Tuesday, 9th June
The Unmagical Life of Briar Jones by Lex Croucher
Briar always dreamed of attending the Temple School of Thaumaturgy, the elite boarding school that’s produced the most CEOs and Prime Ministers in history, long rumoured to be magical. Briar’s best friend, Sebastian, just wanted them to stay together forever.
When Sebastian gets an acceptance letter and Briar doesn’t, their relationship is shattered – until, at eighteen, Briar secures a temp job sorting through the magical junk in Temple’s attic, and discovers that quiet, sensitive Sebastian, the boy they once loved more than anything else in the world, has become the villain.
Thursday, 11th June
A Real Piece of Work by Freya Bromley
Hardback, Hutchinson Heinemann UK
Nola McConkey has made it. Animal Oracle, the memoir she has written about her beloved late sister Darina, has become a hit. People read it, critics loved it, producers now want to make it into a movie. The dream of quitting her job and becoming a full-time writer in London doesn’t seem so far away. There’s only one problem: everyone in her family has an opinion about the book – and none of them are good. Though Nola can’t let it affect her. It’s the price she must pay for the life she wants.
But now, someone has made an anonymous complaint to her publisher about Animal Oracle. Suddenly, her hard-won reputation as a literary darling is at stake. Nola is sure that only someone in her secretive, chaotic family could be to blame. As her parents and three remaining siblings prepare to spend the fifth anniversary of Darina’s death together on the isolated island of Lundy, Nola knows this is the perfect opportunity to convince her accuser to pull the complaint before it causes irreparable damage – but first, she must discover who made it.
A Real Piece of Work is a sparkling and spiky story of complicated families and even more complicated sisters, exploring who owns grief and who gets to tell the story of those who are gone and those left behind with tenderness, nuance and wit.
