Book group collections

Are you a member of a book group in Edinburgh ? You can borrow up to fifteen copies of a particular book for your book group to use for 6 weeks. It’s so easy, and even better, it’s all free!

Here’s how:

• Choose a person from your bookgroup to join as a Library Book Group member.
• Get a Book Group ticket at your nearest library.
• Choose the book you’d like to read – take your pick from the titles listed below
• Call 0131 242 8046 or email annie.bell@edinburgh.gov.uk to book the collection.
• Pick up and return collections to your nearest library.

If you already have a library card you can still use it for your own personal reading. The book group ticket is an extra card for borrowing multiple copies of the same book.

There are currently over 170 titles to choose from but if you’d like to suggest a title to add to the list please do so using this form.

Things fall apart by Chinua Achebe
Okonowo is the greatest warrior alive. His fame has spread like bushfire in West Africa and he’s one of the most powerful men of his clan. Fiery tempered, determined not to be like his father, he refuses to show weakness to anyone – even if the only way he can master his feelings is with his fists. When outsiders threaten the traditions of his clan, Okonowo takes violent action. Will the great man’s dangerous pride eventually destroy him?  Discuss this book online

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
The most useful advice ever given, Don’t Panic, can be found on the cover of the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The day aliens demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass is the day when Arthur Dent realises the futility of such advice.  Discuss this book online 

Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Set in Nigeria during the 1960s, this novel contains three main characters who get swept up in the violence during these turbulent years. It is about Africa, about the end of colonialism, about class and race, and the ways in which love can complicate these things.  Discuss this book online

Seeing stars by Simon Armitage
Simon Armitage’s ‘Seeing Stars’, a funny an though provoking collection of ‘flash fiction’, is sure to intrigue, featuring such oddities as a speech from a sperm whale (The Christening) to a miracle in the dishwasher (Upon unloading the dishwasher).  Discuss this book online

One good turn by Kate Atkinson
It is summer, it is the Edinburgh Festival. People queuing for a lunchtime show witness a road-rage incident – an incident which changes the lives of everyone involved. Jackson Brodie, ex-army, ex-police, ex-private detective, is also an innocent bystander – until he becomes a suspect.  Discuss this book online

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
Started Early, Took My Dog’ is the fourth novel in the bestselling sequence that started with ‘Case Histories’. It again features the beguiling former detective Jackson Brodie, who was also seen in ‘One Good Turn’ and ‘When Will There Be Good News?’  Discuss this book online

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Republic of Gilead offers Offred only one function – to breed. If she deviates, she will be killed. But even an oppressive state cannot obliterate desire – neither Offred’s nor that of the two men on which her future hangs.  Discuss this book online

Pride and Predjudice by Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice is one of the best loved and most intimately known of Jane Austen’s novels. Her sense of comedy and satire makes this an enduring classic.  A love story between one of the wealthiest men in England and Elizabeth Bennett.  Discuss this book online

Girl in the Polka Dot Dress by Beryl Bainbridge
This Beryl Bainbridge novel is a double murder mystery and a bittersweet masterpiece of the kind with which she has made her reputation. Discuss this book online.

Transition by Iain Banks
A world that hangs suspended between triumph & catastrophe, between the dismantling of the Wall & the fall of the Twin Towers, frozen in the shadow of suicide terrorism & global financial collapse, such a world requires a firm hand & a guiding light. But does it need the Concern?  Discuss this book online

The elegance of the hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Renée is the concierge of a grand Parisian apartment building, home to members of the great and the good. But beneath this façade lies the real Renée: passionate about culture and the arts, and more knowledgeable in many ways than her employers with their outwardly successful but emotionally void lives.  Discuss this book online

Toby’s Room by Pat Barker
Toby and Elinor, brother and sister, friends and confidants, are sharers of a dark secret, carried from the summer of 1912 into the battlefields of France and wartime London in 1917.  A ‘must read’ from the author of the ‘Regeneration’ trilogy. Discuss this book online

Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel
A memoir about her mother – a voracious reader, a music lover, a passionate amateur actor. A woman, unhappily married to a gay man, whose artistic aspirations simmered under the surface of Bechdel’s childhood… and who stopped kissing her daughter goodnight, for ever, when she was seven. Poignantly, hilariously, Bechdel embarks on a quest for answers concerning the mother-daughter gulf, in graphic novel form.  Discuss this book online

Alex’s adventures in Numberland by Alex Bellos
Exploding the myth that maths is best left to the geeks, Alex Bellos covers subjects from adding to algebra, from set theory to statistics and from logarithms to logical paradoxes. In doing so, he explains how mathematical ideas underpin just about everything in our lives.  Discuss this book online

