Book Group Readers' Recommendations 2024

The author was a teacher for many years and this is about how she taught English to her pupils. It has a chapter about each set play or book or poem that is required to be taught in the syllabus. And I was fascinated, and most impressed. It's really well written, really interesting.

It's set in Dublin in the 1950s and Quirk is a surly but brilliant pathologist, who works very closely with Stratford, a detective inspector in the police. Together, they solve crimes. The book opens with a husband running around the edge of a cliff, because he thinks his wife's just jumped off and drowned. The book is about did she or didn't she, is she alive or dead. You meet all these different people on the way, and everybody isn't quite the way you thought they would be when you first start reading the book. It's classic John Banville and brings 1950s Ireland to life. It's brilliant.

This is a psychological thriller set in New Zealand. A new teacher comes to a class and all the pupils are vying to be her pet, but then things start going missing. It features an unreliable narrator, a fast paced storyline and an awful main character, which I really like. And I just read it so quickly. The. Writing is fantastic. The characters are very complex, and they also bring different themes in quite naturally. I would say it's aimed at middle grade, but it does have a lot more to offer. It's really good, and there's one scene in this book which I will remember forever. 

It's a multi-generational novel based in Bourneville, in Birmingham, which was set up by the Cadbury family who were philanthropists for their workforce. It's very interesting the way it's written - each chapter is based around a national event and how this affects the characters in the novel - from VE Day to Diana's Funeral. Coe said the novel was his way of trying to understand the historical background to the Brexit vote. It's well written and I found the characters very engaging. 

Set in Belfast in the 1970s in the troubles, it is about an affair, between a working class Catholic woman and a very middle class Protestant man. To my shame, I know very little about the 1970s in Northern Ireland so it was really interesting and very well written. Brilliant book.

This is a book I go back to because I love it. The protagonist is a zombie but if you can get over that, it's about love, humanity and what it means to be human. It's a really lovely, warm, sweet love story and it's very funny.

This novel was published posthumously by the author's daughters. It is two novellas and was intended to be a work of five parts portraying the lives of French families in the Second World War. It shows how classes and personalities behave under enormous pressure and when the desire to survive supercedes any desire to help their neighbour. The appendix tells the story of the author who died in Auschwitz, with her children surviving her. It's a hard subject but a moving and beautiful book.

It's about a divorced woman who meets a teacher, who is separated from his wife, when they both take part in a hike on the coast to coast walk from Cumbria in the west to Yorkshire in the east. It seems to me that David Nicholls is very gifted in describing the minutiae of life and relationships. I loved the characters, the story, the humour, and the descriptions of the countryside and the weather on the route. There's also a little map showing you the route, which I rather liked.

This is an easy read, a page-turner, something to help you shut the world out for two or three hours. It's about a lady who has broken up with her partner and goes to work in her uncle's stationery shop in London. There are some beautiful passages about stationery which made me want to go and buy a fountain pen. It's a bit about heartbreak. It's a lot about friendship, and reconnecting with people. It's just a really, really lovely read.

This is a big, warm hug of a book about hard-won self-knowledge, the folly of youth and young love. It's heartfelt, elegaic, intensely moving for me - it made me cry - and it took me into a world I didn't want to leave, in all of its locations and timelines. It's about the complexities at play in all of our closest relationships, and the idea of letting life happen to you versus taking control. It was just lovely, absolutely lovely.

It was published in 2021 and is an anthology of Lizzie Stewart's work until that point. And it's just really wonderful. She's just got a very good ear for dialogue and the dynamics of relationships. And I'd say it's a woman's book but the themes are universal.