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Simon Armitage: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – Acclaimed retelling of this enduring winter’s tale. 128 pages
Andrea Ashworth: Once, In a House on Fire – Recommended as splendiferous by one of our readers, this autobiography is about a gifted child. Despite the succession of violent Dads her mother chooses for her, and a life of secret suffering, she triumphs. 336 pages
Margaret Atwood: Alias Grace - A murder mystery constructed around the true story of Grace Mark, accused of murdering her employer and his mistress in the 1840s. 545 pages
Jenna Bailey: Can Any Mother Help Me? - In 1935, a young woman wrote a letter to Nursery World magazine, expressing her feelings of isolation and loneliness. Women from all over the country experiencing similar frustrations wrote back. To create an outlet for their abundant ideas and opinions they started a private magazine, The Cooperative Correspondence Club. The deep friendships formed through its pages ensured the magazine continued until 1990, fifty-five years after the first issue was put together. 352 pages
John Banville: The Untouchable - This novel successfully combines espionage, politics, conspiracy and art history. This engaging, and highly literate espionage-cum-existential novel, concerns the suddenly exposed double agent Victor Maskell, a character based on the real Cambridge intellectual elites who famously spied on the United Kingdom in the middle of the 20th century. 416 pages
Jean-Dominic Bauby: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly - On 8 December 1995, Jean-Dominique Bauby suffered a massive stroke and slipped into a coma. When he regained consciousness three weeks later, the only muscle left functioning was in his left eyelid although his mind remained as active and alert as it had ever been. He spent most of 1996 writing this book, letter by letter, blinking as an alphabet was repeatedly read out to him. The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly was published in France on Thursday 6th March 1997. It was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. And then, three days later, he died. A remarkable book about the triumph of the human spirit and the ability to invent a life for oneself in the most appalling of circumstances. 144 pages
Saul Bellow: Ravelstein – An old man muses on the life of his friend, who had educated the movers and shakers of American society, making certain if he could that the greatness of humankind would not entirely evaporate in bourgeois wellbeing. The narrator himself has a brush with death – as Bellow did – in this mix of fact and fiction. 240 pages
Alan Bennett: Talking Heads 2 – Dramatic monologues written for television, reflecting social attitudes, entertaining with acute asides and moving with their insight into people’s lives. 92 pages
Richard Benson: The Farm: The Story Of One Family And The Countryside – When his family are forced to sell their family farm the author reflects on how the countryside has changed in his lifetime. One family’s personal history highlights the impact of globalisation and environmental changes on farming today. An engrossing read but take note, if you live in a barn conversion, you may experience irrational feelings of guilt. 240 pages
Tim Binding: Island Madness - Guernsey, 1943. The Nazis are in occupation and the islanders live in uneasy peace with the Germans. Against an evocative 1940s period setting of parties, gin and amateur dramatics, local policeman Ned Luscombe investigates the death of a childhood sweetheart and finds his own sense of loyalties under threat. 360 pages
William Boyd: Armadillo – Life can be bizarre and baffling - for the hero of this novel it turns inside out, with comic results. He is an insurance checker, used to calculating odds. More acutely than most, he grapples with the vain quest for certainty, the overwhelming longing to feel safe and secure, the need to love someone, and to be loved in return. 384 pages
Melvyn Bragg: The Soldier’s Return – Returning to Cumbria from Burma in 1946, Sam has seen terrible things, but has also discovered himself to be a natural leader of men. Now his peacetime job is unfulfilling, his longed-for wife is oddly separate and he is jealous of his six-year-old son. How to find his role in the new order? The dilemmas of the story are delicately described and old Wigton is lovingly reconstructed and celebrated. 288 pages
Dan Brown: The Da Vinci Code - If you haven’t heard of this book by now where have you been for the last six months? Hugely successful worldwide, this is an art history thriller, intellectual puzzle and old-fashioned adventure story rolled into one. A Harvard professor and his glamorous French cryptologist assistant must stay one step ahead of the powerful Opus Dei sect in a race to discover the true meaning of the Holy Grail. This controversial conspiracy theory tale will provoke plenty of discussion. 560 pages
Albert Camus: The First Man – This is the Nobel prize winner’s last novel, published here 34 years after his death. The main character grows up in poverty in Algeria and is rescued from ignorance by a remarkable teacher. 272 pages
Peter Carey: True History of the Kelly Gang – A song of Australia, protesting in a voice at once crude and delicate, menacing, heartrending and very funny. Ned Kelly grows from orphan, Oedipus, horse thief, farmer, bushranger, reformer, bank robber and police killer to become his country’s beloved Robin Hood. 424 pages
Raymond Carver: What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - This powerful collection of stories, set in the Midwest among the lonely men and women who drink, fish and play cards to ease the passing of time, was the first by Raymond Carver to be published in the UK. With its spare, colloquial narration and razor sharp sense of how people really communicate, the collection was to become one of the most influential literary works of the 1980s. 144 pages
Bruce Chatwin: Utz - A gem of a novel about collecting. What appears at first to be an intriguing mystery story turns out to be a provocative meditation on the nature of freedom, political tyranny, human relations and possessions. 127 pages
Mavis Cheek: The Sex Life of My Aunt - Cheek usually styles her novels around comedy of manners, and whilst the humour is just as prevalent in this one, she also explores the idea that we all have the potential for deception. The Independent's reviewer said, 'energetic, witty and brimming with good sense, Cheek's astute social comedies point out to receptive ears the pitfalls of love, sex, and the contradictory mess that is the female state.' 288 pages
Tracy Chevalier: Girl with a Pearl Earring – A short, exquisite book imagining the life of a maid in the seventeenth century Delft household of the painter Johannes Vermeer, inspired by the painting of the same title. Under the beautiful orderly surface of life lurk tragedy, passion and conflicting loyalties. 248 pages
Ann Cleeves: Raven Black - the first of four books which form a Shetland Quartet, Raven Black was the first winner of the prestigious Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award for the best crime novel of the year, winning praise for its superb sense of place and depiction of an enclosed community. 320 pages
Paulo Coelho: The Alchemist – Coelho’s spiritual tales have made him one of the world’s bestselling authors. This story tells of Santiago, an Andalucian shepherd boy who one night dreams of a distant treasure in the Egyptian pyramids, and sets off to try and find it. 192 pages
J M Coetzee: Disgrace – Winner of the 1999 Booker Prize. A disturbing, but beautifully written, story: in the new South Africa, a university professor is accused of sexual harassment. 219 pages
Barbara Comyns: Our Spoons Came From Woolworths –Sophia elopes with penniless young artist Charles to live the Bohemian life in London. She is an innocent abroad, who carries pet newt Great Warty about in her pocket and is ill-prepared for the real hardships of poverty and motherhood. An affair with an elderly art critic just makes the situation worse. Comyns was a Great British Eccentric, and coming across her work for the first time is an utter delight for the reader. If you haven't encountered her before, then do read this book: you won’t be disappointed. This title was suggested by several reading groups. 224 pages
Jim Crace: Quarantine - Four travellers in a Judean desert, about 2000 years ago, meet a miracle worker from Galilee. An unusual setting with distinctive characters and vivid language. 256 pages
