Summer Matrix Catalogue

A thrilling and unprecedented account of the radicalism and political extremism that gripped the 1970s – a seismic decade that transformed the modern world.

In the 1970s, a network of extremists terrorised the West with intricately planned plane hijackings and hostage-takings. Among them were the glamorous Leila Khaled, hard-drinking Carlos the Jackal, and radical leftists of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, all united by their hatred of Israel, capitalism and ‘Western imperialism’.

Their audacious attacks brought governments to their knees and glued nations to their TV screens. Drawing on decades of research, declassified and secret documents, and first-hand interviews with hijackers, spies, witnesses and victims, Jason Burke takes us inside these often-deadly operations. In this underground realm of loyalty, betrayal and commitment to radical change at any cost, he reveals the dark origins of our fractured world today.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2014.

Aged thirteen, Theo Decker, son of a devoted mother and a reckless, largely absent father, survives an accident that otherwise tears his life apart. Alone and rudderless in New York, he is taken in by the family of a wealthy friend. He is tormented by an unbearable longing for his mother, and down the years clings to the thing that most reminds him of her: a small, strangely captivating painting that ultimately draws him into the criminal underworld.

As he grows up, Theo learns to glide between the drawing rooms of the rich and the dusty antiques store where he works. He is alienated and in love - and his talisman, the painting, places him at the centre of a narrowing, ever more dangerous circle. The Goldfinch is a haunted odyssey through present-day America and a drama of enthralling power.

Combining unforgettably vivid characters and thrilling suspense, it is a beautiful, addictive triumph - a sweeping story of loss and obsession, of survival and self-invention, of the deepest mysteries of love, identity and fate.

An antimeme is an entity with self-censoring properties. Some are benign; but others, less so…These entities can feed on your most cherished memories, the things that make you you – and you’ll never even know anything changed.

And they aren’t just feeding on us. They’re invading. But how do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war?

WELCOME TO THE ANTIMEMETICS DIVISIONNO, THIS IS NOT YOUR FIRST DAY

The groundbreaking first book of an epic series that has changed the face of fantasy. The Way of Kings begins The Stormlight Archive.

Speak again the ancient oaths: Life before death. Strength before weakness. Journey before Destination. Return to men the Shards they once bore. The Knights Radiant must stand again.

Roshar is a world of stone and storms. Uncanny tempests of incredible power sweep across the rocky terrain so frequently that they have shaped ecology and civilization alike. Animals hide in shells, trees pull in branches, and grass retracts into the soilless ground.

Cities are built only where the topography offers shelter. It has been centuries since the fall of the ten consecrated orders known as the Knights Radiant, but their Shardblades and Shardplate remain: mystical swords and suits of armor that transform ordinary men into near-invincible warriors. Men trade kingdoms for Shardblades.

Wars were fought for them, and won by them. One such war rages on a ruined landscape called the Shattered Plains. There, Kaladin, who traded his medical apprenticeship for a spear to protect his little brother, has been reduced to slavery.

In a war that makes no sense, where ten armies fight separately against a single foe, he struggles to save his men and to fathom the leaders who consider them expendable. Brightlord Dalinar Kholin commands one of those other armies. Like his brother, the late king, he is fascinated by an ancient text called The Way of Kings.

Troubled by over-powering visions of ancient times and the Knights Radiant, he has begun to doubt his own sanity. Across the ocean, an untried young woman named Shallan seeks to train under an eminent scholar and notorious heretic, Dalinar's niece, Jasnah. Though she genuinely loves learning, Shallan's motives are less than pure.

As she plans a daring theft, her research for Jasnah hints at secrets of the Knights Radiant and the true cause of the war.

Jamaica, 1976.

Seven gunmen storm Bob Marley's house, machine guns blazing. The reggae superstar survives, but the gunmen are never caught.

In A Brief History of Seven Killings, Marlon James reimagines the story behind this near-mythical event, chronicling the lives of a host of unforgettable characters from street kids, drug lords and journalists, to prostitutes and secret service agents. Gripping, inventive and ambitious, it is one of the most mesmerising and influential novels of the twenty-first century.

An unbelievable table of greed, looted treasures and stolen history in the world's biggest art heist. In the shattered aftermath of Cambodia’s civil war, temples that had stood for centuries were found ransacked - sacred sculptures hacked from pedestals, towering statues of Hindu gods and priceless relics of the Khmer Empire vanished. At the centre of this vast plunder, British expatriate Douglas Latchford, whose decades-long obsession fuelled one of the most audacious cultural thefts of modern times.

