Saturday Spotlight: New Book Releases June 2026
- 27 June 2026
- News, Saturday Spotlight
At Write On! and Pen to Print, we want to help connect authors and readers, playwrights and audiences, so we’ve created a Spotlight page on the last Saturday of the month, showcasing some of the exciting new reads and plays available. The curated list is based on books and plays that you send us, so if you’re an author or a playwright and you’d like your book or play in the spotlight, reach out to us at pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk. Whether you’re an indie author, with a small press or mainstream publisher, established or brand new playwright, we’d love to hear from you and shine a light on your new work.
Write On! offers other opportunities for writers as well. If you’d like us to feature an extract from your book or a short story, please send the extract, book cover and blurb to pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk with the subject: Write On! Showcase (ensuring you have your publisher’s permission, of course).
Pen to Print are also looking for short videos from people reading a passage from their favourite book, or authors reading extracts from their own books. These videos will be featured on the Pen to Print YouTube channel and across our social media. Please send in your videos or links to pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk with the subject: Video Stories.
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Poetry Inspired By Art by Sabinah Adewole
Available to buy here
Connect with Sabinah Adewole
Uprising by Tahmima Anam
Any moment now, we would grow up and we would become them, waking late and hungry and with a job that had no name.
On a desolate, sinking island, a group of children witness their mothers living lives of cruelty and servitude. Bought and sold by Amma, the sadistic madam who was once herself sold into slavery, the women have learned to accept their fate. Yet their children weave fantastic tales of escape, imagining that someday they will leave the island and enjoy a life of freedom.
When Kusum Khan, a young, educated woman from the city, is forcibly brought to the island, she too is subjected to Amma’s violent induction. Yet Kusum refuses to yield, and soon the collective complacency of her fellow prisoners turns into ferocity and defiance. Together, they begin a rebellion that will upend their island, their world and the very order of things.
An earth-shattering drama of resistance and female power, Uprising gives voice to the silenced through the story of a revolution no one saw coming.
Available to buy here
Connect with Tahmima Anam
Don’t Miss Perfect by Gulnaz Aybenk
What if your perfect partner was written in your DNA?
In a society shaped by efficiency and science, the government has launched a DNA- based programme designed to pair people with their ideal partners. It promises stronger relationships, healthier families, and a more stable population. For genetic researcher Angela Swytch, the programme represents the pinnacle of her life’s work. For loyal citizen Zara Remson, it offers certainty, belonging, and the reassurance that no one needs to be alone – everything she has ever hoped for.
As profiles are activated and matches are assigned, cracks begin to show behind the cheerful propaganda. Friendships fracture, trust erodes, and the line between protection and control blurs beyond recognition. A growing resistance emerges. When Zara is forced to choose between faith in the system and the people she loves most, the truth begins to unravel.
Available to buy here
Connect with Gulnaz Aybenk
Secrets At The Dover Café by Ginny Bell
Available to buy here
Connect with Ginny Bell
The Tiny Magic Bookshop by August Bloom
There’s magic in a book …
Max always felt too ordinary for the magical village of Lampton. No place more so than her mum’s bookshop, where the recommendations are more than just a matter of taste – they’re magic.
When Max’s mum dies suddenly, she leaves her daughter Lamplight Books and makes one last wish: that Max would spend a year working in the bookshop before she sells it.
Max has no desire to uproot her busy life in the city to return to a place that always made her feel inadequate, but she can’t ignore her mum’s last request. So she decides on a trial run of two weeks – if she can’t even last that long, then a year would be impossible.
Available to buy here
Connect with August Bloom
Vigilantes Anonymous by Nick Burdett
Vigilantes Anonymous is a club where they don’t use the word “crime”. It’s a weekly gathering of like-minded people. Sharing is optional, but it’s rude to turn down a cup of tea.
Todd is an overlooked IT worker whose days are spent in the office or at home with his cat avoiding the social side of life.
Until one particularly bad Monday pushes him too far. An uncharacteristic outburst involving two illegally parked trucks, a tyre iron, and a couple of smashed bumpers earns him a mysterious card.
An invitation.
Drawn into the group, and close to the group’s linchpin Poppy, he finds himself swept up in their enjoyable, but petty, vigilante justice. As these activities begin to escalate, he is emboldened to start righting the wrongs beyond the group, solving workplace issues in ways his job description never mentioned.
But as the risks grow and the consequences close in, Todd attracts attention from someone far more dangerous than he could imagine, someone that he doesn’t know is there.
Available to buy here
Connect with Nick Burdett
Two friends, Kenjo and Leah, swoosh through the lush forests at the edge of their village in Kenya. Imitating hornbills and lying on the mossy boulders that line the river, the young girls are watched over by a canopy of ancient trees, whose roots reach into the past, present and future.
But this glittering countryside is quickly becoming a haunting. As the armed rebellion against the British colonial regime intensifies, the forest is subsumed in a destructive conflict, disturbing the profound balance of life it nourishes and knowledge it preserves. Forced from their homes, the friends are separated by oceans and decades. Like the branches that once sheltered them, they may be twisted and buckled by violence – but they will also, somehow, endure.
