Reading Group Multiples List
(Updated November 2005)
Isabel Allende - Daughter of Fortune
Isabel Allende's best novel since The House of the Spirits. Set in Anglophile Chile and
goldrush California during the middle years of the nineteenth century, this magnificent
romance tells the story of English foundling Eliza Sommers who grows up in the bustling
entrepot of Valparaiso. Eliza is a spirited, sparky and ambitious romantic who becomes
embroiled in a forbidden love affair with the charismatic but capricious Joaquin Andieta.
When he disappears suddenly for California, and the promise of riches that rumours of
gold strikes have brought him, she can but follow after him... (8 copies)
Martin Amis – The Information Richard Tull, a failed novelist, contemplates with
jealousy the success of his rival and friend Gwyn Barry. He looks in vain for a means of
damaging Gwyn's reputation, and finally finds someone who will do this for him in
exchange for cash. (10 copies)
Margaret Atwood – The Blind Assassin
"It's loss and regret and misery and yearning that drive the story forward," writes
Margaret Atwood, towards the end of her impressive and complex new novel, The Blind
Assassin. It's a melancholic account of why writers write--and readers read--and one
that frames the different lives told through this book.
With the intelligence, subtlety and remarkable characterisation associated with Atwood's
writing (from her first novel, The Edible Woman through to the best-selling Alias Grace),
the two stories in the book play with one another--sustaining an uncertainty about who
has done what to who and why to the very end of this compelling book. (12 copies)
Beryl Bainbridge - Master Georgie
A novel about one family's experiences in the Crimean War. When the Battle of
Inkerman was over, five survivors were assembled in front of a camera. A sixth figure Master Georgie - added symmetry to the group. In the distance a young woman circled
round and round like a bird above a robbed nest. (15 copies)
Iain Banks – The Bridge
A man lies in a coma after a near fatal accident. His body broken, his memory vanished,
he finds himself in the surreal world of the bridge - a world where dreams and fantasy,
past and future fuse. Who is this man? Where is he? Is he more dead than alive? Or
has he never been so alive before? (10 copies)
Iain Banks – The Wasp Factory
Frank, no ordinary sixteen-year-old, lives with his father outside a remote Scottish
village. Their life is, to say the least, unconventional. Frank's mother abandoned them
years ago: his elder brother Eric is confined to a psychiatric hospital; and his father
measures out his eccentricities on an imperial scale. Frank has turned to strange acts of
violence to vent his frustrations. In the bizarre daily rituals there is some solace. But
when news comes of Eric's escape from the hospital Frank has to prepare the ground
for his brother's inevitable return - an event that explodes the mysteries of the past and
changes Frank utterly. (10 copies)
Joan Barfoot – Getting Over Edgar
1
Gwen's husband, Edgar, walks out on their marriage in pursuit of excitement. The
requisite red convertible, however, leads not to eternal youth but to a premature death
by the 8.20 eastbound train. The story then follows Gwen and her uncharacteristic
behaviour in the wake of Edgar's death. (9 copies)
Alessandro Baricco - Silk
When an epidemic threatens to destroy the silk trade in France, Herve Joncour leaves
his small town and travels to Japan to obtain eggs for a fresh breeding of silk worms.
There he falls in love with another man's concubine, and during subsequent visits their
secret and silent affair develops. (13 copies)
Pat Barker - Another World
Nick's grandfather Geordie lies dying. As Nick watches, Geordie relives the horrors
surrounding his brother's death. Meanwhile the children, who have been organized into
decorating the living room, peel away the wallpaper to reveal an obscene portrait of an
Edwardian family. (12 copies)
Suzanne Berne – A crime in the Neighbourhood
When the murdered body of a local boy is found in the woods, suspicions transform
young Marsha's once-secure neighbourhood. Marsha begins to watch her neighbours
and when Mr Green, the shy bachelor from next-door, takes an interest in her mother,
Marsha is drawn into a cruel chain of events. (15 copies)
Melvin Bragg – The Soldier’s Return
The end of World War Two has to be one of Britain's most dewy-eyed, rose-tinted
memories. Yearned for years in advance--Dame Vera Lynn built an entire career on
such yearning--it spelled the end of the anguishing waiting, the terrible deprivations
overseas and Johnny asleep in his own little bed again. It takes a good novel to make
new all the hackneyed emotion of the moment, and a great one to reveal, without
sensationalising, the doubts behind the smiles. In that case, this may be a great novel.
(15 copies)
Poppy Z Brite – Exquisite Corpse
A convicted serial killer leaves his prison cell a dead man and rises again to build a new
life. His journey takes him to New Orleans' French Quarter- to the decadent bars and
frivolous boys that haunt the luscious dark corners of a town brought up on Voodoo and
the dark arts. Anticipating a willing victim he finds an equal, something he never
expected even in his wildest dreams... Two men thrown together share a dangerous
desire and a love that brings fear along with lust, and leaves a trail of blood from
London to the USA. (12 copies)
Bill Broady – Swimmer
‘A lyrical and haunting evocation of the one-track life of a champion sportswoman and
the spititual cost of her obsessive quest for competitive success.’ Independent
(10 copies)
William Brodrick – The Sixth Lamentation
What should you do if the world has turned against you? When Father Anselm is asked
this question by an old man at Larkwood Priory, his response, to claim sanctuary, is to
have greater resonance than he could ever have imagined. For that evening the old
2
man returns, demanding the protection of the church. His name is Eduard Schwermann
and he is wanted by the police as a suspected war criminal. With her life running out,
Agnes Aubret feels it is time to unburden to her granddaughter Lucy the secrets she has
been carrying for so long. Fifty years earlier, Agnes had been living in Occupied Paris, a
member of a small group risking their lives to smuggle Jewish children to safety - until
they were exposed by a young SS Officer: Eduard Schwermann. As Anselm attempts to
uncover Schwermann's past, and as Lucy's search into her grandmother's history
continues, their investigations dovetail to reveal a remarkable story. (10 copies)
Anne Bronte – Agnes Grey
"Agnes Grey" (1847) draws largely upon the author's unhappy experiences as a
governess. It is the story of a rector's daughter who takes service as a governess and is
ill-treated and lonely. She experiences kindness from no one but the curate, Mr Weston,
whom she finally marries. (10 copies)
Robert Olen Butler – Tabloid Dreams
This collection of short stories is hilarious. The author has taken tabloid headlines and
written his own imaginary accounts of the stories behind the headlines. And they say
that truth is stranger than fiction!! (11 copies)
Anthony Capella – Food of Love
Laura Patterson is an American exchange student in Rome who, fed up with being
inexpertly groped by her young Italian beaus, decides there's only one sure-fire way to
find a sensual man: date a chef. Then she meets Tomasso, who's handsome, young and cooks in the exclusive Templi restaurant. Perfect. Except, unbeknownst to Laura,
Tomasso is in fact only a waiter at Templi - it's his shy friend Bruno who is the chef. But
Tomasso is the one who knows how to get the girls, and when Laura comes to dinner
he persuades Bruno to help him with the charade. A delicious tale of Cyrano de
Bergerac-style culinary seduction, but with sensual recipes instead of love poems. (10
copies)
Justin Cartwright – The Promise of Happiness
Charles Judd meanders round his local Cornish beach, contemplating the turns his life
has taken. His wife Daphne struggles hopelessly with the latest fish recipe, trying to
keep something in her life under control. Two of their children are keeping it all together
- just. But they are all still recovering from the shock of the prodigal daughter, Juliet,
being imprisoned in New York State for her part in an art theft. Since then, Charles
appears to have lost his entire family. Now Juliet is being released, the family is about to
be reunited and the wounds her imprisonment has caused are being re-opened. (10
copies)
Michael Chabon – The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
One night in 1939, Josef Kavalier shuffles into his cousin Sam Clay's cramped New
York bedroom, his arduous and nerve-wracking escape from Prague finally achieved with the help of his mentor, the master illusionist Kornblum. But little does he realise that
this uneasy first meeting is the start of an extraordinary friendship and even more fruitful
business partnership. For Sam, Joe's formidable artistic skills are a chance to liberate
them both from lives as inventory clerks at the Empire Novelties Incorporated Company.
