Reading & Libraries
Inspire Online Book Club | Members' Reviews
Our club members have taken pen on paper to review our latest monthly reads.
If you'd like to join our online book club drop us a line at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
Did you know the online Book club now has a Facebook page. You can join here.
Each month we bring you a recommendation of a title we have in our large collection of e-resources, both as an e-book and an e-audiobook that we can all read together. This will be followed up with the opportunity to join an online discussion at the end of the month.
Keep updated on Facebook and Twitter @NottsLibraries, and follow #InspireOnlineBookClub. You can also join our NEW Inspire Online Book Club Community on Facebook - here.
We always welcome new online book club members. If you're interested in getting involved, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
You wake up, your husband is dead and YOU are the prime suspect. Your children have been taken away, your life sent into freefall - and yet you can barely remember anything about the night you lost everything.
Ten years later you are released from prison. What do you do? Do you accept your fate, your conviction and leave your children to be raised by someone else?
Or do you stop at nothing to find out the truth about what really happened that night - and to get your family back?
Praise for THE MOTHER:
Ten years later you are released from prison. What do you do? Do you accept your fate, your conviction and leave your children to be raised by someone else?
Or do you stop at nothing to find out the truth about what really happened that night - and to get your family back?
Praise for THE MOTHER:
'A tense and compelling thriller that demands to be read in one sitting, with a final twist that will make you gasp . . . Logan belongs in the top echelons of British thriller writers' Sunday Express
Available from 1st March 2024
Tom Kettle, a retired policeman, and widower, is settling into the quiet of his new home in Dalkey, overlooking the sea.
His solitude is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. A case that Tom never quite came to terms with. And his peace is further disturbed when his new neighbour, a mysterious young mother, asks for his help.
A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God's Time is an unforgettable exploration of family, loss and love.
His solitude is interrupted when two former colleagues turn up at his door to ask about a traumatic, decades-old case. A case that Tom never quite came to terms with. And his peace is further disturbed when his new neighbour, a mysterious young mother, asks for his help.
A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God's Time is an unforgettable exploration of family, loss and love.
'A masterpiece' Sunday Times
Image showing February's online book club choice of Maxwell's Demon by Steven Hall
When Thomas Quinn receives a seemingly impossible voice message, he can’t help but wonder if Andrew Black – a legendary, reclusive mystery writer and his father’s protégé – is somehow involved.
Thomas knows that Black can’t be trusted, that he should be avoided at all costs. But as the search for answers spirals into an examination of the nature of time, entropy, the true forms of angels, fictional stalkers and the secrets of the nativity set . . . Thomas realises that he might not have a choice.
‘Ingeniously plotted and compulsively well-paced’ Sunday Times
January 2024 - The Golden couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
From Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen, the authors of the top ten bestseller The Wife Between Us, comes The Golden Couple – a compelling psychological thriller that will keep you guessing to the very end.
Marissa and Mathew Bishop seem like the golden couple, until Marissa cheats. She wants to repair things – both because she loves her husband, and for the sake of their eight-year-old son. After a friend forwards an article about Avery, Marissa takes a chance on this maverick therapist, who lost her licence due to controversial methods.
If Avery Chambers can’t fix you in ten sessions, she won’t take you on as a client. She helps people overcome everything, from anxiety to domineering parents. Her successes almost help her absorb the emptiness she feels since her husband’s death.
When the Bishops glide through Avery’s door, all three are immediately set on a collision course. Because the biggest secrets in the room are still hidden, and it’s no longer simply a marriage that’s in danger.
December 2023 - The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict
Our online reading group met to discuss the book on 2nd January and gave the book an average score 2.6/5. Do you agree?
Twelve clues.
Twelve keys.
Twelve days of Christmas.
But who will survive until Twelfth Night?
Lily Armitage never intended to return to Endgame House - the grand family home where her mother died twenty-one Christmases ago. Until she receives a letter from her aunt, asking her to return to take part in an annual tradition: the Christmas Game. The challenge? Solve twelve clues, to find twelve keys. The prize? The deeds to the manor house.
Lily has no desire to win the house. But her aunt makes one more promise: The clues will also reveal who really killed Lily's mother all those years ago.
So, for the twelve days of Christmas, Lily must stay at Endgame House with her estranged cousins and unravel the riddles that hold the key not just to the family home, but to its darkest secrets. However, it soon becomes clear that her cousins all have their own reasons for wanting to win the house - and not all of them are playing fair.
As a snowstorm cuts them off from the village, the game turns deadly. Soon Lily realises that she is no longer fighting for an inheritance, but for her life.
