Hungerford Bookshop

Our ‘Start of the Year’ newsletter can be found here: JanFeb news

Click for Costa Book awards, Valentine’s Day, Charles Dickens, Bedtime Books for Children and lots of other snippets of info!

by Andrew Miller
£17.99

Shortlisted for the Costa prize, we thought this book was “As compassionate as it is ingenious. Pure confirms Miller as a superlative technician – a master of register, narrative and characterisation.” Set in 1785 one man is commissioned to clear the cemetery of Les Innocents. (Beautifully designed cover too!)

by P.D. James
£18.99

Set to be our hardback fiction bestseller. I was talking to a very well read customer who waxed lyrical about this! If you like Jane Austen and Crime you are in for a real treat! Definitely one for my list

by Stella Gibbons
£7.99

A glorious collection of stories from the author of ‘Cold Comfort Farm’. The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste.

by Philip Pullman
£15

Everyman Classics have released the trilogy (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) in a single volume with a beautiful jacket. For young adults and grown-ups alike.

by Louisa Young
£16.99

Unashamedly another from the Costa list. One of my most enjoyable reads of this year. Balances the
experience of women left behind during the first World War, with the atrocities and emotional challenges faced by the men in the trenches. Brilliantly written.

by Anita Desai
£12.99

A triptych of beautifully crafted novellas makes up Anita Desai’s exquisite new book. Set in modern India, but where history still casts a long shadow. One of Tessa’s favourite fiction books this year.

by Nancy Mitford
£8.99

Published a year after Nancy Mitford’s first novel ‘Highland Fling’, ‘Christmas Pudding’ gives a flavour of life for the Bright Young Things of the twenties and thirties, and a taste of what was to come in her later novels. And for a real Mitford fan Penguin have published all her novels in a handsome hardback (£30) or paperback (£18.99). A must for the bookshelf!

by Claire Tomalin
£30

Claire Tomalin has earned her reputation is one of Britain’s most respected biographers after her books on Thomas Hardy and Samuel Pepys. Here she captures brilliantly the complex character of this great genius.

by Sophie Ratcliffe
£30

Wodehouse always shied away from the idea of a biography. A quiet, retiring man, he expressed himself through the written word. His letters illuminate his life in new York, his success as a novelist and the unhappy episode in 1940 where he was interned by the Germans and later erroneously accused of broadcasting pro-Nazi propaganda.