Andrew Crumley: Sputnik Caledonia - Robbie Coyle is an imaginative kid. He wants so badly to become Scotland's first cosmonaut that he tries to teach himself Russian and trains for space exploration in the cupboard under the sink. But the place to which his fantasies later take him is far from the safety of his suburban childhood. In a communist state, in a closed, bleak town, the mysterious Red Star heralds his discovery of cruelty and of love, and the possibility that the most passionate of dreams may only be a chimera. 312 pages
Catrin Dafydd - Random Deaths and Custard - Sam Jones is a perfectly ordinary Valleys girl. Except for the random deaths, that is. Which she only just manages to avoid. This is a novel that will have you laughing and crying into your custard. 176 pages
Alain de Botton: Status Anxiety – The first part of the book investigates the origins of 'status anxiety', a curse the author claims didn't afflict us until recent times: our ancestors didn't worry about keeping up with the metaphorical Jones, so why do we? The latter chapters suggest ways of living and thinking that help to relinquish the grip that 'status anxiety' holds upon us and our daily life. This book isn't another self help manual but an insightful, reflective thesis on a modern, western affliction. 288 pages
Louise Dean: Becoming Strangers - The title of this accomplished, sexually frank, first novel means more each time you look back at it. Two couples meet on a Caribbean holiday which offers a break from the lives they have made. They've all been married for a long time and now have to face death and ageing. If this sounds serious, it is, but the book's also a page-turner, wicked yet empathetic. It won a Betty Trask prize & was long listed for the Man Booker. 291 pages
Anita Diamant: The Red Tent - The story of Dinah, a midwife, sister of the Old Testament Joseph, which celebrates the ancient continuity and unity of women sounds dull, but word-of-mouth recommendation made it a recent best seller. Episodes of painful violence occur in Dinah's life like the knots on a beautiful necklace: necessary for keeping the beads in place. Everyone will have different views on the novel's highlights, but they'd probably include the journeys, from Canaan & Egypt, the alarming first encounter with a cat, and a joyful love story cruelly destroyed. 400 pages
Joan Didier: A Year of Magical Thinking - A stunning book and the later stage adaptation was a Broadway hit, now transferred to the UK and starring Vanessa Redgrave. Several days before Christmas 2003, John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion saw their only daughter fall ill. Days later John suffered a massive and fatal coronary. In a second, a partnership of 40 years was over. This powerful book is an exploration of an intensely personal yet universal experience: a portrait of a marriage, and a life, in good times and bad. 227 pages
Jim Dodge: Fup! – Described as a modern-day fable for adults, Fup is a tale of two humans, one duck and several vats of home-brewed whisky. Hilarious and heartwarming. 96 pages
Ben Dolnick: Zoology – Henry lands a job at the Central Park Children's Zoo. As the months unfolds in a haze of jazz bars, ill-advised romance and hard truths about family, Henry learns what it is to love -- and to lose -- in this hilarious, inventive and touching debut novel. 352 pages
Gerard Donovan: Julius Winsome - Julius Winsome lives in a cabin in the hunting heartland of the Maine woods, with only his books and his dog for company. That is until the morning he finds that his dog has been shot dead, and not by accident. From this starting point, Gerard Donovan weaves an extraordinary tale that explores ideas of revenge and the threat of the wild, but one that is also a tender and heartbreaking paean to lost love. Narrated by the unforgettable voice of Julius himself - at once compassionate, vulnerable and threatening - it reads like a timeless, lost classic. 224 pages
Roddy Doyle: The Woman Who Walked into Doors - This is the heartrending story of Paula, struggling to reclaim her dignity after a violent, abusive marriage and a worsening drink problem. Doyle’s previous novel, Paddy Clarke ha ha ha, was the largest selling winner of the Booker Prize. 240 pages
Clare Dudman: 98 Reasons for Being – In 1850s Frankfurt, a Jewish girl named Hannah Meyer enters the town asylum, rumoured to be suffering from nymphomania. She is treated by Dr Heinrich Hoffmann, physician and famed author of the book of children's tales, Struwwelpeter, who uses every method from ice packs to electrodes in an effort to cure her. Nothing works, until he resorts to talking - telling her anecdotes from his youth, revealing the case histories of Hannah's fellow patients, confessing to his troubled home life. Only then does Hannah begin to yield her haunting tale of love, prejudice and transgression." Clare Dudman lives in Chester and is also the winner of the inaugural Cheshire Prize for Literature. 347 pages
Carol Ann Duffy: The World’s Wife – An extremely original and playful collection of poetry from one of the nation’s leading contemporary poets. Here, Duffy takes notable male figures from history and then presents their story from the perspective of their lesser-known wives and sisters. Meet Mrs Darwin, the Kray sisters, Mrs Midas, Frau Freud and a cast of others. Shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize and the Forward Poetry Prize: Best Collection. 200 pages
Patricia Duncker: Miss Webster and Cherif - Elizabeth Webster is a spinster pushing seventy. Forced out of her teaching job, she unleashes her sharp tongue and dogmatic opinions on everyone in the English village of Little Blessington. Then, one night, she grinds to a dead halt. To recover from this illness, she travels to North Africa where she has a brush with terrorism - not that she cares about politics. Three weeks after Miss Webster has returned home her doorbell rings. There stands a beautiful young Arab man carrying a large suitcase. Who is he, why is he there and what does he want? 256 pages
Helen Dunmore: The Siege – Shortlisted for the Orange Prize 2002, this novel explores Russia’s culture and people through one of the most important episodes in the country’s history, the siege of Leningrad in 1941. It is a story about the consequences of war on love, life and survival. 304 pages
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Marina Fiorato: The Glassblower of Murano - Nora Manin decides to leave her fractured life in London to start again in Venice, and there begins to unravel the story of her ancestor, Corradino Manin, the greatest artist of glass that the island of Murano ever produced. 356 pages
Giles Foden :The Last King of Scotland - Winner of the Whitbread first novel award: a thriller about a young Scottish doctor who becomes Idi Amin’s personal physician and is drawn into the heart of the Ugandan dictator’s surreal and brutal regime. 330 pages
Jonathan Franzen: The Corrections - Dubbed by many critics as the next great American novel, this is the story of the Lambert family, Alfred & Enid, and their three grownup children. From the outset, the Lamberts appear to be a fairly ordinary family, but this initial impression soon dissolves as you are exposed to the insecurities, disappointments and failures of each family member, and the associated corrections each of them needs to make. Franzen skilfully and generously provides a portrait of the state of American society and leaves you firm in the belief that all families are, to some degree, dysfunctional. 653 pages
Michael Frayn: Spies - Dull, at first, as befits a tale set in a wartime cul-de-sac, this novel becomes quietly gripping. "His father has troubles? If anything could make me smile, this could,” thinks the boy, Stephen. He is comically cautious about germs but becomes aware that other deep and painful mysteries surround him. 272 pages
Charles Frazier: Cold Mountain - A beautifully written and moving tale of love and war, set at the end of the American Civil War. It is a story of two parallel journeys: Inman's physical trek across the American landscape and Ada's internal odyssey toward an understanding of herself. 438 pages
Patrick Gale: A Sweet Obscurity - Returning to the Cornwall Gale knows so well, this is a particularly poignant and emotional story about the lengths people go to in order to seek protection and security in others. At the centre of the novel is Dido, a nine-year-old girl who knows that the adults who surround her depend on her for happiness. 336 pages
