Archives de l’auteur : WebmasterBenisti

STALEMATE de Mary Newnham

Piglet if written by Dolly Alderton, STALEMATE is a testament to the fact that your coming-of-age story can begin whenever you choose, be that in your 30s, 40s or beyond.

STALEMATE
by Mary Newnham
Hodder & Stoughton, January 2026
(via Northbank Talent Management)

Awkward secondary school Physics teacher, Amy and her gym bro fiancé, Josh are in no rush to make it to the altar.

The couple are content with their quiet life in the slow lane. Until they’re coerced by Josh’s family into getting married much earlier than anticipated.

There’s just one problem: after ten years of dating, their sex life has completely dried up.

As time ticks closer and closer to the big day, Amy scrambles to cross everything off her to-do-list… including Josh.

Mary Newnham is a British female fiction writer. Mary found her love for writing when she started blogging about Bloody Marys. Her film production degree led her into the world of advertising, where she worked in the film department at a Soho ad agency. For a brief time, she lived in Australia as a constantly sunburnt producer before returning to England. She currently writes and records The Quack, a weekly blog featuring true stories and witty observations. Mary has an MA in Creative Writing at Oxford Brookes. She lives solo in Jericho, Oxford. She doesn’t own a cat.

THE LOST VOICES OF POMPEII de Jess Venner

THE LOST VOICES OF POMPEII will transport readers into the final 24 hours of the ancient city, vividly detailing the lives of seven diverse characters. Through a blend of meticulous research and compelling storytelling, this book brings Pompeii’s last day to life in a way that is both immersive and unforgettable.

THE LOST VOICES OF POMPEII:
The Last 24 Hours
by Jess Venner
HarperCollins, Spring 2026
(via Northbank Talent Management)

In her thrilling new take on the ancient city, Dr Jess Venner casts aside traditional archaeological and historical perspectives to immerse readers in the vibrant daily lives of its inhabitants. We meet Julia Felix, a successful female entrepreneur defying Roman convention; a slave who gains his freedom during a night of revelry; and politician Gaius Cuspius Pansa who is hosting the Plebian Games at the amphitheatre.

Using real historical figures the book plausibly recreates their final day before the eruption; a fresh narrative approach that brings the ancient streets to life through the eyes of those who lived, worked, loved, and ultimately met their fate there.

Dr Jess Venner is an award-winning ancient historian and archaeologist, and a world-leading expert on Pompeii and Herculaneum. She is currently an academic at the prestigious Institute of Classical Studies in London and was elected as an Associate Fellow of the Royal Historical Society for her contributions to history. She has a following of over 140,000 engaged history fans on TikTok as @lifeinthepastlane_, and has appeared in publications such as The Times, The Mirror, The Daily Star, and Ancient History Magazine.

KINGDOM OF FEAR d’Anuj Chopra

A riveting portrait of Saudi Arabia under Mohammed bin Salman and the untold stories of those living under the influence of the millennial dictator’s rule, for readers of Barbara Demick and Svetlana Alexievich.

KINGDOM OF FEAR:
A millennial dictator rises from the shadows, unmaking and remaking Saudi Arabia
by Anuj Chopra
Granta, Late 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

In incisive, deeply-reported prose, KINGDOM OF FEAR introduces us to ten indelible characters, from a monied rival to a flashy aide, and from a defiant female activist to an outspoken dissident. Through their carefully unfolded stories, we come to understand them not only as individuals but also as representatives of different strata of Saudi society, layers that have been, as Anuj says, “upended, uprooted, or uplifted” by dramatic changes under MBS.

Along the way, Anuj himself becomes an eleventh character. His on-the-ground reporting grants us an intimate view of a country in turmoil, one that can often seem opaque to the outside world. And through the eyes of a reporter fighting for his sources and their stories, we witness the terrifying impact of a growing culture of fear, one that seeks to silence and oppress. But as Anuj reminds us, silence, too, can speak volumes, and he thoughtfully unpacks those weighted moments, bringing clarity to darkness.

