Titles worth breaking your reading rules for

by Chloe Benjamin

New York Times bestseller Chloe Benjamin presents a sweeping speculative fiction about scientific discovery and hubris, love and loss, and our connection to the planet and each other. Laurel Salter is a mycologist in crisis. After her life with a promising career and happy family imploded, she relocated to an isolated research base in Antarctica to hide from her past and debilitating grief. But everything changes when the Arc, a mysterious glowing dome, appears over the ice. Soon scientists are flocking to her new home, and it isn’t long before her physicist ex-husband is among them. When Laurel presents her theory, that the Arc could hold the key to changing their past and saving their future, will the once-happy couple finally be able to overcome their grief together? 

by Rebecca Perry

Longlisted for the Booker Prize and winner of the Waterstones Debut Fiction Prize, May We Feed the King is part historical fiction, part meditation on historical scholarship itself. When a curator accepts a commission to restore the private quarters of a medieval palace, she quickly becomes absorbed in the story of a king almost lost to time. Soon the lines between her life and his begin to blur, at which point the narrative shifts to that of the King, a man struggling with a role he was neither raised for nor desired. As the story progresses, the author forces the reader to question how much can truly be known about another person’s life, particularly when all we have are written fragments.

by Erynne Rivers

In this reimagining of the classic Robin Hood legend, Maid Marian has been sent off to marry the reviled Sheriff of Nottingham, much to her dismay. Everything changes when her journey takes her through the fae-infested Sherwood Forest and she’s captured by the Merry Men. Raised to fear these magical creatures, and their infamous yet sinfully handsome leader most of all, Marian soon realizes the stories she’s been told may not all be true. As the Sheriff’s men close in on Marian’s location, she’s forced to decide between the family she’s always known or a love she chooses for herself.

by Susie Dent

Fans of Countdown and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown won’t want to miss resident lexicographer Susie Dent’s second novel. In this sequel to Dent’s 2024 debut, Guilty by Definition, Martha Thornhill finds herself yet again at the center of a linguistic mystery when the body of a university lecturer is discovered near mysterious graffiti symbols she recognizes. As new messages surface, Martha and her colleagues must lend their expertise to the case before tragedy strikes again.

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Investigative journalist Patrick Radden Keefe delivers a spellbinding account of a family devastated by the loss of their nineteen-year-old son, and the secrets they would unravel only after his death. In November 2019, surveillance cameras captured video of Zac Brettler leaping from a fifth-floor balcony into the Thames. But as his family would soon uncover, this was not a straightforward suicide. Brettler had created a false identity for himself, posing as the son of a Russian oligarch to live a life of opulence – a life that would soon thrust him into London’s criminal underworld. Through years of communication with the Brettlers as well as exhaustive research, Keefe presents a tour de force of true crime fiction that is both shocking and sensitively handled.