Reading Groups Collection
The Great Gatsby | The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society | The Help | The Historian | How to Seduce a Ghost | How to Talk to a Widower | The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared | The Importance of Being Kennedy | The Inheritance of Loss | Back to the List
The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
In the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald brilliantly captures both
the disillusion of post-war America and the moral failure of a society obsessed
with wealth and status. But he does more than render the essence of a particular
time and place, for in chronicling Gatsby's tragic pursuit of his dream,
Fitzgerald re-creates the universal conflict between illusion and reality.
'A classic, perhaps the supreme American novel.'
John Carey, Sunday Times
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups
Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Schaffer
It's
January, 1946, and writer Juliet Ashton sits at her desk, vainly seeking a
subject for her next book.
Out of the blue, she receives a letter from one Dawsey Adams of Guernsey, a farmer with a shy manner and a tender heart, who has by chance acquired a secondhand book that once belonged to Juliet. Spurred on by their mutual love of Charles Lamb, they begin a correspondence. When Dawsey reveals that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Juliet's curiousity is piqued, and it's not long before she begins to hear from other members.
As the letters fly back and forth with stories of life in Guernsey under the German Occupation, Juliet soon realises that the society is every bit as extraordinary as its name...
A jewelPoignant and keenly observed, Guernsey is a small masterpiece about love, war and the immeasurable sustenance to be found in good books and good friends. People
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups
Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
The The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Enter
a vanished world: Jackson Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white
children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... There's Aibileen,
raising her seventeeth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's
tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white
Miss Skeeter, home from college, who wants to know why her beloved maid has
disappeared.
Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still
would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they
come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in search of a truth. And
together they have an extraordinary story to tell...
'Stockett is brilliant on people, on food, on relationships, on the weather.
Draws you completely into a world of okra and fried chicken and peach cobbler'
Daily Telegraph
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups
Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
Late
one night, exploring her father's library, a young woman finds an ancient book
and a cache of yellowing letters addressed to 'My dear and unfortunate
successor'. Her discovery plunges her into a world she never dreamed of - a
labyrinth where the secrets of her father's past and her mother's mysterious
fate connect to an evil hidden in the depths of history.
'A spirited update of Bram Stoker's classic, with a vastly ingenious plot in
which Dracula has developed a mysterious penchant for librarians... Kostova is a
whiz at storytelling and narrative pace'
Observer
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups
Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
How to Seduce a Ghost by Hope McIntyre
Although she loves her boyfriend Tommy, Lee is suffering from commitment
phobia because, as a ghost-writer, she values her solitude and privacy above all
else and she can't bear his mess. At the same time, though, she doesn't really
like living alone in a big, creaky old house in Notting Hill. But whilst Lee
tries to remain in denial about the state of her crumbling home, a neighbour is
suddenly killed in a fire, and it looks like arson.
Lee's latest commission, ghosting the autobiography of a soap opera star, seems
to offer her an escape from her problems at home. Until she meets her subject's
smoulderingly sexy manager, and finds herself compulsively attracted to him. But
then Lee is drawn into a murder investigation as there is a second fire and
another murder close to home. As her precious privacy comes under increasing
pressure from all sides, could it be that Lee herself is in danger?
'Smart and hugely enjoyable'
Elizabeth Buchan
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups
Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
How to Talk to a Widower by Jonathan Tropper
When
Doug married Hailey - beautiful, smart and ten years older - he left his carefree
Manhattan life to live in the suburbs with her and her teenage son, Russ. Three
years later, at 29, Doug has been a widower for twelve months and just wants to
drown himself in self-pity and Jack Daniels. But his family has other ideas...
Russ is furious with Doug for not adopting him, and has fallen in with a bad
crowd. Claire, Doug's irrepressible, pregnant twin sister, has left her husband
and, uninvited, moved in with Doug. And their sister Debbie is determined to
have the perfect wedding, at any cost.
Soon, Doug finds himself trying to forge a relationship with Russ and reconnect
with his own eccentric family, while reluctantly edging back into the
complicated world of dating...
'A wise-cracking, darkly comic tale, yet beneath its raucous plot lies a
heartfelt meditation on love and loss'
Daily Mail
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups
Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson
Sitting
quietly in his room in an old people's home, Allan Karlsson is waiting for a party he doesn't want to begin.
His one-hundredth birthday party to be precise. The Mayor will be there. The press will be there. But, as it
turns out, Allan will not… Escaping (in his slippers) through his bedroom window, into the flowerbed, Allan makes
his getaway. And so begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase
full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, Allan's earlier life is revealed. A life in which -
remarkably - he played a key role behind the scenes in some of the momentous events of the twentieth century.
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
The Importance of Being Kennedy by Laurie Graham
When Nora Brennan, a country girl from Westmeath, starts as nursery maid to a
Brooklyn family in 1917 it places her at the heart of American history. The
family is the Kennedy's: rich, successful, driven, and soon to be iconic.
Nursemaid to all nine Kennedy children, Nora is witness to every moment, public
and private, of family life and knows the children's natures better than they
know themselves: charming Joe Junior, his father's hope for the first Catholic
president; mischievous Jack; quiet, forgotten Rose; and rebellious, strong
willed Kick.
Through turbulent times Nora remains the warm heart of this astonishing family,
receiving their confidences and telling their tale with humour, insight and
affection, as events, both global and personal, challenge the Kennedy's'
ambitions.
'Her story has the feeling of being more alive and more revealing than any
biography with energetic pace, witty dialogue and vividly drawn characters.'
Guardian
Contact your local library to request copies from the Reading Groups
Co-ordinator.
Click here to see contact details for
all the libraries
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
In
the north-eastern Himalayas, at the foot of Mount Kanchenjunga, in a crumbling
isolated house, there lives a
cantankerous old judge, who wants nothing more than to retire in peace. But with
the arrival of his orphaned granddaughter, Sai, and the son of his chatty cook
trying to make his way in the US and stay ahead of the immigration services,
this is far from easy.
When a Nepalese insurgency threatens the blossoming romance between Sai and her
handsome tutor, they, too, are forced to consider their colliding interests. And
the judge must revisit his past, his own journey and his role in this grasping
world of conflicting desires - every moment holding out the possibility of hope
or betrayal.
'Briskly paced and sumptuously written ponders questions of nationhood,
modernity and class, in ways both moving and revelatory'
New Yorker
Click here to see contact details for all the libraries
Page last updated: 21st March 2014