Book Group Summary

Ordinary Saints Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin 3 November 2025 Brought up in a devout household in Ireland, Jay is now living in London with her girlfriend, determined to live day to day and not think too much about either the future or the past. But when she learns that her beloved older brother, who died in a terrible accident, may be made into a Catholic saint, she realises she must at last confront her family, her childhood and herself.
The Sparrow Mary Doria Russell 15 September 2025 “But the sparrow still falls...” the passage in Matthew’s gospel describes God’s attention to even the one sparrow that falls. The sole survivor of a crew sent to explore a new planet, Jesuit priest Emilio Sandoz, discovers an alien civilisation that raises questions about the very essence of humanity, an encounter that leads Sandoz to a public inquisition and the destruction of his faith.
My Name is Asher Lev Chaim Potok 31 July 2025 Asher’s story is one of how he becomes an individual person who is also a great artist. He tells his story in the first person emphasising on the first page that he is an observant Jew. Yet at the same time confirming that observant Jews are not artists and do not paint at all. The tension between the importance of his cultural traditions and his personal individuality as an artist are present in this beginning and this tension is a presence in his relationships, his development, and even his dreams.
Mr Golightly’s Holiday Salley Vickers 19 June 2025 Retreating to Devon one summer, Mr Golightly hopes to regain the inspiration that saw him write an international best-seller many years ago and to contemplate his own attitude to love and the effect of his only son’s terrible death. As the book unfolds we realise that there is much more to Mr Golightly. With his true identity revealed, the drama takes on another perspective, with much greater, far-reaching implications.
Black Girl from Pyongyang Monica Macias 12 May 2025 In 1979, aged seven, Monica Macias was sent from West Africa to the unfamiliar world of North Korea by her father, the President of Equatorial Guinea, to be educated under the guardianship of his ally, Kim Il Sung. Within months her father was executed in a military coup and her mother became unreachable. Effectively orphaned, she and two siblings had to make their life in Pyongyang. Reaching adulthood, she went in search of her roots.
Four Seasons in Japan Nick Bradley 27 March 2025 A gorgeously crafted book within a book about literature, identity and what it is to belong. Flo is sick of Tokyo. Suffering from a crisis in confidence, she is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up and she's in a relationship that's run its course. That’s until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left on the subway. Flo quickly realises that she needs to venture outside the pages of the book to track down its elusive author.
The Uninvited Geling Yan 20 February 2025 The Uninvited is a satirical take on contemporary market-oriented China. Dan Dong, lives in squalor in a dying factory in Beijing, where the stranded workers are notionally paid a fraction of their wages, but in fact not paid at all. With him is his angelic wife, Little Plum, who exemplifies the traditional virtues of China: patient, hardworking, loyal and honest, she seems untouched by the moral and social disintegration of Chinese society but the secrets Dan overhears at these events eventually lead him down a twisted, intrigue-laden path.
How we disappeared Jing-Jing Lee 13 January 2025 As Japanese troops sweep down Malaysia and into Singapore, a village is ransacked, leaving only two survivors and one tiny child. In a neighbouring village, seventeen-year-old Wang Di is strapped into the back of a troop carrier and shipped off to a Japanese military brothel where she is forced into sexual slavery as a ‘comfort woman’. After sixty years of silence, what she saw and experienced still haunts her.
Pachinko Min Jin Lee 30 September 2024 The story of one Korean family beginning in early 1900s Korea with Sunja, the prized daughter of a poor yet proud family, whose unplanned pregnancy threatens to shame them all. Deserted by her lover, Sunja is saved when a young tubercular minister offers to marry and bring her to Japan. So begins a sweeping saga of an exceptional family in exile from its homeland and caught in the arc of history.
Land below the wind Agnes Newton Keith 12 August 2024 This memoir by Agnes Newton Keith, first published in 1939, recounts the author's experiences living in North Borneo (now part of Malaysia) in the 1930s with her husband, who was a British colonial official. The book provides a vivid and often humorous portrayal of life in colonial Borneo, describing the local culture, natural environment, and the challenges of adapting to a new and unfamiliar world.
Strange Sally Diamond Liz Nugent 20 June 2024 The book tells the story of Sally Diamond, a woman with Down’s syndrome who lives a very sheltered life with her mother. After her mother dies in unusual circumstances, Sally goes to live with her estranged brother and his family. As she becomes exposed to the outside world for the first time as an adult, family secrets begin to emerge.
Still Life Sarah Winman 2 May 2024 A young English soldier, Ulysses Temper, finds himself in the wine cellar of a deserted Tuscan villa in 1944. There, he has a chance encounter with Evelyn Skinner, a middle-aged art historian who has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and recall long-forgotten memories of her own youth. In each other, Ulysses and Evelyn find a kindred spirit amongst the rubble of war-torn Italy, and set off on a course of events that will shape Ulysses’ life for the next four decades.
Lessons in Chemistry Bonnie Garmus 7 March 2024 Elizabeth is a 30-year-old single mother and the reluctant, “permanently depressed” star of a cooking show for housewives called Supper at Six. By training she is a research chemist, though her academic career has foundered despite her obvious talent, and as the narrative jumps back ten years we understand why.
A Wizard of Earthsea Ursula K. Le Guin 11 January 2024 Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawki>, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death’s threshold to restore the balance.
The Garden of Evening Mists Tan Twan Eng 23 November 2023 Supreme Court judge Teoh Yun Ling has retired from public service in Kuala Lumpur to return to the Cameron Highlands, where she has unfinished business: her past and that of her country. As Yun-Ling reconnects with old friends at the hill station and the tone becomes contemplative, we slip into chronologically complex flashbacks. Slowly, the narrative turns to the main dramatic event: the fascinating relationship between Yun Ling and gardener Nakamura Aritomo.
Homegoing Yaa Gyasi 5 October 2023 Two half-sisters, Effia and Esi, are born into different villages in eighteenth-century Ghana. Effia is married off to an Englishman and lives in comfort in the palatial rooms of Cape Coast Castle. Unbeknownst to Effia, her sister, Esi, is imprisoned beneath her in the castle’s dungeons, sold with thousands of others into the Gold Coast’s booming slave trade, and shipped off to America, where her children and grandchildren will be raised in slavery.
The Handfasted Wife Carol McGrath 31 August 2023 This book tell the story of the Norman Conquest from the perspective of Edith (Elditha) Swanneck, King Harold's common-law wife. Determined to protect her children’s destinies and control her economic future, she is taken to William's camp when her estate is sacked on the eve of the Battle of Hastings. She later sets out through strife-torn England to seek help from her sons in Dublin.
O Caledonia Elspeth Barker 29 June 2023 O Caledonia is a coming-of-age novel about a girl growing up in Scotland during and after WWII. Janet is an anomaly in a world where women are still supposed to aim for marriage and raising children. A world where women’s education is seen as acceptable, but not an end in itself, Janet finds herself an outsider no matter where she is: school, home, church. She has a deep empathy for living creatures, with the exception of humans who are less interesting than other animals and far more confusing.
The Wonder Emma Donoghue 11 May 2023 It is summer 1859, and Elizabeth (Lib) Wright, a nurse who worked under Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, arrives at an impoverished Irish village tasked with observing a medical phenomenon. An eleven-year-old girl, Anna O’Donnell, has reportedly taken no food for four months.
Restoration Rose Tremain 9 March 2023 Robert Merivel, son of a glove maker and an aspiring physician, finds his fortunes transformed when he is given a position at the court of King Charles II. But when he’s called on to serve the king in an unusual role, he transgresses the one law that he is forbidden to break and begins a journey to self-knowledge, which will take him down into the lowest depths of seventeenth-century society.
Silas Marner George Elliot 19 January 2023 A gentle linen weaver named Silas Marner is wrongly accused of a theft actually committed by his best friend. Silas exiles himself to a rustic village, where he finds spiritual rebirth through his unselfish love of an abandoned child.
All the Light We Cannot See Anthony Doer 19 November 2022 This novel tells of a blind French girl and a German boy as both try to survive the devastation of World War II. Marie Laure lives with her father, a master of locks, in Paris. When the Germans occupy Paris, father and daughter flee to Saint-Malo on the Brittany coast. In Germany an orphan, Werner, grows up enchanted by radio. He becomes a master at building and repairing radios, and a highly specialised tracker of the Resistance. Werner travels to Saint-Malo, where his path converges with Marie-Laure.
