Love is in the air, and what better way to celebrate the season of romance than with captivating stories that warm the heart (more or less)?

This Valentine’s Day, we have handpicked for you a trio of literary gems that will make you want to swap roses for books… From the elegance of Mrs Gulliver to the raw honesty of Is This Love? and the sheer beauty of June Jordan’s verse in Haruko/Love Poems, we promise that these books will make your Valentine’s Day unforgettable!

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Mrs Gulliver

Available from Waterstones | Amazon | Bookshop.org

‘Irresistible – a funny, sexy romp that’s also smart, even wise’ Kirkus starred review

‘ Pure elegance, subtlety and wit. A triumph of a novel’ – Francesca Segal, author of Mother Ship

It is 1954, and prostitution is legal in the tropical haven that is Verona Island. Here, among gangsters and corrupt lawmen, Lila Gulliver runs a brothel that promises her exclusive clientele privacy and discretion. When nineteen-year-old Carità, beautiful and blind since birth, comes to her door seeking employment, Mrs Gulliver sees a business opportunity and takes a chance. Carità is mesmerising, sharp and a mystery to her employer, always holding herself at a distance.

One night, the son of a wealthy judge patronises Mrs Gulliver’s establishment, immediately falling madly in love with Carità. This is Ian Drohan – young, idealistic and cushioned by wealth and family connections. Mrs Gulliver mistrusts him, and worries for Carità’s future. Carità, on the other hand, is fearless, headstrong and a force of nature that Mrs Gulliver is always several steps behind.

A dazzling drama filled with sex, wry wit and literary references, Mrs Gulliver follows two women who have nothing to lose in their fight for agency on an island too ready to dismiss them.

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Is This Love?

Available from Waterstones | Amazon | Bookshop.org

‘This is a book about the untidy, complicated underbelly of love and love’s end.  Funny and true, wise and utterly authentic, you will recognise yourself over and over.  I loved it’ Kit de Waal

‘A deeply unsettling, but unputdownable account of a marriage unravelling. This book held me captivated with its wit, ambiguity and complexity’ Abi Morgan, creator of The Split

Did you mean to marry me?
Did you understand the vows that we took?

J’s wife has left, and J is trying to understand why. How could someone you loved so much, who claimed to love you once, just walk away? How could they send divorce papers accusing you of terrible things, when all you’ve ever done is tried to make them happy?

Narrated by J in the days, weeks and months after the marriage collapses, and interspersed with the departed wife’s diary entries, Is This Love? is an addictive, deeply unsettling, and provocative novel of deception and betrayal, and passion turned to pain. As the story unfolds, and each character’s version of events undermines the other, all our assumptions about victimhood, agency, love and control are challenged – for we never know J’s gender. If we did, would it change our minds about who was telling the truth?

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HARUKO/Love Poems

Available from Waterstones | Amazon | Bookshop.org

Selected by Seán Hewitt as a Granta Book of the Year

In trailblazing poet, essayist, teacher and activist June Jordan’s poems, love is a vision of revolutionary solidarity, crossing borders both emotional and literal with an outstretched hand. Haruko traces the faltering arc of a passionate love affair with another woman while Love Poems encompasses relationships with men and women, political resistance, the need for self-care in a demanding, uncaring world and apocalyptic visions of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius that destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum.

A contemporary of Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Audre Lorde, June Jordan’s spectacular poetry remains profoundly politically potent, lyrically inventive and breathtakingly romantic. First published in 1994, Haruko/ Love Poems is a vitally important modern classic.

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What will you be reading this Valentine’s?

It is 1954, and prostitution is legal in the tropical haven that is Verona Island. Here, among gangsters and corrupt lawmen, Lila Gulliver runs a brothel that promises her exclusive clientele privacy and discretion. When nineteen-year-old Carità, beautiful and blind since birth, comes to her door seeking employment, Mrs Gulliver sees a business opportunity and takes a chance. Carità is mesmerising, sharp and a mystery to her employer, always holding herself at a distance.

One night, the son of a wealthy judge patronises Mrs Gulliver’s establishment, immediately falling madly in love with Carità. This is Ian Drohan – young, idealistic and cushioned by wealth and family connections. Mrs Gulliver mistrusts him, and worries for Carità’s future. Carità, on the other hand, is fearless, headstrong and a force of nature that Mrs Gulliver is always several steps behind.

A dazzling drama filled with sex, wry wit and literary references, Mrs Gulliver follows two women who have nothing to lose in their fight for agency on an island too ready to dismiss them.

Don’t miss the latest novel from the winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction, Valerie Martin! Read the opening of Mrs Gulliver below.

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Our clients are professionals: doctors, lawyers, bankers, politicians (we’ve served a few mayors over the years), and, because our city is wrapped around the largest port on the island, a steady supply of seagoing men. My rule is: officers only. Discretion is what we offer. Except for the address in wrought-iron numbers, the front door is unmarked and never used; clients enter via a side door behind a tall hedge, so it can’t be seen from the street; a password is required at all times. As the password doesn’t change, this is the mildest of security measures. Our clients are encouraged to share it with interested friends or acquaintances. It creates a kind of network, with the charm of inclusion in a select society. Boys love passwords.

In the last few years, bad weather and blight have played havoc with the local economy, particularly among the rice farmers on the windward side of the island. A few of their prettier daughters have made their way to the city seeking honest labor and, failing that, turned up at my door. By that time, they are desperate, hungry, and frightened, and their best option is a charity organization run by nuns in a little town up in the hills. I refer them there. I’ve taken one or two to work, but they’re seldom up to my standard for the house. Occasionally, my sympathy overrules my judgment and I employ a girl who presents what I know will be a challenge. This may be shrewdness on my part, as I would not have been successful in my business were it not for a sixth sense I have about some quality in an applicant that will appeal to certain of my clients. Carità was such a girl.

That summer morning, a hot and humid day with rain, as usual, in the forecast, my majordomo, Brutus (aptly named), came to my office, which is also the kitchen, and planted himself squarely in the door frame. “There’s an odd couple asking to see you in the drawing room,” he announced. “I don’t know what they want. They look like beggars, but they know the password.”

“Did you tell them we don’t open until noon?”

“They’re country girls, Lila,” he said. “They’re looking for employment, is my guess.”

I rose from the table. “Then how did they get the password?” I mused. Brutus stepped aside and I sauntered down the hall.

They sat facing each other, one in a leather chair, the other perched on the edge of the red silk upholstered divan, her back straight and sandaled feet drawn in. They were dressed in plain cotton sleeveless shifts that came to the calf, worn but clean. Two destitute girls, one fair and portly, the other an elfin creature, small-boned, emaciated but not boyish. Even in her unflattering dress I could see she had a shapely figure: long waist, full breasts, excellent posture—that’s always the first thing I notice. Her hair was an uncombed thick black mop that fell to the center of her back and partially covered her face.

The blonde looked up as I entered the room, her innocent face flushed with hope. Her friend didn’t move, her head slightly bowed and turned away from me.

“How do you come to know the password here?” I asked sharply.

“My uncle gave it to me,” she said. “His name was Peter Rizzo. He said you might not remember him, because he only came here once, with a friend.”

