FLESH Booker Prize Winner 2025

Briar Thornton has spent months outrunning her past, but when she's drawn to the small Montana town of Bane Falls with the death of her late uncle and his estate to handle, she runs straight into a new nightmare- and a man more dangerous than the one who tried to kill her.

Roman Syxx isn't a saviour. He's a weapon - cold, precise, and programmed by the Dark Forces to destroy anything and anyone. As the lieutenant of the covert Icarus Squad, he's in Bane Falls on orders: infiltrate, eliminate, disappear. But the new girl that randomly shows up in the small town fractures his control in ways no enemy ever could.

Three years ago, Emery Finch did something completely out of character: she got married. To Luca - the impossibly charming landscaper she met on one blistering night in Vegas who made her laugh, made her dance, made her feel.

But now, Emery is consumed by her top-secret job, missing dinners, forgetting anniversaries, and promising herself Luca will understand once her cutting-edge research comes to light. Until the unthinkable happens: a tragic accident takes Luca from her.

My name is Preston Armstrong, and I’m the most depraved bastard you'll ever meet.
I take what I want, ruin what I don’t, and live exactly how I please.
That is, until I crash into the force of nature that is Marcus Osborn.
Captain of our rival hockey team and the perpetual thorn in my side.

Haunted by her role in a massacre that reignited an ancient war, demigod knight Alira is cursed to relive her kingdom's destruction - dying again and again at the hands of the Blood Knight, a ruthless demon commander. But when the demons propose a peace marriage to end the bloodshed, Alira volunteers herself, desperate to break the cycle and save her people.

Betrothed to her enemy - who is also the lost demon boy she once tried to save - Alira must navigate a dangerous path between vengeance and forgiveness. Kalel Lornhelm, haunted by his own dark past and the monstrous hunger within him, is torn between hatred and a growing, forbidden attraction.

It ends where it begins. . .

Years ago, four dangerous men and a mysterious negotiator gathered in the shadows to broker a deal that would shape the future of the Tenebrae Outfit forever.

Now, the criminal world they created is far darker – far more dangerous – than anyone could have ever imagined.

To survive, four couples – tied to one another in ways none of them understand – must work together to uncover the mob’s deadliest secrets and break free from the darkness that made them.

Perfect families, perfect houses, perfect lives. Three mothers, Jane, Madeline and Celeste appear to have it all... but do they? They are about to find out just how easy it is for one little lie to spiral out of control.

Single mum Jane has just moved to town. She's got her little boy in tow - plus a secret she's been carrying for five years. On the first day of the school run she meets Madeline - a force to be reckoned with, who remembers everything and forgives no one - and Celeste, the kind beautiful woman who makes the world stop and stare, but is inexplicably ill at ease.

Most people don’t even notice them – three tiny figures sitting at the end of a long pier in the corner of one of the most famous paintings in the world. Most people think it’s just a depiction of the sea. But Louisa, an aspiring artist herself, knows otherwise, and she is determined to find out the story of these three enigmatic figures.

Twenty-five years earlier, in a distant seaside town, a group of teenagers find refuge from their bruising home lives by spending long summer days on an abandoned pier, telling silly jokes, sharing secrets, and committing small acts of rebellion. These lost souls find in each other a reason to get up each morning, a reason to dream, a reason to love.

When Sir James Harrison, one of the greatest actors of his generation, passes away at the age of ninety-five, he leaves behind not just a heartbroken family, but also a secret so shocking, so devastating, that it could rock the British Establishment to its core . . .

Joanna Haslam is an ambitious young journalist, assigned to cover the legendary actor’s funeral. The biggest icons of the celebrity world are in attendance. But Joanna stumbles on something dark beneath the glamour: the mention of a letter James Harrison has left behind, the contents of which others have been desperate to conceal for over seventy years.

This is Maia’s story. When Pa Salt dies suddenly, the bereaved sisters gather together at their childhood home, a spectacular secluded castle on the shores of Lake Geneva. Each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their heritage and Maia finds herself on a journey across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Eighty years earlier, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for her to marry into the aristocracy. But Izabela longs for adventure, and convinces him to allow her to first travel to Paris. In the heady, vibrant streets of the city, Izabela meets an ambitious young sculptor, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.

The sixth book in the multi-million-copy bestselling series about a cosy Japanese cafe that offers its visitors the chance to travel back in time.

In a special seat in a fabled Tokyo cafe, you’re offered something irresistible – not just a warm, comforting coffee, but the chance to go back in time to revisit the ones you love . . .

In Before I knew I loved you, Toshikazu Kawaguchi takes us back to the warm heart of the mysterious Funiculi Funicula Cafe, with another four guests whose luminous stories of love, lost and won again, will reaffirm your belief in its eternal potential. In this book, we meet:

- The girl who wishes to make amends with the mother she never accepted
- The man who waited for a reply from his girlfriend, and never heard from her
- The woman anxious to travel ahead to know what her future holds
- The student who travels back to meet his father again, who passed away many years before.

East of Eden by John Steinbeck is a sweeping novel that intertwines the lives of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, over multiple generations in California's Salinas Valley. The story explores complex themes of good and evil, free will, and the s

Tyrannical Nurse Ratched rules her ward in an Oregon State mental hospital with a strict and unbending routine, unopposed by her patients, who remain cowed by mind-numbing medication and the threat of electroshock therapy. But her regime is disrupted by t