Paul Murray

SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2023 From one of our greatest comic novelists and the author of Skippy Dies comes a funny, thought-provoking story of one family desperately clinging on as their world falls apart . . . 'A tragicomic triumph. You won't read a sadder, truer, funnier novel this year' Guardian ‘The finest novel that Murray has yet written . . . will surely be one of the books of 2023’ Sunday Independent 'Murray is a natural storyteller . . . Ambitious, expansive, hugely entertaining tragicomic fiction' Irish Times The Barnes family is in trouble. Dickie's once-lucrative car business is going under - but rather than face the music, he's spending his days in the woods, building an apocalypse-proof bunker with a renegade handyman. His wife Imelda is selling off her jewellery on eBay while their teenage daughter Cass, formerly top of her class, seems determined to binge-drink her way to her final exams. And twelve-year-old PJ is putting the final touches to his grand plan to run away from home. Where did it all go wrong? A patch of ice on the tarmac, a casual favour to a charming stranger, a bee caught beneath a bridal veil? Can a single moment of bad luck change the direction of a life? And if the story has already been written - is there still time to find a happy ending? 'It's a thing of beauty, a novel that will fill your heart' Observer ‘Generous, immersive, sharp-witted and devastating . . . a triumph’ Financial Times ‘It's been compared to Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections; I'd argue it's better’ Daily Mail

Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023

The Bee Sting

Alawander Bouston 

History, the boy scoffed. He waved a hand at the Elizabethan grandeur surrounding them. History's just a pair of knickers. Pull ‘em off and what do you find? 

Dickie had no response to this. The boy's eyes, bloated through the thick lenses, gleamed at him gleefully. Nature, he said, answering his own question. Nothing but nature. The repulsively perfect lips smirked with satisfaction, and he added in conclusion, And it's absolutely 

Gemma McCarthy

She had never telt so connected to someone. When they messaged each other at night sometimes they'd stay up till two in the morning they got so in synch it was almost like they were the same person. 

That evening after she went home Elaine sent her a close up picture of a bee with the message Will you bee mine Cass? Cass sent one back of a bee superimposed onto a wedding dress that said Bee my honey Elaine They stayed up half the night sending each other random pictures of bees.

Cass assumed that's what Rowan was worried about too. She felt sad, but she didn't show it. She just said they would probably want to see other people.

she used to play a game with PJ: red car-blue car, one of them would say to the other, and if the next car they saw was blue, then they knew they would have agood day. The car was red.

The Bee Sting quotes

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