On Bee's Bookshelf

Medea longs for a different life. Since childhood, she has been separated from her sister, shunned by her mother, and persecuted and tormented by her brother and father. All because of a unique and dangerous talent: witchcraft. But when a dashing young hero, Jason, arrives to claim the famed Golden Fleece that her father fiercely protects, Medea sees her opportunity for escape. Her offer to help Jason overcome the trials set by her father sets in motion a journey that will test every ounce of her strength, magic and loyalty; a journey that will see her battle monsters, dethrone kings and fall in love. When faced with the ultimate betrayal, Medea is driven to an act of desperation so brutal it rips apart the lives of everyone involved... " You are a monster, Medea. You have no soul, no heart.' he spits, and I wipe the residue slowly from my cheek. 'You are right, and why is that? ... Because I gave those things to you. I gave you all of me. I loved you Jason, so deeply, so ...

Becca Taylor is having a bad summer. Her best friend is dead. Her good-for-nothing ex is back in her life. And her career is in freefall. So, when fellow writer Riley O'Connell invites Becca to the charming Irish countryside, she can't pack her bags fast enough, even though they have never met. But happily-ever-after isn't quite so simple. And Riley is not a sensitive female romance novelist like Becca assumed. No, he is  definitely  a man. A  hot , six-foot tall, Irish man. But with their complicated pasts getting in the way, Becca and Riley just can't get on the same page. We meet our narrator running late for a smear test and pissing off a rather scary receptionist - before finding not only did her best friend die, but was engaged to her ex. And that rollercoaster of emotions is just the first chapter - setting the tone for what is a chaotic, a little angry but beautiful journey for Becca. We follow Becca now and ten years before, when she was young and still in love...

Emery is born with a heart condition that means her heart could quite literally stop at any moment. The people around her know what to do - if they act quickly enough there will be no lasting damage, and Emery's heart can be restarted. But when this happens, she is briefly technically dead. Each time Emery's heart stops, she meets Nick. His purpose is to help people adjust to the fact that they are dead, to help them say goodbye, before they move on entirely. He does not usually meet people more than once - but with Emery, he is able to make a connection, and he finds himself drawn to her. As Emery's life progresses, and she goes through ups and downs, she finds that a part of her is longing for those moments when her heart will stop - so that she can see Nick again. " I don't know what to say. Usually, when I see someone, it is unequivocally the end. But with her, I get the sense that it's all only just beginning." A story of life, death and love told thr...

The heroine of the spare and haunting  It Lasts Forever and  Then It’s Over  is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, she notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. And even if she has forgotten her name and much of what connects her to her humanity, she remembers with an implacable and nearly unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known—where she loved and was loved. Traveling across the landscapes of time and of space, heading always west, and carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest, our undead narrator encounters and loses parts of her body and her self in one terrifying, hilarious, and heartbreaking situation after another.  "Or maybe, I say to the crow or myself, that the end, the end you can only see after it is too late, maybe the end is what makes a beginning what it is. What else is a beginning but the end of something else? The crow s...

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back. Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought? "What the public found most alarming, even more than Kajii's lack of beauty, was the fact that she was not thin. W...

  Am I a murderer? You tell me . . . You probably already know about me. Lucy Chase, the woman who doesn’t remember murdering her best friend. You all think I did it. That’s OK, I get it. Being found wandering the streets covered in her blood wasn't a great look. Believe me, I’m as frustrated as you are. I’d love to know if I’m a murderer – it’s the sort of thing you really should know about yourself, isn’t it? And now, thanks to true-crime podcast Listen for the Lie, I finally have the chance to find out. But will I be able to live with myself if it turns out it was me? And if it wasn’t, will digging into the secrets of the night I forgot make me the next target of whoever did? "People don't believe women who fight back. When a man lashes out, people say he's lost control of his temper or made a terrible mistake. When a woman does it, she's a psychopath." Listen for the Lie is a deliciously dark thriller about a small-town murder with big consequences. We fir...

A collection of four intensely dark horror stories that turns a mirror on the human body and transforms it into something truly disturbing. It takes the complexities and nuanced nature of interpersonal relationships only to dissect it and see just how deeply these relationships can infect our minds, how they can become addictive or obsessive in dangerous ways - each story offering a chilling version of human connection that turns dark. In our title tale, This Skin Was Once Mine, Jillian’s father dies mysteriously and she returns to the home she’s been exiled from for the last two decades but his death reveals secrets about his past that may make everything she knows a lie. In Seedling, a young man returns home after his father tells him his mother has passed to find her body still laying on the floor with a strange black mark on her wrist, one that is now on his father too. Our third story, all the parts of you that won’t easily burn Enoch is purchasing a knife for his husband to use a...