“Who was the friend?”

“I don’t know that,” the girl replied. “It was when he came to town. He was a rice farmer. Or he was until the blight came. Now he’s dead, and the bank took the farm.”

“Where are your parents?” I asked.

“Our parents are dead,” she said candidly, with no more emphasis than you might use to make a trivial factual observation—for example, That door is closed.

“So . . . you’re sisters,” I observed. “And you’ve come to the city looking for work.”

“That’s right,” she said. “My name is Bessie Bercy, and this is Carità. I’ve already got a job. I’m signed up to shuck oysters at the market restaurant on the wharf. The man there showed me how it’s done and then gave me a test, and right off he said I was faster than the two boys he’s already got put together.”

“Good for you,” I said. “That shows enterprise.”

“Yes, ma’am,” she said. “But Carità won’t do that kind of work, so now I need to find a place for her, because I can’t leave her on her own and I won’t make enough for us both. My uncle said he thought she might be useful to you.”

At this her dark sister chuckled. “That’s not exactly how he put it, Bessie,” she said. Her voice, deep and breathy, vibrated through my chest like a cat purring in my lap. As she spoke, she turned toward me, and I could make out through the screen of her hair that her eyes, half closed, were very light. “What he said,” she continued, “was that I’d be better off here than with the goddamned lesbian nuns.”

How can I describe the rich velvet of her voice? She could have been a countess or an actress, delivering a scene-clinching line. There was an archness as well, distant and amused, deflecting the crudeness of the information she had just so succinctly passed along. She made me smile in spite of myself.

“Carità,” her sister said, “don’t talk like that.”

“I don’t think Mrs. Gulliver is shocked,” the girl replied. Again, the deep vibration and archness of tone caressed my ears.

“Would you push your hair back so I can see your face?” I said.

She pressed her palms against her temples, pulling back the curtain of hair.

I caught my breath. Her face was beautiful, a creamy complexion with a natural blush, like an English beauty, her nose straight, her lips full and soft, her chin squarish and firm. But it was her eyes that startled me, heavy-lidded and half closed, with thick dark lashes, and irises like blue glass, the perfectly translucent blue of a glacier. Beneath the dark bird-wings of her brows, her eyes glittered enchantingly. I studied her. Something was very odd about those eyes.

“She’s nineteen years old,” Bessie said. Carità inclined her head toward her sister’s voice, but the eyes didn’t move. “She’s blind from birth.”

  Chapter One

 

She heard them before she saw them, a cluster of brightly coloured chickens, fussing at the water’s edge, flapping and clucking.

‘Silly bitches,’ she said.

Treading water, blinking the salt from her eyes, she watched them for a moment. They were folding towels, stowing phones in yoga-bags, pulling off sandals. They were toeing the water, expressing dismay at its temperature. They were coming in, now. She could hear the giggles and the tiny little screams of surprise as the water met their smooth white feet. They wore dinky little swim-hats and their shoulders were hunched and pale and narrow.

She flipped herself over and ducked down, down, down under the surface, letting the sparkle of her bubbles soothe her, feeling the cold rush over her skin, her belly, her thighs. A cool hand. She felt the tick of her pulse grow heavy as she dived into the dark, but kept going, kept swimming and wriggling downwards until her heart became a knocking in her throat and temples, forcing her to turn back, push to the surface again, pull fresh air in and blink and drip and breathe and look out to sea and try to pretend she was on her own.

‘What the hell are they doing here?’ she grumbled, lying back crossly and kicking great columns of water up into the air, letting it rain down again, delicious. She could have stayed for ages longer but the shrieking and splashing carried out across the still plane of water in the bay – her bay – and jangled her, spoilt it all. No one ever came all the way around here, to this pebbly, inhospitable place. They put up their windbreakers and their deckchairs and the rest of their shit back around the corner on the main beach where the sand lay golden and inviting and cool and bright, and left this place for her.

Bugger, she thought.

She rolled over, disgruntled, looking out to where the grey sea met the grey sky and disappeared, feeling the depths beneath her dangling toes, dark and heavy and beautiful. It was maybe fifteen, twenty metres deep out here, just at the edge of OK, just before the currents began, those whip-strong lines of muscle from east to west, those unstoppable forces, those dangerous beasts. She could see them from where she was, juddering the water ahead, as if freight trains ran just underneath the surface and dragged the sea along.

She swam away, just to be sure, swam a little distance in, towards the shore.

They were still in a tight group, the other women, but they were in the water properly now at last. Their red and green and blue and white heads bobbed up and down as they sketched a communal breaststroke around and around in tight circles, up down, up down, up down, like that fabulous fairground game where you got to hit rodents with a mallet. She wished she had a mallet, now, she surely did.

They’d be there for ages on her beach, she grumped, even after they’d got out of the water – swaddled in special swimming robes and taking photos of themselves, drinking hot things that steamed from shiny metal cups. Adventurers, all. Triumphant explorers of the deep on social media.

She’d have to go in, then. Get it over with.

Damn.

She headed back, slowly, like a schoolchild at the morning bell.

The dog saw her coming, jumped up from the shelter of the dark rocks, and started barking as it always did.

‘Good lad,’ she said, and smiled a little, felt a teensy bit better.

The dog came to the edge of the water, barking, barking, barking.

The chittering and bobbing stopped among the swimmers, and squeaky wondering began.

‘Oh my god, look at that thing – I wonder where its owner is.’

‘I wonder if it will come in? D’you think it will come in?’

‘Oh god, Ellie, I hate dogs, you know I hate dogs. I hope it doesn’t come in.’

‘That’s not a dog, that’s a monster.’

Nervous giggling, swivelling of bright heads.

‘I’m getting a bit cold. I’ll really need to get out, in a minute.’

‘How can we get out, if it’s there, like that? I wonder how we can get out?’

Their voices, rising, travelled faster over water than on land. She could hear every word, their clear assertive diction shining through.

‘Oh my god, look! There’s someone way out there – I bet it’s their dog.’

‘Where?’

‘Where? I can’t see anything.’

‘They haven’t a hat on, or anything. Look – miles away – that black dot, there, see?’

Pause. Everyone looking.

She felt like waving, but didn’t.

Dog, barking and barking.

Barking and barking and barking.

Paws in the water now, barking and barking.

She imagined its mouth open, doing that frothing thing by now, all the teeth jangling in there, sharp in its blunt ugly head.

The heads turning to her, to the dog, to her again.

All standing now, pimpled and chilly no doubt, their silly orange tow-floats dangling, staring out along a pointing finger to where she swam.

‘Unless it’s a seal?’

‘Oh god, Ellie, I hope it’s not a seal. I hate seals.’

She obliged, with a flip of her feet, ducking under, hearing a shriek before the water bubbled over. It was a pity, she thought, in the murky white of it, holding herself down by letting breath stream out. It was a damn pity she wasn’t a seal. Seals could submerge for six minutes or more. Fantastic creatures, altogether. She could have swum right past them, right in to shore, invisible; lolloped out and up the beach and away, before they knew it.

