On Bee's Bookshelf

  Genre: Literary Fiction | Absurdist Fiction | Adult Fiction Release Date: Expected 26th August 2021 Publisher: Europa Editions  A faceless, nameless American couple arrive that night in a strange, snow-covered European city with one hope - to finally adopt the baby boy who they think will save their resentful marriage, their unhappy lives and their fear that the wife will soon die from the stage four cancer weakening her body. When they check in to Borgarfjaroasysla Grand Imperial Hotel - they enter a new world, frozen in time. Here, the bar never closes, the drinks seem like magic potions, dinner is always ten courses and everybody has something to tell you. What seemed like a simple journey to the orphanage becomes more complicated by the second; muggings and wrong directions, a mysterious healer, a seemingly immortal former actress draped in fur, an uncomfortably familiar businessman and a silently intuitive bartender all help them on their journey - but not the one they ...

Genre: Literary Fiction  Release Date: Expected 12th August 2021 Publisher: Europa Editions  Translated from French by Tina Kover  No Touching is a re-release of 'On ne touche pas', originally released in French in 2020 and winner of prix du premier roman 2020, or the Premier Novel Awards.  Following Josephine, a philosophy teacher in the suburbs of Paris. Her daily life is a tedious, never-ending repetition of working and anxiety medication, and ocassionaly reading erotic novels to break the monotony. But at night, she becomes Rose Lee, a glamourous, desired dancer that breaks the grey of her daily life and fills it with colour.  But living a lie is a dangerous game, and soon Josephine realises she's going to have to make a decision between her stable, safe career and her passion before it all slips from her fingertips. " You have to cling to something and what better to cling to than yourself?" No Touching is a story about self-love, freedom, pleasure...

Genre: Adult Fiction | Surrealist Fiction Release Date: Expected 10th August 2021 Publisher: Orion Publishing Group | Trapeze CW: Intense racial language, bullying, guns, violence, police brutality, swearing. It's time for the book tour of ' Hell of a Book ', which the Author has been told before really is a hell of a book. But once he meets The Kid, who looks just like the young black boy on the news that was shot by the police recently, the Author has a nw story to tell.  Now, he has to tell a sad story. The story of a boy who could be a halluination, or a ghost, or a memory. Or nobody at all. A boy who has tried for his whole life to learn the impossible trick of invisibility. A story that feels all too familiar to the Author... Our story begins with our nameless Author being naked as a jaybird in a hotel hallway, and the rollercoaster just keeps spiraling from there. Told in such a unique, surreal voice, you don't realise you're in a serious discussion with the...

  Genre: General Fiction | Womens Fiction | Adult Fiction Release Date: Expected 5th August 2021 Publisher: Orion Publishing Group CW; This book contains descriptions Self-Harm, Domestic Abuse and Miscarriage.  Lo lives the perfect life, according to her expertly curated social media anyway. A happily middle-class Mother to a very cute four-year old, she spends her time thinking of the right instagram captions for her adoring followers, drinking very good wine and fighting for the rights of breastfeeding mums from her phone. She has no reason to know Dylan, a single mum just about getting by on a zero hour job and barely able to afford to even feed her son , just trying to continue her life quietly and out of sight.  But a chance meeting at the school entangles their lives together in ways they'd never expect -  and threatens to bring everything they're hiding out of the shadows and into the spotlight.  " This one is about women and the dark things we do to each...

 Genre: Romance | Science Fiction | Fiction Released: Expected 5th August 2021 Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group UK Jess Davis knows you can solve most problems with maths - aside from her disaster of a love life, of course. Her daughter Juno has a feeling that Jess could find real love if she just took a chance but between raising a seven year old and a stressful career as a freelance statistican she doesn't have much time for romance.  So when Jess and her best friend stumble across a new genetic match-making service that pairs potential relationships using dna-based equations it just makes sense to try it. Until she discovers she's got a never-before-seen 98% martch with Dr Rive r Pe ñ a himself - the creator of GeneticAlly and someone she most definitely does not like. But GeneticAlly aren't going to let a match like this slip them by and offer her money and security if she just tries to get to know him and she really isn't in a position to say no. As Jess is thro...

  Genre: Non-Fiction Release Date: Expected 26th August 2021 Publisher: Pan Macmillan UK - Square Peg "For every women, every femme, every non-binary person who's ever experienced something they didn't have the words to define. For those who've experienced something they'd rather forget. Who felt that what happened to them didn't match up to what they consented to. Who felt their experienced was just a 'gray area' or 'just bad sex' or 'not rape, but...'. Who were harmed, and didn't believe they had the right to feel that way."  Rough is a collection of the stories of fifty different women and non-binary people at their experience with sexual violence. It read more like a collection of personal anectodes with some facts and statistics alongside, so was (writing-wise) very easy to read and absorb, despite the content being very hard to read in places. It had a very personal feel to it, as though the writer is talking directly to u...

