Setting up a reading group
Find out how to set up a reading group with Suffolk Libraries.
Set up a reading group
Recommendations
Book Club Favourites #29
Looking for inspiration for your book club? Take a look at our recommended titles, perfect for reading groups!
Find more book club recommendations.
Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has. In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food and waterlilies to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone. Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims? Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.
The holdout, by Graham Moore
15-year-old Jessica Silver, heiress to a billion-dollar fortune, vanishes on her way home from school. Her teacher, Bobby Nock, is the prime suspect. It's an open and shut case for the prosecution, and a quick conviction seems all but guaranteed. Until Maya Seale, a young woman on the jury, persuades the rest of the jurors to vote not guilty: a controversial decision that will change all of their lives forever. Ten years later, one of the jurors is found dead, and Maya is the prime suspect. The real killer could be any of the other ten jurors. Is Maya being forced to pay the price for her decision all those years ago?
The recovery of Rose Gold, by Stephanie Wrobel
Rose Gold Watts believed she was sick for eighteen years. She thought she needed the feeding tube, the surgeries, the wheelchair. Turns out her mother is a really good liar. After five years in prison, Patty Watts is finally free. All she wants is to put old grievances behind her, reconcile with her daughter - and care for her new infant grandson. When Rose Gold agrees to have Patty move in, it seems their relationship is truly on the mend. But Rose Gold knows her mother. Patty won't rest until she has her daughter back under her thumb. Which is inconvenient because Rose Gold wants to be free of Patty. Forever. Only one Watts woman will get her way. Will it be Patty or Rose Gold? Mother or daughter?
Borrow The recovery of Rose Gold →
A spool of blue thread, by Anne Tyler
'It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon'. This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that day in July 1959. The whole family on the porch, relaxed, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. And yet this gathering is different. Abby and Red are getting older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them and their beloved family home. From that porch we spool back through three generations of the Whitshanks, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define who and what they are. And while all families like to believe they are special, round that kitchen table over all those years we see played out the hopes and fears, the rivalries and tensions of families everywhere - the essential nature of family life.
Borrow A spool of blue thread →
The wild silence, by Raynor Winn
Nature holds the answers for Raynor and her husband Moth. After walking 630 miles homeless along the Salt Path, the windswept and wild English coastline now feels like their home. And despite Moth's terminal diagnosis, against all medical odds, he seems revitalised in nature - outside, they discover that anything is possible. Now, life beyond the Salt Path awaits. As they return to four walls, the sense of home is illusive and returning to normality is proving difficult - until an incredible gesture by someone who reads their story changes everything: a chance to breathe life back into a beautiful but neglected farmhouse in the Cornish hills - rewilding the land and returning nature to its hedgerows becomes their new path. Along the way, Raynor and Moth learn more about the land that envelopes them, find friends both new and old, and embark on another windswept adventure when the opportunity arises.
The sight of you, by Holly Miller
Joel is afraid of the future. Since he was a child he's been haunted by dreams about the people he loves. Visions of what's going to happen - the good and the bad. And the only way to prevent them is to never let anyone close to him again. Callie can't let go of the past. Since her best friend died, Callie's been lost. She knows she needs to be more spontaneous and live a bigger life. She just doesn't know how to find a way back to the person who used to have those dreams. Joel and Callie both need a reason to start living for today. And though they're not looking for each other, from the moment they meet it feels like the start of something life-changing - until Joel has a vision of how it's going to end.
Still life, by Sarah Winman
'Still Life' is a beautiful, big-hearted, richly tapestried story of people brought together by love, war, art, flood - and the ghost of E.M. Forster. We just need to know what the heart's capable of, Evelyn. And do you know what it's capable of? I do. Grace and fury. It's 1944 and in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together. Ulysses Temper is a young British solider and one-time globe-maker, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the ruins and relive her memories of the time she encountered E.M. Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view.
Sankofa, by Chibundu Onuzo
Here is a funny, gripping, and surprising story of a mixed-race British woman who goes in search of the African father she never knew, by author Chibundu Onuzo. Anna grew up in England with her white mother and knowing very little about her African father. In middle age, after separating from her husband and with her daughter all grown up, she finds herself alone and wondering who she really is. Her mother's death leads her to find her father's student diaries, chronicling his involvement in radical politics in 1970s London. She discovers that he eventually became the president - some would say the dictator - of Bamana in West Africa. And he is still alive. She decides to track him down and so begins a funny, painful, fascinating journey, and an exploration of race, identity, and what we pass on to our children.
The haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson
Hill House stood abandoned, six miles off the road. Four people came to learn its secrets - Dr Montague, an occult scholar; Luke, a spendthrift heir; Theodora, escaping a love affair; and Eleanor, who is lonely and vulnerable - to the house.
Borrow The haunting of Hill House →
Making it, by Jay Blades
In this book, Jay shares the details of his life, from his childhood growing up sheltered and innocent on a council estate in Hackney, to his adolescence when he was introduced to violent racism at secondary school, to being brutalised by police as a teen, to finally becoming a beloved star of the hit primetime show The Repair Shop. Jay reflects on strength, weakness and what it means to be a man. He questions the boundaries society places on male vulnerability and how letting himself be nurtured helped him flourish into the person he is today. An expert at giving a second life to cherished items, he speaks about how his role as a restorer mirrors his own life - if something's broken, you can always find a way to put it back together.
Ascension, by Oliver Harris
Three friends from a mission many years ago reconnect when one of them dies on Ascension Island. Rory Bannatyne had been tasked with tapping a new transatlantic data cable, but a day before he was due to return home he is found hanged. When Kathryn Taylor begs Kane to go over and investigate, he can't say no, but it's an uneasy reintroduction to the intelligence game. Ascension is a curious legacy of England's imperial past. Only employees and their families are allowed to live there. It's home to several highly-classified government projects, a British and American military base, and forty dead volcanic cones. Entirely isolated from the world, the disappearance of a young girl at the same time as Rory's death means local tensions are high. Elliot needs to discover what happened to her as well as to Rory. But the island contains more secrets than even the government knows.
And away..., by Bob Mortimer
Here is the long-awaited first autobiography by national treasure Bob Mortimer. Bob Mortimer's life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for this hilarious and moving memoir.
Happy families, by Julie Ma
Amy is thirty-four and has just given up her glittering career in the big (Welsh) city to move back in with her grandfather, returning to work in the small-town Chinese takeaway where she spent her bookish and boring childhood. Why? That's a secret she won't tell. Just like the secret of why her grandfather, Ah Goong, and her father, TC Li, haven't spoken to each other in thirty years. Weirder still, they've lived in the same small flat above the takeaway for the majority of those years, with Amy's mother Joan acting as their unfortunate go-between and buffer. Now Amy's parents have moved, leaving her in charge of looking after the old man. But then Ah Goong collapses in the street and Amy realises time is running out if she wants to play happy families again.
Driving over lemons: an optimist in Andalucia, by Chris Stewart
At age 17, Chris Stewart retired as the drummer of Genesis, his schoolboy band, and launched a new career as a sheep shearer and travel writer. This book describes his idyllic life on a remote mountain farm in Andalucía, with an updated chapter set 25 years on.