Instructions for a Heatwave by Maggie O’ Farrell

It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta’s children – two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce – back home, each wih different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share..

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The HitchHiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams

It’s an ordinary Thursday lunchtime for Arthur Dent until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly afterwards to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and his best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. At this moment, they’re hurtling through space with nothing but their towels and an innocuous-looking book inscribed with the big, friendly words: DON’T PANIC. The weekend has only just begun….

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Pear Shaped by Stella Newman

Sophie Klein walks into a bar one Friday night and her life changes. She meets James Stephens: charismatic, elusive, and with a hosiery model ex who casts a long, thin shadow over their burgeoning relationship. He’s clever, funny and shares her greatest pleasure in life – to eat and drink slightly too much and then have a little lie down. Sophie’s instinct tells her James is too good to be true – and he is. An exploration of love, heartbreak, self-image, self-deception and lots of food. Pear-Shaped is in turns smart, laugh-out-loud funny and above all, recognizable to women everywhere.

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Rumours by Freya North

Everybody’s talking – but what’s really going on?

Rumour has it that Stella Hutton landed her new job thanks to family connections. She’s guarded about her past and private about her new life. Over in Long Dansbury, there’s always a rumour circulating about Xander – but the eligible bachelor shrugs off village gossip. Then a rumour starts that Longbridge Hall is up for sale. Home to the eccentric Fortescues, it has dominated Long Dansbury lives for centuries.

Stella is summoned to sell the estate. But Xander grew up there. His secrets and memories are not for sale. He’ll do anything to stand in Stella’s way. Anything but fall in love.

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My Sister’s Keeper by Jodi Picoult

‘A major decision about me is being made, and no one’s bothered to ask the one person who most deserves it to speak her opinion.’

The only reason Anna was born was to donate her cord blood cells to her older sister. And though Anna is not sick, she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her sister, Kate, can somehow fight the leukaemia that has plagued her since she was a child. Anna was born for this purpose, her parents tell her, which is why they love her even more. But now that she has reached an age of physical awareness, she can’t help but long for control over her own body and respite from the constant flow of her own blood seeping into her sister’s veins.

And so she makes a decision that for most would be too difficult to bear, at any time and at any age. She decides to sue her parents for the rights to her own body.

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The Hunger Games bySuzanne Collins.

In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games – a fight to the death on live TV.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen regards it as a death sentence when she steps forward to take her sister’s place in the Games. But Katniss has been close to death before and survival for her is second nature. Without really meaning to, she becomes a contender. But if she is to win, she will have to start making choices that weigh survival against humanity and life against love.

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The Ice Cream Girls byDorothy Koomson

As teenagers Poppy Carlisle and Serena Gorringe were the only witnesses to a tragic event. Amid heated public debate, the two seemingly glamorous teens were dubbed ‘The Ice Cream Girls’ by the press and were dealt with by the courts. Years later, having led very different lives, Poppy is keen to set the record straight about what really happened, while Serena wants no one in her present to find out about her past. But some secrets will not stay buried – and if theirs is revealed, everything will become a living hell all over again . . . Gripping, thought-provoking and heart-warming, The Ice Cream Girls will make you wonder if you can ever truly know the people you love.

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The Night Circus byErin Morgenstern

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not.

The black sign, painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, reads:

Opens at Nightfall
Closes at Dawn

As the sun disappears beyond the horizon, all over the tents small lights begin to flicker, as though the entirety of the circus is covered in particularly bright fireflies. When the tents are all aglow, sparkling against the night sky, the sign appears.

Le Cirque des Rêves

The Circus of Dreams.

Now the circus is open.
Now you may enter.

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Me Before You by JoJo Moyes

Lou Clark knows lots of things. She knows how many footsteps there are between the bus stop and home. She knows she likes working in The Buttered Bun tea shop and she knows she might not love her boyfriend Patrick. What Lou doesn’t know is she’s about to lose her job or that knowing what’s coming is what keeps her sane. Will Traynor knows his motorcycle accident took away his desire to live. He knows everything feels very small and rather joyless now and he knows exactly how he’s going to put a stop to that. What Will doesn’t know is that Lou is about to burst into his world in a riot of colour. And neither of them knows they’re going to change the other for all time.

