The Books

The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter

14th August 2025

A taut, elegiac, and engrossing read, The Imagined Life follows Steven Mills, a man in a struggling marriage who becomes obsessed with uncovering the truth about the father who vanished from his life when he was only twelve.

Driving up the coast of California, Steven seeks out his father’s friends, family, and former colleagues, and is transported back to his 1980s childhood: his parents’ legendary pool parties, black-and-white films on the backyard projector, his father’s male friends in the cabana house…With every revelation his father becomes more difficult to recognise, and, with every insight, Steven must confront truths about his own life.

In cinematic prose, Andrew Porter explores the full nexus of male relationships: fathers and sons, husbands and lovers—set achingly against the US AIDS epidemic and the homophobia of the 1980s—and masterfully weaves a tale of trauma, generational secrets, forbidden love, and shame.

After Oscar by Merlin Holland

16th October 2025

THE DEFINITIVE STUDY OF OSCAR WILDE’S POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION, WRITTEN BY WILDE’S ONLY GRANDSON

Oscar Wilde died in November 1900, exiled in Paris and exhausted by scandal and prison life. The details of his life in the limelight are well known; what have regularly been ignored are the reverberations of the scandal for decades after his death.

With pathos, humour, and his grandfather’s signature wit, Holland charts the extraordinary afterlife of the legendary writer and thinker, and traces the dramatic fluctuations in Wilde’s posthumous reputation over the past 125 years. A true feat of storytelling and scholarship, After Oscar tells the story of Oscar’s wife Constance and his sons Cyril and Vyvyan; his lovers, friends, and enemies; the afterlife of De Profundis; sightings from beyond the grave; the fate of the Wilde estate; and Oscar’s contemporary status as a gay icon.

One of the most important works on Wilde in over fifty years, After Oscar exposes decades of sensationalist conjecture surrounding the Wilde family, and documents a century of homophobia within the British establishment. Illuminating and heartbreaking, Holland has written a book that will amuse, infuriate, fascinate, and shock. Readers beware—you’re in for a Wilde ride.

Dominion by Addie E. Citchens

29th January 2026

“TO WOMAN HE GAVE A WOMB, AND TO MAN HE GAVE DOMINION—THAT’S WHAT I TEACH MY BOYS BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE LIVING WORD SAY.”

In the town of Dominion, Mississippi, Reverend Sabre Winfrey, Jr. is more than a preacher. From his pulpit at the Seven Seals Missionary Baptist Church to the airwaves of his local radio station, he exerts influence over every aspect of society. By his side is his wife Priscilla, who types up his sermons and raises their five sons, favouring the youngest, Wonderboy.

Handsome and adored, Wonderboy is destined to carry on his father’s legacy. But, after a violent altercation with a stranger, Wonderboy’s actions send shockwaves through the community. Told through the perspectives of the women who love these two men, this Morrisonian, God-troubled novel illuminates the pervasive sins of the patriarchy, and the bargains women strike to survive them.

A vivid and unforgettable story that exalts the beauty and strength of Black womanhood, Dominion is the incandescent debut from one of America’s most exciting writers.

Floodlines by Saleem Haddad

12th February 2026

In the summer of 2014, three estranged Iraqi-British sisters are drawn back into each other’s orbits through the discovery of their late father’s lost paintings.

As Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar lay claim to his legacy—an inheritance laced with exile, betrayal, and an Iraq they no longer recognise—Zainab’s son Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by his time on the front lines, returns to the family fold. As summer bleeds into autumn and the truth about the paintings unfurls, the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart.

Spanning continents and decades, Floodlines grapples with grief and memory, and charts the emotional and political aftershocks of a century of war and revolution in Iraq and beyond. Inspired by the artistic legacy of Haddad’s great uncle, the Iraqi modernist painter Jewad Selim, Floodlines explores family, queerness, and the wounds of (neo)colonialism in haunting, visceral prose.

Mass Mothering by Sarah Bruni

12th March 2026

“MOTHERS AND POETS RARELY CARRY GUNS. THIS IS ONE OF THE REASONS THAT THEIR STORIES DON’T CAPTURE THE IMAGINATIONS OF THE CONSUMER PUBLIC.”

A. is an amateur translator, living alone in an unforgiving, late-capitalist metropolis. Adrift and burdened by debt following a medical trauma, her nights are spent on the dance floor. There, she encounters N. Among N.’s meagre possessions, A. comes across a book about an unnamed town of disappearing boys. The book, Field Notes, documents a community of mothers who assemble to mourn their missing sons.

