Often, the best books work on you subcutaneously, by accretion, not letting you know precisely what they’re about until days or even weeks after you’ve finished them... Vivid and memorable… Slack-Tide is a fierce and often very funny send-up of a generation of men who think they can have their cake and eat it.

Slack-Tide, Elanor Dymott's captivating third novel, is sharp in many ways… [it’s] so convincingly – and, at times, so disastrously – funny… But what makes Slack-Tide distinct is its brilliant depiction of both romantic rapture and heartfelt delusion.

Forensic and spare, Slack-Tide is a persuasively messy (and sinister) tale of mixed-up emotions.

Dymott writes particularly well on sex, and is refreshingly comfortable with the ambiguities at play in each encounter. This psychologically intelligent study... packs a very precise punch.

When two people meet is it need, fantasy or love? Slack-Tide takes us on an urgent journey and kept me reading late into the night.

A compelling and beautiful reflection on the stories that hold us together and keep us apart.

I finished Slack-Tide after a heady, intense few days of reading. Elanor Dymott writes with such lucidity and precision; her characters, setting and premise are real and involving – I enjoyed it immensely.

Slack-Tide is hypnotically compelling. It asks how you can ever get the measure of your own needs, let alone the needs of another, and how difficult it is to mesh your life with theirs. Her lovers are experienced, flawed, damaged and demanding, but she won’t let them be fooled or floored by emotion... Dymott shows that what you want is not always what you need. That the price exacted by finding yourself can be having to let another go.

This novel has the urgency and readability of a whodunit, with an emotional intensity that draws you in, mercilessly, and then spits you back out again… Sharp and potent, this novel explores what it’s like to fall in love and have your heart broken… [it’s] passion at its most convincing.

Reminds us to live life with no limits

A spirited feel-good story that made me smile, and think

Truly uplifting and joyful.

Filled with warmth and wit. Will make you want to throw on your saved-for-best dress and live your own life to the fullest

A book to cancel plans for – you won’t want to put it down.

Cantor strikes plenty of witty, hopeful notes

Witty and well-crafted.

Engaging heroine! ... There's plenty of drama in Melanie Cantor's debut, which reminds us to live life with no limits.

Witty, very touching and entirely unexpected

A spirited feel-good story that made me smile, and think.
.

I LOVE this book! I read it at high speed. How brilliant to read about a grown-up who is also funny and makes mistakes, in a novel that is full of heart and hope without any stupid bucket lists.

Written with energy and sparkle, it is such a clever idea which makes you think.

Bursting with heart and charm, Cantor serves up a wonderfully warm take on love, loss, and second chances

Totally wonderful: Funny and heart-warming and insightful about relationships and how people operate. Everybody’s going to be reading it this summer.

A brisk, witty tale of saving your life by finding your voice.

[An] accomplished debut….Twists push the story in intriguing directions, and the clever, personable voice of Jennifer is like that of a witty friend with a bad news/good news story to tell, resulting in a moving novel with a surprisingly playful edge.

This novel is going to provoke the most brilliant conversations around the water coolers!

Brilliantly funny and thought-provoking--an absolute joy.

Without doubt Melanie Cantor’s Death and Other Happy Endings should be at the top of your summer reading list. This book is full of life and hope...A rollicking page turner, it will stay with you long after you’ve closed its beautifully designed covers.

So readable - Melanie brings such humour to a usually tragic subject. It gallops along!

Tyler has succeeded once more in lifting up what so often passes unseen in our lives and celebrating it

Neatly observed, thoroughly well-meaning, sharply attuned

Anne Tyler… is a remarkable writer. You might say she is like a landscape painter who keeps returning to the same scene in different weathers… her stories hold your interest and please because they are rooted in her curiosity about the way we live, feel and think. She is a masterly examiner of the unexamined life

Full of insight and sympathy. It is also highly absorbing — partly because of Tyler’s evocative style (when Micah considers his past, he is “visited by a kind of translucent scarf of a memory floating down upon him”), but mostly because of the intimacy with which she depicts the workings of Micah’s heart and mind...a quiet revelation

In wonderful prose, Tyler drills deep into a very ordinary life, familiar struggles, and a quiet heroism

Anne Tyler's masterful new novel asks what it might take for an unhappy man to change his life... her longevity means that her work has become a record of a certain kind of America, especially of "the dailiness of women's lives", for the past half century.

A quiet and beautiful story about human relationships, written with intent observation, empathy and humour

A timely reminder of what matters: kindness and love

This gloriously warm novel felt heaven-sent when it appeared in deepest lockdown

A new book from this wonderful writer is always a joy... Tyler packs feeling and insight into every single sentence

I adored Redhead by the Side of the Road... It is so subtle, and so brilliant as are all Tyler's novels... Witty and warm, its only fault was that I wanted it to be twice as long!

