Lists of Literary Distinction

The international speculation may finally cease: we have selected our Books of the Year for 2025. And what a year it’s been for books! It feels like it took more intellectual wrestling than usual to assemble our literary favourites published (or reissued) in the last 12 months. As always, each of our booksellers has chosen…

So you’ve been through our list of Christmas Bangers and you’re still on the hunt for something a little more unusual, slightly less on-the-nose. Well, traveller, you’ve come to the right place. We tasked our booksellers with recommending a few books apiece, books they’ll be merrily gifting this year – naturally, some of them are…

Some people think sports and literature don’t mix. Those people are wrong. What could be a better subject for a novel than intensity, obsession and strife? What are books for other than taking the reader into another world, another culture, with its own rules, language and hierarchies?

To quote the immortal words of The Mamas & The Papas: all the leaves are brown and the sky is grey. Spooky season is upon us which means one thing and only one thing: spooky reads. Here’s a roundup of our favourites be they absolutely bloodcurdling or just pretty dang autumnal. Choose your spook level…

The season of mischief is upon us! Spooky season is a frightfully good time of year for new kids’ books. Maybe it’s the above average use of puns, the macabre themes, the array of potential anthropomorphic characters… or maybe kids just love witches. Forgoing the bowl of sweets, our coven of booksellers have summoned our…

August is Women in Translation month! Here’s a few recommendations: all women in translation, all recommended by real booksellers near you, a not at all comprehensive list!

Mountains, you might think they get enough airtime, those geographical showoffs in their provocative displays of rock and stone. But literature seems to disagree; mountains are often bypassed, overshadowed by our human narratives and stories. This list centres on books where mountains get their dues, letting them take back the limelight as characters in their…

Proof that queer literature is for everybody! Here are some of our very favourite books for younger readers that introduce, celebrate and tackle pertinent themes in the LGBTQIA+ community. Love Makes a Family, by Sophie Beer A simple but beautiful board book about love in all its forms. Almost effortlessly inclusive, Sophie Beer illustrates family…

The most exquisitely hewn experiences in the LGBTQIA+ community, expertly told by those who were there and those who, crucially, continue to be there in these increasingly fractured times. Revolutionary Acts, by Jason Okundaye It was such a huge pleasure to welcome Jason Okundaye to the shop for a deep dive into his scintillating and…

A cornucopia of tales celebrating the storytelling power of the LGBTQIA+ community in all its glory, experimentation, beauty and levity. The History of My Sexuality, by Tobi Lakmaker, translated by Kristen Gehrman Please believe us when we say this is one of the best debut novels of last – pulsating with abandon, riddled with one-liners,…

Dodging the usual Japanese heavyweights (well, mostly) in favour of more esoteric cuts, here are our favourite reads from this most rich of literary areas. The Proposal, by Bae Myung-Hoon (translated by Stella Kim) We’re long-time Bae Myung-Hoon fans here at Storysmith (‘Bae-Watchers’, as we’re collectively known), ever since his fantastic near-future sci-fi short story…

Picking books for teens is, to put it lightly, not always that easy. But as usual, your local booksellers have done the work for you. Every year each of the team here at Storysmith picks a YA book to read and… wow! YA books do not mess around, they do not waste your time. Pacy,…

We toyed with the idea of calling this list ‘CLAMMY BOOKS’, but it seemed a bit off. You could also file it under ‘weird beach reads’, or maybe ‘sweat-lit’. You get the idea. Anyway, these abundantly hot books will fill even the chilliest winter night with a roasting warmth, a mini-heatwave and possibly an Aperol…

If you can’t say it in under 200 pages, is it really worth saying? These are our favourite pocket-rocket novels, guaranteed to deliver all the poignancy and punch of novels twice their length. Mrs Caliban, by Rachel Ingalls That’s right: a novella about an unsatisfied suburban housewife and her curious, sexy affair with a frogman…

In our minds the sign of a truly great memoir is simply thus: you don’t need to have heard of the subject to relish the read. Thumb through this list for some authors of greater and lesser notoriety, but none at all lacking in literary greatness. Alphabetical Diaries, by Sheila Heti Arranging more than 10…

We’re always on the prowl for new cat-themed books to dig our claws into. Not that we harbour ambitions of a concept bookshop wholly dedicated to all things feline..  But you’ll find these and many, many more sophisticated board books, picture books, chapter books, and manga perched elegantly on the shelves of our children’s section.…

Ah, the campus novel: questionable professors leading students astray, all the while unable to find any kind of professional or creative satisfaction simply because they are Academic Men, set in hallowed Ivy League surroundings… yeah, these books are not like that. These campus novels are distinct in their ability to eschew the trappings of the…

Casting off the shackles of romantic love, celebrations of unconventional desires, independence, or nonconformity: here’s a list of novels and memoirs that make good foils for the more sickly-sweet visions of valentine’s day, maybe for someone you love or maybe just for you and the cat to savour. If Only, by Vigdis Hjorth (translated by…