Beware of Pity Stefan Zweig 3 October 2022 In the only novel published in his lifetime the great Austrian writer Stefan Zweig uncovers the seed of selfishness within even the finest of feelings. In 1913 a young second lieutenant discovers the terrible danger of pity. He had no idea a young woman was disabled when he asked her to dance — his compensatory afternoon calls relieve his guilt but give her a dangerous glimmer of hope.
Caleb's Crossing Geraldine Brooks 1 September 2022 Bethia Mayfield is growing up in the settlement of Great Harbor among pioneers and puritans. Restless and curious, she yearns after an education that is closed to her by her sex. When she can she slips off to explore the island’s beaches and observe its native inhabitants. At twelve she encounters Caleb, the young son of a chieftain, and they forge a secret friendship that draws each into the alien world of the other.
Snow John Banville 21 July 2022 An aristocratic family’s secrets resurface when a parish priest is found murdered in their home. Detective Inspector St. John Strafford has been summoned to County Wexford to investigate the murder. As he delves further, he learns the Osbornes are not at all what they seem. And when his own deputy goes missing, Strafford must work to unravel the ever-expanding mystery before the community’s secrets, like the snowfall itself, threatens to obliterate everything.
Precious Bane Mary Webb 6 May 2022 Born at the time of Waterloo in the wild country of Shropshire, Prudence Sarn is a wild, passionate girl, cursed with a hare lip — her ‘precious bane’. Cursed for it, too, by the superstitious people amongst whom she lives. Prue loves two things; the remote countryside of her birth and weaver Kester Woodseaves. The tale of how Woodseaves gradually discerns Prue’s true beauty is set against the tragic drama of Prue’s brother, Gideon, a driven man who is out of harmony with the natural world.
Way To Go Alan Spence 10 March 2022 Neil McGraw’s childhood is unusual. The son of a dour Scottish undertaker, he regularly finds himself locked among the coffins in the basement. No wonder he becomes obsessed with the question of questions: What happens when you die? Turning is back on the Scottish way of life, Neil sets off to find the answer. But when his father dies, Neil comes home with his Indian wife Lila to turn the family business into something altogether different.
Klara and The Sun Kazuo Ishiguro 27 January 2022 Klara is an an Artificial Friend. Created to be a companion to a human child, Klara waits patiently in the store for the day when she is chosen. With unparalleled observational skills, she watches the passers by and the visitors to the store and learns from their behaviour. Catching the eye of a teenage girl one day, Klara hopes that her circumstances will soon change, but is warned about the inconsistency of human promises.
Blood and Gold: A Journey of Shadows Mara Menzies 9 December 2021 Jeda is a girl on the cusp of adulthood, living in Edinburgh; with a white father and a black mother she feels self-conscious and out of place. Her feelings of alienation allow the shapeshifting Shadowman to feed on her doubts and insecurities. The death of her mother, gives the Shadowman an opportunity to control Jeda through her grief and his lies but her mother’s last gift to her daughter was a box of stories. When the box is flung open the stories escape, setting in motion an incredible journey.
Hamnet Maggie O’Farrell 4 November 2021 On a summer’s day in 1596, a young girl in Stratford-upon-Avon takes to her bed with a fever. Her twin brother, Hamnet, searches for help. Why is nobody at home? Their mother, Agnes, is over a mile away where she grows medicinal herbs. Their father is working in London. Neither parent knows that Hamnet will not survive the week: a boy whose life has been all but forgotten, but whose name was given to one of the most celebrated plays ever written.
Set My Heart To Five Simon Stephenson 30 September 2021 Set My Heart To Five is the hilarious yet profoundly moving story of one android’s emotional awakening. Unhappy with his programmed job and inspired by a love of classic movies, Jared sets out on a bold mission: to use his burgeoning feelings to change the world for him and all his kind. Unfortunately, Jared intends to do this by writing his own movie, and things do not proceed according to plan…
The Noble Path Peter May 12 August 2021 An ex-British Army officer is asked to rescue a wealthy Cambodian refugee’s family from the Khmer Rouge. He demands an extravagant fee, for he expects to die, but he’s unprepared for the scale of suffering inflicted on the Cambodian people, or for the curse it brings him - a reason to live.
Sightlines Kathleen Jamie 8 July 2021 Kathleen Jamie is a Scottish poet and this is a collection of short stories about the natural world. Her interests are in geography and the movement of people; wild creatures; archaeology and how the land was formed. Her gaze swoops vertiginously from a countryside of cells beneath a hospital microscope, to killer whales rounding a headland, to the constellations of satellites that belie our sense of the remote.
Sunset Song Lewis Grassic Gibbon 3 June 2021 The novel tells the story of Chris Guthrie, born into a farming family in the north-east of Scotland as the 20th century begins. The ‘Song’ is divided into sections that follow the farming year and mirror Chris’s own life; The Unfurrowed Field, Ploughing, Drilling, Seed-time, Harvest and then, once again, The Unfurrowed Field. And this expresses the theme of the book―nothing endures. Through Chris’s eyes we witness the end of a way of life, the end of the small tenant farmer and even the end of the land.
Docherty William McIlvanney 22 April 2021 Set in Ayrshire at the start of the First World War, Docherty is a romanticised, but affectionate and moving portrayal of how a working-class man attempts to come to terms with the limitations of his life. Tam Docherty is a miner. He has a wife, a daughter and three sons, and is a fiercely-committed family man and a union activist. He argues with his father about religion, choosing to renounce the Catholicism he’d been brought up with in a close-knit community.
The Kon-Tiki Expedition Thor Heyerdahl 11 March 2021 This is the story of how Thor Heyderdahl and five other men crossed the Pacific Ocean on a balsa-wood raft in an extraordinary bid to prove Heyderdahl’s theory that the Polynesians undertook the same feat on such a craft over 1,000 years ago.
The Redbreast Jo Nesbø 28 January 2021 While monitoring neo-Nazi activities in Oslo, detective Harry Hole is inadvertently drawn into a mystery with deep roots in Norway’s dark past, when members of the government willingly collaborated with Nazi Germany. More than sixty years later, this black mark won’t wash away and and disgraced old soldiers who once survived a brutal Russian winter are being murdered one by one.
Three Strong Women Marie NDiaye and John Fletcher 17 December 2020 Three women who almost had it all... Norah thinks she has made it when she qualifies as a lawyer in Paris; Fanta works her way into a prestigious teaching job in her home city; Khady runs a cafe with her loving husband — now all she wants is a child. But family ties, broken or reasserted, will force each woman to face a journey from France to Africa or from Africa to France, taking the future out of their hands and changing their lives forever.
Set Me free Salvatore Striano 29 October 2020 Sasà grew up in Naples, never went to school and grew up with street violence and bloodshed, becoming the leader of a gang of boys mixed up with the Camorra by the age of fourteen. At the age of thirty, he was in prison and that’s when Shakespeare steps in. At Sasà’s most hopeless point he is persuaded to join the prison’s drama troupe. In Shakespeare’s Tempest, Sasà stumbles on what he needs to explain the world which has defined his own life.
The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree Shokoofeh Azar 26 August 2020 Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a 13-year-old girl whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across the country, a madness that affects both living and dead, old and young.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses Choderlos De Laclos 23 July 2020 The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons Dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. One of the most modern of 18th-century novels, this book tells the story of two libertines and the innocent characters they plot to destroy. When their plans go astray they turn against one another with disastrous consequences for everyone involved.
Red Dust Road Jackie Kay 11 June 2020 When Jackie Kay was a little girl, there came a moment when she realised her skin was a different colour from that of her mum and dad. Growing up in Glasgow, her childhood was one filled with love, and yet later, pregnant with her own son, she decided she needed to find her birth parents. So Kay set out on a remarkable journey from Scotland to Nigeria, a journey full of unexpected twists and turns that forced her to confront what it takes to find yourself, and what it is that makes us who we are.
