Book reviews

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing.

But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Forced to resign, she reluctantly signs on as the host of a cooking show, Supper at Six. But her revolutionary approach to cooking, fuelled by scientific and rational commentary, grabs the attention of a nation.

Soon, a legion of overlooked housewives find themselves daring to change the status quo. One molecule at a time.

NL365 is without doubt one of the most comprehensive photo books ever published about our country. Iconic images of windmills, Amsterdam canals and tulips go hand in hand with contemporary themes such as agricultural innovation, dance festivals, Dutch design and modern architecture. The rich history of the stubborn but tolerant Dutch also appears in the picture. With this, top photographer Frans Lemmens brings together all facets and disciplines in which he excels, and shows the Netherlands with all its beauty and specialness to the world. Lemmens shows us a vibrant Netherlands. This voluminous book is a feast for the eyes and an ode to a beautiful country.

Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. But as evidence threatens June's stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. What happens next is entirely everyone else's fault...

The mystery of a missing translator sets three lives on a collision course that will have a ripple effect across galaxies in this powerful new novel by one of the masters of modern science fiction. Translation State is at once a sweeping space adventure and a brilliant exploration of how in order to belong, we must first become.

A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town to study faerie folklore, where she discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love, in this heart-warming and enchanting fantasy. Emily Wilde is good at many things: she is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encylopaedia of faerie lore.

But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party - much less get invited to one. Emily prefers the company of her books, her dog Shadow, and the Fair Folk to that of friends or lovers.

Squid Game meets The Left Hand of Darkness meets Under the Skin in this radical literary sensation from South Korea about an alien's hunt for food that transforms into an existential crisis about what it means to be human.

"Even through the roar and effervescence of the 1920s, everyone in New York has heard of Benjamin and Helen Rask. He is a legendary Wall Street tycoon; she is the daughter of eccentric aristocrats. Together, they have risen to the very top of a world of seemingly endless wealth, all as a decade of excess and speculation draws to an end. But at what cost have they acquired their immense fortune? This is the mystery at the center of Bonds, a successful 1938 novel that all of New York seems to have read. But there are other versions of the tale of privilege and deceit..."

Based on select writings from a collection of more than two thousand Dutch diaries written during World War II in order to record this unparalleled time, and maintained by devoted archivists, The Diary Keepers illuminates a part of history we haven’t seen in quite this way before, from the stories of a Nazi sympathizing police officer to a Jewish journalist who documented daily activities at a transport camp.

An extraordinary story about a Jewish woman who pretended to be Catholic to survive the Holocaust

Opposites become allies to fool their matchmaking friends in this swoony reimagining of Shakespeare’s beloved comedy, Much Ado About Nothing.