As it was, she thought, bubbling slowly to the surface, she’d have to go past them.

She began to swim again.

She used long, strong, steady strokes, forgetting the others briefly in the tick-tock-tick-tock of it, loving the stretch and the pull of it, loving the slip-slap of it on her face as she turned to snatch a breath, then turned to swim again. She saw the sleek dark rocks slip past, marked her progress on the familiar spikes and lumps of them, felt herself getting close to shore.

‘Excuse me! Hey, excuse me!’

She kept swimming, tick-tock-tick-tock.

‘Hi!’ On two friendly notes, ‘—Excuse me, is that your dog?’

Dog barking and barking and barking.

Its stump of a tail would be whacking back and forth now at the sight of her approaching head. All four legs would be bouncing on the sand at once, as if she’d been gone for a fortnight – stupid thing.

Tick-tock-tick-tock.

Bark, bark, bark, bark.

‘—Hello? Excuse me?’

‘He won’t answer. Why won’t he answer you, Kate?’

‘Rude thing. Horrible, like his dog.’

‘Honestly!’

She must be almost level with them by now.

She could see the seabed, rippled and light, within a toe’s reach below her.

Tick-tock-tick-tock-tick-tock.

‘Hey! Can you call your dog, please?’

The voice was bawling now.

‘—You shouldn’t just let it run loose like that, you know. Scaring people. Hello? Hello?’

She paused in the water, blinked it out of her eyes and found her feet on the sand. It crisped nicely between her toes like a welcome home. She looked at them, standing there. The woman stopped shouting. Moderated her tone. Straightened her bony shoulders.

‘It’s – your dog’s being a nuisance! Look! It won’t let us out of the water!’

Behind her, the other women closed in, a line of faces with knitted eyebrows, nervous eyes.

Bark, bark, bark, bark.

The leader’s swimming-hat was a deep purple, no doubt she’d say it was mulberry, with daft little rubber flowers dotted around the edge. Grace knew that if she ripped it off, the hair underneath would be long and shiny and perfumed and smooth. She didn’t, of course. She flicked her own wild seaweed lengths back over her shoulder instead, and let the woman register several things. Then she stood up slowly. Felt gravity pull everything back down, that had floated so nicely before. Watched the woman’s face go slack with surprise. Smiled.

‘Good god, she’s got nothing on.’

‘Oh my lord, I wish I had my phone.’

Tittering behind Purple-hat, who didn’t seem to know where to look.

Bark, bark, bark, bark.

‘Em,’ the woman lowered her head and shook it, as if trying to get rid of the image she’d just seen ‘—your dog—’

‘Not my dog,’ said Grace briskly, heading for shore with great long strides, hearing snickers and snorts behind her, ‘never seen it before in my life.’

OUR YEAR IN BOOKS

 

It’s getting colder. Days are getting shorter. Fairy lights are twinkling from windows and balconies. It can only mean one thing… Time for some Christmas reading recommendations!

We present you with a selection of the glorious books we’re extremely proud to have published this year, and which we *bet​*​ any one of your loved ones would also love to read.

From moving literary debuts to alternate worlds, thought-provoking nonfiction and sweet stocking-fillers, Serpent’s Tail has you covered for a truly spectacular Christmas.

Happy reading!

Find us at @SerpentsTail and @ViperBooks

 

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STOCKING FILLERS

 

Cheri by Jo Ann Beard

A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heartbreaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.

Seven Cats I Have Loved by Anat Levit

Anat Levit never considered herself a cat lover, but when her life was thrown into upheaval, she found herself adopting one cat at the suggestion of her daughters, and then six more. She delves into the feline mind with gentleness and compassion, while also revealing a moving human story.

Love Me Tender by Constance Debre

‘Destined to become a classic of its kind’ Maggie Nelson
‘One of the most compulsive voices I’ve read in years’ Olivia Laing, Observer

A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices asked from mothers, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge.

Alison by Lizzy Stewart

Alison is newly married, barely twenty and struggling to find her place in the world. A chance encounter with an older artist upturns her life and she forsakes convention and her working-class Dorset roots for the thrumming art scene of London in the late seventies.

“Every now and again a book comes along that is such a bright joy, so true, so beautiful and moving. Alison is one of those books. I loved it.” – Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

 

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BEST BY FIRESIDE

 

Critical Hits edited by Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon

Whether you’re an avid gamer, a Twitch subscriber, or just an incidental Subway Surfer, video games have changed the way you interact with the world and have been part of our lives for over fifty years. Critical Hits is a celebration of play and playfulness through sharp, impassioned and inquisitive essays.

Prostitute Laundry by Charlotte Shane

Prostitute Laundry is a taboo-breaking and radically honest account of love, friendship and sex work. This serial memoir follows Charlotte over the course of several years as she falls in and out of love, muses on the nature of sex work and the value of beauty, discovers hidden emotional complexities and contemplates leaving her profession.

Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison

‘A masterpiece’ Helen Macdonald
‘It will surprise you, sometimes astound you, and leave you profoundly changed’ Jonathan Coe

One of our greatest and most original living writers sets out the perils of the writing life with joyful provocation. This is his first memoir, an ‘anti-memoir’, written with aphoristic daring and trademark originality and style.

 

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DECK THE SHELVES

 

Queen K by Sarah Thomas

Exquisitely written and deliciously unreliable, Queen K takes the reader to some of the most luxurious places in the world. But a dark refrain sounds from the very beginning of the story and grows towards its operatic finale: a novel about insatiable material desire can only ever be a tragedy…

A Flaw in the Design by Nathan Oates

A nephew. An uncle. A psychopath – but which of them is it?

Gil knows his nephew Matthew is dangerous, but to the women in the family he is charming, intelligent, wry. When he disdainfully joins Gil’s classes at the local university, Matthew makes his real intentions clear. Why is Gil the only one who can see this? Is he losing his mind?

Sanderson’s Isle by James Clarke

1969. Thomas Speake comes to London searching for his father and a place to belong, but instead joins the search for a stolen child through swinging London and the Lake District. There he finds Sanderson instead, a larger-than-life TV presenter, who hosts ‘midweek madness’ parties where the punch is spiked with acid…

 

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THE GHOST OF (POSSIBLE) FUTURES

 

Bliss & Blunder by Victoria Gosling

An inventive, magisterial reworking of the King Arthur legend for the 21st century and a heartrending novel of power, friendship and betrayal.

Jungle House by Julianne Pachico

‘Mother is not like other mothers. She gets angry when Lena draws her with a face. When Lena challenges her to portray herself, she paints a tiny yellow dot surrounded by swirling black. She is a bastion of light, she says, against an army of darkness.’

A suspenseful literary novel, with a premise perfect for fans of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, that asks: will humans and AIs form families, and what are the implications of this?

Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis

A satirically funny, poignant and dark novel for fans of cool contemporary fiction. Follow weed-growing couple Kevin and Amber, as Amber is selected for a reality TV show to win a one-way ticket to Mars.

