A WATERSTONES 'BEST BIOGRAPHY OF 2025'
AN iPAPER BEST NEW BOOK OUT IN AUGUST 2025

'Beautifully written and deeply moving' CLARE BALDING
'An important voice' CATHY RENTZENBRINK
'I devoured it in a day . . . An open-hearted book' CLOVER STROUD

The Corner is a place where birds with broken wings will come to heal.

Looking to begin a new chapter after years on the move, Manni Coe and his partner take a risk and buy 'The Corner', a crumbling but beautiful 150-year-old farmstead tucked into a remote valley in Andalusia, surrounded by olive trees. It's perfect for their unconventional family of three: Jack, Manni and his youngest brother, Reuben. Secluded from the village by a river and in awe of the extraordinary Spanish landscape, Manni watches their land teem with mountain goats and wild boar, red deer and seasonal swallows. He begins to feel that this might be the place where each of them will find their peace.

But nothing is ever so simple. Though their hilltop village offers food, fellowship and guidance, many visitors bring their own problems and troubled pasts over the river. While Manni and Jack work to afford rebuilding The Corner, who will care for Reuben in the way that he deserves? And as Manni starts to realise that the scars from his childhood - kept hidden for all these years - might not have healed at all, a single, terrible event threatens everything the three of them have spent so long building together.

From landscape and poetry to family and friendship, Little Ruins is a heart-mending exploration of human connection, nature's gifts and the power of love in all its forms.

Little Ruins is beautifully written and deeply moving. The power of Manni's story and the depth of his soul will stay with you long after you've read the final chapter -- CLARE BALDING
I loved this book so much and devoured it in a day. All of life is contained in its beautiful story of love and grief, addiction and recovery, despair and redemption. An open-hearted book that I found deeply consoling -- CLOVER STROUD
Manni Coe is not only a beautiful human being and writer but also an important voice on trauma -- CATHY RENTZENBRINK
From the author of brother. do. you. love. me. comes an account of his move to a remote farmstead in Andalusia, where he finally confronts his past traumas. It might be hard to read, but it is also hard to forget * * iNews * *
Evocative and moving * * Daily Mail * *
Little Ruins is a brave and timely book about how buried memories from Manni's past threatened to undermine the new life he was building in Spain. This is a moving memoir that tackles difficult subjects with compassion, humour and courage -- JOANNA QUINN
"We live in a world of beauty and brutality and there, in the balance, am I," writes Manni Coe in his expansive and luminescent memoir. He takes his readers from the rugged landscapes of Andalusia to the painful recesses of lingering traumas. Deeply intimate and told with generous observation, his writing thrums with glorious verve. At its core, Little Ruins is a rallying cry for living a life truly connected to the land and within community -- ANDRÉS N. ORDORICA
Manni Coe's Little Ruins is many things: chief among which is a memoir of place, that marks trauma and evokes language alongside love and limitation. It is also a map of remembering, pairing pain with the patience of time, family, solitude and friendship -- PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA
It is a beautiful telling of love, loss and what makes a home. This is a book that finds you at the right moment; I read it in two sittings and found it so deeply consoling and moving. It left me dreaming of the Spanish sun and of deep relationships and what it means to love and be loved -- LALLY MACBETH
Although there are echoes of works such as Chris Stewart's Driving over Lemons and Peter Mayle's A Year in Provence, Little Ruins has richer textures deriving from the steadily more highly charged sequence of flashbacks . . . Coe has followed his own lights with inspiring results * * Church Times * *

Manni Coe grew up in Yorkshire and Berkshire and now lives between Andalusia and Dorset. He works as a private tour guide in both Spain and around the world, and is a registered olive oil farmer who produces extra virgin olive oil. He is the author of the Sunday Times bestselling memoir brother. do. you. love. me.

mannicoe.com | @ManniCoeWrites