Tender and beautifully paced

Compassionate and alert to the complexities in even the most ordinary lives, the book reminds us why, at 79, Tyler is held in such high regard

The qualities that have long won Tyler admiration and affection - wry humour, shrewd perception, characters who leap off the page with authenticity - are in generous supply

You can't go wrong with Anne Tyler. She makes it look easy creating characters that feel so believable, so three-dimensional

Tyler engrosses with the 'and-thenand-then' of domestic detail

I do think the world would probably be a better place if everyone read Anne Tyler . . . She's such a brilliantly empathetic writer - there's no 'them' and 'us' in Tyler's world - and she often writes from the perspective of the kind of people who you would walk past and barely notice in the street . . . Reading Tyler helps people to become better people, and I really fully believe that

Tyler's irresistibly readable 23rd novel follows Micah, a socially inept, OCD-ish IT man whose orderly life is turned upside down by the arrival of a son

Tyler's affectionate and quietly observant novel reveals her deep empathy for the hidden struggles of everyday lives

Another shrewd yet kindly novel about the mysterious business of family life by one of the world's great writers

A charmingly offbeat love story

Bursting with vitality and variety, it's a tour de force . . . fizzes with the qualities – characters who almost leap off the page with authenticity, speech and body language wonderfully caught – that, for more than half a century, have won her such admiration and affection

One of the most influential writers of her generation . . . Her books are so irresistibly readable that it's startling to realise what technical marvels they often are

Chuck envy, illicit passion and financial pressures into the pot and soon this carefully constructed broth is simmering to the boil

Funny, clever and hilarious and the rest, an epic tale of an epic family, the Caseys

A wonderful story, filled with heartbreak, empathy and Keyes's trademark humour . . . You'll laugh, cry, and might even have your heart broken, but it's definitely worth it

A funny and thoughtful read

Up there with her best

A fabulous account of family and secrets, calling into question how civilised and "grown up" any of us actually are

A fabulous account of family and secrets

Marian Keyes nails the zeitgeist while handling a huge cast of characters with aplomb

The absolute queen of astute, moving and cracking-good-fun contemporary fiction returns

Dazzlingly brilliant

Brilliant as ever

It's everything you could want in a Keyes book - funny, warm, tender and a complete page turner

A witty and compassionate story of modern life and relationships

An entertaining, sharp read that peels back the layers and nuances which shape the realities of family life and being an adult. Humorous, heart-warming and relatable

Packed with emotional turmoil, but is light on her trademark wry wit and acerbic humour

Keyes touches on the difficulties of broken relationships; eating disorders; emotional insecurity and other weighty subjects with her trademark humour and lightness of touch

Our Marian is back! And Grown Ups is one of her best yet, creating another memorable family saga

Brilliantly plotted family saga

A warm-hearted and wise tale of a family in trouble. Packed full of sharp observations and laugh-out-loud lines

Her writing just gets better and better . . . Grown Ups is funny and clever in the way it tackles addiction and eating disorders and the hurly burly of family life

A sharp satire of family dynamics and the trappings of wealth. It is a delicious thing - light and dark at once, full of acid observations and warmth, and fully attuned to the absurdities of familial life

An entertaining story of family dynamics packed with vibrant characters, humour and empathy

A sharp, wry tale about a seemingly happy family with contemporary problems . . . despite the traumas, you'll whizz through it with a smile on your face

Keyes's captivating 14th novel tackles difficult issues with a sparkling style that makes it impossible to put down

Marian Keyes is the most wonderful writer. She just gets better and better. She is a writer who believes in the best of us. She shows people's foibles but she also shows the love that binds us together in a very real way

Her novels tackle hard subjects with such humour and warmth its impossible not to be drawn in

Another high-definition family comedy. An intoxicating, effervescent and warm look at modern life

A delightful and insightful examination of the modern family

Laughter and tears intertwine, as ever, in the latest from our leading chronicler of the emotional messiness of contemporary life

The strength of this book lies in its relatability factor - I laughed, cried, nodded in recognition and laughed again

Shines a light on the frustrations and gripes of family life, while inviting us to laugh at the petty reality of it all

A book to fall into and while away hours with

Funny, thought-provoking and hitting you right in the feels, Marian Keyes does it again

I loved this complex family drama . . . Keyes nails every character she touches while keeping it all so relevant

Praise for Marian Keyes

Mercilessly funny

Everything this woman touches turns to comic gold

Comic, convincing and true. The warmth and empathy of Keyes's writing shine through this tale of family secrets revealed.

Clever, hilarious, poignant . . . Gloriously funny

Wildly funny, romantic and nearly impossible to put down

Her writing is a lovely mixture of funny and perceptive and bittersweet

Full of brilliantly funny characters, genuine emotion and heaps of charm

Her books are humorous and have the quality of a warm bath

Classic Marian Keyes: a blizzard of wit and wisecracks

Keyes is an international treasure. The ultimate choice for a binge read

When it comes to writing page-turners that put a smile on your face and make you think, Keyes is in a class of her own

Fabulously entertaining. The queen of intelligent women's fiction

Full of darkness and light, this is Keyes at her classic and most brilliant best

Keyes writes about women who are absolutely themselves, even when society tries to insist they are something else

Glorious, life-affirming

Marian's glorious, warm-hearted wit is always guaranteed to make me laugh on the very first page

There is no finer writer than Marian Keyes

She really is unparalleled when it comes to making serious points with the lightest of touches

Hilariously wise

Brutal yet endearing honesty, wonderful humour and astonishing acumen

Keyes writes extremely well about modern women. Candid and deeply felt

Marian Keyes has an unparalleled talent for making you howl with laughter, nod in recognition and think at the same time

Always brilliant - and brilliantly funny

A publishing sensation

There are few fiction writers today with as much verve and sense of independence as Marian Keyes