Jane Gardam: Flight of the Maidens – In the words of one reviewer, “this is a beautiful example of Gardam's unique ability to inhabit the intense, muddled and vibrant world of the teenage mind”. Set in post war Britain, she follows the lives and loves of three girls who are in transition from home to university. 278 pages
Lesley Glaister: Now You See Me - Lamb is a woman of twenty who walked out of her own life at sixteen and chooses to live alone, keeping herself to herself. She cleans for a living and lives secretly in the cellar of an elderly employer. She meets Doggo, a young convict on the run. They both have secrets they cannot share, so they cannot trust each other. This is a powerful novel, exploring a dark mysterious world which is full of emotion. It has been described as "crime writing of the highest order". 288 pages
Robert Goddard: Sea Change - This is a grand yarn - a penniless mapmaker becomes involved in the collapse of the South Sea Company in the 1720s. George I and his government are implicated in the scandal, a committee of the House of Commons is investigating and players in the game double-cross each other to ensure their survival. Will our hero extricate himself safely? 476 pages
Myla Goldberg: Bee Season – Eleven year old Eliza’s aptitude for spelling throws her into a new prominence in her clever family. Her father, a cantor, devotes himself to her training but her brother feels displaced and embarks on a lone quest for spiritual enlightenment, while her mother’s secrets are exposed. A startling, unconventional, first novel. 274 pages
Laurie Graham: Dog Days, Glenn Miller Nights - Someone said that starting an Elmor Leonard book was like climbing onto a moving vehicle – and so is this one. It is in the voice of brisk Birdie and she doesn’t explain: you just have to keep up. She is a pensioner living in a high rise flat at the sharp end of the changes in our society. Her friends think they’ve had their time but Birdie’s still having hers. As other readers have said, “ a joy to read” and “an admirable mixture of poignancy and humour”. 207 pages
Phillippa Gregory: The Other Boleyn Girl - A gripping story about the rise and fall of Anne Boleyn, and the part played by Mary, her rival sister. As one of our reading group members has already commented, 'it has been some time since I read an historical novel and The Other Boleyn Girl was an excellent way to return. The story made compulsive reading and the wonderful detail brought alive the intrigue of the court of Henry VIII.' 544 pages
Andrew Greig: That Summer - The Independent’s reviewer said that this nostalgic evocation of the Battle of Britain reminds us of the ephemerality of love in time of war. Narrated by fighter pilot Len and Stella, an educated radar operator, the romance is played out against a background of dogfights and casualties. Sometimes it is a puzzle as to which is speaking, which underlines the similarity of their rising to the occasion, each being ordinary yet achieving the unusual. Freed from the constraints of peacetime the lovers quickly shed their inhibitions and seize the day. 271 pages
Kate Grenville: The Idea of Perfection - Fellow Australian Kathy Lette described the winner of this year’s Orange Prize as “a quirky love story with a humour as dry as the outback itself”. Male and female readers appreciated its universal themes of love, infidelity, self-knowledge, power and how to get it. 416 pages
Jay Griffiths: Wild: an Elemental Journey - Part travel book, part political manifesto and deeply personal throughout, Wild has inspired fervent reviews and impassioned responses as well as a fair amount of controversy and debate. 480 pages
David Guterson: Snow Falling on Cedars - A journalist covers the trial of a Japanese-American accused of killing a man over a land dispute on an island where the inhabitants eke out a living from fishing and farming. 404 pages
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Mohsin Hamid: The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Among the brightest and best of his graduating class at Princeton, Changez is snapped up by an elite firm and thrives on New York and the intensity of his work. But in the wake of September 11, he finds his position in the city he loves suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez's own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and perhaps even love. 224 pages
Hugo Hamilton: The Speckled People - Dressed in Aran jumpers and lederhosen, the ‘speckled’ people roam the streets of 1950s Dublin, the children of an Irish-German marriage. Their pig-headed but somehow heroic father forbids the speaking of English in his home as he champions the revival of Gaelic ahead of his time. A poignant childhood memoir and revealing exploration of how language is bound to identity. 304 pages (Nonfiction)
Robert Harris: Pompeii - The author takes a familiar historical event (the volcanic obliteration of the Italian city in AD79) and weaves a plot around those known facts. As the catastrophe approaches, we are immersed in the details of the ancient world. The characters' own dramas are not dwarfed by the larger tragedy. This is particularly important because the historical ending is so well known, and helps to maintain the suspense. 352 pages
Sarah Hartley: Mrs P’s Journey the Remarkable Story of the Woman who Created the A-Z Map - Disproving the theory that women can't read maps, this is the story of Phyllis Pearsall, the eccentric British artist who single-handedly mapped London's A-Z and created a publishing phenomenon. 352 pages
Joseph Heller: Catch 22 – a top 21 Big Read, this title has entered common parlance to describe a no-win situation. The New York Times reviewer found the book "wildly original, brutally gruesome, a dazzling performance that will outrage as many readers as it delights". Set on a fictitious island, it centres on Captain Yossarian's attempts to survive the Second World War by avoiding dangerous combat duties & thinking "only of me". Suppose, he's told, "everyone felt that way". "Then," he says, "I'd be a damned fool to feel any other way." War is treated as an event too farcical for tears. 528 pages
Zoë Heller: Notes on a Scandal - Heller has written a fascinating tale about the complexities of relationships. The book is seemingly about Sheba a teacher who has an illicit relationship with one of her pupils. It is written from the viewpoint of her colleague, the lonely but loyal Barbara. The focus of the story shifts and becomes compelling as Barbara becomes Sheba’s confidante. 256 pages
Patrica Highsmith: Carol - Therese first glimpses Carol in the New York department store where she is working as a sales assistant. Carol is choosing a present for her daughter; she looks preoccupied, exuding an aura of elegance as perfect as a secret. Standing there at the counter, Therese suddenly feels wholly innocent - wholly unprepared for the first shock of love. First published under a pseudonym in 1952, Carol is a love story told with compelling wit and eroticism, and consummate tenderness. 320 pages
Peter Hobbs: The Short Day Dying - Highly acclaimed debut novel of rural passion set in nineteenth century Cornwall. Charles Wenmoth is a blacksmith and Methodist lay-preacher in the wildest reaches of South-West England. It is 1870 and Wenmoth devotes his weekdays to work and the Sabbath to walking great distances to preach to dwindling congregations. Charles burns with faith - but it's a faith balanced by his pleasure in nature and the physical world around him. In his relationship with Harriet French, a blind girl who maintains her belief despite her debilitating condition, Wenmoth finds his fragile faith tested in the most trying of circumstances. 208 pages
Alice Hoffman: Blackbird House - The compelling story of a house, its inhabitants, and the ghosts that haunt a spit of land, from 1778 to the present day. From the great May storm in 1778 when John Hadley and his sons slip the British blockade off the coast of Massachusetts only to disappear at sea, the lives of the inhabitants of the wooden farmhouse on the cape, stranded amid fields of sweet peas and wild fruit vines and red pear trees, coil and weave around each other, right up to the present. 240 pages
Nick Hornby: High Fidelity - Hornby's narrator is a thirtysomething bloke who runs a London record store, selling albums recorded the old-fashioned way on vinyl - and he is having a tough time making other transitions as well, specifically to adulthood. Part love story, most entertaining, though, are the hilarious arguments over arcane matters of pop music. 253 pages
