Set during a crisis in democracy, a society in lockdown linked digitally but convulsed by a social media frenzy, and is told by a little-known, little-read Dutch novelist named Dora Frenhofer who has decided that her life as an old woman in this post-truth pandemic world has become too much. But like a twenty-first century … Continue reading December 2nd – The Imposters (Tom Rachman)

Stella Rode has twice disturbed the ancient cloisters of Carne School: firstly by being the wrong sort, with her doyleys and china ducks, and secondly by being murdered. George Smiley, who has his own connection with the school, is asked by an old Service friend to investigate. As Smiley probes further beneath Carne’s respectable veneer, … Continue reading November 4th – A Murder of Quality (John le Carré)

Emily Brontë’s novel of impossible desires, violence and transgression is a masterpiece of intense, unsettling power. It begins in a snowstorm, when Lockwood, the new tenant of Thrushcross Grange on the bleak Yorkshire moors, is forced to seek shelter at Wuthering Heights. There he discovers the history of the tempestuous events that took place years … Continue reading October 7th – Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë)

It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother’s country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel’s doorstep … Continue reading September 2nd – The Safekeep (Yael van der Wouden)

A body is found bricked into a wall of the Old Vicarage. From the state of the hands, it’s clear the dead man was buried alive. When the man is connected to an old missing person’s case, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is called. After an ‘incident’, Tyler needs this case to go well in order to … Continue reading August 5th – Firewatching (Russ Thomas)

First published in 1901, this Australian classic recounts the live of sixteen-year-old Sybylla Melvyn. Trapped on her parents’ outback farm, she simultaneously loves bush life and hates the physical burdens it imposes. For Sybylla longs for a more refined, aesthetic lifestyle – to read, to think, to sing, but most of all to do great … Continue reading July 1st – My Brilliant Career (Miles Franklin)

Over four centuries, a single house deep in the woods of New England is home to runaways and visionaries, inseparable twins, a lovelorn painter, a desperate mother and a ruthless con-man. This house will change the way you see the world.

Trying to investigate the Secret Service is like trying to get rid of the stink of dead badger. Hard. For two years the government’s Monochrome inquiry has produced nothing more than a series of dead ends. The Service has kept what happened in the newly reunified Berlin under wraps for decades, and intends for it … Continue reading May 6th – The Secret Hours (Mick Herron)

‘I had to deal with what hurt me most. I had to deal with my father.’ Drawing on James Baldwin’s own boyhood in a religious community in 1930s Harlem, his first novel tells the story of young Johnny Grimes. Johnny is destined to become a preacher like his father, Gabriel, at the Temple of the … Continue reading April 1st – Go Tell it on the Mountain (James Baldwin)

One night, not long after the last American troops leave Vietnam, siblings Anh, Thanh and Minh flee their village and embark on a perilous journey in hope of a new life. Separated from their parents and fearing the worst they find themselves travelling alone in the world without a home to return to. After a … Continue reading March 4th – Wandering Souls (Cecile Pin)

When Emily Kane arrives at her sister’s house she finds the front door unlocked with no one inside. Dinner is still cooking and the TV is on. Carrie, her husband and their two daughters are gone.At the heart of their disappearance lies a dark secret . . . And when the police draw a blank, it … Continue reading February 11th – Never Coming Back (Tim Weaver)

New York: Late 1958. Walter Withers had given the best years of his life to the CIA, setting honeytraps and reeling in the victims of his plots. But Withers has returned to his hometown for an easier, safer life as a Private Investigator. Manhattan in the late Fifties is alive with new possibilities, new sounds … Continue reading January 7th – Isle of Joy (Don Winslow)