Jonathan Cape Mother's Boy. A Writer's Beginnings Джейкобсон Говард

A taut, groundbreaking new novel about a writer's relationship with her larger-than-life mother - and about the very nature of writing • Ten months after her mother's death, the narrator of The Hero of This Book walks across London on a quiet Sunday. The city was a favourite of her mother's, and as the narrator wanders the streets, she finds herself reflecting on her mother's life and their relationship. Thoughts of the past meld with questions of the future: back in New England, the family home is now up for sale, its considerable contents already winnowed • The woman, a writer, recalls all that made her complicated mother extraordinary - her brilliant wit, her generosity, her unbelievable obstinacy, her sheer will in seizing life despite physical difficulties - and finds herself wondering how her mother had endured

On holiday in Suffolk, a boy and his dog discover a World War II pillbox half buried on a deserted beach. When he returns the next day with his parents, the pillbox has disappeared. They learn a pillbox had been there and a boy had once been found in it, dead • 1945, another boy, another dog, the same pillbox … and an American serviceman from the local base. Murder, treachery, a terrible secret… • David Hughes’ second graphic novel is a haunting ghost story – dark, disturbing and – as always with Hughes – stunningly drawn

1980s Cork. Jack Shine discovers a shoe box full of love letters in his mother's belongings. Rebekah came to Cork alone as a young Jewish refugee from Vienna when the Second World War broke out. She died soon after, and Jack never learned of his father's identity. Why did she keep newspaper clippings about a famous footballer player? Who was 'The Paper Man'? • As Jack uncovers his mother's life, he is transported to 1930s Vienna, a bustling city on the brink of war. At the heart of the action is Matthias Sindelar, one of the most famous footballers in the world, known as 'The Paper Man' because of his effortless weave across the pitch. When Sindelar unexpectedly meets Rebekah, both of their lives are changed forever. As war looms, they must accept that their survival will tear them apart

The extraordinary new story collection from one of Ireland's greatest writers and bestselling author of Mindwinter Break • Bernard MacLaverty is a consummately gifted short-story writer and novelist whose work - like that of John McGahern, William Trevor, Edna O'Brien or Colm Toibin - is deceptively simple on the surface, but carries a turbulent undertow. Everywhere, the dark currents of violence, persecution and regret pull at his subject matter: family love, the making of art, Catholicism, the Troubles and, latterly, ageing • Blank Pages is a collection of twelve extraordinary new stories that show the emotional range of a master. 'Blackthorns', for instance, tells of a poor out-of-work Catholic man who falls gravely ill in the sectarian Northern Ireland of 1942 but is brought back from the brink by an unlikely saviour

The second book from the "exact and poetic" (New York Times) author of critical smash Young Skins, winner of the Guardian First Book Award and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature and a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35, Homesickness is an emotionally resonant and wonderfully wry collection that follows the lives of outcasts, misfits, and malcontents from County Mayo to Canada • When Colin Barrett's debut Young Skins published, it swept up several major literary awards, and, in both its linguistic originality and sharply drawn portraits of working-class Ireland, earned Barrett comparisons to Faulkner, Hardy, and Musil. Now, in a blistering follow-up collection, Barrett brings together eight character-driven stories, each showcasing his inimitably observant eye and darkly funny style • A quiet night in a local pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive; a funeral party teeters on the edge of this world and the next, as ghosts simply won't lay in wake; a shooting sees a veteran policewoman confront the banality of her own existence; and an aspiring writer grapples with his father's cancer diagnosis and in his despair wreaks havoc on his mentor's life

A spellbinding new book by the much-acclaimed writer, a journey to South Africa in search of the lost people called the /Xam - a haunting book about the brutality of colonial frontiers and the fate of those they dispossess • In spring 2020, Julia Blackburn travelled to the Karoo region of South Africa to see for herself the ancestral lands that had once belonged to an indigenous group called the /Xam • Throughout the nineteenth century the /Xam were persecuted and denied the right to live in their own territories. In the 1870s, facing cultural extinction, several /Xam individuals agreed to teach their intricate language to a German philologist and his indomitable English sister-in-law. The result was the Bleek-Lloyd Archive: 60,000 notebook pages in which their dreams, memories and beliefs, alongside the traumas of their more recent history, were meticulously recorded word for word