Elizabeth Jane Howard: Falling – Told in alternating narratives, this is the story of Henry, a charmer, and his prey: Daisy. It shows that the need to be first in someone’s affections may be as dangerous as it is powerful but also that experience, however painful, helps you grow- even at 62. 432 pages
Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go – The lives of a group of students growing up in a darkly skewed version of contemporary England. Kathy, now 31, attempts to come to terms with her childhood at the seemingly idyllic Hailsham School, and with the fate that has always awaited her and her closest friends in the wider world. 276 pages
Mick Jackson: The Underground Man - The journals of a Duke and his tunnels give a sharp insight into his mind, raising questions about sanity. In the last few days of the Duke's life, eccentricity burgeons; madness follows. The reader learns that his odd view of the world was shaped by early tragedy, the full truth of which is withheld until the last few pages. 268 pages
Edward P Jones: The Known World – Winner of both IMPAC and Pulitzer prizes, this masterful epic centres on slave life on a Southern plantation. Regarded as ‘an utterly original exploration of race, trust and the cruel truths of human nature’, this has been hailed as a landmark in modern American literature. 400 pages
A L Kennedy: Everything you need to know – Novelist Nathan Staples lives in a writer's colony and dreams of reunion with his estranged wife and daughter, Mary, who he's not seen for 15 years. Nathan contrives to have Mary, now 19, invited to join the colony where he can mentor her literary progress without telling her who he is. Mary, an independent and open young woman, has been lovingly raised by an extraordinary gay couple and is more than match for her father. 556 pages
Douglas Kennedy: State of the Union – Hannah confounds her radical parents by marrying her doctor boyfriend and settling in a small town only to find herself forced into breaking the law. For decades, this one transgression in an otherwise faultless life remains buried. But then, in the charged atmosphere of America after 9/11, her secret comes out and her life goes into freefall. 432 pages
Hari Kunzru: The Impressionist - In India an infant is brought howling into the world, his remarkable paleness marking him out from his brown-skinned fellows. Revered at first, he is later cast out form his wealthy home when his true parentage is revealed. So begins Pran Nath's odyssey of self-discovery - a journey that will take him from the streets of Agra, via the red light district of Bombay, to the green lawns of England and beyond. 496 pages
Andrey Kurkov: Death and the Penguin - A truly original debut novel, which featured in the 2005 Waverton Good Read. Set in post-soviet Ukraine, the story centres on Viktor, a would-be novelist who turns to writing obelisks - obituaries – in order to make a living, and Misha, his pet and somewhat depressed penguin. When Viktor’s subjects start to die, he inadvertently gets caught up in the underworld. This is a darkly comic, satirical tale, but underneath the humour, makes serious comment on contemporary Ukraine. 240 pages
Harper Lee: To Kill a Mockingbird – Eight-year old Scout Finch gives a vivid account of small town life in 1930s Alabama. All the elements of the Deep South are here: pecan nuts and maybugs, the bogeyman in the big house, rape, incest and poor white trash, racism and lynching, but the child’s matter-of-fact voice gives this compassionate novel a freshness and immediacy that still has a powerful resonance. A Pulitzer Prize winner in the 1960s and chosen from the BBC Big Read top 100. 320 pages
Donna Leon: Fatal Remedies – From a fine series for those who like police procedural thrillers to include the developing story of the detective’s family life. The tone is cheerful, interest is added by the setting- Venice, and bite by coverage of European social issues. The Commissario’s wife takes direct action against a purveyor of sex tourism while he is concerned about Mafia involvement in a bank robbery, and the descriptions of food make your mouth water. 303 pages
Andrea Levy: Small Island - Just after the second world war, Hortense and Gilbert's dream of leaving Jamaica and coming to England comes true. But Hortense is shocked by London's shabbiness and horrified at the way the English live. Even Gilbert is not the man she thought he was. Queenie, the landlady, is criticised for her choice of tenants and made to feel very uncomfortable. Through the stories of these people, Small Island explores a point in England's past when the country began to change. It is a moving novel covering themes of prejudice, war and love. Winner of both the Orange Prize and Whitbread Book of the Year 2004. 544 pages
Gwyneth Lewis: Two in the Boat - In her forties Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis decided to trade in her landlubber life for life aboard a small yacht with her husband Leighton, a former bosun with the Merchant Navy and now in his mid-sixties. Gwyneth and Leighton set out to cross the Atlantic. Unfortunately Gwyneth's incessant seasickness and Leighton's daily deterioration into a moody Captain Bastard were not the only catastrophes with which they had to contend. This strange, stirring and often hilarious account of their voyage is as much a beginner's guide to sailing as it is a portrait of a marriage under the pressure of depression, both medical and meteorological. 320 pages
Marina Lewycka: A Short History Of Tractors In Ukrainian – Don’t be put off by the unpromising title as this author was the first woman to be awarded the PG Wodehouse prize for a comic novel. First and foremost, a story of middle-aged sibling rivalry put on hold as two sisters unite to have their octogenarian father’s new wife, a top-heavy 36 year-old blonde, deported before she spends their inheritance. 336 pages
David Lodge: Thinks... - A campus novel celebrating the collision of academic worlds. Consciousness interests a predatory, vulgar cognitive scientist and the women he pursues - a sensitive creative writer. He likens the brain to a computer; she feels the mind relates to the conscience and we learn a lot about their different disciplines. There are some funny pastiches of other writers' work & excellent observational comedy. The plot has lots of twists as secrets are uncovered and illicit love, blissful for some, is revealed as baleful for others. 352 pages
Mary Loudon: Secrets & Lives - Middle England Revealed - From the author of Unveiled – Nuns Talking, this is a collection of over 40 real-life accounts from residents of a typical English market town (Wantage in Oxfordshire) in a quest to reveal the essence of “Middle England”. In the range of experience recounted, rather than politics, what this book essentially explores is the nature of love, grief, hope and disappointment. As these stories have been edited from the subjects’ own words, the author leaves the reader to make up his or her own mind on the picture presented of England and the English today. 400 pages (Non-Fiction)
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Jim Lynch: The Highest Tide - One moonlit night Miles O’Malley goes exploring on the flats of Puget Sound. What begins as an ordinary hunt for starfish, snails, and clams is soon transformed by an astonishing sight: a beached giant squid. In this mesmerizing, beautifully wrought first novel, we witness the dramatic sea change for both Miles and the coastline that he adores over the course of a summer — one that will culminate with the highest tide in fifty years. 272 pages
Cormac McCarthy: The Road - A father and his son walk alone through burned America, heading through the ravaged landscape to the coast. Awesome in the totality of its vision, it is an unflinching meditation on the worst and the best that we are capable of: ultimate destructiveness, desperate tenacity, and the tenderness that keeps two people alive in the face of total devastation. 256 pages
Pete McCarthy: McCarthy’s Bar - McCarthy knows Ireland, and other, more exotic places, well. In his entertaining first book he travels from Cork to Donegal, even surprising himself by going on pilgrimage, constantly firing off affectionate insults and quotable (though often rude) jokes. 384 pages (Nonfiction)