This tale of courage, survival and restoration captures the healing and, destructive, power of time and unearths the hidden traces it leaves behind.
Available to buy here
Connect with Elizabeth-Jane Burnett
Novi Sad Protocol by David Cross
Dmitri Volkov lost everything in Novi Sad. Now he’s brought his vengeance to London –and The Den stadium on match day is his target.
Amir Kamara stole the wrong device. The petty thief who pocketed what looked like a phone – a titanium box containing the plan, the trigger, and the contacts to turn a stadium into a massive pyre – now holds the only thing standing between London and catastrophe. Pursued by MI5 operatives and stalked by Dmitri’s relentless cell, Amir, who has spent his life invisible on London’s streets, must decide whether to run or become the only person who can stop a massacre.
One man’s vengeance. One thief’s choice. One city’s last chance.
Flight Of Fancy by Heidi Edmundson
Vulpe Tempest – quirky and clever art student and trainee detective – returns to the City Of Light to investigate her next case. She embarks upon a series of journeys that intersect in ways both inevitable and shocking.
Blurring the distinctions between ghost story and detective fiction, Flight Of Fancy plots a fine line between the real and the imagined. Vulpe experiences life as a series of mysteries, filled with half-understood connotations and allusions. The crime she must unravel unfolds in ways both haunting and beguiling, calling into question the whole moral landscape of the novel.
In this powerful exploration of the consolations and challenges of love, where Vulpe must wrestle with the conflicting provocations of conscience and temptation, even the houses have stories to tell.
Available to buy here
Connect with Heidi Edmundson
A Wartime Promise For The East End Girls by Jean Fullerton
Villa Coco by Andrew Sean Greer
Broke and directionless, our young protagonist takes a job in the Italian countryside as the assistant to Lisabetta – better known to her friends as Coco – a strong-willed, wealthy aristocrat of great local renown.
Trained as an archivist, he thinks he’s been hired to catalogue the contents of the beautiful, crumbling mansion nestled in the green Tuscan hills. But what are his actual duties? Days are spent in a series of increasingly eccentric pursuits: entertaining an endless carousel of guests (from bohemian painters to elderly princesses to unnervingly handsome nephews), attending a funeral in order to make off with the urn and aiding and abetting Coco’s great and final plan – to reunite with the lost love of her life before it’s too late.
As summer turns into autumn and the Italian countryside begins to work its magic, the secrets of Villa Coco and its inhabitants are slowly brought to light – and with them, an unforgettable story of the enduring power of friendship.
Hit Or Miss by Elle Kelk
He’s a player. And she’s the goal…
Ethan Taylor is unbeatable on and off the field. Being the star of the Marshall College soccer team – and hot as hell – has its perks. But when tragedy strikes, Ethan flies straight out of South Carolina and to the intimidating halls of Hemden University, where even his Southern charm can’t melt the stiff British upper lips.
Mia Meyers has never had much luck with people. Having always been a bookish wallflower, junior year abroad could be her one chance to step into the spotlight. So, when Mia realises she’s not the only student from Marshall across the pond this year, she is determined that no one will get in the way of her new life – not even Ethan Taylor.
But why is it that Ethan’s infuriatingly sexy green eyes can’t stop staring at her, and why doesn’t she want him to look away? They may be far from friends at home, but under the spires of Hemden, could this striker score her heart?
In the darkness of winter on the first day of the year, a woman in Denmark is making a list.
She plans to set out and see all of the country’s butterfly species in a single summer. She knows nothing about butterflies. She doesn’t even know why she wants to see them. She just knows that something is calling her. The pull is irresistible.
The Butterfly Season tells the story of what happened next. We follow Lea Korsgaard as her list takes her to landscapes she never knew existed, shaped by the wind and by the sea. She discovers secret places and meets strangers who help along the way. And she is led into the past: into the lives of her ancestors and the worlds of philosophy and myth. Because ever since ancient times, the butterfly has symbolised humanity’s hope of rebirth and confronted us with the biggest questions of existence: why do we live? And what are we living for?
Available to buy here
Connect with Lea Korsgaard
Fellow Creatures by Emma Lowther
Shannon Bell is a nobody. But she can act.
So when she’s accepted into one of London’s most elite drama schools, it feels like her chance at a life that’s far from her drab home town.
There, Shannon meets Victoria: dazzling, wealthy, beautiful Victoria. The two become inseparable, Victoria the shining centre of Shannon’s new world.
And suddenly, Shannon is no longer a nobody. Instead, she’s on the inside, part of Victoria’s exclusive set of promising young somethings. They spend their days competing for roles and their nights vying for each other’s affections.
But when Victoria’s privilege begins to single her out from her peers, Shannon finds their friendship – and her jealousy – spinning out of control… with fatal consequences.
