BOOKMARK June 2024 Book recommendations
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June 2024
All books are available from Waterstones in Perth and Adventure Into Books in Blairgowrie.
Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang
(Borough Press, 2025)
Fiction
Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang (ISBN: 9780008532819, paperback). It’s a story of failed writer June Hayward and the increasingly treacherous web of lies she spins after she steals the manuscript of her dead rival Athena Liu.
Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid
(Birlinn, 2025)
Historical Fiction
Queen Macbeth by Val McDermid (ISBN: 9781846976759, hardback). Debunking the myth penned by Shakespeare, McDermid reclaims the story of Gruoch and her husband Macbeth. It was a time when there was no ‘Scotland’ but a set of independent kingdoms; it was a time when it took armies and marriage alliances to hold onto a crown; it was a time when a strong woman survived by using her wits.
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov
(Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2023)
Fiction
Time Shelter by Georgi Gospodinov (ISBN: 9781474623070, paperback).The story is set in a clinic for people living with Alzheimer’s: each floor replicates, in detail, a different decade, transporting patients back to a familiar time. But it is not just the patients who respond to their altered surroundings, others also start to seek out the clinic, hoping to escape from distressing present realities. The consequences are profound.
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
(Sort of Books, 2024)
Fiction
The Summer Book by Tove Jansson (ISBN: 9780954221713, paperback). This novel comes across as part fiction, part fact and part memoir. It doesn’t read like a classic story but instead depicts a series of adventures, musings, still-days and storm-days experienced by a grandmother and her young granddaughter, living in much-loved summer home on a small Finnish island. It is simple, vivid, honest and delightful.
The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff
(Bloomsbury, 2021)
Fiction
The Great Godden by Meg Rosoff (ISBN: 9781526618535, paperback). A long, sun-drenched, family-filled summer stretches ahead. It’s an annual pilgrimage, with its annual rituals. Until this year, when the Goddens – the charming, golden Kit and his over-shadowed brother Hugo – join them, and life changes for more than one member of the family.
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
(Pan Macmillan, 2023)
Historical Fiction
The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden (ISBN: 9781529078404, paperback). Set in the French countryside, just after the First World War, it is the story of the young, beautiful Joss and her four siblings. When their mother falls ill, the children are left to fend for themselves, in the battle-scarred hotel Les Oeilets. When Joss catches the attention of the charming Eliot, the idleness of summer gives way to an atmosphere of deceit and danger.
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee
(Vintage Publishing, 2002)
Fiction
Cider with Rosie by Laurie Lee (ISBN: 9780099285663, paperback). A book of growing up in a bygone, bucolic, rural Cotswold village.