The Woman in White Wilkie Collins 30 April 2020 “There, in the middle of the broad, bright high-road--there, as if it had that moment sprung out of the earth or dropped from the heaven — stood the figure of a solitary Woman, dressed from head to foot in white garments.” Thus young Walter Hartright first meets the mysterious woman in white in what became one of the most popular novels of the nineteenth century, with secrets, mistaken identities, surprise revelations, amnesia, locked rooms and locked asylums, plus an unorthodox villain.
Black Widow Christopher Brookmyre 5 March 2020 There is no perfect marriage. There is no perfect murder. Diana Jager is clever, strong and successful, a skilled surgeon and fierce campaigner. Yet it takes only hours for her life to crumble when her personal details are released on the internet as revenge for her writing.. Black Widow tells the potent story of a woman who thought she was too late for love, the man who falls for her ambition, and the secret selves that are poised, at any moment, to end everything.
The Long Delirious Burning Blue Sharon Blackie 16 January 2020 Cat’s safe world as a corporate lawyer in Phoenix is disintegrating, and she is diagnosed with panic disorder just before her fortieth birthday. In an attempt to regain control of her life, she faces up to her greatest fear of all: she decides to learn to fly. Several thousand miles away in Scotland, Cat’s mother Laura faces retirement and a growing sense of failure and futility. Alone for the first time in her life, she is forced to face the memories of her violent and abusive marriage.
Your Blue-Eyed Boy Helen Dunmore 14 November 2019 Simone has responsibilities: she’s a district judge with two small boys, and a husband on the verge of bankruptcy and breakdown. When she receives a letter from New York she has no idea that opening it will threaten all she has worked for and call into question her judgement. For the photographs contained in the letter remind her of things she regrets from twenty years ago, and a man she’d decided to forget.
Short Stories #5 Sam Gugliani & Claire Keegan 20 August 2019 Sally’s choices are the first two stories from Histories by Sam Gugliani and the first story from Walk the Blue Fields by Claire Keegan.).
Short Stories #4 Angela Carter & Gina Berriault 6 June 2019 Joy’s choices are The Company of Wolves by Angela Carter and The Stone Boy by Gina Berriault (taken from The Mistress, and Other Stories).
Short Stories #3 Edith Pearlman & Alice Munro 23 April 2019 Maggie’s choices are Allog by Edith Pearlman and Free Radicals by Alice Munro.
Short Stories #2 William Faulkner & Flannery O'Connor 5 March 2019 Ruth’s choices are The Evening Sun by William Faulkner and Everything That Rises Must Converge, by Flannery O'Connor.
Short Stories #1 Leo Tolstoy & William Trevor 15 January 2019 Maria’s choices are The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy and The Piano Tuner’s Wives by William Trevor.
Trumpet Jackie Kay 19 November 2018 The death of legendary jazz trumpeter Joss Moody exposes an extraordinary secret. Unbeknown to all but his wife Millie, Joss was a woman living as a man. The discovery is most devastating for their adopted son whose bewildered fury brings the press to the doorstep and sends his grieving mother to the sanctuary of a remote Scottish village.
Unbecoming Rebecca Scherm 1 October 2018 On the grubby outskirts of Paris, Grace restores bric-a-brac. She calls herself Julie, says she’s from California, and slips back to a rented room at night. In truth, home is Tennessee, where two young men have just been paroled. Both were jailed for a crime that Grace planned. The heist went bad--but not before she was on a plane to Prague, contraband in her bag. As Grace’s web of deception unravels, she begins a cat-and-mouse game worthy of Hitchcock.
Educated: A Memoir Tara Westover 20 August 2018 Born to survivalists in the mountains of Idaho, Tara Westover was seventeen the first time she set foot in a classroom, learning for the first time about pivotal world events like the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement. Her quest for knowledge transformed her, taking her over oceans and across continents, to Harvard and to Cambridge University. Only then would she wonder if she’d traveled too far, if there was still a way home.
The Wasp Factory Iain Banks 25 June 2018 Frank is a 17 year-old boy living with his eccentric hippie father on an island in Scotland. He killed his cousin Blythe when he was 8, his younger brother Paul when he was 9 and then his young cousin Esmerelda when he was 10. He isn’t planning on killing anyone else because, “this was just a stage that he went through”. His older brother Eric has just escaped from a mental facility and is on his way home.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine Gail Honeyman 24 May 2018 Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day and buys the same two bottles of vodka to drink every weekend. Eleanor Oliphant is happy. Nothing is missing from her carefully timetabled life. Except, sometimes, everything.
Midwinter Break Bernard MacLaverty 26 February 2018 This book examines the long marriage of Gerry and Stella, originally from Northern Island and now living in Scotland. Their marriage has fallen into dull routines: Stella becomes increasingly involved with the Catholic church while Gerry lives under the delusion that his wife has no idea how much he drinks. Gerry thinks they are just on a short midwinter break to Amsterdam, but Stella uses the possibility to consider leaving the marriage to fulfil a promise she made to God years ago.
The Worthing Saga Orson Scott card 15 January 2018 Through the scientific magic of Somec, a drug that allows for extended periods of ageless sleep, one can now exist past a normal life span, and, with the right technology, one can also travel immense interstellar distances to colonise worlds across the galaxy. This is the story of Jason Worthing’s journey across time and through space, and of the new world he built.
A Boy Made of Blocks Keith Stuart 30 October 2017 Alex loves his family, and yet struggles to connect with his eight-year-old autistic son Sam. The strain has pushed his marriage to the breaking point. So Alex moves in with his best friend, sleeping on the world’s most uncomfortable blow-up bed. As Alex navigates single life, long-buried family secrets, and part-time fatherhood, his son begins playing Minecraft. Sam’s imagination blossoms and the game opens up a whole new world for father and son to share.
Fried Green Tomatoes At The Whistle Stop Café Fannie Flagg 11 September 2017 This book tells the story of two women: Evelyn, who is in a middle-aged slump, and grey-headed Mrs. Threadgoode, who is telling her life story. Her tale includes two more women — tomboy Idgie and her friend Ruth who, back in the 1930s, ran a little café in Whistle Stop, Alabama, offering good coffee, barbecue, all kinds of love and laughter plus even an occasional murder.
Disobedience Naomi Alderman 7 August 2017 By the age of 32, Ronit has left London and transformed her life. She has become a cigarette-smoking, wise-cracking, New York career woman, who is in love with a married man.But when Ronit’s father dies she is called back into the very different world of her childhood, a world she thought she had left far behind. The orthodox Jewish suburb of Hendon, north London is outraged by Ronit and her provocative ways but she is forced to think again about what she has left behind.
The Birth of Venus Sarah Dunant 19 June 2017 Sarah Dunant weaves a tapestry as rich and as the cloths of Alessandra Cecchi’s merchant father, in her book about late fifteenth century Florence. This is the uplifting story of the indomitable spirit of a talented and fiercely intelligent young woman, and how her spirit finds a way in a repressive religious and masculine world. Part historical treatise and part love story, The Birth of Venus is packed with religious and visual symbolism.
The Underground Railroad Colson Whitehead 8 May 2017 The book opens on a plantation in Georgia where the slaves are treated with hellish inhumanity: girls such as Cora are raped by their fellow black slaves as well as being abused by their white masters. The underground railroad of the title is shifted from a figurative network of routes and safe houses to an actual railway complete with stations via which Cora travels from Georgia to other states, expanding the exploration of slavery, abolition, emancipation and liberty beyond the plantations.
Golden Hill Francis Spufford 1 March 2017 It’s New York in 1746; a young Mr Smith arrives with a thousand dollar bill. Smith is an Adam in the New World, announcing himself boldly as a “new man… new-made”. Across the city, among merchants, daughters, slaves, actors, rogues, runs the general murmuring: “Who is he?” Smith has no past he’s willing to talk about and, ahead of him, everything a man might do with a promissory note and four shining guineas in his pocket.