Ordinary thunderstorms by William Boyd
What is the devastating effect on your life when, through no fault of your own, you lose everything – home, family, friends, job, reputation, passport, money, credit cards, mobile phone – and you can never get them back? This book tells the story of a young man called Adam Kindred.  Discuss this book online

Restless by William Boyd
What happens to your life when everything you thought you knew about your mother turns out to be an elaborate lie? Ruth Gilmartin discovers the strange and haunting truth about her mother, Sally, during the long hot summer of 1976.  Discuss this book online 

The Congress of Rough Riders by John Boyne
From the author of the much loved ‘Boy in the striped pyjamas’, ‘The Congress of Rough Riders’ flits between modern day London and frontier fantasy Wild West. Challenged to recreate distant relative Buffalo Bill’s famed stage show by his father, protagonist William Cody faces a dilemma…  Discuss this book online

A tale etched in blood and hard black pencil by Christopher Brookmyre
Does knowing someone since childhood enable one to know who is capable of killing in adulthood? Or is there some nugget in their shared experience which explains the murder scene in the hills outside Glasgow?  Discuss this book online

The life and times of the thunderbolt kid by Bill Bryson
Some say that the first hint that Bill Bryson was not of Planet Earth came when his mother sent him to school in lime-green Capri pants. Others think it all started with his discovery, at the age of six, of a woollen jersey of rare fineness. In his funny memoir, he travels back in time to explore the ordinary kid he once was.  Discuss this book online

The secret garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
After the death of her parents, 9-year-old Mary is brought back from India to live in Misselthwaite Manor. Wandering in the grounds, she finds a buried key & unlocks a door in the garden wall to find a garden that has been hidden away for many years.  Discuss this book online

The storm: the world economic crisis and what it means by Vincent Cable
Vincent Cable’s bestseller on the credit crunch explains how the recent crisis came about and gives some solutions as to how to we can climb out of recession, while responding to the challenges it brings.  He argues that although the downturn is global, British complacency towards the huge ‘bubble’ in property prices and high levels of personal debt, combined with increasingly exotic and opaque trading within the financial markets, has left Britain badly exposed. He argues that policy makers must keep their faith in liberal markets if the remarkable advances in living standards, which are now being extended to the world’s poorer countries, are to be maintained.  Discuss this book online

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
Olivier is a French aristocrat, the traumatized child of survivors of the Revolution. Parrot, the son of an itinerant printer who always wanted to be an artist, but has ended up a servant. Born on different sides of history, their lives will be brought together by their travels in America.  Discuss this book online

Other People’s Money by Justin Cartwright
The upper-crust, family-owned bank of Tubal & Co, in the City of London, is in trouble. It’s not the first time in its 340 year history, but it may be the last. A secret sale is under way, and a number of facts need to be kept hidden from the regulators and major clients.

Carry a Poem
A treat for Poetry Lovers.  Join in the City of Literature’s ‘One Edinburgh’ campaign and read a collection of poems which features Scots from all walks of life talking about the poems they carry with them, and why they mean so much.  Discuss this book online

The Waiting by Regi Claire
How far can you go to get what you want?  It is a few weeks before Christmas and Rachel, a messed-up young student from Switzerland doing a PhD on Calvinism, doesn’t baulk at drugging Lizzie Fairbairn, the elderly widow whose Edinburgh home she invades, then stealing what she thinks belongs to her by rights.  Discuss this book online

The other hand by Chris Cleave
‘The Other Hand’ is a novel by Chris Cleave, the author of ‘Incendiary’. Deeply moving, yet light in touch, it explores the nature of loss, hope, love and identity with atrocity as its backdrop.  Discuss this book online

Mr Two-Bomb by William Coles
Set amidst the apocalyptic background of post A-bomb Japan, Mr Two-Bomb guides the reader through age old arguments of love and luck and depicts the recovery of Japan and its people following the 1945 atrocity. Inspired by a true story.  Discuss this book online

A Foreign Country by Charles Cumming
Six months before she’s due to take up her position as the first female head of MI6, Amelia Levene vanishes without a trace.  Former MI6 officer Thomas Kell is called out of retirement and ordered to find her. With only days before the story leaks to the press, Kell must begin to piece together Levene’s final movements. Winner of the CWA best thriller award 2012.  Discuss this book online

The God delusion by Richard Dawkins
While Europe is secularized, the rise of religious fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East or Middle America, divides opinion around the world. This work attacks God in various forms.  Discuss this book online

