Books Like Legends & Lattes

An orc warrior hangs up her greatsword to open the city's first coffee shop, and spends the book working out grind, foam and which regulars become family. Low stakes, fresh cinnamon rolls, the slow satisfaction of building something good. Read it when the world has been too loud and you want warm rooms instead.

The prequel: a young, injured Viv washes up in a sleepy coast town and ends up dusting off a dying bookshop instead of resting. Salt air, a grumpy proprietor, a baker worth lingering for, and the quiet thrill of pressing the right book on the right person. Read it when you want a holiday by the sea without leaving the sofa.

A travelling tea monk, drifting and a little lost, meets the first robot anyone's seen in centuries, and the two of them potter through the woods asking what people actually need. Mostly it's two voices talking kindly over a brewing pot. Read it when you're tired and want permission to simply be.

Sophie is turned into an old woman by a witch, shrugs, and goes to keep house for a vain, slippery wizard whose castle clanks across the moors on chicken legs. It's all bickering, doors that open onto four different places, and a fire demon who does the cooking. Read it when you want to be looked after and gently teased.

A boy crosses the wall at the edge of his sleepy English village to fetch a fallen star for a girl, and finds the star is a furious woman with a broken leg. What follows is a proper fairy tale — witches, ghostly princes, a market that appears once every nine years. Read it on a night when you want enchantment with a sharp, knowing wink.

A man returns to the Sussex lane where he grew up and remembers the year he was seven, when something old and hungry came through, and the girl down the road said her duck pond was an ocean. Small, frightening, and aching with how big the world feels when you're little. Read it when you want to be unsettled and tucked in at once.