Heros of the Neros: The 2024 Nero Awards Shortlist
By The Bookshop in Helston
Heros of the Neros: The 2024 Nero Awards Shortlist
By The Bookshop in Helston
Celebrating outstanding writing by great authors living in the UK and Ireland, these awards list the best books of the year.
Each year, an expert panel of judges will choose which books from the past 12 months they would most want to recommend to others for their quality writing and readability. From a shortlist of 16 unputdownable books, a winner will be named in January 2024 from each of the following four categories: Children’s Fiction, Debut Fiction, Fiction and Non-Fiction. An overall winner, given the Nero Gold Prize for the “Book of the Year”, will also be named in March 2024.
Strong Female Character: Nero Book Awards Winner
Fern Brady
£10.99 £10.44Non-Fiction Award CATEGORY WINNER WINNER, NON FICTION BOOK 2023, BOOKS ARE MY BAG AWARDS SHORTLIST, NERO BOOK AWARDS SHORTLIST, BOOKSHOP.ORG INDIE CHAMPIONS SHORTLIST, AMAZON NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR SHORTLIST, GOODREADS CHOICE BOOK OF THE YEARAudible Books of the Year 2023The Times Books of the Year 2023Apple Best Audiobooks of 2023BOOKSHOP.ORG Book of the Month January 2024THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'I tore through this hilarious, smart, sad, revealing book' - Bob Odenkirk 'Funny, sharp and has incredible clarity' - Jon Ronson'An absolute riot. I'm literally going to read it again once I've finished, and I'm a miserable bastard...it's a belter' - FRANKIE BOYLE'Strong Female Character is a testament to the importance of self-knowledge.' - Rachael Healy, The GuardianA summary of my book:1. I'm diagnosed with autism 20 years after telling a doctor I had it. 2. My terrible Catholic childhood: I hate my parents etc. 3. My friendship with an elderly man who runs the corner shop and is definitely not trying to groom me. I get groomed. 4. Homelessness. 5. Stripping. 6. More stripping but with more nervous breakdowns. 7. I hate everyone at uni and live with a psycho etc. 8. REDACTED as too spicy. 9. After everyone tells me I don't look autistic, I try to cure my autism and get addicted to Xanax. 10. REDACTED as too embarrassing. 'Fern's book, like everything she does, is awesome. Incredibly funny, and so unapologetically frank that I feel genuinely sorry for her lawyers.' - PHIL WANG'Of course it's funny - it's Fern Brady - but this book is also deeply moving and eye-opening'- ADAM KAY'It made me laugh out loud and broke my heart and made me weep...I hope absolutely everyone reads this, and it makes them kinder and more curious about the way we all live' - DAISY BUCHANAN'Glorious. Frank but nuanced, a memoir that doesn't sacrifice voice or self-awareness. And it has brilliant things to say about being autistic and being funny' - ELLE MCNICOLL'A set text for all of us in 2023' - DEBORAH FRANCES-WHITE'Fern is a brilliant, beautiful writer with a unique voice and even more unique story. Astute, honest and very, very funny.' - LOU SANDERS'So funny and brilliant' - HOLLY SMALE'Witty, dry, and gimlet-eyed, Strong Female Character is a necessary corrective. Brady offers a compelling, messy, highly resonant portrait of what masked Autism feels like.' - Devon Price, author of Unmasking Autism
The Tidal Year: shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards 2023
Freya Bromley
£16.99 £16.14Non-Fiction Award Shortlist 'Immersive and compelling. I read it in a single day! Everyone should take a plunge into this book.' CATHY RENTZENBRINK'The Tidal Year is some of the best writing on wild swimming that I have encountered.' MARIANNE LEVYFreya is still searching. For four years, she's been looking for a way to fill the empty space her brother's death left behind. Ready for another distraction, Freya decides to swim every tidal pool in Britain in a year with her friend Miri. The adventure takes them from a pool hidden in the cliffs of fishing-village Polperro to the quarry lagoon of Abereiddi via the Trinkie where locals meet each year to give the pool wall a fresh lick of paint. As Freya travels further from London, she finds herself closer to memories of her brother. With every swim, and every stranger they meet in the water, the challenge becomes more than just a way to explore the coast, but a journey of self-discovery. The Tidal Year is a true story about the healing power of wild swimming and the space it creates for reflection, rewilding, and hope. An exploration of grief in the modern age, it's also a tale of loss, love, female rage and sisterhood. 'Funny, sad and honest, but ultimately also hopeful, The Tidal Year is a wonderful and welcome addition to the growing canon of books exploring the restorative power of wild swimming.' SOPHIE PIERCE
