Hello!

Happy September!

Book News . . .

I’ve just received the very exciting news that Nourish has been shortlisted for the World of Books 2026 Sustainable Story Award! It’s one of five books in the Children’s & YA category, and the winner will be announced at an award ceremony in London on 12th November. Although I’ve been listed for prizes before, and even won one, this will be the first in-person award ceremony I’ve attended so I am absolutely thrilled!

The publication of my latest book, Enough, is also fast-approaching. Although it’s my ‘latest’ book, it’s actually my oldest… perhaps I should explain!

I wrote Enough a number of years ago and a little publisher called Neem Tree Press was all set to publish it. The book went on sale for preorders and everything was going well, until Neem Tree Press merged with a bigger publisher, Unbound, who swiftly went bankrupt and took Neem Tree into liquidation with them!

Fortunately, I discovered Habitat Press, who picked up and published my next two novels, Dirt and Nourish. Habitat Press has now offered to make it a hat trick with Enough! I’m tremendously grateful that my first YA novel is finally going to see the light of day – one of the Habitat Press team says it’s her favourite of the three!

Enough will be out in November; here's the blurb to whet your appetite:

It is the near future. A medical breakthrough solves the problem of prolonged old age. When a person thinks they’ve had enough of living, their ‘Switch’ flips and they instantly die.

15-year-old Margaretta lives in fear of her Switch – she survives her unhappy home life only by shutting out all feelings.

Her emotional armour starts to crack when she meets Sky, a charismatic homeless boy, and runs away with him. But as their romance grows, they discover the devastating truth about the Switch.

With countless lives at stake, can they make the world listen in time?

Enough was a finalist in the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition and longlisted for the Times / Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition.

Reading recommendation

The Girl Who Broke The Sea by A. Connors is a great YA read – I love books set in space, and it turns out that books set at the bottom of the sea can have a similarly exciting vibe! Big base stations, small launchers, explosions, oxygen shortages, terrors lurking in the black depths… all very spacey. This one has the added bonus of combining environmental issues (think deep-sea mining) with a classic speculative fiction concept: something alive is out there, it’s never seen humans before, and it’s evolving…

For adults, Ian Mcewan’s latest novel is a great story and fascinating from an environmental and futurist perspective – I’m halfway through and thoroughly enjoying the vividness of his imaginary UK archipelago 100 years from now. It’s also, inevitably, full of real-world warnings; it feels to me that What We Can Know is an important read for this moment.

Lazy green wins #27

Buy a second-hand book!

Whatever you’re buying, second-hand is always the most sustainable option. When it comes to books, pre-read is usually as good as new, and will be much cheaper, plus buying from charity shops means giving to a good cause (an excellent excuse for adding just one more book to the purchase pile…!).

And if you’d like to shop second-hand online, I have to recommend World of Books! They’re a Certified B Corp and I’ve shopped with them for years because of their positive environmental record. Of course, I’m a little biased since being shortlisted for their Sustainable Story Award (in fact, I was briefly anxious they only included Nourish on the shortlist to reward my customer loyalty!) but honestly, I’d give them a shout-out even if I hadn’t got anywhere in the competition.

Have you ever found any brilliant book bargains in a second-hand shop? And what’s your most treasured, falling-apart copy of a book that you’d never part with?

Until next time, Happy reading! Laura