From the Killing Fields of the Khmer Rouge to the marble galleries of New York and London and the private collections of the rich and famous, The Man Who Stole the Gods unravels a breathtaking story of power, greed and corruption, and asks what you take from a nation when you steal its past. Drawing on years of investigation and exclusive access to the stories’ key players – from temple looters and traffickers to the investigators and archaeologists fighting to bring masterpieces home – award-winning writer Matthew Campbell reveals how the treasures of one of the world’s greatest civilizations were stolen, sold and finally found.

Anyone can write a bestseller. Here’s how…GO GAYIt’s been seven years since Mallory shot to fame as a literary sensation.

But after years of struggling with writer’s block, she’s desperate to resurrect her career before it spirals into obscurity. She needs inspiration to strike – and fast. GO SADEnter Leo – a young struggling addict sleeping under bridges and trading sex for survival.

He’s vulnerable. He’s enigmatic. He’s exactly what Mallory has been looking for.

GO DARKMallory needs Leo if she wants another bestseller. Authenticity sells, and there’s nothing more authentic than real life. She’s the perfect person to tell Leo’s story.

Gay, sad, dark – just what the world needs right now. But as secrets threaten to unravel more than just her career, Mallory must decide: just how far will she go to pen the perfect story?

Qianze has not seen her father in eleven years, since he walked out of her life the night of her fourteenth birthday and disappeared without a trace. But then she gets a call-there is a man on the porch of her childhood home, and he's asking for her. This man isn't the Ba Qianze remembers: he is much older, more fragile, and worst of all, haunted by a half-forgotten prophecy.

While Qianze wrestles with what she owes this near-stranger, Ba begins telling stories of his past. From his bloody days as a Red Guard during the Cultural Revolution to his mother's youth under Japanese occupation, he circles around the prophecy he came to deliver. Qianze has always longed to know more about her family history, but as Ba reveals a past far darker than she could have imagined, she finds herself plagued by strange visions-fox spirits trail her on her evening commute, a terrifying jackalope stalks her nightmares, and the looming prophecy slinks ever closer.

Spanning decades and continents, A Beast Slinks Towards Beijing is a dark, magical realist family saga that moves through the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Cultural Revolution, and the present day to explore the effects of intergenerational trauma, the legacy of colonialism and inescapability of fate in stunningly rendered folklore.

Austerlitz is W. G. Sebald's haunting novel of post-war Europe.

In 1939, five-year-old Jacques Austerlitz is sent to England on a Kindertransport and placed with foster parents. This childless couple promptly erase from the boy all knowledge of his identity and he grows up ignorant of his past. Later in life, after a career as an architectural historian, Austerlitz - having avoided all clues that might point to his origin - finds the past returning to haunt him and he is forced to explore what happened fifty years before.

Austerlitz is W.G. Sebald's melancholic masterpiece.

A tree is not just a type of being, it is also a way of being – one that is wildly creative, fantastically resilient, and most of all, deeply rooted...

From bestselling author Robert Moor comes a wondrous journey through the wilds of nature and the gnarls of history, exploring how trees – from the tiniest bonsai to the mightiest sequoia – teach us to grow wise. One day, on a whim, Robert Moor set out to climb a tree near his home, unwittingly embarking on what would become a decade-long, globe-spanning adventure. Drawing on an astonishing range of thinkers, from cutting-edge scientists to ancient philosophers, Moor explores how trees have shaped human lives for millennia – and how they can guide us into the future.

His hunt for the ‘wisdom of trees’ takes him from the Lake District to Ethiopia, Tanzania, Papua and Japan. He dines with David Attenborough, naps with chimpanzees and risks his life to save an ancient forest. Along the way, Moor investigates some of humanity’s oldest mysteries: What is the secret to growing old well? How do we set down roots in an increasingly chaotic world? And most importantly, how should we – as individuals, as communities, as stewards of the Earth – live?What begins as an ode to the miracle of trees blossoms into a joyous, daring, fiercely hopeful endeavour to broaden our minds and deepen our connections.

To truly grasp the wisdom of a tree, this bold new classic announces, you must learn to think like one.

Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water follows a family in southern India that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning - and in Kerala, water is everywhere.

At the turn of the century a twelve-year-old girl, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this poignant beginning, the young girl and future matriarch - known as Big Ammachi - will witness unthinkable changes at home and at large over the span of her extraordinary life, full of the joys and trials of love and the struggles of hardship. A shimmering evocation of a lost India and of the passage of time itself, The Covenant of Water is a hymn to progress in medicine and to human understanding, and a humbling testament to the hardships undergone by past generations for the sake of those alive today.

Imbued with humour, deep emotion and the essence of life, it is one of the most masterful literary novels published in recent years.

The first complete new translation for 25 years of the acknowledged masterpiece of Japanese literature. Lady Murasaki's great 11th century novel is a beautifully crafted story of love, betrayal and death at the Imperial Court. At the core of this epic is Prince Genji, the son of an emperor, whose passionate character, love affairs and shifting political fortunes, offer an equisite glimpse of the golden age of Japan.

