Four debuts that disturb and dazzle: New voices to read now

There is nothing better when it comes to books than discovering a favourite new writer, and this summer has seen the arrival of several striking debut novels that push boundaries, both thematically and stylistically. These are books that disturb, provoke and linger in the mind. They are just the kind of books that will stick with you.

What links them isn’t genre or setting but a willingness to confront discomfort: whether in the body, the family or society itself. These books ask readers to sit with pain and ambiguity, not to solve or resolve it, but to acknowledge it.

Hidden Pages: Graham Greene and the joy of literary discoveries

I love a literary discovery like the newly found short story by Graham Greene, Reading at Night. It adds an intriguing footnote to a major literary life. Published in Strand Magazine, the piece is a ghost story of sorts—spare, eerie, and lightly comic. It’s a small thing, a curiosity, but it opens up new angles on Greene’s creative instincts.

Dua Lipa and Helen Garner: When pop culture meets literary depth

Dua Lipa’s book club selection of This House of Grief brought Helen Garner’s work into the mainstream spotlight and sparked an unexpected literary ripple. 

Garner’s forensic exploration of a real-life Australian murder case is anything but tabloid. Instead, she writes with quiet precision and moral seriousness.

Publishers and platforms: How Substack, AI & email newsletters are redefining fiction in 2025

In 2025, a quiet transformation is reshaping literary publishing. Authors are increasingly bypassing traditional deals to connect directly with readers via Substack, newsletters, and AI-assisted tools. This shift is not simply about technology. 

It's about creative autonomy, deeper community engagement, and the rediscovery of storytelling on a writer's own terms. In this new ecosystem, fiction finds fresh formats, writers build loyal readerships, and the lines between hobbyist and professional blur in fascinating ways.

The Booker Prize 2025: Subtle power and global resonance

This year's Booker Prize longlist pulses with quiet intensity. From the return of Kiran Desai after a 19-year silence to Maria Reva's striking debut, the list trades fireworks for finesse. That's right up my street.

These are novels of displacement, longing and radical introspection, stories that ask readers to listen closely.

Writing with machines, owning your voice, and where the ethical lines are drawn

We’ve crossed a threshold. What used to be the stuff of speculative fiction is now a line item in the writing process: AI is here, and it’s shaping how we write, revise and even brainstorm.

But with the rise of tools like ChatGPT, Sudowrite and Claude, a wave of questions has followed. If a machine helped shape a chapter, is it still your voice? If it tightened your prose or fed you metaphors, do you owe your reader an explanation? And most fundamentally—how much help is too much?

Burn Bright, Burn Brief —The quiet power of short novels and why less is suddenly more

In a world of infinite scrolling and 800-page epics, something strange is happening, books are shrinking. 

Not in value or complexity, but in size. Novels under 200 pages, long confined to indie presses or experimental shelves, are quietly becoming bestsellers. They’re winning awards. They’re getting second printings. And perhaps most telling of all, readers are finishing them.

The Literary Brat Pack and the birth of 1980s Manhattan Cool

For anyone craving an 80s mood board turned dark, literary statement, you’ve arrived at the right place. Step into 1980s Manhattan, when the city throbbed with neon lights, fast cars, and faster lifestyles, and the emergence of the so-called “Literary Brat Pack”.

Led by Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and Tama Janowitz, this trio of young writers provided a fresh, glossy glimpse of urban excess. But beneath the designer clothing and drug-fuelled nights, there was something more: a generational manifesto hidden behind chic minimalism.

Grief, grammar, and the Didion sentence: Rereading The Year of Magical Thinking

For me, few books confront grief with the unflinching clarity of Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking. It is one of my favourite of Didion books and I reread it recently. 

Didion wrote it in the aftermath of her husband’s sudden death; it isn’t a memoir of healing so much as a dissection of loss, precise, restrained, devastating. 

Why the Classics still cast a spell: reading backwards in the age of the algorithm

Browse through the bookish corners of Instagram or TikTok, and you’ll encounter a familiar pattern: glossy covers, rapid emotional claims, and an endless stream of “must-reads” that promise devastation, catharsis, or shocking twists. 

It sometimes feels that the language of the algorithm values sensation over subtlety. Amid this noisy chorus, the quiet, deliberate appeal of the classics becomes harder to hear, yet more essential than ever. It is the reason that we return to them. And while some say it's about nostalgia. It isn't that at all.

Bookworm summer: Reading as stylish rebellion

Move over, Brat Summer. The era of ironic chaos and glam messiness is giving way for something quieter, more cerebral, and, dare we say it, more enchanting. Welcome to Bookworm Summer, where reading isn’t just cool again; it’s the season’s most coveted accessory.

From Dior’s limited-edition Dracula book tote to Dua Lipa’s Instagram book club and Kaia Gerber’s annotated paperbacks, literary flair is everywhere. Celebrities aren’t just posting reading lists for show; these curated collections have become a way to express identity, mood, and even political consciousness.

Why Mansfield Park deserves your attention in Austen’s anniversary year

 In the book world, you cannot have missed it. It’s 2025, and it’s Jane Austen’s year — the 250th anniversary of her birth. So, it's natural that readers will return to the classics: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, Sense and Sensibility. They sparkle with wit, romantic tension, and iconic heroines — the ones we recommend, adapt, reread, and lovingly quote. But in this anniversary year, I want to make a quieter, more subversive suggestion:

Read Mansfield Park.