Ian McEwan: Enduring Love - A heart stopping opening: a ballooning accident, leads on to a coolly observed story about a science writer who becomes the victim of a stalker. This huge bestseller examines the themes of the ambivalence of male desire and rationalism versus religion. 304 pages
Adrian McKinty: The Bloomsday Dead - Michael Forsythe is living in Lima under the FBI's Witness Protection Program but returns to Ireland leaving a trail of mayhem. Break-neck action and wry literary references; McKinty's distinctly Irish voice packs a ferocious punch. 304 pages
Bernard MacLaverty: Anatomy School - Martin is a Catholic boy growing up in the late sixties in Belfast, attempting to understand religion, science and sex. His school days are described, and he merely scrapes through "O" and "A" levels. He therefore looks for a job and becomes a technician in the Anatomy Department of the university. During a night-shift there, he meets a girl with whom he loses his virginity. This gives him the confidence to seek the company of other girls, and at the end of the book, he has a date in prospect. If you are a Catholic, you will identify strongly with this book. If you are not, you will be surprised, amused and very much enlightened. 355 pages
Alistair Macleod: No Great Mischief - Narrated in the first person, this story of a Scottish clan in Nova Scotia is thrilling and passionate and intersects with history, from memories of Culloden to the Vietnam War. You become really involved with these intrepid people, who care a lot and try too hard, and whose humanity crosses borders. 272 pages
Candia McWilliam: Wait till I tell you - A collection of short stories touching on subjects such as community life in the Scottish Islands, loneliness, marriage and old age. 256 pages
Hilary Mantel: Beyond Black – If you like black humour you’ll appreciate this bizarre view of the world of spiritualists and mediums. It’s the contrast of the mundane, messages from ‘spiritside’ criticising a loved one’s choice of new kitchen units, with the threatening presence of those most unwelcome spirits that gives this book an edge. 480 pages
Patrick Marnham: Wild Mary: Mary Wesley - Mary Wesley famously began writing at the age of 70 and her ten best-selling novels won her thousands of fans, and described a world that she had known in her youth - the world of war-time London, with its fear and high-spirits and casual sex. The real Mary Wesley had lived a life more fascinating, scandalous and passionate than any she created for her heroines. 304 pages
Gabriel Garcia Marquez: Love in the Time of Cholera – A BBC Big Read written by the winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for Literature. At its simplest, this is a story about the love Fiorentino Ariza has had for Permina Daze for 50 years, and the chance he finally has for happiness when Permina’s husband dies. This is an enquiry into one of the most basic human conditions, delivered in the author’s poetic style, and set against a South American backdrop. 368 pages
Yann Martel: The Life of Pi - A unique bestseller about faith, animals and sailing the Pacific, enlivened with magic realism and offering two endings. It may or may not be an allegory about colonialism. Winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction (2002). 384 pages
D T Max: The Family that Couldn’t Sleep - For many, the prospect of going without sleep for months is a nightmare. Fatal Familial Insomnia means just that. Members of one Italian family experienced the horror of fatal familial insomnia for two centuries. D.T. Max details their saga with the disease and their race to find a cure. 336 pages
Anne Michaels: Fugitive Pieces - A beautiful and lyrical first novel. The reader is transported to a Greek island, where Jakob, orphaned by the Holocaust, seeks to come to terms with the violence of his past. 294 pages
Giles Milton: Big Chief Elizabeth (How England's Adventures Gambled and Won the New World) - In these days of jet travel we tend to forget how hard it must have been for the early settlers, who could wait years for relief ships to visit their fragile communities. Milton is very good at showing how the different cultures worked together (sometimes with horrifying violence) and also at telling the tale of some of the great heroes of the Tudor and Jacobean age. The main player in this book is Walter Raleigh. Using contemporary diaries and illustrations, Milton really brings the first English settlers and explorers in the Americas to life. A thrilling read. 427 pages
David Mitchell: Black Swan Green – Nostalgic account of thirteen months in the life of teenager Jason set in 1980s England at war in the Falklands. 384 pages
Marion Moltena: Somewhere More Simple - A young teacher returns to the islands that captured her imagination in childhood where she becomes involved with Anna, a painter in her fifties who has cut herself off from her mainland past, and Hugh, drawn to the islands by a taste for self-reliance but now adrift. When a young girl disappears while on a school trip to the mainland all three are drawn into the mystery. 352 pages
Clare Morrall: Astonishing Splashes of Colour - Kitty has been brought up in a household of older brothers by an eccentric father, and she can not remember her mother. As a result she lacks a true sense of identity. As she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her own baby, she wonders why her brothers are so vague in their descriptions of her mother. As she finds out the truth behind her strange family, she begins to understand the real reason for her pervasive sense of ‘nonexistence’. Short listed for the Man Booker Prize, 2003. 320 pages
Blake Morrison: And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993) The journalist’s moving, funny, tender, disturbing memoir of his father, Dr Arthur Morrison. 224 pages
Toni Morrison: Love - Short, earthy and shocking : a book about a good bad man or a bad good one. The personal histories of the women in his life illuminate Afro-American experience over the last 60 years. It’s rich so that the blurb suggests two readings of it are needed, and a piece of wisdom can suddenly halt your progress, as “All over the world, traitors help progress. It’s like being exposed to tuberculosis.” Both style and content should provide much to discuss. 208 pages
Walter Mosley: Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned - A superb insight into the moral values of a black American murderer rebuilding his self-respect after gaol. 208 pages
Haruki Murakami: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle - Much acclaimed Japanese writer who offers a surreal take on contemporary life. Mr Okada decides to quit his job. Within months his wife and cat have disappeared and his life has been taken over by a series of enigmatic and implausibly named strangers who warn him against his brother-in-law, a sinister and powerful politician. When all else fails he takes refuge in a well with a baseball bat and ponders the possible significance of a blue mark on his face. Weird and wonderful, this author is addictive! 624 pages
Margaret Murphy: Weaving Shadows – Psychological suspense from local writers and member of Murder Squad. Barrister Clara Pascal uses work to recover from the trauma of her own recent abduction but places herself in danger by defending a convicted killer. A likeable heroine, complex plotting and plenty of local colour from the contemporary Chester setting. 416 pages
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Preethi Nair: 100 Shades of White - This is a "gently powerful" story of an Indian family who relocate to London from Kerala. When the father leaves, the children believe he has been killed whilst saving a child's life. He has actually set up home with another woman. The family struggles financially until the mother finds her ethnic culinary skills are a rich source of income. The son and daughter come to prefer English life, whilst their mother tries to preserve their heritage. The tale is told alternately by mother and daughter, so we see both sides of the story and culture. The mother remarries and her first husband reappears with the inevitable consequences. Due to be televised in 2006. 304 pages
Irene Nemirovsky: Suite Francaise – Set during a year that begins with France's fall to the Nazis in June 1940 and ends with Germany turning its attention to Russia Irene Nemirovsky conceived of "Suite Francaise" as a four- or five-part novel. It was to be a symphony - her War and Peace. Although only two sections were finished before her tragic death, they form a book that is beautifully complete in itself, and awe-inspiring in its understanding of humanity. 416 pages