First published in 2003, Literary Life became an instant classic as readers (and writers) delighted in watching Posy Simmonds skewer the pains and pretensions of the writer’s (and reader’s) calling with her inimitable flair for witty satire and sharp social observation. As well as all the cartoons and comic strips from the original edition, The Complete Literary Life includes 40 extra pages of cartoons, including the two series Rick Raker and Dr Derek, in which two very different heroes attempt to right the wrongs afflicting the writing world, one by brute force and skulduggery, the other with a silky bedside manner

It takes a whole universe to make one small black bird • The bestselling author of Crow Country and writer of The Guardian's Country Diary tells the story of all life on Earth through a single day spent in the company of swifts • Swifts are among the most extraordinary of all birds. Their migrations span continents and their twelve-week stopover, when they pause to breed in European rooftops, is the very definition of summer. They may nest in our homes but much about their lives passes over our heads. No birds are more wreathed in mystery. Captivated, Mark Cocker sets out to capture their essence • Over the course of one day in midsummer he devotes himself to his beloved black birds as they spiral overhead. Yet this is also a book about so much more

A funny, heartfelt graphic memoir about living in foreign countries, and finding one's place both at home and abroad • In this delightful graphic novel, Lucie Arnoux chronicles her adventures around the world. Growing up in Marseille as a misfit with a passion for drawing, she decides to settle in London to pursue her dream career as a comics writer. Je Ne Sais Quoi shows us London through the eyes of a mischievous and clear-sighted young French woman, the joys and pains of being an outsider and, ultimately, how to live life to its fullest

An epic, deeply moving novel about the power of love and loving with courage - from the Man Booker International Prize-winning author of A Horse Walks into a Bar • On a kibbutz in Israel in 2008, Gili is celebrating the ninetieth birthday of her grandmother Vera, the adored matriarch of a sprawling and tight-knit family. But festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Nina: the iron-willed daughter who rejected Vera's care; and the absent mother who abandoned Gili when she was still a baby • Nina's return to the family after years of silence precipitates an epic journey from Israel to the desolate island of Goli Otok, formerly part of Yugoslavia. It was here, five decades earlier, that Vera was held and tortured as a political prisoner. And it is here that the three women will finally come to terms with the terrible moral dilemma that Vera faced, and that permanently altered the course of their lives

A brilliantly warm, witty and moving portrait of our pandemic lives, told in ten heart-rending short stories • Love and marriage. Children and family. Death and grief. Life touches everyone the same. But living under lockdown, it changes us alone • In these ten, beautifully moving short stories mostly written over the last year, Booker Prize winner Roddy Doyle paints a collective portrait of our strange times. A man abroad wanders the stag-and-hen-strewn streets of Newcastle, as news of the virus at home asks him to question his next move. An exhausted nurse struggles to let go, having lost a much-loved patient in isolation. A middle-aged son, barred from his mother's funeral, wakes to an oncoming hangover of regret • Told with Doyle's signature warmth, wit and extraordinary eye for the richness that underpins the quiet of our lives, Life Without Children cuts to the heart of how we are all navigating loss, loneliness, and the shifting of history underneath our feet

'When someone looks back and writes a history of this summer, two people they will almost certainly leave out are Sue and Daniel Bagnold...' • So begins Joff Winterhart's sublimely funny and perceptive graphic novel, Days of the Bagnold Summer. Sue, 52, works in a library. Daniel, 15, is still at school. This was the summer holidays Daniel was due to spend with his father and his father's pregnant new wife in Florida. When they cancel his trip, Sue and Daniel face six long weeks together • Joff Winterhart perfectly captures the ennui, the tension, the pathos and yes, the affection of this mother-son relationship. Already well-known for his animated films like Violet and Turquoise, he here shows himself to be a comics author of extraordinary talent