
Our Booksellers' Recommendations
By Golden Hare Books
Our Booksellers' Recommendations

Here's what our booksellers have been reading and loving recently.

Coming Through Slaughter
Michael Ondaatje
£9.99 £9.49Jonathan: Through thrilling and visceral prose, Ondaatje tells the (possible) life story of Jazz pioneer, Buddy Bolden. This novel is an incredible achievement, especially considering it was the author's debut!

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
£9.99 £9.49Ella: An utterly humane and affirming novel that will remind you of how important your friends and family are. A book of life, of love, of creating things and seeing them succeed or fall. Truly beautiful.

Wain: LGBT reimaginings of Scottish folktales
Rachel Plummer and Helene Boppert
£12.00 £11.40Jonathan: LGBT poetry for teens! But really for everybody. Rachel Plummer's words retell fairytales from Scotland in the most beautiful way, complemented by gorgeous illustrations by Helene Boppert.

Time of the Flies
Claudia Pineiro
£12.99 £12.34Kira: Claudia Pineiro does it again! Impressively following her novels Elena Knows and A Little Luck, Time of the Flies easily holds its own. Coupled with Pineiro's beautiful prose and slow and suspenseful plot reveals, Time of the Flies explores redemption, rehabilitation, motherhood, and found family.

The Darkness Outside Us
Eliot Schrefer
£8.99 £8.54Ella: This is a simply phenomenal sci-fi mystery, with one of the greatest plot twists I have ever read. Queer, provocative, rule-breaking, and full of love. A true joy of a book. It will stay with you.

The Minotaur Takes A Cigarette Break
Steven Sherrill
£9.99 £9.49Jonathan: A moving and bittersweet novel about love, hope, outsiders, and a minotaur!

When Haru Was Here
Dustin Thao
£8.99 £8.54Kira: A touching novel about grief, friendship, and growing up. Eric is reeling after the death of his best friend. But when Haru reappears in his life, capturing his heart along the way, it gets harder and harder for Eric to tell what is real.

A Psalm for the Wild-Built
Becky Chambers
£17.99 £17.09Ella: A truly wonderous, life-affirming and wholesome read when you're feeling lost and could use some faith in humanity and our future. A tea monk, a robot, and an endless supply of philosophical discussion. Sublime!

The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On
Franny Choi
£12.99 £12.34Kira: An urgent and delicate poetry collection full of life and captivating reflections and observations. Timely and relevant for our generation of apocalypse fearers, doomsday preppers, and the people just trying to survive another day.

The Doll's Alphabet
Camilla Grudova
£10.99 £10.44Julia: Some are creepy, some are weird, but all these stories are wonderful. I'd be hard-pressed to pick a favourite - I think you should read them all!

Evocation: Book I in The Summoner's Circle
S.T. Gibson
£18.99 £18.04Julia: Have you ever had one of those bad phases where everything goes wrong because your bloodline is cursed? No? Well, this book gives you a great idea of what that might feel like. Hilarious, innovative, and really rather sweet.

The Other Valley
Scott Alexander Howard
£16.99 £16.14Kira: Such an intriguing concept and expertly executed. To the east of the valley is the same town but 20 years ahead, and to the west 20 years behind. 16 year old Odile is training to become a member of Conseil; a judge who decides which residents can cross boarders. Odile is succeeding until a case becomes personal and emotions run high. Gripping and moving!

Blue Sisters
Coco Mellors
£16.99 £16.14Ella: This is a beautiful novel worthy of its praise, tender and loving, and softer than Mellors' debut - anyone who has had a sister will recognise themselves or her in these pages. I gave a copy to mine, and she loved it too!

Mouthing
Orla Mackey
£14.99 £14.24Ella: If you enjoyed Small Things Like These, or any other Claire Keegan, you might enjoy a visit to Ballyrowan - a fictional Irish town where eyes search for trouble and mouths yap behind closed doors. This book is a fantastic debut, full of charm.

Enter Ghost
Isabella Hammad
£9.99 £9.49Kira: When Sonia returns to Palestine to visit her older sister, we become aware of her fragile relationship with her family and history. Joining a local production of Hamlet, we're briefly distracted and entertained by the group's drama until art mimics real life in a harrowing and climatic opening night. Powerful and enlightening!

Girl, Woman, Other: WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE 2019
Bernardine Evaristo
£9.99 £9.49Kira: This was truly spectacular - Evaristo has a rare talent for being able to craft and interweave multigenerational voices. It was splendid to spend time with such a wide variety of characters. Captivating and unputdownable!

The Sentence: Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2022
Louise Erdrich
£10.99 £10.44Polly: Set in Minneapolis as the Covid pandemic unfolds, and then the Black Lives Matter movement comes into being, this brilliant novel deals with ghosts of many types, mystical, personal, cultural. Funny, moving and what you'd expect from a Pulitzer Prize winner.