Status anxiety by Alain de Botton
We all worry about what others think of us. We all long to succeed and fear failure. We all suffer – to a greater or lesser degree, usually privately and with embarrassment – from status anxiety. For the first time, Alain de Botton gives a name to this universal condition and sets out to investigate both its origins and possible solutions. He looks at history, philosophy, economics, art and politics – and reveals the many ingenious ways that great minds have overcome their worries. This book is not only entertaining and thought-provoking, but genuinely wise and helpful as well.  Discuss this book online

And then forever by Christine De Luca
Katherine Maitland has always wondered what happened to her Shetland grandfather when he emigrated to Winnipeg around 1900; why his life turned out the way it did. She sets out on a journey of discovery, based on the slimmest of evidence, and in the process, her own life takes a new and unforeseen turn. Discuss this book online

The Hare with Amber Eyes: a Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal
This globe spanning memoir tells the turbulent story of of De Wahl’s Jewish ancestors, triggered by his inheritance of some surprisingly sturdy family heirlooms.  Discuss this book online

The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
From the author of ‘Ablutions’, ‘The Sisters Brothers’ is an offbeat Western about a reluctant assassin and his murderous brother who are on the trail of a man named Hermann Kermit Warm. On the way, the brothers have a series of unsettling and violent experiences in the Darwinian landscape of Gold Rush America. Discuss this book online.

The red tent by Anita Diamant
An epic celebration of womanhood, written for women everywhere. Dinah, like the majority of women in the Old Testament, merits only a passing mention. It’s the men in Dinah’s life that history has remembered: her famous father Jacob, his dozen sons and her brother, Joseph, and his technicolour dreamcoat. A meticulously researched and hugely fascinating picture of everyday life as an early Jewish woman, this novel is compelling for its female take on the grand themes that transcend time – birth, death, love, hate, betrayal and forgiveness.  Discuss this book online

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
Dickens’ story of Pip’s progress from rags to riches deals with the pervasive themes of greed, desire, money and the nature of capitalism.  Discuss this book online

My epileptic lurcher by Des Dillon
Manny Riley is a recovering alcoholic and struggling scriptwriter with a serious anger management problem. Lately, though, things have started to change for the better. A happy marriage, a move away from Glasgow to an idyllic seaside village and the adoption of Bailey, a lurcher with epilepsy.  Discuss this book online

Room by Emma Donoghue
Shortlisted for the 2010 Man Booker Prize, ‘Room’ is the story of five year old Jack, whose world is confined to one room which he shares with his mother. Innovatively written from his perspective, ‘Room’ is sinister and challenging, but ultimately compelling.  Discuss this book online

The Sea Detective by Mark Douglas-Home
Cal McGill, a part-time PhD oceanography student with a macabre interest in floating corpses, comes across a young woman in dirty clothes with scabs and cracked lips. She explains how her friend died three years ago and was fished out of the sea. This isn’t the only unexplained death haunting McGill however  Discuss this book online

The seamstress by Maria Duenas
Aged 12, Sira Quiroga was apprenticed to a Madrid dressmaker. As she masters the seamstress’s art, her life seems clearly mapped out – until she falls passionately in love and flees with her seductive lover. But betrayed in Morocco and left penniless, Sira finds that she cannot return to Civil war Spain and so turns to her one true skil.  Discuss this book online

The Bees by Carol Ann Duffy
The Bees is a collection of poetry from the pen of our current Poet Laureate. Weaving through the book is its presiding spirit, the bee, symbolizing what we have left of grace in the world and what is most precious for us to protect. Discuss this book online

The siege by Helen Dunmore
Leningrad, September 1941. German tanks surround the city, imprisoning those who live there. The besieged people of Leningrad face shells, starvation, and the Russian winter. Interweaving two love affairs in two generations, ‘The Siege’ draws us deep into the Levin’s family struggle to stay alive during this terrible winter. It is a story about war and the wounds it inflicts on people’s lives. It is also a lyrical and deeply moving celebration of love, life and survival.  Discuss this book online

Wild Abandon by Joe Dunthorne
Kate and Albert, are not yet the last two human beings on Earth, but Albert is hopeful. The secluded communal farm they grew up on is disintegrating, taking their parents’ marriage with it. They both try to escape: Kate, at 17, to a suburbia she reads about, and Albert, 11, into preparations for the end of the world.  Discuss this book online

A Visit from the Goon Squad  by Jennifer Egan
This novel circles the lives of Bennie Salazar, an aging former punk rocker and record executive, and Sasha, the passionate, troubled young woman he employs. Although Bennie and Sasha never discover each other’s pasts, the reader does, in intimate detail, along with the secret lives of a host of other characters.  Discuss this book online.

The Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright
It’s snowing in Terenure, a pleasant suburb of Dublin in the winter of 2009. Gina Moynihan, girl about town, recalls the trail of lust and happenstance that brought her to fall for the love of her life.  Discuss this book online. 

Visitation by Jenny Erpenbeck
Its physical slightness belies this novel’s weighty themes, revolving around a grandiose Brandenburg lake house whose history and occupants weave through the 20th century’s turbulent history.  Discuss this book online

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Born twice, as a baby girl, and as a teenage boy, Calliope, and three generations of the Greek-American Stephanides family, travel from a tiny village in Asia Minor to Prohibition-era Detroit, moving out to the tree-lined streets of suburban Grosse Point, Michigan. Trying to understand why she’s not like other girls, Calliope uncovers a guilty family secret and the astonishing genetic history that turns her into Cal, one of the most audacious and wondrous narrators in contemporary fiction.  Discuss this book online

The crimson petal and the white by Michel Faber
Now a major BBC series, ‘The Crimson Petal and the White’ features Sugar, a London prostitute seeking a better life for herself, whilst writing a gruesome tirade against her clients. A new life beckons in the form of perfumer William Rackham, but is it one for the better?  Discuss this book online

The Panopticon by Jenni Fagan
Anais Hendricks is once again off to The Panopticon, a prison so constructed that it allows the inspector to see each of the prisoners at all times, without being seen. Looking up at the watchtower that looms over the residents, Anais knows her fate – she is part of an experiment, and that experiment is now closing in.  Discuss this book online

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada
Berlin, 1940, and the city is filled with fear. At 55 Jablonski Strasse, various occupants try to live under Nazi rule in their different ways: the nervous Frau Rosenthal, the bullying Hitler loyalists the Persickes, the retired judge Fromm, and the unassuming working-class couple Otto and Anna Quangel.  First published in 1947, this is the first English translation of a German classic. Discuss this book online

Birsdong by Sebastian Faulks
This is the story of Stephen, who arrives in Amiens in 1910. His life goeas thorugh a series of traumatic experiences, from the clandestine love affair that tears apart the family with whom he lives, to the unprecedented experience of war itelf. Discuss this book online

The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
A social satire and a milestone in 20th century literature, ‘The Great Gatsby’ peels away the layers of the glamorous twenties in the U.S. to display the coldness and cruelty at its heart.  Discuss this book online

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming
At the casino in Deauville Bond’s game is baccarat, for stakes that run into millions of francs. But away from the discreet salons, it’s 007 versus one of Russia’s most powerful and ruthless agents.  Discuss this book online

Canada by Richard Ford
“First, I’ll tell you about the robbery our parents committed. Then about the murders, which happened later.” So, tantalisingly, begins Richard Ford’s seventh novel, a big book that takes its time to tell the story of how 15-year-old Dell Parsons’s life was temporarily derailed by a single, spectacularly uncharacteristic act by his mother and father: a barely planned and ineptly executed bank robbery.   Discuss this book online

Freedom by Jonathan Franzen
Freedom invites us to question perfection and whether it really exists, in the form of Patty and Walter, a successful American couple. All is not as it seems with the Berglunds, their dysfunction fully explored in this latest offering from Franzen.  Discuss this book online 

Skios by Michael Frayn
On the Greek island of Skios, the Fred Toppler Foundation’s annual lecture is to be given by the young and charming Dr Norman Wilfred, an authority on science. The Foundation’s guests are soon eating out of his hand. Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island is a balding old gent called Dr Norman Wilfred… Find out what happens in one of the funniest novels of 2012.  Discuss this book online

Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst
Follow Costa Zannis as he navigates Nazi occupied Salonika, holding down a government intelligence position whilst becoming a fully fledged member of the resistance movement.  Discuss this book online

All Made Up by Janice Galloway
In the second volume of her memoirs, the prize-winning author Janice Galloway reveals how the child introduced in ‘This Is Not About Me’ evolved during her teenage years.  Winner of the Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust Book of the Year non-fiction section, and overall prize in 2012.  Discuss this book online

The White Lie by Andrea Gillies
On a hot summer’s afternoon, Ursula Salter runs sobbing from the loch on her parents’ Scottish estate and confesses, distraught, that she has killed Michael, her 19-year-old nephew. But what really happened? No body can be found, and Ursula’s story is full of contradictions.  ‘The White Lie’ is a tense, beautifully crafted novel about the poisonous ripple effect of unaddressed guilt.   Discuss this book online 

