Tucked away along a shady path towards the north-east edge of Hampstead Heath is a sign: Women Only. This is the Kenwood Ladies' Bathing Pond.Floating in the Pond's silky waters, hidden by a canopy of trees, it's easy to forget that you are in the middle of London. On a hot day, thousands of swimmers from eight to eighty-plus can be found waiting to take a dip before sunbathing in the adjoining meadow. As summer turns to autumn and then winter, the Pond is still visited by a large ...

'The book I've been waiting for my entire life' DOLLY ALDERTONIs it possible that life without romantic love isn't so bad?When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a...

'Every night when I turn the lights out in my sixteenth-floor living room before I go to bed, I experience a shock of pleasure as I see the banks of lighted windows rising to the sky, crowding round me, and feel myself embraced by the anonymous ingathering of city dwellers.' Set in New York, The Odd Woman and the City explores the rhythms, chance encounters, and ever-changing friendships of urban life that forge the sensibility of a fiercely independent woman. Running through the book is V...

Poetry Book Society Wild Card Choice. Amy Key’s Isn’t Forever is a grimoire for feminine selfhood in a world where a sense of self is flimsy, elusive and unrequited. The poems in this book are obsessive in their desire to construct and breach the terms of their own intimacy. They have their own ‘narrative costume’ but are vexed with it, not quite able to master the ‘diligence of having a body’. This is a book where a tender and sabotaging shame of aloneness has taken root. Where wants clus...

When Ethel's grandmother dies, Ethel goes to live with her father, brother, and the stepmother and little siblings she has never met. She also must live with, and endure, the spitefulness of Aunt Sophie, who rules the house under a cloud of bad-temper and bitterness. Ethel’s Text is a Victorian story edited gently for a modern audience. It is a simple, heart-warming tale of overcoming grief and adversity through the guiding lights of past love, new friends and family and the words of the S...

When Ethel's grandmother dies, Ethel goes to live with her father, brother, and the stepmother and little siblings she has never met. She also must live with, and endure, the spitefulness of Aunt Sophie, who rules the house under a cloud of bad-temper and bitterness. Ethel’s Text is a Victorian story edited gently for a modern audience. It is a simple, heart-warming tale of overcoming grief and adversity through the guiding lights of past love, new friends and family and the words of the S...

Brought to you by Penguin.When poet Amy Key was growing up, she looked forward to a life shaped by romance, fuelled by desire, longing and the conventional markers of success that come when you share a life with another person. But that didn't happen for her. Now in her forties, she sets out to explore the realities of a life lived in the absence of romantic love.Using Joni Mitchell's seminal album Blue - an album that shaped Key's expectations of ...

Brought to you by Penguin.A radical argument that we are living on the wrong clock, one that tells us time is money, and that embracing a new concept of time can open us up to bold, hopeful possibilities from the New York Times bestselling author of How to Do Nothing.Our daily experience, dominated by the corporate clock that so many of us contort ourselves to fit inside, is destroying us. It wasn't built for people, it was built f...

Brought to you by Penguin.WINNER OF THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2024An exhilarating and expansive new novel about fathers and sons, faith and friendship from Caleb Azumah Nelson, the no.1 bestselling, award-winning author of Open WaterThe one thing that can solve Stephen's problems is dancing. Dancing at Church, with his parents and brother, the shimmer of Black hands raised in praise; he might have lost his fai...

Brought to you by Penguin.**For fans of Poverty Safari and Skint Estate, That Peckham Boy is a real-life manifesto calling for positive change for those on the fringes of society.'When you're writing the story of your life, make sure you're holding the pen. In this life you can be whoever you want to be.'**Two days after his eighteenth birthday, Kenny Imafidon was charged with the murder of a seventeen-year-old boy in sout...

**'Destined to become a new classic' Chris KrausA dazzlingly original reassessment of women's stories, bodies and art - and how we think about them.**For decades, feminist artists have confronted the problem of how to tell the truth about their experiences as bodies. Queer bodies, sick bodies, racialised bodies, female bodies, what is their language, what are the materials we need to transcribe it?Exploring the ways in which feminist artists have taken up this chall...

'A natural follow up to Susan Cain's Quiet' - The Sunday Times Style'The authors paint an illuminating portrait of highly sensitive people' - Financial Times*****Have you ever been told you're too sensitive? Welcome to the club.Nearly 1 in 3 people have the genes to be more sensitive than others. But what if we said it doesn't have to be the insult it's always been...