Welcome back to Book Break! It is coming out to the end of the month, and you know what that
means, it is time for our October book haul. I have just received my favourite email of the
month, Elle has just sent me a batch of some of the most exciting books we published in the month
of October. I'm going to open up this email live in front of you now, and do leave a comment if you
spot a book that you're particularly excited about reading. So the first we have in here,
oh that's gorgeous! I don't know what this book is but it's beautiful.
Wild City: meet the animals who share our city spaces. That is stunning. That's one
of the fun things about working for such a big publishing company is we work on so many books,
so so often in these emails I open something up I haven't actually seen before. But this looks
amazing, so Wild City travels the globe exploring how animals have adapted to live alongside humans,
so it takes us all around cities from London to New York to Stockholm to Singapore to Mumbai and
discover all the different animals that coexist with humans in the cities there. There are cities
where you'll find penguins waiting patiently to cross the road, that is delightful. And it's all
illustrated the whole way through. If you're starting to think about Christmas gift lists,
this looks like a great present. OK next The Saints of Salvation. OK, we've got a sci-fi one.
This is the third and final book in the Salvation sequence trilogy, which is this high sci-fi epic
story about humanity fighting against aliens in space. So hardcore sci-fi fans love this series.
Then we've got Daily Rituals: Women at Work. OK so this is a follow-up to the original Daily Rituals
book, and this one is focused specifically on successful women and what their days look like,
and how they find the time to be so amazing, how great women make time, find inspiration, and get
to work. And it's got details of the rituals of everyone from Coco Chanel to Nina Simone, stuff
like how Louisa May Alcott learned to write with her left hand so that when her right hand cramped
up from writing she could just switch to the other hand. Or maybe it's just funny little traditions
that they had like Isabelle Allende apparently insisted that she began every new book she wrote
on the 8th of January. So it's got practical decisions they made, little superstitions that
they had, just fun little details about their lives that will maybe inspire you. Ah, and then
we've got the paperback of Me: the autobiography from Elton John. And this has got a brand new
chapter in it so there's even more to find out. This book has, no surprise, been completely adored
by Elton John fans, and just fans of British rock and roll or the music industry in general,
because it's got so many amazing behind-the-scenes stories about Elton John's life about the music
industry. It's just fascinating stuff and then we have a proper Christmas one. I know I always
get excited too early about Christmas but I am fully in the Christmas spirit, so this is great.
Meerkat Christmas, this is a super cute children's book about Sonny the meerkat traveling around the
world trying to find the perfect place to spend christmas that fits the image that he
has in his head, and there's like flaps to lift up and read his postcards from around the world,
it's so much fun, and then another one from the same author and illustrator Emily Gravett, who is
just brilliant. This one is called Too Much Stuff, and even just from the front cover you can see how
expressive her illustrations are. They bring the stories so much to life and her stories are always
really funny as well. It's really cute, so this one is about a pair of magpies trying to build
their perfect nest and they just keep adding more and more stuff they're convinced that they need,
very relatable, until disaster is going to strike from the dangers of having too much stuff.
Oh, A World Beneath the Sands by Toby Wilkinson. Watch out because I am going to be doing a Book
Break video starring this book very very soon, all about the ancient world, so watch out for that one.
This one is about the golden age of Egyptology and Egyptology is basically the study of ancient Egypt .
So the book is absolutely packed with really really interesting stuff about ancient Egypt but
also about how archaeologists learnt everything we know and the kind of race for information
that happened. Then this one has been a Book Break favourite, a lot of you have loved this, The Girl
Who Reads on the Metro by Christine Feret-Fleury, now out in this beautiful new paperback. So this
is translated from French, it's about a woman called Juliet who lives in Paris
and she takes the metro every day and she likes to watch the other people on the metro reading
and see what she can figure out about their lives. So she's got this really special talent for kind
of pairing up people's personalities with books, which leads her to take this very mysterious job
giving people the perfect book at the exact right time in their life. So I've talked about this one
in Book Break in the video we did on books about books, I will link to that one below, but it's all
about the power of reading to change our lives, which all book lovers like me truly believe in.
