2 November 2011
The Siege
Helen Dunmore
Leningrad, September 1941. Hitler orders the German forces to surround the city at the start of the most dangerous, desperate winter in its history. For two pairs of...
4 October 2011
The Island
Victoria Hislop
On the brink of a life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding longs to find out about her mother's past. But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to...
1 September 2011
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Mark Haddon
Seen through the eyes of Christopher, a mathematical genius and Sherlock Holmes fan, who also has Asperger's Syndrome (a form of Autism), the novel opens with his discovery...
4 August 2011
One Good Turn
Kate Atkinson
It is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident - an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army,...
27 June 2011
The Suspicions of Mr Whicher
Kate Summerscale
It is a summer's night in 1860. In an elegant, detached Georgian house in the village of Road, Wiltshire, all is quiet. Behind shuttered windows the Kent family...
1 May 2011
Suite Française
Irène Némirovsky
In June 1940 France fell to the Nazis. The effects of this momentous event on the lives of ordinary Parisians and the inhabitants of a small rural community...
30 March 2011
The Little Stranger
Sarah Waters
In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries,...
31 December 2010
Birdsong
Sebastian Faulks
Set before and during the great war, Birdsong captures the drama of that era on both a national and a personal scale. It is the story of Stephen,...
30 November 2010
The Road Home
Rose Tremain
'On the coach, Lev chose a seat near the back and he sat huddled against the window, staring out at the land he was leaving ...' Lev is...
11 October 2010
Atonement
Ian McEwan
On the hottest day of the summer of 1934, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden...
5 August 2010
Diary of a Nobody
George and Weedon Grossmith
'Why should I not publish my diary? I have often seen reminiscences of people I have never even heard of, and I fail to see - because I...
30 June 2010
The Kite Runner
Khaled Houssani
Twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the approval of his father and resolves to win the local kite-fighting tournament, to prove that he has the makings of a...
28 May 2010
A Thousand Splendid Suns
Khaled Hosseini
Mariam is only fifteen when she is sent to Kabul to marry the troubled and bitter Rasheed, who is thirty years her senior. Nearly two decades later, in...
30 April 2010
Dreams from my Father
Barack Obama
The son of a black African father and a white American mother, Obama was only two years old when his father walked out on the family. Many years...
31 March 2010
The Bookseller of Kabul
Asne Seierstad
Two weeks after September 11th, award-winning journalist Asne Seierstad went to Afghanistan to report on the conflict. In the following spring she returned to live with a bookseller...
1 March 2010
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
Mary Ann Schaffer
It’s 1946 and author Juliet Ashton can’t think what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey – by chance,...
4 February 2010
The Other Side of the Dale
Gervase Phinn
This is a warm, funny and mostly true account of the first year that Gervase Phinn spent as a schools' inspector in North Yorkshire. His brilliantly portrayed cast...
