Europa Editions Book Mail 💌

This week, I was thrilled to receive a special delivery of book mail—all from the incredible Europa Editions UK.

It's always exciting to get my hands on new reads, and these editions are stunning.

Europa Editions was launched in 2005 by the team behind an Italian publishing house, all with one fabulous mission: to bring brilliant international stories to English-speaking readers. I’m a huge fan of translated books, there’s nothing better than finding an under-the-radar gem from halfway across the world. It's like a literary passport to stories that deserve way more attention than they get!

Barbara Isn't Dying Yet by Alina Bronsky:

Walter wakes up one morning to no coffee, no breakfast, and no Barbara.

Not because she’s gone, but because she’s had a fall and can’t get out of bed. His first thought? “When will she be up to make my coffee?”

Yes, this is the kind of man we’re dealing with... and yet, he is oddly endearing. As Barbara remains in bed, Walter must become the caregiver, chef, cleaner, and emotional support, roles he’s never played before.

Watching him fumble through microwave meals, social awkwardness, and a painfully rigid routine is both hilarious and deeply touching.

This book is a slow-burn character study wrapped in dry wit and tender insight. If you love a bad temper but with a heart buried under layers of grump, you’ll enjoy watching Walter's world shift and crack open.

💬 Dark humour ✅

💔 Long marriages and late-in-life growth ✅

🥣 Microwave soup and emotional soup ✅

📚 A short, sharp read that sneaks up on you ✅

Support a local and independent bookshop and buy the book here.

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The Imagined Life by Andrew Porter:

Quiet, reflective and emotionally layered, this is a story about memory, family, and the puzzle of personal identity. It's about the man you think your father is... and the man he actually was.

Steven Mills is fifty. His wife and son have left him. His life, as he knows it, has fractured, and in that vacuum comes a need for answers. At the heart of this gentle, aching book is a decades-old disappearance: his father's.

Once a respected professor, full of charisma and intellect, Steven’s father vanished in 1984, leaving twelve-year-old Steven and his mother behind with no explanation.

Now, Steven embarks on a road trip up the California coast to piece together what happened. Along the way, he revisits family, former friends, and academic colleagues, and slowly the mythology of his father begins to unravel.

What Steven thought was a childhood filled with black-and-white film nights, glamorous pool parties, and a brilliant father figure turns out to be more complicated, and more painful. Mental illness, social stigma, and repressed identity sit just beneath the surface.

✨ Thought-provoking and atmospheric

👨‍👦 A father-son bond told through memory

🌊 Set against a drifting California backdrop

🧠 Mental illness, identity, and abandonment themes

📚 A lyrical and emotionally intelligent read

This was haunting, moving, and quietly devastating. A beautifully written meditation on truth, memory, and the spaces between what we know and what we feel.

Buy the book here.

Buy the Kindle book here.

Support a local and independent bookshop and buy the book here.