Recent Books

Wish You Were Here (May 2022)

By Jodi Picoult

May 16, 2022

Diana O’Toole is perfectly on track.  She will be married by thirty, done having kids by thirty-five, and move out to the New York City suburbs, all while climbing the professional ladder in the cutthroat art action world.  She’s not engaged just yet, but she knows her boyfriend Finn, a surgical resident, is about to propose – days before her thirtieth birthday.  Right on time.

But now she’s is stranded alone on what was planned to be a romantic idyll with Finn.  Unfortunately, Finn is trapped thousands of miles away, and Diana is on one of the world’s most beautiful islands with no food, no luggage, and no place to stay, forced to test her personal limits to survive.

Struggling to find her feet, Diana gradually connects with a local family when a teenager with a secret opens up to her.  As Diana helps her fight her demons she learns more about herself, and about the islands of Galapagos, where Darwin developed his theory of evolution.  The dramatic and sometimes dangerous terrain reflects Diana’s own experiences, her new relationships and growing awareness that she too is evolving into someone quite different.

A near-death experience brings Diana abruptly back to familiar city surroundings, where she tires to pick up the threads of her old life.  Has she changed or have the people around her?  Diana is no longer prepared to be just a follower, at work or in her relationships.  She breaks down years of estrangement with her mother takes the initiative in her career, and looks at Finn through new eyes.

The Maid (May 2022)

By Nita Prose

May 16, 2022

I am your maid.  I know your secrets.  Your dirty laundry.  But what do you know about me?

Molly the maid is all alone in the world.  A nobody.  She’s used to being invisible in her job at the Regency Grand Hotel, plumping pillows and wiping away the grime, dust and secrets of the guests passing through.  She’s just a maid – why should anyone take notice?

But Molly is thrown into the spotlight when she discovers an infamous guest, Mr Black, very dead in his bed.  This isn’t a mess that can be easily cleaned up.  And as Molly becomes embroiled in the hunt for the truth, following the clues whispering in the hallways, she discovers a power she never knew was there.  She’s just a maid – but what can she see that others overlook?

This is the Night They Come for You (May 2022)

By Robert Goddard

May 16, 2022

On a stifling afternoon at Police HQ in Algiers, Superintendent Taleb, coasting towards retirement, with not even an air-conditioned office to show for his long years of service, is handed a ticking time bomb of a case which will take him deep into Algeria’s troubled past and its fraught relationship with France.

To his dismay, he is assigned to work with Agent Hidouchi, an intimidating representative of the country’s feared secret service, who makes it clear she intends to call the shots.  They are instructed to pursue a former agent, now on the run after twenty years in prison for his part in a high-level corruption scandal.  But their search will lead them inexorably towards a greater mystery, surrounding a murder that took place in Paris more than fifty years ago.

Uncovering the truth may be his responsibility, but Taleb is well aware that no one in Algeria wants to be reminded of the dark deeds carried out in the struggle for independence – or in the violence that has racked the nation since.

Soon, he will face a choice he has long sought to avoid, between self-preservation and doing the right-thing.

And, ultimately, the choice may not even be his to make.

The Diamond Eye (May 2022)

By Kate Quinn

May 16, 2022

She’s World War II’s most lethal sniper.  And the one they least expect…

In the snowbound city of Kiev, aspiring historian Mila Pavlichenko’s live revolves around her young son – until Hitler’s invasion of Russia changes everything.  Suddenly, she and her friends must take up arms to save their country from the Fuhrer’s destruction.

Handed a rifle, Mila discovers a gift – and months of blood sweat and tears turn the young woman into a deadly sniper: the most lethal hunter of Nazis.

But when an old enemy from Mila’s past joins forces with a terrifying new foe, she finds herself in the deadliest duel of her life.

Mazarine Athenaeum Book Club 2022

By Charlotte Grimshaw

February 21, 2022

When her daughter vanishes during a heatwave in Europe, writer Frances Sinclair embarks on a hunt that takes her across continents and into her own past.  What clues can Frances find in her own history, and who is the mysterious Mazarine?  Following the narrative thread left by her daughter, she travels through cities touched by terrorism and surveillance, where ways of relating are subtly changed, and a startling new fiction seems to be constructing itself.

The Mirror Book Athenaeum Book Club 2021

By Charlotte Grimshaw

April 14, 2021

‘This was the terror and the comedy of interrogating the past…’

Brave, explosive and thought-provoking, this is a powerful memoir from a critically acclaimed writer.

‘It’s material, make a story out of it,’ was the mantra Charlotte Grimshaw grew up with in her famous literary family.  But when her life suddenly turned upside-down, she needed to re-examine the reality of that material.  The more she delved into her memories, the more the real characters in her life seemed to object.  So what was the truth of ‘a whole life lived in fiction’?

This is a vivid account of a New Zealand upbringing, where rebellion was encouraged, where trouble and tragedy lay ahead.  It looks beyond the public face to the ‘messy reality of family life – and much more’.

Shuggie Bain Athenaeum Book Club 2021

By Douglas Stuart

April 1, 2021

1981.  Glasgow.  The city is dying.  Poverty is on the rise.  People watch the lives they had hoped for disappear from view.

Agnes Bain had always expected more.  She dreamed of greater things: a house with its own front door, a life bought and paid for outright (like her perfect – but false – teeth).  When her philandering husband ups and leaves, she and her three children find themselves trapped in a mining town decimated by Thatcher-era politics.  As Agnes increasingly turns to alcohol for comfort, her children try their best to save her.  Yet one by one they abandon her in order to save themselves.

It is her son Shuggie who holds the longest.  But Shuggie has problems of his own: despite all his efforts to pass as a normal boy, everyone has started to realize that Shuggie is ‘no right’.  Agnes wants to be there for her son, but her addiction has the power to eclipse everyone close to her – even her beloved Shuggie.

Laying bare the ruthlessness of poverty, the limits of love, and the hollowness of pride.  Shuggie Bain is a blistering debut by an exceptional novelist with a powerful and important story to tell.

Before the Coffee Gets Cold Athenaeum Book Club 2021

By Toshikazu Kawaguchi

December 8, 2020

If you could go back, who would you want to meet?

In a small back allay in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years.  But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the cafe’s time-travelling offer, in order to confront the lover who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has begun to fade, see their sister one last time, and meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the cafe, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold…

The Pursuit of Love – Athenaeum Book Club 2020

By Nancy Mitford

July 3, 2020

Nancy Mitford was born in 1904.  Her childhood in a large remote country house with five sisters and one brother is described in the early chapters of The Pursuit of Love, which, said Miss Mitford, are largely autobiographical.  She was, she said, uneducated except for being taught to ride and to speak French.

Olive Kitteridge – Athenaeum Book Club 2020

By Elizabeth Strout

July 3, 2020

Olive Kitteridge: indomitable, compassionate and often unpredictable.  A retired schoolteacher in a small coastal town in Maine, struggling to make sense of the changes in her life as she grows older.  She is a woman who sees into the hearts of others, discerning their triumphs and tragedies.

We meet her stoic husband, bound to her in a marriage both broken and strong, and a young man who aches for the mother he lost – and whom Olive comforts by her mere presence, while her own son feels tyrannized by her overbearing sensitivities.

A penetrating, vibrant exploration of the human soul in need, Olive Kitteridge will make you laugh, nod in recognition, wince in pain and shed a tear or two.