A DELICIOUS LOCKED ROOM MYSTERY' VAL MCDERMID
November 2023 - Before the Coffee gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Available from Wednesday 1st November.
November 2023 - Before The Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
What would you change if you could go back in time?
In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe's time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .
Toshikazu Kawaguchi's beautiful, moving story - translated from Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot - explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?
October 2023 - The House of Ashes by Stuart Neville
For Sara Keane, it was supposed to be a second chance. A new country. A new house. A new beginning with her husband Damien.
Then came the knock on the door.
Elderly Mary Jackson can't understand why Sara and her husband are living in her home. She remembers the fire, and the house burning down. But she also remembers the children. The children who need her, whom she must protect.
'The children will find you,' she tells Sara, because Mary knows she needs help too. Sara soon becomes obsessed with what happened in that house nearly sixty years ago - the tragic, bloody night her husband never intended for her to discover. And Mary - silent for six decades - is finally ready to tell her story . . .
The House of Ashes is the stunning new 2022 thriller from the award-winning master of the genre, Stuart Neville - perfect for fans of John Connolly, Alex North and Brian McGilloway.
'This might well be his masterpiece' - MARK BILLINGHAM
'One of Ireland's finest crime writers' - STEVE CAVANAGH
'Chilling and compelling' - VAL McDERMID
'Terrifying' - CHRIS BROOKMYRE
'Thrilling' - CHRIS WHITAKER
'Stunning' - MARK EDWARDS
'Brilliant' - ADRIAN McKINTY
'Haunting' - LIZ NUGENT
'Superb' - WILL DEAN
Available to borrow from 1st September
September 2023 - Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
Winner of the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction
Demon Copperhead is a once-in-a-generation novel that breaks and mends your heart in the way only the best fiction can.
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster care. For Demon, born on the wrong side of luck, the affection and safety he craves is as remote as the ocean he dreams of seeing one day. The wonder is in how far he's willing to travel to try and get there.
Suffused with truth, anger and compassion, Demon Copperhead is an epic tale of love, loss and everything in between.
It's EPIC. Righteously angry, DEEPLY moving and exquisitely written.' MARIAN KEYES
'A powerful tale.' Good Housekeeping
'A fantastic read.' EMILY MAITLIS
Available to borrow from 1st August 2023
August 2023 - The Club by Ellery Lloyd
A Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick
There’s no place like Home . . .
The Home Group is a collection of ultra-exclusive private members' clubs and a global phenomenon, and the opening of its most ambitious project yet – Island Home, a forgotten island transformed into the height of luxury – is billed as the celebrity event of the decade.
But as the first guests arrive, the weekend soon proves deadly – because it turns out that even the most beautiful people can keep the ugliest secrets and, in a world where reputation is everything, they'll do anything to keep it.
If your name's on the list, you're not getting out . . .
For fans of The White Lotus and Big Little Lies, Ellery Lloyd's The Club is an exhilarating, addictive read, telling a story of ambition, excess, and what happens when people who have everything - or nothing - to lose are pushed to their imit.
'Smart, topical and immensely entertaining' T.M. Logan, author of The Holiday
'Marple meets Succession' Sunday Times Style
'Glitzy and twisty and tons of fun' Observer
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
July 2023 – Rites of Spring by Anders de la Motte
Southern Sweden:
Beautiful countryside, endless forests, coastal walks, dark days - and even
darker nights. But beneath the beauty lies a dark heart . . .
Skåne, 1986: On the night of
Walpurgis, the eve of May Day, where bonfires are lit to ward off evil spirits
and preparations are made to celebrate the renewal of spring, a
sixteen-year-old girl is ritualistically murdered in the woods beside a castle.
Her stepbrother is convicted of the terrible deed and shortly after, the entire
family vanishes without a trace.
Spring, 2019: Dr Thea Lind moves
into the castle. After making a strange discovery in an ancient oak tree on the
grounds, her fascination with the old tragedy deepens. As she uncovers more and
more similarities between her own troubled past and the murdered girl, she
begins to believe that the real truth of the killing was never uncovered.
What if the spring of 1986 claimed more than one
victim?
'A mesmerising amalgam of
creepy folklore, festering secrets, dark truths and a damp and mouldering
Scandinavian landscape rendered so dark and
brooding that is becomes a principal player in this
slow-burn, addictive tale' Lancashire Evening Post
Enthralling...De la Motte juxtaposes the horrors of war with age-old superstitions to superb effect -- Joan Smith ― Sunday Times
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
June 2023 - The Island Child by Molly Aitken
Twenty years ago, Oona left the island of Inis for the very first time. A wind-blasted rock of fishing boats and turf fires, where girls stayed in their homes until they became mothers themselves, the island was a gift for some, a prison for others.
