Weekend supplement

summer reading special

Everything linked below

Good morning! I mislaid a day this week due to having my nose in the most incredible novel, of which more below. I’ve also rounded up a few other favourite recent titles to add to your summer reading list. This is a really bumper year for fiction.

Today’s picks also include an eyeshadow stick, normal weddings, little horses, fantastic older books, broderie anglaise bedding, two notable obituaries, a potentially quite interesting and relatively affordable London hotel, a tablecloth, a dress, two recipes, and lots of interesting things to read (that aren’t books).

I write these posts for paid subscribers once a week, and for free subscribers once a month. This is a PAID post. The most recent FREE one was last week. All the others are here (there are loads). All free posts auto-paywall after 2 weeks, so if don’t want to miss them, you might want to subscribe.

HOME is the number 1 bestseller in the Home & Garden category.

Here come the things I liked this week. Get comfortable, it’s a long one.

This book imprint

Four of the 12 titles so far

It’s called The Mermaid Collection, it’s from Penguin, it launched last year, and like Persephone books, they’re reprints of insufficiently-known (now, not when they were published) books by women. The difference is that Mermaids are reprints of books by women that MADE A SPLASH, do you see 🧜🏼‍♀️, i.e. that would have been commercial bestsellers in their day. They are all page-turners. Their publisher, Elizabeth Smith, explains the idea here.

There are currently 12 books on the list, with more imminent (I’m writing an intro to one of my favourite novels for them as we speak, see below). I thought I’d flag the series because I think you, readers of this newsletter, would really love them. Start anywhere - given we’re doing summer books, maybe Fenny by Lettice Cooper, set in Florence in the summer of 1933, but the collection is so sure-footed that you’re unlikely to go wrong.

BE STILL MY HEART! Out later this year