Eric Newby: Love and War in the Apennines - A moving fragment of autobiography in which this famous travel writer tells of his escape from a POW camp and how he was hidden by peasants in the Tuscan mountains. 224 pages
David Nobbs: Going Gently – Can a man, the creator of TV’s Reginald Perrin, successfully convey a brave woman’s experience of the twentieth century? Sometimes the language is frank, as she looks back on an eventful life from her hospital bed, in what has been called our finest post war comic novelist’s most ambitious and best work. 412 pages
Joseph O’Connor: Star of the Sea - A group of people on a ship bound for New York look back at the ways in which the Irish potato famine affected their lives - how marriages, families and livelihoods disappeared, and how they struggled with starvation. Brings home the horror of famine without making political judgments or allocating blame. There is a great depth of feeling in the characters. 432 pages
Catherine O’Flynn: What Was Lost - The 1980s. Kate Meaney is a serious-minded and curious young girl - who spends her time with her toy monkey acting out the role of a junior detective. She notes goings-on at the Green Oaks shopping centre and in her street, particularly the newsagents, where she is friends with the owner's son Adrian. When she disappears, Adrian falls under suspicion. 2004: 30-something Lisa strikes up a friendship with a security guard in protest at her own futile relationship. Following CCTV glimpses of Kate, they become entranced by the lost girl and the history of Green Oaks. 272 pages
Orhan Pamuk: The Black Book – Galip is an Istanbul lawyer whose wife has vanished. Could she be hiding out with her brother? And if so, why isn't anyone in his flat? Playing the part of private investigator, Galip sleuth soon finds himself descending deeper and deeper into an extraordinary mystery. Richly atmospheric, 'The Black Book' is a labyrinthine novel suffused with the sights, sounds and scents of contemporary Istanbul. 416 pages
Tony Parsons: Man and Boy – A bestseller from the popular journalist, famously a “new man”. Harry Silver’s wife walks out on him when he is unfaithful, leaving him to cope with the care of their young son. He has to grow up and decide what love and family mean to him. 352 pages
Ann Patchett: Bel Canto – Orange Prize winner 2002 in which a gathering of international visitors enjoying a diplomatic party are taken hostage by a gang of Latin American terrorists. The author explores the beliefs and psyches of both hostages and terrorists, revealing some unexpected bonds. 318 pages
Per Petterson: Out Stealing Horses - Following the death of his wife, Trond has moved to an isolated part of Norway to live in solitude. But a chance encounter with a character from the fateful summer of 1948 brings the painful memories of that year flooding back, and will leave Trond even more convinced of his decision to end his days alone. 272 pages
Caryl Phillips: A Distant Shore – Dorothy is a retired teacher, Solomon is an African refugee, and they cross paths where they both live in a small English village. Dorothy is a woman stranded by her choices in life, Solomon escaping a war-torn country. Coming from two markedly different paths to the same point in time, their stories and brief friendship reflect the Britain that has changed during their lifetimes. 320 pages
DBC Pierre: Vernon God Little – Winner of the Man Booker Prize 2003, “a twenty-first century comedy in the presence of death” is the perfect, concise description provided on the book cover. As the pages turn, you will become desperate to find out what happens to hapless teenager Vernon Gregory Little, who inadvertently gets deeper and deeper into trouble as he continually finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pierre brilliantly exposes many shortcomings of contemporary American society, not least trial by media. Whilst written from a teenage perspective – with dialogue to suit – the author skilfully comes up with passages such as, “When massive times come, your mind sprays your senses with ice. Not to deaden the brain, but to deaden the part that learned to expect”. 288 pages
Terry Pratchett: Equal Rites - Don't be put off by the "Fantasy" label - Pratchett's books deal very much with real life problems. In the case of Equal Rites, it's sexual discrimination he's taking on. A determined young girl decides she wants to qualify as a wizard, despite the fact that in order to make the grade she will have to attend the all male, and very traditional, Unseen University. To help her she has a disapproving witch, Granny Weatherwax (a first appearance for one of Pratchett's greatest recurring characters), as they travel to the big city of Ankh-Morpork where the University is situated. A splendid picaresque tale with lots of humour. 282 pages
E Annie Proulx: Postcards - A dazzling first novel, which the New York Times critic said came close to being The Great American Novel. Loyal Blood, a man who has murdered his girlfriend, spends forty years eking out an existence in the American West, haunted by guilt. The postcards are handwritten epigraphs, linking him to the past he has left behind. This was the first book by a woman to win the PEN/Faulkner Prize. 320 pages
Philip Pullman: Northern Lights – Winning numerous awards including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Award, the Carnegie Medal and the Children’s Book of the Year, this is the first book in the Dark Materials Trilogy. This highly acclaimed teenage trilogy is being widely read by adults, forming part of the newly branded “kid-ult” literature. Northern Lights begins this epic fantasy chronicling the otherworldly adventures of Lyra and her companions. 416 pages
Jonathan Raban: Waxwings - At the turn of the millennium, two immigrants to the United States are living their versions of the American Dream in this zestful, sophisticated novel. The stock market hits a new high, anti-globalisation riots break out in the streets and a child disappears, as the men’s lives collide in surprising & entertaining ways. 300 pages
Ian Rankin: The Falls – It is clear from this novel how the author has acquired the enviable reputation for being “unsurpassed among living British crime writers” (The Times). A student has gone missing in Edinburgh and DI John Rebus has a gut feeling it’s not another runaway case. Rankin has mastered the art of storytelling and if this is your first encounter with Rebus, it’s unlikely to be your last. 496 pages
Kathy Reichs: Deja Dead - A gripping thriller, with a French-Canadian flavour, a headstrong heroine and plenty of bones. Not for the squeamish! 416 pages
Dan Rhodes: Gold - Miyuki Woodward, lover of pints and Pot Noodles, has been spending holidays in the same Welsh seaside town for years. This year, following an act of raw creativity involving some cans of gold spray paint, Miyuki will take part in the most turbulent events the village has seen since Tall Mr Hughes returned from the pub toilet without remembering to button up. 208 pages
Gwendoline Riley: Joshua Spassky - Joshua and Natalie share a vexed five-year history of sporadic encounters, explosive drunkenness and failed intercourse, all spliced with the occasional sad intimation of true love. Natalie attempts to start a new life without him in Manchester, but when Joshua calls unexpectedly and asks her to meet him in America she knows she has no choice but to go. Whilst wandering around the Blue Ridge Mountains or lying together for days in their cheap hotel room, they talk about their lives - about his ex-wife, and her dead family - and come to a slow, surprising understanding. 176 pages
Bethan Roberts: The Good Plain Cook - It's summer 1936, and the world is on the cusp of change, but there's little sign of this in rural Sussex. When local girl Kitty Allen answers an advert looking for 'a good plain cook', she has no idea what she's in for. 320 pages
Michele Roberts: Reader, I Married Him – Thrice-widowed Aurora (also known as Dawn) goes to Italy to find herself and succeeds in getting embroiled with radical feminist nuns, dubious priests, smuggling and a certain amount of sex and shopping. But Aurora is not all she seems. Described by one reviewer as a ‘menopausal Bridget Jones’, this is a great read, a literary take on the chick-lit genre. 240 pages
