12.11.2019 - ‘Blood Summit’ by Robert Pimm «Counter-terrorism expert Helen Gale has one job: to protect world leaders at a summit in the Berlin Reichstag. But terrorists take hostage presidents, prime ministers, one hundred innocent children...
12.11.2019 - ‘Middle England’ (2018) by Jonathan Coe Maria, Sandra and Andrew discuss the novel. «Beginning in 2010, on the outskirts of Birmingham, where car factories have been replaced by Poundland, and London, where frenzied riots give way to...
12.11.2019 - ‘Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine’ (2017) by Gail Honeyman Eleanor Oliphant leads a simple life. She wears the same clothes to work every day, eats the same meal deal for lunch every day, and buys the same two bottles of vodka to...
16.09.2019 - A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid (1999) In two separate sessions, Sandra and Andrew discuss this brilliantly executed novel… In the Peak District village of Scardale, 13-year-old girls don’t just run away. So, when Alison Carter vanished...
24.07.2019 - A Place of Execution, by Val McDermid (1999) In two separate sessions, Sandra and Andrew discuss this brilliantly executed novel… In the Peak District village of Scardale, 13-year-old girls don’t just run away. So, when Alison Carter vanished...
11.06.2019 - ‘The Only Story’ (2018) by Julian Barnes «Would you love the more, and suffer the more; or love the less, and suffer the less? That is, I think, finally, the only real question.» First love has lifelong consequences, but Paul...
11.06.2019 - ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’ (2003) by Amos Oz Lee-Anne, Sylvia, Sandra and Andrew discuss Amos Oz’s 2003 ‘novelistic memoir’ ‘A Tale of Love and Darkness’. «Love and darkness are just two of the...
18.04.2019 - ‘Transcription’ (2018) by Kate Atkinson Sandra, Maria, Thomas and Andrew discuss Kate Atkinson’s 2018 novel ‘Transcription’. In 1940, 18-year-old Juliet Armstrong is reluctantly recruited into the world of MI5...
12.03.2019 - ‘On Chesil Beach’ (2007), by Ian McEwan A stunning ‘novella’… It is July 1961. Edward and Florence, young Innocents married that morning, arrive at a hotel on the Dorset coast. At dinner in their room they struggle to...
18.02.2019 - ‘Educated’ (2018) by Tara Westover Maria, Georg, Heinz, Sandra and Andrew discuss this extraordinary book: ‘an unflicnching account of love and brutality, of the strength of blood ties and the power of imagination’ (Sarah...
23.01.2019 - ‘Unsheltered’ (2018) by Barbara Kingsolver Maria, Sandra, Susie and Andrew discuss the parallel storylines, contrasting characters, diverse themes and original narrative structure of the novel. ‘How could two hardworking people do everything...
23.01.2019 - ‘The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ (2012) by Rachel Joyce When Harold Frau leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the...
23.01.2019 - ‘The Sympathizer‘ (2015), by Viet Thanh Nguyen Tom, Sandra and Andrew discuss the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. This 2015 debut novel by Vietnamese American Viet Thanh Nguyen deals with the psychological aftermath of the Vietnam...