The Island Child tells two stories: of the girl who grew up watching births and betrayals, storms and secrets, and of the adult Oona, desperate to find a second chance, only to discover she can never completely escape. As the strands of Oona’s life come together, in blood and marriage and motherhood, she must accept the price we pay when we love what is never truly ours . . .
'Thrillingly original' Naoise Dolan
'Exquisite' Daily Telegraph
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
May 2023 - A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske
Young baronet Robin Blyth thought he was taking up a minor governmental post. However, he's actually been appointed parliamentary liaison to a secret magical society. If it weren’t for this administrative error, he’d never have discovered the incredible magic underlying his world.
Cursed by mysterious attackers and plagued by visions, Robin becomes determined to drag answers from his missing predecessor – but he’ll need the help of Edwin Courcey, his hostile magical-society counterpart. Unwillingly thrown together, Robin and Edwin will discover a plot that threatens every magician in the British Isles.
The Binding meets Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell in debut author Freya Marske’s A Marvellous Light.
‘A dazzling debut’ – Shelley Parker-Chan, author of She Who Became the Sun
‘Prepare to fall in love with the gorgeous Edwardian setting, the sizzling character dynamics, and the murderous enchanted hedge maze’ – Emily Tesh, author of Silver in the Wood
April 2023 - Winchelsea by Alex Preston
The year is 1742. Goody Brown, saved from drowning and adopted when just a babe, has grown up happily in the smuggling town of Winchelsea. But when she turns sixteen, her father is murdered by men he thought were friends.
In a town where lawlessness prevails, Goody and her brother Francis must enter the cut-throat world of her father’s killers in order to find justice. Facing high seas and desperate villains, she discovers what life can be like without constraints or expectations, developing a taste for danger that makes her blood run fast.
Goody was never born to be a gentlewoman. But what will she become instead?
"Imagine Daphne du Maurier crossed with Quentin Tarantino, and you will have some idea of just what a thrilling, bloody and heady ride this novel is" -- TOM HOLLAND
"I was riveted. Winchelsea is a great read - terrific narrative drive, credible characters, and such an elegant creation of the backdrop in terms of both time and place" -- PENELOPE LIVELY
"Boisterous . . . evocative . . . What holds the novel together as much as its driving plot are its incantatory atmosphere and spellbinding language" ― Guardian
"Preston is a gifted prose cartographer, conjuring up the Sussex coastline in a crisp, clear fashion . . . He has written a bawdy, thunderous romp that echoes with cannon fire, sea shanties and the occasional plaintive cry of a nightjar" ― Financial Times
"Glorious" ― Spectator
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
March 2023 - Breakfast with Einstein by Chad Orzel
A Sunday Times Book of the Year
From the author of the international bestseller How to Teach Quantum Physics to Your Dog
Your humble alarm clock, digital cameras, the smell of coffee, the glow of a grill, fibre broadband, smoke detectors… all hold secrets about quantum physics.
Beginning at sunrise, Chad Orzel reveals the extraordinary science that underpins the simplest activities we all do every day, from making toast to shopping online. It’s all around us, the wonderful weirdness of quantum – you just have to know where to look.
‘[A] fine example of scientific passion.’
― Sunday Times, Books of the Year
‘Informative and friendly.’
― New York Times
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
February 2023 - To Paradise by Hanya Yanagihara
The No.1 Sunday Times bestseller from the author of A LITTLE LIFE
To Paradise is a bold, brilliant novel spanning three centuries and three different versions of the elusive idea of utopia; driven by Yanagihara’s understanding of our desire to protect those we love – partners, lovers, children, friends, family and even our fellow citizens – and the pain that ensues when we cannot.
In an alternate version of 1893 America, New York is part of the Free States, where people may live and love as they please (or so it seems).
In a 1993 Manhattan besieged by the AIDS epidemic, a young Hawaiian man lives with his much older, wealthier partner, hiding his troubled childhood and the fate of his father.
In 2093, in a world riven by plagues and governed by totalitarian rule, a powerful scientist’s damaged granddaughter tries to navigate life without him – and solve the mystery of her husband’s disappearance.
What unites these characters, and these Americas, are their reckonings with the qualities that make us human – fear, love, shame, need, loneliness – and the longing to find a place in an earthly paradise.
'I’m not sure I’ve ever missed the world of a book as much' - Observer
‘Not only rare . . . revolutionary’ - Michael Cunningham
‘Prepare to weep in public and be utterly transformed’ - Stylist
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
January 2023 - The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Winner of the Booker Prize and one of the BBC'S '100 Novels that shaped our world'
In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past...