Jane Rogers: Mr Wroe's Virgins - Mr Wroe heads a religious cult called Ashton Israelites, and requests local families to staff his home and HQ with their daughters. Their lives and dress code are very strict. The book is based on fact, but the stories of the young women are fictional. One is a mother, but brings her baby up as a foundling, unbeknown to the others. There is rivalry between the strong and the weak; those who can carry out the chores and those who can't. Two in particular try to seduce Mr. Wroe. In the end, because of rumours of indecency, the house breaks up. A wonderful, unusual novel. 276 pages
Bernice Rubens: Yesterday in the Back Lane – By popular demand for a title by this author. From the start you know that the narrator is an undetected murderess. Her story is about respectability, punishment and atonement, with the reader compelled to discover what happens to her. 256 pages
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Salman Rushdie: The Satanic Verses - This Whitbread Prize winner continues to cause controversy. 560 pages
Lorna Sage : Bad Blood - This memoir of girlhood won the Whitbread Prize and has been especially popular in Cheshire since its setting is a Flintshire vicarage. Anthony Thwaite named it as one of his books of 2000, calling it a rackety, painful, devastatingly funny account of breaking the rules and breaking out. 287 pages (Nonfiction)
C J Sansom: Dissolution - This debut novel came very close to winning the first Waverton Good Read Award, and was shortlisted for two Crime Writers’ Association ‘Daggers’. It is 1537, Henry VIII has declared himself Supreme Head of the Church, and Lord Cromwell has sent a team of commissioners to investigate the monasteries. However, at Scarnsea – a monastery on the Sussex coast – the situation is far worse than is assumed elsewhere. Robin Singleton, one of Cromwell’s charges, has been murdered, and when Master Shardlake – a lawyer – is sent with his assistant Mark to investigate, a series of darker events unfurl. 464 pages
Bernard Schlink: The Reader - This short novel by a professor of law at Berlin University, the author of several thrillers, is surprisingly affecting. In it, a schoolboy in post war Germany has an affair with an older woman, who disappears. They meet again when she is a defendant in a war crimes trial. 224 pages
Susan Schwartz Senstad: Music for the Third Ear – ‘Gripping’ usually describes the suspense of a thriller but it is fitting here for a story about the consequences of cruelty and torture on a Bosnian Muslim & his Croatian wife. They are given refuge in Norway, their lives haunted by what has happened to them, and how others try to help them. A painful, compassionate, extraordinary book. 255 pages
Asne Seierstad: The Bookseller of Kabul - Seierstad, an award winning journalist has developed a fascinating portrait of the life of a family in Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban. This rich story is based on real events observed during her stay with the bookseller and his family. The narrative is concerned with everyday occurrences in family life set against a backdrop of political change. 288 pages
Will Self: The Book of Dave - London cabbie Dave Rudman writes a book to his estranged son to give him some fatherly advice? Hundreds of years later, when rising sea levels have put London underwater, the discovery of the Book of Dave spawns a religion. Shuttling between the recent past and a far-off future where England is terribly altered, "The Book of Dave" is a strange and troubling mirror held up to our times: disturbing, satirizing and vilifying who and what we think we are. 512 pages
Vikram Seth: An Equal Music - A book about love, about the love of a woman lost and found and lost again; it is a book about music and how the love of music can run like a passionate fugue through a life. It is the story of Michael, of Julia and of the love that binds them. 483 pages
James Shapiro: 1599: a year in the life of William Shakespeare – How did Shakespeare go from being a talented poet and playwright to become one of the greatest writers who ever lived? In this one exhilarating year, we follow what he reads and writes, what he saw, and who he worked with as he invests in the new Globe theatre and creates four of his most famous plays. 464 pages
Qaisra Shahraz: The Holy Woman – Set in contemporary Pakistan, London and Egypt. Zarrie Bano is a glamorous 28 year-old daughter of a wealthy Muslim landowner who falls in love a business tycoon and plans to marry him. Her father takes an instant irrational dislike to her choice and vetoes the match and when his only son is killed in a freak riding accident, decides to make Zarri his heiress, resurrecting an ancient tradition which decrees that an heiress must remain celibate. 354 pages
Gary Shteyngart: Absurdistan – Absurdistan, a tiny, oil-rich nation where Misha unexpectedly finds himself installed as minister of multicultural affairs. Our hero soon finds himself covered in oil, fighting for his life, falling in love, and trying to figure out if normal life is still possible in the twenty-first century. 352 pages
Carol Shields: Larry’s Party – One of the most frequently discussed books in reading groups, nationally. Canadian Larry is a maze-maker whose life of 20 years is exuberantly, graphically, told. As in a maze, he pursues knowledge, enjoys himself, and meets both dead ends and successes. 352 pages
Carol Shields: Unless - On one level, this is a story about a successful forty-something woman trying to come to terms with why her grown up daughter has become a beggar on the streets of Toronto. It is, however, much more. The story is engaging right from the start, and through the main character, Reta, the reader is faced with the themes of goodness, nature of power, family life and, perhaps unfashionably, the place of women in society. An excellent read with lots of ideas to talk about. 336 pages
Anita Shreve: Sea Glass - At first the writing seems cool, too simple, but it's not. In 1929 a young American couple get into too much debt and then the stockmarket falls. They become involved with striking mill workers in the nearby city. This novel should give much to discuss, from it's construction, and its sensuous detailing of clothes and emotions, to its compassion for lonely, hardworking people. 368 pages
Dodie Smith: I Capture the Castle – Featured in the BBC Big Read poll of the nation’s 100 favourite novels, and recently adapted for the silver screen, this is an enchanting and totally absorbing story by the author of 101 Dalmatians which bridges teenage and adult readerships. The Mortmains are an eccentric and somewhat dysfunctional family living in a dilapidated castle in Suffolk during the 1930s. Told through the journal entries of youngest daughter, seventeen year old Cassandra - the most charming and warmest narrator imaginable - and written with such wit and irony, this is a delightful portrayal of family life and love. 407 pages
Nigel Smith: I Think There’s Something Wrong With Me – A brilliant black comedy for our time, a book for everyone who's ever thought, 'there must be more to life than this'. 320 pages
Alexander McCall Smith: The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency - Precious Ramotswe inherits money from her father and sets up Botswana’s first ever female detective agency. This delightful book, the first in a series, shows how she solves a succession of mysteries, such as missing persons, while evoking the African countryside and people. Rather like “Captain Corelli’s Mandolin”, the book has been in print for a few years and has only recently become a major hit. A quick and charming read. 256 pages
Dava Sobel: Longitude - An account of John Harrison’s long quest for a perfect timekeeper for use at sea. Gripping and beautifully written, it is one of the best popular science books, discovered anew after the TV serialisation. 189 pages
Graham Swift: Last Orders – This story is about a group of men, friends since the second world war, whose lives revolve around work, family, the racetrack and their favourite pub. When one of them dies, the survivors drive his ashes from London to a seaside town where they will be scattered, compelling them to take stock of who they are today, who they were before and the shifting relationships in between. Booker prize winner of 1997. 304 pages
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Amy Tan: The Bonesetter’s Daughter – two stories, of Ruth in contemporary San Francisco deciphering her mother’s tumultuous life in pre-war China as an aid to sorting out her own future. Praised by readers as fascinating, witty and heartbreaking in turn. 352 pages