March Geraldine Brooks 16 January 2017 This is the tale of the father of the Little Women, and flicks between his present position as chaplain in the American Civil War and his past when he first visited the southern states as a pedlar in his youth. He is a staunch abolitionist with fixed views, but the book challenges these views in terms of his idealism versus practicalities of the age, and also explores where personal courage lies
Pure Andrew Miller 14 November 2016 In 1785, the year that preceded the French revolution, a young engineer, Jean-Baptiste Baratte, is given a job — to demolish an over-crowded graveyard and moribund church in Paris. This book tells the story of that demolition and of what happens to Jean-Baptiste during a momentous year.
Dissolution CJ Sansom 13 October 2016 It is 1537, a time of revolution that sees the greatest changes in England since 1066. Henry VIII has proclaimed himself Supreme Head of the Church and the country is waking up to savage new laws, rigged trials and the greatest network of informers ever seen. Under the order of Thomas Cromwell, a team of commissioners is sent through the country to investigate the monasteries. There can only be one outcome: the monasteries are to be dissolved.
A Long Way Home Saroo Brierley 22 August 2016 Aged five, Saroo Brierley was separated from his older brother and ended up alone on the streets of Calcutta. After weeks surviving alone, he was taken into an orphanage and later adopted by an Australian couple. Although happy, Saroo couldn’t help but think about the family he’d lost. Years later, he swapped the map of India on his wall for Google Earth, scouring it for landmarks he knew from his childhood. One day he saw something he recognised.
The Sunlight Pilgrims Jenni Fagan 27 June 2016 Set in a Scottish caravan park during a freak winter The Sunlight Pilgrims tells the story of a small Scottish community living through what people have begun to think is the end of times. Bodies are found frozen in the street with their eyes open, people live with economic collapse and schooling and health care are run primarily on a voluntary basis. Dylan, a refugee from panic-stricken London arrives in the caravan park in the middle of the night to begin his new life.
The Home Stretch: From Prison to Parole Erwin James 16 May 2016 Nineteen years ago, Erwin James was sentenced to life imprisonment. Over the past five years, he has written powerfully about prison life for the Guardian. The Home Stretch picks up where A Life Inside left off. It does not glorify wrongdoing, nor does it seek to justify the crimes of its author or any other prisoners. However, with one eye to the outside world The Home Stretch sets out to answer some of the questions raised by his first collection of articles.
The Drowned And The Saved Primo Levi 21 March 2016 Shortly after completing The Drowned and the Saved, Primo Levi committed suicide. There are some who argue that he killed himself because he was tormented by guilt — that he had survived the horrors of Auschwitz while others, better than he, had gone to the wall. The book explores the rationale behind the concentration camps during World War II and attempts to explain the mindset behind both the oppressors and the oppressed.
Cider with Rosie Laurie Lee 8 February 2016 The opening page of ‘Cider with Rosie’ describes the world through the eyes of a toddler; mysterious, unpredictable, worryingly large. Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past.
Not My Father’s Son: A Family Memoir Alan Cumming 14 December 2015 In ‘Not My Father’s Son’ we are brought into Alan’s world through three different timelines: ‘Now’ (the present), ‘Then’ (his childhood onwards) and various points throughout 2010 when he was filming his episode for popular BBC ancestry show ‘Who Do You Think You Are’. It’s as Alan is getting ready to investigate the mystery surrounding his maternal grandfather’s life and death, that his brother Tom drops a massive bombshell, causing Alan to revisit painful memories on both sides of his family.
This is not about me Janice Galloway 26 October 2015 Janice Galloway’s memoir of growing up in a rainy west-coast seaside town with a brusque mother and a glamorous, savage older sister does what all great books do: it makes you feel, hear and see something new to the neglect of everything else. As textures, smells and tastes are resurrected in dazzling, precise prose, you’re soon forgetting the time, or missing your stop, as you are overwhelmed by the observations of this timid child overshadowed by capricious adults.
Purge Sofi Oksanen 14 September 2015 (Pizza Express) Deep in an Estonian forest, two women, one young, one old, are hiding. Zara is a prostitute and a murderer, on the run from brutal captors - men who know how to punish a woman. Aliide offers refuge but not safety: she has her own criminal secrets - traitorous crimes of passion and revenge committed long ago, during the country's brutal Soviet years. Both women have survived lives of abuse. But this time their survival depends on revealing the one thing history has taught them to keep safely hidden: the truth.
The Adversary Emmanuel Carrere 27 July 2015 Carrere’s novel is a disturbing exploration of the mind of a ruthless killer, a man so entangled in the web of his own deceptions that it became easier to kill than confess. Every detail of Romand’s life had been built on an elaborate edifice of fabrication. How could he have lied to so many for so long without anyone suspecting him? Emmanuel Carrere’s record of his correspondence with Romand charts a horrific journey into the psyche of a killer and questions the nature of human identity human, delusion and evil.
The Blackhouse Peter May 8 June 2015 The Isle of Lewis is the most desolate and harshly beautiful place in Scotland, where the brutality of daily life is outweighed only by people’s fear of God. When a bloody murder on the island bears the hallmarks of a similar slaying in Edinburgh, police detective Fin Macleod is dispatched north to investigate. Since Fin himself was raised on the island, the investigation represents not only a journey home but a voyage into his past.
Friends in High Places Donna Leon 23 April 2015 When Commissario Guido Brunetti is visited by a young bureaucrat investigating the building of his apartment years earlier, his first reaction, like any other Venetian, is to think of whom he knows who might bring pressure to bear on the relevant government department. But when the bureaucrat rings Brunetti at work, clearly scared, and is then found dead after a fall from scaffolding, something is obviously going on that has implications greater than the fate of Brunetti’s home.
To Kill A Mockingbird Harper Lee 5 March 2015 Lawyer Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee's classic novel - a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man's struggle for justice.
The Private Patient P.D. James 15 January 2015 When the investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn books into a private clinic for the removal of a disfiguring and long-standing scar, she has every prospect of the beginning of a new life. While she lies recovering from the anaesthetic a figure stealthily enters her bedroom and within minutes Rhoda is dead. Adam Dalgliesh and his team, called in to investigate the murder find themselves confronted with problems even more complicated than the question of innocence or guilt.
Once in a house on fire Andrea Ashworth 3 December 2014 Given her start in life, it is all the more remarkable that Andrea Ashworth should have turned out to be an Oxford graduate with such a compelling memoir under her belt. Her father died when she was five, her mother was left, poor and isolated in 70s, depressed Manchester to bring up Andrea and her younger sister singlehandedly.
Five Quarters Of The Orange Joanne Harris 1 October 2014 Beyond the main street of Les Laveuses runs the Loire, smooth and brown as a sunning snake but hiding a deadly undertow beneath its moving surface. This is where Framboise, a secretive widow, plies her culinary trade at the crêperie - and lets her memory play strange games. As her memories of a disturbed childhood during the German Occupation flood back, they expose a past full of betrayal, blackmail and lies.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Dr Maya Angelou 19 August 2014 In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother’s lover.
Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother Amy Chua 17 June 2014 Chua imparts the secret behind the stereotypical Asian child's phenomenal success: the Chinese mother. Chua promotes what has traditionally worked very well in raising children: strict, Old World, uncompromising values — and the parents don't have to be Chinese. The author’s teenage daughters are undeniably accomplished, but at what emotional cost?
The Education of Harriet Hatfield May Sarton 25 March 2014 Harriet Hatfield begins a new life at the age of 60 after her lover of 30 years has died and left her comfortably well off. But when Harriet opens a book store for women in a blue-collar neighbourhood of Boston, she is viciously attacked for her lesbianism. This powerful portrayal of the shy, reserved woman’s battle becomes a moving statement about the place of the outsider in our world and the necessity of following the human heart.
How To Be a Woman Caitlin Moran 10 Feb 2014 In this book Moran is really arguing for is more female happiness. Women spend too much of their time worrying, beating themselves up, going along with time-wasting, restrictive, often expensive, sexist mores. The triumph of How To Be A Woman is that it adds to women’s confidence. It reminds us that sexism, and all that is associated with it, is not only repressive, it is tedious and stupid.
Things fall apart Chinua Achebe 8 January 2014 Okonowo is the greatest warrior alive. His fame has spread like a bushfire in West Africa and he is one of the most powerful men of his clan. But he also has a fiery temper. Determined not to be like his father, he refuses to show weakness to anyone - even if the only way he can master his feelings is with his fists. When outsiders threaten the traditions of his clan, Okonowo takes violent action. Will the great man's dangerous pride eventually destroy him?