Together, they create a comic strip called The Escapist, its superhero a Nazi-busting
saviour who liberates the oppressed around the world with his Golden Key. The
Escapist makes them their fortune and their name, but, as the situation worsens in
3
Europe, Joe can only think of one thing. How can he effect a real-life escape, and free
his family from the tyranny of Hitler? (10 copies)
Mavis Cheek – Sleeping Beauties
A morality tale by the author of "Janice Gentle Gets Sexy" and "Aunt Margaret's Lover".
The women who cross the portals of Tabitha's Beauty Parlour enter a perfumed world
where never a harsh note is struck. Tabitha is benign - but her prospective successor,
Chloe, is of a newer persuasion. (9 copies)
Tracy Chevalier – Falling Angels
"Sex and death meet again in Tracy Chevalier's marvellous evocation of Edwardian
England...."
In Falling Angels, Tracy Chevalier has combined a moving elegy to the lost innocence
of the 21st century's grandmothers and great-grandmothers with a reminder of the
strength and modernity of their aspirations and achievements. (12 copies)
Wilkie Collins- Woman in White
Late one night, a drawing teacher meets a mysterious woman dressed in white. Who is
she, and what is her connection to the teacher's new pupil, a beautiful heiress? The
narrative, related in succession by Walter Hartright and other characters in the story,
starts with his midnight encounter on a lonely road with a mysterious and agitated
woman dressed entirely in white, whom he helps to escape from pursuers.
(12 copies)
Michael Cunningham-The Hours
Winner of the 1999 Pulitzer and Pen/Faulkner prizes, THE HOURS is a daring and
deeply affecting novel inspired by the life and work of Virginia Woolf. In 1920's London,
Virginia Woolf is fighting against her rebellious spirit as she attempts to make a start on
her new novel. A young wife and mother, broiling in a suburb of 1940's Los Angeles,
yearns to escape and read her precious copy of Mrs Dalloway. And Clarissa Vaughan
steps out of her smart Greenwich village apartment in 1990's New York to buy flowers
for a party she is hosting for a dying friend. Moving effortlessly across the decades and
between England and America, this exquisite novel intertwines the stories of three
unforgettable women.
(7 copies)
Fred D’Aguiar – The Longest Memory
The tragic story of a rebellious, fiercely intelligent young slave who breaks all the rules:
in learning to read and write; in falling in love with a white girl, the daughter of his owner,
and finally in trying to escape and joining her in the free North. (11 copies)
Isla Dewar – Keeping up with Magda
A novel set in a fishing village on the Scottish coast, where everyone knows everybody
else's business and gossip abounds. The centre of this world is a cafe and the largerthan-life woman who runs it, but when newly-widowed Jessie Tate, who seeks peace
and solitude, rents a room upstairs she discovers that it is just the place to lay her
ghosts. (11 copies)
Charles Dickens- David Copperfield
In this novel, Dickens describes one boy growing up in a world which is by turns
magical, fearful and grimly realistic. In a book which is part autobiographical, the
4
novelist transmutes his life-experience into a series of comic and sentimental
adventures.
(12 copies)
Michael Dibdin – Dead Lagoon
An Aurelio Zen mystery. Zen returns to his native Venice to investigate the
disappearance of a wealthy American resident, but soon learns that, amid the hazy light
and shifting waters of the lagoon, nothing is what it seems. (10 copies)
Andre Dubus – House of Sand and Fog
Kathy, a recovering alcoholic, seperated from her husband, fails to open a series of
letters from the tax office. The State seizes her house and it is sold to Behrani, a former
Iranian Air Force officer. For him, the house comes to represent a passport to the
American dream, but not for Kathy. (10 copies)
Helen Dunmore – Your blue-eyed boy.
Simone is a woman who is struggling to deal with a difficult present - a move to the
country, a new job as a district judge, a husband on the brink of a breakdown and
already bankrupt, two small boys and a precarious domestic life, She also has a past
that will soon catch up with her. (15 copies)
Jonathan Falla – Blue Poppies
It is 1950. In a remote Tibetan village, on the border with China, Puton, a young woman,
crippled and widowed in a terrifying attack, and now seen as an omen of bad luck by the
villagers, meets a stranger - a young Scot, Jamie. He is in the village to set up a radio
post. Both are lonely and isolated. Puton is scared of the locals and the Chinese; Jamie
is homesick. As their attraction for each other grows, Communist China invades Tibet.
The villagers must flee to safety, and led by Jamie, and his friend, Nima, a Buddhist
monk and herbalist, the caravan tries to dodge the army, led by a vengeful Chinese
commander. (10 copies)
Sebastian Faulks – Charlotte Gray
A young woman travels to occupied France in 1942, both to carry out a mission for
British Intelligence and to search for her lover, an English airman who is missing in
action. Once there, she witnesses the horror of French collusion with the Nazis and also
the tremendous courage of the Resistance. (14 copies)
Fannie Flagg – Fried green tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café
As eighty year old Mrs Cleo Threadgoode tells Evelyn Couch about her life, she
escapes the Rose Terrace Nursing Home and returns in her mind to Whistle Stop,
Alabama in the thirties where the Whistle Stop Café provides good barbecue, good
coffee, love and even an occasional murder. (13 copies)
Susan Fletcher – Eve Green
With the death of a mother and the abduction of a young girl, Susan Fletcher has written
a vividly beautiful novel about the innocence and terror of childhood. Following the loss
of her mother, eight-year-old Evie is sent to a new life in rural Wales -- a dripping place,
where flowers appear mysteriously on doorsteps and people look at her twice. With a
sense of being lied to she sets out to discover her family's dark secret -- unaware that
there is yet more darkness to come with the sinister disappearance of local girl
Rosemary Hughes. Now many years later Eve Green is waiting for the birth of her own
child, and when she revisits her past something clicks in her mind and her own reckless
5
role in the hunt for Rosie's abductor is revealed...A truly beautiful and hypnotic first
novel, this is both an engaging puzzle and an enchanting work of literature. (10 copies)
Karen Joy Fowler – The Jane Austen Book Club
Six people five women and a man meet once a month in California's Central Valley to
discuss Jane Austen's novels. They are ordinary people, neither happy nor unhappy,
but each of them is wounded in different ways, they are all mixed up about their lives
and relationships. Over the six months they meet, marriages are tested, affairs begin,
unsuitable arrangements become suitable under the guiding eye of Jane Austen a
couple of them even fall in love. (10 copies)
Elizabeth Gaskell- Ruth
A young orphan, Ruth Hilton, is seduced and then abandoned by the wealthy Henry
Bellingham. She is left to bring up her child in a society that offers her no protection and
seems to punish such innocence. Taken in by a Dissenting minister in the guise of a
widow, she is given a chance to bring up her son whom she loves above all else. But
the condemnation of society always threatens, and despite Ruth's rejection of his
belated offer of marriage, Bellingham's reappearance precipitates her exposure and
rejection. Only her heroic self-sacrifice in the midst of a cholera epidemic regains her
her position, but too late. This was a crusading novel when it was published in 1853,
and aroused almost as much censure for its shocking scenes as it did sympathy for the
heroine.
