5 new books to read this week

It’s a week of big names with the inimitable Zadie Smith and late Harper Lee both back with essay collections, and Keira Knightley presents her debut children’s book…

Fiction

Beasts of the Sea by Iida Turpeinen, translated by David Hackston published in hardback by MacLehose Press priced £16.99 (ebook £7.99). Available October 23

Iida Turpeinen’s powerful novel traces a series of human encounters with Steller’s sea cow – one of nature’s lost giants, which became extinct within years of first being recorded. Beasts of the Sea begins in 1741 with a ship running aground on one of the animal’s last remaining refuges, before exploring its legacy through the scientists, artists and collectors for whom only its bones remained. The book’s northerly settings – the Bering Sea, Russian Alaska and Finnish zoological museums – lend a rugged, physical quality to its meditations on extinction, and humanity’s ongoing failure to grasp its impact on the natural world. Ambitious, moving and brilliantly written, Turpeinen’s novel weaves together historic episodes with zoological insights to deliver an urgent message for the present day. Highly recommended.
9/10

Review by Nick Forbes

The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell is published in hardback by Del Rey priced £18.99 (ebook £7.99). Available October 28

Magic and time travel aren’t for everyone. When done badly, they can be silly, require too much suspension of disbelief and you find yourself busy trying to spot plot holes rather than just going with it. But The White Octopus Hotel has so much charm, such transporting imagery and  real, devastating emotional heft behind it, that you totally fall for the more fantastical elements. Jumping from 2015 to 1935, and set in the tantalising rooms of a grand, otherworldly hotel in the Swiss Alps, where certain items have magical properties, Eve, an art appraiser, is trying to find a way to unravel a tragedy from her childhood. Tangled up in her quest is a composer called Max Everly, who she meets as an old man, but has an inkling that she already knows him. A love story, but also a crushing exploration of what grief, guilt and war can do to a person, Alexandra Bell has created an utterly absorbing world. Sometimes it feels a little frantic, and the romance could be more deeply imagined, but it’s a bewitching read.
8/10

Review by Ella Walker

The Land of Sweet Forever by Harper Lee is published in hardback by Hutchinson Heinemann priced £22 (ebook £10.99). Available now

For To Kill A Mockingbird fans, pieces by Pulitzer Prize winner Harper Lee, who died in 2016, are so few and far between, that any scrap of her penmanship is rightly welcomed heartily. This new collection, with a foreword by Casey Cep, who is writing the authorised biography of Lee, comes from the early part of her career. In the first half of the book, ‘Stories’, she is trying out ideas and settings that show up later in TKAM and Go Set A Watchman, while the latter half brings together a hodge-podge of her published essays, which first appeared in the likes of Vogue or The Oprah Magazine. While any snippets of Lee’s words are to be relished – she captures the dark terrors of feared pregnancy in The Water Tank, is witty about the relationship between audiences and movie execs in The Viewers and The Viewed – the fragments here feel a little mashed together. Who knows if she’d have wanted them presented like this. We’ll take the scraps, and the autobiographical essays – like ‘Christmas to Me’ in which friends gift her a year off work to write – are gripping, but The Land of Sweet Forever lacks a sense of wholeness.
7/10

Review by Ella Walker

Non fiction

Dead And Alive by Zadie Smith is published in hardback by Hamish Hamilton priced £17.99 (ebook £11.99). Available October 30

Dead And Alive gathers more than 30 pieces by Zadie Smith written over the past decade, and together they reveal a writer still restless in her curiosity. She moves from art criticism – on Toyin Ojih Odutola and Kara Walker – to reflections on politics, grief and pop culture, whether musing on the artistic drama Tár or Stormzy’s Glastonbury set. At times, the range can feel dizzying, as though Smith is thinking aloud rather than steering the reader towards a firm conclusion. But in many ways, that’s Smith’s point. These essays are a stream of consciousness, less about answers and more about paying attention to beauty, to loss, to change and more. Even when the arguments meander, Smith’s wit and warmth keep them engaging. Dead And Alive is an invitation to wander with her and question the world we walk through ourselves.
8/10

Review by Lara Owen

Children’s book of the week

I Love You Just The Same by Keira Knightley is published in hardback by Gallery Kids, priced £20 (ebook £9.99). Available October 23

A young girl’s life with Mum and Dad is a wonderful haven of laughter and affection, until a baby sister arrives and throws a once harmonious household into turmoil. As the little protagonist grapples with the challenge of divided attention, she journeys through a dreamlike world full of enchanted landscapes where she must choose whether to accept or reject her new family member, to find her way home to Mum. Written and illustrated by Academy Award-nominated actress Keira Knightley, I Love You Just The Same is a stunningly beautiful book – but the narrative is too obscure and mature in tone for the young audience it is trying to attract. While gorgeously designed, the dark tones and psychological themes won’t engage preschool children as much as many of its vibrant peers, and the whole thing feels a little too earnest and moralising for small kids.
6/10

Review by Holly Cowell

BOOK CHARTS FOR THE WEEK ENDING OCTOBER 18

HARDBACK (FICTION)
1. Daughter of No Worlds:The War of Lost Hearts by Carissa Broadbent
2. The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
3. The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer
4. Alchemised by SenLinYu
5. Boleyn Traitor by Philippa Gregory
6. The Witching Hour by Bridget Collins, Imogen Hermes, Natasha Pulley, Jess Kidd, Andrew Michael Hurley, Elizabeth Macneal, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Stuart Turton, Catriona Ward, Laura Shepherd-Robinson, Susan Stokes-Chapman, Stacey Halls and Michelle Paver
7. The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
8. The Alchemy of Secrets by Stephanie Garber
9. The Dire Bound by Sable Sorensen
10. The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves
(Compiled by Waterstones)

HARDBACK (NON-FICTION)
1. Always Remember:The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, the Horse and the Storm by Charlie Mackesy
2. Eat Yourself Healthy by Jamie Oliver
3. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins
4. When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between by Ruth Jones and James Corden
5. Mary 90:My Very Best Recipes by Mary Berry
6. Vagabond by Tim Curry
7. Guinness World Records 2026
8. Domination by Alice Roberts
9. Wankernomics:A Deep-Dive Into Workplace Bullsh*ttery by James Schloeffel and Charles Firth
10. The Only Way I Know by Andy Farrell
(Compiled by Waterstones)

AUDIOBOOKS (FICTION AND NONFICTION)
1. The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman
2. The Long Shoe by Bob Mortimer
3. The Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins
4. The Secret of Secrets by Dan Brown
5. Alchemised by SenLinYu
6. The Hallmarked Man by Robert Galbraith
7. When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between by Ruth Jones and James Corden
8. Peter Kay’s Diary by Peter Kay
9. Don’t Let Him In by Lisa Jewell
10. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, Book 1 by J.K. Rowling
(Compiled by Audible)