Poetry plays a big part in this book, but I have never understood its appeal. Maybe that’s just me. It has always felt elusive, too abstract, as though it demands something from me that I was never willing or able to give. But by the end of Confetti and Ashes, I understood its power. Alshammari’s writing is littered with poetry. The beginning of every chapter starts as it means to go on, not used as decoration or a distraction, but as distilled reflections of memory or views.

Stephen D. Owen’s Iceni: The Year of Sacrifice does not retell history so much as exhume it, raw and steaming from the earth. What begins as a quiet reckoning—a widow mourning, a kingdom holding its breath—builds into a merciless unraveling. The empire doesn’t storm the gates with fire and swords, at least not at first. It arrives with paperwork. With polite contempt. With a rolled-up decree and a cold gaze from a man who represents Nero himself.

There are books you pick up for the story, and there are books you pick up for the company. The Three Wives of Charlie Mellon offers both — but it’s the company you’ll end up treasuring.

Charlie’s voice is so alive, so stubbornly his own, that slipping into his world feels less like reading and more like joining a friend who's one minor catastrophe away from greatness. If the name Nick Hornby or a certain early Bill Bryson comes to mind, you're not wrong — but Ian Siragher's Charlie is very much his own man, bruises, bacon sandwiches, and all.

A Parent’s Guide to Living With Adult Children by Catherine Jennings is not just a book about boundaries, communication, or the logistics of cohabitating with your grown offspring; it’s part roadmap, part therapy session, and part much-needed sigh of relief for parents who feel like they’re treading water in uncharted family dynamics. With a voice that feels equal parts Brené Brown, Bridget Jones, and a very patient family therapist, Jennings gives readers the ultimate survival guide to navigating life with the ‘boomerang generation.’

A memoir of grit, grace, and glorious unpredictability

Across England, Holland, Canada, Borneo, the United States, Malaysia, and Brunei — through incredulous highs and crushing lows — this is the life of a woman bravely discovering who she really is. This absorbing memoir at times reads stranger than fiction. It is one of those rare stories that envelops you so completely, you forget you're reading non-fiction. No, you’re not watching this from the sidelines — you’re in it with her, for the whole journey as it unfolds.

You know those rare books that make you sit in stunned silence after finishing the last page? The kind where you look up from the words and feel like you’ve just been somewhere else entirely — not just observed a story, but lived it? Beyond Boundaries is one of those books. I don’t say that lightly. George Carter doesn’t just write characters — he conjures them, with all their scars and wonder and tangled inner lives. This is fiction that feels truer than memory.

In the ever-evolving landscape of literary criticism, a work occasionally emerges that not only illuminates its subject but transforms how we perceive an entire genre. Mary Phelan's "Wicked Uncles & Haunted Cellars: What The Gothic Heroine Tells Us Today" (Greenwich Exchange, 2023) is precisely such a revelation—a work that breathes new life into our understanding of Gothic literature's most compelling figures.

Charlie Tyler's The Tangled Mane is a cleverly constructed tale of survival, loss, and resilience. At its heart are two young people, left to fend for themselves amidst a world of neglect and chaos, their mother—a drug-addicted cleaner with many bed partners —unable to provide the love and stability they need. Though the themes appear heavy, Tyler's deeply descriptive writing creates a vivid narrative of a sad but only too regularly reported life, along with the fleeting moments of happiness, balancing sadness with humour. It's storytelling that captivates, both beautiful and harrowing.

The loss of a loved one is a wound we all know we'll face someday, yet nothing prepares us for when that loss defies the natural order of life. When someone leaves us too soon—especially a child—the grief carves a path through our hearts that forever changes the landscape of our lives. It's this sacred, painful territory that Jennifer Fox navigates with extraordinary grace in her memoir "The Day Our Lives Changed."

Eoin O’Donovan’s When Geminis Fall is an ambitious, darkly compelling novel that draws readers into a gripping narrative set against one of the most catastrophic days in modern history. What starts as a tale of personal ambition and betrayal soon becomes entangled in a global crisis, with lives colliding in ways neither characters nor readers could anticipate.

If you're looking for a fiction-based series novella that takes the concept of absurdity and runs with it (while occasionally tripping over its own laces), The Maltese Haddock by Keven Shevels might be just what you need. Our lead, Monsewer Dogsbreath, a private detective turned psychic investigator (thanks to a blind signwriter) with a drinking problem, is thrown into another whirlwind of insane but hilarious escapades, this time with a lunatic werewolf client.