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Snapback by Bob Harvey

A series of news-breaking events. An innocent bystander with a camera. A devastating backlash. Invading people’s privacy can have serious repercussions, as amateur photographer Matt Holmes is about to find out. Within a few days of acquiring a new camera, Matt becomes a key witness to a string of news-breaking events, including an attempted suicide by a well-known comedian from Richmond Bridge, a warehouse fire, a jewel robbery and a kidnap, his dramatic photographs suddenly given prominence in the national press. But Matt’s moment of fame takes a sinister turn as suspicions are aroused by his prolific scoops and his accidental intrusions make him a target for revenge.

As Matt looks back over his collection of photographs he makes discoveries that put everything into focus and he realises that his ultimate fate rests on the simple truth that nothing is ever quite what it seems.

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The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty

On a summer’s day in 1922 Cora Carlisle boards a train from Wichita, Kansas, to New York City, leaving behind a marriage that’s not as perfect as it seems and a past that she buried long ago. She is charged with the care of a stunning young girl with a jet-black fringe and eyes wild and wise beyond her fifteen years. This girl is hungry for stardom and Cora for something she doesn’t yet know. Cora will be many things in her lifetime – an orphan, a mother, a wife, a mistress – but in New York she is a chaperone and her life is about to change. It is here under the bright lights of Broadway, in a time when prohibition reigns and speakeasies with their forbidden whispers behind closed doors thrive, that Cora finds what she has been searching for. It is here, in a time when illicit thrills and daring glamour sizzle beneath the laws of propriety that her life truly begins. It is here that Cora and her charge, Louise Brooks, take their first steps towards their dreams.

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Something Borrowed by Emily Griffin

Rachel has always played by the rules and is the “Good Girl.”

She’s a hard working attorney at a Manhattan law firm and a diligent Maid of Honour to her best friend Darcy, who seems to live a charmed life. Since school, Rachel has been happy to sit on the sidelines and watch Darcy shine, quietly accepting her role.

That is until her thirtieth birthday, when Rachel confesses her feelings to Darcy’s fiancé and is both horrified and thrilled when he tells her that he feels the same way.

As the wedding gets nearer, events spiral out of control and Rachel finds that she must make a choice between right and wrong and that the lines between the two are sometimes blurry. She discovers that sometimes you have to risk everything to be true to yourself.

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The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom

Eddie, a war veteran, thinks he has lived an uninspired life. When an accident kills him on his 83rd birthday, he wakes in the afterlife to find that Heaven is not a destination but a place where your life is explained by five people, some you knew and some who may be strangers. One by one, Eddie’s five people revisit their connections and the mystery of Eddie’s ‘meaningless’ life and reveal the haunting secret behind the question, ‘why was I here?’

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Who is Mr Satoshi by Jonathan Lee

On the day his mother dies, reclusive photographer Rob Fossick – forty-one and already in the twilight of his career – finds among her belongings an unexplained package addressed to a ‘Mr Satoshi.’

So begins a quest that will propel Rob, anxious and unprepared, into the urban maelstrom of Tokyo. With the help of a colourful group of new acquaintances – a vigilant octogenarian; a beautiful ‘love hotel’ receptionist; an ex-sumo wrestler obsessed with Dolly Parton – the scene seems set for him to unravel the secrets surrounding Mr Satoshi’s identity. But until he has faced his own demons, and begun to reconnect with the world around him, the answers Rob craves will remain tantalisingly beyond his reach.

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When God was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman

For Elly and her brother Joe, one earth-shattering event threatens to break their bond forever.

This is a book about a brother and a sister. It’s a book about growing up, friendship and families, triumph and tragedy and everything in between. More than anything, it’s a book about love in all its forms.