(12 copies)
Mike Gayle – My Legendary Girlfriend
A weekend in the life of struggling teacher Will Kelly, still in love with The One and
desperately searching for An-Other One, and his discovery that with a phone call friends
can lift you from the depths of depression or muck up your entire weekend. (10 copies)
Arthur Golden – Memoirs of a Geisha
Summoning up more than 20 years of Japan's most dramatic history, the geisha's story
uncovers a hidden world of eroticism and enchantment, exploitation and degradation. It
moves from a small fishing village in 1929 to the glamorous and decadent Kyoto of the
30s and on to postwar New York. (16 copies)
Ivan Goncharov – Oblomov
The best-known work by the 19th century Russian novelist about a man who lacks
willpower and self-confidence.
On its publication in 1859, Oblomov made Goncharov famous throughout Russia and
ensured for him a prominent position among contemporary Russian novelists. As a boy,
Goncharov was deeply struck by the carefree and idle lives of many of the nobility in his
native town, and in his reminiscences he commented that he created Oblomov from
both his personal observations and self-analysis. (9 copies)
Kate Grenville – Idea of Pefection
Orange Prize winner 2001
The Idea of Perfection is a funny and touching romance between two people who've
given up on love. Set in the eccentric little backwater of Karakarook, New South Wales,
pop. 1,374, it tells the story of Douglas Cheeseman, a gawky engineer with jug-handle
ears, and Harley Savage, a woman altogether too big and too abrupt for comfort. (12
copies)
6
Abdulrazak Gurnah – By the Sea
By the Sea tells of an elderly man coming to Britain from Zanzibar, off the coast of
Tanzania, as an asylum seeker. Rajab Shaaban-the name on his passport-does not
explain to the British immigration authorities why he needs asylum, expecting only to be
accepted, as the government of Zanzibar has been officially designated "as dangerous
to its own citizens". The picture Gurnah paints of the asylum-seeker's lot in late 20thcentury Britain is not a favourable one. Shaaban comes to Britain claiming he cannot
speak English, yet understands all that is said to him. Through this deception he meets,
after 30 years, the son of his namesake; Latif Mahmud has settled in Britain and is
presented as an academic expert who will speak Rajab's language. We also receive
glimpses of the torture and imprisonment of Shaaban in his own country, where men
abuse their power after independence from colonialism. However, this unfair treatment
is marginalised by the deception, bitterness and revenge that reverberates between the
two families of Gurnah's story. (10 copies)
Mark Haddon – The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night time
The title the curious incident of the dog in the night-time is an appropriate one for Mark
Haddon's ingenious novel both because of its reference to that most obsessive and factobsessed of detectives, Sherlock Holmes, and because its lower-case letters indicate
something important about its narrator.
Christopher is an intelligent youth who lives in the functional hinterland of autism--every
day is an investigation for him because of all the aspects of human life that he does not
quite get. When the dog next door is killed with a garden fork, Christopher becomes
quietly persistent in his desire to find out what has happened and tugs away at the world
around him until a lot of secrets unravel messily. (10 copies)
George Hagen – The Laments
When Howard and Julia Lament adopt Will, a baby secretly switched at birth in a bizarre
hospital debacle, it marks the beginning of a journey that takes them from Northern
Rhodesia in the 1950s to the Persian Gulf, England and suburban, Seventies America,
as they search for their place in the world. Howard is an engineer and dreamer,
obsessed by the conveyance of liquids through valves. Julia is a woman of fiery spirit
and an artist, who is constantly called upon to reinvent her family's life and her own.
Forced by his younger, anarchic twin brothers to question his place in the family, Will
struggles to find a sense of his own identity through the characters he meets en route from Ruth, his first love in Africa, who carries around a biscuit tin lid to admire her
reflection to Dawn Snedecker, the lisping intellectual who breaks his heart in America and fights to keep his family from breaking apart. (10 copies)
Sarah Hall – The Electric Michelangelo
Opening on the windswept front of Morecambe Bay, on the remote north-west coast of
England, The Electric Michelangelo is a novel of love, loss and the art of tattooing.
Hugely atmospheric, exotic and familiar, it is an exquisitely rendered portrait of seaside
resorts on opposite sides of the Atlantic by one of the most uniquely talented novelists
of her generation. (10 copies)
Jules Hardy – Altered Land
7
The story of this book concerns the relationship between a mother and her son, but the
theme is selfless love in its widest sense, its beauty and its power to overcome pain.
(10 copies)
Joanne Harris – Chocolat
Chocolat begins with Vianne Rocher and her six-year-old daughter Anouk arriving in the
small village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes. Three days later, Vianne opens a luxuriant
chocolate shop crammed with the most tempting of confections and offering a mouthwatering variety of hot chocolate drinks. It's Lent, the shop is opposite the church, it's
open on Sundays and Francis Reynaud, the austere parish priest, is livid.
One by one the locals succumb to Vianne's concoctions. However, certain villagers-including Armande's snobby daughter and Joséphine's violent husband--side with
Reynaud. So when Vianne announces a Grand Festival of Chocolate commencing
Easter Sunday, it's all-out war. War between church and chocolate, between good and
evil, between love and dogma. (10 copies)
Joanne Harris – Five Quarters of the Orange (12 copies)
When the widowed Framboise moves back to the village of Les Laveuses, where she
grew up, she is pleased to discover that no-one recognises her. She soon forges a new
life for herself there, and before long has established a profitable creperie. All is going
well, until her profiteering nephew realises that money can be made by publishing a
collection Framboise's increasingly popular recipes, left to her by her mother a woman
despised throughout the village. For the book to be a success, her true identity must be
revealed, opening the flood gates to a past life and painful childhood memories.
