Monday 2nd March – Monday 6th April
A Man Called Ove by Fredrick Backman (discussed on 6th April)

At first sight, Ove is almost certainly the grumpiest man you will ever meet. He thinks himself surrounded by idiots – neighbours who can’t reverse a trailer properly, joggers, shop assistants who talk in code, and the perpetrators of the vicious coup d’etat that ousted him as Chairman of the Residents’ Association. He will persist in making his daily inspection rounds of the local streets. But isn’t it rare, these days, to find such old-fashioned clarity of belief and deed? Such unswerving conviction about what the world should be, and a lifelong dedication to making it just so? In the end, you will see, there is something about Ove that is quite irresistible…

Monday 6th April – Monday 4th May
Becoming by Michelle Obama (discussed on 4th May)

In a life filled with meaning and accomplishment, Michelle Obama has emerged as one of the most iconic and compelling women of our era. As First Lady of the United States of America – the first African-American to serve in that role – she helped create the most welcoming and inclusive White House in history, while also establishing herself as a powerful advocate for women and girls in the U.S. and around the world, dramatically changing the ways that families pursue healthier and more active lives, and standing with her husband as he led America through some of its most harrowing moments. Along the way, she showed us a few dance moves, crushed Carpool Karaoke, and raised two down-to-earth daughters under an unforgiving media glare.

Monday 4th May – Monday 1st June
Those Who Are Loved by Victoria Hislop (discussed on 1st June)

Athens 1941. After decades of political uncertainty, Greece is polarised between Right- and Left-wing views when the Germans invade. Fifteen-year-old Themis comes from a family divided by these political differences. The Nazi occupation deepens the fault-lines between those she loves just as it reduces Greece to destitution. She watches friends die in the ensuing famine and is moved to commit acts of resistance. In the civil war that follows the end of the occupation, Themis joins the Communist army, where she experiences the extremes of love and hatred and the paradoxes presented by a war in which Greek fights Greek. Eventually imprisoned on the infamous islands of exile, Makronisos and then Trikeri, Themis encounters another prisoner whose life will entwine with her own in ways neither can foresee. And finds she must weigh her principles against her desire to escape and live.

Monday 5^th August – Monday 2^nd September
The Island written by Victoria Hislop

On the brink of a life-changing decision, Alexis Fielding longs to find out about her mother’s past. But Sofia has never spoken of it. All she admits to is growing up in a small Cretan village before moving to London. When Alexis decides to visit Crete, however, Sofia gives her daughter a letter to take to an old friend, and promises that through her she will learn more.

Arriving in Plaka, Alexis is astonished to see that it lies a stone’s throw from the tiny, deserted island of Spinalonga – Greece’s former leper colony. Then she finds Fotini, and at last hears the story that Sofia has buried all her life: the tale of her great-grandmother Eleni and her daughters and a family rent by tragedy, war and passion.

She discovers how intimately she is connected with the island, and how secrecy holds them all in its powerful grip…

Monday 2^nd September – Monday 7^th October
This is Going to Hurt written by Adam Kay  

Welcome to 97-hour weeks. Welcome to life and death decisions. Welcome to a constant tsunami of bodily fluids. Welcome to earning less than the hospital parking meter. Wave goodbye to your friends and relationships… Welcome to the life of a junior doctor. Hilarious, horrifying and heart-breaking by turns, these diaries are everything you wanted to know – and more than a few things you didn’t – about life on and off the hospital ward. And yes, it may leave a scar.

Scribbled in secret after endless days, sleepless nights and missed weekends, comedian and former junior doctor Adam Kay’s This is Going to Hurt provides an essential, brutally frank account of what life is like for the beleaguered vanguard of the NHS. Now providing the groundwork for a sell-out stand-up tour, This is Going to Hurt is an unmissable window into Britain’s ailing health system and the lives of the people who are its lifeblood. Simply essential reading.

Monday 7^th October – Monday 4^th November
Feminine Gospels written by Carol Ann Duffy

In Feminine Gospels, Carol Ann Duffy draws on the historical, the archetypal, the biblical and the fantastical to create various visions – and revisions – of female identity. Simultaneously stripping women bare and revealing them in all their guises and disguises, these poems tell tall stories as though they were true confessions, and spin modern myths from real women seen in every aspect – as bodies and corpses, writers and workers, shoppers and slimmer’s, fairy-tale royals or girls-next-door.

Monday 4^th November – Monday 2^nd December
Never Greener by Ruth Jones

The past has a habit of tracking us down. And tripping us up. When Kate was twenty-two, she had an intense and passionate affair with a married man, Callum, which ended in heartbreak. Kate thought she’d never get over it. Seventeen years later, life has moved on – Kate, now a successful actress, is living in London, married to Matt and mother to little Tallulah. Meanwhile Callum and his wife Belinda are happy together, living in Edinburgh and watching their kids grow up. The past, it would seem, is well and truly behind them all. But then Kate meets Callum again. And they are faced with a choice: to walk away from each other . . . or to risk finding out what might have been.

Monday 2^nd December – Monday 6^th January
Skipping Christmas by John Grisham

Imagine a year without Christmas. No crowded malls, no corny office parties, no fruitcakes, no unwanted presents. That’s just what Luther and Nora Krank have in mind when they decide that, just this once, they’ll skip the holiday altogether. Theirs will be the only house on Hemlock Street without a rooftop Frosty, they won’t be hosting their annual Christmas Eve bash, they aren’t even going to have a tree. They won’t need one, because come December 25 they’re setting sail on a Caribbean cruise. But as this weary couple is about to discover, skipping Christmas brings enormous consequences—and isn’t half as easy as they’d imagined.

Monday 6^th January – Monday 3^rd February
Moving by Jenny Éclair

It only took one night to tear a family apart. Artist and illustrator Edwina Spinner used to have a busy family life. Now she lives alone, in a house that has grown too big for her. She has decided to sell it. As Edwina takes the estate agent from room to room, she finds herself transported back to her life as a young mother. Back to her twins, Rowena and Charlie, and a stepson she cannot bring herself to mention by name. As the house reveals its secrets, Edwina is forced to confront her family’s past, and a devastating betrayal that changed everything. But Edwina doesn’t know the whole story. And to discover the truth, she will have to face the one person she vowed never to see again.

Monday 3rd February – Monday 2nd March 
Canal Pushers by Andy Griffee (discussed on 2nd March)

Canal Pushers is the first thriller in an exciting new crime series set on Britain’s waterways. Does a serial killer stalk the towpaths and locks? Jack Johnson is newly divorced, recently made redundant and in search of a fresh start. But when a young boy he meets on the canals turns up drowned, trouble seems determined to follow him. With the encouragement of Jack’s unlikely companion, Nina, who’s come aboard his narrowboat, Jumping Jack Flash, to help him navigate the waterways of the Midlands, Jack is soon tangled up in a police investigation that doesn’t quite add up. Is there a serial killer stalking the towpaths? Jack’s got more pressing problems too: can a canal boat outrun an organised crime syndicate and a media manhunt?

The selection of books will be chosen by the attendees of the club.

It is not currently necessary to book, just turn up on the night.

Usually Book Club is held on the first Monday of every month, however just now we are hosting it weekly on a Monday between 7.40pm-8.40pm.