Available to buy here
Connect with Emma Lowther
The Love Library by Sarra Manning
After a series of dating disasters, Tess Hardy wonders if she’ll ever find the man of her dreams – or if he only exists on the pages of her favourite novels.
So when she’s invited to visit The Love Library, a 200-hundred-year-old institution which promises dates with her favourite romantic heroes in real life, Tess can’t resist!
But handsome head librarian Gabe Sharma seems grumpily determined to keep the library under lock and key. And as soon as Tess steps into the beautiful building crammed full of books, she realises why. It’s not just dust in the air… it’s magic. Here she really can grab drinks with Heathcliff, dine with Rochester and cosy up to her one true literary love, Darcy.
There’s just one problem: Gabe. He’s determined to sabotage all of Tess’s dates! And why is it that she has more fun fighting with Gabe than flirting with any of her book-bound suitors…?
Available to buy here
Connect with Sarra Manning
Awake Awake by Fiona Mozley
Mary is struggling with her memory.
She does not have too few recollections but too many, including some that are downright absurd. She has many memories of her childhood: going to parties and on school trips, walks with her father and family dinners. She remembers world events too: the falling of the Twin Towers and the Iraq War. But the most concerning memories she has are about her Jewish grandfather and his role in the death of Adolf Hitler. She feels sure – almost completely sure – that what she’s been told can’t be true, that she must have imagined the whole thing. But there is a doubt.
To decipher fact from fiction, Mary goes back over her life, sorting through her childhood and adolescence with her three friends in York, through an adulthood accustomed to tragedy. Guided by her family and friends, Mary attempts to work out what is real, both in history and her own life, all the while wondering if her mind has conjured everything.
Available to buy here
Connect with Fiona Mozley
Land by Maggie O’Farrell
On a windswept peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, Tomás and his reluctant son, Liam, are working for the great Ordnance Survey project to map the whole of Ireland. The year is 1865, and in a country not long since ravaged and emptied by the Great Hunger, the task is not an easy one. Tomás, however, is determined that his maps will be a record of the disaster.
The British soldiers in charge are due to arrive any day, expecting the work to be completed, but Tomás is sent off course by an unsettling encounter in a copse. His life, and those of his family, will never be the same again. Liam is terrified by the sudden change in his taciturn father. What was it that caused such cracks to open in Tomás and how is Liam, aged only ten, going to finish the mapping and get them both home?
Land is a story of buried treasure, overlapping lives, ancient woodland, persistent ghosts, a particularly loyal dog, and how, when it comes to both land and history, nothing ever goes away.
Available to buy here
Connect with Maggie O’Farrell
The Death Of Shame by Ambrose Parry
When you’re a prisoner of your secrets, the death of shame is the only path to liberty.
Annabel Banks was promised work as a maid with a prestigious Edinburgh family. But on her first day, she’s nowhere to be found. Concerned relatives contact Sarah Fisher to help. Sarah might know her way around the city – its light sides and dark – but soon she’ll discover the plight of dozens of girls ensnared in its many brothels: lured, abused and left ruined in the eyes of the world.
Meanwhile, a prominent society figure throws himself from the Scott Monument. Will Raven is asked to establish whether the death was suicide or if someone else was involved. Drawing upon real historical events, The Death Of Shame takes the Raven and Fisher series into a treacherous labyrinth of shame and the pitfalls of a culture obsessed with moral purity.
Available to buy here
Connect with Ambrose Parry
Death By Noir by Olly Smith
In an idyllic Sussex town, murder is fermenting…
Barclay Flint is the charmingly eccentric proprietor of The Bottle Bank wine shop, nestled in a picturesque Sussex town renowned for its gloriously anarchic Bonfire Night celebration.
Barclay can taste a kaleidoscopic universe in a single glass of wine and delights in matching customers to the grapes of their dreams. But when his close friend, struggling regenerative vineyard owner Victor Crawshaw, is found dead, Barclay finds himself a prime suspect.
To crack the case and clear his name, Barclay must deploy his wine detection skills and follow his nose through the rolling Sussex hills where a tangle of old resentments and rivalries awaits to ensnare him.
With a killer on the loose and Bonfire Night fast approaching, the town crackles with anticipation. This year the fireworks might not be the only things to explode.
Available to buy here
Connect with Olly Smith
Remember, if you’re an author and you’d like to see your book in our Saturday Spotlight, email: pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk and send us the details of your new novel.
For details of Penguin RandomHouse new releases, visit their website here.
For details of Hachette new releases, visit their website here.
For details of HarperCollins new releases, visit their website here.
For details of PanMacmillan new releases, visit their website here.
For details of Simon & Schuster new releases, visit their website here.
Disclaimer: Amazon links are given for ease but please remember there are a number of other online retailers operating, including hive (which helps to support independent book shops), Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play and Nook as well as online stores for bookstores such as Waterstones, Barnes & Noble and WHSmiths.
Issue 27 of Write On! is out now and you can read it online here. Find it in libraries and other outlets. You can find previous editions of our magazines here.
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