Indecent Exposure Tom Sharpe 13 November 2013 Tom Sharpe’s second novel returned to the fertile ground of South Africa and the characters of Konstabel Els, Lieutenant Verkramp and Kommandant Van Heerden. Following from the events of `Riotous Assembly’, this follows the three leads as they unintentionally wreak havoc across the peaceful suburbs of Zululand.
Cutting for Stone Abraham Verghese 9 October 2013 Marion and Shiva Stone, born in a mission hospital in Ethiopia in the 1950s, are twin sons of an illicit union between an Indian nun and British doctor. Bound by birth but with widely different temperaments they grow up together, in a country on the brink of revolution, until a betrayal splits them apart. But fate has not finished with them.
The Other Hand Chris Cleave 28 August 2013 The Other Hand tells the story of two women and how their lives converge. Little Bee is a 16-year-old Nigerian refugee who has seen her entire village and family brutally murdered. Sarah is a 30-something suburbanite juggling career and family. The two women met once on a beach in Africa and something happened which changed both their lives, linking them forever.
Tiny Sunbirds Far Away Christie Watson 19 July 2013 Tiny Sunbirds Far Away gives us a fascinating look at life through the innocent eyes of a twelve year old girl growing up in a small village in Nigeria. Abruptly uprooted from all the modern comforts of life as she knew it, Blessing, her mother and 14 year old brother are forced to move to the rural village of her mother’s newly converted Muslim family.
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood Alexandra Fuller 4 June 2013 Fuller weaves together painful family tragedy with a wider understanding of the ambivalence of being part of a separatist white farming community in the midst of Black African independence. The book focuses on Fuller’s early years in war-torn Zimbabwe, growing up on farm where her father is away most nights fighting “terrorists” and stripping a rifle takes precedence over school lessons.
Year of Wonders Geraldine Brooks 16 April 2013 In 1666, plague swept through London, driving the King and his court to Oxford, and Samuel Pepys to Greenwich, in an attempt to escape contagion. The north of England remained untouched until, in a small community of leadminers and hill farmers, a bolt of cloth arrived from the capital. The tailor who cut the cloth had no way of knowing that the damp fabric carried with it bubonic infection.
House of the spirits Isabel Allende 4 March 2013 Spanning four generations, Isabel Allende's magnificent family saga is populated by a memorable, often eccentric cast of characters. Together, men and women, spirits, the forces of nature, and of history, converge in an unforgettable, wholly absorbing and brilliantly realised novel that is as richly entertaining as it is a masterpiece of modern literature.
Life of Pi Yann Martel 14 January 2013 After the tragic sinking of a cargo ship, a solitary lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue Pacific. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan and a 450-pound Royal Bengal tiger. This book is stunningly original and chilling - a real masterpiece.
Regeneration Pat Barker 10 December 2012 Army psychiatrist William Rivers is treating shell-shocked soldiers in Edinburgh and under his care are the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen. Rivers’ job is to make the men in his charge healthy enough to fight. Yet the closer he gets to mending his patients’ minds the harder becomes every decision to send them back to the horrors of the front.
The Temple of My Familiar Alice Walker 23 October 2012 The Temple of My Familiar follows a cast of interrelated characters, most of African descent, and each representing a different ethnic strain—ranging from diverse African tribes to the mixed bloods of Latin America—that contribute to the black experience in America.
Angle of Repose Wallace Stegner 22 August 2012 The novel tells the story of Lyman Ward, a retired professor of history and author of books about the Western frontier, who returns to his ancestral home in the Sierra Nevada. Wheelchair-bound with a crippling bone disease, Ward embarks nonetheless on a search to rediscover his grandmother, no long dead, who made her own journey to Grass Valley nearly a hundred years earlier.
Red Dog Louis de Bernieres 19 June 2012 Red Dog is a beautiful novella, based on the true story of a dog that travelled around Australia in the 70s, befriending everyone he met. It describes how the love for such a character can bring people together, and make them work together in times of loss and despair. The overall message is truly uplifting.
Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Jeanette Winterson 17 April 2012 This book is the story of a life’s work to find happiness. It is a book full of stories: about a girl locked out of her home, sitting on the doorstep all night; about a tyrant in place of a mother, who has two sets of false teeth and a revolver in the duster drawer, waiting for Armageddon; about growing up in an northern industrial town.
Midnight’s Children Salman Rushdie 28 February 2012 Born at the stroke of midnight at the exact moment of India’s independence, Saleem Sinai is a special child. However, this coincidence of birth has consequences he is not prepared for: telepathic powers connect him with 1,000 other ‘midnight’s children’ all of whom are endowed with unusual gifts. Inextricably linked to his nation, Saleem’s story is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirrors the course of modern India at its most impossible and glorious.
An Imaginary Life David Malouf 10 January 2012 In the first century AD, Ovid, the most urbane and irreverent poet of imperial Rome, was banished to a remote village on the edge of the Black Sea. Marooned on the edge of the known world, exiled from his native tongue, Ovid depends on the kindness of barbarians who converse with the spirit world. But then he becomes the guardian of a still more savage creature, a feral child who has grown up among deer.
Whisky Galore (Pitlochry Theatre) Compton Mackenzie 12 November 2011 1943: the curse of rationing has visited the remote Hebridean islands of Little Todday and Great Todday and the thirsty islanders have all but run out of uisge beatha - the water of life. When the S.S. Cabinet Minister runs aground with fifty thousand cases of whisky aboard, the islanders rush to take advantage of the unexpected bounty. But then the officious Captain Waggett, the English commander of the Home Guard, learns of the illicit salvage operation – and is ordered to confiscate the liquor!
The Comfort of Things Daniel Miller 29 September 2011 Daniel Miller and his co-researcher Fiona Parrott set off on a 17-month investigation into the lives, loves and domestic interiors of 30 households in a randomly chosen London street. That word “household” is important. For although Miller’s research has all the trappings of an ethnographic community study, he is quick to emphasise that there is no community to be found in the street he studied.
And The Land Lay Still James Robertson 24 August 2011 The story of a nation. James Robertson’s breathtaking novel is a portrait of modern Scotland as seen through the eyes of natives and immigrants, journalists and politicians, drop-outs and spooks, all trying to make their way through a country in the throes of great and rapid change. It is a moving, sweeping story of family, friendship, struggle and hope.
At the Loch of the Green Corrie Andrew Greig 29 June 2011 ‘I should like you to fish for me at the Loch of the Green Corrie’ MacCaig commanded months before his death. ‘Go to Lochinver and ask for a man named Norman MacAskill - if he likes you he may tell you where it is. If you catch a fish, I shall be delighted. If you fail, then looking down from a place in which I do not believe, I shall be most amused.’ The quest sounds simple and irresistible, but the loch is as demanding as it is beautiful.
Brooklyn Colm Tóibín 5 May 2011 It is Ireland in the early 1950s and for Eilis Lacey, as for so many young Irish girls, opportunities are scarce. So when her sister arranges for her to emigrate to New York, Eilis knows she must go, leaving behind her family and her home for the first time. Arriving in a crowded lodging house in Brooklyn, Eilis can only be reminded of what she has sacrificed as she takes tentative steps towards friendship.
Prodigal Summer Barbara Kingsolver 8 March 2011 Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, wanders the mountain trails and watches a den of coyotes, while becoming involved with a young hunter; Lusa Maluf Landowski, who loves moths, finds herself mourning her farmer husband, surrounded by his relations and their children.
Middlesex Jeffrey Eugenides 18 January 2011 Middlesex tells the mesmerising story of a near-mythic Greek American family and the “roller-coaster ride of a single gene through time”. The odd but utterly believable story of Cal Stephanides, and how this 41-year-old hermaphrodite was raised as Calliope, is at the tender heart of this long-awaited second novel from Jeffrey Eugenides.
The Winter of Our Discontent John Steinbeck 23 November 2010 Steinbeck’s last great novel focuses on the theme of success and what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family’s past fortune, and his father’s loss of the family wealth, the hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, characterises successin every era and in all its forms as robbery, murder, even a kind of combat, operating under ‘the laws of controlled savagery.’
