Literature

Remarkable range and exquisite prose' Ayobami Adebayo, Guardian Books of the YearA stunning collection of short stories from Caine-Prize shortlisted and Commonwealth Writer's Prize winner Lesley Nneka Arimah, WHAT IT MEANS WHEN A MAN FALLS FROM THE SKY has been described as 'luminous' (Roxane Gay), 'mesmeric' (Claire Vaye Watkins) and 'hilarious and heartbreaking' (Rowan Hisayo Buchanan). Shot through with magic and a powerful sense of yearning, this is a diverse and dazzling collection that showcases the work of a major new talent at the beginning of a stellar literary career. 'When Enebeli Okwara sent his girl out in the world, he did not know what the world did to daughters'. The daughters, wives and mothers in Lesley Nneka Arimah's remarkable debut collection find themselves in extraordinary situations: a woman whose mother's ghost appears to have stepped out of a family snapshot, another who, exhausted by childlessness, resorts to fashioning a charmed infant out of human hair, a 'grief worker' with a miraculous ability to remove emotional pain - at a price. What unites them is the toughness of the world they inhabit, a world where the future is uncertain, opportunities are scant, and fortunes change quicker than the flick of a switch. Characterised by their vividness, immediacy and the author's seemingly endless ability to conjure worlds at once familiar and unsettlingly different, this is a remarkable debut from a 'master storyteller' (Independent)

From the author of the magnificent, award-winning novels GILEAD, HOME and LILA comes this wonderful, heart-warming collection of essays about reading.

'Grace and intelligence ...[her work] defines universal truths about what it means to be human' Barack Obama

Marilynne Robinson is not only a writer of sharp, subtly moving fiction, but also a rigorous thinker and incisive essayist. In this luminous collection she returns to the themes which have preoccupied her bestselling novels: the place literature has in life, the role of faith in modern living, the contradictions inherent in human nature. Clear-eyed and forceful as ever, Robinson demonstrates once again why she is regarded as one of our best-loved writers.

Yiyun Li meets life’s deepest sorrows as she imagines a conversation between a mother and child in a timeless world. Composed in the months after she lost a child to suicide, Where Reasons End trespasses into the space between life and death as mother and child talk, free from old images and narratives. Deeply moving, these conversations portray the love and complexity of a relationship.

Written with originality, precision, and poise, Where Reasons End is suffused with intimacy, inescapable pain, and fierce love.

*The multi-million copy bestseller*Soon to be a major filmA Number One New York Times Bestseller'Painfully beautiful' New York Times'Unforgettable . . . as engrossing as it is moving' Daily Mail'A rare achievement' The Times 'I can't even express how much I love this book!' Reese Witherspoon-------------------------------------------------For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens. -------------------------------------------------'[It] will reach a huge audience though the writer's old-fashioned talents for compelling character, plotting and landscape description' The Guardian 'For sheer escapism pick up Where The Crawdads Sing . . . there is writing that takes your breath away' The Times'All is not as it seems in this heartbreaking coming-of-age bestseller' The i newspaper

Some of Agatha Christie's earliest stories - including her very first - which show the Queen of Crime in the making... A macabre recurring dream ... revenge against a blackmailer ... jealousy, infidelity and a tortured conscience ... a stolen gemstone ... the haunting attraction of an ancient relic ... a race against time ... a tragic love triangle ... a body in a box ... an unexpected visitor from beyond the grave... Nine quintessential examples of Agatha Christie's brilliance are contained in this new collection of early short stories - including the very first one she ever wrote - and provide a unique glimpse of the Queen of Crime in the making.

It's 1943 and the war has brought rationing to the Hebridean islands of Great and Little Todday. When food is in short supply, it is bad enough, but when the whisky runs out, it looks like the end of the world.

Morale is at rock bottom. George Campbell needs a wee dram to give him the courage to stand up to his mother and marry Catriona. The priest, the doctor and, of course, the landlord at the inn are all having a very thin time of it. There's no conversation, no jolity, no fun - until a shipwreck off the coast brings a piece of extraordinary good fortune...

When a man plunges down a cliff, two adventurous young friends decide to find his killer... While playing an erratic round of golf, Bobby Jones slices his ball over the edge of a cliff. His ball is lost, but on the rocks below he finds the crumpled body of a dying man. With his final breath the man opens his eyes and says, 'Why didn't they ask Evans?' Haunted by these words, Bobby and his vivacious companion, Frankie, set out to solve a mystery that will bring them into mortal danger...

One of the BBC's '100 Novels That Shaped Our World''Rhys took one of the works of genius of the 19th Century and turned it inside-out to create one of the works of genius of the 20th Century' Michele RobertsJean Rhys's masterpiece tells the story of Jane Eyre's 'madwoman in the attic', Bertha Rochester. Born into the oppressive, colonialist society of 1930s Jamaica, white Creole heiress Antoinette Cosway meets a young Englishman who is drawn to her innocent beauty and sensuality. After their marriage, however, disturbing rumours begin to circulate which poison her husband against her.

Caught between his demands and her own precarious sense of belonging, Antoinette is inexorably driven towards madness, and her husband into the arms of another novel's heroine. This classic study of betrayal, a seminal work of postcolonial literature, is Jean Rhys's brief, beautiful masterpiece. Edited with an introduction and notes by Angela Smith