My Last Duchess by Daisy Goodwin
Beautiful Cora Cash, the wealthiest debutante in America, is spirited away from the glamour & comfort of her Park Avenue mansion & suddenly finds herself Duchess of Wareham, mistress of Lulworth Castle, maried to Ivo, the most eligible bachelor in England. As Cora is soon to discover, nothing in this strange new world is quite as it seems. Discuss this book online

A spot of bother by Mark Haddon
At 57, George is settling down to retirement. Then his daughter announces she is getting remarried, to Ray. Her family is not pleased, and her mother is a bit put out by all the wedding planning, which gets in the way of her love affair with her husband’s former collegue. Unnoticed in the uproar, George begins to lose his mind.  Discuss this book online

The Footballer who could Fly  by Duncan Hamilton
Inspired by his father’s lifelong devotion to Newcastle United, Duncan Hamilton charts the progress of post war British football to the present day. But at the heart of the book is his exploration of the bond between father and son through the Beautiful Game and how football became the only connection between two people who were totally different from one another. Discuss this book online. 

Gillespie and I by Jane Harris.
In 1888, young, art-loving Harriet Baxter arrives in Glasgow at the time of the International Exhibition. Befriending the Gillespie family, Harriet soon becomes a fixture in all of their lives. But when tragedy strikes the promise and certainties of this world all too rapidly disorientate into mystery and deception. Discuss this book online

Grace Williams says it loud by Emma Henderson
Briar Mental Institute seems an unlikely setting for a heartwarming tale of love against the odds but Grace and Daniel’s bittersweet relationship offers inspiration in the face of sadness. Discuss this book online

The Junior Officers Reading Club by Patrick Hennessey
Written in spare and lucid prose, this title describes with alarming vividness not only the frenetic violence of a soldier’s life, but the periods of stifling and (sometimes) comic boredom, living inside an institution in a state of flux, an Army caught between a world that needs it and a society that no longer understands it.  Discuss this book online

The Thread by Victoria Hislop
Thessaloniki, 1917. As Dimitri Komninos is born, a devastating fire sweeps through the Greek city where Christians, Jews and Muslims live side by side. 5 years later, Katerina Sarafoglou’s home in Asia Minoris destroyed by the Turkish army. Losing her mother in the chaos, she flees across the sea to an unknown destination in Greece. Discuss this book online.

Stranger’s child by Alan Hollinghurst
In the late summer of 1913 aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at ‘Two Acres’, the home of his close Cambridge friend George Sawle. A weekend of many excitements and confusions for all the Sawles, it is on George’s 16-year-old sister, Daphne, that it will have the most lasting impact. Discuss this book online.

A thousand splendid suns by Khaled Hosseini
A chronicle of Afghan history, and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, and the salvation to be found in love.  Discuss this book online

Mr Chartwell by Rebecca Hunt
When the dark and mysterious frame of Mr Chartwell appears in their doorways, both Esther, a mild mannered librarian, and Winston Churchill (yes, that Winston Churchill) are filled with dread. This book takes a novel approach in its depiction of a black dog who visits many of us. Discuss this book online

Never let me go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Recently adapted for the big screen, featuring Keira Knightley, Ishiguro gives us a tragic love story whose characters enjoy a seemingly idyllic childhood in a country boarding school. Their adult lives, however, hold none of the possibilities aforded to the rest of us. Ishiguro is often credited with ‘extending the possibilities of fiction’ (Sunday Times) and this book is no exception.  Discuss this book online 

We have always lived in the castle by Shirley Jackson
Featuring a memorable murder plot (arsenic in the sugar bowl!) this story follows Constance as she returns to the family estate, acquitted of the crime. A chilling and sinister tale, sure to shock as it becomes clear that Constance is not the character to fear.  Discuss this book online

Smokeheads by Doug Johnstone
As we follow four male friends, reunited since university, on a trip to whiskey hot spot Islay, we might expect some bad behaviour and drunken antics. When an accident gets them involved with the local police, the friends are drawn into a shocking, gory and ultimately gripping tale with many twists and turns.  Discuss this book online

Hand me down world by Lloyd Jones
A multi-voiced approach to the often unheard story of the illegal immigrant, Hand Me Down World follows Ines, who, whilst searching for her stolen child, encounters a wide range of individuals, both good and bad, who share their experiences with the reader.  Discuss this book online

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce
When Harold Fry nips out one morning to post a letter, leaving his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking.  To save someone else’s life.  Discuss this book online

The adoption papers by Jackie Kay
A collection of personal, brave and often funny poems.  Discuss this book online

The sound of laughter by Peter Kay
Born in Bolton in 1973, Peter Kay left behind a string of menial jobs when he won the 1997 So You Think You’re Funny contest at the Edinburgh festival. This is the autobiography of the star and creator of ‘Phoenix Nights’ and ‘Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere’.  Discuss this book online

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman
With equal fascination for the local gang – the Dell Farm Crew – and the pigeon who visits his balcony, 11-year-old Harri absorbs the many strange elements of his new life in England. But when a boy is knifed to death and a police appeal for witnesses draws only silence, Harri decides to start a murder investigation of his own. Discuss this book online.

