TV Book Club and Richard & Judy 2013 book titles

I noticed this morning via twitter that the Autumn Book Club 2013 Richard and Judy WHSmith titles have been announced, and also that with the announcement of the shortlists for the Specsavers Crime Thriller Awards comes the news that there will be a six-part tv series, The Crime Thriller Club, which will include a crime thriller version of what was the TV Book Club.

Here are the books featured in the respective lists:

The Crime Thriller Book Club

Trust Your Eyes by Linwood Barclay (Orion)

Dare Me by Megan Abbott (Picador)

Bryant and May and the Invisible Code by Christopher Fowler (Transworld)

The Necessary Death of Lewis Winter by Malcolm Mackay (Pan Books)

City of Devils by Diana Bretherick (Orion)

The Scent of Death by Andrew Taylor (Harper Collins)

More info can be found here.

The Richard and Judy WHSmith Autumn 2013 Book Club

The Shining Girls - Lauren Beukes

Instructions for a Heatwave - Maggie O'Farrell 

Heartbreak Hotel - Deborah Moggach

Never Coming Back - Tim Weaver

The Twins - Saskia Sarginson

The Husband's Secret - Liane Moriarty

Snow White Must Die - Nele Neuhaus

More info can be found here.

I do like the sound of Snow White Must Die and it's nice to see a title that has been translated from German included in this book club list. The only title I've read so far on the R&J list is Maggie O'Farrell's novel. There's a couple on both lists that I'm interested to find out more about.

Anything here that is a must read for you, or that you have already read and loved?

Richard & Judy Summer Book Club 2012

The choices have been announced for the Richard & Judy Summer Book Club 2012 at WHSmith.

There are ten books in the list this time.

Which books have you already read? Which ones are you looking forward to reading? Do you like these selections? Do these lists influence your reading?

The selections, in reading order, are:

The Thread by Victoria Hislop - this is on my to be read and reviewed pile.

Jubliee by Shelley Harris - this is on my wishlist.

The Fear Index by Robert Harris - need to investigate this one further.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - this has been on my to be read pile for so long and I am desperate to find the time to read it!!

The Secrets Between Us by Louise Douglas - I read this last year as part of the Transworld Book Group Reading Challenge. 

Read my review here.

The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler - need to investigate this one further too.

Tideline by Penny Hancock - this is on my to be read and reviewed pile. 

The Book of Summers by Emylia Hall - I read and reviewed this earlier this year, and I really loved it. 

Read my review here. 

A Perfectly Good Man by Patrick Gale - this is on my wishlist.

Alice Bliss by Laura Harrington - I read and reviewed this last year. 

Read my review here. 

Click here to find out more about them all.


Which of these books have you already read? 

Which ones are you looking forward to reading or take your fancy?


Would love to know your thoughts and comments on these. 

The Story of Beautiful Girl - Rachel Simon

It is 1968, in Pennsylvania, USA, and one evening, widow and retired teacher Martha Zimmer answers a knock at her door. It's very unusual indeed for her to have visitors, in fact it's usually just on Christmas Day when she has an open house for her former students to visit her. The unexpected visitors who suddenly arrive from nowhere will change the rest of her life. Lynnie and Homan, the visitors, have escaped from the nearby 'School for the Incurable and Feebleminded.' They have formed a bond despite the barriers and difficulties of communication between them. And they have with them a precious cargo, Lynnie's newborn baby girl. They have been there only a short while when people from the School find them and try to take them back. But Lynnie is able to force out the words 'Hide her' to Martha, and the baby stays safely with Martha as Lynnie is dragged away, and Homan runs for his freedom. 