 

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THE BOOKS THAT STOLE CHRISTMAS

 

Looking Glass Sound by Catriona Ward

‘Writers are monsters. We eat everything we see…’

This book will be Wilder’s revenge on Sky, who betrayed his trust and died without ever telling him why. But as he writes, Wilder begins to find notes written in Sky’s signature green ink. Is Sky haunting him? And who is the dark-haired woman drowning in the cove, whom no one else can see?

Scarlet Town by Leonora Nattrass

1796. A rigged election. A town at war. A murderer at large…

Disgraced former Foreign Office clerk Laurence Jago and William Philpott have escaped America by the skin of their teeth. In this third instalment in the Laurence Jago series, they return to Laurence’s home town of Helston, Cornwall, where they find themselves in the middle of a tumultuous election that has the inhabitants of the town at one another’s throats.

The Christmas Appeal by Janice Hallett

One dead Santa. A town full of suspects. Will you discover the truth?

Christmas in Lower Lockwood, and the Fairway Players are busy rehearsing their festive pantomime. Sarah-Jane is fending off threats to her new position as Chair, the fibreglass beanstalk might be full of asbestos, and a someone is intent on ruining the panto even before the curtain goes up. Of course there’s also the matter of the dead body. Will the show go on?

 

‘A loot drop of brilliance’ – Naomi Alderman, author of The Power

Whether you’re an avid gamer, a Twitch subscriber, or just an incidental Subway Surfer, video games have changed the way you interact with the world, and have been part of our lives for over fifty years. Critical Hits is a celebration of play and playfulness, and the lasting impact of videogames.

Composed of sharp, impassioned, and inquisitive essays, this collection begins with an introduction by Carmen Maria Machado and presents video games through the eyes of eighteen writer-gamers as they straddle real and artificial worlds. In games, they find solace from illness and grief, test ideas about language, bodies, race, and technology, and see their experiences and identities reflected in-or complicated by-the interactive virtual realities they inhabit.

From a deep dive into “portal fantasy” games by Charlie Jane Anders and a comic by MariNaomi about her time as a video game producer, to the overlaps in gaming and poetry by Stephen Sexton, Critical Hits illuminates fragments of an industry that is wildly popular, grossly misunderstood, and absolutely spellbinding.

Featuring: Red Dead Redemption, Genshin Impact, Hollow Knight, Halo, Call of Duty 4, The Last of Us, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Fallout 76, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy VI, and many more!

Available from: Bookshop.org | Foyles | Forbidden Planet | Waterstones | Amazon

 

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CONTENTS

• Introduction
  Carmen Maria Machado

• I Struggled a Long Time with Surviving
  Elissa Washuta

• This Kind of Animal
  Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

• Thinking like the Knight
  Max Delsohn

• Mule Milk
  Keith S. Wilson

• Staying with the Trouble
  Octavia Bright

• Narnia Made of Pixels
  Charlie Jane Anders

• Cathartic Warfare
  Jamil Jan Kochai

• The Cocoon
  Ander Monson

• Video Game Boss
  MariNaomi

• In the Shadow of the Wolf
  Vanessa Villarreal

• Clash Rules Everything around Me
  Tony Tulathimutte

• The Great Indoorsmen
  Eleanor Henderson

• I Was a Teenage Transgender Supersoldier
  nat steele

• Ninjas and Foxes
  Alexander Chee

• No Traces
  Stephen Sexton

• Status Effect
  Larissa Pham

• Ruined Ground
  J. Robert Lennon

• We’re More Ghosts Than People
  Hanif Abdurraqib

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Have we made you curious?

Critical Hits will make an exclusive appearance at MCM London Comicon on 27-29 October at Forbidden Planet’s stall (N800) alongside our authors!

And if you absolutely cannot wait to dive in, Critical Hits will also be freely available to read on Netgalley during MCM weekend – but better request it fast, as there are only 50 copies up for grabs! Here is the link you will want to bookmark to get ahead of the queue:

Critical Hits on Netgalley

SERPENT’S TAIL
BLACK HISTORY MONTH SPOTLIGHT

A letter from our editors…

Serpent’s Tail is proud to be publishing three brilliant debuts by Black writers in 2023, with settings spanning from South London all the way to Amsterdam and America.

To start the year off, we present prize-winning Dutch star Simone Atangana Bekono, whose novel Confrontations follows a bookish and bullied sixteen-year-old girl in a unit for young offenders. Further into spring, Gianni Washington’s chilling short story collection Flowers from the Void showcases a new and fearsome vision for American gothic fiction. And in the summer, Orlaine McDonald’s No Small Thing vibrantly depicts the joy and pain of Black and working-class life in urban Britain.

With sharp prose and dynamic characters, each of these debuts tell distinctive stories that will entertain you, move you and make you think.

Follow us on X @SerpentsTail | Instagram @serpentstail

 

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Confrontations
by Simone Atangana Bekono
11 January 2024

Salomé was bullied for years and no one did a single thing to help her. One day she finally snapped. Now at just sixteen years old, she’s being held in a secure unit for young offenders. But as time passes, she finds new strength to delve into the reasons for her rage and arrive at her own understanding of punishment, penitence and the paradoxical demands made on her existence as a Black woman.

 

 

 

Leonora Craig-Cohen, Commissioning Editor, on Confrontations

‘In this layered, literary page-turner, the young protagonist upends common preconceptions of justice to tell her own story. Salomé’s voice is instantly engaging and the reasons for her rage difficult to turn away from.’

 

Flowers from the Void
by Gianni Washington
2 May 2024

Hauntingly macabre and piercingly insightful about loss and loneliness, these gothic short stories lead us into a labyrinth of other possible worlds, each one darker than the last and yet all fearfully close to our own. Living dolls serve as imperfect replacements for the deceased, a girl without a shadow finds her soulmate and spurned lovers’ bodies begin falling to pieces. In this scintillating debut collection Gianni Washington explores the limit of intimacy and empathy with the vivid intensity of your worst nightmare.

 

 

 

Leonora Craig-Cohen, Commissioning Editor, on Flowers from the Void

‘Gianni Washington skilfully blends elements of gothic horror, science fiction and folklore in this deliciously grotesque collection. Read with all your lights on, and sleep with one eye open!’

 

No Small Thing
by Orlaine McDonald
4 July 2024

Three women. For a year they live in the flat below Earl’s on Blossom View Estate. Then there are two. Spanning a year, this is a novel of hope, desire and loss which explores the damage we do to the people we claim to love the most. Told with grace and compelling clarity, No Small Thing reveals tender truths about motherhood, the intersection of class and race and the legacies of the trauma we inherit.

‘Being a mother is no small thing, and whether or not you agree with mothers Livia and Mickey, you will love them for who they are, as well as who they are trying to be. And of course, there is Summer. Eleven years old and confused, desperate to be seen, and dangerously unaware of her own vulnerability.’

 

Luke Brown, Publishing Director, on No Small Thing

‘I love the way Orlaine McDonald presents life on a London council estate, with all its ups and down, rather than as a symbol for social depravation. It’s a subtle look at class and race, and how they affect the generations of characters who live there. And it’s a novel that crackles with female desire, with women seeking freedom and transcendence through risky relationships with men. I really hope you’ll like it.’