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The Gift by Cecelia Ahern

Lou Suffern wishes he could be in two places at once. His constant battle with the clock is a sensitive issue with his wife and family.
Gabe is the homeless man who sits outside Lou’s office. When Lou invites Gabe into the building and into his life, Lou’s world is changed beyond all measure.

A Christmas story that speaks to all of us about the value of time and what is truly important in life.

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The Haunting by Alan Titchmarsh

How can the mysterious disappearance of Anne Flint in 1816 and the drowning of a young girl in a chalk stream so long ago possibly affect the life of schoolteacher Harry Flint some two centuries later?

Having left his job and a failed marriage behind him, Harry begins to research his ancestors. The deeper he digs, the more he realises that the past is closer than he had ever imagined.

The Haunting is a story of love and betrayal, intrigue and murder. Where people are not what they seem, and the past is no more predictable than the future….

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Foursome by Jane Fallon

Rebecca, Daniel, Alex and Isabel have been best friends since university. Rebecca married Daniel, Alex married Isabel and, for twenty years, they have been inseparable. But all that is about to change. When Alex walks out on Isabel, Rebecca thinks things can’t get any worse. But then she finds out the reason why and she’s left harbouring a secret she’d rather forget. And there’s more upheaval to come in Rebecca’s life as her emaciated, neurotic, self-obsessed colleague, Lorna – her arch nemesis at work – suddenly becomes a regular feature in her social life.

Rebecca’s once-happy foursome is now a distant memory and with hearts broken and friendships fractured, it seems that change is never a good thing. Or is it?

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One Day by David Nicholls

15th July 1988. Emma and Dexter meet on the night of their graduation. Tomorrow they must go their separate ways. So where will they be on day next year? And the year after that? And every year that follows?

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Twilight by Stephenie Meyer

Isabella Swan expects her new life in Forks to be as dull as the town itself. But her new classmates don’t seem to mind her awkward manner and low expectations. They seem to like her – with the expectation, that is, of Edward Cullen. The problem is that Bella finds herself fascinated by him. What she doesn’t realise is that the closer she gets, the more she is at risk. And it might be too late to turn back.

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e. by Matt Beaumont

e is a tale of everyday sleaze, dishonesty and incompetence in Adland. It tells the story of the Miller Shanks agency’s desperate chase for the Coca-Cola account and it tells it entirely in emails.

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Glasshopper by Isabel Ashdown

Portsmouth, 1984. Thirteen-year-old Jake’s world is unravelling as his father and older brother leave home, and his mother plunges into alcoholic freefall.

Despite his turbulent home life, Jake is an irrepressible teenager and his troubled mother is not the only thing on his mind: there’s the hi-fi he’s saving up for, his growing passion for Greek mythology (and his pretty classics teacher), and the anticipation of brief visits to see his dad. When his parents reconcile, life finally seems to be looking up. Their first family holiday, announced over scampi and chips in the Royal Oak, promises to be the icing on the cake – until long-unspoken family secrets begin to surface.

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Notes on a Scandal – Zoe Heller

From the first day that the beguiling Sheba Hart joins the staff of St George’s, history teacher Barbara Covett is convinced that she’s found a kindred spirit.
Barbara’s loyalty to her new friend is passionate and unstinting and when Sheba is discovered to be having an illicit affair with one of her young pupils, Barbara quickly elects herself as Sheba’s chief defender. But all is not as it first seems in this dark story and, as Sheba will soon discover, a friend can be as treacherous as any lover.

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Wicked – Gregory Maguire

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in the classic novel The Wonderful Wizard of OZ, we heard only one side of the story. But what of her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch?

Long before Dorothy drops in, a girl is born in OZ with emerald-green skin. Elphaba, who will grow up to become the infamous witch, is a smart, prickly and misunderstood creature who challenges all our preconceived ideas about the nature of good and evil.

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Secrets of the Tudor Court – Darcey Bonnette

When young Mary Howard arrives at the grand court of King Henry VIII to attend his mistress, Anne Boleyn, she is overjoyed. Mary is certain Anne will one day become Queen. But Mary has witnessed the kings fickle nature before and knows how quickly he can turn on those he claims to love.