Royal Tyler's superb new translation is scrupulously true to the Japanese original but appeals immeadiately to the modern reader. This edition also includes notes, glossaries, character lists and a chronology to enable the reader to appreciate the richness of this classic of world literature.

The great Icelandic novel written by a Nobel prize-winner, this is a magnificent portrait of the eerie Icelandic landscape and one man's dogged struggle for independence. ‘In Iceland it’s the canon, but to me it’s a cult classic’ Zadie Smith‘I defy anyone to finish Halldór Laxness's Independent People without wetting the pages with tears’ Jonathan Franzen‘Favourite book? Independent People… I love it’ Ann PatchettBjartus is a sheep farmer determined to eke a living from a blighted patch of land in rural Iceland. Nothing, not merciless weather, nor his family, will come between him and his goal of financial independence.

Only Asta Solillja, the child he brings up as his daughter, can pierce his stubborn heart. As she grows up, keen to make her own way in the world, Bjartus's obstinacy threatens to estrange them forever.

Tata begins with a mystery—Agnès is asked to identify the body of her beloved aunt Colette—who, as far as she knows, died three years earlier. From this phone call, Valérie Perrin crafts a compelling blend of family saga and literary suspense. As Agnès searches for the truth, long-buried secrets and hidden lives come to light, revealing an unforgettable cast of characters and the extraordinary story of the woman she thought she knew.

At the heart of the novel is Colette—Agnès’s beloved aunt—whose decision to fake her own death sets in motion a richly layered tale of resilience, identity, and reinvention. Told with warmth, humour, and emotional depth, Tata is a captivating story about the mysteries that shape a life and the courage that is required of women who choose to forge one's own path.

Disguised as a translation of a rediscovered text by a Japanese writer, Taiwan Travelogue is a bittersweet story of love between two women, nested in an artful exploration of language, history and power.

Set in May 1938, the young novelist Aoyama Chizuko sails from Japan to Taiwan where her interpreter proffers tantalising glimpses of island life and helps her to taste as much of cuisine as her larger-than-life appetite can bear.

When Daphne notices an older gentleman following her around the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, she doesn’t expect it to be Eddie – her former stepfather. Married to her mother for a short time when Daphne was nine, she hasn’t seen Eddie for many years; not since the fateful event that changed the direction of both their lives. Meeting again now, Daphne and Eddie feel that time has fallen away.

Their earlier relationship was brief but had a profound impact on both of them. Together, they consider not only their past, but the joys of the present and their commitment to face the future together. A moving, luminous story about how family, memory and love endures, Whistler paints an intimate portrait of how the feeling of being known by one other person, even for a short period of time, can change everything.

Graham Greene’s iconic thriller – a shocking tale of espionage and deceit, told from amongst the smouldering ruins of war-torn Europe. Rollo Martins, a second-rate novelist, arrives penniless in post-war Vienna to visit his friend and hero, Harry Lime. But Harry has died in suspicious circumstances, and the police are closing in on his associates...

BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days

Co-written by two award-winning writers, This Is How You Lose the Time War is an epic love story spanning time and space. Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandant finds a letter.

It reads: Burn before reading.

Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, grows into something more. Something epic.

Something romantic. Something that could change the past and the future. Except the discovery of their bond would mean death for each of them.

There's still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win that war. That's how war works.

Right?

INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE SHORTLISTED 2026.

On land where enslaved people were once tortured and murdered, the state built a penal colony in the wilderness, where inmates could be rehabilitated, but never escape. Now, decades later, and having only succeeded in trapping men, not changing them for the better, its operations are winding down. But in the prison’s waning days, a new horror is unleashed: every full-moon night, the inmates are released, the warden is armed with rifles, and the hunt begins.

Every man plans his escape, not knowing if his end will come at the hands of a familiar face, or from the unknown dangers beyond the prison walls. Ana Paula Maia has once again delivered a bracing vision of our potential for violence, and our collective failure to account for the consequences of our social and political action, or inaction. No crime is committed out of view for this novelist, and her raw, brutal power enlists us all as witness.

There's Grandaddy Jake Santee, 99 years old, an unreformed gambler, cranky reprobate and fierce opponent of the work ethic. Thanks to his home-distilled hooch, Ol' Death Whisper, he reckons he's in with good shot at immortality. And then there's Tiny, adopted at the age of four by Grandaddy Jake, a giant young man as gentle as Jake is belligerent.

And then there's Fup, an uncompromising twenty-pound mallard, partial to a drink herself, whose unique presence transforms the Santee household. Hilarious, heartwarming and magical, Fup is a contemporary fable that inspires an almost evangelical fervour in all who read it. It is a work of enormous originality with a giant heart.

