‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell

Pbk, Headline, £10.99

With movie award season upon us, it is worth remembering that numerous blockbuster films are based on bestselling books and Hamnet is a great case in point.

Originally published in 2020, by early 2022 it had already sold 1.6m copies and has won a plethora of awards for fiction.

The untold love story that inspired Shakespeare's Hamlet.

On a summer's day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a sudden fever.

Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches everywhere for help.

Their mother, Agnes, is more than a mile away, in the garden where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London.

Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week.

Hamnet tells the powerful story of Agnes and Will, and of the son whose life has been all but forgotten, but who inspired one of the greatest plays ever written. Forget the movie hype, read the book.

‘H is for Hawk’ by Helen Macdonald

Discover the memoir that inspired the major new film starring Claire Foy and Brendan Gleeson.

An international bestseller and prize-winning sensation, Helen Macdonald's story of adopting and raising a goshawk has soared into the hearts of millions.

As a child, Helen was determined to become a falconer, studying hard.

Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk.

She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.

Fierce and feral, Mabel's temperament mirrors Helen's state of grief, and together raptor and human discover the pain and beauty of being alive.

‘H Is for Hawk’ is a genre-defying masterpiece on grief, memory, taming and liberation and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.