 

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Explore our backlist…

SERPENT’S TAIL AUTUMN READING GUIDE

Sweater weather is here…

Which means it’s time to start squirreling away books in preparation for cosy nights curled up reading with a nice cuppa. Lucky for you, we have prepared a wonderful selection of titles to treat yourself with, from stirring novellas to genre-bending fiction!

Which stories will you be falling into this autumn? Let us know by tweeting us @SerpentsTail.

 

SWEATER WEATHER

Reads that will make you want to stay inside

 

Critical Hits eds. by Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon

Whether you’re an avid gamer, a Twitch subscriber, or just an incidental Subway Surfer, video games have changed the way you interact with the world and have been part of our lives for over fifty years. Critical Hits is a celebration of play and playfulness through sharp, impassioned and inquisitive essays.

Alison by Lizzy Stewart

Alison is newly married, barely twenty and struggling to find her place in the world. A chance encounter with an older artist upturns her life and she forsakes her roots for the thrumming art scene of London in the late seventies.

As the thrill of bohemian romance leads inevitably to disappointment, Alison begins to find her own path – through art, friendship and love.

The Collected Works by Jo Ann Beard

‘The stories are essays, the essays are stories. Even when they are not literally true, they contain the kind of truth that great fiction thrives on’ The Times

‘Literature’s best kept secret’ Independent

Jo Ann Beard, one of the most influential writers in America, illuminates the complexities of the human condition in this career-spanning collection of her best work.

 

 

TURNING OVER A NEW LEAF

Genre-bending and escapist fiction for daydreaming

 

Sanderson’s Isle by James Clarke

1969. Thomas Speake comes to London searching for his father and a place to belong, but instead joins the search for a stolen child through swinging London and the Lake District. There he finds Sanderson instead, a larger-than-life TV presenter who hosts ‘midweek madness’ parties where the punch is spiked with acid…

Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis

A satirically funny, poignant and dark novel for fans of cool contemporary fiction. Follow weed-growing couple Kevin and Amber as Amber is selected for a reality TV to win a one-way ticket to Mars.

Jungle House by Julianne Pachico

‘Mother is not like other mothers. She gets angry when Lena draws her with a face. When Lena challenges her to portray herself, she paints a tiny yellow dot surrounded by swirling black. She is a bastion of light, she says, against an army of darkness.’

A suspenseful literary novel with a premise perfect for fans of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro that asks: will humans and AIs form families, and what are the implications of this?

 

 

TRICK-OR-TREAT

Reads with a touch of magic for spooky season

 

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter by Soraya Palmer

Life at home has become unbearable for Zora and Sasha. But they can’t hide forever. The Anansi stories stories that captivated them as children begin to creep into the present, revealing truths about the Porter family’s past they must all face up to…

This is an extraordinary debut novel that asks – what happens when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

Verge by Nadia Attia

Two strangers bound by fate.
A deadly curse.
An epic road trip across a (dis)United Kingdom.

Exploring belief, loyalty and legacies beyond our control, this thrilling debut is as magnetic and unpredictable as the curse Rowena is racing to escape.

The Green Man of Eshwood Hall by Jacob Kerr

A family story rooted in folk tale, The Green Man of Eshwood Hall shows us the power that the wild still holds on our imagination and the shocking nightmares to which it can give rise.

 

 

SHORTER DAYS, SHORTER BOOKS

Short but sweet reads

Seven Cats I Have Loved by Anat Levit

Anat never considered herself a cat lover, but when her life was thrown into upheaval, she found herself adopting one cat at the suggestion of her daughters, and then six more. She delves into the feline mind with gentleness and compassion, while also revealing a moving human story.

Love Me Tender by Constance Debré

‘Destined to become a classic of its kind’ Maggie Nelson

‘One of the most compulsive voices I’ve read in years’ Olivia Laing, Observer

A starkly beautiful account of impossible sacrifices asked from mothers, Love Me Tender is a bold novel of defiance, freedom and self-knowledge.

Cheri by Jo Ann Beard

A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heart-breaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.

On 17^th August this year, Serpent’s Tail are very proud to be publishing Cheri and The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard by the renowned American writer of the same name. Beard is an award-winning essayist who is widely acknowledged as an influential figure in the US. As recently as last year, she received the American Academy of Arts & Letters 2022 Award in Literature.

Cheri navigates the final weeks of the character’s battle with cancer and has been described as ‘Profoundly sad, poignant, and filled with the flabbergasting abundance of life … an extraordinary achievement’ by cult US author Mary Gaitskill. Beard has created a heart-wrenching novella that leaves readers with an appreciation for the brilliance of life.

This publication is paired with The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard, a combination of Beard’s first collection The Boys of My Youth and the unforgettable pieces compiled within Festival Days, exploring the complexities of the human condition in one career-spanning collection. The compassion and wisdom with which she writes ingrains the experiences of these characters in your minds and hearts. Beard’s masterpieces of empathy are perfect for readers of Andrew O’Hagan or Claire Keegan.

With high profile fans from Francesca Segal to Geoff Dyer, Cheri and The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard are this summer’s most unmissable literary reads.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cheri:

Cheri has been living with cancer for many years. Now, she is dying. As she navigates the final weeks of her life, and takes charge of the manner of her death, she is flooded with childhood memories, and returns to the present with a renewed appreciation for the brilliance of life around her: the autumn has never been so beautiful, her daughters never as radiant. Brave, incredibly strong and deeply loved, Cheri makes one last nerve-wracking journey across the country with her girls and her friends, knowing relief waits welcoming as a frozen lake on the other side.

A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heart-breaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.

 

The Collected Works of Jo Ann Beard:

Weaving a complex tapestry drawn from interviews, anecdotes, moments from Beard’s own life, and sheer imagination, these extraordinary pieces embody the hospitality of spectacular writing: they are spaces you fall into and are reluctant to leave. From the intimate drama of everyday life – school crushes, dog clinics, divorce – to the terror and excitement of a fox lurking by a campsite or a murderer in your home, Beard flawlessly distils what it means to live deeply as we hurtle through wonder and grief, love and heartbreak.

Bringing together pieces from Beard’s first collection, The Boys of My Youth, and Festival Days, which was published two decades later, The Collected Works showcases Jo Ann Beard’s impressive breadth, quiet brilliance, and timeless prose.

Sun’s out, books out!

The sun is finally out, which means it’s time to start counting down the days until summer vacation. From beloved stories with a fresh paperback look, to sizzling new titles and thought-provoking memoirs, we at Serpent’s Tail have cooked up a summer reading guide that is truly… out of this world.

Which books will you be diving into this summer? Let us know by tweeting us @SerpentsTail.

 

FOUR FRESH PAPERBACKS

Is This Love? by C.E. Riley

A searing literary debut with the compulsive qualities of a thriller… J’s wife has left, and J is trying to understand why. Narrated by J in the days, weeks and months after the marriage collapses, Is This Love? is an addictive, deeply unsettling, and provocative novel of deception and betrayal, and passion turned to pain.

We Move by Gurnaik Johal

Mapping an area of West London, these stories chart a wider narrative about the movement of multiple generations of immigrants. In acts of startling imagination, Gurnaik Johal’s debut brings together the past and the present, the local and the global, to show the surprising ways we come together.

