WD Awards

The seas are alive, the waters are alive. From the smallest fish to the biggest whale. It is all alive. It is all alive. Zandi dreams of the big blue ocean and bright colourful fish even though she lives far away from the sea and hasn’t learnt to swim. One day the sea gives her a gift that changes everything. Zandi goes on an adventure full of amazing discoveries but something is threatening this magical world … is the key to protecting it buried in stories from the past? An empowering and inspiring story about our connection to the natural world, following your dreams, and caring for the environment.

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Berlin. 11 July 1986. They meet by chance on a bus. She is a young student, he is older and married. Theirs is an intense and sudden attraction, fuelled by a shared passion for music and art, and heightened by the secrecy they must maintain. But when she strays for a single night he cannot forgive her and a dangerous crack forms between them, opening up a space for cruelty, punishment and the exertion of power. And the world around them is changing too: as the GDR begins to crumble, so too do all the old certainties and the old loyalties, ushering in a new era whose great gains also involve profound loss.From a prize-winning German writer, this is the intimate and devastating story of the path of two lovers through the ruins of a relationship, set against the backdrop of a seismic period in European history.

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From one of our most accomplished novelists, a mesmerising story about a mother and daughter seeking refuge in a mental asylum in the chaotic aftermath of the Civil War. In 1874, in the wake of the War, erasure, trauma, and namelessness haunt civilians and veterans, renegades and wanderers, freedmen and runaways. Twelve-year-old ConaLee and her mother, Eliza, who hasn't spoken in more than a year, arrive at the Trans-Allegh­eny Lunatic Asylum in West Virginia, delivered to the hospital's entrance by a war vet­eran who has forced himself into their lives. There, far from family, a beloved neighbor, and the mountain home they knew, they try to reclaim their lives. The omnipresent vagaries of war and race rise to the surface as we learn their back­story: their flight to the highest mountain ridges of western Virginia; the disappearance of ConaLee's father, who left for the war and never returned. Meanwhile in the asylum, they begin to find a new path. ConaLee pretends to be her mother's maid; Eliza responds slowly to treatment. They get swept up in the life of the facility-the mystery behind the man they call the Night Watch; the child called Weed; the fearsome woman who runs the kitchen; the remarkable doctor at the head of the institution. Epic, enthralling, and meticulously crafted, Night Watch is a brilliant portrait of family endurance against all odds, and a stunning chronicle of surviving war and its aftermath.

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The new book from the no. 1 New York Times and no. 2 Sunday Times bestselling author R.F. Kuang ‘A riot’ PANDORA SYKES ‘Razor-sharp’ TIME ‘A wild ride’ STYLIST ‘Darkly comic’ GQ ‘Satirical and humorous’ COSMOPOLITAN Athena Liu is a literary darling and June Hayward is literally nobody. White liesWhen Athena dies in a freak accident, June steals her unpublished manuscript and publishes it as her own under the ambiguous name Juniper Song. Dark humourBut as evidence threatens June’s stolen success, she will discover exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves. Deadly consequences…What happens next is entirely everyone else’s fault.

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'A heartbreaking exploration of a family fractured by civil war. This beautiful, nuanced novel follows a young doctor caught within conflicting ideologies as she tries to save lives. I couldn't put this book down' BRIT BENNETT, bestselling author of THE VANISHING HALF Sixteen-year-old Sashi wants to become a doctor. But over the next decade, as a vicious civil war tears through her hometown of Jaffna, her dream takes her on a different path as she sees those around her, including her four beloved brothers and their friend, get swept up in violent political ideologies and their consequences. Desperate to act, she must ask herself: is it possible for anyone to move through life without doing harm?"With immense compassion and deep moral complexity, V. V. Ganeshananthan brings us an achingly moving portrait of individual and societal grief. "I want you to understand," the narrator of BROTHERLESS NIGHT insists, and by the end of this blazingly brilliant novel, we do: that in a world full of turmoil, human connections and shared stories can teach us how - and as importantly, why - to survive" CELESTE NG, bestselling author of LITTLE FIRES EVERYWHERE "Stunningly great" Curtis Sittenfeld, bestselling author of RODHAM, via Twitter 'V.V. Ganeshananthan's novel Brotherless Night reveals the moral nuances of violence, ever belied by black-and-white terminology' New York Times

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What if you woke up one morning and found you'd acquired a double? Someone almost like you, and yet not you at all?When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn't. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity - all we have to meet the world - so unstable?To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting 'the children'). In doing so, she lifts the lid on our own culture during this surreal moment in history, as we turn ourselves into polished virtual brands, publicly shame our enemies, watch as deep fakes proliferate and whole nations flip from democracy to something far more sinister.This is a book for our age and for all of us; a deadly serious dark comedy which invites us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It's for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters.

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A story about finding your kindness when the big green monster of jealousy rears its head ... “Pumpkin Pie was grumpy. Her day had been the worst. She thought she’d win a prize at school but Megan had come first. Her anger started rumbling. It SIZZLED, SNAKED and GREW into a big green monster that she couldn’t quite undo.”

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Kule ncwadi entle kangakanana nenika inkuthazo, uMiss South Africa, uShudufhadzo Musida, ubalisa ngebali lakhe lobuntwana; eyintombazana ethanda ukucula, ukudanisa nelincoko, ekhulele kwilali eyaziwa ngokuba yiHa-Vhangani, egcwele uthando, ingakumbi elikamama wakhe noGogo Gugu. Kodwa izinto zange zimhambele kakuhle uShudu ngelixa ethuthela kwidolophu entsha, apho afika agezelwe ngabanye afunda nabo, bemenza isigculelo sabo. Funda ngendlela uShudu ajongana nazo ngayo iintsizi zakhe nemingeni adibana nayo, aze abe yintombazana, nenina eliqolileyo elifunde kabanzi ngokuzithanda!

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