant, and fell for the man who helped me do it.

2026 The Heart of Everything by Marc Levy - FR

Even death can’t break the bond between father and son in an uncannily funny and poignant novel about love, loss, memory, and family by Marc Levy, the bestselling author of P.S. from Paris.

2026 The Flightless Birds of New Hope by Farah Naz Rishi - US

Three estranged siblings—and a high-maintenance cockatoo—reunite in a luminous novel about forgiveness, connection, and the complexities of family by the author of Sorry for the Inconvenience.

2026 The Last Father-Daughter Dance by Lisa Wingate - US

For a father and daughter, it’s a journey through the four seasons in a poignant short story about memories and everlasting love by #1 New York Times bestselling author Lisa Wingate.

2026 History: Un-Attached: Historical Figures and their Emotional Baggage by C. V. Wooster - US

Through historically grounded and emotionally revealing imagined therapy sessions, History: Unattached brings the dead back to life—emotionally, if not literally. These aren't battles, biographies, or dry timelines. They're raw, modern reflections on grief, shame, control, identity, delusion, and unmet needs.

2114 Scribbler Moon by Margaret Atwood - CAN

This book is part of an art initiative conceived by Scottish artist Katie Paterson, who, along with top publishers and editors, will choose one renowned writer to contribute a new story each year to the Future Library. The art initiative is a literary time capsule, with a plan for 100 authors to submit 100 original works over the next 100 years. The material will remain unpublished and unread until 2114, held in trust in a special room of the new Deichman Library in Oslo.