Get Set

It's been a dark and stormy start to the year already and we've barely begun! Still, the good news is that we are here to showcase some of the best books coming out in this first quarter. We've got debuts, we've got well kent faces, we've got great books for children, history buffs, armchair travellers, poetry lovers and crime fiction fans. All you need to start the year with a bang!

Alive in a Merciful Country by A. L. Kennedy

David Robinson Reviews

A new novel from A. L. Kennedy is always cause to celebrate, and Alive in a Merciful Country is a a great reason to run right to your nearest bookshop. David Robinson finds the novel ambitious, full of imagination and deeply human.

Alive in a Merciful Country By A. L. Kennedy Published by Saraband

On the verge of lockdown, Anna McCormick is teaching her Year Fives at Oakwood Primary School all about Rumpelstiltskin. They’ve made masks, wondered whether it would be possible to spin straw into gold, and worked out what kind of dance he might perform as he sets the princess the seemingly impossible task of guessing his name – which, as you might remember from your own time in Year Five, is the only way for her to avoid having to give him her first-born child.

A. L. Kennedy, herself the child of a primary school teacher mother, makes sure that Anna has no doubts about the importance of her job: ‘I am the person who keeps your society working right from the start, who tries to make sure it isn’t full of broken people.’ Working at Oakwood Primary (motto: ‘There’s always a bright side – we just need to find it’), living in a Victorian coachyard flat she adores in central London, she has a spectacularly good relationship with her 19-year-old son Paul, who matches her for both idealism and banter. Then there’s her website designer boyfriend Francis; even someone like Anna, a habitual worrier, knows that this is love. On their first night together, she confides to her diary, ‘it’s as if you’ve had an open cupboard door swinging back and forth while you walk about and now it’s comfortably closed and snug, and nothing important will fall out, not ever again.’

Happiness, two kinds of unwavering love, a job rooted in hope: this isn’t normal A. L. Kennedy territory. Where has all the nuance gone? The layers of p...

Coorie Doon by Jackie Kay & Jill Calder

Coorie Doon by Jackie Kay, and illustrated by Jill Calder is a truly beautiful book about family, love and song. We just had to share one of its marvellous illustrations! Don’t forget too, that if you buy the book, there is a QR code where you can learn the songs sung in the book too. What a treat!

Coorie Doon: A Scottish Lullaby Story By Jackie Kay, Illustrated by Jill Calder Published by Walker Books

He-ree ho-ro, my bonnie wee girl, He-ree ho0ro, my fair one.

Will you come away , my love, To be my own, my rare one?

...

Hermit: A Q & A with Chris McQueer

‘I wanted to explore themes of loneliness, masculinity, mental health and trauma as well as how easy it is for boys and young men to be preyed upon by toxic ideologies like that of incels.’

Poems from Fierce Salvage: A Queer Words Anthology

‘For all my life, I’ve stuck to walking pace, / but here, here comes the first rush of speed.

For Emma by Ewan Morrison

‘If I’d known anything more about Biosys’ Infinity Project at that point, I could have worked out that your time in that Hi-tech hospital was not about saving your life at all.’

Overnight by Dan Richards

‘Outside it’s overcast. Night is falling. The wind is getting up. Rain had been drumming on the roof of the covered walkway from the terminal out to the ship.’

The Book … According to Gareth Russell

‘I wanted to explore James’s life, in all its complexity and richness, as well as to see if there was something new, different and revealing about his love affairs, and there was. It was a thrilling h …

The Silent House of Sleep: A Q & A with Allan Gaw

‘Yes, of course, readers want intricate, absorbing plots, but they also want to read about characters who seem real and whose lives are as interesting as the world they inhabit.’

The Friday Girl by R. D. Mclean

‘Dow’s good people. One of the few. The uncle you wish you had. He served in the war, but discusses it fleetingly. Did his duty, but would rather forget he ever had to.’

Beautiful Ugly by Alice Feeney

‘Our adventure might have had a tricky beginning, but this is beautiful, and I experience something like hope for the first time in a long time.’

Carrion Crow by Heather Parry

‘There are some facts about the world that only your mother can teach you.’

I Don’t Do Mountains: A Q & A with Barbara Henderson

‘I took to heart the advice from children’s author Helen Peters: ‘You can NEVER have enough jeopardy’.’

The River by Craig A. Smith

‘Seven ghosts had been visiting his dreams; some pleasant, some not so much.’

This Is What You Get by Iain MacLachlain

‘Aa those who’d been equipped in this buildin an had been sent awa tae break their kit in. Tae be torn, cut an chaffed by it. Tae clean it, an press it, an polish it. Tae lose it an tae beg borrow an …

David Robinson Reviews: Upon a White Horse by Peter Ross

‘Ross is always lucid, almost reverent, about the whole process of archaeological discovery.’
Abdullah’s Bear Needs a Name! by Yasmin Hanif

‘”Why don’t you guess?” said Abba. “You’ll know in your heart when you’ve found the right one.”‘
Food, Whisky, Life by Ghillie BaŞan

‘Pastries filled with ground nuts, baked fruit or creamy, semolina mixtures, and bathed in honey or …
A Chaos of Light: New Writing Scotland

‘The attic lowed like a crystal haal, last I saa her – / dark-eyed and ready tae furgit me.’
The Fathers by John Niven

‘The pleasures of the unexamined life and all that. Dan had read somewhere that the lower classes – …
Mrs Burke & Mrs Hare by Michelle Sloan

‘If you rip these bodies from the place that’s been blessed as their final place of peace, where fam …