This year, for the first time ever, we ran our very own Books of the Year competition. We asked you to tell us your favourite read of 2023 and what made it so special to you. In exchange we chose a winner to receive all six of our 2023 Books of the Year! We were inundated with some really great recommendations from you guys so thought we'd put a selection here to share the love...   Mandy's Books of the Year: Poor by Katriona O'Sullivan I heard the writer speak on the radio about her book. It immediately struck me as something I...

It can sometimes feel like there isn't a whole lot out there for your teenaged boy especially if he's not too fussed about reading in the first place. So we've put together a list to get him back into the habit and once again hooked on books...     Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk  First rule of Fight Club? You gotta read the book if you liked the movie. In a world of white-collar jobs and catalog-bought apartments, a group of men gather in abandoned basements across the country to fight barehanded. They fight for as long as they need to - until the numbing...

There is a particular kind of precision required to write good short stories, sometimes less really is more. Here are some of the best examples I've come across. Twenty One Stories by Graham Greene Graham Greene's novels are revered globally and rightly so, his short stories are not as well known although they are excellent. This collection is variously comedic, violent, thought provoking, and dark. I think of Greene as a natural storyteller and short stories gave him room to flex his literary muscles. Written between 1929 - 1954, these stories are always unmistakably Greene. Includes The Destructors, set in the 50s, a gang...

Seven Days in June - Tia WilliamsWhen a book forces you to put it down, pace the room for a bit, and then pick it right back up again, you know it’s a good’un. One hot New York summer and best-selling romance writer Eva Mercy has been invited to a literary panel of black writers. Who should she see, but her first great love (and now literary golden-boy) Shane Hall. Over the course of one week they grapple with reacquaintance over a decade since their catastrophic teenage relationship. Full of yearning, flirting, and the messy baggage of past-selves, Shane and...

Uprooted - Naomi NovikThe perfect introduction into adult fantasy, and definitely the book that made me go ‘oh this is what reading can be.’ Naomi Novik’s wonderful novel creates a rich Eastern-European based world, where a deadly forest is slowly poisoning the neighbouring valley. Only the Dragon, an immortal magician of unfathomable power, can protect them . . . but at a cost. Every ten years a girl is taken, and Agnieszka is stunned when it is her. Thrown into the chaotic world of politics, magic, and ancient power that is stirring in the dark, Agnieszka and the Dragon must...