Instagram story viewer> @penguinfigtree> Tagged

Fig Tree

@penguinfigtree

8.2K

followers

534

following

An imprint of @penguinukbooks
Home to authors including Stanley Tucci, Dolly Alderton, Meera Sodha & Claire Fuller📚
Sign up to our newsletter⬇️

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

I am enjoying this book SO much! ✨️
It's gonna take me a while though, because I'm a slow reader, and it's about 600+ pages. But I am savouring it 💖

#bookstagramofnorway #bookstagram #bookworm #booklover #booksbooksbooks @kathrynstockettauthor @penguinfigtree

14

0

NEW REVIEW!

#TheShadowsofKensingtonGore by @mossmontmomery is OUT NOW!

'Another hit for Ross Montgomery - I look forward to the next one.' Read my 5 star review on Kindig Blog, and swipe to see the highlights!

@penguinrandomhouse @penguinukbooks @vikingbooksuk @penguinfigtree @penguinhamishhamilton

62

2

🥀 ‘They say sticks and stones may break your bones, but words will never hurt you… They haven’t met Jane Anger.’

I know… a review of a book called Jane Anger by Jane Gentle 😆

This is such exciting book post, thank you @juliet_dudley! 🙏🏽

This was the very last manuscript I read at Penguin and I fell in love with Jane Anger instantly. I enjoyed seeing all the love for Rosanna Pike’s first novel A Little Trickerie when it was published, but life is busy and I missed out at the time. I’m so glad I discovered this!

Inspired by a true story, we meet Kit, wronged in so many ways in her short life - and powerless and voiceless until she retaliates by writing under the pseudonym Jane Anger. Kit’s voice, rage, wit and defiance were what I loved here, plus the visceral descriptions of this violent world and the way the author paints the injustices and dangers of being a woman in Elizabethan England. I found it completely gripping.

🥀Jane Anger by Rosanna Pike is published by @penguinfigtree on 18 March next year.

13

0

a little stack of 2027 books (nb: the pleasure palace was originally due to come out this summer but is now due out january 2027). i have read seven so far: the pleasure palace, the living realm, we go way back, iris, karro, in august, and decent people. my reviews for karro, the living realm, we go way back and decent people are already out. looking forward to reading the others!!
.
any here you’re eyeing up?
.
gifted copies
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
#bookstack #bookstagramuk

3

36

my 2027 reading list (ft. ad | gifted copies. thank you!!) ⭐️

a lil snapshot of everything that has got me excited for next year…it’s going to be PHENOMENAL

KARRO
third novel from the fantastic @jennymustard author of okay days and what a time to be alive!

an anna karenina reimagining. a woman with everything, falls for a younger man putting her marriage and family in jeopardy. told across london, stockholm, new york city and the côte d’azur.

@penguinfigtree apr 27

CASSANDRA COMPLEX
another 3rd - I’ve loved both of these editors previous collections peach pit and be gay do crime 🙂‍↕️

‘in sixteen fierce and vivid tales, cassandra complex delivers twisted myths from palestine to tonga, iran to colombia, wales to zimbabwe, and more—wild stories grown lush in the soil of love, rage, and revenge.’

@dzancbooks jun 27

WEEB
debut novel from the translator of taiwan travelogue.

a japanese obsessed graduate moves to tokyo for work…and to follow her favourite anime hero. moulding herself and her story, she falls into ‘the world of performers and outsiders’ and her identity begins to crumble.

@headofzeus apr 27

THE TRUE CONFESSIONS OF FIRST LADY FREEMAN from the author of the secret lives of church ladies (5 stars!) deesha philyaw.

a novel about an annual first lady (pastors wife) pageant and the scandal that threatens to rock this years pageant.

@doubledayukbooks jan 27

A DOMESTICATION
translated from the author of bad girls. a popular ‘travesti’ actress travels home with her family to the countryside and faces the dysfunction she left behind.

‘a tragicomedy of domestic dysfunction written in a voice rich with raw, rebellious beauty, a domestication is a darkly funny, gritty and moving novel about sex, class, the oppressive lure of wealth and convention – and the unquenchable desire for love.’

@viragopress jan 27

A GREAT PLACE TO RAISE A FAMILY
riots in sydney leave a family home ransacked with a ceramic chest missing. ten year old fiona searches for answers.

‘piercing and compassionate, a great place to raise a family is a novel about migration and assimilation, the fragile architecture of family, and the distance between the life we imagine and th

255

9

✨2027 Proofs✨

I have been very lucky to be sent these from some lovely bookish folks and publishers (you have been tagged and have my everlasting gratitude, thank you 🧡)

One of the favourite things about being here is finding new debut authors (of which there are a few here)! And also being able to get an early copy of an auto buy author like Max blooming Porter is always so exciting (blooming is his middle name right?!)