Despite all of Mary’s efforts to please him, she soon becomes a victim of the King’s wrath. Not until she becomes betrothed to Henry Fitzroy, the Duke of Richmond and illegitimate son to the King, does Mary find the love and approval she’s been seeking.

But when Mary believes she is finally free, the tides turn. She has uncovered an intricate web of secrets within the palace walls, secrets that she must guard with her life…

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A Tiny Bit Marvellous – Dawn French

Mo is about to hit the big 50. She doesn’t understand either of her teenage kids, which as a child psychologist, is fairly embarrassing. She has become entirely grey. Inside, and out. Her face has surrendered and is frightening children. Dora is about to hit the big 18 . . . and about to hit anyone who annoys her, especially her precocious younger brother Peter who has a chronic Oscar Wilde fixation. Then there’s Dad . . . who’s just, well, dad.
A TINY BIT MARVELLOUS is the story of a modern family all living in their own separate bubbles lurching towards meltdown. It is for anyone who has ever shared a home with that weird group of strangers we call relations. Oh and there’s a dog. Called Poo

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Life of Pi

One boy, one boat, one tiger… After the sinking of a cargo ship, one lifeboat remains bobbing on the wild, blue pacific ocean. The only survivors from the wreck are a sixteen year-old boy named Pi, a hyena, a zebra (with a broken leg), a female orang-utan and a 450- pound Royal Bengal tiger.

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A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

A Christmas Carol is a timeless classic that is a must at Christmas. Scrooge is a lonely, mean man who, one Christmas Eve is visited by three ghosts and shown what will happen if he continues on his current life path.

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Jonathan Livingston Seagull – Richard Bach

For most seagulls, life consists simply of eating and surviving. Flying is just a means of finding food. However, Jonathan Livingston Seagull is no ordinary bird. For him, flying is life itself. Against the conventions of seagull society, he seeks to find a higher purpose and become the best at doing what he loves.

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The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function: to breed. If she deviates, she will, like dissenters, be hanged at the wall or sent out to die slowly of radiation sickness. But even a repressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither Offred’s nor that of the two men on which her future hangs…

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The Help – Kathryn Stockett

Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child whilst nursing the hurt caused by her own son’s death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they’d be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell….

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Magnolia House – Pauline Barclay

When Jane Leonard gave half of her house to her only son, little did she realise that within twelve months, she would be forced to sell the home she had lived in for nearly five decades. The choice for this action was not hers, but the events that led up to her handing over fifty percent of Magnolia House paled by comparison to what happened after the ink had dried on the documents that named the new owners. As Magnolia House is put on the market for sale, love and betrayal, hopes and dreams and ultimately family loyalty will affect the lives of all of those who become involved.

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The Book of Tomorrow – Cecelia Ahern

Tamara Goodwin has always lived in the here and now, never giving a second thought to tomorrow. Until a travelling library arrives in her tiny village, bringing with it a mysterious, large leather-bound book locked with a gold clasp and padlock. What she discovers within the pages takes her breath away and shakes her world to its core.

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The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

A most untraditional love story, this is the celebrated tale of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who involuntarily travels through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare’s passionate affair endures across a sea of time and captures them in an impossibly romantic trip that tests the strength of fate and basks in the bonds of love.

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Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

Winston Smith works for the Ministry of Truth in London, chief city of Airstrip One. Big Brother stares out from every poster, the Thought Police uncover every act of betrayal. When Winston finds love with Julia, he discovers that life does not have to be dull and deadening, and awakens to new possibilities. Despite the police helicopters that hover and circle overhead, Winston and Julia begin to question the Party; they are drawn towards conspiracy. Yet Big Brother will not tolerate dissent – even in the mind. For those with original thoughts they invented Room 101

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The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters

In a dusty post-war summer in rural Warwickshire, a doctor is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall. Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once grand and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in its stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine. Its owners – mother, son and daughter are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with the conflicts of their own.

But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life? Little does Dr Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entined with his.

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