A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Nobel Prize-winner Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House, of lost causes and lost love.
'A triumph. This wholly convincing portrait of a human life unweaving before your eyes is inventive and absorbing, by turns funny, absurd and ultimately very moving.', Sunday Times
'A dream of a book: a beguiling comedy of manners that evolves almost magically into a profound and heart-rending study of personality, class and culture.', New York Times Book Review
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
December 2022 - The Wild Laughter by Caoilinn Hughes.
It's 2008, and the Celtic Tiger has left devastation in its wake. Brothers Hart and Cormac Black are waking up to a very different Ireland – one that widens the chasm between them and brings their beloved father to his knees. Facing a devastating choice that will put their livelihood, even their lives, on the line, the brothers soon learn that their biggest danger comes when there is nothing to lose.
A sharp snapshot of a family and a nation suddenly unmoored, this epic-in-miniature explores cowardice and sacrifice, faith rewarded and abandoned, the stories we tell ourselves and the ones we resist. Hilarious, poignant and utterly fresh, The Wild Laughter cements Caoilinn Hughes' position as one of Ireland's most audacious, nuanced and insightful young writers.
FINALIST FOR THE AN POST IRISH NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2020, THE RTÉ RADIO 1 LISTENERS' CHOICE AWARD 2020 & THE DALKEY EMERGING WRITER AWARD 2021
LONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE & THE i COMEDY WOMEN IN PRINT PRIZE, 2021
AN IRISH TIMES, IRISH SUNDAY TIMES, IRISH INDEPENDENT & SUNDAY INDEPENDENT BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2020
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
November 2022 - The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson.
You should never talk to strangers
With his flight delayed, Ted Severson meets Lily Kintner, a magnetic stranger, in an airport bar. In the netherworld of international travel and too many martinis, he confesses his darkest secrets, about his wife's infidelity and how he wishes her dead. Without missing a beat Lily offers to help him carry out the task.
'Gripping, elegantly and stylishly written and extremely hard to put down.' Sophie Hannah
'A work of lovely violence and graceful malevolence, it slips into your life like a stiletto in the ribs.' Joe Hill
'Gone Girl on speed.' Daisy Goodwin
'Chilling and hypnotically suspenseful ... an instant classic.' Lee Child
We're looking for readers to take part in future Book Club Zoom chats. If you're interested in getting involved and chatting about this months book, then get in touch and let us know by email at reading@inspireculture.org.uk
October 2022 - The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki
When a book and a reader are meant for each other, both of them know it . . .
After the tragic death of his father, fourteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices. The voices belong to the things in his house and sound variously pleasant, angry or sad. Then his mother develops a hoarding problem, and the voices grow more clamorous. So Benny seeks refuge in the silence of a large public library. There he meets a mesmerising street artist with a smug pet ferret; a homeless philosopher-poet; and his very own Book, who narrates Benny’s life and teaches him to listen to the things that truly matter.
Blending unforgettable characters with jazz, climate change and our attachment to material possessions, this is classic Ruth Ozeki – bold, humane and heartbreaking.
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2022
"Heart-breaking and heart-healing - a book to not only keep us absorbed but also to help us think and love and live and listen. No one writes quite like Ruth Ozeki and The Book of Form and Emptiness is a triumph" -- MATT HAIG
"The Book of Form and Emptiness is a big, polyphonic, often comic, magical-realist collage of a novel that attempts to interrogate the most pressing issues of the age . . . at its heart is a compelling story of human connection and the redemptive power of art . . . Ozeki is a talented storyteller" ― Guardian
September 2022 = The Young Team by Graeme Armstrong.
Azzy Williams is ready. Ready to smoke, pop pills, drink wine and ready to fight. But most of all, he's ready to do anything for his friends, his gang, his young team.
Round here, in the schemes of the forgotten industrial heartland of Scotland, your mates, your young team - they're everything.
Azzy Williams is fourteen; a rising star, this is his life and he loves it.
Azzy Williams is seventeen; he's out of control.
Azzy Williams is twenty-one; he'd like to leave it all behind.
But a way out isn't easy to find . . .
Inspired by the experiences of its author, Graeme Armstrong, The Young Team is an energetic novel, full of the loyalty, laughs, mischief, boredom, violence and threat of life on these streets. It looks beyond the tabloid stereotypes to tell a powerful story about the realities of life for young people in Britain today.
