A curated selection of summer reading from the team at Primrose Hill Books.
Al is an ‘interloper’: breaking, entering and squatting properties while their rich owners are away. He teams up with three others and has to turn detective when a home owner is murdered. Ingenious and enjoyable.
Stylish detective story set in a French town where Chief Inspector Georges Gorski investigates the sudden, and suspicious, death of a prominent local manufacturer. A darkly funny tale of corruption, bribery, passion and malice.
The Brown family and close friend Annemarie suffer a bereavement which leaves each one of them struggling for stability and direction. Somehow, teenager Ali, forced to confront the reality of adult life, steers them through the ensuing year. A deeply moving story of the changes wrought by adversity.
A woman suffering from a creative block embarks on a road trip across America, but ends up finding inspiration closer to home than expected. A raunchy, subversive, funny novel about midlife and the different forms family can take.
Jay, once a promising artist but now a van driver, finds himself delivering groceries to a successful former lover from his art school days. An insightful portrait of the creative impulse and the rapacious demands of the art world.
A fictionalised account of Eric Blair’s service in the Burmese colonial police, an experience which changed him from a schoolboy into a writer embittered by his experience of colonialism, and ready to reinvent himself as George Orwell.
A page-turner with an extensive cast and clever plot, which offers, through its shifting perspectives and the interactions of the characters, an ambitious and intelligent analysis of contemporary London society.
Ivar, living alone on a remote Scottish island, rescues a stranger washed up on the beach and takes him in. A masterly unfolding of tensions and a brilliant depiction of solitude, connection and passion. Tender, full of surprises.
Cleverly plotted thriller in which Sadie, dismissed in disgrace from the FBI and now a spy for hire, is embedded in a rural commune in France, tasked with undermining their efforts to protect their environment, by fair means or foul.
15-year-old Dunky Logan has just left school for the local farm, trying to fit in with the workers and their macho hierarchy. Shortlisted for the inaugural Booker Prize, this is a powerful, enthralling read.
Entertaining Cold War espionage caper in which Gabriel, a restless journalist, is lured into covert missions under orders from shadowy intelligence officers and his alluring, enigmatic handler, Faith Green.
Scott, a cardiologist with an enviable lifestyle, makes a rash error of judgement at work and his family life goes into freefall. A slyly observed satire of upper middle class aspirations. Warm- hearted and very funny.
Dazzlingly accomplished novel set in Dublin in which two brothers find themselves emotionally adrift after the death of their father. Beautifully observed depiction of their inner thought processes and those of the women closest to them.
Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, the tale of Jim, an enslaved man desperate to evade being sold to a new owner in New Orleans, and young runaway Huck Finn, who travel along the perilous Mississippi in the hope of reaching the free states. Suffused with humour and compassion.
Published 24th July
A man making his way through an apocalyptic landscape with a child passenger is captured by a loner living in an old mine, to whom he recounts their story of survival in a devastated post-climate-collapse world. Spellbinding and troubling.
In a worthy addition to the genre, John le Carré’s son brings Smiley out of retirement, two years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. It stands as both homage to his father and an excellent thriller in its own right.