Now that my 30 in 30 is over! I can finally pace myself a bit more hahaha.

Synopsis: For centuries we’ve been sold a that you need to own the land to care for it. Just 1% of the population own half of England, and this tiny landowning elite like to present themselves as the rightful custodians of the countryside. They’re even paid billions of pounds of public money to be good stewards. But what happens when they just don’t care? A small number of landowners have laid waste to some of our most treasured landscapes, leaving our forests bare, our rivers polluted, our moorlands burned, and our fenlands drained. Here Guy Shrubsole journeys all over Britain to expose the damage done to our land, and meet the communities fighting the river guardians, small farmers and trespassing activists restoring our lost wildlife. Full of rage and hope, this is a bold vision for our nation’s wild places, and how we can treat them with the awe and attention they deserve. It’s time to demand better for nature. We can start by replacing the lie of the land with a profound that any of us can care for the countryside, regardless of whether you own it.

Plot: Flora is a new mom enamored of her baby girl, Iris, even if she arrived a few weeks early. With her husband still deployed, Flora navigates the newborn stage alone. But as the sleepless nights pass in the loneliness of their half-empty home, the edges of her reality begin to blur. Just as Flora becomes convinced she is losing her mind, a surprising guest shows up: Flora’s own mother, to whom she hasn’t spoken in years. Can they mend their fraught relationship? Or is there more Flora’s mother isn’t telling her about the events that led to their estrangement? As stranger and scarier events unfold, Flora begins to suspect the house is not as empty as she once thought. She must determine: is her hold on reality slipping dangerously away? Or is she, in fact, the only thing standing between a terrifying visitor and her baby? 

Plot: Clem gets a call that is every mother’s worst nightmare. Her nineteen-year-old daughter Erin is unconscious in the hospital after a hiking trip with her friends on the remote Orkney Islands that met a horrifying end, leaving her boyfriend dead and her best friend missing. When Erin wakes, she doesn’t recognize her mother. And she doesn’t answer to her name, but insists she is someone named Nyx. Clem travels the site of her daughter’s accident, determined to find out what happened to her. The answer may lie in a dark secret in the history of the Orkneys: a woman wrongly accused of witchcraft and murder four centuries ago. Clem begins to wonder if Erin’s strange behavior is a symptom of a broken mind, or the effects of an ancient curse?

Plot: A rumour surrounds an old house. Send a letter and if it’s chosen a mysterious ticket will be delivered to you. No one is more surprised than Serin when she receives a ticket inviting her to a store that opens once a year when it rains. Here she’s offered to sell a misfortune for happiness. The problem? She has one week to find true happiness, or she’ll be trapped inside forever. Accompanied by Isha the cat, Serin searches through bookstores, hair salons and perfumeries before time runs out. All while a shadow follows quietly behind them …

Synopsis: What was life really like for women in the medieval period? How did they think about sex, death and God? Could they live independent lives? And how can we hear the stories of women from this period? Few women had the luxury of writing down their thoughts and feelings during medieval times. But remarkably, there are at least four extraordinary women who did. Those women Marie de France, a poet; Julian of Norwich, a mystic and anchoress; Christine de Pizan, a widow and court writer; and Margery Kempe, a no-good wife. Four women, writing hundreds of years ago, long before feminism existed – yet in their own ways these four, very different writers pushed back against the misogyny of the period. Each of them broke new ground in women’s writing and left us incredible insights into the world of medieval life and politics. Hetta Howes has spent her working life uncovering these women’s stories to give us a valuable and unique historical insight that challenges what we hold to be common knowledge about medieval women in Europe. Women did earn money, they could live independent lives, and they thought, loved, fought and suffered just as we do today.

Plot: An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant. What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was once more than a janitor; before he mopped floors for the mages, Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. Ten years have passed since he survived the perilous crossing that killed his family. But working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the Tiranish in power. Through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. Sciona has defined her life by the pursuit of truth, but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilization in the balance?

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Plot: Sixteen-year-old trans boy Benji is on the run from the cult that raised him—the fundamentalist sect that unleashed Armageddon and decimated the world’s population. Desperately, he searches for a place where the cult can’t get their hands on him, or more importantly, on the bioweapon they infected him with.  But when cornered by monsters born from the destruction, Benji is rescued by a group of teens from the local Acheson LGBTQ+ Center, affectionately known as the ALC. The ALC’s leader, Nick, is gorgeous, autistic, and a deadly shot, and he knows Benji’s darkest secret: the cult’s bioweapon is mutating him into a monster deadly enough to wipe humanity from the earth once and for all.  Still, Nick offers Benji shelter among his ragtag group of queer teens, as long as Benji can control the monster and use its power to defend the ALC. Eager to belong, Benji accepts Nick’s terms…until he discovers the ALC’s mysterious leader has a hidden agenda, and more than a few secrets of his own.

Plot: Jane has no interest in a husband. Eager to make her own way in the world, she accepts the governess position at Thornfield Hall. Though her new employer, Edward Rochester, has a charming air—not to mention a handsome face—Jane discovers that his smile can sharpen in an instant. Plagued by Edward’s mercurial mood and the strange wails that echo through the corridors, she grows suspicious of the secrets hidden within Thornfield Hall—unaware of the true horrors lurking above her very head. On the topmost floor, Bertha is trapped in more ways than one. After her whirlwind marriage to Edward turned into a nightmare, he locked her away as revenge for withholding her inheritance. Now his patience grows thin in the face of Bertha’s resilience and Jane’s persistent questions, and both young women are in more danger than they realize. When their only chance at safety—and perhaps something more—is in each other’s arms, can they find and keep one another safe before Edward’s dark machinations close in around them?