Like many of us we have started the new year full of positivity and high hopes for a much better year than of late. We are certainly heartened to see so many of you through our doors browsing, choosing and ordering books from us. It’s wonderful to learn about new titles from our customers and many of your order requests also end up on our shelves too so thank you for bringing them to our attention.

Our monthly Book Club and Cooking the Books sessions with The Cooks Place continue to be popular and more information is available in store if you are interested.

Here are our four book choices this month. As usual we have chosen a fiction and a non-fiction title for adults and the same for younger readers. We hope you enjoy.

They Both Die at The End by Adam Silvera

Have you ever wondered how you would react if you woke up to a phone call explaining that today would be your last day on earth? Where your priorities would lie, and how you would choose to spend your final minutes? For Mateo and Rufus, this is the devastating truth, and they must think fast about how they want to live their last day, managing to fit an entire lifetime into less than 24 hours. On September 5th, at around midnight, Mateo and Rufus both receive a phone call from ‘Death Cast’ telling them they will die on that day, although they are unsure when, or how this will happen. As total strangers, each with a different history and background, the two unfortunate teens happen to meet by chance, through communicating via an app: the ‘Last Friend’, set up specifically to help those for whom death is scarily imminent. Eager to waste no time at all, and aware that every fleeting second is precious, they embark on an unforgettable adventure, experiencing another side of life specially catered for the ‘Deckers’. As the hours pass all too quickly, their relationship blossoms, and an intimate connection is formed between the two. To us as readers, however, this becomes increasingly heart wrenching and futile as we are continuously aware of their painfully inevitable fate. Through friendship, love, heartache and emotive LGBTQ representation, Silvera effectively explores the utterly shattering experience of loss, and terrifying knowledge that time is running out. The final few short chapters, although shockingly inevitable, game me goosebumps; I believe that this Young Adult A 'Tik Tok famous' bestseller has the power to really influence one’s perception on the fragility of life, teaching us to grasp every moment and treasure the time we have with one another.

Published by Simon & Schuster £7.99 Paperback ISBN 9781471166204

Atlas of Amazing Migrations by Matt Sewell and Megan Lee

In his latest book, Matt Sewell brings us a beautifully illustrated journey around the world via the migrations of all manner of flora and fauna.

When we think of migration, we often think of birds such as the Arctic Tern which holds the record for the longest recorded regular migration. However, Sewell reminds us of other animals such as wildebeest, elephants and even our own common toad who all set off on their own arduous and often perilous journey in search of food, warmth or a breeding ground. Not only this, we are also introduced to migrations from more surprising life forms such as coconut plants that use the ocean for their movements and the corn leaf aphid which catches a lift on the jet streams of the American Midwest.

The book is alive with Sewell’s distinctive and characterful watercolours of the many amazing creatures who undertake these epic journeys. It is accompanied by engaging text that is informative in a conversational way, making it universally appealing. Altogether, this is a beautiful book that offers a new perspective of our earth through the travels of some of its most interesting creatures.

Published by Harper Collins £16.99 Hardback ISBN 9781843654995

Piranesi by Susannah Clarke

On first appearance, and especially when compared to her debut novel, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susannah Clarke’s Piranesi may seem like a ‘quick read’. However, to paraphrase an age-old saying we should never judge a book by the number of its pages! Piranesi is a remarkable work of fantasy fiction. It is both compelling and disorientating, beautiful yet with an undercurrent of disquietude; a kind of dream turned narrative.

The tale revolves around the experience of Piranesi whose story is told through a series of journal entries. He is a character who does not recognise his own name and, though someone who the reader instinctively trusts, he may prove to be an unreliable narrator. Piranesi likes to think of both himself and the only other living human in the house as beings of reason and logic who collect facts and record experience in order to give significance to the dizzying world in which they inhabit. However, this attempt at rational stability is undermined for the reader as the book unfolds and an ambivalent exchange between science and magic is revealed. Through this thematic collision Clarke offers us a believable world which makes no sense at all: is it real or is it imagined?

Perhaps the most interesting thing about the House is that it means many things to many different people. Piranesi himself finds a kind of spiritual solace in this space he calls home as he repeats throughout the novel, ‘the beauty of the House is immeasurable; its kindness infinite’. However, The Other is fearful of the destructive potential of the tides and is clearly of the view that the house cannot support him. Likewise, readers have interpreted the house, and what it means, in a whole spectrum of ways.

It is no wonder that Susannah Clarke won The Women’s Prize for Fiction with this labyrinthine novel. It is, in a way, a psychological the Lion, the Witch and The Wardrobe for adults. Clarke has created a space in which to meditate upon the binary opposites of our world: the real and the imagined, kindness and cruelty, life and death and reason and madness. Indeed, The House is a world which you will never forget and, equally, are never likely to fathom.

Published by Bloomsbury £8.99 Paperback ISBN 9781526622433

Lady Lumley: Life and Legacy by John T. Smith

The name Lady Lumley is well known in Ryedale. Thousands of pupils have attended the local secondary, Lady Lumley’s School, in Pickering which can trace its origins back over 450 years, there are almshouses at Thornton Dale and two other schools in Thornton Dale and Sinnington were bestowed upon these communities by Lady Lumley. However, before the publication of this most interesting book, not much other than name alone was known about this generous benefactress.

Former history teacher at Lady Lumley’s School and now Senior Lecturer at the University of Hull, Dr. John Smith, has meticulously researched the life Lady Lumley, a most remarkable, but fairly elusive, 17th Century noblewoman who seems to have ‘craved no notoriety’. Born towards the start of Queen Elizabeth I’s reign, she was the fourth child of a wealthy and influential catholic family living in London and Suffolk. Her long life – she lived beyond the age of 80 – was littered with personal strife including scandals associated with her sisters, the accidental death of her brother, the death of her beloved first husband and separation from her second. By her death, her wealth had certainly reduced but she used it well and her generosity towards the locality remains a legacy that lives on to this very day.

Dr. Smith’s research is wide-ranging and thorough, building up a clear picture of both aristocratic life in 17th Century England and bringing to us the fine details of the life of woman who lived through it. It is also written in an engaging style and the personal accounts of his interest in Lady Lumley convey a real affection for the school in which he worked for 24 years. By recording, documenting and preserving the life of this ‘truly progressive woman’ Dr. Smith has created his own legacy for the school and this book is most certainly a fitting tribute to the woman who created it.

Published by Blackthorn Press £12.99 Softback ISBN 9781906259662

(Blackthorn is a local published based near Pickering)