‘You may know how it feels when you nuzzle into the neck of your beloved. You lose sense of time and space. You want to inflate the reservoir of your lungs to compensate for the moments of agonizing separation. And it’s never enough.’ … More In Love with the City by Sofia Gershevitskaya

‘A misinformed member of my family once told me there was nothing in Verona apart from a fake balcony. Because Juliet and her Romeo were a figment of Shakespeare’s imagination.’ … More Verona Style Report by Liv Monaghan

‘She wanted to shut them out completely and enclose herself in this darkness. It weighed heavy around her like an enormous blanket. She breathed it in greedily, felt herself bodiless. She didn’t need to see anything because it was all there.’ … More Making Tea in the Dark by Eric Karl Anderson

‘It was 1999 when I arrived. We were starlets, hustlers, setters of scenes to a beat. Sculptors and tweakers of mood and trend. Valliant weeders of the pretentious from the authentic.’ … More Only the Visible Can Vanish by Anna Maconochie

‘If a true Londoner ever blundered into Malaya’s imagined London, he would be completely baffled. Its creator had never set foot in the British Isles, had never even been outside her little island in the Pacific. This trifling matter did not stop her from putting bits and bobs together from postcards, films, picture books, television shows, and her daydreams.’ … More Little Queen of London by Pami Estalilla

‘There was a boy I liked. He had wide cheekbones and fleshy lips, was sullen and red-eyed. He was as empty as I was. He opened his treasure chest suddenly, with no expression, and took out a pair of pants that had been painted to stand and crack like glorified leather. Soon he would be Pancho Villa, hero of outlaws and rebels!’ … More Becoming Cleopatra by Jill Pearlman