Summit Books UK – serie

‘A beautifully expansive novel about race and class... Franklin's emotional and intellectual range is vast... An exceptional debut’ – Katie Kitamura, author of Intimacies‘So smart, so moving, so earned; as soon as I finished, I started reading it again’ – Kaveh Akbar, author of Martyr!‘The precision and ecstasy of Rob Franklin's prose had me entranced. Great Black Hope marks the arrival of a breathtakingly talented writer’ – Megha Majumdar, author of A Burning‘Great Black Hope will allow you to vicariously experience a sweltering summer in the city – though this debut is much more than a simple tale of hedonism’ - BBC Culture‘Perfectly captures the heady atmosphere of a New York summer’ - Dazed‘A new voice in fiction to be reckoned with’ Harper’s Bazaar ‘Best Books of 2025’‘A book about New York that’s part love letter, part reckoning’ – Guardian‘Gripping’ – Daily MailAn arrest for cocaine possession in the Hamptons on the last day of a sweltering summer leaves Smith, a young Black queer graduate, in a state of turmoil. Pulled into the court system and mandated treatment, he finds himself in an absurd but dangerous situation: his class protects him but his race does not. It is just weeks after the death of his beloved roommate Elle, a glamorous member of the Black elite, and he is still reeling from the tabloid spectacle - as well as the lingering question of how well he really knew his closest friend and what happened to her the night she died.When he flees to his hometown of Atlanta and generations of his family of doctors and college presidents and lawyers - the weight of expectations haunts him. Then Carolyn, the closest friend he has left, goes off the rails, Smith returns to New York only to lose himself in his old life, drawn back into the city's underworld. Will his search for the truth about Elle cost him his freedom and his future?Smith goes on a dizzying journey through the New York City nightlife circuit, anonymous recovery rooms, Atlanta's Black society set, police investigations and courtroom dramas, and a circle of friends coming of age in a new era. Great Black Hope is a propulsive, glittering story about what it means to exist between worlds, to be upwardly mobile yet spiralling downward and how to find a way back to hope.

An exuberant, darkly humorous novel by the US National Book Award-shortlisted author of FieldworkCelebrated stage actress Mona Zahid wakes up on the morning of Thanksgiving to the clamour of guests packed into her Manhattan apartment and to a wave of dread: her in-laws are lurking on the other side of the bedroom door; she has been fighting with her husband; and in just a few weeks she will begin rehearsals to play Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, the most challenging role of her career. On an impulse, and pretending she needs to do some last-minute shopping, Mona leaves her family and heads out into the city to visit her estranged mentor, Milton Katz, the legendary director who has been forced out of the theatre company he founded amid accusations of sexual misconduct. Mona’s escape turns into an overnight adventure that brings her face-to-face with her past, with her creative power and its limitations, and ultimately, with all the people she has ever loved. At once funny and sad and wise, Mona Acts Out is a deeply moving novel about acting and telling the truth, about how we all play roles to negotiate our lives, and how the great roles teach us how to live.Praise for MISCHA BERLINSKIMona Acts Out‘An instant-classic New York novel about theater, aging, sex and love’ Joshua Cohen, author of Pulitzer Prize-winning The Netanyahus‘Berlinski deserves a standing ovation for this bravura performance.’ Publishers Weekly‘Wonderfully constructed, witty, warm, wise, and filled with an extraordinary sense of the relation between theater and life’ Kirkus Reviews'Witty but insightful . . . an engaging bittersweet novel' - Herald Scotland'Richly funny' - Daily Mail Peacekeeping‘Powerfully intelligent . . . There's magic in the way that Mr. Berlinski, in command of fact and emotion, pilots this big novel safely home.’ – Dwight Garner, New York Times ‘Formidable’ James Wood, New Yorker                                                  ‘Marvelous’ Washington Post  Fieldwork‘Gripping and entertaining...you know you're in the hands of a writer to whom the novel form is, when all's said, as natural as an old overcoat... A quirky, often brilliant debut, bounced along by limitless energy’ – Hilary Mantel in the New York Review of Books'A killer novel... A great story... You can't stop reading.' Stephen King, Entertainment Weekly‘This is storytelling of the highest quality: richly entertaining, intelligent and anchored in a deep sense of humanity’ – Tash Aw, Guardian

