The 8 books on this stack
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Need
Helen Phillips · 2019
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION 2019 A New York Times 2019 Notable Book 2019 BOOK OF THE YEAR: Oprah Magazine , Time , Vulture , and Entertainment Weekly 'The Need is a profound meditation on the nature of reality, a fearless examination of parenthood, and also somehow a thriller. This is an extraordinary and dazzlingly original work from one of our most gifted and interesting writers' Emily St. John Mandel She crouched in front of the mirror in the dark, clinging to them. The baby in her right arm, the child in her left. There were footsteps in the other room... Molly is exhausted, anxious, losing her grip on reality. Her husband is away and she is running between her children and her job, where things are unravelling. She’s a paleobotanist, working at a fossil quarry, and has recently unearthed artefacts that defy understanding; the coke bottle with the lettering that leans the wrong way, an alternate version of the Bible. Where do these things come from? At home, as dusk falls, she gets jumpy. Are those footsteps out in the hall? What was that noise? She holds her two small children close to her, and tries to pull herself together. But her worlds of work and home are about to collide. She discovers that the stranger in her sitting room knows everything about her life and, as their identity becomes chillingly clear, this intruder makes a demand of Molly that upends everything, forcing her to reckon with her most unspeakable fears. The Need is a gripping, unsettling and stunningly original story that probes deep truths about motherhood, and explores grief, loss and how we treat others. It's a compulsive, reality-warping novel that makes us rethink our world, and question how far we would go to protect the ones we love. 'The atmosphere is as close and taut as a thriller, but this is, in fact, both a highly original examination of grief and an extraordinarily vivid evocation of motherhood -- the moments of terror and hilarity, the visceral burden of it, and the fleeting, but almost transcendent, joy' Daily Mail 'A chilling novel from a blazing talent' Observer
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Water Cure
Sophie Mackintosh · 2018
BRITISH VOGUE 'STAR OF THE FUTURE' INDEPENDENT BEST BOOKS OF THE DECADE ' A gripping, sinister fable' Margaret Atwood (via Twitter) 'An extraordinary debut - otherworldly, luminous, precise' Guardian 'Bold, inventive, haunting... With shades of Margaret Atwood and Eimear McBride, you'll be bowled over by it' Stylist Grace, Lia and Sky live in an abandoned hotel, on a sun-bleached island, beside a poisoned sea. Their parents raised them there to keep them safe, to make them good. The world beyond the water is contaminated and men are the contamination. But one day three strangers wash ashore - men who stare at the sisters hungrily, helplessly. Men who bring trouble. This ebook edition includes an exclusive extract from Sophie Mackintosh's gripping second novel, Blue Ticket , which is out now. ***** 'A feminist fable set by the sea, a female Lord of the Flies . It felt like a book I'd been waiting to read for a long time ' Emma Jane Unsworth 'Visceral, hypnotic, with one of my favourite endings I've read in a long while' The Pool 'An unsettling dark fantasy... [It] lingers long after the final page' Daily Telegraph
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The Yellow Wallpaper
Charlotte Perkins Gilman · 2009
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Yellow Wallpaper is a short story by American writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman, first published in January 1892 in The New England Magazine. It is regarded as an important early work of American feminist literature, illustrating attitudes in the 19th century toward women's health, both physical and mental. Presented in the first person, the story is a collection of journal entries written by a woman whose physician husband has rented an old mansion for the summer. Forgoing other rooms in the house, the couple moves into the upstairs nursery. As a form of treatment, the unnamed woman is forbidden from working, and is encouraged to eat well and get plenty of exercise and air, so she can recuperate from what he calls a "temporary nervous depression - a slight hysterical tendency", a diagnosis common to women in that period.