When a near-assault stuns A. out of her inertia, she takes off for the town where Field Notes was written in search of its author and the end of the story. But, A.’s digging leads her instead to the traces of a murdered poet, and a legacy that will intersect unexpectedly and pivotally with her own life.

Told through recorded testimonies and written fragments, Mass Mothering is a poignant story of the mutuality of grief, the shattering force of a mother’s love, and the aftershocks of violence in a globalised era.

The Praise

“A fascinating portrait. Foremost among Porter’s 20th-century forebears might be Richard Yates.”

The New York Times

“Porter deftly combines a bildungsroman with the story of a midlife crisis to deliver a cathartic resolution.”

The New Yorker

“Steeped in beautiful melancholy, The Imagined Life is a plangent, sensual meditation on forgiveness, written with finger-tip sensitivity. Boldly tender and calmly powerful, a novel to disappear into.”

Jenny Mustard, author of Okay Days and What a Time to Be Alive

“Atmospheric, kaleidoscopic, and cinematic, Andrew Porter's The Imagined Life captures the ineffable quality of childhood memory with startling precision.”

Lidija Hilje, USA TODAY bestselling author of Slanting Toward The Sea

“A poignant, achingly beautiful story of human love.”

The Irish Times

“The Imagined Life is compulsively readable. Its owners can look forward to its vein of attenuated nostalgia and cautious hope.”

The TLS

“Oscar Wilde deserves a work of genius. Now he has one.”

Gyles Brandreth

“As gripping as a thriller and as full of human drama as one of Wilde’s plays.”

The Times

“A magnificent blend of scholarship and memoir and a vital contribution to Wildeana.”

Stephen Fry

“No one touches Merlin Holland in his reach, his knowledge and his authority. A wonderful achievement.”

David Hare

“Written with an engaging combination of wit, personal candour and scholarly rigour… Wilde’s afterlife remains almost as rich and entertaining as his life.”

The Guardian

“A monumental undertaking… utterly engrossing.”

The Irish Examiner

“Extraordinarily gripping… This is a work of familial love and loyalty. It’s also a compelling story.”

The Standard

“This novel will grab you in the gut and hold you there. It’s absolutely outstanding. Once I entered this world I didn’t want to leave.”

Roxane Gay, author of Bad Feminist

“In its exploration of female competition and resourcefulness, Dominion may remind readers of Zora Neale Hurston. Citchens can effortlessly convey history, personality, and desire.”

The New York Times

“This book is at once ancestral and newborn, drunk with sugary grits beauty and sobering with a Black woman’s truth.”

Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor

“I could not stop turning the pages. Nothing is the same now. Addie E. Citchens is a world-changing writer.”

Alexis Pauline Gumbs, author of Survival Is A Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde

“Gripping. Dominion has the page-turning quality of a crime novel.”

The Telegraph

“This stellar, utterly assured debut simply crackles. Citchens is a bright new voice.”

Lit Hub

“Floodlines is a haunting, incandescent novel. With fierce tenderness and astonishing power, Haddad confirms himself as one of our most vital storytellers.”

Seth Insua, author of Human, Animal

“A searing meditation on hope, Floodlines mourns Iraq and all the senseless violence its people and lands have been subjected to, while celebrating its richness and commitment to life.”

Tareq Baconi, author of Fire in Every Direction

“Floodlines fuses the intimate subjectivities of disinheritance and displacement with unfolding history. An epic vindication.”

Youssef Rakha, author of The Dissenters

“Haddad has written a stunning queer history for our fractured times.”

Catherine Taylor, author of The Stirrings

“A sophisticated exploration of inheritance, identity, and the politics of intimacy.”

Peter Scalpello, author of Limbic

“A luminous parable on mothering in an era of state violence.”

Idra Novey, author of Take What You Need

“Mass Mothering is a propulsive, intratextual mystery worthy of Bolaño.”

Darrow Farr, author of The Bombshell

“A masterwork for post-empire American literature. Bruni has written an essential novel for our times.”

Michael Zapata, author of The Lost Book of Adana Moreau

“An exquisite, wrenching novel.”

Teddy Wayne, author of The Winner

“Mass Mothering is a beautiful novel about the importance of really seeing—that is, the pain of bearing witness.”

Yuri Herrera, author of Season of the Swamp

“A truly original entry into the growing canon of motherhood novels.”

Kirkus Reviews

“Layered and moving, Mass Mothering hits with startling force.”

Publisher’s Weekly