A gripping and revealing new biography of one of the greatest of modern poets, the queer, Greek-Egyptian Constantine Cavafy, whose admirers have ranged from E.M. Forster, T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf to Jackie Onassis, Leonard Cohen and Stephen Fry.Shortlisted for the Anglo-Hellenic League Runciman Award'A deeply researched and engaging biography… Jeffreys and Jusdanis brilliantly recreate Cavafy’s world’ - Guardian‘A nuanced and original portrait’ - Literary Review‘A richly detailed and clear-sighted account of Cavafy’s life and work’ - Spectator'Melancholy and majesty. . . [an] extraordinary life story' - New StatesmanIn this illuminating book, Peter Jeffreys and Gregory Jusdanis reveal Cavafy as a troubled, brilliant poet who sacrificed love for his art and changed the course of world poetry. Alexandrian Sphinx chronicles the extraordinary story of his family, the vicissitudes of their fortunes, and their eventual poverty when they left Egypt and moved to Liverpool, London and Istanbul. As the poet reached adulthood, his story centred on his beloved Alexandria, the city that nourished his imagination and became for him a metaphor of both his poetry and modern life. Deep archival research uncovers the poet’s relationships with his teenage companions, his friends of middle age, and the individuals whom in later life he enlisted in his steadfast pursuit of fame.Alexandrian Sphinx tells not only of Cavafy’s life but of his work and his artistic journey, from his early poetic experiments to his startling reinvention in middle age, when he renounced much of what he had written and developed a radical new poetics. Erotic, philosophical, and linguistically suggestive, this widely imitated yet singular style is now recognized and revered as Cavafian.

‘An intimate story of self-discovery… Beautiful’ Orhan Pamuk‘For readers who loved Call Me By Your Name, this is a similarly soft, hazy, and quietly devastating story.’ Dua Lipa's Service95A moving and dreamy debut novel about the summer love that changes two girls at the edge of adulthood‘Such a tender story of love, discovery, connection, and loss. Ekin Oklap’s writing is startling in its apparent simplicity, beautifully timeless and fragile.’ Han Smith, Goldsmith Prize-shortlisted author of Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and WreckingIn the heat and the green haze that seemed to surround us both like a physical presence, I felt intensely awake.One afternoon at the start of summer, a teenager watches a new girl move in across the street. In Clara, the narrator recognises the same loneliness that she feels herself, but finds tenderness and laughter too. Over hot, languid days spent talking and reading side by side in the garden, the narrator is awakened to the possibility of a true connection with another human being, free of the self-consciousness she feels with others.Meanwhile, in a distant fictional galaxy, Nadia the space explorer - the protagonist of a children's book series beloved by both girls - traverses the known universe with her companion, Rosa. Their imagined adventures make sense of new and powerful feelings.First Summer captures the innocence and agony of adolescence and the exquisite promise of love on the cusp of adulthood: a moment where fantasy is still vivid in the mind. This story of the first summer of love echoes throughout the characters’ lives and will change them forever.‘An engrossing, passionate, and nostalgic queer coming-of-age story. Set in the heat of a teenaged summer, and in a galaxy far, far away; this book captures how it feels to connect with someone during that adolescent period when childhood fantasies collide with the realities of adulthood. A true celestial treat.’ Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be Dead