Joseph Heller - Catch 22
At the heart of Joseph Heller's bestselling novel, first published in 1961, is a satirical
indictment of military madness and stupidity, and the desire of the ordinary man to
survive it. It is the tale of the dangerously sane Captain Yossarian, who spends his time
in Italy plotting to survive. (12 copies)
Ernest Hemingway – The Old man and the Sea
The story of an old man's tragic fishing-trip, following the original publication of which
Hemingway was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. (10 copies)
Khaled Hosseini – The Kite Runner
Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to gain the approval of his father and resolves to win
the local kite-fighting tournament, helped by his loyal friend Hassan. But this is 1970’s
Afghanistan and Hassan is a low-caste servant who is jeered at in the street. Neither of
the boys could foresee what would happen to Hassan on the afternoon of the
tournament, which would shatter their lives. After the Russians invade and the family is
forced to flee to America, Amir realises that one day he must return, to find the one
thing that his new life cannot grant him: redemption. (15 copies)
Ha Jin – Waiting
This novel tells the story of Lin Kong, a man living in two worlds, struggling with the
conflicting claims of two utterly different women, as he moves through the political
minefields of a society designed to regulate his every move. (13 copies)
Sebastien Japrisot – A Very Long Engagement
One night in 1917, five French soldiers, court-martialled for self-inflicted wounds, are
pushed into No-man's-land and later found dead. The youngest of the five has a
8
fiancée, Mathilda. This is the story of Mathilda's quest, after the war, to discover what
has become of her fiancé. (12 copies)
Cathy Kelly – Never Too Late
When Evie, her sister Cara, and her best friend Olivia, go home for Christmas, Evie's
father announces that he's getting re-married. That shouldn't change anything - but then
they don't know whom they're going to meet at the wedding. (12 copies)
Douglas Kennedy-The Pursuit of Happiness
Manhattan, Thanksgiving Eve 1945. War is over and Eric Smythe's party is swinging.
Everyone is there, including his sister Sara. Then in walks the gatecrasher - Jack
Malone, an army journalist fresh from a defeated Germany. This chance meeting
between Sara and Jack will have profound consequences.
(12 copies)
Barbara Kingsolver – The Poisonwood Bible
This is a story told by the wife and four daughters of Nathan Price, a fierce evangelical
Baptist who takes his family and mission to the Belgian Congo in 1959. (10 copies)
Barbara Kingsolver – Prodigal Summer
From an isolated mountain cabin, Deanna Wolfe, a reclusive wildlife biologist, is caught
off-guard by a young hunter who changes utterly her self-assured, solitary life. Lusa
Maluf Landowski finds herself unexpectedly marooned on her husband's farm where
she must declare or lose her attachment to the land. Garnett Walker and Nannie
Rawley, a pair of elderly, feuding neighbours, tend their respective farms and wrangle
about God, pesticides, and the possibilities of a future neither of them expected. Over
the course of one humid summer in the Appalachian mountains these characters
discover their connections to one another and to the flora and fauna with which they
share their place in the world. (10 copies).
Matthew Kneale – English Passengers
This novel tells two parallel stories: one of three eccentric Englishmen who set sail for
Tasmania to find the garden of Eden; the other of a young Tasmanian aborigine and his
tribe, struggling against the invading British, who prove as lethal in their good intentions
as in their cruelty.(7 copies)
John Lanchester- Fragrant Harbour
This is the story of four people whose intertwined lives span 70 years in Asia. The
complacency of colonial life in the 1930s; the horrors of the Japanese occupation during
World War II; and the post-war boom and transformation of Hong Kong all surface in
this epic novel.
(12 copies)
Janet Laurence – The Mermaid’s Feast
What could possibly spoil a cruise around Scandinavia? Darina Lisle is about to find out
when the ship's purser disappears over board - and rumours abound that he was
murdered... When Darina Lisle was offered a free cruise on the Empress of India it was
hard to decide what was the most exciting. The two weeks on a luxury liner? The
opportunity to advise the cruise company on their menus? Or the promise of the
uninterrupted company of her husband Detective William Pigram?(12 copies)
9
Andrea Levy – Small Island
In this delicately wrought and profoundly moving novel, Andrea Levy handles the
weighty themes of empire, prejudice, war and love, with a lightness of touch and a
generosity of spirit that challenges and uplifts the reader. Winner of the 2004 Orange
Prize for Fiction and the 2005 Whitbread Prize. (10 copies)
Penelope Lively-The Photograph
Searching through a little-used cupboard at home, Glyn Peters chances upon a
photograph he has never seen before. It shows his wife holding hands with another
man. As Glyn begins to search for answers, he, and those around him, find the
certainties of the past and present slip away. (12 copies)
Ian McEwan – Atonement
Shortlisted for the Booker prize 2001
Atonement is Ian McEwan's ninth novel and his first since the Booker Prize-winning
Amsterdam in 1998. But whereas Amsterdam was a slim, sleek piece, Atonement is a
more sturdy, ambitious work, allowing McEwan more room to play, think and
experiment. (12 copies)
Gabriel Garcia Marquez – Chronicle of a death foretold
Setting out to reconstruct a murder that took place 27 years earlier, this chronicle moves
backwards and forwards in time, through the contradictions of memory and moments
lost in time. Its irony gives the book the nuances of a political fable. (9 copies)
Yann Martel – Life of Pi
Some books defy categorisation: Life of Pi, the second novel from Canadian writer Yann
Martel, is a case in point: just about the only thing you can say for certain about it is that
it is fiercely and admirably unique. The plot, if that’s the right word, concerns the
oceanic wanderings of a lost boy, the young and eager Piscine Patel of the title (Pi).
After a colourful and loving upbringing in gorgeously hued India, the Muslim-Christiananimistic Pi sets off for a fresh start in Canada. His blissful voyage is rudely interrupted
when his boat is scuppered halfway across the Pacific, and he is forced to rough it in a
lifeboat with a hyena, a monkey, a whinging zebra and a tiger called Richard.
(14 copies)
Andrew Miller – Oxygen
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2001
In Andrew Miller's third novel, Oxygen, the IMPAC-award winning author of Ingenious
Pain offers an intense, claustrophobic tale of parallel lives experiencing regret and
redemption. (5 copies)
David Mitchell – Cloud Atlas
A reluctant voyager crossing the Pacific in 1850; a disinherited composer blagging a
precarious livelihood in between-the-wars Belgium; a high-minded journalist in Governor
Reagan's California; a vanity publisher fleeing his gangland creditors; a genetically
modified 'dinery server' on death-row; and Zachry, a young Pacific Islander witnessing
the nightfall of science and civilisation - the narrators of Cloud Atlas hear each other's
echoes down the corridor of history, and their destinies are changed in ways great and
small. In his extraordinary third novel, David Mitchell erases the boundaries of
language, genre and time to offer a meditation on humanity's dangerous will to power,
and where it may lead us. (10 copies)
10
Deborah Moggach – Tulip Fever
The story of sexual betrayal and human failings in 17th-century Amsterdam, as the
characters move inexorably towards a grand deception and a tragic climax. (10 copies)
Bharati Mukherjee – Leave it to me
A post-modern and blackly comic view of California today. Set in San Francisco, this is
a wild exploration of personal and national guilt and responsibility, played out within the
stranglehold of a violent past. (15 copies)
Iris Murdoch- The Sea, The Sea
First published in 1978, this is the story of Charles Arrowby who, retiring from his
glittering London world in order to abjure magic and become a hermit turns to the sea:
turbulent and leaden, transparent and opaque, magician and mother. But he finds his
solitude is peopled by the drama of his own fantasies and obsessions.
(12 copies)
Preethi Nair – One Hundred Shades of White
Is about a mother who tells a lie to protect her children and that lie comes back years
later to destroy the very people it was meant to protect. Nalini, has a carefree life in
India until her husband sends for her and his two small children to come and join him in
London. Uprooted, he abandons them ruthlessly and leaves them with nothing. In order
to protect the childrens' sense of self worth, Nalini tells them that their father died
heroically in an accident and whole realities are build on this one lie as their fight for
survival begins. (10 copies)
Grant Naylor-Red Dwarf
The first lesson Lister learned about space travel was you should never try it. But Lister
didn't have a choice. All he remembered was going on a birthday celebration pub crawl
through London. When he came to his senses again, he was living in a locker on one of
Saturn's moons, with nothing in his pockets but a passport in the name of Emily
Berkenstein. So he did the only thing he could. Amazed to discover they would actually
hire him, he joined the Space Corps--and found himself aboard Red Dwarf, a spaceship
as big as a small city that, six or seven years from now, would get him back to Earth.
