We are now well into our summer holidays and we thought we’d give you a bumper edition of Book of the Month. Here are our recommendations for the months of July and August. Don’t forget there is something for everyone so be sure to give one a try!
Nappy the Pirate Baby – By Alan Macdonald and Elissa Elwick
Genre: Comedy | Ages: 2-4
Life was calm on board The Salty Herring until one day an unusual wailing sound could be heard. The crew soon discover a baby boy below deck. But how did he get there and who does he belong to?
Buy here Paperback £5.75
Doctorsaurus – By Emi-Lou May and Martin Leire
Genre: Real Life | Ages: 2-4
When the dinosaurs have accidents or become unwell the Doctorsaurus is always on hand to help.
Buy here Hardcover £8.99
What About The Tooth Fairy? – By Elys Dolan
Genre: Comedy| Ages: 5-7
With some expert advice from Father Christmas, Easter Bunny and many others, Toothy tries to start her own ‘Tooth Day’! But no matter how hard she tries, their ideas for Tooth Day just don’t feel right. Soon the Tooth Fairy learns that for her day to be really special, she’s got to do it her own way.
Buy here Kindle Edition £2.99, Hardcover £10.20, Paperback £5.94
Eyes that Kiss in the Corners – By Joanna Ho and Ho Dung
Genre: Personal Issues| Ages: 5-7
A young Asian child notices that her own eyes are different to those of her friends but are the same as those in her family. In those eyes she sees love, strength and a sense of belonging, and through her family, she finds out exactly who she is and how much she’s loved.
Buy here Kindle Edition £5.99, Hardcover £10.99, FREE with Amazon Audible
Everyday Magic – By Jess Kidd
Genre: Fantasy | Ages: 8-10
Nine year old Alfie’s parents have met a very unfortunate end, now he’s living in Switherbroom Hall with his eccentric Aunts Gertie and Zita and their resident ghost. Alfie’s aunts are witches and when he teams up with new friend Calypso to find Nova, his sister, magic and mayhem pervade!
Buy here Kindle Edition £4.27, Paperback £5.94, FREE with Amazon Audible
The Swallows’ Flight – By Hillary McKay
Genre: Historical Fiction/Adventure | Ages: 8-10
Erik and Hans enjoy the swallows flying over the rooftops of Berlin, little thinking that one day they will be flying above England, risking their lives in a war they both detest. Ruby and Kate, great friends despite their differences, find themselves racing towards a danger that neither of them could possibly have imagined. As their four lives converge – all touched by war.
Buy here Kindle Edition £7.49, Paperback £11.71, FREE with Amazon Audible
A Case of Grave Danger – By Sophie Cleverly
Genre: Mystery | Ages: 11-13
Violet Veil wants nothing more than to prove her worth and become her father’s apprentice at Veil & Sons Undertakers. Then one rain-soaked night she gets her chance when she meets a boy, Oliver, who is wandering around the graveyard. The last time Violet saw Oliver, he was indoors and very much dead, waiting to be buried.
Violet has just found her first case, and it doesn’t get bigger than this: can she, with the help of her dog, Bones, help Oliver solve his own ‘murder’?
Buy here Kindle Edition £3.99, Paperback £5.94, FREE with Amazon Audible
Water World – By Ben Rothery
Genre: Non Fiction | Ages: 11-13
From cold to temperate to tropical, the bizarre, the fierce and the record breakers – sea creatures who have adapted to their surroundings. Water World explores our seas and reminds us how vital oceans are to our existence. With lifelike and vibrant illustrations, of animals that that live across the globe.
Buy here Kindle Edition £10.99, Hardcover £14.99
We Played with Fire – By Catherine Barter
Genre: Historical/Ghosts | Ages: 13-15
Maggie has witnessed impossible things but no one believes her, and now her family has taken her away to spend the winter in a remote, freezing farmhouse. Bored and angry, Maggie and her younger sister start to play tricks: rapping on the floorboards above their parents’ bedroom, cracking their toes under the table, and telling tales about noises in the night. Then the house starts to make sounds of its own that can’t be explained but it seems as though someone – or something – is trying to speak to them.
Inspired by the incredible true tale of the Fox Sisters, the girls who made their fortune in nineteenth-century America by speaking to ghosts.
Buy here Kindle Edition £3.74, Paperback £6.55, FREE with Amazon Audible
Future Girl – By Asphyxia
Genre: Climate Crisis/Diary | Ages: 13-15
Piper’s mum wants her to be ‘normal’, to pass as hearing and get a good job. But when peak oil hits and Melbourne lurches towards environmental catastrophe, Piper has more important things to worry about, such as how to get food. Then she meets Marley, a CODA (child of Deaf adult), deafness then becomes something to celebrate. As she dives into learning sign language, Piper finds herself falling hard for Marley. But Marley, is struggling to find his place in the hearing world – can they ever be together?
Buy here Kindle Edition £5.56, Paperback £19.99
Burn Our Bodies Down – Rory Power
Genre: Thriller | Ages: 16-18
Ever since Margot was born, it’s been just her and her mum, no answers to Margot’s questions – no history, just the two of them. But that’s not enough for Margot, she wants to find her family, she wants a past. So when she finds a photograph pointing her to a town called Phalene, she leaves.
But when Margot gets there, it’s not what she bargained for. Margot’s mother left for a reason. But was it to hide her past? Or was it to protect Margot from what’s still there?
