<div>Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel, Fleishman is in Trouble – a tale of the acrimonious divorce of a Brooklyn couple told from two very different perspectives – was one of the most talked about books of 2019, and became an equally buzzy TV show starring Jesse Eisenberg and Claire Danes. For her follow up, Brodesser-Akner moves out to the suburbs of Long Island, with a story inspired by the real-life kidnapping of wealthy businessman Jack Teich in the 1970s. In Long Island Compromise, it’s Carl Fletcher, the owner of a polystyrene-foam factory, who gets snatched from his driveway. But the Book is less about the crime itself than its ripple effects on this wealthy Jewish-American family, examining the generational trauma that both precedes and follows it.
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley
On the surface, The Ministry of Time is a quirky time-travel romance, featuring a civil servant in a near future London who, thanks to a secretive new government programme, finds herself living with a Victorian polar explorer. But as well as being a brilliantly entertaining page-turner, this debut novel by British-Cambodian writer Kaliane Bradley also tackles some huge themes, including climate change, colonialism, corruption, immigration and genocide. TV rights were snapped up months before the book was even published, with A24 producing the series for the and a screenplay by Alice Birch, who wrote the hugely acclaimed adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Normal People. Now’s the time to read it before it hits the screen.
You Are Here by David Nicholls
If your idea of a great holiday is less lazing around in the sun and more taking a long walk through windswept landscapes, you’ll find lots to love in David Nicholls’ latest. Marnie and Michael are two strangers who, thanks to a trip arranged by a mutual friend, find themselves trudging miles across the north of England together, with varying levels of enthusiasm. Both are on the cusp of middle age with failed marriages behind them, and are grappling with lives that look different from – and lonelier than – they expected. As anyone who sobbed over One Day knows, Nicholls is a master at creating brilliantly well-drawn characters, flaws and all, whose lives you can’t help but feel invested in. You’ll be rooting for these two to make it – and not just to the end of their gruelling hike.
Enlightenment by Sarah Perry
Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent and Melmoth, creates worlds to disappear into, combining complex ideas and richly layered stories with beautiful, vivid prose. Her latest book is possibly her most ambitious yet, spanning 20 years, and tackling themes of love, faith and astronomy. Set in the fictional Essex town of Aldleigh, it follows the unlikely friendship between 17-year-old Grace Macaulay and 50-year-old newspaper columnist Thomas Hart. An old-fashioned story in the best possible sense, it showcases Perry’s “unerring capacity to make the earthly new and strange”.
The Wedding People by Alison Espach
Newly divorced Phoebe Stone arrives alone at a luxury Rhode Island hotel thinking she has absolutely nothing to live for – much to the initial horror of bride-to-be Lila, who thought she had the hotel commandeered for her meticulously planned destination wedding. But the two women form an unlikely friendship and, while being an interloper at the festivities, Phoebe finds reasons to feel hopeful again. Released bang in the middle of summer, and already an NYT best-seller, with the film rights also snapped up, The Wedding People’s dark humour has seen it compared to Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss.
