Welcome to Bloomsbury Books

Meet a woman as tenacious as Elizabeth Strout’s Olive Kitteridge and as irresistible as Andrew Sean Greer’s Arthur Less: Honey Fasinga, the glamorous daughter of a notorious New Jersey mobster, is returning home at last, ready to reckon with her violent past. As a rebellious teenager, Honey managed to escape her father’s circle of influence and reinvent herself in a world of art and beauty, working for a high-end auction house in Los Angeles. Now in her twilight years, she decides to retur…

From New York Times bestselling author Hampton Sides, an epic account of the most momentous voyage of the Age of Exploration, which culminated in Captain James Cook’s death in Hawaii, and left a complex and controversial legacy still debated to this day. On July 12th, 1776, Captain James Cook, already lionized as the greatest explorer in British history, set off on his third voyage in his ship the HMS Resolution. Two-and-a-half years later, on a beach on the island of Hawaii, Cook was killed …

The millions of readers of Amor Towles are in for a treat as he shares some of his shorter fiction: six stories set in New York City and a novella in Los Angeles. The New York stories, most of which are set around the turn of the millennium, take up everything from the death-defying acrobatics of the male ego, to the fateful consequences of brief encounters, and the delicate mechanics of comprise which operate at the heart of modern marriages. In Towles’s novel, Rules of Civility, the indomit…

Love is our only hope,” Anne Lamott writes in this perceptive new book. “It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.” In Somehow: Thoughts on Love, Lamott explores the transformative power that love has in our lives: how it surprises us, forces us to confront uncomfortable truths, reminds us of our humanity, and guides us forward. “Love just won’t be pinned down,” she says. “It is in our ver…

From Percival Everett-a recipient of the NBCC Lifetime Achievement Award and finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Booker Prize, and numerous PEN awards-comes James, a retelling of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, both harrowing and ferociously funny, told from the enslaved Jim’s point of view. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a man in New Orleans, separated from his wife and daughter forever, he decides to hide on nearby Jackson Island until he can formulate a pla…

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Searcher and “one of the greatest crime novelists writing today” (Vox), a spellbinding new novel set in the Irish countryside. It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die. Cal Hooper took early retirement from Chicago PD and moved to rural Ireland looking for peace. He’s found it, more or less: he’s built…

Cassie Andrews, a mild-mannered bookseller in New York City, inherits the mysterious eponymous volume from a deceased customer. Discovering its magical ability to transport her to any place she envisions, Cassie, accompanied by her spirited roommate, Izzy, embarks on an adventure. However, as they realize the perilous potential of the book, they find themselves entangled with an enigmatic man known as the Librarian, who protects a collection of similarly magical books, and pursued by malevole…

Have you been sentenced to a life in prison? Are you looking for a way out? In this dystopian debut novel, Adjei-Brenyah provides the brutal answer… gladiator-style death matches. If you stay alive for three years, you are granted your freedom. Naturally, this is a controversial plan.  The spectacle of violence, beautifully rendered and oddly tender, is an eye-opening lens thought which the reader can explore the suffocating sickness that is incarceration. The story examines the idea fro…

The Curse of Pietro Houdini has everything you want in a historical page-turner of a novel: a colorful cast of characters, some with shadowy pasts; a rich, historical setting in and around the WWII siege of Montecassino; an art heist featuring Renaissance masters; a coming-of-age story in which a young orphan navigates secrets, lies and moral ambiguities as the story unfolds. If you enjoyed City of Thieves or All the Light We Cannot See, don’t miss The Curse of Pietro Houdini! – Diana

How do you make sense of a life when all you can see is loss? How do you find meaning amidst the messiness of living? Thorny questions for sure, but as Cyrus Shams struggles with love, loss and addiction in his quest to understand what it means to live a life that matters, what he learns is heart-wrenching and profound, but also at times darkly funny. Wholly original and beautifully written, you’ll be glad you took this journey with Cyrus. – Diana