What makes a short story so different to a novel (other than, you know, the length)? The best answer we’ve ever heard was when Yan Ge visited the shop. “If your short story has a resolution, you’ve done something wrong.” They ask more of the reader, they disorientate, they leave you hanging. Here are some…

Graphic novels! No, these are not novels with especially graphic content. These are “graphic novels”: the somewhat grandiose term for long-form comics with a literary edge. If you’ve never read a graphic novel before, they are a reading experience quite unlike any other, and are certainly no less profound and rich and immersive than their…

There’s a time and a place for a sprawling Lord of the Rings style epic. But what about the sublime, intense, distilled brilliance of the single-day setting? The 24 hour snapshot is sometimes the perfect narrative pressure cooker, extracting all sorts of flavours that were previously lying dormant. And yeah, okay, we missed Ulysses and…

Don’t bore us, get to the chorus! Journalism, memoir, tales of debauchery and genius: the music world has given us more than its fair share of brilliant books from all corners of popular culture. Here are some of our favourites – regardless of your tolerance for particular genres or artists, these books will get you…

Here are some of our favourite weird sci-fi books, spelling out the big stuff in life through the medium of spaceships and aliens and freaky goings-on (all of which we heartily endorse). Aerth, by Deborah Tomkins This is one of those “I don’t know how you pulled this off” books. It’s a concept that’s so…

Knowledge and enlightenment are sometimes best delivered in nugget-form, which is why we are suckers for a good essay collection. Hopefully in these collections, our very faves, you’ll be able to detect not only the concentrated nugget-like goodness of each individual essay, but wider, more thought-provoking threads that bind each collection together, whether the subject…

If you haven’t yet had the chance to behold Latin America’s literary vistas, you’re in for a treat—albeit a selection of supernatural, beguiling, and downright dark treats. Here are some of our favourite novels, novellas and short stories from Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, the Caribbean, Chile and beyond. Not A River, by Selva Almada(translated by Annie…

Frankly, the usual literary offering specifically aimed at Dads is confined to books about cars, old planes or antiquated rifles. Or all of those together somehow. We don’t think this is fair on Dads, so we’ve come up with some actually interesting Dad books that will intrigue and enchant: some on the topic of fatherhood…

Works that comb the farthest reaches of this wide-ranging continent, not just the sun-soaked city break bits. all this here, now. by Anna Stern translated by Damion Searls Perhaps the absolute peak of the “no plot, just vibes” genre. For some people that’s a turn off, but if you’re the kind of person who likes…

We love a fireside read as much as the next person, but even the most roaring and well-stoked woodburner will struggle to take the edge off these chilly tomes. If you like to feel the biting cold drift from the page to your fingertips, you need all of these on your shelf. We Do Not…

Buying a present for a little person and don’t want to duplicate? These are our favourite off-the-beaten-track picture books for kids, featuring lesser-known artists and writers, distinctive and special stories. Dim Sum Palace, by X Fang Have you ever dreamed of being wrapped up like a dumpling and eaten by an Empress? This playfully dark…

Utterly compelling real-life stories that scour the outer reaches of human behaviour, for better or worse. This list is not sponsored by Squarespace. Premonitions Bureau, by Sam Knight ​If you’re a fan of the narrative investigations of Jon Ronson, Julia Ebner and Patrick Radden Keefe, we’ve found your new favourite book. Sam Knight’s painstakingly researched…

Yes, it’s subjective, but for our money there are too many books out there that claim to be hilarious and are actually just sort-of tittersome. These are all actually funny. The Mezzanine, by Nicholson Baker Howie is the most meticulous character in all fiction – prepare yourself to be very much in his company for…

The most important end-of-year list is finally here! Forget your broadsheet predictable-a-thons and dispense with iffy anecdotal accounts of your friends who read ‘a lot’, your local booksellers have had their annual brain-meld and come up with this list of truly indispensable titles from the pretty excellent year that was 2024. Hyperbole aside (lol, we’ll…

It’s that time again! Discard your literary supplements and algorithmically determined end-of-year lists, this is the only all-killer-no-filler compendium of literary excellence you need this year, compiled lovingly by our booksellers. Each bookseller had a strict maximum of 5 favourite books, and we’ve put it all in a great big list and got them to…

It’s that time again! Twenty books have made our (very unscientifically curated) list – one of them was unanimous, the others represent the most succulent morsels from our reading diet this year. We have loved, loved banging on about them to you in the shop, so if for some reason we haven’t already invaded your…

Another chaotic year comes to a close, and we reflect on the very best things we read. No matter what else happened to be going on in the wider world, amazing books still got published, and this list represents our booksellers’ most raved-about titles. No One Is Talking About This, by Patricia Lockwood We’re putting…

Somehow, despite everything, it’s been an amazing year for books. Here, in no particular order, are our 10 favourites for 2020! Breasts and Eggs, by Mieko Kawakami (translated by Sam Bett & David Boyd) You’ll find two Japanese translations on our list this year, and we’re slightly divided on which one we love more. Arriving…