  Genre: Short Stories Release Date: Expected 22nd July 2021 Publisher: Pan Macmillan - Picador  Having being hailed as a 'Mostly Anticipated Book of 2021' by Lithub and The Millions, Objects of Desire definitely has a certain unique charm about it, a voice that is sure to make it's mark on the literary world.  Featuring eleven stories that delve into the hidden world of womens desires and wants, their interior thoughts that are rarely brought to the surface. From childish yearning to aching desire, this looks into the many facets of life from relationships and envy, to motherhood in all it's incarnations, to growing older and growing up.  From a young woman who spends her days imagining what it would be like to be pregnant with her married lover, to a sucessful graphic designer trying to celebrate her sons wedding while dealing with sexual assault allegations, to a woman who hasn't seen her old lover since she had an abortion many years ago until she suddenly bump...

Genre: Fiction | Humour | Womens Fiction Release Date: Expected 12th August 2021 Publisher: Duckworth Books | Farrago Sally Marshall is one in a hundred, Epiphanie is one of a kind. Sally is just an ordinary woman, but Epiphanie is extraordinary. Sally is a tribute artist, one of many - but Epiphane is the real thing. But Sallys normality is shattered when Epiphanie magically appears at her kitchen table and asks her to trade places for a few weeks - just like in the movies. Overnight, Sally has become a global star and Epiphanie is playing in small pubs and drinking with the locals. Sally has spent so long pretending to be someone else and now she has the chance to really BE her will it be everthing she hoped? Or will she find they might not be that different after all... I'm a sucker for a classic life-swap, but they are definitely starting to feel stale and overdone so I was a little dubious going into this - but Beth Miller has taken something standard and made it SPARKLE. She ...

  Genre: Adult Fiction | General Fiction Release Date: Expected 5th August 2021 Publisher: Head of Zeus  Patience Willow has the perfect name - not as though she's had a choice to be anything other than patient. She's been content with her life quietly watching the world go by for the last three decades. Watching her Mum dutifully take care of her, her Dad constantly travelling and working to provide for her, and sister Eliza living the most perfect life trying to win her parents approval. Patience is happy, sometimes. But the one thing she's wanted more than anything (besides meeting Take That and trying some Gin) is to have a voice - so when her Mum stumbles across an experimental gene therapy treatment for Rett Syndrome all she can do is pray that her family won't fall apart making an impossible decision.  Could the one thing she's waited patiently for her whole life really happen? And is it really worth the risks?  And what would she say if she could? "When...

  Genre: Mystery | Thriller | Domestic Drama | Womens Literature Release Date: Expected 3rd August 2021 Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group UK Nora has a perfect husband, a beautiful daughter with another on the way, a sucessful career as a lawyer - she really does ' Have It All'. But you know how it goes - a woman can't really have it all without sacrifice, and she's beginning to notice her partner Hayden doesn't seem to have to work half as hard as her to get anywhere, and nobody assumes anything of him. But when they discover an unassuming suburban neighbourhood Nora doesn't just set her eyes on a beautiful new house, but a whole new world. Here, the husbands of the neighbourhood are seemingly stripped of male privileges - they look after the children, they clean the house, and most of all, their wives aren't expected to sacrifice their lives for the sake of family alone. It seems perfect, but when she's asked to consult in a wrongful death case of on...

  Genre: Non-Fiction | Memoir | Feminist Literature Release Date: 17th September 2019 Publisher: Beacon Press "This book is not the place where you will hear the reasonable argument that patriarchy is bad for men and boys too. It is indeed ... I refuse to focus on and will not plead with those who benefit from my opression to join a fight against a centuries-long systemic opression that not only hurts women and girls but all who deviate from the templace of heterosexual, conservative and mostly, rich men, but kills them."  It is a crime that before I was gifted this book, I had never heard of Mona Eltahawy before. In this manifesto for women and girls everywhere, Eltahawy draws on her own personal experiences being born into an Egyptian Muslim family and her journey of discovery and growth into an unapologetic feminist.  "Women who do not ask for permission are powerful." Gloriously powerful, rage inducing and striking for any woman who's ever even thought the p...

  Genre: Romance | Romantic Comedy Release Date: Expected 5th August 2021 Publisher:  Aria & Aries Bridie Morgan is doing the unthinkable - searching for the one, if that exists. As her groups official Man-Cynic, she's giving it one last try and going on twenty dates in twenty days as a final kill or cure experiment. She'll either find her match, or prove that dating is a waste of time.  And as the maid of honour for her best friends wedding, she's trying to her best to drop her less than rosy view on love for at least the day. But that would be much easier if Ben wasn't the best man. Ben Kemp - the brother of her besties future husband who once upon a time was the boy who left her standing outside in her prom dress alone and became her first reason to run away from love. But they're stuck together now, for better or worse, whether they like it or not and there is definitely still a spark between them, but it going to leave her burned again? Inspired by Shakespe...