Also, there may have been some more arrivals since this picture was taken 🫠, do you want to see those too?! 👀

Are any of these ones you’re really excited for in 2027?!

🧡

#proofs #2027books #bookish #bookmail

90

27

Little Wonder by Sophie Chen Keller
[AD/PR PRODUCT]
This is the story of a mother and son who become separated from one another in the packed crowds of Beijing train station.

The boy in question is River a young piano prodigy and his mother, Song a migrant worker and single mother from Harbin. Song is looking to find her son a piano teacher in Beijing who can change their fortunes.

Unable to find him, Song becomes a food delivery courier so she can search the city for River, whilst he is taken in by a serious of kind souls who look out for him.

The narrative sees mother and son almost crossed paths with one another again and again in a city of millions and watching those almost moments is heartbreaking.

The descriptions of music, as you'd expect from a writer who was a classically trained pianist herself, are lyrically beautiful and bring out this passion River has for music, so much so that it made me want to pick up one of my old instruments and get playing again.

I found myself listening for the classical pieces mentioned in the book, as I was reading which brought the whole story to life.

I also loved how River sees music as if it were colours. Since music is so intrinsically interwoven into his identity, he has to almost rediscover who he is and whether he can live without it.

I was so enchanted by this book that I flew through it. The scene in the train station in particular, is so gut wrenching I dare any parent not to feel anxious reading it.

There are so many moments of small kindnesses that alter the direction of both mother and son's lives leaving you to ponder how different things could have been.

The novel explore issuss of class, access to opportunities in the arts and systematic systemic barriers. It asks, how much of our successes in life is down to luck, talent and connections. So much is out of Song's control as a migrant worker, which feeds into wider debates about inequality in Chinese society in the novel.

Continued in comments...

Little Wonder, musical prodigy, Literary Fiction, uk book reviews

322

25

R E V I E W - liz
📖 Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller
🌕🌕🌕🌕🌘
I read this novel months ago but have left my thoughts to simmer and percolate. Halloween seems like the perfect time to pull my cobwebbed musings out of the cupboard and dust them off for spooky season. Fuller’s sixth novel is a literary gothic horror set in the eighties with a creepy tone that’s deliciously unsettling.

It’s 1987. Ursula is sixteen, naïve, isolated and a bit feral having survived the stark horror of the foster care system. She’s hungry and thirsty both literally and metaphorically, longing for companionship and acceptance. Her social worker Joy manages to secure her a job in the post room of the local art school and advises her to keep her head down and her nose clean.

She’s then reluctantly cajoled into tagging along to a send-off meal for a colleague. There’s often a sense with Ursula that she doesn’t quite understand the rules of the social game. She takes things others say literally which gives her a unique view of the world and makes me think she’s an outsider who might also be neurodivergent.

Ursula gets to know Sue and Vince through work and, as a kind of apology, gets invited to co-habit with Vince in a squat called The Underwood, an ugly 1950s bungalow abandoned by its previous owners. After Ursula moves in here from the halfway house, things tip on their axis and we’re no longer sure what’s real and what’s imagined.

The narrative shifts back and forth in time. We know from the outset of the novel that there was a murder back then, that Ursula survives living under a pseudonym and that the murder is a crime that fascinates conspiracy theorists and internet trolls alike.

The queasy unease that permeates this novel reminded me at times of Catherine Chidgey’s novels. Both authors plunder the eighties TV archives for inspiration from their formative years. Here, Fuller mentions Crimewatch - the UK ‘true crime’ show that ended with the fateful words, ‘Please don’t have nightmares, do sleep well’.

Flies are used as a motif throughout the book, taking Ursula back to her lonely childhood and a dead weight behind a bathroom door.

(Continued in comments).

63

21

Books lately:

@vintagebooks so kindly sent me the new Muarakmi, Abandoning a Cat, which I read immediately. It's a personal essay and reflection on his father and their estranged relationship, the weight of history and inherited trauma. I love personal essays like this and it was so interesting reading about his second hand recollections from WWII, a time his father never really talked about but that shaped his and probably by indirect effect, Haruki Murakami's own life. There's a particularly gruesome flashback scene in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicles that anyone who has read the book will remember and it was quite shocking to find out where that scene came from. This edition is also half illustrations and it's so well put together.

I'm halfway through Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, and also coincidentally halfway through Averno by Louise Glück. I had no intention or motivation to read two works that concern the Ancient Greek underworld but it's making for an entertaining juxtaposition. Katabasis is funny and I love the *concept* of a suffering graduate student having to go to hell for her supervisor, but I'm finding the exposition is dragging on a bit.
Averno is a book of poetry and I'm dipping in and out.