The Cherry Robbers by Sarai Walker

First they get married, then they get buried. The Cherry Robbers is a wonderfully atmospheric, propulsive novel about sisterhood, mortality and forging one’s own path.

Teen Couple Have Fun Outdoors by Aravind Jayan

A scandalous video.
A humiliated family.
And a brother stuck in the middle.

Full of bittersweet comedy, and insight into contemporary Indian society and an online generation, this is a story about now with the feel of a classic.

THREE HOT NEW TITLES

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter by Soraya Palmer

Life at home has become unbearable for Zora and Sasha. But they can’t hide forever. The Anansi Stories that captivated them as children begin to creep into the present, revealing truths about the Porter family’s past they must all face up to…

This is an extraordinary debut novel that asks – what happens when our stories are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number 3 by Kira Yarmysh

*WINNER OF THE ENGLISH PEN AWARD*

When Anya is arrested at a Moscow anti-corruption rally, she is given a sentence at a detention centre. But her cellmates are not thieves, crooks and murderers…

A brilliant exploration of what it means to be marginalized in an increasingly intolerant Russia in particular, this explosive debut introduces one of the most urgent and gripping new voices in international literature.

HARUKO/Love Poems by June Jordan

Searingly beautiful poems about compassion, resistance and desire by an iconic Black American activist and writer. June Jordan’s spectacular poetry remains profoundly politically potent, lyrically inventive and breathtakingly romantic. First published in 1994, it is a vitally important modern classic.

TWO INCREDIBLE MEMOIRS

Wish I Was Here by M. John Harrison

‘Wish I Was Here is a masterpiece’ Helen Macdonald
‘It will surprise you, sometimes astound you, and leave you profoundly changed’ Jonathan Coe

One of our greatest and most original living writers sets out the perils of the writing life with joyful provocation. This is his first memoir, an ‘anti-memoir’, written with aphoristic daring and trademark originality and style.

Prostitute Laundry by Charlotte Shane

Prostitute Laundry is a taboo-breaking and radically honest account of love, friendship and sex work. This serial memoir follows Charlotte over the course of several years as she falls in and out of love, muses on the nature of sex work and the value of beauty, discovers hidden emotional complexities and contemplates leaving her profession.

ONE GREAT SUMMER TO LOOK FORWARD TO

Bliss & Blunder by Victoria Gosling

An inventive, magisterial reworking of the King Arthur legend for the 21st century and a heartrending novel of power, friendship and betrayal.

Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis

A satirically funny, poignant and dark novel for fans of cool contemporary fiction. Follow weed-growing couple Kevin and Amber as Amber is selected for a reality TV to win a one-way ticket to Mars.

Cheri by Jo Ann Beard

A masterpiece of fiction and memory, Cheri is a heart-breaking but glorious celebration of all the moments of beauty and pain that make an individual life, right up until its very last moments.

Winner of a PEN Translates Award

‘The whole world through a single cell: frightening and funny, absurd and all too real’ Julia Phillips, author of Disappearing Earth
‘As unpredictable as it is damning’ Wall Street Journal
‘Kira Yarmysh has succeeded in creating a sensitive, angry, and often funny portrait of Russian society’ Deutsche Welle

When Anya is arrested at a Moscow anti-corruption rally under false pretences, she is given a 10-day sentence at a detention centre. Her cellmates are five other ordinary women arrested on petty charges.

Ten listless days stretch before Anya and, as she appeals her sentence and recalls her progress from apolitical youth to informed citizen, she is troubled by strange, dreamlike visions, and wonders if her cellmates might somehow not be as ordinary as they seem.

A brilliant exploration of what it means to be marginalized both as an independent woman and in an increasingly intolerant Russia in particular, The Incredible Events in Women’s Cell Number Three introduces one of the most urgent and gripping new voices in international literature.

Read an extract below.

Order your copy: Waterstones | Bookshop.org

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DAY ONE

If you asked Anya which day in prison had been the most trying, she would say the first. It had seemed both insane and endless. Prison time was elastic: it stretched out interminably, only to then fly like an arrow.

It started with her waking up on a clammy, impermeable mattress in a detention cell in a Moscow police department. She had been arrested the day before, but her efforts to outrun the riot police, her journey in the police bus, and her registration at the police department had kept her busy enough to all but overlook how it had ended. The reality of being in police custody struck her only once she was locked in that cell.

She had spent the night tossing and turning on the mattress, trying to pull her top down to avoid her body coming into contact with the oilcloth. The mattress was on the floor, there were no pillows, no blankets, and it was impossible to get comfortable. Either the arm under her head went numb or she got pins and needles in her side. She could only tell that she had managed to get some fitful sleep when she jerked awake, which happened many times.

What the time was, she had no idea. The cell was windowless, with only a dim light bulb above the door, which stayed on night and day. Her phone had been taken from her. Each time she woke, for want of anything else to do, she entertained herself by inspecting the wall in front of her: the peeling paint that looked like crushed eggshells; the suspicious streaks whose origins she preferred not to think about; the graffiti: Lex, Up Biryulyovo!, Allahu Akbar. Waking up one last time with a jolt, Anya realized she was not imagining it: she could feel a tremor under the floor, the metro must be open, morning had arrived.

The police department began coming to life, as Anya could hear through her cell door, which had been left ajar overnight. A kindly, older cop had not locked it but left it open a handbreadth. (A chain on the outside ensured she opened it no farther.) She lay, listening to the police arguing among themselves in the reception area, the telephone ringing off the hook, the rasping of a door lock, water flushing in a toilet she was eventually taken to visit. A policeman let her in and stayed outside to keep the door shut.

Anya dithered and looked around her. A scene from Trainspotting came to mind, where the main character goes to “the worst toilet in Scotland.” He had clearly seen nothing like the one in the Tverskaya
police department, with its chipped tile floor awash with murky fluid. A rusty chain hung from the water tank, and as for the toilet itself, it was a hole in the ground. Anya decided against going anywhere near
it. Running the faucet for appearances’ sake, while avoiding all contact with the squishy remnant of soap on the filthy edge of the washbasin, she emerged, and the policeman took her back to the cell.

Time passed with demoralizing slowness. Her cell door was now shut tight and did not allow in any outside sounds. She ran her eyes over the walls, which were barely visible in the dim light, but it was
an unrewarding pastime. She felt heavy and clumsy from lack of sleep, and thoughts stirred sluggishly in her head. Anya could not tell how long she sat like that. Her heart seemed to begin beating more slowly
and she felt she was sinking into a trancelike state; perhaps, indeed, suspended animation. When the door opened and a policeman came into the cell, Anya was startled, not sure what was happening.

She was taken through to the reception desk and told to sit on a bench next to a sad-eyed woman who looked Roma, a young guy who was drunk, and a man with a large black eye. The fatherly cop who
had left her door partly open took the box of her belongings out of a closet. “Get yourself together,” he said. “You have to go to the court hearing.” Anya turned on her phone, quickly checked her messages,
put her belt back on and laced up her sneakers. (The laces had been taken from her before she had spent the night in the cell.)