Undercurrent: A Cornish memoir of poverty and resilience, shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards 2023
Natasha Carthew
£16.99 £16.14Non-Fiction Award Shortlist 'At times roaring and visceral, in turn gentle and embracing, always driven by hope and determination' Raynor Winn 'Haunting and powerful' Kate Mosse To grow up in rural poverty is to fight for life before you can walk. Natasha Carthew was born into a world that sat alongside picture-postcard Cornwall, one where second homes took the sea view of council properties, summer months shifted the course of people's lives, and wealth converged with poverty on sandy beaches. In the rockpools and hedgerows of the natural world, Natasha found solace in the beauty of the landscape, and in the mobile library she found her means of escape. In Undercurrent she returns to the cliff paths of her childhood, determined to make sense of an upbringing shaped by political neglect and a life defined by the beauty of nature. This is a journey through place, and a vivid story of hope, beauty and fierce resilience. 'Marvellous, moving and mesmerising' Anita Sethi 'A story of queer resistance, of community and of finding your own voice' Damian Barr
Undercurrent: A Cornish memoir of poverty and resilience, shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards 2023
Natasha Carthew
£9.99 £9.49Non-Fiction Award Shortlist PAPERBACK EDITION TO BE PUBLISHED 11 APRIL 2024 'At times roaring and visceral, in turn gentle and embracing, always driven by hope and determination' Raynor Winn 'Haunting and powerful' Kate Mosse To grow up in rural poverty is to fight for life before you can walk. Natasha Carthew was born into a world that sat alongside picture-postcard Cornwall, one where second homes took the sea view of council properties, summer months shifted the course of people's lives, and wealth converged with poverty on sandy beaches. In the rockpools and hedgerows of the natural world, Natasha found solace in the beauty of the landscape, and in the mobile library she found her means of escape. In Undercurrent she returns to the cliff paths of her childhood, determined to make sense of an upbringing shaped by political neglect and a life defined by the beauty of nature. This is a journey through place, and a vivid story of hope, beauty and fierce resilience. 'Marvellous, moving and mesmerising' Anita Sethi 'A story of queer resistance, of community and of finding your own voice' Damian Barr
Hags: *SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2023*
Victoria Smith
£12.99 £12.34Non-Fiction Award Shortlist A book that could not be more necessary' Observer'Eloquent, clever and devastating' The Times'Deftly illustrates how ageist misogyny remains an acceptable prejudice' GuardianWhat is about women in middle-age and beyond that seems to enrage - almost everyone?In the last few years, as identity politics has taken hold, middle-aged women have found themselves talked and written about as morally inferior beings, the face of bigotry, entitlement and selfishness, to be ignored, pitied or abused. Hags asks the question why these women are treated with such active disdain. Each chapter takes a different theme - care work, beauty, violence, political organization, sex - and explores it in relation to middle-aged women's beliefs, bodies and choices. Victoria Smith traces the attitudes she describes back to the same anxieties about older women that drove Early Modern witch hunts, and explores the very specific reasons why this type of misogyny is so powerful today. The demonisation of hags has never felt more now. Victoria Smith has decided in this book that she will be the Karen so nobody else has to be, and she ends on a positive note, exploring potential solutions which can benefit all women, hags and hags-in-waiting.