What becomes by AL Kennedy
Always attuned to the moment of epiphany, these 12 stories are profound, intimate observations of men and women whose lives ache with possibility. Each story is a dramatisation of the instant in a life that exposes it all: love and the lack of love, hope and the lack of hope.  Discuss this book online

Smoke Portrait by Trilby Kent
Moving between the exotic setting of a Ceylon tea plantation and a small Belgian village, Glen and Marten develop a deep friendship following an exchange of letters in which both create a false identity for themselves…  Discuss this book online

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
‘The Lacuna’ is the story of a man’s search for safety in the grinding jaws of two nations, at a moment when the entire world seemed bent on reinventing itself at any cost.  Discuss this book online

The poisonwood bible by Barbara Kingsolver
As soon as missionary Nathan Price, along with his wife and four daughters, sets foot in the Belgian Congo, all hell breaks loose. To say that he and his family are woefully unprepared is an understatement and it isn’t long before they discover that life in the jungle is one huge hassle. Arriving in the middle of political upheaval, (the Congolese are seeking to wrest independence from Belgium), Nathan preaches his fiery brand of Christianity which falls on stony village ground. Could things get any worse?  Discuss this book online

Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver
Attempting to escape her empty marriage and the drudgery of life on a rundown Appalachian farm, Dellarobia Turnbow heads for an assignation that accidentally transforms her life. En route to a tryst with a lover, she stumbles on a hillside covered with swathes of orange monarch butterflies that appear like fire on the landscape, a beautiful and terrible marvel of nature.  A calamity of contemporary climate change?  Discuss this book online

No Saints or Angels by Ivan Klima
No Saints or Angels was Klima’s first novel written from a woman’s point of view, as a mother struggles with a drug-addicted daughter and her own attraction to a younger man, but gradually comes to accept and forgive her ex-husband’s infidelity.  Narrated in the voices of three generations, it’s a compassionate exploration of life and love in contemporary Prague.  Translated from the Czech.  Discuss this book online

Tigers in Red Weather by Liza Klaussman
An immensely gripping and well-told tale of two generations of a family spanning the period from 1945 to 1969, beginning with two cousins – beautiful and demanding Nick, who wants more from life than a woman in post-war America is likely to get, and insecure Helena, who doesn’t ask for much and receives even less.  Read on with the growing conviction that a nasty surprise lies around the corner.  Discuss this book online

The girl with the dragon tattoo by Stieg Larsson
The first novel in a trilogy,this tale is split between the shady secrets of a wealthy family and the murky dealings of a famous businessman. Mikael Blomkvist, recently convicted journalist, is hired by Henrik Vanger to investigate the disappearance of his niece almost 40 years ago. Vanger promises Blomkvist the means to clear his good name as part of the payment and Blomkvist accepts, with a young Female, an emotionally disturbed, punk hacker, joining forces with him to investigate both strands of the plot.  Discuss this book online

To kill a mockingbird by Harper Lee
‘Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird’. This is a lawyer’s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of the story – a black man charged with raping a white girl in the 30s.  Discuss this book online

Freakonomics by Stephen D Levitt and Stephen J Dubner
Asking provocative and profound questions about human motivation and contemporary living and reaching some astonishing conclusions, ‘Freakonomics’ will make you see the familiar world through a completely original lens.  Discuss this book online

The long song by Andrea Levy
Set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed, this novel follows the life of July, a slave girl, who lives upon a sugar plantation named Amity.  Discuss this book online

A short history of tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka
“Two years after my mother died, my father fell in love with a glamorous blonde Ukranian divorcee. He was eighty-four and she was thirty-six. She exploded into our lives like a fluffy pink grenade, churning up the murky water, bringing to the surface sludge of sloughed-off memories, giving the family ghosts a kick up the backside.”  Discuss this book online

The Road by Cormac McCarthy
A father and his young son walk alone through burned America. Nothing moves in the ravaged landscape save the ash on the wind. Their destination is the coast, although they don’t know what, if anything, awaits them there. They have nothing but a pistol to defend themselves against the lawless bands that stalk the road.  Discuss this book online 

