Picador books

07/07/2025

‘We work in publishing. These are the books we can’t wait to read this summer.'

The Pan Macmillan team lets us in on the books they're looking forward to reading this summer, and the holiday reads they recommend.

27/06/2025

'This book is many things and is, at times, shocking and unsettling. But at the heart of the novel is one of the tenderest and truest love stories of recent years.'

Which book broke our editors' hearts (and have you read it yet)?

As Colm Tóibín's Long Island returns us to the great love story that began in Brooklyn, we asked the Picador team which love stories they keep coming back to.

13/06/2025

From the Scottish novel that was shortlisted for the first ever Booker Prize then slipped into obscurity, to the forgotten memoir brought back to life thanks to a secondhand bookshop, these below-the-radar classics are essential additions to your TBR 💎

Find out more about these rediscovered gems, direct from the editors who found and republished them, through this link: https://buff.ly/tSPyY55

11/06/2025

Out in paperback tomorrow! An addictive, dark and sexy story about falling in love as society falls apart. Bonding by Mariel Franklin is the timely and thrilling read fans of Exciting Times and Cleopatra and Frankenstein need this summer 💔

Meet Mary. Adrift in her early thirties and exhausted by an endless cycle of casual relationships and unstable work, she books a spontaneous trip to Ibiza✈️☀️ There, she meets Tom, a brilliant chemist with a new antidepressant claiming to cure the anxieties of modern life 💊

Back in London, old connections resurface and new opportunities arise. But soon tech and pharma collide with shocking consequences, forcing Mary to question what love and success mean in a world that is hurtling out of control. Get your next beach read today!

04/06/2025

🌈 A very special announcement for Pride Month: we are beyond excited to share that we'll be publishing John of John, the new novel from Douglas Stuart, Booker Prize-winning, iconic author of Shuggie Bain and Young Mungo 🌈

Set in the remote beauty of the Isle of Harris, John of John is a tender, devastating story of love and religion, of a father and son, art and landscape, and the corrosive effects of living a secret life. It is everything you love about Douglas' writing and more 💫

Coming May 2026 and available to pre-order everywhere now: https://bio.to/WEcWtx

03/06/2025

'An editor is part sleuth, part subsonic listener. We search in all sorts of directions for writers and work.' Discover three rediscovered gems for your TBR direct from the editors who found and republished them.

Undeservedly overlooked books recommended by the editors who brought them back to print.

02/06/2025

We're incredibly excited to be sharing Colm Tóibín’s masterpiece with even more readers as it hits bookshops in paperback this Thursday. So we're thrilled that Waterstones have chosen it as their fiction book of the month ✨

Long Island is an exquisite, exhilarating novel that asks whether it's truly possible to return to the past and renew a great love. We hope this bookseller love inspires you to treat yourself to the love story of the century.

‘Riveting’ Elizabeth Strout
‘Masterful’ Douglas Stuart
‘Wonderful’ Oprah Winfrey
‘Entrancing’ The Economist
‘Magnificent’ The Times
‘Exquisite’ New York Times
‘Gorgeous’ The Independent
‘Dazzling’ The Financial Times
‘A masterclass’ The Guardian

31/05/2025

"The week I shot a man clean through the head began like any other . . ."

Prepare for the tension-filled journey of Birdie Keller in The Sunshine Man, as her quest for justice drives her through a story of intense love and grief. With a plan two decades in the making, Birdie’s pursuit of her sister’s killer leads her from the grit of London to the windswept moors and beyond.

What would you do if the past came knocking? 🌦️🔍

Available now at your favourite bookshops and online.

30/05/2025

🍊 Ripe and ready to read!🍊

From the golden hues of rural Italy ☀️ to the emerald greens of Ireland ☘️ Sarah Moss's Ripeness is a story of life, love, and discovery that readers are loving!

'Absolutely magical' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Not one word is wasted'⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Hauntingly lyrical, and deeply moving' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
'Her most accomplished yet' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

'A luminous tale about borders, bodies and a sense of belonging' Financial Times
'What a delicious novel' Literary Review
'Impressive' The Independent

22/05/2025

🌟 Today is publication day for Ripeness by Sarah Moss, the Sunday Times bestselling author of Summerwater! 🌟

It is the 60s and, just out of school, Edith finds herself travelling to rural Italy. She has been sent by her mother with strict instructions: to see her sister, ballet dancer Lydia, through the final weeks of her pregnancy, help at the birth and then make a phone call which will seal this baby’s fate, and his mother’s.

Decades later, happily divorced and newly energized, Edith is living a life of contentment and comfort in Ireland. When her best friend Méabh receives a call from an American man claiming to be her brother, Maebh must decide if she will meet him, and she asks Edith for help.

Ripeness is an extraordinary novel about familial love and the communities we create, about migration and new beginnings, and about what it is to have somewhere to belong. ☀️❤️

It's your perfect summer read and it's available wherever you get your books now 🍊

21/05/2025

Naked Portrait, Rose Boyt's searing, intimate and wise memoir, is out in paperback next week. In its pages, Rose explores her complicated relationship with her beloved father, Lucian Freud, through her diary and other accounts of sitting for him, naked or otherwise.

Enthralled by his genius, it was only after his death that she began to question the version of events she had come to accept. The shock of the truth is profound but what emerges is her love and compassion not just for herself as a vulnerable young woman, but for the man himself, who is shown in all his brilliant complexity.

20/05/2025

One of the most interesting things Neema Shah found when writing her historical novel A Thread of Light, was the need to let go of preconceived notions about the London Blitz and WWII...

"The idea that ‘we were all in it together’ for example, simply isn’t true. Crime was still rife and blackouts gave the perfect opportunity for ‘spivs’ and other criminals to loot and plunder.

I also had this idea, perhaps partly fueled by shows like Dad’s Army, that the war on the home front was mainly fought by men. In reality, many women joined the WAAF, ATS and other corps.

While researching my novel, I was hugely inspired by Barbara Nixon, a Cambridge educated actress turned air raid precaution warden who worked in the Finsbury district of London from the earliest days of the war.

She was a key inspiration for my character Ruby Thacker, who ditches her secretarial life for air raid precautions, while finding herself drawn into the exciting and dynamic world of the India Forum . . ."