Ah then another one that you're going to see in that ancient world video, in fact I've actually got
it right here on my desk, so this is Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes who is so famous and beloved for
her Greek myth retellings, from A Thousand Ships to Children of Jocasta and this is her non-fiction
book where she's exploring the portrayal of women in Greek myths, so she gives us lots of historical
context and kind of shows how the portrayals of these women have changed through the retellings
through the years, and that the women are actually a lot more nuanced than we might know.
Then we have a David Baldacci. Walk the Wire is now out in paperback, so this is from the Amos Decker
series. And Amos Decker is an FBI agent who had a life-changing brain injury and can now remember
everything. Very useful skill for an FBI agent. Next we have a legend John Cooper Clark, so
John Keeper Clark is a performance poet, he's been described as the godfather of British performance
poetry, he's a rock star, he's a presenter, he has such a huge fan club and this is his memoir I Want
to Be Yours. John Cooper Clarke has just had this incredible career and he's worked with so many
amazing people, so there's a lot of stories in here. Plus he's a comedian, so it's got his trademark
sense of humour as well. And then we've got another iconic memoir in here, Look Again by David Bailey.
So David Bailey is a very famous photographer who revolutionized fashion photography. He has also
worked with a lot of very famous people and had this incredible career that is still going strong.
So there's going to be so many stories in here too. Right next we have Mum and Dad by Joanna Trollope,
so this is a story about an English couple living in Spain and then the husband has a
stroke. And so the three grown-up children have to step in and help them out, so it's all about
that relationship between the parents and children. And Joanna Trollope is of course this wonderfully
compassionate writer and she writes so well about family life here. Maybe another one for
your Christmas gift lists. And then we have an actual Christmas book! Together by Christmas by
Karen Swan, who is queen of the Christmas bestsellers. So this one is set in Amsterdam. Karen
Swan's books are famous for taking us all over the world, and this one is about a woman called Lee
who one day finds a book in the basket of her bicycle with a message scrolled in it. So she
tries to track down the book's author which leads to a sparking relationship, but Lee has a secret
and of course it's finally going to catch up with her. Formula for a perfect Christmas book.
Now this is the picture book edition of Coming to England. So Coming to England by Floella Benjamin
is an iconic book all about Floella Benjamin's experience of moving from Trinidad to London
as part of the Windrush generation. It's this really inspiring story and so this
picture book version means it's now going to be accessible to a whole new younger generation. And
now continuing the Christmas theme, My Magical Snowman. This is one of the Campbell books,
these are always so much fun to play with in real life, because they've got so much to push around
and pull and slide, and this time you're playing in the snow.
And I want this one too, Dear Santa, so this is celebrating the 15 year anniversary of this book
from Rod Campbell, who is most famous for his book Dear Zoo. This is Dear Santa, it's really
interactive, you can lift the flaps to look at what presents Santa's brought each time. I want
to play with this right now. Then we have Cannibal by Safiya Sinclair. So this is a poetry collection.
Safiya Sinclair has been so buzzed about for being such a unique new voice in poetry, so i'm just
looking at the description here. It says "colliding with and confronting Shakespeare's The Tempest
and post-colonial identity, the poems in Cannibal beautifully evoke the poet's Jamaican childhood
and reach beyond to explore history, race relations in America, womanhood, otherness and exile". Amazing.
Next we have, oh another beautifully gifty one. So you all know and love Macmillan Collectors
Library, and that really iconic blue and gold look, and they also do these beautiful little
collections. So this is The Art of Solitude, which is a collection of writings all about solitude
and how people have been inspired by time on their own. So that's a gorgeous little stocking stuffer,
as is this one Why Friendship Matters, which is again selected writings on friendship with
a beautiful theme. Such a lovely thing to give to a friend for Christmas. Then this is The Sicilian
Method by Andrea Camilleri, from the Inspector Montalbano series. Let me just look up which
number in the series this is. It is number 26 in this series, out of I believe 28, so Camilleri who
was just the most beloved crime writer, very sadly died last year, but there are still a couple more
novels in this series to come that he wrote before he died. And now this I have not seen before: Spooky
Jokes. Pretty self-explanatory, that sounds fun. I've been talking so much about how excited I
am for Christmas but it is not too late to get this one in time for Halloween. And just reading
the description here, I've got a few examples of the types of jokes you will find in here.