The Land of Decoration by Grace McCleen
10-year-old Judith McPherson’s world is regimented by her father’s faith. Her mother was fun and liked making things, but she has gone, so Judith consoles herself with ‘The Land of Decoration’ – an intricate model of The Promised Land which she has built in her bedroom. Through the model, Judith realises she can perform miracles.  Discuss this book online 

Atonement by Ian McEwan
‘Atonement’ is the novel for which Ian McEwan will always be remembered. Enthralling in its depiction of childhood, love and war, class and England, at its centre is a profound and profoundly moving exploration of shame and forgiveness.  Discuss this book online

Saturday by Ian McEwan
‘Saturday’ is a novel set within a single day in February 2003. Henry Perowne is a contented man, but what troubles him is the state of the world. Following a minor car accident, Perowne is brought into contact with a small-time thug called Miller. This meeting has savage consequences.  Discuss this book online

Even the dogs by Jon McGregor
When Robert’s neglected body is eventually discovered, his friends and acquaintances narrate the circumstances in which he died, revealing a bleak life consumed by addiction. Emotional and gritty, this novel provokes consideration of those on the fringes of society.  Discuss this book online

Right to die by Hazel McHaffie
Successful writer and journalist,Adam O’Neill, discovers he has Motor Neurone Disease. Keeping a computer diary to help him track his loss of control and choose the time and manner of his death, he writes of his inner struggle and changing priorities. When is the time right for his exit? Who will help him? How should he consider his wife and mother? Trapped in a body that increasingly refuses to obey him, his mind remains alert. Devising a exit plan for himself, he doesn’t reckon on his wife’s haunting secret that could jeopardize what little time they have left together.  Discuss this book online

All the colours of the town by Liam McIlvanney
When Glasgow journalist Gerry Conway receives a phone call promising unsavoury information about Scottish Justice Minister Peter Lyons, his instinct is that this apparent scoop won’t warrant space in The Tribune. But as Conway’s curiosity grows and his leads proliferate, his investigation takes him from Scotland to Belfast.  Discuss this book online

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Winner of the Booker Prize 2009, this historical novel explores the complex charater of Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s right hand man, within the wider context of the politics of Tudor England.  Discuss this book online

Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus
A sci-fi disaster thriller, driven by the conceit that language has become toxic in a more than purely metaphorical sense. Words have begun literally poisoning people, their ravaging effects sweeping across America like a deadly plague. Both morally engaged and wickedly entertaining, ‘The Flame Alphabet’ begs the question: what is left of civilisation when we lose the ability to communicate with those we love?  Discuss this book online

Matterhorn: a novel of the Vietnam War by Karl Marlantes
Loosely based on the author’s own experiences during the Vietnam War, this novel follows Second Lieutenant Mellas and his platoon’s experiences around Matterhorn. With rich description of the environment and the mens’ camaraderie, the novel ultimately highlights the futility of the war.  Discuss this book online

Beatrice and Virgil by Yann Martel
Fate takes many forms. When Henry receives a letter from an elderly taxidermist, it poses a puzzle that he cannot resist. As he is pulled further into the world of this strange and calculating man, Henry becomes increasingly involved with the lives of a donkey and a howler monkey named Beatrice and Virgil.  Discuss this book online

Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Young Pi Patel, who grows up with a love of swimming and among a family circus, finds himself stranded at sea with wild animals after the boat transporting his family sinks. His challenges and the dealing with his eventual return to civilization pose some existential and psychological questions that make this book more than just a story about a lost boy.  Discuss this book online

Anatomy of a Disappearance by Hisham Matar
Nuri is a young boy when his mother dies. It seems that nothing will fill the emptiness that her strange death leaves behind in the Cairo apartment, until Mona appears in her bright yellow sunsuit.  Discuss this book online.

The Girl Who Fell From the Sky by Simon Mawer
Marian Sutro is an outsider: the daughter of a diplomat, brought up on the shores of Lake Geneva and in England. But when she is recruited from her desk job by SOE to go undercover in wartime France, it seems her hybrid status will be of service to a greater, more dangerous cause.  Discuss this book online. 

Kick Ass by Mark Millar and John Romita
Dave Lizewski is just an ordinary American teenager. He has a MySpace page, he loves comic books and he is unable to find a girlfriend. Then an idea hits him: why not become a real life superhero? Soon, his life will never be the same again.  Discuss this book online

Pure by Andrew Miller
Deep in the heart of 1785 Paris, its oldest cemetery is overflowing, tainting the very breath of those who live nearby. Into their midst comes Jean-Baptiste Baratte, a young engineer charged by the king with demolishing it. But before long, he begins to suspect that the destruction of the cemetery might be a prelude to his own.  Discuss this book online.

