Programmes for Each Group

Group A (Janet Powell) 📘

2025

7th August - Colm Toibin - Brooklyn - 2009

In the 1950’s, Eilis emigrates to America from Ireland. Settled in her new life, news from home sees her return and while there she will be confronted with a terrible dilemma. (Jean)

4th September - Voltaire - Candide - 1759

Candide has been instilled with the belief that “all is for the best”, but his optimism will be sorely tested by an outrageous series of disasters. (Sue)

2nd October - Jeanine Cummins - American Dirt - 2020

When her journalist husband is murdered by a drug cartel, Lydia flees Acapulco with her son and heads north to the US border, a journey fraught with danger. (Margaret)

6th November - Tracy Chevalier - The Girl with the Pearl Earring - 1999

A captivating story about the Dutch artist Vermeer, and his enigmatic painting. (David)

4th December - Olive Collins - The Tides Between Us - 2017

In the early 1800’s, a young boy is deported from Ireland to a plantation in Jamaica. When a skeleton is unearthed in 1990’s Ireland, so too are the long-buried truths of family links to the slave trade. (Alison)

Group B (Anne Smith) 📗

2025

Pending

Group C (Sue Buchan) 📕

2025

24th July - Rosamond Lehmann - The Echoing Grove - 1953

Lehmann's heartbreak at the end of her affair with Cecil Day-Lewis inspired this novel about two sisters who loved the same man until his death. (Alison)

28th August - Katy Hays - The Cloisters - 2023

In New York, the gothic Cloisters museum hosts a small cliqué of researchers: a mystery Tarot set is discovered. (Anne)

25th September - David Grann - The Wager - 2023

A story of shipwreck, mutiny and murder, culminating in a dramatic court martial. (Sally)

Group D (Sue Buchan) 📙

2025

21st July - Nick Hayes - The Book Of Trespass - 2020

About our country, and the lack of access we have to most of it: in England we are excluded from 92% of the land and 97% of the waterways. (Peggy)

18th Aug - Lisa See - The Island Of Sea Women - 2019

Female friendships and family secrets on Jeju island before, during, and after the Korean war. (Lee)

15th Sep - Alice Munro - Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - 2001

Short story collection by Canadian writer, winner of 2013 Nobel Prize for Literature. (Sue)

20th Oct - Steven Saylor - Roman Blood - 1991

Gordianus is employed by Cicero to investigate a client accused of patricide. (Geoff)

17th Nov - Markus Zuzak - The Book Thief - 2005

Historical fiction set in Nazi Germany: a young girl has lost her family and becomes obsessed with

reading. (Frances)

15th Dec - Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide - 2004

Set in the Sundarbans, a mismatched trio travel upriver to find the rare Irrawaddy dolphin. (Savi)

2026

19th Jan - John Steinbeck - Cannery Row - 1945

Story of a marine biologist in a seedy district of sardine canneries in Monterey, California. (Sue)

16th Feb - Robert Harris - Fatherland - 1992

April 64: The naked body of an old man is found in a lake near Berlin. (Geoff)

16th Mar - J B Priestley - The Good Companion - 1929

The travels and travails of a concert troupe on the road, as they criss-cross England. (Anne)

20th Apr - Pat Barker - The Silence Of The Girls - 2018

From the Iliad: Briseis recounts her life as a queen and then as Achilles' slave in the Greek camp outside Troy. (Sian)

18th May - Tan Twan Eng - The Garden Of Evening Mists - 2012

A POW in Malaysia becomes a judge, then creates a garden in memory of her sister. (Margaret)

15th Jun - Catherine Newman - Sandwich - 2014

Comedy around an annual three generational family holiday to Cape Cod. (Peggy)

20th Jul - Marlen Haushofer - The Wall - 1963

Austrian dystopian novel: One survivor and her animals as she tries to cope, alone in her hunting lodge. (Jenny)

The other books that were nominated, but not selected, were:

E L Doctorow - Ragtime - 1975

Historical fiction of early 20th Century New York: includes a wealthy dysfunctional family, racial tensions and historical characters. (Frances)

Jack Parkes - The Man With The Golden Tooth - 2023

Gregor and family have to go into hiding after he helps to bring drug smugglers to justice. (Anne)

Rabindranath Tagore - Selected Short Stories - 2005

By the 1913 Nobel Laureate - the first non-European Laureate. (Savi)

Iain Banks - The Wasp Factory - 1984

Teenager Frank tells the story of his younger childhood, creating rituals and killing. (Sian)

Chris Whitaker - All The Colours Of The Dark - 2024

A young boy was abducted: How it affects him and his best friend in later life. (Peggy)

William Woodruff - The Road To Nab End - 1993

Childhood memoir of being a weaver’s son in Blackburn in the 1920s, - he went on to become a professor at several universities around the world. (Jenny)

Beryl Bainbridge - According To Queeney - 2001

Fictional tale of the last years of Samuel Johnson and his friendship with Hester Thrale and her daughter, Queeney. (Margaret)