Reading Groups Collection
The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry | Visible World | The Vows of Silence | We Are all Made of Glue | When God Was a Rabbit | Where There's a Will | The White Woman on the Green Bicycle | Wolf Hall | The Year After | Back to the List
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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The Visible World by Mark Slouka
As a boy growing up in New York, his parents' memories of their Czech homeland
seem to belong to another world, as distant and unreal as the fairy tales his
father tells him. It is only as an adult, when he makes his own journey to
Prague, that he is finally able to piece together the truth of his parent' past:
what they did, who his mother loved, and why they were never able to forget.
'The novel skilfully conveys the irony of wartime love stories, and ends with plot twists wring out pure romance, in the style of Milan Kundera and Michael Ondaatje. This is a deft mix of history, memoir and fiction.' - Sunday Telegraph
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The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill
Gunmen
are terrorising young women in the Cathedral town of Lafferton. What - if
anything - links the apparently random murders? Is the marksman with a rifle the
same person as the killer with a handgun?
Detective Chief Superintendent Simon Serrailler falls back on well-tried police
methods such as questioning neighbours and house-to-house searches. Simon has
been promoted and is now with the Serious Incident Flying Taskforce, but he is
still at heart a loner and these chilly murders are on his home territory. He
tries to stay one step ahead of the killer, to prevent each new outrage. And he
tries to think himself into the gunman's head...
Meanwhile his sister, Cat, has returned with her husband and children from
Australia, and Simon is once again sucked into family life at her welcoming
farmhouse. But tragedy strikes, and the warmth and security of home are cruelly
tested.
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We are all Made of Glue by Marina Lewycka
Georgie
Sinclair's husband has walked out; her sixteen-year-old son is busy surfing
born-again websites; and all those overdue articles for Adhesives in the Modern
World are getting her down. So when Georgie spots Mrs Shapiro, an eccentric old
Jewish migr neighbour with an eye for a bargain and a fondness for
matchmaking, rummaging through her skip in the middle of the night, it's just
the distraction she needs. And although they mistrust each other at first -
Georgie doesnt like the look of that past-its-sell-by-date fish, while Mrs
Shapiro thinks Georgie needs to smarten herself up and grab a new husband - a
firm friendship is formed over the reduced-shelf at the supermarket.
Then Mrs Shapiro is admitted to hospital and, to Georgie's surprise, she is
named as her next of kin. But sorting out Mrs Shapiro's semi-derelict mansion in
Highbury, home to seven stinky cats with agendas of their own, is no easy job
when the handyman called in to change the locks turns out to be not what he
seems and his two assistant, 'the Uselesses', are doing more breaking than
fixing. And what about the two slimy estate agents (one with a charming taste
for bondage) who start competing to trick Mrs Shapiro into selling her rickety
old house, or the social worker determined to commit her to a nursing home? As
Georgie steps in to help her new friend, she finds herself unravelling a mystery
which takes her from Highbury to wartime Europe to the Middle East, and learning
a bit about DIY along the way.
'Vibrant dialogue, a family in meltdown, a clash of cultures and wonderful cast
of expertly observed characters. Pure laugh-out-loud social comedy'
Daily Mail
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When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
This
is a book about a brother and a sister.
It's a book about childhood and growing up, friendships and families, triumph
and tragedy and everything in between.
More than anything, it's a book about love in all its forms.
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The White Woman on the Green Bicycle by Monique Roffey
When George and Sabine Harwood
arrive in Trinidad from England George is immediately seduced by the beguiling island. But Sabine feels isolated, heat-fatigued and ill at ease. Her only solace
is her growing fixation with Eric Williams, the charismatic leader of Trinidad's new national party, to whom she pours out all her hopes and fears for the future
in letters that she never brings herself to send. As the years progress, George and Sabine's marriage endures for better and for worse. When George discovers
Sabine's cache of letters, he realises just how many secrets she's kept from him - and he from her - over the decades. And he is seized by an urgent, desperate
need to prove his love for her...
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Where There's a Will by Matt Beaumont
It is the height of the Cold War. When a defector from Eastern Europe
mysteriously returns to the village of his birth, it's a chance for disgraced
detective Brano Sev to redeem himself. Being framed for a murder should just be
part of his cover story.
Or is it ? Exiled suddenly to Vienna, treacherous city of spies, Sev finds
himself caught up in a cat-and-mouse game where survival is the only prize. But
in a world where no good deed goes unpunished, loyalty can be the biggest crime
of all...
'Steinhauer takes his familiar material and brilliantly infuses it with
noirish twists and dark psychology ... utterly
compelling'
Time Out
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Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
'Lock
Cromwell in a deep dungeon in the morning,' says Thomas More, 'and when you come
back that night he'll be sitting on a plush cushion eating larks' tongues, and
all the gaolers will owe him money.'
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal
Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses
to grant. Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first
as Wolsey's clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man:
the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a
bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and
events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his
wider politics as he is for himself. His reforming agenda is carried out in the
grip of a self-interested parliament and a king who fluctuates between romantic
passions and murderous rages.
With a vast array of characters, and richly overflowing with incident, 'Wolf
Hall' peels back history to show us Tudor England as a half-made society,
moulding itself with great passion, suffering and courage.
'If you have never read Mantel's historical fiction before, then start here.
Wolf Hall is atmospheric, compelling and terrifying. Hilary Mantel is writing at
the top of her game'
Literary Review
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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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Page last updated: 10th April 2014