Gate to Women’s Country Sheri S. Tepper 5 Oct 2010 This is the story of the struggles that a society headed by women face in a post-nuclear holocaust Earth. Inside the cities that have been established the women live; governing and working at their chosen trade. Separated by the city walls are the garrisons, where Spartan type male warriors are taken from their mothers at the age of five to train in the ways of war. The contrasts between the two societies are great.
Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier 11 Aug 2010 Max de Winter brings his new bride to Manderley, the home he shared with his beautiful first wife Rebecca, before her untimely death. Rebecca's presence still seems to permeate Manderley, haunting the new Mrs de Winter and sapping her confidence. The housekeeper Mrs Danvers who loved Rebecca and resents her place being 'usurped' feeds the young brides insecurities at every opportunity and makes her doubt her husbands love for her.
The Wrong Boy Willy Russell 16 June 2010 Teenager Raymond Marks has not had a charmed life; with a struggling mother and doting Sartre-fan grandmother. Fifteen minutes of potential glory when he saved a boy from drowning are cruelly compromised when Raymond becomes “the precocious pervert, the evil influence, the filthy little beast”. Eventually packed off to Grimsby at the suggestion of his despised Uncle, Raymond pours out his life’s woes in a series of missives to his idol, one-time Smiths’ star Morrissey.
The Ode Less Travelled Stephen Fry 28 April 2010 Stephen Fry believes that if you can speak and read English you can write poetry. Stephen, who has long written poems, and indeed has written long poems, for his own private pleasure, invites you to discover the incomparable delights of metre, rhyme and verse forms.
Poetry Various 3 March 2010
Lottery: The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Perry L. Crandall Patricia Wood 13 January 2010 Perry L. Crandall knows what it's like to be an outsider. With an IQ of 76, he's an easy mark. Before his grandmother died, she armed Perry well with what he'd need to know: the importance of words and writing things down, and how to play the lottery. Most importantly, she taught him whom to trust, a crucial lesson for Perry when he wins the multimillion-dollar jackpot. As his family descends, moving in on his fortune, he has a lesson for them: never ever underestimate Perry L. Crandall.
The Merchant of Venice William Shakespeare 28 October 2009 Bassanio, a feckless young Venetian, asks his wealthy friend, the merchant Antonio, for money to finance a trip to woo the beautiful Portia in Belmont. Reluctant to refuse his friend (to whom he professes intense love), Antonio borrows the money from the Jewish moneylender. If he reneges on the deal, Shylock jokingly demands a pound of his flesh. When all Antonio's ships are lost at sea, Shylock calls in his debt, and the love and laughter of the first scenes of the play threaten to give way to death and tragedy.
Corvus: A Life with Birds Esther Woolfson 9 Sept 2009 Esther Woolfson has been fascinated by corvids, the bird group that includes crows, magpies and ravens, since her daughter rescued a fledgling rook sixteen years ago. That rook - named Chicken - has lived with the family ever since. Other birds have also taken their place in the household - a magpie, starling, parrot and doves. But above all, it has been the corvids that she has formed the closest attachments with, amazed by their intelligence, personality and capacity for affection.
The Golden Notebook Doris Lessing 29 July 2009 Anna Wulf is a young novelist with writer's block. Divorced, with a young child, and disillusioned by unsatisfactory relationships, she feels her life is falling apart. Fearing the onset of madness, she records her experiences in four coloured notebooks. The black notebook addresses her problems as a writer; the red her political life; the yellow her relationships and emotions; and the blue becomes a diary of everyday events. But it is the fifth notebook, the Golden Notebook, which is the key to her recovery and renaissance.
By the Shores of Silver Lake & The Long Winter Laura Ingalls Wilder 10 June 2009 By the Shores of Silver Lake is the fourth book by Laura Ingalls Wilder in The Little House On The Prairie series and one of the least well known, it tells the story of the Ingalls family journey from Plum Creek to Dakota Territory. The Long Winter is the fifth book in Laura Ingalls Wilder's slightly fictionalized account of the life of pioneers in the 1860-80 period. This is an account of one of the toughest winters on record, as it was lived by a family with nothing to rely on but themselves and their neighbours.
The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde 22 April 2009 Enthralled by his own exquisite portrait, Dorian Gray exchanges his soul for eternal youth and beauty. Influenced by his friend Lord Henry Wotton, he is drawn into a corrupt double life, indulging his desires in secret while remaining a gentleman in the eyes of polite society. Only his portrait bears the traces of his decadence.
Love In A Cold Climate Nancy Mitford 4 March 2009 In one of the wittiest novels of them all, Nancy Mitford casts a finely gauged net to capture perfectly the foibles and fancies of the English upper class. Set in the privileged world of the county house party and the London season, the story of coldly beautiful Polly Hampton and her aristocratic parents is is a comedy of English manners between the wars by one of the most individual, beguiling and creative users of the language.
Boy in the Striped Pyjamas John Boyne 14 January 2009 Nine year old Bruno knows nothing of the Final Solution and the Holocaust. He is oblivious to the appalling cruelties being inflicted on the people of Europe by his country. All he knows is that he has been moved from a comfortable home in Berlin to a house in a desolate area where there is nothing to do and no-one to play with until he meets Shmuel, a boy who lives a strange parallel existence on the other side of the adjoining wire fence
Glass of Blessings Barbara Pym 27 November 2008 Blessed with money, position, and marital stability, Wilmet Forsyth lives in the heart of London with her husband and mother-in-law and tries to spice up her staid life by imagining the possibility of romance coming to her from handsome clergymen or lonely bachelor friends.
A Quiet Belief in Angels R.J. Ellory 29 October 2008 Joseph Vaughan’s life has been dogged by tragedy. Growing up in the 1950s, he was at the centre of series of killings of young girls in his small rural community. The girls were taken, assaulted and left horribly mutilated. Only after a full ten years did the nightmare end when the one of his neighbours is found hanging from a rope, but it seems that the real murderer still lives and is killing again.
Short Stories 10 September 2008 The Stone Boy - Gina Berriault The Dead - James Joyce Notes on Nationalism - George Orwell Holy - Orson Scott Card Roman Fever - Edith Wharton Event Horizon & Of fugues and Fireflies - langsandy & sadi_ranson_polizzotti
Short Stories Various 23 July 2008 (Hamiltons)
Middlemarch George Elliot 4 June 2008 Middlemarch is a complex tale of idealism, disillusion, profligacy, loyalty and frustrated love. This penetrating analysis of the life of an English provincial town during the time of social unrest prior to the Reform Bill of 1832 is told through the lives of Dorothea Brooke and Dr Tertius Lydgate and includes a host of other characters who illuminate the condition of English life in the mid-nineteenth century.
Sidetracked Henning Mankell 23 April 2008 “The Swedish summer-time is too beautiful and too brief for something like this to happen.” A young girl commits self-immolation, a former government minister is killed with an axe and scalped; these are the two brutal facts that confront Inspector Kurt Wallander as he prepares for his holiday. As the Swedish midsummer approaches there is no escaping from the darkness of society.
The Whale Caller Zakes Mda 18 March 2008 After years of wandering along the coasts of two Oceans, a sometime fisherman returns home to "The Whale Coast" where tourists flock with cameras, video recorders, dour expressions and money. The fisherman, who once caused a schism in his local church, is also enchanted by the whales. That attraction manifests itself as a spellbinding story - the creation of the Hermanus Penitent.
Half of a Yellow Sun Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie 23 January 2008 The sad story of the Biafran War is told through the intersecting lives of people in the country - Olanna and Kainene, feisty twin sisters from a privileged background, Richard, an Englishman who grows to love Africa (and Kainene) and Ugwu, the bright, vulnerable houseboy of Olanna. There are many other strong characters who make the sad story of civil conflict come alive.
Intuition Allegra Goodman 11 December 2007 This intimate portrait of life in a research institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, revolves around a scientific mystery: the groundbreaking discovery of a virus that fights cancer. Cliff, responsible for the discovery, is on the verge of dismissal when his tumour-ridden mice exhibit stunning rates of remission; meanwhile, Cliff's colleague and former girlfriend, spurred by personal and professional jealousy, begins to harbour suspicions about his lab work.