What Lister couldn't foresee was that he'd inadvertently signed up for a one-way jaunt
three million years into the future--a future which would see him the last living member
of the human race, with only a hologram crew mate and a highly evolved Cat for
company. Of course, that was before the ship broke the light barrier and things began to
get really weird. (10 copies)
David Nicholls – Starter for Ten
The year is 1985 and Brian has just started his first term at university, armed with the
obligatory CND membership and a complete set of Kate Bush albums. But he also has
a dark secret - a long-held, burning ambition to appear on University Challenge and
now, finally, it seems the dream is about to become reality. He's made the team, they've
successfully completed the qualifying rounds and are limbering up for their first televised
match in January. Surely it's only a matter of time before Brian is shaking hands with
Bamber Gascoigne and holding aloft the silver-plated commemorative plaque? But
Brian has a whole lot of living to do before then and when he falls in love with his teammate, the off-puttingly posh Alice, he finds there's more than a spanner in the works...
(10 copies)
11
Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveller’s Wife
This extraordinary, magical novel is the story of Clare and Henry who have known each
other since Clare was six and Henry was thirty-six, and were married when Clare was
twenty-two and Henry thirty. Impossible but true, because Henry is one of the first
people diagnosed with Chrono-Displacement Disorder: periodically his genetic clock
resets and he finds himself pulled suddenly into his past or future. His disappearances
are spontaneous and his experiences are alternately harrowing and amusing. The Time
Traveler's Wife depicts the effects of time travel on Henry and Clare's passionate love
for each other with grace and humour. Their struggle to lead normal lives in the face of
a force they can neither prevent nor control is intensely moving and entirely
unforgettable. (10 copies)
Elizabeth Noble – The Tenko Club
The Tenko Club is made up of four women, Freddie the tall straight shooting American,
Tamsin the English student and born to be mother, Reagan a moody intelligent career
women and Sarah the beauty who makes men swoon. The girls met at Oxford
University in the 80's and over girly chats and late nights formed the Tenko Club,
vowing to always be there for each other.
Twenty years later their lives have all taken very different paths but as promised they
are still firm friends, each other's confidants and rescuers. Freddie's life is thrown into
chaos when her husband tells her he's having an affair, on the same day she hears her
estranged father has died suddenly, shaken and confused she turns to Tamsin and so
begins a trip to the States that changes everything. (10 copies)
Jeff Noon – Automated Alice
This is a reworking of Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" which sees Alice
transported in time from the Victorian ages to 1998 - automated age inhabited by weird
and wonderful characters including "civil serpents" and "policedogmen". (10 copies)
John O’Farrell – May Contain Nuts
Alice and David are worried parents. Are their children falling behind with their
schoolwork, their music lessons and the number of sleepover invitations received this
month? Or are all these extra lessons causing them to miss out on physical exercise?
Maybe they could find a maths tutor who'd be prepared to swim alongside them and
explain binary numbers while the children practiced their breast-stroke? This permanent
sense of crisis is coming to a climax as their eldest child looks set to fail her entrance
exam for the hallowed school on which they have pinned all their hopes. Many mothers
can't help wanting to do everything for their children, but Alice takes this controlling
maternal obsession one step further. She takes the test in place of her daughter. ..
(10 copies)
Sheila O’Flannagan – Isobel’s Wedding
Four hundred and twenty pearls hand-sewn onto the wedding dress. The Mediterranean
honeymoon booked for months. A pile of presents bigger than Everest. And her lovely
Tim, with his jet-black hair and navy-blue eyes, the most perfect bridegroom a girl could
wish for. Except, two weeks before the wedding, he changes his mind...(12 copies)
12
Tony Parsons – Man and Boy
Harry Silver has it all. A successful job in TV, a gorgeous wife, a lovely child. And in one
moment of madness, he chucks it all away. This is the story of how he comes to terms
with his life and achieves a degree of self-respect, bringing up his son alone.
(14 copies)
Tim Pears- In the Place of Fallen Leaves
Set in a tiny, steep village near Dartmoor, remote and scarcely touched by the late 20th
century, except for an incursion of hippies, the central situation in this book is a
hallucinatory hot summer, remembered by an adult narrator, Alison. The book switches
through time as Alison remembers.
(12 copies)
Jodi Picoult – My Sister’s Keeper
Anna is not sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone
countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister, Kate, can somehow
fight the leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of preimplantation
genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match for Kate -- a life and a
role that she has never challenged...until now. Like most teenagers, Anna is beginning
to question who she truly is. But unlike most teenagers, she has always been defined in
terms of her sister -- and so Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable,
a decision that will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for the
sister she loves. (10 copies)
Jodi Picoult – Plain Truth
The discovery of a dead infant in an Amish barn shakes Lancaster County to its core.
But the police investigation leads to a more shocking disclosure: circumstantial
evidence suggests that that eighteen-year-old Katie Fisher, an unmarried Amish woman
believed to be the newborn's mother, took the child's life. When Ellie Hathaway, a
disillusioned big city attorney, comes to Paradise, Pennsylvania, to defend Katie, two
cultures collide - and, for the first time in her high profile career, Ellie faces a system of
justice very different from her own. Delving deep into the world of those who live 'plain',
Ellie must find a way to reach Katie on her terms. As she unravels a tangled murder
case, Ellie also looks deep within - to confront her own fears and desires when a man
from her past comes back into her life. (10 copies)
Rosamunde Pilcher – Winter Solstice
Elfrida Phipps loves her new life in the pretty Hampshire village. But an unforeseen
tragedy upsets Elfrida's tranquillity: Oscar's wife and daughter are killed in a terrible car
crash and he finds himself homeless when his stepchildren claim their dead mother's
inheritance. Oscar and Elfrida take refuge in a rambling house in Scotland which
becomes a magnet for various waifs and strays who converge upon it, including an
unhappy teenage girl. It could be a recipe for disaster. (15 copies)
Annie Proulx- That old ace in the hole
A richly textured story of one man's struggle to make good in the inhospitable ranch
country of the Texas panhandle, told with razor wit and a masterly sense of place. Folks
in the Texas panhandle do not like hog farms. But Bob Dollar, the newly-hired hog site
scout for Global Pork Rind, intends to do his job. Bob must contend with tough men and
women like ancient Freda Beautyrooms who controls a ranch he covets, and Ace
13
Crouch, the windmiller who defies the hog farms. As Bob settles in at La Von Fronk's
bunkhouse and lends a hand at Cy Frease's Old Dog Cafe, he is forced to question
everything. (12 copies)
Philip Pullman – Northern Lights
In this first part of the "Dark Materials" trilogy, Lyra's friend Roger disappears. She and
her daemon, Pantalaimon, determine to find him. Their quest leads them to the bleak
splendour of the North where a team of scientists are conducting unspeakably horrible
experiments. (12 copies)
Karen Quinn – The Ivy Chronicles
Having lost her high-powered Wall Street job, her husband and her plush Park Avenue
apartment in one afternoon, Ivy Ames emerges broken but unbowed. The newly-single
mother-of-two picks herself up, dusts herself down and reinvents herself as a private
school admissions adviser whose well-heeled clients will do (literally) anything to get
their children into the A-list schools. Thus begins a fast-paced and very funny rom com
as Ivy's bid to support her family and regain her self-esteem becomes a tale of modernday reinvention - and unexpected romance. (10 copies)
Ruth Rendell – Harm Done
Two young girls disappear then return home unharmed some days later. Chief Inspector
Wexford is concerned about a paedophile recently been released into the community
but he cannot foresee the series of serious crimes waiting to happen. (15 copies)
J. D. Salinger – The Catcher in the Rye
Since his debut in 1951 as The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield has been
synonymous with "cynical adolescent". Holden narrates the story of a couple of days in
his 16-year-old life, just after he's been expelled from prep school, in a slang that
sounds edgy even today and keeps this novel on banned book lists. (8 copies)
Jose Saramago – All The Names
Senhor Jose is a minor official in a registry office, with a passion for reconstructing
people's lives from the data in archive documents. One woman's file is particularly
intriguing. She is dead, and he decides to trace her life backwards, from death to birth.