A swaggering, incendiary debut . . . The non-standard English forges a dazzling poetry of its own . . . pitches Armstrong straight into the first division of Scottish writers. -- Jude Cook ― Guardian
Armstrong’s hard-hitting novel is Trainspotting for a new generation. ― Independent
Raw and lyrical . . . written in a voice that recalls Irvine Welsh and Alan Warner – dialect that fizzes off the page. ― Observer
[A] gripping debut novel . . . he is quite a phenomenon . . . one of the most admired young voices in British fiction. -- Mike Wade ― The Times
A riveting debut novel . . . it crackles with teenage energy . . . has already engendered a buzz that many other debut novelists would kill for. ― Herald
August 2022 - Annie Stanley All At Sea by Sue Teddern
August 2022 - Annie Stanley All At Sea by Sue Teddern
Sometimes the end is only the beginning . . .
Annie is single, unemployed and just a bit stuck when her beloved father dies unexpectedly. Furious at his partner’s plans to scatter his ashes somewhere of no emotional significance, Annie seizes the urn and, on a whim, decides to take it on a tour of the thirty-one sea areas that make up the shipping forecast, which her father loved listening to, despite living in landlocked St Albans. Travelling around the coastline of Britain searching for the perfect place to say goodbye, she starts to wonder if it might be time to rethink some of the relationships in her life – but is it too late for second chances?
A novel about love, loss and the importance of living life to the full, Annie Stanley, All at Sea by Sue Teddern is proof that it’s often the most difficult moments in life that show us what really matters.
'Witty, wise with wonderful characters. I absolutely loved this book' - Katie Fforde, author of A Springtime Affair
July 2022 - Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
July 2022 - Songbirds by Christy Lefteri
Not all tragedies make headlines, not every
voice is heard.
Nisha has crossed oceans to give her child a future. Now she spends her days
caring for someone else's daughter while her own waits for her return, half a
world away.
For Petra, it is only natural to hire a domestic worker to keep her house clean
and her family fed. Their lives have nothing in common, except the love they
feel for their daughters.
Then one day, Nisha vanishes. No one cares about the disappearance of a foreign
domestic worker, except Petra and Nisha's secret lover, Yiannis, the only
connection to her daughter back in Sri Lanka.
As Petra and Yiannis desperately search for Nisha, they realise how little they
knew about her. What they uncover will change them both forever.
Inspired by true stories of love and loss, hope and refuge, this evocative
masterpiece from the million-copy bestselling author of The Beekeeper of Aleppo, Christy Lefteri, is an
illuminating story of the power of the human spirit, and the enduring love of a
mother for her child, that will stay with you long after you finish reading.
'Will break your
heart and open your eyes' Heather Morris, author of The Tattooist of
Auschwitz
'I've never read anything quite
like Songbirds - a beautifully crafted novel.' Jodi Picoult,
bestselling author of Wish You Were Here.
June 2022 - Lampedusa by Steven Prince
June 2022 - Lampedusa by Steven Prince
In the Sicily of the 1950s, still haunted by memories of Fascism and the war, the last Prince of Lampedusa, Giuseppe Tomasi, struggles to complete his only novel, The Leopard.
Tomasi is a veteran of the previous war, while his wife Alessandra is living in exile after her native Latvia is absorbed into the Soviet Union. The childless couple are survivors of a vanishing world of European aristocracy, living in the present, yet nostalgic for the decadent past. Diagnosed with advanced emphysema and with a profound awareness of his doomed lineage, the prince begins working on a novel. When The Leopard is posthumously published, it is to much acclaim; it will come to be considered the greatest Italian novel of the century.
Achingly haunting, Lampedusa tells the story of a man’s awakening to the possibilities of life as he nears its end.
‘In subtle and intelligent prose, Price invites us into the mind of a man striving to make sense of memory and mortality.’ Sunday Times
May 2022 - Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
May 2022 - Of Women and Salt by Gabriela Garcia
Five generations of women, linked by blood and circumstance, by the secrets they share, and by a single book passed down through a family, with an affirmation scrawled in its margins: We are force. We are more than we think we are.
1866, Cuba: María Isabel is the only woman employed at a cigar factory, where each day the workers find strength in daily readings of Victor Hugo. But these are dangerous political times, and as María begins to see marriage and motherhood as her only options, the sounds of war are approaching.
1959, Cuba: Dolores watches her husband make for the mountains in answer to Fidel Castro’s call to arms. What Dolores knows, though, is that to survive, she must win her own war, and commit an act of violence that threatens to destroy her daughter Carmen’s world.
2016, Miami: Carmen, still wrestling with the trauma of displacement, is shocked when her daughter Jeanette announces her plans to travel to Cuba to see her grandmother Dolores. In the walls of her crumbling home lies a secret, one that will link Jeanette to her past, and to this fearless line of women.