Birnam Wood: The Sunday Times Bestseller
Eleanor Catton
£9.99 £9.49Fiction Award Shortlist Birnam Wood is on the move... A landslide has closed the Korowai Pass in New Zealand's South Island, cutting off the town of Thorndike, leaving a sizable farm abandoned. The disaster presents an opportunity for Birnam Wood, a guerrilla gardening collective that plants crops wherever no one will notice. But they hadn't figured on the enigmatic American billionaire Robert Lemoine, who also has an interest in the place. Can they trust him? And, as their ideals and ideologies are tested, can they trust each other? A propulsive literary thriller from the Booker Prize-winning author of The Luminaries, Birnam Wood is Shakespearean in its wit, drama and immersion in character. It is a brilliantly constructed tale of intentions, actions and consequences, and an unflinching examination of the human impulse to ensure our own survival.
The Bee Sting
Paul Murray
£18.99 £18.04Fiction Award Shortlist CATEGORY WINNER Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under - but rather than face the music, he's spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home. Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil? Can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written - is there still time to find a happy ending? "The finest novel that Murray has yet written . . . will surely be one of the books of 2023" Sunday Independent 'Murray is a natural storyteller . . . ambitious, expansive, hugely entertaining tragicomic fiction" Irish Times "It's a thing of beauty, a novel that will fill your heart" Observer "Generous, immersive, sharp-witted and devastating . . . a triumph" Financial Times "It's been compared to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections; I'd argue it's better" Daily Mail
Ordinary Human Failings
Megan Nolan
£16.99 £16.14Fiction Award Shortlist 1990 in London and, after the death of a young girl on an estate, the finger of suspicion is pointing at one reclusive Irish family: the Greens. At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, other-worldly, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life – and love – got in her way. Now, as the scandal unfolds and the tabloids hunt their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations. "Bold and beautiful" DAILY TELEGRAPH "Ambitious and original" DAVID NICHOLLS "A compulsive read" THE TIMES
Fifteen Wild Decembers
Karen Powell
£14.99 £14.24Fiction Award Shortlist Isolated from society, Emily Brontë and her siblings spend their days inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape to which she has become so passionately bound, she is simply unable to function. To the outside world, Emily Bronte appears taciturn and unexceptional, but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment. A violent phenomenon is about to burst forth that will fuse her imaginary world with the landscape of her beloved Yorkshire and change the literary world forever. Fifteen Wild Decembers is the dazzling second novel from a writer who has been compared to Shirley Hazzard and Graham Greene.
Fifteen Wild Decembers: SHORTLISTED FOR THE NERO BOOK AWARDS 2023
Karen Powell
£9.99 £9.49Fiction Award Shortlist PAPERBACK EDITION TO BE PUBLISHED 29 FEBRUARY 2024 Isolated from society, Emily Brontë and her siblings spend their days inventing elaborate fictional realms or roaming the wild moors above their family home in Yorkshire. When the time comes for them to venture out into the world to earn a living, each of them struggles to adapt, but for Emily the change is catastrophic. Torn from the landscape to which she has become so passionately bound, she is simply unable to function. To the outside world, Emily Bronte appears taciturn and unexceptional, but beneath the surface her mind is in a creative ferment. A violent phenomenon is about to burst forth that will fuse her imaginary world with the landscape of her beloved Yorkshire and change the literary world forever. Fifteen Wild Decembers is the dazzling second novel from a writer who has been compared to Shirley Hazzard and Graham Greene.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: Shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards 2023
Stephen Buoro
£16.99Debut Fiction Award Shortlist A writer of imagination and flair’ ECONOMIST‘Smart, subversive, funny, heartbreaking’ KAMILA SHAMSIE‘Buoro's writing deserves to inspire a generation of superheroes’ THE TIMESFifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza lives in Kontagora, Nigeria, where his days are spent about town with his droogs, Slim and Morocca, grappling with his fantasies about white girls – especially blondes – and wondering who his father is. When he’s not in church, at school or attempting to form ‘Africa’s first superheroes’, he obsesses over mathematical theorems, ideas of black power and HXVX: the Curse of Africa. Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed ‘Andy Africa’ soon falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on, Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man claims, despite his mother’s denials, to be Andy’s father, and the gathering of an anti-Christian mob is headed for the church – both set to shake the foundations of everything Andy knows and loves. The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzling, distinctive, new literary voice. Profound, exhilarating and highly original, this tragicomic novel is a stunning exploration of the contemporary African ‘condition’, the relentless infiltration of Western culture and, most of all, the ordinary but impossible challenges of coming of age in a turbulent world.
