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Recommendations
Book Club Favourites #32
by Brandon King
Looking for inspiration for your book club? Take a look at our recommended titles, perfect for reading groups!
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The passenger, by Ulrich Alexander Boschwitz
Germany, November 1938: Otto Silbermann receives a knock on his door and realises he must flee. A respected German-Jewish businessman, he has managed to evade the escalating brutality of the Nazi regime. But now, as he and his wife plan to leave, all avenues are shut down and he is forced to abandon his home amid the untrammelled violence of Kristallnacht. With all the money he can gather stuffed into a suitcase, Otto takes train after train across Germany, desperately seeking to cross the border, every moment terrified a fellow passenger will discover his Jewish identity.
This must be the place, by Maggie O'Farrell
A reclusive former film star living in the wilds of Ireland, Claudette Wells thinks nothing of firing a gun if strangers get too close to her house. Why is she so fiercely protective of her privacy and what made her disappear at the height of her cinematic fame? Her husband Daniel, reeling from a discovery about a woman he last saw 20 years ago, is about to make an exit of his own. It is a journey that will send him off-course, far from home. Will his love for Claudette be enough to bring him back?
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Uncommon type: some stories, by Tom Hanks
A collection of seventeen wonderful short stories showing that two-time Oscar winner Tom Hanks is as talented a writer as he is an actor. A hectic, funny sexual affair between two best friends. A World War II veteran dealing with his emotional and physical scars. A second-rate actor plunged into sudden stardom and a whirlwind press junket. A small-town newspaper columnist with old-fashioned views of the modern world. A woman adjusting to life in a new neighbourhood after her divorce. Four friends going to the moon and back in a rocket ship constructed in the backyard. A teenage surfer stumbling into his father's secret life. These are just some of the people and situations that Tom Hanks explores in his first work of fiction, a collection of stories that dissects, with great affection, humour and insight, the human condition and all its foibles.
Vox, by Christina Dalcher
Jean McClellan spends her days in almost complete silence, limited to a daily quota of just one hundred words. Now that the new government is in power, no woman is able to speak over this limit without punishment by electric shock. But when the President's brother suffers a stroke, Jean is temporarily given back her voice in order to work on the cure. Soon, she discovers that she is part of a much larger plan: to eliminate the voices of women entirely.
Three hours, by Rosamund Lupton
3 hours is 180 minutes or 10,800 seconds. It is a morning's lessons, a dress rehearsal of Macbeth, a snowy trek through the woods. It is 180 minutes to discover who you will die for and what men will kill for. In rural Somerset in the middle of a blizzard, the unthinkable happens: a school is under siege. Told from the point of view of the people at the heart of it, from the wounded headmaster in the library, unable to help his trapped pupils and staff, to teenage Hannah in love for the first time, to the parents gathering desperate for news, to the 16 year old Syrian refugee trying to rescue his little brother, to the police psychologist who must identify the gunmen, to the students taking refuge in the school theatre, all experience the most intense hours of their lives, where evil and terror are met by courage, love and redemption.
The illusion of separateness, by Simon Van Booy
'The Illusion of Separateness' centres around one simple act of courage on the battlefield in the heart of France during World War Two, the implications of which reverberate through the future generations of two very different men.
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Prayers for the stolen, by Jennifer Clement
The Narcos only had to hear there was a pretty girl around and they'd sweep onto our lands in black SUVs and carry the girl off. Not one of the stolen girls had ever come back, except for Paula. She came back a year after she'd been kidnapped. She held a baby bottle in one hand. She wore seven earrings that climbed the cupped edge of her left ear in a line of blue, yellow, and green studs and a tattoo that snaked around her wrist. 'Did you see that? Did you see Paula's tattoo? My mother said. You know what that means, right? Jesus, Mary's son and Son of God, and the angels in heaven protect us all.' At the time, I didn't know what that meant. But I was going to find out.
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Will she do?: Act one of a life on stage, by Eileen Atkins
The story of a girl from a council estate in Tottenham, born in 1934 to an electric-meter reader and a seamstress, who was determined to be an actress. Candid and witty, this memoir takes her from her awkward performances in working-men's clubs at six years of age as dancing 'Baby Eileen', through the war years in London, to her breakthrough at thirty-two on Broadway with The Killing of Sister George, for which she received the first of five Tony Award nominations. Characterised by an eye for the absurd, a terrific knack for storytelling and an insistence on honesty, 'Will She Do?' is a raconteur's tale about family, about class, about youthful ambition and big dreams and what really goes on behind the scenes.
Old rage, by Sheila Hancock
In 'Old Rage', one of Britain's best loved actors opens up about her ninth decade. Funny, feisty, honest, she makes for brilliant company as she talks about her life as a daughter, a sister, a mother, a widow, an actor, a friend and looks at a world so different from the wartime world of her childhood. And yet - despite age, despite rage - she finds there are always reasons for joy.
The man who died twice, by Richard Osman
It's the following Thursday. Elizabeth has received a letter from an old colleague, a man with whom she has a long history. He needs her help. His story involves stolen diamonds, a violent mobster, and a very real threat to his life. As bodies start piling up, Elizabeth enlists Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron in the hunt for a ruthless murderer. And if they find the diamonds too? Well, wouldn't that be a bonus? But this time they are up against an enemy who wouldn't bat an eyelid at knocking off four septuagenarians. Can the Thursday Murder Club find the killer, before the killer finds them?
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Cloud cuckoo land, by Anthony Doerr
'Cloud Cuckoo Land' follows three storylines: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city wall during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and gentle octogenarian Zeno, in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for a distant exoplanet, decades from now. A single copy of an ancient text - the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to the paradise of Cloud Cuckoo Land - provides solace, mystery and the most profound human connection to these five unforgettable characters.
An unsuitable woman, by Kat Gordon
Theo Miller is fourteen years old, bright and ambitious, when he steps off the train into the simmering heat and uproar of 1920s Nairobi. Neither he, nor his earnest younger sister Maud, is prepared for the turbulent mix of joy and pain their new life in Kenya will bring. Their father is Director of Kenyan Railways, a role it is assumed Theo will inherit. But when he meets enchanting American heiress Sylvie de Croÿ and her charismatic, reckless companion, Freddie Hamilton, his aspirations turn in an instant. Sylvie and Freddie's charm is magnetic and Theo is welcomed into the heart of their inner circle: rich, glamorous expatriates, infamous for their hedonistic lifestyles. Yet behind their intoxicating allure lies a more powerful cocktail of lust, betrayal, deceit and violence that he realises he cannot avoid.