Little Black Book of Stories A.S. Byatt 16 October 2007 In these five short stories Byatt displays her talent for making the magical out of the mundane. Byatt takes a simple cloth and embroiders it until she has a tale woven richly with mythology and allegory, and strung with references classical and modern. Her well-structured stories are deceptively simple and when you look again, the focus of the stories seem to have shifted slightly and the different facets become apparent.
Keeping Faith Jodi Picoult 4 September 2007 33-year-old Mariah discovers that her husband, Colin, is having an affair. Years ago, his cheating drove her to attempt suicide and Colin had her briefly committed to an institution. Now Mariah's facing divorce and depression when her eight-year-old daughter, Faith, acquires an imaginary friend. Soon this friend is telling the girl how to bring her grandmother back from the dead and as Faith manifests stigmata, doctors are astounded, and religious controversy ensues.
TransAmerica Dir: Duncan Tucker 24 July 2007 TransAmerica, a small but rich movie about Bree — formerly Stanley — a pre-operative male-to-female transexual awaiting gender-reassignment surgery who learns she has a wayward teenage son named Toby. When her therapist strongarms Bree into facing her past, she bails Toby out of jail and they end up on a road trip across the country. Such a premise could feel forced, but the script and performances make it persuasive and natural.
Digging to America Anne Tyler 4 June 2007 In Digging to America, Anne Tyler tells a simple story of two families: the Donaldsons and the Yazdans who meet at an airport both awaiting a baby both families have adopted from Korea. Strangers until that evening, they are destined to begin a friendship that will span their adoptive daughters’ childhoods.
Istanbul: Memories of a City Orhan Pamuk 19 April 2007 Turkish novelist Pamuk presents a breathtaking portrait of a city, an elegy for a dead civilization and a meditation on life’s complicated intimacies. The author, born in 1952 into a rapidly fading bourgeois family in Istanbul, spins a masterful tale, moving from his fractured extended family, all living in a communal apartment building, out into the city and encompassing the entire Ottoman Empire.
The French Dancer’s Bastard Emma Tennant 7 March 2007 Adèle Varens is only eight when she comes to Thornfield Hall to live with the forbidding Mr Rochester, who may or may not be her father. She longs to return to the glitter of Paris and to the mother who has been lost to her. Her loneliness would be complete were it not for the young governess who arrives to care for her, although Adèle at first regards her with suspicion and dislike.
Poetry Readings Various 17 January 2007
Shalimar the Clown Salman Rushdie 14 November 2006 The central tragedy of the story is the transformation of Kashmir from a Garden of Eden into a ravaged moonscape populated by cold-blooded, fanatic, malevolent marauders. The story of Shalimar and Boonyi echoes the tragedy on a personal level, as each proceeds toward their respective dooms after Boonyi eats from the forbidden fruit of modernity and Shalimar the Clown becomes an Islamist terrorist by way of passage to the execution of his personal terrorist agenda.
Rum Punch Elmore Leonard 10 October 2006 A combination of coincidence and choice connects the fates of Jackie Burke, a 44-year-old, thrice-married stewardess, bail bondsman Max Cherry, overweight and in his 50s, and brash young gun dealer Ordell Robbie, in Miami. When Jackie is caught bringing cash into the U.S. from the Bahamas for Ordell, she agrees to cooperate with federal and state agents to catch him in a sting operation.
The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini 7 September 2006 (Pizza Express) The Kite Runner is an illiterate Afghan boy with an uncanny instinct for predicting exactly where a downed kite will land. Set in the city of Kabul in the early 1970s, The Kite Runner tells the gripping story of a boyhood friendship destroyed by jealousy, fear, and a ruthless evil that transcends mere politics. Running parallel to this personal narrative of loss and redemption is the story of modern Afghanistan and of Amir’s equally guilt-ridden relationship with the war-torn city of his birth.
Small Island Andrea Levy 25 July 2006 It is 1948, and England is recovering from war. Queenie Bligh’s neighbours do not approve when she agrees to take in Jamaican lodgers, but Queenie doesn’t know when her husband will return, or if he will come back at all. Small Island explores a point in England’s past when the country began to change and addresses weighty themes of empire, prejudice, war and love, with a lightness of touch.
The Rotter’s Club Jonathan Coe 30 May 2006 Against a distant backdrop of strikes, terrorist attacks and growing racial tension, a group of young friends inherit the editorship of their school magazine and begin to put their own distinctive spin onto events in the wider world. A zestful comedy of personal and social upheaval that captures a fateful moment in British politics - the collapse of ‘Old Labour’ - and imagines its impact on the topsy-turvy world of the bemused teenager.
Life Along The Silk Road Susan Whitfield 4 April 2006 In the first 1,000 years AD, merchants, missionaries, monks, mendicants and military men travelled on the vast network of Central Asian tracks that became known as the Silk Road. Linking Europe, India and the Far East, the route passed through many countries and many settlements, from the splendid city of Samarkand to tiny desert hamlets. This book recounts the lives of some of these people and the towns in which they lived.
Liza’s England Pat Barker 28 February 2006 Set in 1984-85, the book deals with the final year in the life of its protagonist, Liza Wright, who is the same age as the century, almost to the second. Liza survives a divorce, bringing up children by herself, and a war, only to see the community disintegrate in the name of “progress”.
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe C.S. Lewis 23 January 2006 To avoid the threat of bombings in London, the four Pevensie children are sent to stay with a wealthy, eccentric professor in the country. But strange things start to happen when Lucy finds a wardrobe during a game of hide-and-seek -- when she climbs in, she finds a snowy woodland and a friendly faun. Her siblings don't believe her... until peevish Edmund also ventures through, and encounters the beautiful but evil White Witch.
A Widow For One Year John Irving 30 November 2005 Tracing the complicated life of novelist Ruth Cole, this book is divided into three parts. The book views Ruth’s life and relationships at age four in 1958 then focuses on Ruth’s book tour in Europe while coming to grips with a poor love life and considering marriage to an older man. Part 3 traces Ruth’s short widowhood and her marriage to the Dutch policeman who solves the murder to which she was a witness.
Persuasion Jane Austen 20 October 2005 (Pizza Express) Anne Elliot seems to have given up on present happiness and has resigned herself to living off her memories. Seven years earlier she complied with duty: persuaded to view the match as imprudent and improper, she broke off her engagement to a naval captain with neither fortune, ancestry, nor prospects. However, when peacetime arrives and brings the Navy home, and Anne encounters Captain Wentworth once more, she starts to believe in second chances.
Headlong Michael Frayn 31 August 2005 Martin Clay, a young would-be art historian, sees a chance of a lifetime: to perform a great public service, and to make his professional reputation. To obtain the treasure he thinks he has identified involves him setting up a classic sting and risking everything that is valuable to him.
We Need to Talk About KEVIN Lionel Shriver 19 July 2005 Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian’s son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a prison for young offenders in upstate New York. Telling the story of Kevin’s upbringing, Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters.
Heart of Midlothian Sir Walter Scott 8 June 2005 1736 and the people of Edinburgh are infuriated by the actions of John Porteous, Captain of the Guard. His death reprieved by a distant monarch they resolve to take their own revenge. At the centre of the story is Edinburgh’s forbidding Tolbooth prison, known by all as the Heart of Midlothian.
The Third Policeman Flann O’Brien 27 April 2005 This novel is about a hilarious and terrifying murder case. You feel at many times dislocated and trapped in a surreal comedy, but the underlying ideas of the story are quite serious. In a sense, the murder is over and solved in the first sentence. The rest of the novel is a contemplation of the psychological and metaphysical consequences of it.
Cries Unheard: The Story of Mary Bell Gitta Sereny 10 March 2005 This book pieces together the damaged life of Mary Bell, who aged 11 was tried and convicted of manslaughter after the death of two young boys. Only as an adult has she been able to realise the moral enormity of her crimes. The story of her life forces the reader to consider society’s responsibility for children's crime.
