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 BridgeA 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 FactoryFrank, 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

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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 ReturnThe 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 LamentationWhat 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

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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 DreamsThis 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 LoveLaura 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 HappinessCharles 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 ClayOne 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

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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 BeautiesA 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 WhiteLate 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 HoursWinner 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 MemoryThe 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 MagdaA 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 larger-than-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 CopperfieldIn 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

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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 FogKathy, 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 PoppiesIt 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 GrayA 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 CaféAs 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 GreenWith 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

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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 ClubSix 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- RuthA 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 GirlfriendA 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 GeishaSummoning 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 2001The 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)

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Abdulrazak Gurnah – By the SeaBy 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 20th-century 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 timeThe 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 fact-obsessed 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 LamentsWhen 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 MichelangeloOpening 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

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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 mouth-watering 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 22At 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 SeaThe 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 RunnerTwelve-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 – WaitingThis 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 EngagementOne 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

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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 LateWhen 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 HappinessManhattan, 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 SummerFrom 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 PassengersThis 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 HarbourThis 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 FeastWhat 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)

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Andrea Levy – Small IslandIn 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 PhotographSearching 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 2001Atonement 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 foretoldSetting 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 PiSome 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-Christian-animistic 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 2001In 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 AtlasA 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)

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Deborah Moggach – Tulip FeverThe 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 meA 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 SeaFirst 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 WhiteIs 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 DwarfThe 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 TenThe 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 team-mate, the off-puttingly posh Alice, he finds there's more than a spanner in the works... (10 copies)

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Audrey Niffenegger – The Time Traveller’s WifeThis 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 ClubThe 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 AliceThis 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 NutsAlice 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 WeddingFour 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)

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Tony Parsons – Man and BoyHarry 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 LeavesSet 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 KeeperAnna 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 TruthThe 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 holeA 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

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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 LightsIn 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 ChroniclesHaving 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 modern-day reinvention - and unexpected romance. (10 copies)

Ruth Rendell – Harm DoneTwo 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 RyeSince 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 NamesSenhor 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 BonesOn 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

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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- UnlessReta 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 so-called 'ordinary' lives. (12 copies)

Anita Shreve - Sea GlassThe 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 KevinTwo years ago, Eva Khatchadourian's son, Kevin, murdered seven of his fellow high-school 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 2001Ali 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?

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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 CastleThe 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 ManAlex-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 – PerfumeBorn 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 FriendThe 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 BoyInterweaving 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)

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Hunter S Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las VegasStylish reissue of a classic first published in the 1970s: Hunter S Thompson's ether-fuelled, 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 HornplayerBad, 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 StankieThe 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, LuciaLucia 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 MarriageFrom 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 AngelJulia 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

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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 InnocenceThe 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 PrioryAbove 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 newsFirst, 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 LighthouseThe 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

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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 WindHidden 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 EverythingThe 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 BerkshireThis 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 AfghanistanNot 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 sistersJudith 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,

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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 DevonshireThe 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 tonightAlexandra 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 TimeThe 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 NutmegIn 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 – VeniceAn evocation of Venice which uses vivid prose, humour and irony to present a personal portrait of an eccentric city. (6 copies)

Mo Mowlam – MomentumIn 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

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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 TulipThis 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 peopleSo 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. CarrJ.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 WeddingThis 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 – LongitudeAt 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.

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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.

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