Reading Groups Collection
Pink Hotel | Pistache | A Place of Secrets | The Private Lives of Pippa Lee | The Private Patient | The Return | Room | A Room Full of Bones |The Room of Lost Things | The Rose of Sebastopol | The Rosie Project | Back to the List
The Pink Hotel by Anna Stothard
A seventeen-year-old London girl flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of her
mother Lily, from whom she had been separated in her childhood. After stealing a
suitcase of letters, clothes and photographs from her mum's bedroom at the top
of a hotel on Venice Beach, the girl spends her summer travelling around Los
Angeles returning love letters and photographs to the men who had known her
mother. As she discovers more about Lily's past and tries to re-enact her life,
she comes to question the foundations of her own personality.
'She breathes new life into old literature' - Fay Weldon
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Pistache by Sebastian Faulks
From
Thomas Hardy's football report to Dan Brown's visit to the cash dispenser, the
work of the great and the not-so-great is here sent up with little hope of
coming down.
Most of these pieces began their life on Radio four's The Write Stuff, but have
been retooled for the printed page. Others, such as Martin Amis's first day at
Hogwarts, have been written specially for this collection.
Philip Larkin's Lines in Celebration of the Queen Mother's 115th Birthday, first
banned, then cut by the BBC, appears in its entirety for the first time.
'Faulks picks up the big names of the Western canon and plonks them down
mercilessly in the most unexpected places.'
The Times
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The Place of Secrets by Rachel Hore
Can
dreams be passed down through families? As a child Jude suffered a recurrent
nightmare: running through a dark forest, crying for her mother. Now her
six-year-old niece, Summer, is having the same dream, and Jude is frightened for
her.
A successful auctioneer, Jude is struggling to come to terms with the death of
her husband. When she's asked to value a collection of scientific instruments
and manuscripts belonging to Anthony Wickham, a lonely 18th-century astronomer,
she leaps at the chance to escape London for the untamed beauty of Norfolk,
where she grew up.
As Jude untangles Wickham's tragic story, she discovers threatening links to the
present. What have Summer's nightmares to do with Starbrough folly, the eerie
crumbling tower in the woods from which Wickham and his adopted daughter Esther
once viewed the night sky? With the help of Euan, a local naturalist, Jude
searches for answers in the wild, haunting splendour of the Norfolk forests.
Dare she leave behind the sadness in her own life, and learn to love again?
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The Private Lives of Pippa Lee by Rebecca Miller
Meet
Pippa Lee, a thoroughly modern heroine. She is the devoted wife of a brilliant
man thirty years her senior, proud mother of grown-up twins, and adored friend
and neighbour. But where once she was content with this seemingly enviable
world, Pippa finds her life beginning to unravel. Amid the buzzing lawnmowers
and suburban coffee mornings, she starts to wonder, how did she find herself in
this place?
The Private Lives of Pippa Lee is a story of wild youth, unexpected encounters,
affairs and betrayals, and the dangerous security of marriage. It brilliantly
captures the challenges, confusion and excitement of modern life - and the
possibility that it holds.
'With beautiful simplicity, Miller unravels Pippa's past and celebrates the
stirrings of something new '
Good Housekeeping
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The Private Patient by P D James
When
the notorious investigative journalist Rhoda Gradwyn booked into Mr
Chandler-Powell's private clinic in Dorset for the removal of a disfiguring and
long-standing facial scar, she had every prospect of a successful operation by a
distinguished surgeon, a week's peaceful convalescence in one of Dorset's most
beautiful manor houses and the beginning of a new life. She was never to leave
Cheverell Manor alive. Dalgliesh and his team, called in to investigate the
murder, and later a second death, are confronted with problems even more
complicated that the question of innocence or guilt.
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The Return by Victoria Hislop
Beneath
the majestic towers of the Alhambra, Granada's cobbled streets resonate with
music and secrets. Sonia Cameron knows nothing of the city's shocking past; she
is here to dance. But in a quiet caf, a chance conversation and an intriguing
collection of old photographs draw her into the extraordinary tale of Spain's
devastating civil war.
Seventy years earlier, the caf is home to the close-knit Ramirez family. In
1936, an army coup led by Franco shatters the country's fragile peace, and in
the heart of Granada the family witnesses the worst atrocities of conflict.
Divided by politics and tragedy, everyone must take a side, fighting a personal
battle as Spain rips itself apart.
'A compelling story that has rarely left the bestseller list this year and
deservedly so'
Sunday Express
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Room by Emma Donoghue
It's
Jack's birthday, and he's excited about turning five. He lives with his Ma in
Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures 11 feet by 11 feet.
He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows
that nothing he sees on screen is truly real - only him, Ma and the things in
Room. Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside...
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A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths
Night falls on Halloween eve.
The museum in King's Lynn is preparing for an unusual event - the opening of a coffin excavated from the site of a medieval church. But when archaeologist Dr. Ruth
Galloway arrives to supervise, she finds the museum's curator lying dead beside it. Ruth and Detective Inspector Nelson are forced to cross paths once again when
he's called in to investigate the murder, and their past tensions are reignited. And as Ruth becomes further embroiled in the case, she must decide where
her loyalties lie - a choice that her very survival depends on.
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The Room of Lost Things by Stella Duffy
Under
the railway arch in Loughborough Junction, south London, Robert Sutton is taking
leave of a lifetime of hard work. His dry-cleaning shop lies at the heart of a
lively community, a fixed point in a changing world. And, as he explains to his
successor, young east Londoner Akeel, it is also the resting place for the
contents of his customers' pockets - and for their secrets and lies.
As he helps Akeel to make a new life out of his old one, Robert also hands on all he knows of this world: the dirty dip of the Thames; the parks, rare green oases in a desert of high-rises and decaying mansion blocks; and the varied lives that converge at the junction. There is restless Australian nanny Helen, trapped in London for love; tight-sweatered, high-heeled health visitor Marylin; ex-dancer and commitment-phobe Stefan on the cusp of middle-age; fixer, runner and all-round bad lad Dean. And there is Robert himself, who holds back his own terrible story, a secret he may never surrender.
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The Rose of Sebastopol by Katharine McMahon
Russia,
1854. As the Crimean War grinds on, Rosa Barr - young, headstrong and beautiful
- travels to the battlefields, determined to save as many of the wounded as she
can. For Mariella Lingwood, Rosa's cousin, the war is contained within the pages
of her scrapbook, in her London sewing circle, and in the letters she receives
from Henry, her fianc, a celebrated surgeon who has volunteered to work within
the shadow of the guns. But when Henry falls ill and Rosa's communications
cease, Mariella finds herself drawn inexorably towards the war.
Following the trail of her elusive and captivating cousin, Mariella's epic
journey takes her from the domestic restraint of Victorian London to the ravaged
landscape of the Crimea. As she ventures deeper into the dark heart of the
conflict, Mariella's ordered world begins to crumble and she finds she has much
to learn about secrecy, faithfulness and love.
'This is everything a good historical romance should be.'
The Good Book Guide
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The The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion
"I'm not good at understanding what other people want."
"Tell me something I don't know..." Love isn't an exact science - but no-one told Don Tillman. A handsome thirty-nine-year-old geneticist, Don's never had a
second date. So he devises The Wife Project, a scientific test to find the perfect partner. Enter Rosie - 'the worlds' most incompatible woman' - throwing Don's
safe, ordered life into chaos. Just what is this unsettling, alien emotion he's feeling?
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Page last updated: 10th April 2014