Book of the month

In 1972, when workers in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, were digging the foundations for a new development, the last thing they expected to find was a skeleton at the bottom of a well. Who the skeleton was and how it got there were two of the long-held secrets kept by the residents of Chicken Hill, the dilapidated neighbourhood where Jewish immigrants and African Americans lived side by side through the 1920s and ’30s. In this novel about small-town secrets and the people who keep them, James McBride shows us that even in dark times, it is love and community – heaven and earth – that sustain us.  //  Discuss in the Fiction reading group  //  

Six celebrities. One dead singer. No way out. Welcome to the world’s most exclusive rehab clinic – a refuge for the rich and beautiful – and perhaps the perfect place for murder? Meg’s sister Haley was a troubled country singer, hiding away from fans and paparazzi, until she was found dead. Now Meg checks in – to find out why her sister never checked out. You can check in, but you might never check out… //  Discuss in the Crime reading group  //  

”What are you looking for?” So asks Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. But she is no ordinary librarian. Sensing exactly what someone is searching for in life, she provides just the book recommendation to help them find it. We meet five visitors to the library, each at a different crossroads, from a hopeful young manga artist to a mother facing demotion at work – they all go to the library to find that special book only she can find for them.  //  Discuss in the Fiction reading group  //  

Meet Dr. Miriam Price. The most fun you’ll have with a murder mystery all year. She’ll solve this murder if it kills her. Except it already has… ”Hello? Can you hear me? Probably not. I’m Dr Miriam Price . . . and I'm dead. The local police, who couldn't investigate their own nostrils, think I drank myself into an early grave. The nerve! I was murdered. I was just too plastered to know whodunnit, that’s all.”  //  Discuss in the Crime reading group  //  

Their first year of marriage is also their last. A few weeks after their wedding, Lewis receives a rare diagnosis. He's turning into a great white shark, and has less than a year left to live as a human…  An extraordinary novel of love, loss, hope and happiness, Shark Heart explores the shapes that love takes, in all its many forms, and asks us to ask ourselves: what makes us human? Praised by none other than Anthony Doerr as ”a fantastical, original and beautifully written novel”.   // Discuss in the Modern Fiction reading group  //  

Oxford is a wonderful place to be in the summer, except for perhaps when a suspicious death has occurred… Jesus College, Oxford, 1881. Amongst the scholars, secrets and soporifics of Victorian Oxford, the truth can be a bitter pill to swallow. An undergraduate is found dead at his lodgings and the medical examination reveals some shocking findings.…  //  Discuss in the Crime reading group  //  

At the Golden Sunset retirement home, the residents tend to invent stories. So when elderly Ms Mook first begins to unspool her memories, the obituarist listening to her is sceptical. Stories of captivity, friendship, murder, assumed identities and spying. A life that moves from WWII Indonesia to Busan during the Korean war; from cold-war Pyongyang to a Protestant church in China. The adventures are so colourful and various, at times so unbelievable. Surely they can’t all belong to the same woman. Can they?  // Discuss in the Modern Fiction reading group  // 

"The game is afoot!" Set in early 20th century London, this action-packed novel tells the tale of a daring opium-addicted Chinese Judge and his academic sidekick solving crimes in the Chinese community in London’s Limehouse District. Taking inspiration from the Sherlock Holmes canon, this brand new novel is going to satisfy Holmes fans while bringing something completely new to the table!   //  Discuss in the Crime reading group  //  

In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood – not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been. ”It was only because Gaunt knew he might die, that he could be so reckless as to kiss him.” An epic tale of the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip. // Discuss in the Modern Fiction reading group //  

It’s a classic setting: big city detective moves to a small country village for some peace and quiet, not getting much of either as he has barely unpacked when the bones of a young woman are discovered. The quiet country life that Jake Jackson envisioned is no more. Sometimes the quietest villages hide the darkest secrets… //  Discuss in the Crime reading group  //