The story moves forward then, all told through the third person narrator, in chapters which alternate between the characters Martha, Lynnie, Homan and Kate, who is an assistant at the School. Having been institutionalised for so long, it is a new and daunting world for Homan as he struggles to cope on the outside. We are told what happened to him in the past and how he came to end up in the School. Likewise with Lynnie, who is returned to the School, where she communicates with Kate through her artwork alone, we are given an insight into her earlier years, and the way in which she came to be there too. For both of them, it is inevitably a tale of sadness, and their lives at the School are very limited, and very unhappy. They suffer at the hands of those who are supposedly their carers, as there was little insight then into how to help them with their mental disabilities, and they were routinely treated with cruelty rather than supported or nurtured. Lynnie is fortunate that in Kate, she has someone who does care, and spends a little time with her trying to bring out the person inside. Meanwhile, kindly Martha is left with a newborn infant to care for, and has to act fast and decisively. She is aided by the kindness of some of her former students. 

The story moves about quite a lot, so we can learn what has happened to each of the key characters. I did feel that this made the book a little disjointed at times though, and also that I engaged much more with the stories of Lynnie and Martha than that of Homan, and when reading certain chapters I wanted to get back to the other stories; it jumped around a little too much. Lynnie is portrayed as very perceptive for a character that is suffering from an intellectual disability, perhaps too much at times to be convincing. I felt the plot was a little slow at times too, and would have liked to engage with it more. Though a very worthwhile story to tell, and very engaging at the start, I felt it needed more to keep it enthralling through to the end.  

Thinking about the issues raised in this novel, it's the proximity of the date that shocks me the most. As recently as the late 1960's and early 1970's, these institutions still existed, and the inhumane, terribly unkind treatment of the people who were forced to live there, having no other option, is deeply saddening. I feel the author has tackled an important issue in discussing this shameful past treatment of some of society's most vulnerable people, bringing it to a wide audience through her story. She talks in the notes at the end of the book about why this is of such a personal importance to her, and she has evidently researched the background very thoroughly. 

3/5

Thank you very much to WHSmith for sending me a copy of this book to read and review.

Published by Windmill Books. 

It is available to buy now from WHSmith, the paperback currently priced at £3.99.

This novel is one of the 'Richard & Judy Book Club' selections for Spring 2012. 

A Cold Season - Alison Littlewood

Cass has received the devastating news that her army husband Pete has been lost in Afghanistan. Crushed, she moves with her son Ben to the village of Darnshaw, where she spent some of her youth, to make a fresh start. The isolated nature of the location, reached via Saddleworth Moor, is conveyed very early on in the novel, as Cass is driving towards their new home and the landscape becomes a blur, disorientating, as heavy fog sets in. Already there is an element of tension, and as Cass starts to feel unsettled, so does the reader.

Their new home is to be the renovated Foxdene Mill. Upon arrival it becomes clear that they are the first new inhabitants there; the rest of the complex appears to be unoccupied, with some of it unfinished. As the severe winter weather worsens, so Cass’ feeling of isolation in Darnshaw intensifies. Phone lines don’t work anymore, no post is coming in or out, and any communications outside of the village are seemingly impossible. Ben is able to attend his new school though, and there Cass meets some other mothers and the new headteacher, Theo Remick. Strange, unnerving events begin to occur, and Cass tries to rationalise these, and puts it all down to them being new, to Ben being uprooted, but she sees shocking changes in her son and his behaviour. To go much further into the story may be to reveal plot that is best discovered by readers for themselves.

This is a tense, nervy horror story with some weird goings-on. It’s outside the genres of fiction I usually read and beyond my comfort zone but I really wanted to read this one. The isolation, the weird and eerie atmosphere, and the tension, is all built effectively, and the growing fear and uncertainty within Cass is conveyed very well. I was on edge whilst reading parts of this novel, and I didn’t want to read it in the dark! There are some grim discoveries and the isolated village and its’ inhabitants hold many dark secrets. A lot of the tension is the thought and suggestion of what may happen, or what you imagine might be the case; it’s achieved nicely in this author’s first novel. The reader needs to be able to suspend disbelief at some of the goings on, and at times I wanted to make Cass act differently, faster somehow.  I was compelled to finish it.

3.5/5