One night Lauren finds a strange man in her flat who claims to be her husband. All the evidence – from photos to electricity bills – suggests he’s right.  Lauren’s attic, she slowly realises, is creating an endless supply of husbands for her. There’s the one who pretends to play music on her toes. The one who’s too hot (there must be a catch). The one who makes a great breakfast sandwich. The one who turns everything into double entendres (‘I’ll weed  your  garden’). And the one who can calm her unruly thoughts with a single touch. But when you can change husbands as easily as changing a lightbulb, how do you know whether the one you have now is the good-enough one, or the wrong one, or the best one? And how long should you keep trying to find out? This is hands down one of the most absurdly brilliant books I’ve read in a while - it’s so fun, sparkling with silliness but with a lot of heart underneath. The plot is absolute chaos, with a fast pace and quick chapters moving...

Are you on a date that doesn’t feel right?  Can’t shake that creepy guy at the bar?  Worried you’re being followed home?  Message M. After one too many terrifying encounters, Millie Masters sets up a hotline for women who feel unsafe walking home alone at night: Message M. But very quickly she realises that there’s much more to be done to help the women who call in. Because the men just do it again the next night, and the next, and the next… And when her own sister is assaulted on a night out, the temptation to take the law into her own hands becomes too much to resist. Because M can also stand for murder… "A drunk, a mother and a serial killer walk into a bar, and the barman says, 'What can I get you ladies?' And they all sit down to discuss the fourth member of the group, the grieving lawyer." A sharply dark story about one women’s journey of revenge after her sisters assault and an imagination of what would happen if we gave into the feminine rage we all feel at ti...

From menopause to mental illness, burnout to binge eating — Mad Woman is an incisive conversation about why so many women today are struggling to keep it together under the intense pressure of a patriarchal, capitalist world. Part memoir, part recovery guide and part conversation with a good friend; Bryony talks about her own experiences with addiction, mental illness and womanhood, showing her personal journey from the worst moments of her life to the best but without glamourising the struggle and being so realistic but always hopeful. It read easily, like she was telling us the story directly and talking to us about everything she’s seen, everything that the world puts in the way to make us seem and feel mad. With snippets of phone notes, random thoughts and more structured sections, it had a great pace and I just kept going till I ran out of pages. And as someone who has dealt with OCD and disordered eating in my life, I found not only a connection but a strange kind of relief and c...

Mae and Ari are not your average power couple. Their love story started when they met at Leeds University. Back when Mae, whilst never short of a date and confident about who she is at her core, needed Ari's bright light to help her grow into herself. Ari, having run from New York following an undisclosed scandal and battling his own demons, held onto Mae as his grounding anchor. Though they quickly become inseparable, their inimitable bond must survive guilt, secrets, growing up and, ultimately, love in all its complex and fluid forms. This Love has been described as our generations One Day, and this decade-spanning tale of queer love, friendship and family is definitely one to remember. It’s a beautiful journey into the ever-changing nature of human connection and relationships, the way they evolve and grow with us through the years and it does it all with such grace. Everything that a bohemian, youthful glow in the beginning - full of hope, late nights and endless possibilities...

  I’m not usually a reader of erotic fiction but I also appreciate how beautiful, sexy or simply poetic it can be. And I also know a bad sex scene when I read it - and I read them a lot . But as Smith addresses in the introduction, many authors censor themselves through fear of judgement, fear of revealing their sexuality, fear of sharing their innermost desires, so through this book each writer isn’t attributed directly to their piece to allow complete freedom and there is something beautiful about that. But sex is natural, it’s fun and it’s a key part of a lot of relationships even ones with our own bodies - and we should definitely be able to talk and write about it without fear. From subtle sexuality, to evocative and meaningful, to slapstick, graphic and intense, to fantasy, to even one just made out of pornhub titles, there is such a range of different moods, themes and styles - it is not just about sex, but the way we feel, think and talk about all the different incarnations...

