Looking for something new to read? Browse our fiction picks for July! Includes titles by Rory Clements, Rebecca Hardy, Ajay Chowdhury and many more.
Want more suggested books? Take a look at our recommendations.
Contrapposto
Dave Eggers
Cricket is just a shy kid who likes drawing when he first meets Olympia. She’s older, more confident; she bullies him into some light vandalism and instantly he’s in love.
When they’re together, they talk about their futures, how they’re going to travel the world, the beauty and rapture of art. Then those futures start to arrive in unexpected ways, the years and decades pile up between them, the art world seduces and disappoints and frustrates them. And they have to figure out, again and again, what it is to be an artist, and who and what to love.
This is a wild and beautiful novel about two friends who believe they can change the world, if only they can start their own movement, dodge charlatans, remain open-eyed and open-hearted, avoid going mad, avoid dying young of rare cancers, stay true to their ideals and never tire of beauty. Not easy, but not impossible, either.
Netherwood
Jake Arnott
Exhausted by the pressures of life in London, Justine and Adam move to Hastings. With Adam’s failed career as an artist and a recent miscarriage causing rifts in their marriage, Justine wants this to be a fresh start for them.
As they try to settle into their new seaside home, they find a bolted door in their basement, behind which is a cave. Adam feels a strange but enchanting pull to the cave while apprehension begins to claw at Justine. Inside the cave, they find a witch bottle and with this discovery, the couple begin to uncover disturbing rumours about the home’s previous owner, John Malachy.
A sinister figure, Malachy was known for his obsession with chaos magic, and association with Sacred Disease – a band that rose to fame in the 80s that supposedly experimented with blood magic and occult forces and was made a scapegoat in the media due to their association with Satanism.
Exit 8
Genki Kawamura and Sammeha Anwar
Inspired by a cult video game and now adapted into an acclaimed film, Exit 8 is an innovative work of storytelling, and an ingenious locked-room mystery unlike any other.
A young man is riding the Tokyo subway when he receives a life-changing text message from his ex-girlfriend. He exits the train, but extraordinary things begin to happen, and he finds he cannot escape.
Why is he trapped? Is it related to the text message he received? Will he solve the clues before it is too late?
Algot, Anna Stina and the Water of Life
Jonas Jonasson and Rachel Willson-Broyles
After his father’s death is caused by the greedy and cunning Count Bielkegren, Algot Olsson is left with nothing to his name, except for a potato field and a homemade still to make liquor.
But Algot is smart, ambitious and resourceful, and it’s not long before he masters the lucrative art of distilling spirits. When his schnapps become a sensation, he finds his success once again attracts the envy of the Count, who will do everything in his power to sabotage Algot’s budding business.
Thankfully, however, Algot isn’t alone. With the support of his friend Helmut, a Bavarian printer with a flexible relationship to the truth, and Helmut’s daughter Anna Stina, who is as strong-willed as she is charming, he might just have the creativity and the courage to outsmart the Count’s schemes once and for all.
The Summer We Lied
Rebecca Hardy
Eighteen years ago, Alex – then a teenager – sent a man to prison. She, and her two best friends from school, overheard the vicious murder of a mother and child, although only she took the stand in court.
But despite her evidence, there were always rumours that the wrong man had been imprisoned. That although he was someone not to be trusted, he wasn’t a killer.
Alex has always known she did the right thing but when new DNA evidences comes to light and the conviction is overturned, the spotlight falls on her, the woman who sent him to jail. The woman whose mistake may have let the real killer evade justice for years. And for Jonathan, Alex and Rachel, once friends for life, now strangers to one another, there are going to be many more secrets coming to light.
Because that summer, there were many different versions of the truth.
Eden Falls
Ajay Chowdhury
Newlyweds Adam and Aisha are in an airport lounge in Delhi, their honeymoon abruptly cut short by the murder of Adam’s best friend.
While Aisha waits, Adam disappears, leaving only a cryptic message: ‘I’m sorry’.
Stranded in India without documents, Aisha is interrogated by RAW, India’s intelligence agency, and the FBI – both of whom seem to know more about her husband’s disappearance than she does. At the same time Adam’s ex-lover, Sara, receives an urgent message from him: ‘Help her’.
Thrown together by circumstance and suspicion, Aisha and Sara decode Adam’s clues, which lead them across the US in a hunt to find Adam before it’s too late.
Invitation From a Dictator
রোরি ক্লেমেন্টস
Munich, 1937. The Duke and Duchess of Windsor have arrived in Germany for a historic meeting at Hitler’s mountain retreat. But recent attacks by ruthless Communist band, Red Freedom, has brought fear and bloodshed to the area.
As brutal as the Nazis, their next targets are Edward, Wallis and the Fuhrer himself. Detective Sebastian Wolff is charged with their protection, but the conflict between his job and his politics becomes even more complicated when Wolff realises who is behind Red Freedom – Ulrike, his first love and the mother of his son.
Cool Machine
Colson Whitehead
1981. New York City is beginning to emerge from financial ruin and decline, energized by rampant real estate development and a Wall Street unchained by Reagan-era predatory capitalism.
Up in Harlem, successful business owner/master fence Ray Carney has just been named Sterling Furniture’s Dealer of the Month. When the banks won’t give his beloved wife, Elizabeth, a loan for her new travel agency, however, Carney gambles on one last heist, and finds himself entangled with a legendary criminal mastermind.
1983. To some, Carney’s friend and partner in crime Pepper is a stone-cold sociopath. To others, a top thief with questionable people skills. Either way, he’s feeling his age in his troubled gut and his aching bones.
When he takes on a bodyguard gig as a favour to Elizabeth, he’s plunged into the alien territory of the East Village art and club scene.
To Tame a Wild Flower
Sarah A. Parker
I’ve tumbled into a darkness so deep it’s hard to see the light, my petals curling inward as I tip my face from the sun. Hide from my monstrous actions.
Traitor. Murderer. High Mistress. My mistakes hunt me down, and I’m pulled into a political tug-of-war, balancing Ocruth’s welfare on the edge of a bloody blade.
The moon is swelling, the weight on my shoulders compacting, and my unfailing curiosity keeps weaving its roots in the wrong direction. Horrible truths unravel, casting explosive light on everything I thought I knew. I’ll have no choice but to shed my morals, my withering self-preservation, and sow the seed of a plan set to bloom beneath a bloated moon.
One wrong move could destroy everything. Destroy me. Lines will blur, blood will spill, and I’ll learn how fragile I really am – at a cost far greater than I could have imagined. Fate is a ravenous beast, and there’s only so far I can run.
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