Burning Bright by Tracey Chevalier

Synopsis: The new top ten bestselling novel from the much loved author of Girl with a Pearl Earring Flames and funerals, circus feats and seduction, neighbours and nakedness: Tracy Chevalier’s new novel ‘Burning Bright’ sparkles with drama. London 1792. The Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving city. They [...]

The Infinite Wisdom of Harriet Rose by Diana Janney

Synopsis: Harriet Rose, like any other teenager, is naive, overconfident and has always felt she has something important to say. However, unlike most of her peers, her hero is Marcus Aurelius, in imitation of whom she has been composing philosophical reflections on life for some time. When Harriet’s father dies, the urge to write these [...]

Reading in Bed by Sue Gee

Synopsis: Opening at the Hay Festival, and ending with the prospect of a spring wedding, Sue Gee’s new novel is a lively story of tangled relationships and the sustaining powers of good books, loyal friends and conversation. Friends since university, with busy working lives behind them, Dido and Georgia have long been looking forward to [...]

The Welsh Girl by Peter Ho Davies

Synopsis: In 1944, a German Jewish refugee is sent to Wales to interview Rudolf Hess; in Snowdonia, a seventeen-year-old girl, the daughter of a fiercely nationalistic shepherd, dreams of the bright lights of an English city; and in a nearby POW camp, a German soldier struggles to reconcile his surrender with his sense of honour. [...]

Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones

Synopsis: ‘You cannot pretend to read a book. Your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames.’ Bougainville. 1991. A small village [...]

Boy A by Jonathan Trigell

Synopsis: ‘A is for Apple. A bad apple.’ Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions, to be released with a new name, new job, new life. At 24, he is utterly innocent of the world, yet guilty of a monstrous childhood crime. To his new friends, he is a good guy with [...]

Sweeney Todd or The String of Pearls: The Original Tale of Sweeney Todd by Anon

Synopsis: The String of Pearls - the original tale of Sweeney Todd, a classic of British horror - was first published as a weekly serial in 1846-7 by Edward Lloyd, the King of the Penny Dreadfuls. One of the earliest detective stories, it became an important source for Bram Stoker’s Dracula. After 157 years of [...]

E11even Terrible Months by R L Royle

Synopsis: Eleven Terrible Months explores what really happens in a haunted house and how it affects the people living there. This book is terrifyingly realistic and you’ll laugh and cry as you come to know the Walkingtons, the family subjected to the haunting. The Walkingtons - Sue, Roy and their three teenage children - were [...]

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

Synopsis: This is one of the earliest novels of industrial alienation, tellingly linked to the plight of 19th-century women. It tells of the relationship between Margaret Hale, a girl from the old rural south, and John Thornton, a mill owner from the new industrial north. (synopsis taken from Amazon).
Review: Although this was well written and [...]

Arlington Park by Rachel Cusk

Synopsis: Set in a moderately posh suburb of London, acclaimed British novelist Rachel Cusk’s Arlington Park is a captivating exploration of how the simple act of living can become an excruciating exercise in self-deprivation, hypocrisy, and desperation. Set over the course of a single day, the novel follows a group of young mothers who feel [...]