Jade has become everything she ever wanted to be. Successful lawyer.  Dutiful daughter.  Beloved girlfriend.  Loyal friend. Until Jade wakes up the morning after a work event, naked and alone, with no idea how she got home. Caught between her parents who can’t understand, her boyfriend who feels betrayed, and her job that expects silence, the world Jade has constructed starts to crumble. Jade thought she was everything she ever wanted to be. But now she feels like nothing at all. "But he said nothing further. Soothed me with praise of my strength, when I needed him to accept my weakness. Hushed me with a standard I didn't know how to meet anymore.  J aded is a searing social commentary on modern life from a powerful voice. Ceyda encapsulates the struggle of the glass ceiling as she navigates contemporary corporate culture and the rampant sexism that plagues it, she works through working out her own identity and how her heritage and culture factor into it on top of ho...

Although the term feminism is fairly modern, there have been women existing for countless eras who have rebelled against patriarchy, dared to break from convention, had bigger dreams and desired — and whilst some of their actions may not be what we think of feminism today, these amazing women were yesteryears feminist icons. This book takes a look at ten women from the Tudor period, when women were firmly held down by a sexism regime and shows us how each remarkable women decided to make a stand and shift the social current in their own way. Each chapter focuses on one historical figure, from Anne Boleyn and Katherine of Aragon to Gràinne O’Malley and Aemila Lanier - each one clearly well researched, full of context and laid out in an easily readable way in a chronological and informative style that was quite simple to follow and not too formal. I also appreciate the authors acknowledgement that feminism wasn’t a choice for many women due to their positions, and most poor women went la...

  Ellen knows immediately what Bell really wants from her. Ellen is deaf, and for a time was Bell's student in a technique called Visible Speech. As he instructed her in speaking, Bell also confided in her about his dream of producing a device which would transmit the human voice along a wire: the telephone. Now, on the cusp of wealth and renown, Bell wants Ellen to speak up in support of his claim to the patent to the telephone, which is being challenged by rivals. But Ellen has a different story to tell: that of how Bell betrayed her, and other deaf pupils, in pursuit of ambition and personal gain, and cut Ellen off from a community in which she had come to feel truly at home. It is a story no one around Ellen seems to want to hear - but there may never be a more important time for her to tell it. A Sign of Her Own is a must-read for this year. A uniquely compelling voice with almost poetic, richly descriptive language that both captures the time period while being so easily read...

This unique collaborative story brings 14 distinct voices, different characters together each with their own story but slowly each one weaves together to create one tale of neighbours, friends and people living through a crisis. Some people really don’t like references to the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns in literature, but it is a part of our history now and something that changed so many of us that it can’t be ignored - and this is done with grace and care. It is a story of survival but so much more, it’s about the intrinsic need we have for connection, for the love we can give to strangers and the strength we can find in others. Although told in a time of great loss and suffering, it finds those beautiful human inclinations that allow us to survive and live through the hardest times. And of course, it is a love letter to the timeless power of storytelling. The storytelling was dynamic, changing and evolving from each character but with an overarching theme that flow...

A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo; they work at home, freelance copy-editing; they no longer have very much to say to one another. But one day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. It leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. Soon they are buying treats for the cat and enjoying talks about the animal and all its little ways. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife — the days have more light and colour.  As someone who also was lucky enough to be a part of the mythical cat distribution system, my own cat found me and brought me so much love and purpose when I needed some so I felt every single word of this story. It’s playful, poetic and delicate with lyrical and deeply vibrant storytelling and a delicate tone that radiates warmth and comfort even in its saddest and most heartbreaking moments. The narration is quiet and patient — a moment of calm in a storm, a memory of this tim...

Enid is many things: lesbian, serial dater, deaf in one ear, space obsessive, true crime fanatic. When she's not listening to grizzly murder podcasts, she's managing her crippling phobia of bald people and trying hard not to think about her mortifying teenage years - which is hard, when she's lost the password to her old YouTube account and the (many) vlogs that her teen self once uploaded. She's worried about herself, her depressive mother, and what the deal is with gender reveal parties. But as Enid fumbles her way through her first serious relationship and navigates a new family life with her estranged half-sisters, she starts to worry that someone is following her. As her paranoia spirals out of control, Enid must contend with her mounting suspicion that something is seriously wrong with her... " I've read that women are into [true crime] because it's like a dress rehearsal. They're more fearful of violent crime than us because they're victims m...