From nineteenth-century cigar factories to present-day detention centres, from Cuba to the United States to Mexico, Gabriela Garcia’s Of Women and Salt follows Latina women of fierce pride, bound by the stories passed between them. It is a haunting meditation on the choices of mothers and the tenacity of women who choose to tell their truth despite those who wish to silence them.
The women in Garcia's striking debut novel are connected not just by blood but by the need to endure or escape abusive relationships and countries. She captures the hope and pain of immigration and the terror of deportation with an unsentimental yet empathetic eye ― New York Times
A stunning achievement. I loved its intensity, its scope, its vivid prose. An essential, profound story about mothers and daughters, the Latina Experience, and the indomitable beating heart of womankind. -- Emma Stonex, author of The Lamplighters
April 2022 - Summerwater by Sarah Moss
April 2022 - Summerwater by Sarah Moss - Members Rating 4/5
It is the summer solstice, but in a faded Scottish cabin park the rain is unrelenting. Twelve people on holiday with their families look on as the skies remain resolutely grey. A woman goes running up the Ben as if fleeing; a teenage boy chances the dark waters of the loch in his kayak; a retired couple head out despite the downpour, driving too fast on the familiar bends.
But there are newcomers too, and one particular family, a mother and daughter with the wrong clothes and the wrong manners, start to draw the attention of the others. Who are they? Where are they from? Should they be here at all? As darkness finally falls, something is unravelling . . .
- The Sunday Times Top Ten Bestseller, longlisted for the Orwell Prize for Political Fiction 2021
- From the acclaimed author of Ghost Wall, Sarah Moss' Summerwater is a devastating story told over twenty-four hours in the Scottish highlands . . .
- 'Superb' - The Times
- 'Sharp, searching . . . utterly of the moment' - Hilary Mantel
- 'So accomplished' - Guardian
March 2022 - The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
March 2022. The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex
Cornwall, 1972. Three keepers vanish from a remote lighthouse, miles from the shore. The entrance door is locked from the inside. The clocks have stopped. The Principal Keeper’s weather log describes a mighty storm, but the skies have been clear all week.
What happened to those three men, out on the tower? The heavy sea whispers their names. The tide shifts beneath the swell, drowning ghosts. Can their secrets ever be recovered from the waves?
Twenty years later, the women they left behind are still struggling to move on. Helen, Jenny and Michelle should have been united by the tragedy, but instead it drove them apart. And then a writer approaches them. He wants to give them a chance to tell their side of the story. But only in confronting their darkest fears can the truth begin to surface . . .
Inspired by real events, The Lamplighters by Emma Stonex is an intoxicating and suspenseful mystery, an unforgettable story of love and grief that explores the way our fears blur the line between the real and the imagined.
'Gripping' - Guardian
'Riveting' - Independent
'Excellent' - Observer
'A triumph' - Daily Mail
'Stunning' - The Times
February 2022 - The Wonder
February 2022 - Read with us The Wonder by Emma Donoghue
An eleven-year-old girl stops eating, but remains miraculously alive and well. A nurse, sent to investigate whether she is a fraud, meets a journalist hungry for a story . . .
Set in the Irish Midlands in the 1850s, Emma Donoghue's The Wonder – inspired by numerous European and North American cases of 'fasting girls' between the sixteenth century and the twentieth – is a psychological thriller about a child's murder threatening to happen in slow motion before our eyes. Pitting all the seductions of fundamentalism against sense and love, it is a searing examination of what nourishes us, body and soul.
January 2022 - Diary of a Somebody
Please note: this video discussion contains some strong
language.
Members Rating - 3.2/5
January 2022 - Read with us Diary of a Somebody by Brian Bilston.
Shortlisted for the Costa First Novel Award.
Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part hilarious description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is a stunningly original novel from Twitter sensation, Brian Bilston.
It’s January 1st and Brian Bilston is convinced that this year, his New Year’s resolution will change his life. Every day for a year, he will write a poem. It’s quite simple.
Brian’s life certainly needs improving. His ex-wife has taken up with a new man, he seems to constantly disappoint his long-suffering son, and at work he is drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and management jargon. So poetry will be his salvation. But there is an obstacle in the form of Toby Salt, his arch nemesis at Poetry Club and rival suitor to Liz, Brian’s new poetic inspiration.
When Toby goes missing, just after the announcement of the publication of his first collection, This Bridge No Hands Shall Cleave, Brian becomes the number one suspect. If he is to regain his reputation and to have a chance of winning Liz, he must find out what has happened to Toby before it is too late.
Nobody must find out about this unique gem, because I’m giving it to EVERYONE - Dawn French
December 2021 - Station Eleven
Members Rating - 4/5
December 2021 - Read with us Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.
almost everything, almost everyone, but there is still such beauty.
