What we're reading this month
Emily Brontë (Author)
‘Be with me always – take any form – drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!’
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 before: the intense passion between the foundling Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw, her betrayal of him and the bitter vengeance he now wreaks on the innocent heirs of the past.
Markus Zusak (Author)
'Life affirming, triumphant and tragic . . . masterfully told. . . but also a wonderful page-turner' Guardian
'Brilliant and hugely ambitious' New York Times
'Extraordinary' Telegraph
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HERE IS A SMALL FACT - YOU ARE GOING TO DIE
1939. Nazi Germany. The country is holding its breath. Death has never been busier.
Liesel, a nine-year-old girl, is living with a foster family on Himmel Street. Her parents have been taken away to a concentration camp. Liesel steals books. This is her story and the story of the inhabitants of her street when the bombs begin to fall.
SOME IMPORTANT INFORMATION - THIS NOVEL IS NARRATED BY DEATH
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What readers are saying about The Book Thief:
***** 'I loved every page of this book. So many great quotes, observations on humanity and images...I just didn't want it to end.
***** 'I loved this book. It is not only one of the best I've read this year, it is one of the best I've ever read.'
***** 'This is the sort of book the restores your faith in humanity and leaves you feeling uplifted, even when it makes you shed a tear.
Yael van der Wouden (Author)
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 - as a guest, there to stay for the season…In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known...
Jennie Godfrey (Author)
***SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER 1 BESTSELLER***
***USA TODAY BESTSELLER***
THE BIGGEST DEBUT LAUNCH OF 2024
‘Such a fresh and interesting voice. You'll cry and you won't be able to stop reading’
MARIAN KEYES
'Such a beautiful story about friendship, community and family and secrets and what’s going on underneath'
ZOE BALL
'Gripping and moving'
GUARDIAN
'To read it is to feel that little bit better about life'
ELIZABETH DAY
‘A touching paean to lost innocence and the comfort of friendships’
THE TIMES
'A beautiful mystery with heart'
ROB RINDER
'This is a heart-warming book'
EMMA HEALEY
'A gorgeous, page-turning book'
I PAPER
'A wonderful story'
FEARNE COTTON
Yorkshire, 1979
Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South.
Because of the murders.
Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn't an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv's mum stopped talking.
Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all?
So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a list of all the suspicious people and things down their street. People they know. People they don't.
But their search for the truth reveals more secrets in their neighbourhood, within their families - and between each other - than they ever thought possible.
What if the real mystery Miv needs to solve is the one that lies much closer to home?
*SHORTLISTED FOR BOOK OF THE YEAR - DEBUT FICTION AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2025*
The perfect debut novel to discuss in book clubs
***READER REVIEWS***
'Left a lump in my throat and a hole in my heart'
'A book I won't forget for a while'
'A beautiful and emotional debut that I know will stay with me for a long time'
'A superb look at childhood, at growing up, at starting to see the world around you'
Sunday Times bestseller, April 2024
Elif Shafak (Author)
In Victorian London, an extraordinary child is born at the edge of the dirt-black Thames. When his brilliant memory earns him a spot as an apprentice at a printing press, the world opens up far beyond the slums and across the seas.In 2014 in Turkey, Narin, a Yazidi girl living by the River Tigris, waits to be baptized. The ceremony is cruelly interrupted, and soon she and her grandmother must journey across war-torn lands in the hope of reaching the sacred valley of their people.In 2018 in London, broken-hearted Zaleekhah, a hydrologist, moves to a houseboat on the Thames to escape the wreckage of her marriage – until an unexpected connection to her homeland changes everything.A dazzling feat of storytelling from one of the greatest writers of our time, one that spans centuries and continents, this is the story of one lost poem, two great rivers and three remarkable lives – all connected by a single drop of water.
Samantha Harvey (Author)
**WINNER OF THE BOOKER PRIZE**
**THE #1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**
'A slim, profound study of intimate human fears set against epic vistas' GUARDIAN
'Stunning... An uplifting book' SUNDAY TIMES
Life on our planet as you've never seen it before
A team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull. News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction.
The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams. So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?
'Our unanimity about Orbital recognises its beauty and ambition. It reflects Harvey’s extraordinary intensity of attention to the precious and precarious world we share' Edmund de Waal, Chair of the 2024 Booker Prize judges
*A BOOK OF THE YEAR FOR THE GUARDIAN, SUNDAY TIMES, FINANCIAL TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SPECTATOR, DAILY MAIL AND MAIL ON SUNDAY*
Jacqueline Harpman (Author)
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Ros Schwartz (Translator)
SISTERHOOD. SECRETS. SURVIVAL.
Discover the haunting, heart-breaking post-apocalyptic TikTok sensation, now available in a beautiful hardback gift edition.
Deep underground, thirty-nine women are kept in isolation in a cage. Above ground, a world awaits. Has it been abandoned? Devastated by a virus?
Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only vague recollection of their lives before. But, as the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl - the fortieth prisoner - sits alone an outcast in the corner.
Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground. The woman who will never know men.
WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION BY SOPHIE MACKINTOSH, BOOKER PRIZE-LONGLISTED AUTHOR OF THE WATER CURE
Discover the reader obsession.
**Orlanda, the next sensation from Jacquline Harpman, is available now**
F. Scott Fitzgerald (Author)
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Tony Tanner (Notes by)
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William Blažek (Introducer)
Jay Gatsby is the man who has everything. But one thing will always be out of his reach ... Everybody who is anybody is seen at his glittering parties. Day and night his Long Island mansion buzzes with bright young things drinking, dancing and debating his mysterious character. For Gatsby - young, handsome, fabulously rich - always seems alone in the crowd, watching and waiting, though no one knows what for. Beneath the shimmering surface of his life he is hiding a secret: a silent longing that can never be fulfilled. And soon this destructive obsession will force his world to unravel.
Liane Moriarty (Author)
We’re all so busy, caught up in life's moments, big and small –
The flight attendant working a shift on her birthday. The mother struggling alone with two young children. The newlyweds excited about their tropical honeymoon . The overworked father missing his kid’s big show. The young man returning from his best friend’s funeral. The ER nurse wondering what retirement will bring.All strangers. All unsuspecting. Each with a life heading in a particular direction – or so they imagine. Because an elderly woman is about to step into each of their paths. In just a few words, she will make a prediction, causing the most ordered of lives to unravel in the most unexpected of ways...
Gabriel García Márquez (Author)
Florentino Ariza has never forgotten his first love. He has waited nearly a lifetime in silence since his beloved Fermina married another man. No woman can replace her in his heart. But now her husband is dead. Finally - after fifty-one years, nine months and four days - Florentino has another chance to declare his eternal passion and win her back. Will love that has survived half a century remain unrequited?
Rose Tremain (Author)
‘Gorgeous’ Observer * ‘Profoundly moving’ Financial Times * ‘Electrifying’ Daily Mail
How do you find the courage to make your own life? An electrifying novel about first love set in 1960s London from the bestselling Rose Tremain
Marianne is fifteen when she falls helplessly and absolutely in love with Simon. Simon owns a Morris Minor, is in his final year at school and has a dazzling future ahead of him. Desperate to escape the stifling 1950s suburbs she has been raised in, Marianne feels sure she will be able to find true happiness with him.
However a twist of fate sees Simon’s glittering future dashed and with it Marianne’s dreams. He flees the country and Marianne, realising she will now have to make a life of her own, moves to London determined to reinvent herself. But Marianne cannot let go of that first all-encompassing love and all the while Simon is in Paris, nursing a secret that will alter everything.
‘A perfect Tremain novel… English, dark and yearning… Remarkable… Tremain shows us the things that make every human life extraordinary’ The Times
‘A complex tale of becoming that’s moving, evocative and mesmerising in its acuity’ Mail on Sunday
A Sunday Times Book of the Year * Shortlisted for the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction *
READERS LOVE ABSOLUTELY AND FOREVER:
'Heartrending, funny, unputdownable' 5*****
'An undoubted modern classic' 5*****
'Marianne will remain with me as a friend' 5*****
'A masterclass in character and world building ... the writing is just sublime' 5*****
Elena Ferrante (Author)
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Anastasia Hille (Read by)
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Monica Dolan (Read by)
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Full Cast (Read by)
From one of Italy's most acclaimed authors, The Neapolitan Novels is an exploration of the friendship between Lila and Lena, two bright young girls who grew up in the tough, rough streets of post-war Naples. This is no normal friendship; it's a friendship that loves, hurts, supports and destroys - and yet it is one that lasts a lifetime. These four full-cast BBC adaptations bring the streets of Naples vividly to life.
The first novel , My Brilliant Friend, begins in the 1950s in a poor but vibrant neighbourhood on the outskirts of Naples. Growing up on these streets two girls, Lena and Lila, learn to rely on each other ahead of anyone - or anything.
The Story of a New Name sees the two girls striving to make a better life for themselves. They work hard at school but Lila is stopped in her tracks when forced to give up her education to work for the family shoe-making business. It's not long before their worlds are pushed apart.
In the third book, Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay, Lena escapes to Milan but struggles to find the courage to live, parent and write again after her marriage to her increasingly dismissive husband. Lila, meanwhile, also struggles to rise above her social conditions and desperately tries to find a way to better herself in whatever way she can.
In the final part of their story, The Story of the Lost Child, Lena returns to Naples with her two children to find Lila has also managed to turn her life around, despite remaining in the claws of violent and mafia-run Naples.
Through broken marriages, violent pasts, and the yearning for something more, the two women always turn to each other as their friendship – and the tensions between them – grow ever deeper.
Adapted from the books by Elena Ferrante, translated by Ann Goldstein.
Dramatised by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Directed by Celia de Wolff
A Pier production for BBC Radio 4.