Buy here Kindle Edition £3.99, Paperback £6.90, FREE with Amazon Audible
Carry On – Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Fantasy | Ages: 16-18
Simon Snow just wants to relax and savour his last year at the Watford School of Magicks, but no one will let him. His girlfriend broke up with him, his best friend is a pest and his mentor keeps trying to hide him away in the mountains where maybe he’ll be safe. Simon can’t even enjoy the fact that his room-mate and long-time nemesis is missing plus he can’t stop worrying about him!
There are ghosts and vampires trying to shut Simon down, but when you’re the most powerful magician the world has ever known, you never get to relax and savour anything.
Buy here Kindle Edition £3.99, Paperback £6.55, Hardcover £13.55, FREE with Amazon Audible
Luster – By Raven Leilani
ADULT
She’s messing up in her dead-end job in her all-white office and is sleeping with all the wrong men. No one seems to care that she doesn’t really know what she’s doing with her life. Then she meets Eric, a white, middle-aged archivist with a family, including a wife who has sort-of-agreed to an open marriage and an adopted black daughter who doesn’t have a single person in her life who can show her how to do her hair.
As if navigating the constantly shifting landscape of sexual and racial politics as a young black woman wasn’t already hard enough, with nowhere else left to go, Edie finds herself falling head-first into Eric’s home and family.
Buy here: Kindle Edition £7.99, Paperback £12.41, Hardcover £10.61, FREE with Amazon Audible
Daughters of Night – By Laura Shepherd-Robinson
ADULT
Desperate for her politician husband to return home from France, Caroline ‘Caro’ Corsham is already in a state of anxiety when she finds a well-dressed woman mortally wounded in the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
The Bow Street constables are swift to act, until they discover that the deceased woman was a highly paid prostitute, at which point they cease to care entirely. But Caro has motives of her own for wanting to see justice done, and so sets out to solve the crime herself.
Enlisting the help of Peregrine Child, their inquiry delves into the hidden corners of Georgian society, a world of artifice, deception and secret lives. But with many gentlemen refusing to speak about their dealings with the dead woman, and Caro’s own reputation under threat, finding the killer will be harder, and more treacherous, than she can know.
Buy here: Kindle Edition £7.99, Paperback £12.43, Hardcover £10.65, FREE with Amazon Audible
The Lamplighters – By Emma Stonex
ADULT
Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside and the clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper’s weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week. What happened to those three men? Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves? Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on.
Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them, he wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story but only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface.
Buy here: Kindle Edition £8.49, Paperback £12.03, Hardcover £10.61, FREE with Amazon Audible
Second Place – By Rachel Cusk
ADULT
A woman invites a famous artist to use her guesthouse in a remote coastal landscape where she lives with her family. Powerfully drawn to his paintings, she believes his vision might penetrate the mystery at the centre of her life. But as a long, dry summer sets in, his provocative presence itself becomes an enigma-and disrupts the calm of her secluded household.
Buy here: Kindle Edition £4.68, Paperback £12.99, Hardcover £10.85, FREE with Amazon Audible
Second Place – By Rachel Cusk
ADULT
Amid severe economic upheaval and political unrest, how can we make sense of the business world? Anthropologist and Financial Times journalist, Tett, points to anthropology as a way to get inside the minds of others. This way of thinking is revolutionary for understanding business and the behaviour of organisations, individuals and markets in today’s ever-changing world.
Buy here: Kindle Edition £4.68, Paperback £12.99, Hardcover £10.85, FREE with Amazon Audible
Broken Dreams: An Intimate History of the Midlife Crisis – By Mark Jackson
ADULT
Since the mid-twentieth century, the term Midlife Crisis, has been used to explain infidelity in middle-aged men, disillusionment with personal achievements, the pain and sadness associated with separation and divorce, and the fear of approaching death.
This book provides a meticulously researched account of the social and cultural conditions in which middle-aged men and women began to re-evaluate their hopes and dreams, reassess their relationships, and seek new forms of identity and fresh pathways to self-satisfaction.
Buy here: Kindle Edition £14.24, Hardcover £14.99
Sins of Fathers – By Michael Emmett
ADULT
Growing up, Michael knew he wanted to follow in his dad’s footsteps and join the ‘family business.’
At just sixteen, Michael did just that – and entered the glamourous and dangerous world of organised crime. Under the tutelage of his career criminal father – a contemporary of the infamous Kray twins – Michael’s criminal activities funded a reckless lifestyle marked by drugs, sex and violence.
But the high couldn’t last forever, Michael and his father were arrested in a dramatic confrontation with the police. He was sentenced to twelve years behind bars and would serve his time in the same prison as his father. But behind the prison walls, Michael found something he never expected – redemption.
Buy here: Kindle Edition £9.99, Hardcover £13.29, FREE with Amazon Audible
Geezers – By Monica Lavers
ADULT
“They call themselves geezers – or at least some of them do.”
The SAS is staffed by the toughest and most resourceful soldiers in the world – only the cream of the crop will get through the rigorous training programme to achieve their status as ‘badged’, rightly deserving their famous motto ‘Who Dares Wins’.
But who are they really? The author spent time working at closely with them thus giving the reader a ringside view of how the SAS live, work and play.
Buy here: Kindle Edition FREE with kindleunlimited, Hardcover £12.35