But can he bring her back to life? (10 copies)
Bernard Schlink - The Reader
'A tender, horrifying novel that shows blazingly well how the Holocaust should be dealt
with in fiction. A thriller, a love story and a deeply moving examination of a German
conscience' Independent Saturday Magazine (12 copies)
Alice Sebold – The Lovely Bones
On her way home from school on a snowy December day, 14-year-old Susie Salmon is
lured into a cornfield and brutally raped and murdered, the latest victim of a serial killer.
The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold's haunting and heartbreaking debut novel, unfolds from
heaven, where "life is a perpetual yesterday" and where Susie narrates and keeps
watch over her grieving family and friends, as well as her brazen killer and the sad
detective working on her case.
(12 copies)
Ben Sherwood – The life and death of Charlie St Cloud
14
Heartwarming and uplifting novel examining love in all its guises. As a boy, Charlie St
Cloud narrowly survived a car crash that killed Sam, his little brother. Years later, still
unable to recover from his loss, Charlie has taken a job tending to the lawns and
monuments in the New England cemetery where Sam is buried. When he meets Tess
Carroll, a captivating, adventurous woman in training for a solo sailing trip around the
globe, they discover a beautiful and uncommon connection that, after a violent storm at
sea, eventually forces them to choose between death and live, past and present,
holding on and letting go. The Death and Life of Charlie St Cloud is a romantic and
uplifting novel about second chances and the liberating power of love. (10 copies)
Carol Shields- Unless
Reta Winters has a loving family, good friends, and growing success as a writer of light
fiction. Then her eldest daughter suddenly withdraws from the world, abandoning
university to sit on a street corner, wearing a sign that reads only 'goodness'. As Reta
seeks the causes of her daughter's retreat, her enquiry turns into an unflinching, often
very funny meditation on society and where we find meaning and hope. Unless is a
dazzling and daring novel from the undisputed master of extraordinary fictions about socalled 'ordinary' lives.
(12 copies)
Anita Shreve - Sea Glass
The year is 1929 and Honora Beecher and her husband, Sexton, are just settling into a
new marriage and a cottage on the coast of New Hampshire. While Honora fixes up the
derelict house and searches for bits of sea glass on the beach, Sexton risks everything
they own to buy the house they both love. Shaken by forces they scarcely understand,
Honora and Sexton try to build a marriage and home while overwhelmed by passions of
every kind.This is another gripping and unforgettable story of the human heart from one
of the most accomplished novelists of our time. (12 copies)
Anita Shreve – The Pilot’s Wife With five novels to her credit, including the acclaimed
The Weight of Water, Anita Shreve now offers a skilfully crafted exploration of the long
reach of tragedy in The Pilot's Wife. News of Jack Lyons's fatal crash sends his wife into
shock and emotional numbness. (12 copies)
Lionel Shriver – We Need to Talk About Kevin
Two years ago, Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow highschool students, a cafeteria worker, and a popular algebra teacher. Because he was
only fifteen at the time of the killings, he received a lenient sentence and is now in a
prison for young offenders in upstate New York. Telling the story of Kevin's upbringing,
Eva addresses herself to her estranged husband through a series of letters. Fearing
that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become, she confesses
to a deep, long-standing ambivalence about both motherhood in general and Kevin in
particular. How much is her fault? Lionel Shriver tells a compelling, absorbing, and
resonant story while framing these horrifying tableaux of teenage carnage as metaphors
for the larger tragedy - the tragedy of a country where everything works, nobody
starves, and anything can be bought but a sense of purpose. (10 copies)
Ali Smith – Hotel World
Shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2001
Ali Smith's innovative, extraordinary new novel checks us into the smooth, plush world
of the Global - but is it really the kind of place you want to spend the rest of your life in?
15
Hotel World takes us through a night in the lives of five people. Three are strangers, two
are sisters, one is dead. Through the course of the evening we are drawn into their
different worlds. It's luxurious for some, but a long drop for others. Playful, defiant and
richly inventive ( 10 copies)
Dodie Smith- I capture the Castle
The 1934 journal of seventeen-year-old Cassandra Mortmain reveals her perspective
on six stormy months in the eccentric and poverty-stricken life of her family in a ruined
Suffolk castle, ending with the revelation that Cassandra is deeply in love!
(12 copies)
Zadie Smith – The Autograph Man
Alex-Li Tandem sells autographs. He hunts for names on paper in a huge network of
desire, collecting them, selling them and occasionally faking them; offering people a
little piece of fame. To him, enlightenment is some part of himself that cannot be signed,
celebrated or sold. (8 copies)
Zadie Smith – White Teeth
Epic in scale and intimate in approach, White Teeth is an ambitious novel. Genetics,
eugenics, gender, race, class and history are the book's themes but Zadie Smith is
gifted with the wit and inventiveness to make these weighty ideas seem effortlessly
light. (10 copies)
Patrick Suskind – Perfume
Born in sweaty, fetid eighteenth century Paris, Grenouille is distinctive even in infancy.
He has "the finest nose in Paris and no personal odour". With wit, a Gothic imagination
and considerable originality, Suskind has developed this simple idea into a fantastic tale
of murder and twisted eroticism controlled by a disgusted loathing of humanity ...Clever,
stylish, absorbing and well worth reading. From ‘Literary review’ (10 copies)
Donna Tartt – The Little Friend
The Cleves--Charlotte, Grandma Edith, Great Aunt Adelaide, Aunts Libby and Tat--are
a southern family of noble stock but, by the early 1970s, diminished numbers and
wealth; haunted by the motiveless, unsolved murder of 9-year-old Robin, "their dear
little Robs", a decade earlier. Harriet, Charlotte's youngest child, "neither sweet nor
pretty" like her sister, Allison, but "smart" was a baby when Robin died. Now a
precocious, bookish pre-teen, she is convinced she can unravel the mystery of his
death. Her chief suspects are the Ratliffs, a local clan of speed-dealing ne'er-do-wells,
one of whom, Danny, had been in Robin's class. (10 copies)
Andrew Taylor – The American Boy
Interweaving real and fictional elements, The American Boy is a major new literary
historical crime novel in the tradition of An Instance of the Fingerpost and Possession.