“Don’t make too much effort,” the cop advised. “You’re going to court.”

‘Refreshingly original and laugh-out-loud funny’ – CLARE MACKINTOSH
‘Delightfully shocking and irreverently funny’ – JANICE HALLETT
‘If Bret Easton Ellis ever went to grief counselling, this would be just the kind of brilliant book he’d write’ – PHILIPPA EAST

I have a gift. I see people as ghosts before they die.
Of course, it helps that I’m the one killing them.

The night after her father’s funeral, Claire meets Lucas in a bar. Lucas doesn’t know it, but it’s not a chance meeting. One thoughtless mistyped email has put him in the crosshairs of an extremely put-out serial killer. But before they make eye contact, before Claire lets him buy her a drink, even before she takes him home and carves him up into little pieces, something about that night is very wrong. Because someone is watching Claire. Someone who is about to discover her murderous little hobby.

The thing is, it’s not sensible to tangle with a part-time serial killer, even one who is distracted by attending a weekly bereavement support group and trying to get her art career off the ground. Let the games begin…

Dexter meets Killing Eve in this superb thriller, perfect for fans of How To Kill Your Family and My Sister the Serial Killer.

Read the opening below.

PRE-ORDER YOUR COPY

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CHAPTER ONE

She looks about the same age as me, early thirties, and she’s piling the plates precariously. I wonder whether she’s in a rush or just enjoys the excitement of seeing how many she can stack before they fall. There are nine plates piled on the tray with a selection of cutlery on top. She turns towards the kitchen and hesitates. She’s spotted another plate. Surely not. She reaches for the tenth plate and balances it on top of the cutlery. I take a sip of red wine and look away from the waitress. The serious-looking men in serious black suits are standing seriously too close and staring at me. Are they waiting for me to talk?

‘Claire,’ one of them says, ‘like I was saying, I’m so sorry about your dad. He was a good man. One of the best.’

One of the best? What a curious accolade. Out of how many? The whole world? This room?

‘He was such a lovely man,’ someone else is saying now. Another solo voice emerging from a chorus of gentle agreement. They look like a depressed choir, all these men who used to work with my dad. The choir that charisma forgot.

‘Always so calm,’ continues the soloist. ‘In fact, do you know something, Claire? I can’t ever remember a time when I saw your dad rattled. Not once! In all the years I knew him, he never got rattled. No matter what was going on, he was always so calm.’

‘You’re so right!’ someone else is saying now. ‘He never got rattled, did he? It was extraordinary, now I think about it. I never saw him rattled. Not ever.’

I stand here, watching their mouths move, and wonder about all the funerals in the history of the world. All the funerals that have happened since the beginning of time. How many billions of funerals must there have been? Hundreds of billions? Thousands of billions? Trillions? How many billions in a trillion? And has there ever been a funeral, I wonder, since records began, that has seen such a peculiar overuse of the word ‘rattled’?

‘I remember one time, must be thirty years ago now,’ says another voice, ‘me and your dad, we were working together on this huge project and, let me tell you, the deadlines were unbelievable! Everyone – well, almost everyone – was panicking. The boss was panicking, the client was panicking, and I don’t mind telling you, I was the most nervous of wrecks! But your dad, Claire, he wasn’t one bit rattled. Nothing ever seemed to rattle him.’

A taboo-breaking and radically honest account of love, friendship and sex work.

A Stylist ‘Non-fiction You Can’t Miss’ selection for 2023

‘Addictive, intimate . . .’ VICE

‘[Prostitute Laundry] is so beautiful and so heartbreaking. It’s a book that makes me feel a little less alone.’  New York Times Book Podcast

‘Stunning writing …  everything from high end sex work to the emotional labour of long-term relationships for women.’ Arifa Akbar, author of Consumed

This serial memoir follows Charlotte over the course of several years as she falls in and out of love, muses on the nature of sex work and the value of beauty, discovers hidden emotional complexities and contemplates leaving her profession. Growing out of a series of confessional letters sent by the author to a small but devoted mailing list, her candid, unstinting and sometimes heart-breaking meditations have gained thousands of subscribers and a cult status.

Prostitute Laundry is a deeply thoughtful book about sensuality, money, and identity – how those forces can break us, and how they can make us whole again. By turns philosophical, funny and explicit, this is an affecting, immediate account of one life lived to its fullest.

Read the sneak peak below.

Order your copy

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Searching

Bleak Week

February 8, 2014

This week, my most frequent regular said he’d come up with an idea. One of us would give the other explicit sexual instructions (that the other was free to refuse) but the one being instructed couldn’t do anything spontaneously. They simply had to obey. He said I could choose who took which role and that was easy—I said he should be in charge. It’s no secret that many sex workers hate the ubiquitous “tell me what you want to do” client line.

But I wasn’t off the hook yet. Because he added that whoever obeyed this time would have to instruct next time, and then he proceeded to cheat. “Put your hand on my hand and guide me,” he said with his fingers between my legs. “Put your hands on my head and guide me,” he said later. He asked for 69 by prefacing it with, “I know you don’t like this”—or “I know this isn’t your favorite,” maybe, which is so mildly stated that it’s almost a lie—“but since I’m the one deciding . . .”

I thought about this for days. Normally he is someone I like and feel warmly toward, but the fond regards now felt poisoned by reality: he hires me, I do what he wants. Why did he preface the request with admission of his knowledge? Why not pretend he forgot? Why announce the irrelevancy of my pleasure or desires when it comes to his own enjoyment? This is a man who has said he loves me, with whom I’ve spent copious amounts of time since we met three years ago.

I tried to think of an instance when I’d done something like that to someone else, and I succeeded. Years ago, when my boyfriend and I were still relatively new, I asked him to let me go down on him for a while even though I knew he didn’t really like it. I wanted to convince him to like it and I thought I had a decent chance of pulling it off. But I couldn’t, so I didn’t ask it of him again. I wish I knew then what I know now, which is to trust another person’s knowledge of their body enough to not force sensation, no matter how much you might like stimulating them that way. I was in my early 20s at the time.

There are lots of examples of men ignoring what I tell them I don’t like, and those men are not all clients. But they are men in their 30s, 40s, 50s, beyond. They should have learned better a long time ago. It happens with anal penetration, with receiving oral. Normally I endure more than I deny at work. But if I see an opportunity for discussion or just can’t take it anymore, I’ll say, “I don’t really like that” or “That doesn’t feel good.” It’s very rare that this makes anyone stop. Even outside of work, when I immediately tell guys not to go down on me, they’ll try to dive between my legs and change my mind. If only they knew how many other mouths have tried, I think, forgetting that even then they wouldn’t be dissuaded.

My boyfriend has a habit of pinching or sucking on my nipples whenever I’m topless around him. I sleep naked, and I change clothes in front of him. We shower together. I know, without fail, that in these circumstances he’s going to reach for my nipples in spite of the fact that I’ve told him many times not to do it and that I don’t like it, in spite of me crossing my arms over my chest, actively resisting him, moving away, whining “no” while it happens. This is from someone I’ve been with for many years. He knows what I do for work, but perhaps makes no connection between what I tolerate there and what I tolerate at home. Or, the more probable option—feels entitled because of what I allow at work.

