BOOKLOVES

Stranded between history and myth, a young man must fight for survival in a strange land in this dreamlike historical fantasy. There’s nothing like a good survival story. Strip away the comforts of civilization, maroon a character in an unforgiving wilderness, ensure there is an abundance of potentially deadly flora and fauna, and the essentials […]

A four-year-old named Esme sits on the bottom stair, tugging on a pair of Frozen wellies, while her grandmother fetches a carrier bag of kitchen scraps. They walk out past thatched cottages to a farm on the edge of the village, sing a song from Mary Poppins, and tip the scraps into a pen of […]

Sixty years after her father died, Judi Dench went back to the house in York where she grew up, and found it covered in scaffolding. A builder waved, knocked on the door, and the owners invited her in. Up the narrow stairs, past the half-landing lavatory with the same door it had in her childhood, […]

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Content warnings: Child sexual abuse A sensitive, utterly riveting autobiography about a life of countless reinventions In Karmic Math, Tobias Maxwell deftly explores sexual abuse, addiction, escaping working-class Ontario, and reconciling with sexuality, gender, spirituality, and artistic callings. “The name on my birth certificate is Joseph Denis Rhéal Allaire. That’s probably the most difficult admission […]

A moving and reflective literary novel about atonement, reconciliation, and one woman grappling with her dark past Donna has carried the shame of her past like Sisyphus and his boulder: perpetually and futilely. The actions of her youth have haunted her, the weight of her guilt slowly crushing her. But on Halloween night 1991, twelve […]

The distraction is a dropped tray. Teacups shatter on the marble, every guard in the corridor rushes to help, and a princess who has never once walked anywhere unwatched darts across the hall into the crown prince’s rooms. Within the hour Layla of Sawan is in a hooded cloak in the Dakarian capital, stealing half […]

The first garment of the day is an infant’s gown the colour of marsh marigolds, lace spotted with blood. The woman kneeling in the River Bàsail works the stains out against the stones and sings a lullaby she cannot stop singing, because the curse pulls the song out of her throat. Elsewhere in the kingdom […]