The Best Book Releases In March: The New Reads We Think You’ll Love  

The desks of the Service95 Book Club team were creaking under the weight of new releases this month. With a long-awaited new book from the legend that is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to a debut by the first disabled author to win Japan’s most prestigious literary award, these are the books that made it to the top of our reading lists...

The Anticipated Release 

Pity by Andrew McMillan

“This debut novel from award-winning poet Andrew McMillan is a study in love and longing, told through three generations of men in a Yorkshire mining town. The shadow of the pit, long closed, looms over a more modern world of drag acts and Grindr, framing a tough but tender story of identity and sexuality.” – Maria Padget, Book Club Director 

The Thrilling Debut

Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa

“Hunchback is uncomfortable in a blunt, fresh, and thought-provoking way. Shaka, the narrator, has a congenital muscle disorder that forces her to remain in a care home on a ventilator. She spends her days studying and writing highly explicit erotica online. When her caretaker reveals he has read her stories, the two make a deal. Author Saou has no intention of hiding or obscuring Shaka’s body – what it requires, what it desires – while weaving in the intricacies of her own perspective as a woman with disabilities. This is a book I will think about for a long time.” – Leila Wilkinson, Digital Content Intern 

The Sisterhood Saga

Dream Count by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“Surely the literary event of the year, the new novel from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has been hotly anticipated – and doesn’t disappoint. Told through the interconnected lives of four Nigerian women living on both sides of the Atlantic, Dream Count is a study of the pursuit of love and happiness, and how fulfilment can be found in many guises. It is also a mediation on the social worlds the women inhabit – and the recognisably real-life assault that is suffered by one lands like a gut-punch. We experience the full force of Chimamanda’s feminist rage and it is magnificent.” – Maria Padget, Book Club Director 

The Conversation Starter

Elegy, Southwest by Madeleine Watts

“A beautifully profound love story following Eloise and Lewis as they take off on a two-week road trip from Las Vegas, driving across the American Southwest after the death of Lewis’ mother. While the wildfires rage on the horizon, the couple take an unforgettable journey through the desert, battling the vastness of nothing, dangerous droughts and the fracturing of their relationship. A profound novel that looks at grief of this territory and of parental loss.” – Samantha de Haas, Creative Production Manager 

The Genre-Bending Fiction

Stag Dance by Torrey Peters

“Fans of Detransition, Baby, buckle up – Torrey Peters is back and as audacious as ever. Stag Dance is three novellas and a novel in one, exploring Trans life past, present and future. From the adventures of a lonely logger and the story of an obsessive boarding-school romance to the dizzying spectacle of a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend, what ties these stories together is Torrey’s critical eye on gender and her refusal to submit to a single definition of Trans identity.” – Maria Padget, Book Club Director 

The Instant Classic

Universality by Natasha Brown

“A man is bludgeoned with a solid gold bar at an illegal hippie rave during Covid and the attacker goes on the run. A young journalist solves the mystery by connecting the dots between a banker landlord, an anti-woke newspaper columnist and members of a fringe anarchist movement. What follows is a series of perspectives from those caught up in the crime who never miss an opportunity to pontificate about identity, class or even genetics. Brown has great fun sending up her cishet white characters and their great fear of wokery – but her message about the current state of British society and politics is deadly serious.” – Maria Padget, Book Club Director