Elizabeth Taylor: A View of the Harbour - In the faded coastal village of Newby, everyone looks out for - and in on - each other, and beneath the deceptively sleepy exterior, passions run high. Tory, recently divorced, begins a passionate affair with her neighbour Robert, the local doctor. 320 pages
Colin Thubron: In Siberia - Here is one of the great travel writers, who can arrive in a town and impress strangers into giving him a bed for the night. He is steeped in Asian history yet wears his knowledge gracefully. Across the vast country he meets Siberians who continue, as once political exiles did, to adapt, cut down, muck in and suffer through the wreckage of Communism. 304 pages
Claire Tomalin: Samuel Pepys: the unequalled self - the famous diary covered only nine of Pepys' 70 years; a life which the Guardian reviewer of this award-winning biography called "full of irresistible material... sex, drink, plague, fire, marital conflict... corruption and courage in public life". With great scholarship Claire Tomalin has mastered a mass of detail to create a "fast, vivid, accessible" good read. 499 pages
Leonid Tsypkin: Summer in Baden-Baden - One bitterly cold winter in the 1970s, Leonid Tsypkin's obsession with Dostoyevsky leads him to Leningrad by train, so that he can see for himself where his hero died. As the train makes its way across Russia, a journal inspires Tsypkin to conjure up the summer of 1867, when Dostoyevsky and his young wife Anna travelled across Europe to Baden-Baden. This elegy to the great Russian writer becomes a glorious and unforgettable love story. 320 pages
William Trevor: After Rain – Less is most definitely more in the case of this author. Trevor is a master in the art of short story writing, and here is a collection of twelve stories, mostly set in Ireland, that say so much in so few words. 224 pages
Anne Tyler: Saint Maybe - Be warned, if you haven’t already you will want to read everything else by this author after this brisk, wise, funny book. Following a family tragedy Ian Bedloes of Baltimore devotes himself to child-rearing but hopes, one day, to be free from responsibilities. 352 pages
Sally Vickers: Miss Garnet’s Angel - On her retirement a schoolteacher journeys to Venice and discovers some fun. Her sudden emotional awakening involves lessons about how closely good and evil go hand in hand, in a gentle adventure which has touched and delighted many readers. 352 pages
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith - Shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction (2002), shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction (2002), winner of the Crime Writers' Association Ellis Peters Historical Dagger (2002) and Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Lesbian Fiction (2002). This is Waters’ third offering of Victorian crime, sharing with Dickens the themes of orphans, villains, pickpockets, lunacy and petty criminality. 560 pages
Fay Weldon: Mantrapped – Part fiction, part autobiography. In it, Weldon finally admits the extent to which she has portrayed her own life story and events through her novels. In the story of Trisha that runs through this book, she contemplates how easy it is to lose one’s soul – she crosses a man too closely on the stairs to lose hers - and equally, how easily one can accumulate and lose wealth – Trisha rises from rags to riches by winning the lottery and then returns to rags by having spent it all. Weldon continues to explore themes of gender, class and cultural change. 288 pages
Rebecca Wells: Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – Sidalee, from Louisiana, has an unconventional extended family. Their lives are alive with humour and exuberance, but there are also darker undercurrents. 544 pages
Kate Williams: England’s Mistress: The Infamous Tale of Emma Hamilton -
A dramatic, sparkling tale of sex, glamour, intrigue, romance and heartbreak, England's Mistress traces the rise and fall of the gorgeous Emma Hamilton. Born into poverty, she clawed her way up through London's underworlds of sex for sale to become England's first media superstar. In a world of tabloid fame and three-minute wonders, Emma's life is truly a tale for our time. 528 pages
Simon Winchester: The Surgeon of Crowthorne - An entertaining true story by the Asia-Pacific editor for Conde Nast Traveler, about one of the most helpful contributors to the Oxford English Dictionary in the nineteenth century, an inmate of the Broadmoor asylum for the criminally insane. 224 pages
William Woodruff: The Road to Nab End - A popular book about childhood poverty that isn't nostalgic. The sone of a weaver recalls 1920s Blackburn vividly. Though he became an historian he didn't learn much at school, being too tired after his paper rounds and dashing out at lunchtime to fetch his families' meals to them at work. He knew Great War Survivors and met the hunger marchers in 1932, and hilariously tells of the excitement of entering into the spirit of the drama at the theatre. He asks, why didn't the hard times breed revolution? Like his quiet father the poor were too meek but their, and his, resourcefulness and self-reliance are astonishing. 407 pages
Markus Yusak: The Book Thief - 1939 - Nazi Germany - The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier. Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall. Some important information - this novel is narrated by death. It's a small story, about: a girl; an accordionist; some fanatical Germans; a Jewish fist fighter; and quite a lot of thievery. Another thing you should know - death will visit the book thief three times. 560 pages
Reading Group Extra
Ideal for confident groups, a fabulous new opportunity for reading group members to each read a different book around a particular theme. Your reading discussions will take on a new direction as you share and compare your individual reading experiences, and be introduced to an even wider range of writing. Each reader only needs to select and read one title from the collection. New themes will be added in time; if you have your own suggestions for themes, do let us know.
Art in Fiction
Tracey Chevalier’s Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of the most requested titles in the Reading Group Collection so we’ve come up with an art history themed box. Visual arts are the link between titles by Sarah Dunant, Susan Vreeland, Tracey Chevalier, Will Davenport, Peter Ackroyd, Michael Frayn, Patrick White, Adele Geras and others, an eclectic selection taking the reader from fifteenth century Florence to a tattoo parlour in present day Coney Island.
Big Gay Read
In 2005 Manchester Central Library set up a gay and lesbian reading group open to anyone wanting to broaden their reading experience. The Big Gay Read was a suggestion from the members of that group and has now become a national vote. This is an opportunity to try a selection from the shortlist. Includes titles by Amanda Boulter, Stella Duffy, Jeffrey Eugenides, Patricia Highsmith, Alan Hollingworth, Armistead Maupin, Jamie O'Neill, Annie Proulx, Jane Rule, Shyam Selvadurai, Colm Tobin and Jeannette Winterson.
Faber 25
Reading group selection of 25 of Faber’s best poetry anthologies. Includes Ted Hughes, Philip Larkin, Thomas Hardy, William Wordsworth, Dylan Thomas, Wendy Cope, Carol Ann Duffy, Simon Armitage, Paul Muldoon, Dorothy Molloy, Alice Oswald, Don Paterson and our current Poet Laureate, Andrew Motion.
Here & Now
Here & Now brings the best North West writing out into the open through the region’s public libraries. Including writers who live and work in the region or who are North Westerners at heart, it takes in every kind of writing from novels to biography and all points between. This selection from the main promotion reflects the region’s strong tradition of superb crime writing (Martin Edwards, Val McDermid), profiles some of its well known names (Howard Jacobson, Sarah Hall, Erica James) and complements these with some emerging voices (Heather Beck, Joe Pemberton, Robert Graham). Further information on Here & Now can be found at www.time-to-read.co.uk.
Motherhood
What makes a good mother? 12 very different portrayals of motherhood to contrast and compare. This box includes recent controversial titles ‘We Need To Talk About Kevin’ and ‘My Sister’s Keeper’ as well as maligned mothers from the past in ‘Sons And Lovers’ , ‘Confederacy Of Dunces’ and reluctant mothers, as in the neglected classic ‘The Children Who Lived In A Barn’. Plus, naturally, ‘The Bad Mother’s Handbook’ |