The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa: Shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards 2023
Stephen Buoro
£9.99 £9.49Debut Fiction Award Shortlist PAPERBACK EDITION TO BE PUBLISHED MARCH 2024 A writer of imagination and flair’ ECONOMIST‘Smart, subversive, funny, heartbreaking’ KAMILA SHAMSIE‘Buoro's writing deserves to inspire a generation of superheroes’ THE TIMESFifteen-year-old Andrew Aziza lives in Kontagora, Nigeria, where his days are spent about town with his droogs, Slim and Morocca, grappling with his fantasies about white girls – especially blondes – and wondering who his father is. When he’s not in church, at school or attempting to form ‘Africa’s first superheroes’, he obsesses over mathematical theorems, ideas of black power and HXVX: the Curse of Africa. Sure enough, the reluctantly nicknamed ‘Andy Africa’ soon falls hopelessly and inappropriately in love with the first white girl he lays eyes on, Eileen. But at the church party held to celebrate her arrival, multiple crises loom. An unfamiliar man claims, despite his mother’s denials, to be Andy’s father, and the gathering of an anti-Christian mob is headed for the church – both set to shake the foundations of everything Andy knows and loves. The Five Sorrowful Mysteries of Andy Africa announces a dazzling, distinctive, new literary voice. Profound, exhilarating and highly original, this tragicomic novel is a stunning exploration of the contemporary African ‘condition’, the relentless infiltration of Western culture and, most of all, the ordinary but impossible challenges of coming of age in a turbulent world.
The New Life
Tom Crewe
£9.99 £9.49Debut Fiction Award Shortlist After a lifetime spent navigating his desires, John has finally found a man who returns his feelings. Meanwhile, Henry is convinced that his new unconventional marriage will bring freedom. United by a shared vision, they begin work on a revolutionary book arguing for the legalisation of homosexuality. Before it can be published however, Oscar Wilde is arrested and their daring book threatens to throw them, and all around them, into danger. How high a price are they willing to pay for a new way of living? 'A very fine new writer' Kate Atkinson 'Filled with nuance and tenderness . . . charting the lives of men and women who inspired not only political progress but an entire new way of living and loving' Colm Toibin
Sunburn: Shortlisted for the Polari First Book Prize 2024
Chloe Michelle Howarth
£10.99 £10.44Debut Fiction Award Shortlist It's the early 1990s, and in the Irish village of Crossmore, Lucy feels out of place. Despite her fierce friendships, she's always felt this way, and the conventional path of marriage and motherhood doesn't appeal to her at all. Not even with handsome and doting Martin, her closest childhood friend. Lucy begins to make sense of herself during a long hot summer, when a spark with her school friend Susannah escalates to an all-consuming infatuation, and, very quickly, to a desperate and devastating love. Fearful of rejection from her small and conservative community, Lucy begins living a double life, hiding the most honest parts of herself in stolen moments with Susannah. But with the end of school and the opportunity to leave Crossmore looming, Lucy must choose between two places, two people and two futures, each as terrifying as the other. But only one can offer her real happiness. Sunburn is an astute and tender portrayal of first love, adolescent anxiety and the realities of growing up in a small town where tradition holds people tightly in its grasp.
