Some books previously discussed in the group:

In September

• The Blue Ticket by Sophie Mackintosh – led to a mention of The Handmaids Tale by Margaret Atwood
• The Names by Florence Kemp
• When the Rain Clouds Gather by Bessie Head
• Spectacles by Sue Perkins
• Left Neglected by Lisa Genova
• The Ghost Ship by Kate Mosse (this is book 3; book 1 is The Burning Chambers; book 2 is The City of Tears)
• The Night Sky by Clare Francis
• Pompeii by Robert Harris – Caroline finished it at last!
• Sea of Poppies/River of Smoke/Flood of Fire – the Ibis trilogy by Amitav Ghosh
• Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
• Black Sheep by Susan Hill
• Wicked Autumn by G M Malliet
• The Passage by Justin Cronin
• Fall Down Dead by Stephen Booth – watch the Cooper & Fry TV series with the same detectives
• The Terror by Dan Simmons
• Casino Royale by Ian Fleming (also worth reading From Russia with Love and Doctor No)
• Tony Parks – series of books set in Africa. Book 1 = Far Horizon
• The Life Class Trilogy and the Regeneration Trilogy by Pat Barker – both recommended
• How Population Change Will Transform our World by Sarah Harper
• The Solitude of Prime Numbers by Paolo Giordano

Autumn Books

• Jane Eyre – starts in November
• Autumn by Kate Mosse
• Digging to America by Anne Tyler
• The Fires of Autumn by Irene Nemirovsky

And as usual we got onto TV and film

• Radical on Radio 4 – learn all about human composting, preppers and population change!
• Michael Sheen’s documentary on BBC – Buried
• The World’s greatest accidental explosion was near Hanbury in Derbyshire – enormous nature pit
• Cauliflowers Fluffy – the classic Harvest Festival tune!
• To Autumn by Keats – Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

In August

• The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen
• The Night Manager by John Le Carre
• The Names by Florence Knapp
• The Second Sleep by Robert Harris
• The Various Haunts of Men by Susan Hill
• The Pure in Heart by Susan Hill
• The Dry by Jane Harper
• The Dangerous Stranger by Simon Mason
• The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood
• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
• Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
• One of Us by Elizabeth Day
• Magpie by Elizabeth Day
• A Far-Flung Life by M L Stedman
• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood
• Detective books by Ann Cleeves – Vera, Shetland, Matthew Venn + when I checked, there is also a series about George and Holly Palmer-Jones!
• Books by Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh & Kate Grenville – hot!
• Books by Solzhenitsyn & Gogol (The Overcoat) – cold!

Following the talk on Thursday 20th August, we also spoke about books related to partition

Partition Voices: untold British stories by Kavita Puri, Broken Threads by Mishal Husain and The Right Sort of Girl by Anita Rani

In June:

• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• And the Mountains Echoed by Khaled Hosseini
• The Trial by Rob Rinder. Worth reading this first then working through his others
• The Tale of Murasaki by Liza Dalby
• Every Secret Thing by Gillian Slovo
• On Leopard Rock by Wilbur Smith. Dianna also recommended When the Lion Feeds and his Ancient Egyptian series
• The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman – we’re told he is back to excellent form!
• Cleopatra’s Daughter by Jane Draycott
• The Seven Sisters series by Lucinda Riley – long books, but Caroline and Gill said they were worth reading
• Traitors Legacy by S.J.Parris – Fran and Caroline both racing to the end!
• V2 by Robert Harris – Liz continues through his catalogue, depending what is on the library shelf. Act of Oblivion recommended, but only Munich was available – let’s see what she thinks at next month’s meeting
• Clear Light of Day by Anita Desai
• Gigi and The Cat by Colette – 2 novellas
• Depressing but well-written & recommended to Fran - Black Butterflies by Priscilla Morris, about the Balkan war, and Wolf Hunt by Ayelet Gundar-Goshen about teenagers and crime
• Cadfael books – Dianna has just started – 1 down, 19 more to go!

In May:

• Middlemarch by George Eliot
• The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot 
• Memento Mori and ‘Curriculum Vitae: A Volume of Autobiography’ by Muriel Spark
• After You’d Gone by Maggie O’Farrell
• Roadside Picnic by Arkady & Boris Strugatsky
• The Martian and Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K Dick – filmed as Blade Runner·
• Watling Street by John Higgs 
• Celestial Lights & Wandering Souls by Cecile Pin
• Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
• Don’t Burn Anyone at the Stake Today by Naomi Alderman
• The Killing Stones by Ann Cleeves
• Legenda by Janina Ramirez
• The Shape of Snakes by Minette Walters
• The Places In Between & ‘Middleland’ by Rory Stewart
• Suite Francaise, The Fires of Autumn & Fire in the Blood by Irene Nemirovsky
• The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

In April:

• Pompeii by Robert Harris
• Wintry Peacock – short stories by D.H.Lawrence
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H.Lawrence
• In Memoriam by Alice Winn
• Restless Dolly Maunder by Kate Grenville
• Winter of the World by Ken Follett
• The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak
• Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
• In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden
• The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O’Sullivan
• Chasing Freedom by Simukai Chigudu
• Disobedient by Elizabeth Freemantle    

In previous months:

• Elusive by Frank Close
• The Boy from the Sea by Garrett Carr
• Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Our Women on the Ground by Zahra Hankir
• The Shortest History of Japan by Lesley Downer
• The Widow by John Grisham
• Sea of Poppies/River of Smoke/Flood of Fire by Amitav Ghosh
• Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
• Broken Threads – Mishal Husain
• Saturday by Ian McEwan
• Pied Piper by Neville Shute
• Dr Siri books by Colin Cotterill
• Also, books by Robert Harris -Act of Oblivion, Conclave, Pompeii, Precipice - many of us had read these and enjoyed them
• The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese.
• A History of Loneliness by John Boyne
• A Place Beyond Courage by Elizabeth Chadwick
• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
• A Life on our Planet by David Attenborough
• Normal Women by Phillipa Gregory
• The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse by Charlie Mackesy
• The Library of Lost Maps by James Cheshire
• Manchester, Mapping the City by Wyke, Robson and Dodge
• All the Wide Border: Wales, England and the places in-between by Mike Parker
• The Puppet Show by M W Craven
• The Measure’ by Nikki Erlick