One snowy night in Toronto famous actor Arthur Leander dies on stage whilst performing the role of a lifetime. That same evening a deadly virus touches down in North America.
The world will never be the same again.
Twenty years later Kirsten, an actress in the Travelling Symphony, performs Shakespeare in the settlements that have grown up since the collapse.
But then her newly hopeful world is threatened.
If civilization was lost, what would you preserve?
And how far would you go to protect it?
Visually stunning, dreamily atmospheric and impressively gripping . . . Station Eleven is not so much about apocalypse as about memory and loss, nostalgia and yearning; the effort of art to deepen our fleeting impressions of the world and bolster our solitude. ― Guardian
November 2021 - Shed No Tears
Members rating - 2.25/5
November 2021 - Read with us Shed No Tears by Caz Frear.
The brilliant new thriller from the Richard & Judy Search for a Bestseller competition winner and #1 bestseller.
Who killed Holly Kemp? Christopher Masters, known as 'The Roommate Killer', strangled three women over a two-week period in a London house in November 2012. Holly Kemp, his fourth victim, was never found. Until now. Her remains have been unearthed in a field in Cambridgeshire and DC Cat Kinsella and the Major Investigation Team are called in for what should be an open-and-shut case. But immediately Cat has questions and with Masters dead and few new leads, she has little to go on except her gut instinct, which is telling her that the real killer is still out there. But if you'd got away with murder, how far would you go to keep the past where it belongs?
'If you haven't discovered Caz Frear yet, you are in for a treat. She's fast becoming one of my favourite writers. Shed No Tears is magnificent.' ―Fiona Cummins
Reader Reviews
Book Worm with a cuppa wrote a review about Shed No Tears - Read the review here.
Anne wrote a review about Shed No Tears - Read the review here.
Clare wrote a review about Shed No Tears - Read the review here.
Hawley reviews wrote a review Shed about No Tears - Read the review here.
T.K wrote a review about Shed No Tears - Read the review here.
October 2021 - The Humans
Members Rating - 4.35
October 2021 - Read with us The Humans by Matt Haig.
There's no place like home. Or is there?
After an 'incident' one wet Friday night where he is found walking naked through the streets of Cambridge, Professor Andrew Martin is not feeling quite himself. Food sickens him. Clothes confound him. Even his loving wife and teenage son are repulsive to him. He feels lost amongst an alien species and hates everyone on the planet. Everyone, that is, except Newton, and he's a dog.Who is he really? And what could make someone change their mind about the human race . . . ?
'The Humans is tremendous; a kind of Curious Incident meets The Man Who Fell to Earth. It's funny, touching and written in a highly appealing voice' - Joanne Harris
IOBC member Col Robinson wrote a review about "The Humans" - Read
the review here.
IOBC member T.K wrote a review about "The Humans" - Read the review here.
We took our discussion to Zoom. Watch the video here:
September 2021 - Come Again
Our members' rating: 1.75 out of 5
September 2021 - We read Come Again by Robert Webb.
You can't fall in love for the first time twice...
Kate's husband Luke - the man she loved from the moment she met him twenty-eight years ago - died suddenly. Since then she has pushed away her friends, lost her job and everything is starting to fall apart. One day, she wakes up in the wrong room and in the wrong body. She is eighteen again but remembers everything. . .
‘Time-slip novels and plots revisiting the 1990s student experience are both things at the moment. This debut by the well-known comedian and Peep Show actor ingeniously combines both.’ - The Mail
Our IOBC member T.K. wrote a review about "Come Again" - Read the review here.
We took our discussion to Zoom. Watch the video here:
August 2021 - Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess
Our members' rating: 3.5 out of 5
August 2021 - We read Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess by Amanda Owen. Amanda Owen loves her traditional life on her hill farm alongside her nine children and husband Clive. And, as readers of her previous bestsellers will know, every day at Ravenseat brings surprises. In Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess Amanda takes us from her family’s desperate race to save a missing calf to finding her bra has been repurposed as a house martin’s nest, and from wild swimming to the brutal winter of 2018 that almost brought her to her knees. As busy as she is with her family and flock though, an exciting new project soon catches her eye . . .
"Awash with anecdote and incident, The Adventures of a Yorkshire Shepherdess is an uplifting memoir of a remarkable woman living the kind of life that is rapidly vanishing from view" - Waterstones
Our IOBC member T.K. wrote a review about "Adventures of the Yorkshire Shepherdess" - Read the review here.