England 1819: Thomas Shield, a new master at a school just outside London, is tutor to
a young American boy and the boy's sensitive best friend, Charles Frant. Drawn to
Frant's beautiful, unhappy mother, Thomas becomes caught up in her family's twisted
intrigues. Then a brutal crime is committed, with consequences that threaten to destroy
Thomas and all that he has come to hold dear. Despite his efforts, Shield is caught up in
a deadly tangle of sex, money, murder and lies -- a tangle that grips him tighter even as
he tries to escape from it. And what of the strange American child, at the heart of these
macabre events, yet mysterious -- what is the secret of the boy named Edgar Allen
Poe? (10 copies)
16
Hunter S Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Stylish reissue of a classic first published in the 1970s: Hunter S Thompson's etherfuelled, savage journey to the heart of the American Dream. 'We were somewhere
around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold! And
suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like
huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going
about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas!' As knights of old
buckled on armour of supernatural power, so Hunter S. Thompson enters Las Vegas
armed with a veritable arsenal of 'heinous chemicals'. His perilous, drug-enhanced
confrontations with casino operators, bartenders, police officers and assorted
representatives of the Silent Majority have a hallucinatory humour and nightmare terror
never before seen on the printed page. (10 copies)
Barbara Trapido – The Travelling Hornplayer
Bad, mad,flame-haired cellist Stella, adulterous Jonathan and high spirited sisters Ellen
& Lydia Dent find their fates bound together through love, loss and literature in a
dazzling tragi-comedy. (12 copies)
Barbara Trapido – Frankie and Stankie
The story of two girls growing up in South Africa in the 1940s and 1950s, set against a
backdrop of tightening Apartheid laws and Afrikaner Nationalist politics. Written with all
Trapido's customary style and wit, this semi autobiographical novel gives a fascinating
insight into what it was like to grow up in that dark period of South African history. (10
copies)
Adriana Trigiani – Lucia, Lucia
Lucia Sartori is the beautiful twenty-five-year-old daughter of a prosperous Italian grocer
in Greenwich Village. The post-war 50s boom is ripe with opportunities for girls with
ambition, and Lucia becomes apprentice to an up-and-coming designer at a chic
department store on New York's Fifth Avenue. Engaged to her childhood sweetheart,
Lucia is torn when she meets a handsome stranger who promises a life of uptown
luxury that career girls like her only read about in the society pages. Forced to choose
between duty to her family and her own dreams, Lucia finds herself in the midst of a
sizzling scandal in which secrets are revealed, her beloved career is jeopardised, and
the Sartoris' honour is tested. (10 copies)
Anne Tyler – The Amateur Marriage
From the incomparable Anne Tyler, a rich and compelling novel, spanning three
generations, about a mismatched marriage - and its consequences. Michael and
Pauline seemed like the perfect couple - young, good-looking, made for each other. The
moment she walked into his mother's grocery store in Baltimore, he was smitten, and in
the heat of World War II fervour, they marry in haste. From the sound of the cash
register in the old grocery to the counterculture jargon of the sixties, from the miniskirts
to the multilayers of later years, Anne Tyler captures the nuances of everyday life with
telling precision and sly humour. (10 copies)
Salley Vickers- Miss Garnet’s Angel
Julia Garnet is a teacher. Just retired, she is left a legacy which she uses by leaving her
orderly life and going to live - in winter - in an apartment in Venice. Its beauty, its secret
17
corners and treasures, and its people overwhelm a lifetime of reserve and caution.
Above all she's touched by the all-prevalent spirit of the Angel, Raphael. The ancient
tale of Tobias, who travels to Media unaware he is accompanied by the Archangel
Raphael, unfolds alongside Julia Garnet's contemporary journey. The two stories
interweave with parents and landladies, restorers and priests, American tourists and
ancient travellers abounding. The result is an enormously satisfying journey of the spirit:
and Julia Garnet is a character to treasure.
(12 copies)
Edith Wharton-The Age of Innocence
The return of the beautiful Countess Olenska into the rigidly conventional society of
New York sends reverberations throughout the upper reaches of society.
Newland Archer, an eligible young man of the establishment is about to announce his
engagement to May Welland, a pretty ingénue, when May's cousin, Countess Olenska,
is introduced into their circle. The Countess brings with her an aura of European
sophistication and a hint of scandal, having left her husband and claimed her
independence.
Her sorrowful eyes, her tragic worldliness and her air of unapproachability attract the
sensitive Newland and, almost against their will, a passionate bond develops between
them. But Archer's life has no place for passion and, with society on the side of May and
all she stands for, he finds himself drawn into a bitter conflict between love and duty. (10
copies)
Dorothy Whipple- The Priory
Above all, The Priory is a very subtle novel, so subtle that, as with all Dorothy Whipple’s
books, it is very easy to miss what an excellent writer she is.
Gently, deceptively gently, but straightforwardly, it sets the scene and draws the reader
in. We are shown the two Marwood girls, who are nearly grown-up, their father, the
widower Major Marwood, and their aunt. Then, as soon as their lives have been evoked,
we see the Major proposing marriage to a woman much younger than himself; and we
understand how much will have to change.
It is a classic plot (albeit the stepmother is more disinterested than wicked) and the book
has many classic qualities; yet there are no clichés either in situation or outlook, just an
extraordinarily well-written and absorbing novel by the writer who has been called the
twentieth-century Mrs Gaskell. (12 copies)
David Wolstencroft – Good news, bad news
First, there's the good news: George and Charlie are on their last mission for the
Agency before leaving the spy game and relaxing into an early retirement. Then there's
the bad news: their final mission is to kill each other. In the blink of an eye, these two
friends become enemies-until it occurs to them that, just this once, they might not want
to follow orders. Flipping a coin to decide their fate, they set off on an international
round of espionage - jetting from England to Paris before heading to the United States
in a race to find out why their bosses seem to want them dead. The unexpected answer
stuns them both and threatens to bring down the agency itself. (10 copies)
Virginia Woolf- To the Lighthouse
The most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's work, "To the Lighthouse" is based on her
own childhood experiences, and while it touches on childhood and children's
perceptions and desires, it also explores adult relationships, marriage and the changing
class structure of its time. This novel is an extraordinarily poignant evocation of a lost
18
happiness that lives on in the memory. For years now the Ramsays have spent every
summer in their holiday home in Scotland, and they expect these summers will go on
forever.