What do mummies like listening to on halloween? Wrap music. Get it? Because they're wrapped. Which
plant likes Halloween the most? BamBOO. And what kind of pets do ghosts have? Scaredy cats. Classic.
I've been waiting for this one: A Poem For Every Winter Day. You guys love these as well, these
are little seasonal collections edited by Allie Esiri. These are taken from the book that Allie
Esiri edited, A Poem for Every Day of the Year, and this is taking out the winter section. So you can
collect them all, all the seasons, and have them just looking stunning together on your bookshelf. I
know so many of you have been collecting them and I've had lots of messages of people asking me when
this one is coming. So it's here! Oh this is a very beautiful book. Confucius from the Heart by Yu
Dan: Timeless Wisdom for Modern Life. Lovely! So I'm just reading the back now. This is all about taking
the wisdom of Confucius and making it accessible to the modern reader, and seeing how it can apply
to our very busy stressed-filled lives and how to make them a bit easier. Such a lovely
idea, and a beautiful looking book. Now we have another edition of Passing by Nella Larsen, so
this one has been really popular recently in the Macmillan Collectors Library edition.
Passing is the story that The Vanishing Half was based on. So if you loved that novel recently
go and read Passing. It's a modern classic about a woman who bumps into an old childhood friend,
they both grew up in the same neighbourhood, but this friend is now passing as white and
has ended up marrying this very racist white man who has no idea about her true
heritage. And so these women rekindle their friendship but it puts them both in danger.
And then this book is beautiful, I've actually got this one here as well, so this is Journey
by Paulo Coelho, who is the best-selling author of books like The Alchemist. This is a guided journal
so it's absolutely stunning outside and inside, it's got questions to help you kind of explore
thinking about yourself more deeply, it's got beautiful quotes from Paulo Coelho himself.
This would make another wonderful Christmas present, or maybe just a Christmas present that
you might buy yourself if you feel like you want this space for self-reflection and self-discovery.
It's just stunning, and then oh I've got this one here too, look at me! This is The Silence by Don
DeLillo, which I also showed off recently in our video on apocalyptic books. So this is set in the
very near future, just a couple of years away, when some friends are gathering to watch the Super Bowl,
and suddenly the screen cuts out and all of their technology goes dead. So it's this apocalyptic
story about what happens when the technology that we all rely on to communicate with each other
goes completely silent. A Nurse's Story came out this month, this is a really timely one,
this is about Louise Curtis: A nurse working on A&E during the Covid crisis. So it's all about
her completely terrifying and heartbreaking experience as the hospitals just filled up
more and more, but it's also really hopeful and inspirational about the amazing work of all
hospital staff, continuing now to this day. Next we have M is for Melanin, so this is an alphabet book,
a picture book that teaches you all the different letters of the alphabet, but it's specifically
aimed at Black children and celebrating them. I think that's such a lovely idea for children who
don't see themselves represented in books as much as they should. And every letter contains
these really affirming messages so we've got E for Empowerment, L is for Lead, W is for Worthy, and
of course M is for Melanin. And then finally I've got one more in here, and that is Black and British
by David Olusoga. So this is the version aimed at younger readers, so he has his full-length version
aimed at adults also called Black and British, which is this incredible history of Britain,
all the way from Roman times to present day, and exploring the presence of Black people in Britain,
even from ancient times, which not everyone knows about, and all of the different experiences of
Black people throughout British history. So now he's got this version aimed at younger readers
that's got illustrations and maps and it's just a great introduction to Black history. So there you
go with a great haul, these look really exciting, and quite a few Christmas ideas in there. If you
are feeling mega organized, do leave us a comment below and let us know which of these you're
particularly excited about this month. And of course I will link to our playlist here of all
of the book hauls we've done so far, if you just want to keep getting inspiration. See you soon!