Close to Home
Michael Magee
£14.99 £14.24Debut Fiction Award Shortlist CATEGORY WINNER Sean is back. Back in Belfast and back into old habits. Back on the mad all-nighters, the borrowed tenners and missing rent, the casual jobs that always fall through. Back in these scarred streets, where the promised prosperity of peacetime has never arrived. Back among his brothers, his ma, and all the things they never talk about. Until one night Sean finds himself at a party, dog-tired, surrounded by jeering strangers, his back against the wall and he makes a big mistake. 'Staggeringly humane, unfaltering, taut and tender... [It] feels like that rarest of things: a genuinely necessary book' Guardian 'Every detail rings true, every character is fleshy and real and heartbreaking... Michael Magee has a remarkable talent' Sunday Times
Gwen and Art Are Not in Love: Winner of the YA Book Prize and Books Are My Bag Readers' Award for YA
Lex Croucher
£8.99 £8.54Children's Fiction Award Shortlist Gwen, the quick-witted Princess of England, and Arthur, future lord and general gadabout, have been betrothed since birth. Unfortunately, the only thing they can agree on is that they hate each other. When Gwen catches Art kissing a boy and Art discovers where Gwen hides her diary (complete with racy entries about Bridget Leclair, the kingdom's only female knight), they become reluctant allies. By pretending to fall for each other, their mutual protection will be assured. But how long can they keep up the ruse? With Gwen growing closer to Bridget, and Art becoming unaccountably fond of Gabriel, Gwen's infuriatingly serious, bookish brother, the path to true love is looking far from straight 'Exactly what I needed right now, a delightful, heartwarming, hilarious historical romp, overflowing with queer panic and terrible jokes. I loved it' - ALICE OSEMAN, bestselling author of HEARTSTOPPER 'Fun and genuinely funny, with lovely friendships and first-rate dialogue. Gwen and Art may not be in love, but I fell for both of them' - RAINBOW ROWELL, #New York Times bestselling author of the SIMON SNOW trilogy 'A total rollicking delight! Lex Croucher is one of my favourite romcom authors, and they should be yours too' - CASEY MCQUISTON, #1 New York Times bestselling author of I KISSED SHARA WHEELER and RED, WHITE & ROYAL BLUE
Bitterthorn: TikTok made me buy it! A sapphic Gothic fantasy for fans of Samantha Shannon
Kat Dunn
£8.99 £8.54Children's Fiction Award Shortlist Blumwald is a town overshadowed by an ancient curse: in a sinister castle in the depths of the wild wood lives a monstrous Witch. Once a generation, she comes to claim a companion to return with her – never to be seen again. Now that time is drawing near once more... Mina, daughter of the duke, is grieving and lonely. She has lost all hope of any future for herself in Blumwald. So when the Witch demands her next companion, Mina offers herself up – though she has no idea what fate awaits her. Stranded with her darkly alluring captor, the mystery of what happened to the previous companions draws Mina into the heart of a terrifying secret that could save her life, or end it. A deliciously dark fairy tale full of the agony and ecstasy of longing and desire' KATHERINE WEBBER, author of Twin Crowns
Wild Song
Candy Gourlay
£7.99 £7.59Children's Fiction Award Shortlist The year is 1904. Luki has lived a tribal life in the mountains of the Philippines. Now she's growing up, she is expected to become a wife and a mother, but Luki isn't ready to give up her dream to become a warrior. When her tribe are offered a journey to America to be part of the St. Louis World's Fair, Luki will discover that the land of opportunity does not share its possibilities equally .
The Swifts
Beth Lincoln and CLAIRE POWELL
£7.99 £7.59Children's Fiction Award CATEGORY WINNER 'A stunning debut . . . laugh-out-loud funny' - ObserverDiscover the hilarious New York Times bestselling mystery adventure perfect for fans of Robin Stevens and Lemony Snicket. On the day they are born, each Swift is brought before the Family Dictionary. They are given a name and a definition, and it is assumed they will grow up to match. Unfortunately, Shenanigan Swift has other ideas. So what if her relatives all think she's destined to turn out as a troublemaker, just because of her name? Shenanigan knows she can be whatever she wants - pirate, explorer or even detective. Which is lucky, really, because when one of the Family tries to murder Arch-Aunt Schadenfreude, someone has to work out whodunit. With the help of her sisters and cousin, Shenanigan grudgingly takes on the case, but more murders, a hidden treasure and an awful lot of suspects make thing seriously complicated. Can Shenanigan catch the killer before the whole household is picked off? And in a Family where definitions are so important, can she learn to define herself? 'Murder most splendid' - The Telegraph. Winner of the Barnes & Noble Children's Book Award, shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards and nominated for the Carnegie Medal.