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

23rd October - Sheila Armstrong - Falling Animals - 2023

A man’s body is found on Sligo beach: 18 different people tell the story. (Sue B)

27th November - W Somerset Maugham - The Painted Veil - 1925

A doctor’s wife is forced to travel to a Chinese city with a cholera outbreak. (Sarah)

2026

22nd January - Victoria Hislop - The Island - 2005

Alexis needs to find out how her mother’s past is linked to a leper colony off Crete. (Linda)

26th February - Samantha Harvey - Orbital - 2023

SF/Literary Fiction/Philosophical Drama – It follows six astronauts over 24 hours on a space station. (John)

26th March - Ann Patchett - The Dutch House - 2019

Maeve and Danny’s father become rich: Then a stepmother arrives and their lives change. (Sue V)

23rd April - Elif Shafak - The Island Of Missing Trees - 2022

Teenagers on Cyprus are divided by war in 1974: Decades later, a London girl seeks her family history. (Anne)

28th May - Aravind Adiga - The White Tiger - 2008

Darkly humorous view of Indian class struggles: Balram’s rise from poverty to success. (Sally)

25th June - Jane Austen - Mansfield Park - 1814

Shy Fanny is adopted, as a child, by rich relatives. (Amanda)

23rd July - David Park - Travelling In A Strange Land - 2018

Tom ventures out into snowbound landscapes, driving from Belfast to Sunderland to his sick son. (Alison)

27th August - Chris Whitaker - All The Colours Of The Dark - 2024

Coming of age tale, love story and thriller about kidnapped children. (Hazel)

24th September - Kate Atkinson - Life After Life - 2013

Ursula Todd, born 1910, has multiple alternate possible lives - and deaths. (Carol)

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 August - 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 September - Alice Munro - Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage - 2001

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

20th October - Steven Saylor - Roman Blood - 1991

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

17th November - 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 December - Amitav Ghosh - The Hungry Tide - 2004

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

2026

19th January - John Steinbeck - Cannery Row - 1945

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

16th February - Robert Harris - Fatherland - 1992

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

16th March - 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 April - 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 June - Catherine Newman - Sandwich - 2014

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

20th July - 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)