Josh D.

In Claire-Louise Bennett's shimmering debut, an unnamed young woman - wry, somewhat misanthropic, keenly observant - chronicles her life on the outskirts of a small coastal village.The charms of bananas and oatcakes in the morning and Spanish oranges after sex; the small pleasures and anxieties of throwing a party, exchanging salacious emails with a new lover, sitting in the bath as it storms outside. Broken oven knobs prompt a meditation on survival that's both haunting and playful.

The House of Berethnet has ruled Inys for a thousand years. Still unwed, Queen Sabran the Ninth must conceive a daughter to protect her realm from destruction - but assassins are getting closer to her door. Ead Duryan is an outsider at court. Though she has risen to the position of lady-in-waiting, she is loyal to a hidden society of mages. Ead keeps a watchful eye on Sabran, secretly protecting her with forbidden magic.

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.