I don’t like being this pessimistic and cynical and angry about sex, especially when I used to sincerely love it, but I don’t have many moments of sexual joy. The ones I try to create can backfire and seem not worth the risk, leaving me more disenchanted than I was before. A few months ago I managed the mundane rape attempts of a very large, condom-less man who didn’t even pay me for my troubles. It wasn’t traumatic, but it was a frustrating, stupid waste of time and energy that deepened my bitterness.

The way I feel about sex corresponds with the way I feel about (straight) men in general, and vice versa, which makes it all the more fatiguing. I hate dwelling on this evidence, but it keeps accumulating. Fairly frequently, a man says he loves me, but then communicates that his urge to use my body in a certain way is more important than any displeasure it brings me, more important than my right to say no. “Why don’t you care when I say I don’t like it?” I should ask. “Why does my unhappiness enhance your pleasure, or impact it so negligibly that it’s still worth it?” But I don’t think I would ever get an honest answer. At least not one I couldn’t already arrive at on my own.

Meet the legendary author of the anti-memoir Wish I Was Here.

– M. John Harrison created Wish I Was Here out of two hundred thousand words of notes taken over a period of roughly fifty years. ‘So there’s probably another book in the remaining one hundred & fifty thousand somewhere…’ he says.

– Neil Gaiman’s favourite work by M. John Harrison is the Viriconium sequence, which he calls ‘fascinating and delightful’ and for which he wrote the introduction for a U.S. edition.

– His most nominated and awarded novel is Nova Swing; It won the Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick Awards and was nominated for the British Science Fiction Award, the British Fantasy Award, and the John W. Campbell Award.

– One of his own favourite works of his is Climbers, a novel about his other passion—rock climbing—which was widely rejected by the climbing community.

–  Though he has been labelled as ‘one of the restless fathers of modern S[ci-]F[i]’ by Robert Macfarlane and a foundational writer in the development of the New Weird, Harrison rejects stylistic categorisation—unsurprising for a self-identified anarchist.

 

Wish I Was Here comes out 25th May. Order yours here.

A Today Show Most Anticipated Book of 2023
An Electric Literature Recommendation for 2023
A Goodreads Buzziest Debut of 2023

‘A beautiful ode to the power of storytelling’ Eleanor Shearer

‘A brilliant, compelling exploration of familial legacies. A mythic and edifying read’ Irenosen Okojie, author of Speak Gigantular

Growing up in Brooklyn with their Caribbean parents, Zora and Sasha Porter’s days were enchanted by stories from the islands – the mischievous spider Anansi both seductive and vengeful; the flame-breathing Rolling Calf who haunts butchers; and ocean-dwelling Mama Dglo, said to be half snake, half human.

Now they are teenagers, and life at home has become unbearable. Their parents’ tempestuous relationship has fallen apart, their mother Beatrice desperately ill, their father Nigel living with another woman. While an unsettled Zora escapes into her journal, dreaming of being a writer, Sasha discovers sex and chest binding, spending more time with her new girlfriend than at home. But they can’t hide forever. The Anansi Stories that captivated them as children begin to creep into the present, revealing truths about the Porter family’s past they must all face up to.

The Human Origins of Beatrice Porter and Other Essential Ghosts is an extraordinary debut novel, a celebration of the power of stories that asks – what happens when ours are erased? Do we disappear? Or do we come back haunting?

Read the opening below.

Order your copy

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PROLOGUE

What’s My Name?

A Prelude

By the time you finish reading this I will be dead and you, dear reader, will have forgotten all about me.

You see I am what they call Your Faithful Narrator, found in places the West calls fairy tales, what men call gossip, what children call magic. Let me tell you a story. This one we call the first. It is a story that sounds like all the others, and yet it is also the one that has allowed for the existence of all that will come afterward—but we’ll get to that.

In this story, two women sit inside a bar. The first one says, “Let me tell you a story.” The second says, “So, tell me already!” “Okay, okay,” she goes. “Once upon a time, there was a girl,” she starts and looks into her drink. Her tongue starts to hang out like an udon noodle. “Well, go on,” the friend says, mistaking her hanging tongue for excitement. Only the girl’s tongue won’t move. The girl’s breath is fixed in midair. Her lips form the letter O. Her friend pricks the tongue with her fork to see what’s the matter, and the tongue falls out and skitters like worms on the ground. The bartender scoops up all the pieces he can find, and they wriggle in his hands. He worries about the mess he’s made. He asks the friend to fetch a jar and cap from the top shelf of the bar in order to contain the skittering tongue pieces. He looks down and notices no blood—only eraser dust.

The bartender thinks this is strange, but he goes to the bar to fetch his needle and thread. He begins to sew the tongue back together for the girl. This is a very difficult job for the man, as the pieces of her tongue keep moving. Like the tongue doesn’t want to be caught. Mountains of eraser dust are flying from her mouth, getting all over the floor. Her breath stands before them. The bartender does a good job of mending except that he sews her tongue onto a piece of paper and stuffs it into her mouth. The girl and her friend rejoice as the girl begins to speak again. But every time she tries to tell her story, the words come out backward. The ending changes.

Let me tell you a story. This one will give you hope. Once upon a time there was a girl. And this girl grew to be a woman. And this woman had the ability to conjure stories from ghosts. Now the conjure woman had three daughters who loved her stories so much that when she died it was all that she left them. Little did they know that these stories had a life before them. That this book had a life before me.

You see, the woman and her family existed in a place called Brooklyn where the maples lined the pavement, and the houses were made from limestone and brownstone that glittered like stars do under moonlight. It must have been divine providence that whitefolks refused to live on these streets, believing they were haunted, therefore leaving the most beautiful houses to be claimed by the descendants of slaves from all across the Atlantic.

Whitefolks were not entirely wrong about the haunting either. If you were to walk down these streets, you might hear the faint sound of steel drum and boom box and chickadee and pigeon. Or you might hear the chattering of ghosts—the spirits of colonialists, Ashanti warriors, slave holders, African griots, mythic creatures, and stories long since forgotten. But while whitefolks may call this a haunting, we know them to be the ancestors. After all, they only want to be able to walk through their homes like they did before their deaths—to sit in the kitchen drinking Milo, bestowing wisdom onto their children who are at risk of forgetting all about them.

Now this family lived in the only rose-colored building at the end of Maple Street. The youngest called herself Zora or She Who Will One Day Grow Up to Be a Great Writer Like Her Namesake. She could be found conjuring her mother’s words into stories or if not, she could be caught, face flushed with embarrassment, fantasizing about a boy or two.

And then there was Sasha, the eldest, who felt her story should shine brightest for once. Commonly referred to as the Black Sheep or She Who Nearly Disappeared Until She Found Her True Self—this girl did have spunk. They say the girl had a chip on her shoulder the size of El Tucuche Mountain for nearly everyone, but particularly for her father who, legend had it, defeated a Rolling Calf with only a penknife and the power of his gaze.

A nephew. An uncle.