In shifting the focus to those impacted by MBS, Anuj pulls our attention away from the Crown Prince himself, spotlighting and empowering Saudi citizens in order to better understand them and their nation in all their complexity. KINGDOM OF FEAR is a powerful, necessary exploration of Saudi Arabia as it exists today, and how to grapple with the fear that undergirds MBS’s rule.

Anuj Chopra is a Washington D.C.-based reporter for Agence France-Presse (AFP). He was the 2022 Knight-Bagehot Fellow and Dart Center Ochberg Fellow at Columbia Journalism School in New York, and has won several prizes for his work, including the CNN Young Journalist Award, the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) Award, the Human Rights Press Award and the Ramnath Goenka prize for excellence in journalism. He covered Saudi Arabia and Yemen for four years (2017-21) as AFP’s Riyadh bureau chief. Anuj has also written from hotspots around Asia and the Middle East for international publications such as The Atlantic, The Guardian, TIME, The Economist, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post.

SLOPOPOLIS de Laura Preston

A truly unique investigation of the people driving the AI revolution and the forces that drive them.

SLOPOPOLIS:
Travels in the New Digital Kingdom
by Laura Preston
W. W. Norton, 2027
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

SLOPOPOLIS is a people first dispatch from tomorrow’s industrial frontier. It is not an AI explainer, nor does it aspire towards future forecasting. It is not a work of philosophy, nor a meditation on machines and human consciousness. Instead, it asks: who are the speculators racing West? How do they think about their place in history, and what sort of future are they trying to build? While the book will ostensibly be about tech, its chief interest will be people—people and their ambitions, delusions, contradictions, and ambivalent moral frameworks. It is an anthropological expedition to the quarries of the AI gold rush, where we are about to stake everything—even the hope of a habitable planet—on the opportunity not to think.

Laura Preston’s work has appeared in n+1, The New Yorker, The Believer and elsewhere. She graduated cum laude from Princeton University in 2013 with a degree in Art History and certificates in Studio Art and Creative Writing. She received her MFA in Fiction from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program, where her work received Hopwood awards in both fiction and nonfiction categories. Laura lives in Brooklyn and this is her first book.

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS de Krista Diamond

A modern literary noir in the tradition of Bret Easton Ellis for fans of A Touch of Jen by Beth Morgan, the LA stories of Emma Cline, and Uncut Gems.

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS
by Krista Diamond
Simon & Schuster, Fall 2026
(via Sterling Lord Literistic)

CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS follows a Las Vegas wildlife photographer who, while moving to Los Angeles to become a paparazzo, loses his relationships, his morals, and eventually his tether to reality.

A Los Vegan itching for LA, Ben is an amateur wild-life photographer and busser in a diner where tourists come to recreate a movie scene starring Jack Whitlock, “the last real movie star.” He meets a man who promises money as a paparazzo, which he likens to wildlife photography, inciting Ben to move to LA. The job is a thrill; high that he chases to increasingly damaging ends.

A year and a half later, Ben—broke, single, and receiving increasingly credible death threats from a pop star’s stans—is desperate for a win. And when scandalous photos of Jack Whitlock leak, and Ben becomes obsessed with being the first photographer to break new photos of Jack. He follows leads through the absurd horrors of celebrity LA, dodging close encounters with fans, weaving his way back to Las Vegas and the desert of his redemption or demise.

Krista Diamond is a Black Mountain Institute PhD fellow in creative writing at the University of Nevada Las Vegas. Her writing has been supported by Bread Loaf, Tin House, the Nevada Arts Council, and has appeared in The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, Longreads, Hazlitt, Catapult, Joyland, and elsewhere. The opening of CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS WITH STRANGERS was longlisted for both the First Pages Prize and the Stockholm Writers Festival First Pages Prize.