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the chat here:
July 2021 - The Familiars
July 2021 - We read The Familiars by Stacey Halls. Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Debut Book of the Year 2020. Stacey Halls’ accomplished debut is a haunting novel of two women struggling to fight against the expectation and superstition of their age.
"Assured and alluring, this beautiful tale of women and witchcraft and the fight against power was a delight from start to finish." - Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist
Our IOBC member T.K. wrote a review about "The Familiars" - Read the review here.
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the chat here:
June 2021 - The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste
June 2021 - We read The Shadow King by Maaza Mengiste. The Shadow King casts light on the women soldiers written out of African and European history. It is a captivating exploration of female power, and what it means to be a woman at war.
"The Shadow King is a beautiful and devastating work; of women holding together a world ripping itself apart. They will slip into your dreams and overtake your memories." - Marlon James
Our IOBC member T.K. wrote a review about "The Shadow King", Read the review here.
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the chat here:
May 2021 - The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal
May 2021 - We read The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal.
Set in Victorian London against the vibrant backdrop of pre-Raphaelite art and the stifling social limitations on women’s lives, aspiring artist Iris agrees to model in return for painting lessons. As creativity and love blossom, she is unaware that a fleeting encounter with sinister collector Silas has sparked a dark obsession which threatens to destroy her world.
'…a remarkably strong debut; clever and readable with flashes of wonderful, descriptive prose.' - The Times
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the discussion here:
April 2021 - Children of Blood and Bone
April 2021 - We read Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. Already snapped up for development into a major new film by the producers of The Fault in Our Stars, Children of Blood and Bone is a fierce and unflinching saga of divided love, belief and legacy.
'This highly anticipated fantasy novel earned its 23-year-old Nigerian-American author a seven-figure deal. The first instalment of a three-part young adult trilogy, it draws on African myth and folklore and was reportedly inspired by the Black Lives Matters movement. The film rights were snapped up before the book was even published.' - The Irish Independent
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the discussion here:
March 2021 - The Moment of Lift
March 2021 - We celebrated International Women's Day by reading The Moment of Lift by Melinda Gates.
A Sunday Times bestselling debut from Melinda Gates, a timely and necessary call to action for women's empowerment.
"Melinda Gates has spent many years working with women around the world. This book charts her own evolution as a feminist and celebrates the stories of others who inspired her on her journey. It is an urgent manifesto for an equal society where women are valued and recognized in all spheres of life. Most of all, it is a call for unity, inclusion and connection. We need this message more than ever." - Malala Yousafzai
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the discussion here:
February 2021 - The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst
February 2021 - Club friends, this month we celebrated LGBT+ History Month 2021 by reading The Sparsholt Affair by Alan Hollinghurst.
"Perhaps Hollinghurst's most beautiful novel yet--a book full of glorious sentences by the greatest prose stylist writing in English today. 'The Sparsholt Affair' is about gay life, about art, about family, but most of all it's about the remorseless passage of time. An unashamedly readable novel, undoubtedly the work of a master." -Alex Preston, The Observer
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the discussion here:
January 2020 - Traces by Patricia Wiltshire
We started 20201 by reading 'Traces' by Patricia Wiltshire.
'Traces is proof that real-life can be more startling than fiction. The insights into the natural world are every bit as absorbing as the behind-the-scenes details of forensic investigation, while Patricia Wiltshire's own story is as remarkable as any of the cases she's worked on. Poignant, frank and utterly fascinating.' - Simon Beckett
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the video below:
November 2020 - The Catch by T. M. Logan
In November we read The Catch by Nottingham based author T.M. Logan whose suspenseful thrillers have picked up millions of readers worldwide and received high praise from critics and fellow crime-writers alike.
"Action-packed and full of tension . . . Logan keeps the twists going up to the dramatic ending.” Independent
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the video below:
We also had an exclusive interview with T.M. Logan as part of our Book Talks. Watch the interview here.
October 2020 - Night Boat to Tangier by Kevin Barry
Longlisted for the Booker Prize - Irish Times number one
bestseller - shortlisted for novel of the year at the Irish Book Awards, the Dalkey
Literary Awards and the Kerry Group Awards - a book of the year in the New York
Times, New Statesman, Times Literary supplement, Big Issue, i, the Atlantic and
Literary Hub.
‘Barry is a clairvoyant narrator of the male psyche and a consistent lyrical visionary. But what distinguishes this book beyond its humour, terror and beauty of description is its moral perception.’ - The Guardian
We took our book discussion to Zoom. Watch the video below:
Looking for older titles? Find all our book discussions on YouTube!
Our Members' Reviews
Our Inspire Online Book Club members have taken pen to paper and written some fantastic reviews of our recently discussed titles.
Find out the latest reviews here.
