An arresting story of an artist’s obsession, from the beloved and award-winning author of Black Hole.

As a child, Brian and his friend Jimmy would make home movies in their yards, coaxing their friends into starring as victims of grisly murders and smearing lipstick on them to simulate blood. Now an aspiring filmmaker, he, Jimmy and new girl in town Laurie – his reluctant muse – set off to a remote cabin in the woods.

Armed with an old camera, they film a true sci-fi horror movie where humans are born of disembodied alien wombs, in homage to The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But as Brian’s affections for Laurie go seemingly unreciprocated, Brian writes and draws himself into a fantasy where she is the girl of his dreams – both his damsel in distress and his saviour.

Final Cut blurs the line between dreams and reality, imagination and perception in this astonishing look at what it truly means to express oneself through art.

Joseph Conrad is a major figure in modern literature. Before his writing career was established in 1899 with ‘Heart of Darkness’, Conrad was a merchant seafarer and eventually a shipmaster of vessels that regularly sailed between Europe and its antipodes, with several visits to Australia & New Zealand. In ‘Marlow’s Dream’, Martin Edmond shows in vivid detail how Conrad both collected and began to arrange the tales that would later appear in his fiction during these voyages. Intertwining Conrad’s biography with his own, Edmond masterfully demonstrates how Conrad’s celebrated stories were lifted straight out of his experiences as an itinerant mariner who had spent countless days in antipodean ports between 1878–93.

Index Books, 2024

A playful guide to understanding the ways of ‘normal people’, The Autist’s Guide to the Galaxy flips our usual scripts about neurodiversity.

Following on from her internationally successful memoir, The Autists, Clara Törnvall has written a fun, comprehensive, and accessible explanation of neurotypical, or ‘normal’, behaviour. Full of facts, tips, and tests, and developed with input from other autists, this book places the difficulties autists face in the context of a world built for the neurotypical majority. It will help neurodiverse people – and their families, friends, and loved ones – navigate this world, nurture stronger relationships, and thrive.

Scribe, 2024

There was no past, no future, no words, nothing – just the light and the yellow and the scent of dry leaves in the sun.

Japan’s internationally celebrated storyteller returns with five stories of healing and hope. Effortlessly beautiful, nostalgic and melancholy, the stories in Dead-End Memories explore the stories of five women who, following sudden and painful events, find solace in the blissful moments in everyday life.

The daughter of a restaurant owner experiences a budding romance, accompanied by the ghosts of an elderly couple. After a scandalous near-death experience, an editor gains a new lease of life. A woman seeks refuge in the apartment above her uncle’s bar after being betrayed by her fiance. As Yoshimoto’s gentle, effortless prose reminds us, one true miracle can be as simple as having someone to share a meal with, and happiness is always within us if only we take a moment to see it.

Faber, 2024

On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars.

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life.

The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle’s magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Harvill Secker, 2024