(12 copies)
Carlos Ruiz Zafon – Shadow of the Wind
Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the 'cemetery of lost books', a
labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles that have long gone out of print. To
this library, a man brings his 10-year-old son Daniel one cold morning in 1945. Daniel is
allowed to choose one book from the shelves and pulls out 'La Sombra del Viento' by
Julian Carax. But as he grows up, several people seem inordinately interested in his
find. Then, one night, as he is wandering the old streets once more, Daniel is
approached by a figure who reminds him of a character from La Sombra del Viento, a
character who turns out to be the devil. A page-turning exploration of obsession in
literature and love, and the places that obsession can lead. (10 copies)
Non – Fiction -----------------------Bill Bryson – Down Under
‘It was as if I had privately discovered life on another planet, or a parallel universe
where life was at once recognisably similar but entirely different. Insofar as I had
accumulated my expectations of Australia at all . . . I had thought of it as a kind of
alternative southern California, a place of constant sunshine and the cheerful vapidity of
a beach lifestyle, but with a slightly British bent – a sort of Baywatch with cricket . . . ’
Bryson (15 copies)
Bill Bryson – Notes From A Small Island
After nearly two decades in Britain, Bill Bryson took the decision to move Mrs Bryson,
little Jimmy et al. back to the States for a while. But before leaving his much-loved
Yorkshire, Bryson insisted on taking one last trip around old Blighty…(15 copies)
Bill Bryson – A Short History of Nearly Everything
The incomparable Bill Bryson travels through time and space to introduce us to the
world, the universe and everything. (10 copies)
Elizabeth Cader-Cuff – Walks with writers: New literary Walks in Old Berkshire
This book of carefully planned routes takes you to the literary heart of Old
Berkshire.The places they visit offer a unique and enthralling insight into the lives and
work of the major literary figures that once lived in the county. (9 copies)
Jason Elliott – An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
Not long out of school, Jason Elliot went to Afghanistan to see what the Russians were
doing, and found himself living in the mountains amongst the mujaheddin. He combines
his own experiences with anecdotes from sufis and Soviet veterans. (10 copies)
Judith Flanders- A circle of sisters
Judith Flanders chronicles the lives and discusses the literary works of the Macdonald
sisters. Each of these extraordinary women were either married to or mothers of an
eminent male figure in the arts or politics: Alice was mother of the poet Rudyard Kipling,
19
Georgina married Edward Burne-Jones the pre-Raphaelite painter, Agnes married
Edward Poynter, the President of the Royal Academy and Louisa was mother to the
Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin. The book concentrates on the environment in which
the sisters grew up, their reliance on each other and how, in a time when women's
achievements were limited by men, they were not only part of the guiding force behind
such celebrated males but also created works of poetry and novels themselves. (12
copies)
Amanda Foreman – Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire
The story of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, one of the most flamboyant women of
the 18th century, and her times. Distantly related to the late Princess of Wales, she was,
in turn, a compulsive gambler, political savante and operator, drug addict, adulteress
and darling of the common people. (15 copies)
Alexandra Fuller – Don’t lets go to the dogs tonight
Alexandra Fuller was two in 1971, the year her parents abandoned their life in England
and returned to what was then Rhodesia, and to the beginning of a bloody civil war.
While her father was away for long stretches, fighting for Ian Smith's government, her
mother worked the family farm with a passionate determination fuelled by a ferocious
love for Africa. This is the story of one family's quixotic battle against the ravages of
nature and the pain of bereavement, and of their unbreakable bond with the continent
which defined, shaped, scarred and healed them. (10 copies)
Stephen Hawking – A Brief History of Time
The author explores the outer reaches of our knowledge of astrophysics and the nature
of time and the universe, and reviews the great theories of the cosmos, from Galileo
and Newton to Einstein and Poincare. (9 copies)
Giles Milton – Nathaniel’s Nutmeg
In 1616, Nathaniel Courthope arrived on a remote East Indies island on a secret
mission - to persuade the islanders to grant a monopoly to England over their nutmeg, a
fabulously valuable spice in Europe. Despite being overwhelmed by Dutch forces, his
heroism led to the founding of a great city. (12 copies)
Jan Morris – Venice
An evocation of Venice which uses vivid prose, humour and irony to present a personal
portrait of an eccentric city. (6 copies)
Mo Mowlam – Momentum
In this text, Mo Mowlam tells the story of her time in government in her own words. She
writes about the months leading up to the 1997 General Election, Labour's landslide
victory and what had gone on as she underwent treatment for a brain tumour while
working towards that victory. She also tells the inside story of her time as Secretary of
State for Northern Ireland. The characters and chemistry of this time are analysed with
the candour, warmth and humour that are Mo Mowlam's trademarks. After the Good
Friday Agreement, Mo Mowlam was, somewhat controversially, moved to the Cabinet
Office. Before the second landslide victory of 2001, she decided to leave Westminster
politics - this text tells readers why, and also tells of her hopes and plans for the future.
(12 copies)
Eric Newby – Departures and Arrivals Eric Newby recounts his life, from his earliest
childhood adventures in darkest Barnes, to an elephant fair in India; from the faded
20
glamour of days and nights on the Orient Express, to a cave dwelling settlement of opal
miners in Australia where even armed men have disappeared. (10 copies)
Anna Pavord – The Tulip
This gift book tells the story of the tulip, from its origins as a wild flower of the Asian
steppes to the world-wide phenomena it is today. The author traces the cultural
significance of the tulip: how it charts political upheavals, illuminates social behaviour,
mirrors economic booms and busts, and plots the ebb and flow of religious persecution.
(10 copies)
Jeremy Paxman – The English: a portrait of a people
So what are the defining features of "Englishness"? How can a country of football
hooligans have such an astonishingly low murder rate? Does the nation's sense of itself
extend to millions of black, Asian and other immigrant Britons? To answer these crucial
questions, Paxman looks for clues in the English language, literature, luke-warm religion
and "curiously passionless devotion" to cricket. (12 copies)
Byron Rogers – The Last Englishman – The life of J.L. Carr
J.L.Carr was the most English of Englishmen: a man who spent most of his working life
in the middle of Middle England, as headmaster of a Northamptonshire school, an
enthusiastic follower of cricket and a tireless campaigner for the conservation of country
churches. But he was also the author of half a dozen of the quirkiest, most comic novels
in English, a publisher (from his own back-room in Kettering) of some of the most
eccentric, collectable – and smallest – books ever printed, and an enigmatic, elusive
individual. (10 copies)
Fred Secombe – Two Vandals and a Wedding
This story begins with one of the churches in Fred's parish being desecrated - the cross
smashed to pieces - and another burned to the ground. The local police force work with
Fred to solve the mystery of this vandal who bears a grudge against Christianity. In the
wake of the crime, there is uproar at the Archdeacon's reactionary measures, but Fred
finds himself in the gleeful position of being able to side with his clergy against the old
tyrant. A Palm Sunday outing for the children of the Bryfelin Estate turns to a drunken
afternoon for their irresponsible parents; but Fred's spirits are lifted as he takes the
wedding service of his curate, Hugh - a wet, but thoroughly happy occasion. These are
just a few of the delightful tales that Secombe relates, which will doubtless keep his
readers happily amused. (12 copies)
Dava Sobel – Longitude
At the heart of Dava Sobel’s fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation and
horology stands the figure of John Harrison, self-taught Yorkshire clockmaker, and his
forty-year obsession with building the perfect timekeeper. (15 copies)
(With thanks to Amazon.co.uk and Bookfind-Online for synopses!)
Other Books you may wish to borrow for your group
West Berkshire Libraries also hold multiple copies of books by certain bestselling
authors. Please ask for specific titles and if we hold enough copies we will gladly supply
to your group.
21
Please ask if your group would like any other titles and we will be able to tell you if we
have any available and how many.
We cannot always guarantee that every copy of a set will be available, especially
at short notice, but will do our best!
See Karen Peebles, Reading Groups Co-ordinator at Newbury Library for further
information.
Tel:01635 519900 or email Karen at kpeebles@westberks.gov.uk
Highlighted titles are those which have arrived as new sets in 2005.
22