BOOKMARK May 2025 Book recommendations
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May Titles
All books are available from Adventure Into Books in Blairgowrie.
As Emily Brontë said: ‘May is the month of expectation, the month of wishes, the month of hope." A magical, gentle month of colour and growth.We start the month with high expectations of a cracking good afternoon on 3rd May in the company of authors Sean Lusk and Victoria Mackenzie, who will be speaking about the lives of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, captured respectively in A Woman of Opinion and For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain.
Rachel Joyce has also appeared at BOOKMARK, and won the Book of the Year Award, with Miss Benson’s Beetle. Her new story, The Homemade God is set in an island villa, in Italy. Another BOOKMARK guest, Ewan Morrison, also has a new book out: For Emma. Returning to the theme of expectations, this year’s shortlist for the Women’s Prize for Fiction was recently announced, and includes Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout, which I’ve previously recommended. Another on the shortlist is Sanam Mahloudji’s, The Persians. A second book of expectations, hope and women is The Eights by Joanna Miller. Another intriguing debut out this month is The Names by Florence Knapp.
I hope you enjoy these recommendations. Let me know if you have any you would like to share.
Kate
BOOKMARK Member
PS: The Adventure into Books Book Blether group meets at 7pm on the first Wednesday of each month. On 7th May, we’ll be meeting to chat about James by Percival Everett (ISBN: 9781035031269, paperback, Pan Macmillan, 2025). All are welcome. On 4th June, we will be blethering about books that evoke a particular era. All are welcome.
PPS: Ahead of reading James, I read The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain (ISBN: 9780141199009, paperback, Penguin, 2013), where ‘James’ is ‘Jim’, a runaway slave and Huck’s companion on their epic adventure down the Mississippi river. What scrapes, japes and curious characters! Glorious whether you’re reading it for the first time or re-reading it for the 100th.
A Woman of Opinion by Sean Lusk
(Transworld Publishers Ltd, 2025)
Historical Fiction
Sean Lusk's new book is the story of the colourful and influential life of pioneering writer, poet and feminist, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, whose tale is told so well in A Woman of Opinion (ISBN: 9781804994368).
For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain by Victoria MacKenzie
(Bloomsbury, 2026)
Historical Fiction
Victoria Mackenzie's For Thy Great Pain Have Mercy on My Little Pain (ISBN: 9781526647931), which depicts the meeting between Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich in 1413. A slim, vivid novel, it recounts a long-ago event and a secret that changes the course of history.
The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
(Penguin, 2025)
Fiction
The Homemade God (ISBN: 9780857528193, hardback) is set at the Kamp family’s island villa, in Italy. World-famous artist and widower, Vic Kamp, has been bringing his family to the villa for years. This year he brings his young, mysterious fiancé and marries her, in the absence of his children. His death and her presence expose the long-suppressed fractures in the family, and the dark, manipulative shadow Vic has cast on his too-dependent children. It’s a story of false hope, and it isn’t gentle, but if it isn’t a good book group book, I don’t know what is!
For Emma by Ewan Morrison
(Leamington Books, 2025)
Fiction
For Emma (ISBN: 9781914090950, hardback). Emma is a young Silicon Valley scientist who dies in a secret AI brain chip experiment. Her voice then haunts her father, helping him plan the killing of the Big Tech CEO who destroyed her. A futurist, timely story, enriched with the universal human stories of love and loss, all told with Ewan Morrison’s trademark twists, timing and tension.
Tell Me Everything by Elizabeth Strout
(Penguin, 2024)
Fiction
Elizabeth Strout's latest novel, Tell Me Everything (ISBN: 9780241634356, hardback), brings together two well-known characters, Lucy Barton and Olive Kitteridge. This is a story of collected reminiscences, of lives untold, of human relationships, and of love in its many forms.
The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji
(4th Estate, 2026)
Fiction
Sanam Mahloudji’s, The Persians (ISBN: 9780008589042, hardback). A debut novel, the story follows five women from three generations of a once-eminent Iranian family. Each woman has chosen a different path following the revolution: to stay, break the rules, to emigrate, to wed. Exploring the family’s past, present and possible new future, turmoil intermingles with age-old questions of love, money and fulfilment.
The Eights by Joanna Miller
(Penguin, 2026)
Fiction
The Eights by Joanna Miller (ISBN: 9780241662434, hardback). The title references Corridor Eight, St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where four young, pioneering women, Beatrice, Otto, Marianne and Dora, have taken up residence at the start of Michaelmas Term, 1920. Though the rules of ‘engagement’ are draconian, these women are among the first to matriculate with men at Oxford. With the long shadow of the war still very visible, their varied characters, backgrounds and expectations weave together in a strengthening friendship.
The Names by Florence Knapp
(Orian, 2026)
Fiction
The Names by Florence Knapp (ISBN: 9781399624022, hardback). The story explores the importance of names, and what might happen if we are given a different name to the one expected. Contemplating a name for her new-born son, Cora fears that he might become like his domineering father if the family tradition of naming him ‘Gordon’ is followed. Three stories ensue, setting out what happens to the family when the child is given three different names.