From Californian hedonism to the headlands of Devon: presenting our Books of the Month for May

Presenting Waterstones’ May Books of the Month. [Books of the Month]( Dear Reader, May’s assembly of our [Books of the Month]( greatness contains one of the most startling and assured first novels we’ve come across in recent years. You can read on to learn a little more about Emma Cline’s [The Girls]( but for anyone searching for that kind of creeping social claustrophobia Jeffrey Eugenides so brilliantly evoked for [The Virgin Suicides]( Cline’s cautionary, counter-cultural tale will hit the mark. Fiction Book of the Month [The Girls]( ‘Our love for each other boundless, the whole universe an extended crash pad.’ Our [Fiction Book of the Month]( Emma Cline’s [The Girls]( is probably one of the most unsettling and quietly disturbing debuts of its kind. It is 1969, in the heat of a Californian summer. Evie Boyd is like most other teenagers, ‘so attuned to attention’; she seeks other’s notice and life’s next bold step. The void is suddenly filled by the girls, a scattering of young women who are everything she is not, each utterly sure and at one with everything seemingly beyond Evie’s reach. Willingly, she begins to drop into their tranquilised circle, oblivious of the danger that sits so cruelly at its centre. ‘Emma Cline has an unparalleled eye for the intricacies of girlhood, turning the stuff of myth into something altogether more intimate… This book will break your heart and blow your mind.’ - Lena Dunham [Find out more]( Non-Fiction Book of the Month [The Durrells of Corfu]( Television’s glowing adaptation of Gerald Durrell’s [Corfu Trilogy]( now enjoying its second series, has been a ray of light in the British gloom. Durrell, of course, was a novelist first and a biographer second and it’s fair to say that his books ran parallel to the truth rather than existed as a faithful record of account. Our [Non-Fiction Book of the Month]( Michael Haag’s [The Durrells of Corfu]( goes some way to separate fact from fiction, throwing light on the circumstance of the Durrells’ exit from Blighty and unpicking the family’s complexities - from their mother Louisa, very much a product of Empire and a woman who sought solace from widowhood in alcohol, to the wayward, self-destructive Leslie, who died many years later in relatively reduced circumstance. The Durrells’ Corfu sojourn was actually relatively short, and Haag’s account throws into brilliant relief Gerald’s powers of invention in creating a fantastic, heightened past for a post-war British public. [Find out more]( Children's Book of the Month [Letters from the Lighthouse]( Carroll’s 2013 debut [Frost Hollow Hall]( fitted almost hand-in-glove with what we are about as a bookseller. Written with clarity and so sure of its purpose and place (both in its setting and its knowing nods to the novel’s literary legacy, everything from [The Secret Garden]( to [The Woman in Black]( we understood Carroll's ambition to create quality writing for children. Her books since have only confirmed this and we’re delighted to present [Letters from the Lighthouse]( as our [Children’s Book of the Month](. It’s winter of 1941 and evacuees Olive and Cliff are transported from a bombed-out London to the unknown wilds of the Devonshire coast. Their reluctant host is a curmudgeonly lighthouse keeper, Mr Ephraim, a man none too keen on the idea of children, evacuees or not. As Olive tries hard to prove her worth, exchanging letters from the lighthouse to the local village, she happens upon a message that changes everything - a message that seems to link her with her missing older sister Sukie. [Find out more]( Our Thriller of the Month [A Rising Man]( Not so long ago, Abir Mukerjee was immersed in, as he puts it, ‘a spectacularly dull career in finance.’ His entering the Telegraph Harvill Secker Crime Writing Prize transformed his fortunes, bagging a publishing deal with Harvill Secker that would ultimately result in our [Thriller of the Month]( [A Rising Man](. Mukjerkjee’s intriguing stage is a Calcutta of 1919: the massacre of Amritsar is fuelling civil unrest and the murder of a senior British official is proving a potential flashpoint. Into this melee steps the wonderfully-drawn, morphine-addicted Captain Sam Wyndham, troubled veteran of the Great War and a man eager to pursue his new role within the Calcutta police. Joining him on this increasingly darkening case is the implacable Sergeant 'Surrender Not' Banerjee, and together they will be confronted by the most dangerous levels of the British Raj. ‘Highly entertaining… set in a Calcutta so convincingly evoked that readers will find sweat bursting from their foreheads.’ – The Daily Telegraph [Find out more]( As ever, it’s been our pleasure to root out these treasures and we’ll be back again with more superb reading. With all best wishes, Your friends at Waterstones [Facebook]( [Twitter]( [Instagram]( [YouTube]( [View email online](. Sadly replies to this particular email will not be read or generate any responses, but we always welcome feedback and any queries or thoughts are best addressed to our customer support booksellers using our [online form](. You might also find the answer on our [Help pages](. 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