We're back with more bookseller recommendations! Today, London bookseller, Harveen, takes us through some of her favourite reads from this year!
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Lord of the Empty Isles by Jules Arbeaux
Remy Canta is hellbent on revenge for the death of his brother, caused by a withering - death curse - inflicted by the interstellar fugitive he had long admired - Idrian Delaciel. But when he inflicts the same curse on Idrian, it rebounds and binds Remy to him with the same withering. This story deftly combines science fiction and fantasy by setting it on a world driven to extremes by climate change and connecting people through tethers defining their relationships to each other. The way Arbeaux deals with themes of privilege, love, and grief are at once heartwrenching and uplifting. It’s a story of rebellion, resistance, loss, understanding those less fortunate, and learning to let go of grief before it destroys you. This will remain one of my absolute favourite books of 2024.
Get your signed, first edition here!
The Night Ends with Fire by K.X. Song
The legend of Mulan and Romance of the Three Kingdoms, one of the four great classical novels of Chinese literature, are combined to create a whole new retelling of these tales where the protagonist, Meilin, is not driven by filial piety but instead by a desire for her own freedom and eventually develops a taste for power and her own glory. Guided by a dragon spirit with his own untrustworthy agenda, she is thrown into the middle of a war on the mortal plane that is driven by ancient mythical creatures driving their will through the humans they partner with to lead. If you liked Shelley Parker-Chan’s She Who Became the Sun, this is sure to be an instant favourite alongside it.
After reading A Study in Drowning last year, it’s not an exaggeration to say I binge read Ava Reid’s previous books back to back immediately after! When the announcement came that she had written a reimagining of Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth as a witch within a story already so well known. Despite any familiarity with the tale, Reid’s version of the story stands apart from familiar narrative as its own story focusing on the origins and the perspective of one of literature’s most famous villainesses.
The Palace of Eros by Caro De Robertis
The story of Psyche and Eros in Greek mythology is one of the rare few that doesn’t end in tragedy. It’s the tale of a love that grows in shadows between mortal and immortal, and overcoming great trials with the odds stacked against them. De Robertis takes this tale and adds another element to the complexity of their relationship. By interpreting Eros as an embodiment of desire by shifting between their male and female forms, it adds another layer to Psyche’s internal monologue and understanding of what defines a marriage beyond the traditional sense of what she knows. It also leads her to question what defines a monster as this is what she has been led to believe she has been “sacrificed” to. The end is that much more worthwhile with this expansion on the myth.
Get your signed, first edition here!
Strange Beasts by Susan J. Morris
Susan J. Morris brings together the worlds of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes by creating new characters with connections to well known characters from the two classics - Samantha Harker, daughter of Jonathan and Mina Harker, who inherited her mother’s gift of seeing into the minds of monsters, and Dr. Helena Moriarty, daughter to Sherlock Holmes’ greatest foe. Pairing them together to find the monster hunting affluent men across Paris, Morris brings together the gothic horror and detective elements of the classics together to create something new and fresh for a new age of readers.
The Square of Sevens by Laura Shepherd-Robinson
A young girl known only as Red travels across England with her father telling fortunes using the method of the Square of Sevens. When her father dies and leaves her in the care of a gentleman scholar, she is raised in the Georgian high society of Bath, her fortune telling leads to questions about who her mother was and mysteries her father was unwilling to reveal to her. Laura Shepherd-Robinson immaculately crafted a story with a young girl at the centre of it finding her place in the world and society, someone who becomes entwined with conspiracies predating her birth all while using a fortune telling method to draw the truth from those around her. There is so much detail meticulously woven throughout the book, both in the historical research that was carefully constructed and a family history with so many layers, the reader is never quite sure what else there is to reveal. This book had me gripped from the first chapters all the way through to the ending with one of the greatest twists I have ever seen.