‘An intimate story of self-discovery… Beautiful’ Orhan Pamuk‘For readers who loved Call Me By Your Name, this is a similarly soft, hazy, and quietly devastating story.’ Dua Lipa's Service95A moving and dreamy debut novel about the summer love that changes two girls at the edge of adulthood‘Such a tender story of love, discovery, connection, and loss. Ekin Oklap’s writing is startling in its apparent simplicity, beautifully timeless and fragile.’ Han Smith, Goldsmith Prize-shortlisted author of Portraits at the Palace of Creativity and Wrecking‘An engrossing, passionate, and nostalgic queer coming-of-age story. Set in the heat of a teenaged summer, and in a galaxy far, far away; this book captures how it feels to connect with someone during that adolescent period when childhood fantasies collide with the realities of adulthood. A true celestial treat.’ Emily Austin, author of Everyone in This Room Will Someday Be DeadIn the heat and the green haze that seemed to surround us both like a physical presence, I felt intensely awake.One afternoon at the start of summer, a teenager watches a new girl move in across the street. In Clara, the narrator recognises the same loneliness that she feels herself, but finds tenderness and laughter too. Over hot, languid days spent talking and reading side by side in the garden, the narrator is awakened to the possibility of a true connection with another human being, free of the self-consciousness she feels with others.Meanwhile, in a distant fictional galaxy, Nadia the space explorer - the protagonist of a children's book series beloved by both girls - traverses the known universe with her companion, Rosa. Their imagined adventures make sense of new and powerful feelings.First Summer captures the innocence and agony of adolescence and the exquisite promise of love on the cusp of adulthood: a moment where fantasy is still vivid in the mind. This story of the first summer of love echoes throughout the characters’ lives and will change them forever.

Donna Tart meets E.L. James in a darkly seductive debut: When a mysterious young woman comes between two married professors, their carefully crafted cat-and-mouse game crumbles, as prey becomes predator.It’s the summer of 1986 on the Kelsey College campus. Sam and Vera Ward got married decades ago and haven't slept together since. With little desire to satiate Sam's sexual appetite, Vera agrees to a certain tradition at the start of every school year. Sam is allowed to sleep with one woman of his choosing, with two ground rules: she must be a student at the college, and the affair cannot last beyond a year. This year, their target is a mysterious young woman named Jade who, unbeknownst to The Wards, is a hand grenade poised to destroy everything they've carefully built.Alluring and sharp as a tack, Jade breaks all their rules. With a plan of her own, she holds Sam in the palm of her hand, and Vera gripped in a dance of obsession and desire. What unfolds is not a romance but a reckoning, where every touch conceals a move, and every secret becomes a weapon, spiraling into an explosive ending that will leave Vera, Jade, and Sam completely undone.Jaded is an electric, provocative novel about power, the abuse of and submission to it, in which each character is forced to confront the messy web of complicity, lies, and lust in which they have, each, unwittingly entangled themselves.

A moving and haunting  portrait of a Palestinian immigrant’s heroic efforts to heal his community and birth love from tragedy‘This is one of those rare stories that feels at once universal and impossibly strange, rooted in the ordinary challenges of the American Dream but lashed to horrors unfolding on the other side of the planet.’ Washington PostIn Naeem Murr’s first novel in two decades, the conflicts, griefs, and hopes of a community of diverse immigrants in a Chicago condominium come to represent those of the wounded world we all must share.As the financial crisis of the late Noughties looms, all that anyone truly knows about Jamal ‘Jack’ Shaban is how readily he sacrifices himself in his attempts to broker peace between his embittered neighbors. For his flight attendant colleagues, he is an object of desire, even love, particularly for his sweetly bawdy Wisconsinite best friend, Birdy. Believing that Jack is gay, Birdy knows nothing of Dimra, Jack’s traditional Muslim wife, with whom Jack is desperate to have a child. Nor isDimra aware of Jack’s attraction to Marcia: an angry single mother new to the building. The resulting tangle of conflict, love and desire returns Jack to the violence of 1980s Gaza, where a love affair led him to exile and nearly destroyed his life.A man of many faces - adulterer, devoted husband, fixer, community leader, liar, and the survivor of human and cosmic cruelty in both the past and present - Jack is a paragon of both desire and hope, someone who has committed to love because the alternative is darkness. Weaving poignant tragedy and bittersweet comedy, a tale of one man’s blasted hopes and indomitable dedication to the well-being of others, this is a book to love, reread and remember.‘Timely and urgent, EveryExit Brings You Home explores Jack’s hopes, sorrows, and regrets—and, by proxy, those of immigrants everywhere.’ Harper’s Bazaar