Brideshead Revisited Evelyn Waugh 8 February 2005 Brideshead Revisited looks back to the golden age before the Second World War. It tells the story of Charles Ryder's infatuation with the Marchmain family and the rapidly disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recgonize his spiritual and social distance from them.
Thursbitch Alan Garner 7 December 2004 In 1755, Jack Turner is found frozen to death near his home in Thurbitch Valley, a woman's single footprint found beside him. 250 years later, Ian and Sal think they see and hear Jack Turner and the two of them find themself thrust into an ancient story of the moors.
Walden Henry David Thoreau 2 November 2004 In 1845, Thoreau began a new life alone, in a rough hut he built himself on the shore of Walden Pond. Walden is Thoreau’s classic autobiographical account of this experiment in solitary living, his refusal to play by the rules of hard work and the accumulation of wealth and the freedom it gave him.
A History of God Karen Armstrong 30 September 2004 The idea of a single divine being - God, Yahweh, Allah - has existed for over 4000 years. In this account of the evolution of belief Armstrong examines Western society’s unerring fidelity to this idea of one God and the many conflicting convictions it engenders.
The Soldier’s Return Melvyn Bragg 10 August 2004 When Sam Richardson returns from World War II to Wigton in Cumbria, he finds little has changed, as far as his own limited prospects go. In his absence, though, his young family has changed immensely, and Sam struggles to adjust to life in peacetime.
Pharos Alice Thompson 22 June 2004 A young woman is washed up on the shores of a remote lighthouse island off the coast of Scotland. She does not know who she is or how she got there. The keepers of the lighthouse take her in and feed and clothe her. But this mysterious woman is not all that she seems, and neither is the island.
K-Pax Gene Brewer 25 May 2004 A man is detained at Grand Central Station, New York, claiming that his name is Prot and that he has come from the planet K-Pax. He is turned over to psychiatrist Dr. Mark Powell who starts to doubt his own judgement and begins to wonder whether Prot is indeed from a distant planet.
Northern Lights Philip Pullman 1 April 2004 In this first part of the Dark Materials trilogy, Lyra’s friend Roger disappears. She and her daemon, Pantalaimon, determine to find him. Their quest leads them to the bleak splendour of the North where a team of scientists is conducting unspeakably horrible experiments.
The Old Curiosity Shop Charles Dickens 25 February 2004 Nell’s grandfather falls into poverty, under the control of Mr Quilp, through his gambling debts. The novel harks back to a time of innocence unlike the industrial landscape of the Midlands through which Nell has passed.
The Seville Communion Arturo Pérez-Reverte 6 January 2004 When the Pope receives an anonymous plea to save a church slated for demolition, the Vatican sends Father Lorenzo Quart to investigate a diverse collection of people fighting to save the building. Once in Seville, Father Quart finds himself collar-deep in intrigue.
The Little Friend Donna Tartt 18 November 2003 The story of a young girl with an overactive imagination who tries to solve the murder of her brother who died 12 years earlier. It's set in the deep south of the USA and is alive with gothic/biblical imagery and an amazing assortment of vivid characters.
Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë 30 September 2003 The saga of two Yorkshire families in the remote Pennine Hills. The book has been interpreted as an historical romance, a ghostly thriller, a psychological love-story, a religious allegory and a nature poem. This is the author's only novel.
Chronicle of a Death Foretold Gabriel Garcia Márquez 12 August 2003 Setting out to reconstruct a murder that took place 27 years earlier, this chronicle moves backwards and forwards in time, through the contradictions of memory and moments lost in time. Its irony gives the book the nuances of a political fable.
The Magic Toyshop Angela Carter 17 June 2003 Melanie walks naked in the midnight garden whereupon omens of disaster swiftly follow, transporting Melanie from rural comfort to London, to the Magic Toyshop. Using magic and myth, this is a story of sexual awakening.
The Company of Wolves Angela Carter 30 April 2003 This film was a collaboration between director Neil Jordan and feminist author Angela Carter, based upon the classic children's story ‘Little Red Riding Hood’, but is filled with dark, menacing, and sexual imagery, all of which are used in the screenplay to create this stunning piece of gothic horror.
The Left Hand of Darkness Ursula LeGuin 18 March 2003 While on a mission to the planet Gethen, earthling Genly Ai is sent by leaders of the nation of Orgoreyn to a concentration camp from which the exiled prime minister of the nation of Karhide tries to rescue him.
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie Muriel Spark 28 January 2003 (Lyceum Theatre) She was a schoolmistress with a difference. Proud, cultured, romantic, her ideas were progressive, even shocking. And when she decided to transform a group of young girls under her tutelage into the “crème de la crème” of Marcia Blaine school, no one could have predicted the outcome.
The Child That Books Built Francis Spufford 10 December 2002 Spufford was a voracious reader as a child, finding an escape from his family’s problems behind the printed lines on a page. While writing this memoir of childhood reading, he reread all the books he had loved and attempted to find out just why he had read so catatonically, and how it had shaped him.
Heavenly Creatures Peter Jackson (Dir.) 29 October 2002 In 1954 two teenage girls brutally murdered one of the their mothers in what must be the most sensational murder in New Zealand history. “Heavenly Creatures” tells the strange story of these two girls and their unique relationship.
Iris John Bayley 24 September 2002 John Bayley and Iris Murdoch have been married for more than 45 years. She has shown the degenerative effects of Alzheimer’s Disease for the last four years. He chronicles a shared experience that can no longer be shared except with those outside of it, as he copes, rather than grieves.
The Sea, The Sea Iris Murdoch 24 September 2002 Charles, a retired theatre director, retires to a small village where he encounters Hartley, the woman he loved years ago when they were both children, and who is now happily married to a man Charles despises.
Little Infamies Panos Karnezis 6 August 2002 This collection comes from Greek author Panos Karnezis, his subject matter is ordinary tales about ordinary people, and like Chekhov he manages to make the seemingly ordinary into something fascinating. Karnezis writes about the people in a poor, isolated Greek village with a series of connected tales.
The Moonstone Wilkie Collins 19 June 2002 (Pizza Express) The moonstone is a yellow diamond of unearthly beauty brought from India and given to Rachel Verrinder as an eighteenth birthday present, but the fabled diamond carries with it a terrible curse.
Driving Over Lemons Chris Stewart 26 March 2002 Chris Stewart, skilled sheep-shearer and sometime Genesis drummer, took one look at the the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, and decided that's where he wanted to be. This is the story of his adventures coming to terms with the terrain, the lifestyle and, of course, the locals.
Quarantine Jim Crace 5 February 2002 Four travellers enter the Judean desert to fast and pray for their lost souls. They encounter the evil merchant, Musa, who holds them in his tyrannical power. Yet there is also another, a faint figure in the distance, fasting for 40 days, a Galilean who they say has the power to work miracles.
A Wild Herb Soup Emilie Carles 11 December 2001 Emilie Carles was born in 1900 in south eastern France. An ardent pacifist all her life, in later years she became a fierce environmentalist and protected her home, the idyllic Claree valley, from the hands of developers. This enchanting autobiography tells of a world that has largely disappeared.
Girl With a Pearl Earring Tracy Chevalier 30 October 2001 The Dutch painter Vermeer has remained one of the great enigmas of 17th-century Dutch art. The mysterious portrait of the anonymous Girl with a Pearl Earring has fascinated art historians for centuries, and it is this magnetic painting that lies at the heart of Tracy Chevalier’s novel.
The Kitchen God’s Wife Amy Tan 11 September 2001 Pre-Revolutionary China to present day America. It covers the themes of cultural differences, the problems of exile, the generation gap and above all the special relationship between mothers and daughters.
From the Holy Mountain William Dalrymple 7 August 2001 In the spring of 587 AD, two monks set off on an extraordinary journey that would take them in an arc across the entire Byzantine world, from the shores of the Bosphorus to the sand dunes of Egypt. More than a thousand years later William Dalrymple set off to retrace their footsteps.
Age of Iron J.M. Coetzee 26 June 2001 Set in South Africa, this is the story of a retired university teacher who learns, in the same day, that she is dying of cancer and that she has a vagrant in her yard. The story describes the contrast between the dreams of the old woman and the political and social situation around her.