BOOKS: Fiction

***WINNER OF THE NORTHBOUND BOOK AWARD 2020*** "John Rutter's Approval is many things at once. A powerful meditation on judgement. A transfixing fable of a Kafka-esque application process. A complex tragedy about fatherhood. But it's also a simple, affecting and beautifully wrought story of one couple's journey towards what they most desire – a child – and the cost of reaching out for one. A hugely promising debut.” Rodge Glass

London, 1965. An unworldly young woman believes that a charismatic psychotherapist has driven her sister to suicide. “Case Study is a triumph” OBSERVER | “A novel of mind-bending brilliance.” HANNAH KENT | “A page-turning blast.” THE TIMES | "Compelling ... I was hooked like a fish." SPECTATOR | "Genuinely affecting ... a very funny book." GUARDIAN | "Riveting." THE TLS | "Brilliant." THE TELEGRAPH

***HAPPY WOMEN IN TRANSLATION MONTH 2021*** #WIT2021 "Shocked Earth exquisitely captures the way our lives and identities are interwoven with the land we live on, and how its destruction will ultimately be our own. A powerful portrait of a family, an exploration of love and grief, it is perhaps most of all an essential call to action - I was both heartbroken and inspired." Helen Sedgwick

HISTORICAL FICTION BOOK OF THE MONTH, THE TIMES | From the author of the award-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming, In a Veil of Mist is a haunting exploration of the costs and fallout of warmongering. Based on another little-known incident in the Outer Hebridean island where Murray grew up: Operation Cauldron, 1952. Top-secret germ warfare experiments on monkeys and guinea pigs are taking place aboard a vessel moored off the Isle of Lewis. Local villagers Jessie and Duncan encounter strange sights on the deserted beach nearby and suspect the worst.

Former slave, indomitable survivor and now matriarch Rian returns with her daughters to her Celtic homeland and navigates changing fortunes from plundered riches and feuding warlords to betrayals and menacing curses. But when a disaster befalls her older daughter mirroring the cruellest events in Rian’s own past, Rian finds herself conflicted.

PAUL TORDAY MEMORIAL PRIZE WINNER In the small hours of January 1st, 1919, the cruellest twist of fate changed at a stroke the lives of an entire community. Tormod Morrison was there that terrible night. He was on board HMY Iolaire when it smashed into rocks and sank, killing some 200 servicemen on the very last leg of their long journey home from war. For Tormod – a man unlike others, with artistry in his fingertips – the disaster would mark him indelibly.