Thank you to @penguinukbooks for this beautiful clothbound edition of Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali. It's one of my favourite books of all time!

And I got a book I've been anticipating since it was announced!! Karro by @jennymustard 🤍 it's an Anna Karenina modern retelling and that's all I need to know. Thanks to @vikingbooksuk for the arc.

The Waves, The Waves. I'm almost finished, I only have a handful of pages left, but I had such a bad headache last week that I took a break and I haven't had the energy to try again. It's easy to read when you're in the flow of things but since I put it down I can't remember a single thing that happened and now I don't know how to start again 😭 but I shall persevere!!

What have you been reading recently?

2k

7

Yesterday I shared a post announcing that we will start nominating our favourite books for this year’s book awards at the beginning of November.

I love how excited you all are (and how none of us can believe how fast this year has gone 😂)

Of course it got me thinking about my favourite reads…. Swipe through for more

I had planned on sharing my top 10 reads of the year but I’ve read so many brilliant books that I wanted to give you a bumper list.

I have been quite ruthless, and as I’m about to press share I’m thinking of a few others that I’ve really enjoyed.

But here are the ones I’ve really loved.

The Shock of the Light by @loriinglishall
Elizabeth & Marilyn by @julieowenmoylan
The Calamity Club @kathrynstockettauthor
A Hymn to Life by @gisele_pelicot

The Midnight Train by @mattzhaig
Five by @ilona.bannister
The Scandalous Ladies Football Club by @franquinn21
An Unlikely Visitor by @drjocannon

Yesteryear by @caroclaireburke
Roman Mornings @matson_taylor_
Whistler by Ann Patchett
Three Summers by @karenswanauthor

Main Characters by @thebobpalmer
It’s Not What You Think by @claremackwrites
Strangers by @belleburden
Everything Was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt by @authorbenreeves

Mr Sidhu’s Post Office by @ammanbrar
Dolly All The Time by @annabelmonaghan
The Infinite Sadness of Small Appliances by @glenndixonauthor
Under Story by @chloekbenjamin

John of John by @douglas_stuart
American Hagwon @lee_minjin

How many of your favourites made it on your the post or have I convinced you to add any to your TBR? Do you know what books you’ll be nominating?

So many questions for a Friday morning! Come and chat with me in the comments and don’t forget to save this post for next time you need to some reading inspiration 📚💕

228

68

📚 Inherited masculinity and queer identity in a close-knit Faroese village community are at the heart of BOYS BOYS BOYS, in which author Rúni Weihe paints a raw and sensitive portrait of growing up in a place that isn’t quite home.

Published in Danish in September 2026, the novel is already attracting considerable international attention, with translation rights sold in 10 countries.

👉 Swipe to read more about the book and the author & see which publishers have acquired rights

📸: Ikram Abdulkadir
🏷️: #runiweihe #faroeislands #danishliterature #scandinavia

92

5

As a young 20-something living at the end of human history, Dre Archer does not have much to look forward to. Living in a shared community with thousands of other people who know they are on the brink of extinction, she has never known anything different. When she is given the opportunity to become a governess outside of the compound, Dre leaps at the chance, even though the job is eerily uncomfortable from the start. Looking after 4 year old Albie is complex, especially as he believes it is 1884 and everyone around him plays along. As she slowly adapts to Victorian standards of dress, manners and comportment, Dre realises something much more sinister is going on all around her. Who is the child she has been charged with raising? What happened to his previous governess? And if she keeps asking questions, what will happen to her?

One of my biggest grumbles about science fiction or dystopian literature is that it can be so far removed from our own lives that I cannot even begin to relate. Harrison, conversely, has achieved the magic formula of making this futuristic yet entirely believable. Albie is a brilliantly rendered individual and the author has captured the mind of a small yet intelligent child with accuracy and humour – I was particularly fond of the section where he bemoans how adults always lie, applying literal meaning to throwaway phrases we use every day like “breaking the ice”. The use of short chapters and the regular switch in narrative voice provides a multi-dimensional picture of what takes place, and there were enough chilling images to play on my imagination – the gravestones without anything written on them is a particularly powerful momento mori. But most of all it is the subtle yet unsettling undertone of never quite knowing what will happen that kept me hooked, all the way to the thought-provoking ending.

Reading Miss Archer has certainly taught me not to judge a book by its description, and I definitely think you should read this too, even if it doesn’t sound like your thing. Clever, unique and entirely unpredictable, this story will stay with me.

#bookreview #bookblogger #missarcher #booksworthreading #bookstagram

18

2