Reading Groups Collection
The Underground Railroad |
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra |
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry |
Unreliable Memoirs |
Us |
The Vanishing Half |
Waking Lions |
When All is Said |
Where the Crawdads Sing |
Where'd You Go, Bernadette? |
The White Queen |
Wide Sargasso Sea |
The Witchfinder’s Sister |
The Year After |
A Year of Marvellous Ways |
You Don’t Know Me |
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The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
Cora
is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow
Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the
Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.
In Whitehead's razor-sharp imagining of the antebellum South, the Underground
Railroad has assumed a physical form: a dilapidated box car pulled along subterranean tracks by a steam locomotive, picking up fugitives wherever it can.
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The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
On
the day he retires, Inspector Ashwin Chopra discovers that he has inherited an elephant: an unlikely gift that could not be more inconvenient. For Chopra has
one last case to solve…
But as his murder investigation leads him across Mumbai – from its richest mansions to its murky underworld – he quickly discovers that a baby elephant may be
exactly what an honest man needs.
So begins the start of a quite unexpected partnership, and an utterly delightful new series.
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The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
When Harold Fry leaves home
one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no
hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking. To save someone else's life.
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Unreliable Memoirs by Clive James
In the first
instalment of Clive James's memoirs we follow the young Clive on his journey from boyhood to the cusp of manhood, when his days of wearing short trousers are finally behind him.
Battling with school, girls, various relatives and an overwhelming desire to be a superhero, Clive's adventures growing up in the suburbs of post-war Sydney are hair-raising, uproarious
and almost too good to be true.
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Us by David Nicholls
‘I was
looking forward to us growing old together. Me and you, growing old and dying together.’
‘Douglas, who in their right mind would look forward to that?’
Douglas Peterson understands his wife’s need to ‘rediscover herself’ now that their son is leaving home.
He just thought they’d be doing their rediscovery together.
So when Connie announces that she will be leaving too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them
closer, and win the respect of his so. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again.
The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed.
What could possibly go wrong?
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The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin
sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it's not just the shape of their daily lives that is
different as adults, it's everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities. Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she
once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the
twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters' story lines intersect?
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Waking Lions by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen
Dr Eitan Green
is a good man. He saves lives. Then, speeding along a deserted moonlit road in his SUV after an exhausting hospital shift, he hits someone. Seeing that the man, an African migrant, is
beyond help, he flees the scene. It is a decision that changes everything. Because the dead man's wife knows what happened. And when she knocks at Eitan's door the next day, tall and
beautiful, holding his wallet, he discovers that her price is not money. It is something else entirely, something that will shatter his safe existence and take him into a world of secrets
and lies he could never have anticipated.
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When All is Said by Anne Griffin
Five toasts.
Five people. One lifetime. Tonight will be the most important night in the life of 84-year-old Maurice Hannigan. Over the course of one evening, at the bar of the Rainsford House
Hotel in Ireland, he will raise five toasts to five different people. All five changed him, in their own way, and all five are now gone. Tonight, he will finally lay bare his own life,
with all its loves and triumphs, regrets and tragedies. And before the sun comes up, he must work out how his story ends.
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Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
How
long can you protect your heart? For years, rumours of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is
found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that
she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild
beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.
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Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple
Bernadette
Fox is notorious.
To Elgie Branch, a Microsoft wunderkind, she’s his talented, volatile, troubled wife. To fellow mothers at the school gate, she’s a menace. To design experts, she’s a
legendary architect. But to 15-year-old Bee, she is quite simply Mum.
Then Bernadette disappears. And Bee’s search for her mother reveals an extraordinary woman trying to find her place in an absurd world.
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The White Queen by Philippa Gregory
'The White Queen'
tells the tale of one woman's ambitious ascent to royalty during the Wars of the Roses and the unsolved mystery around her sons' imprisonment in the Tower.
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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
Antoinette
Bertha Cosway, known by her step-father’s surname, Mason, first appeared in Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. She was the Creole (white West Indian) heiress whom
Mr Rochester married on his father’s orders, and who was later to haunt Miss Eyre as the madwoman kept hidden in the attics of Thornfield Hall.
Jean Rhys has also been haunted by Antoinette. In Wide Sargasso Sea she tells the story of her childhood as the daughter of a Jamaican family ruined by the
emancipation of the slaves; of how she met and married Mr Rochester; and of their fatal honeymoon in one of the Windward Islands.
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The Witchfinder’s Sister by Beth Underdown
1645.
When Alice Hopkins' husband dies in a tragic accident, she has no choice but to return to the small Essex town of Manningtree, where her brother Matthew still
lives. But home is no longer a place of safety. Matthew has changed, and there are rumours spreading through the town: whispers of witches, and of a great book,
in which her brother is gathering women's names. To what lengths will her brother's obsession drive him? And what choice will Alice make, when she finds
herself at the very heart of his plan?
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The Year After by Martin Davies
"The night of the professor's death had been my last at
Hannesford. It was the night I vowed that I'd never wilingly set eyes on Margot Stansbury again." Home of the Stansbury family, Hannesford Court was always
Tom's sanctuary. But in the hot summer of 1914 - in the last weeks before the war - its famous tranquillity was shattered. Now, five years later, having finally
returned from fighting in France, Tom finds himself alone in London at Christmas, and a last-minute invitation from Margot Stansbury proves irresistible. Soon he
is caught up in a web of secrets and deceptions that he could never have imagined. The more he uncovers the truth behind the fateful events of that summer, the
more he realises that he never really knew Hannesford and its people at all.
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A Year of Marvellous Ways by Sarah Winman
This
is a story about Marvellous Ways, an eighty-nine-year-old woman who sits by a creek in Cornwall, waiting for a last adventure.
And it’s about Francis Drake, a
young soldier who washes up there, reeling from war and broken-hearted.
It’s about the magic in everyday life and the lure of the sea, the healing powers
of storytelling and sloe gin, and how we carry on when grief comes snapping at our heels.
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You Don’t Know Me by Imran Mahmood
An
unnamed defendant stands accused of murder. Just before the Closing Speeches, the young man sacks his lawyer, and decides to give his own defence speech. He
tells us that his barrister told him to leave some things out. Sometimes, the truth can be too difficult to explain, or believe. But he thinks that if he's
going to go down for life, he might as well go down telling the truth.
There are eight pieces of evidence against him. As he talks us through them one by one,
his life is in our hands. We, the reader - member of the jury - must keep an open mind till we hear the end of his story. His defence raises many questions -
but at the end of the speeches, only one matters - did he do it?
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Page last updated: 1st November 2023