Harry Shukman led a double life.

Friends and family knew him as a journalist, but unbeknownst to them he was secretly infiltrating the British far right. Equipped with a hidden camera, he posed as 'Chris' and set out to expose right-wing extremists. From canvassing with Britain First to befriending Holocaust deniers, neo-Nazis and a Silicon Valley-backed race-science organisation, Shukman again and again risked his safety and sanity to remove the far right’s terrifyingly everyday mask.

Now, we must ensure it stays off.

Inspired by a cult video game and now adapted into an acclaimed film, Exit 8 is an innovative work of storytelling, and an ingenious locked-room mystery unlike any other. A young man is riding the Tokyo subway when he receives a life-changing text message from his ex-girlfriend. He exits the train, but extraordinary things begin to happen, and he finds he cannot escape.

Why is he trapped? Is it related to the text message he received? Will he solve the clues before it is too late?The subway will loop endlessly unless he follows precise rules:Do not overlook any anomalies. If you find an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you do not find any anomalies, do not turn back.

GET OUT THROUGH EXIT 8.

Come of age in the credit crunch. Be civil in a hostile environment.

Step out into a world of Go Home vans. Go to Oxbridge, get an education, start a career. Do all the right things.

Buy a flat. Buy art. Buy a sort of happiness.

But above all, keep your head down. Keep quiet. And keep going.

The narrator of Assembly is a Black British woman. She is preparing to attend a lavish garden party at her boyfriend's family estate, set deep in the English countryside. At the same time, she is considering the carefully assembled pieces of herself.

As the minutes tick down and the future beckons, she can't escape the question: is it time to take it all apart?

Hearts will be healed and hearts broken, but no one will leave this festival as they arrived…Viv has turned heartbreak into spectacle: a one-night-only masked festival at a French château, marking the anniversary of her first husband’s departure. Guests roam the moonlit woods in search of reinvention, all waiting for Madame Sosostris, the elusive clairvoyant of The Waste Land, rumoured to appear after decades in hiding.

But as midnight nears, disguises slip, emotions ignite and Viv’s carefully planned celebration begins to unravel. Enchanting and unsettling, this midsummer tale explores love, illusion and the strange transformations of a single night.

Traveling Practice follows a novelist and his spirited niece as they embark on a walk across the Japanese countryside during the last days before the pandemic. Through their journey, the book masterfully explores themes of memory and the power of writing to capture fleeting moments and preserve them. Nominated for the prestigious Akutagawa Prize and winner of both the Mishima Yukio Prize and the Tsubota Joji Literature Prize, Traveling Practice’s quiet, reflective tone and focus on the characters’ inner lives elevate it beyond a simple travel story, establishing it as a significant work of literary fiction.

On an island off the coast of France, six teenagers come together for a summer of desire and discovery until one of them vanishes forever, leaving the rest with an enduring mysteryTell me, do you know why the most beautiful love stories must always end badly?In the summer of 1985, on a scruffy resort island off the coast of France, six teenagers—five boys and one girl—band together for a final golden season before adulthood. Their days are drenched in sun and freedom, and their nights simmer with secrets, jealousy, and longing. Philippe is drawn to Nicolas, the quiet new boy who sees him in a way that no one else does.

As their bond deepens, part of Nicolas remains unreachable—until a sudden tragedy brings their summer to a brutal end. The Summer Boy is a lush and unforgettable autobiographical tale, capturing the ineffable summers of youth in amber. Celebrated novelist Philippe Besson has shaped his memories into an aching meditation on how one summer night—and one fierce connection—can echo across a lifetime.

It's a hot Edinburgh summer, and Roisin’s life is stagnating. She spends her days cancelling plans, skipping work and drinking lukewarm wine in the bathtub with her best friend Eve. When their wealthy mutual friend Claire offers Roisin a significant amount of money under the guise of ‘freelance work,’ Roisin thinks her luck might finally be changing.

But Claire’s proposal is not all it seems, and soon Roisin finds herself trapped. Paralysed by both her intense infatuation with Eve and her secret arrangement with Claire, Roisin must walk a delicate line to avoid losing what matters to her most.

A stunning, timeless story about race, friendship, what keeps us apart and what drives us apart, from the one and only Toni Morrison, with an introduction by Zadie Smith. Twyla and Roberta met in a girls’ shelter as children. Inseparable then, they lose touch as they grow older, only to meet again later at a diner, a grocery store and then on opposing sides of a protest.

The two women are seemingly at opposite ends of every issue, but the persistence of their bond is undeniable. BRIEF ENCOUNTERS: classic novellas and captivating stories, to be read in a single sitting or savoured over days.