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Farm
Joanne Ramos · 2019
A gripping story about race, money and motherhood that asks: what would you sacrifice for a new life? 'A firecracker of a novel' Madeline Miller 'Intelligent, thought-provoking, slyly satirical' Sunday Times 'About everything a book should be about: race and class, power and inequality - and it's dark and funny' Joanna Cannon 'An unsettling, unputdownable read' Elle 'Ramos has crafted a real page-turner' The Times Ambitious businesswoman Mae Yu runs Golden Oaks - a luxury retreat transforming the fertility industry. There, women get the very best of everything: organic meals, fitness trainers, daily massages and big money. Provided they dedicate themselves to producing the perfect baby. For someone else. Jane is a young immigrant in search of a better future. Stuck living in a cramped dorm with her baby daughter and her shrewd aunt Ate, she sees an unmissable chance to change her life. But at what cost? Chosen as a book of the summer by the Guardian , Telegraph , Evening Standard and Cosmopolitan
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Nightbitch
Rachel Yoder · 2021
NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING AMY ADAMS • In this blazingly smart and voracious debut novel, an artist turned stay-at-home mom becomes convinced she's turning into a dog. • "A must-read for anyone who can’t get enough of the ever-blurring line between the psychological and supernatural that Yellowjackets exemplifies." — Vulture One day, the mother was a mother, but then one night, she was quite suddenly something else... An ambitious mother puts her art career on hold to stay at home with her newborn son, but the experience does not match her imagination. Two years later, she steps into the bathroom for a break from her toddler's demands, only to discover a dense patch of hair on the back of her neck. In the mirror, her canines suddenly look sharper than she remembers. Her husband, who travels for work five days a week, casually dismisses her fears from faraway hotel rooms. As the mother's symptoms intensify, and her temptation to give in to her new dog impulses peak, she struggles to keep her alter-canine-identity secret. Seeking a cure at the library, she discovers the mysterious academic tome which becomes her bible, A Field Guide to Magical Women: A Mythical Ethnography , and meets a group of mommies involved in a multilevel-marketing scheme who may also be more than what they seem. An outrageously original novel of ideas about art, power, and womanhood wrapped in a satirical fairy tale, Nightbitch will make you want to howl in laughter and recognition. And you should. You should howl as much as you want.
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The Handmaid's Tale
Margaret Atwood · 1986
** THE SUNDAY TIMES NO. 1 BESTSELLER ** Discover the dystopian novel that started a phenomenon. Offred is a Handmaid in The Republic of Gilead. She is placed in the household of The Commander, Fred Waterford – her assigned name, Offred, means ‘of Fred’. She has only one function: to breed. If Offred refuses to enter into sexual servitude to repopulate a devastated world, she will be hanged. Yet even a repressive state cannot eradicate hope and desire. As she recalls her pre-revolution life in flashbacks, Offred must navigate through the terrifying landscape of torture and persecution in the present day, and between two men upon which her future hangs. 'A fantastic, chilling story. And so powerfully feminist' Bernadine Evaristo ‘As relevant today as it was when Atwood wrote it’ Guardian
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The Stepford Wives
Ira Levin · 1972
The internationally bestselling novel by the author of A Kiss Before Dying, The Boys from Brazil, and Rosemary's Baby With an Introduction by Peter Straub For Joanna, her husband, Walter, and their children, the move to beautiful Stepford seems almost too good to be true. It is. For behind the town's idyllic facade lies a terrible secret -- a secret so shattering that no one who encounters it will ever be the same. At once a masterpiece of psychological suspense and a savage commentary on a media-driven society that values the pursuit of youth and beauty at all costs, The Stepford Wives is a novel so frightening in its final implications that the title itself has earned a place in the American lexicon.
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Yesteryear
Caro Claire Burke · 2026
THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES TOP FIVE BESTSELLER 'EVERYONE WILL BE TALKING ABOUT THIS BOOK' - BELLA MACKIE 'NIGHTMARISH, SHOCKING, BRILLIANT' - STYLIST 'MADDENING, MESMERISING, INGENIOUS' - NEW YORK TIMES 'INTELLIGENT, INCISIVE, INSANELY READABLE' - JENNIE GODFREY 'DERANGED, DARING, CLEVERLY WRITTEN' - VOGUE 'My name is Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive...' Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle - and her followers are sick with envy. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy, her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than the last. So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What her followers don't know won't hurt them. Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. Her home, her husband, her children--they're all familiar, but something's off. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? Natalie knows just two things for sure: this isn't her perfect life, and she must escape, by any means possible. As darkly funny as it is shocking and gripping, Yesteryear is an electrifying examination of tradition, fame, faith and the grand performance of womanhood, from a thrilling new talent in fiction. NOW BEING ADAPTED INTO A MAJOR FILM STARRING ANNE HATHAWAY 'WICKEDLY FUNNY, FRIGHTENINGLY PERCEPTIVE' ABIGAIL DEAN 'INVENTIVE, ADDICTIVE, A WILD RIDE' ASHLEY AUDRAIN 'SHOT THROUGH WITH HUMOUR, LACED WITH DARKNESS' CLARE MACKINTOSH 'THE STEPFORD WIVES MEETS THE HANDMAID'S TALE' HANNAH DEITCH