In the Distance
Hernan Diaz
£9.99 £9.49Jonathan: This is a thrilling and moving novel that touches on subjects such as otherness, loss, friendship and the myth of the American dream. It is beautiful and gripping to the very end.

Dandelion Wine
Ray Bradbury
£9.99 £9.49Jonathan: Bradbury's writing is at its poetic best in this beautiful novel about an extraordinary summer in small town America.

A Tomb With a View – The Stories & Glories of Graveyards: Scottish Non-fiction Book of the Year 2021
Peter Ross
£10.99 £10.44This book brings to life our beloved and forgotten graveyards and shares the stories of the people inhabiting them. So interesting and full of hope and joy!

In Her Nature: How Women Break Boundaries in the Great Outdoors
Rachel Hewitt
£10.99 £10.44Polly: Rachel Hewitt turned to long distance running to help her deal with grief, and found herself repeatedly told that women's involvement in outdoor pursuits is very recent. Her curiosity lead her to research and produce this brilliant account of the amazing female pioneers of the great outdoors

Revenge
Yoko Ogawa
£9.99 £9.49Julia: These stories, which all interlink in surprising ways - are unlike anything else I've read. Dark, twisted, yet very human... a collection that will stay wit you. Perhaps not for those that are easily spooked.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop: The perfect book to curl up with - for lovers of Japanese translated fiction everywhere
Satoshi Yagisawa
£10.99 £10.44Julia: I feel like this book is perfect for the (somewhat nice) group of people who walk around bookshops hoping it'll solve their problems. In all seriousness, if you have an affinity for the bookshops setting and - like me - believe books fix a lot of issues, you'll love this story.

The Voids
Ryan O’Connor
£8.99 £8.54Polly: A vivid depiction of addiction and despair, The Voids takes us on a whirlwind tour of Glasgow. O'Connor expertly conjures brilliant images out of the seedy and grim. A startling debut novel.

Kick the Latch
Kathryn Scanlan
£9.99 £9.49Polly: A short and intense novel like no other, Kick the Latch is based on interviews with a real female veteran of the American horse racing world. Compelling, immediate and full of insight.

Penance: From the author of BOY PARTS
Eliza Clark
£9.99 £9.49Ella: If you've ever spent hours listening to that one time crime podcast, or watched episode after episode of a gruesome documentary, this book is for you. A masterclass in crime writing, fact checking, chronically online 90s kids and true crime ethics. Absolutely unique and amazing.

Feast While You Can: a 'brilliantly visceral queer horror' for fans of Julia Armfield and Eliza Clark
Mikaella Clements and Onjuli Datta
£9.99 £9.49Ella: This modern gothic, super sexy, monster-in-the-cave-type horror story is a fantastic little book for the darker months. A brilliant cast of small town characters, a family curse, a possession unlike any other. I loved this books - it's cool, it's hot, it's scary!

The Secret History
Donna Tartt
£9.99 £9.49Hannah: The first time I read it, I enjoyed the mystery and the plot twists. The second time, I enjoyed the foreshadowing and cleverness. The third time, it became a comedy. One of my all time favourites.

Less: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2018
Andrew Sean Greer
£9.99 £9.49Hannah: It's rare for a comedy to receive such critical acclaim, but if you read it you will understand why. Arthur is dealing with multiple crises at once - midlife, romantic, creative - and the result is one of the funniest and most endearing books I have ever read.

Commonwealth
Ann Patchett
£9.99 £9.49Hannah: Sibling relationships are complex at the best of times. In Commonwealth, the lives of a large blended family become more complicated when one member tells her life story to a novelist. An intelligent and emotional novel that fully absorbed me.

Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games are Made
Jason Schreier
£11.99 £11.39Jonathan: This brilliant book focuses on the chaotic nature of the games industry and the toll it takes on the people involved in it. More of Schreier's excellent journalism can be found in his latest book Play Nice.

Chinaman: From author of Booker Prize 2022 winner The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida
Shehan Karunatilaka
£9.99 £9.49Jonathan: This novel is quite unlike anything else I've read and it's all the better for it. It is flippant yet serious, funny but sad, moving, violent, glorious and one of the greatest books I've read in the last decade.

Jungle House: 'A brilliant AI mystery' the Bookseller
Julianne Pachico
£9.99 £9.49Jonathan: While this could easily be an 'Ex Machina' style story, it's actually very moving novel about family and growing up. And also, AI, robots, rebels and a very dark future.

Of Cattle and Men
Ana Paula Maia
£11.99 £11.39Kira: George Orwell's Animal Farm meets Agustina Bazterrica's Tender is the Flesh, this was an unnerving read that probes at the human/animal relationship. Charco Press with another masterpiece!

A Sunny Place for Shady People
Mariana Enriquez
£14.99 £14.24Kira: A collection of dark short stories that blend Argentinian politics and history with folklore and the supernatural seamlessly. Stunning writing and wildly atmospheric - these stories stay with you.