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 editor Tasha Kavanagh grips and disturbs.
Published as adult fiction but could be read by older teenagers.
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 their own ways for Anne’s baby brother. Denied emotional solace at home and desperate to escape the suitor her father has picked for her, Anne starts to look outside for excitement and affection. She settles on Fub, the butchers’ boy, hardly a suitable match for a young lady. Hardened by grief and made reckless by desire, Anne pushes herself off on a course there’s no turning back from…
Don’t let Janet Ellis’s cosy demeanour fool you, this is a dark, twisting tale of grief, lust and violence in Georgian London, and one unforgettable heroine’s warped attempt to escape the stifling claustrophobia of the female sphere.
On Thursday April 7th at 2.30pm, come and join Emily Gravett in the bookshop garden marquee as we celebrate the release of her charming new picture book ‘Tidy’ – a very funny rhyming woodland tale about the perils of being too tidy.
Pete the badger likes everything to be neat and tidy at all times, but what starts as the collection of one fallen leaf escalates quickly and ends with the complete destruction of the forest! Will Pete realise the error of his ways and set things right? ‘Tidy’ delivers a timely environmental message which children will appreciate, with subtlety and humour, and is sumptuously illustrated in Emily’s unique style.
Emily will share stories and badger-y craft activities with children aged 3-8 (suggested age only)
Tickets just £2 entitle the bearer to £2 off one of Emily’s books.
Includes free refreshments.
Emily has visited our bookshop many times before so should need no introduction – but just to remind you – she is an author/illustrator of unique talent and tremendous skill who has a host of critically acclaimed books to her name, including Wolves, Meerkat Mail and Again! She is also twice winner of the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal and the Nestlé Children’s Book Prize Bronze Award for Wolves and Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears.
Tidy by Emily Gravett
On Thursday 21st April at 7pm join TV presenter and novelist Janet Ellis for supper at The Sussex Produce Cafe. Janet will be talking about her hotly tipped debut novel The Butcher’s Hook – a dark and bewitching historical novel with a truly unforgettable heroine.
Janet Ellis is a broadcaster, an agony aunt for a national newspaper, and now a novelist. She lives in west London with her husband, and has three children, among them the singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor.
‘The Butcher’s Hook doesn’t read like a first novel – it is a high-finish performance… You need to be braced for violence to rival any Jacobean tragedy: The Butcher’s Hook will hook you’
Observer (New Faces of Fiction 2016)
Tickets priced at £27.50 include a delicious 2 course meal and a copy of The Butcher’s Hook.
Book in advance from The Steyning Bookshop.
The Butcher’s Hook
Local writer and illustrator Sam Watkins, author of the very funny and popular ‘Creature Teacher’ series, published by Oxford University Press, will join us on Friday 19th February at 11 am to help kids create their own comic-strips, and offer general story-writing advice, too.
£2 per ticket, advance booking essential as places for this workshop are limited to 15.
Ideal for ages 7-11, ticket entitles the bearer to £2 off one of Sam Watkins’ books.
Free Refreshments will be served.
creature teacher
creature teacher science shocker
creature teacher goes wild
Published last March, this exciting and contemporary thriller follows the fortunes of Dan, a young boy worried that his father is returning to a life of crime, and Aliya, who has escaped with her family from Afghanistan to a run-down housing estate in London and finds her brother implicated in what appears to be a terrorist plot.
Aliya manages to persuade Dan to help her try to prove her brother’s innocence but their investigations become increasingly complicated and dangerous, affected also by Dan’s secret concerns that his father may be involved. A really well written and involving tale, with convincing and sympathetic lead characters and a tense and at times quite frightening plot.
Recommended for age 11 upwards.
Creative collaborators Alexis Deacon and Viviane Schwarz were behind the wonderful ‘A Place to call Home’ plus many other clever picture books. ‘I am Henry Finch’ is a funny and original take on the philosophy of Descartes… ‘I Think Therefore I am’.
One day, the repetitive rhythm of the Finch flock’s existence is turned upside down. Little Henry Finch is suddenly struck by A Thought. The Thought changes everything… in fact, Henry’s Thought saves the day, and before long, the whole flock are buzzing and chattering with Thoughts!
Fabulously funny, quirky and intelligent picture book, perfect for 3 to 6 year olds, whether budding philosophers or not!
Look no further if you’re hoping to banish the February blues with a laugh-out-loud feel-good novel!
Meg Rosoff, author of many bestselling Young Adult novels including the stunning ‘How I Live Now’, makes her first foray into writing for adults with this charmingly wry story set in New York. I completely fell in love with her confused and hapless hero, Jonathan, fresh out of university and making his first tentative steps into being a ‘proper person’.
Jonathan arrives in New York to begin his new, adult life and is amazed to find himself in proud possession of both an apartment (barely legal) and a job in advertising (soul destroying). He is just about holding it together when the arrival of two doggie flatmates, an ultimatum from his bossy girlfriend, and a strange attraction to a new co-worker of indeterminate gender threaten to overwhelm the delicate balance of his life!
What follows is a hilarious, romantic and wise caper, as Jonathan tries to figure out his philosophical bafflement at life, love, and the mysteries of the canine mind….I found myself laughing out loud on many occasions, and I can already picture the charming Nora-Ephron style rom-com it will no doubt become. But don’t let this put you off – Meg Rosoff’s writing fizzes with life, her observation is sharp, and Jonathan is a most endearingly comic character.
Hardback out 11/2/16.
Kate Atkinson’s Life after Life (which won the Costa book award in 2013) introduced readers to the Todd family of Fox Corner and told the multiple stories of Ursula, as she died, or not, countless times. It was a dazzling, inventive book that probed at the dark heart of the Second World War and its effect on those who died and those who survived. A God in Ruins (this year’s Costa winner) is a ‘‘companion’ piece rather than a sequel’ according to Atkinson and takes up the story of Ursula’s younger brother Teddy, the golden boy, their mother’s favourite, the wartime hero who died returning from a bombing raid in Life After Life. He gets another chance here, a wife, a daughter, grandchildren, an ignominious end in a nursing home – the ‘afterwards’ he never thought to have. Although the narrative skips back and forth through time, it is Teddy’s war that is the heart of the book, and his heart remains inside a Halifax bomber. The effect the war had on him and therefore on his monstrous (but amusing) daughter Viola and her own children is played out in subtle, poignant and surprising ways.
From her earliest work Atkinson displayed an exuberant delight in the stuff of storytelling, and in A God in Ruins, as well as its predecessor plays with form in a masterly way with serious intent and to great effect. This is a wonderful, heart-breaking book about life, family, war and its effects on a generation and the lives of those who followed.
Alice
Longlisted for the Booker prize, this thoughtful and engaging novel, Andrew O’Hagan’s fifth, explores with a fresh voice universal themes of age, memory, war and love. Former documentary photographer Ann lives in sheltered accommodation in Ayrshire, while her grandson Luke serves in Afghanistan encountering in real life the scenarios that he and his war fodder contemporaries relished on Xbox games. When he returns disillusioned and trying to forget the disturbing scenes that he has experienced (robustly described by O’Hagan), he finds himself tasked with helping his grandmother, in contrast, retrieve past memories and long-kept secrets and questions of veracity in image and recall gain an added resonance.
It’s a measure of O’Hagan’s compassion that after balancing these stories of war and family – braving the battlefield and braving the passing of time – the ultimate note is hopeful and almost gentle, of something that seems real and vital. The Guardian
