Squirrel Pie (and Other Stories)
Another book to contain a squirrel recipe, surely a first for the Bookshop reviews! This is renowned food writer Elisabeth Luard’s collection of stories of food from around the world. From bush-tucker in Australia, to snails in Crete, squirrel pot-pie from the grey...
The Wild Life
Following the purchase of a run-down Herefordshire farm, and encouraged by dreams of roast duck with wild mushroom sauce, as well as a combination of being utterly broke, with natural bounty around him, farmer John Lewis-Stempel, whose previous book Meadowland was a...
A Little Life
This is the story of four ambitious, talented friends who meet at college, and then move to New York to make their way in the world. Malcolm is a diffident aspiring architect, JB paints acclaimed pictures of his friend, Willem waits tables and auditions for parts and...
Meadows at Great Dixter and Beyond
Meadows: At Great Dixter and Beyond by Christopher Lloyd and Fergus Garrett Pimpernel Press £30 This is a sumptuous new edition of Christopher Lloyd’s classic book on meadows. Starting with the origins of meadows in history, art and literature, Lloyd goes on to...
The Kindness
The Kindness by Polly Samson Pub Bloomsbury 8.99 At the outset of this assured second novel by Polly Samson we encounter Julian, prematurely aged at only 29, in a state of deep anguish at the loss of his lover, Julia, and their daughter, Mira. He drifts through his...
The Summer Before the War
Helen Simonson sets her new novel, "The Summer Before the War," in the summer of 1914 when Europe is contemplating the unthinkable – a German invasion of Belgium. In the English seaside town of Rye the residents are agog at the arrival of the new Latin teacher,...
Tidy
A welcome return to longer picture books from Emily Gravett, after her delightful series for toddlers featuring Bear and Hare, 'Tidy' tells the story of Pete the badger, a slightly OCD woodland character who gets a bit carried away when he starts to tidy up the...
The Year of the Runaways
Sunjeev Sahota’s first novel Ours Are The Streets gained him a place on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list of 2013 and this his second novel was longlisted for the 2015 Man Booker prize. Pertinent in view of the situation in Calais and Greece, this novel,...
Things We Have in Common
Yasmin is fifteen, fat and in her words “a freak”, compulsively drawn to beautiful Alice Taylor whom she feels compelled to protect from afar, with far reaching consequences. An unsettling but at times comic portrayal of an obsession, this debut novel by former film...
The Butcher’s Hook
Anne Jaccob is the daughter of a well-to-do family, though material comforts do nothing to soften a life pinched by misery and neglect. Her father cares nothing for her, her mother is exhausted and absent through her many confinements, and they are all grieving in...