VOLUME FLYERS (12.9.26)

Catch these five books!

Let this week’s flyers land on the top of your reading pile.

THE FINEST HOTEL IN KABUL: A People’s History of Afghanistan by Lyse Doucet $40
The Winner of the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction ”plays to all Lyse Doucet's strengths: clarity, empathy, depth of knowledge and innate grasp of fine detail. Her subject is not just a hotel, but a hotel that tells the story of four decades of Afghanistan's proud and sometimes unbelievably painful history. This is a most readable account of joy, despair and resilience in one of the world's most fascinating countries.” —Michael Palin

SAID THE DEAD by Doireann Ní Ghríofa $38
Blending detailed research with the sensitvities of a novelist and poet, Said the Dead breaches the boundaries that contain the past to resuscitate the voices of women who were inmates in a now-derelict Victorian mental hospital in the city of Cork. As the narrator follows their traces through the archives and through the corridors, she finds in the murmurings of these women much that resonate with her own life and experiences.

ORDINARY PEOPLE LIKE US by Kelly Ana Morey $38
’Ordinary People Like Us explores much of what was important to Morey in her own life and heritage, including her love of history and her deep empathy for the landscapes and communities of the Far North. She celebrates her characters’ mixed heritage, as well as the strength of women, the bonds that link us and, true to her own interests, the significance of art, architecture and objects. But what makes this novel so different is KAM’s inspired imagination, which takes us up to the rafters, where kēhua watch, bitch and comment on their descendants below.’ —Harriet Allan

SWITZY by Emma Cline $38
’A perfect novel, one that goes to the places only novels can go.’ —Samantha Harvey

LIFE OF M by Rachel Cusk $37
Rachel Cusk’s new novel continues her project of applying stress to the conventions of the novel in order to make fiction reveal truths about life that we are conditioned to avoid. In Life of M a character who observes and writes describes or defines the life of a character who performs and is observed, a film star who finds no more autonomy in the role of herself than she does when she is acting.