Snowdrops by Andrew Miller
A chilling story of love and moral freefall – of the corruption, by a corrupt society, of a corruptible young man. It is taut, intense and has a momentum as irresistible to the reader as the moral danger that first enchants, then threatens to overwhelm, its narrator. Discuss this book online. Discuss this book online.

Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
This is a breathtakingly original rendering of the Trojan War – a devastating love story and a tale of gods and kings, immortal fame and the human heart.   Winner of the 2012 Orange prize for fiction.  Discuss this book online. 

A fine balance by Rohinton Mistry
Being recently widowed, Mrs Dina Delal is determined not to marry again. The pressure to make ends meet sees her set up a tailoring business in her apartment, where we meet her three employees. Life has forced them to share their space, meals and stories, but when life forces them to share a tragedy, we see the strength of their love for each other, and their determination.  Discuss this book online

The thousand autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell
Imagine a nation banishing the outside world for two centuries, crushing all vestiges of Christianity, forbidding its subjects to leave its shores on pain of death, and harbouring a deep mistrust of European ideas.   Discuss this book online

How to be a woman by Caitlin Moran
Part memoir, part rant, ‘How To Be A Woman’ follows Caitlin Moran from her terrible 13th birthday, through adolescence, the workplace, strip-clubs, love, fat, abortion, TopShop, motherhood and beyond. Discuss this book online.

Close Your Eyes by Ewan Morrison
Emma, living in London, struggles with postnatal depression after the birth of her first child. She appears to have an easy life: a comfortable home, an adoring husband and child, a career. But her daughter only reminds her that she lost her own mother when young, and that she’s repressed her past.  An exploration of the damage idealistic well-intentioned parents can do to their children and a reminder that it is sometimes the people who are absent really fill our lives.  Discuss this book online.

And when did you last see your father? by Blake Morrison
A bestseller translated into several languages and the inspiration for a whole genre of confessional memoirs, this book is an extraordinary portrait of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement.  Discuss this book online

Her fearful symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger
Julia and Valentina Poole are identical twins who have no interest in college, jobs or anything outside their cosy suburban home. But everything changes when they receive notice that an aunt whom they didn’t know existed has died and left them her flat in an apartment block overlooking Highgate Cemetery in London.  Discuss this book online

The tiger’s wife by Tea Obreht
The prize winning debut novel from this young writer, The Tiger’s Wife paints a fascinating tale of family and folk-lore set in the war torn Balkan region. The author tackles huge questions of life, death, faith and religion in a richly imaginative way.  Discuss this book online

The Man who Forgot his Wife by  John O’Farrell
When forty-something Vaughan suffers total memory loss, he is told that his breakdown has probably been triggered by his marital problems. But then he comes face to face with the stranger he’s supposed to be divorcing – and promptly falls head over heels in love with her.  Discuss this book online

The vanishing act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
Set between the 1930s and the present, Maggie O’Farrell’s novel is the story of Esme, a woman edited out of her family’s history, and of the secrets that come to light when, 60 years later, she is released from care, and a young woman, Iris, discovers the great aunt she never knew she had.  Discuss this book online

The complete novellas by Agnes Owens
This is the complete collection of Agnes Owens’ five novellas: ‘Like Birds in the Wilderness’, ‘A Working Mother’, ‘For the Love of Willie’, ‘Bad Attitudes’ and ‘Jen’s Party’.  Discuss this book online

Foreign Bodies by Cynthia Ozick
The collapse of her brief marriage has stalled Bea Nightingale’s life. Leaving her impoverished borough in 1950s New York, Bea escapes from the stigma of her divorce when she answers a plea from her estranged brother. Now she has left for Paris, to retrieve a nephew she barely knew.  Discuss this book online

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk
Nobel Prize winning author Pamuk offers a highly emotive story of a forbidden love which approaches obsession, set in heady and exotic Istanbul. Discuss this book online

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
There were people on the banks of the river. Among the tangled waterways and giant anacondas of the Brazilian Rio Negro, an enigmatic scientist is developing a drug that could alter the lives of women for ever. Dr Annick Swenson’s work is shrouded in mystery; she refuses to report on her progress, especially to her investors.  Discuss this book online.

Tales from the back green by Bill Paterson
Tales full of wit and warmth, carefully sculpted but told in a conversational style. An unusual gem from a much loved Scottish acting treasure, Bill Paterson details his Glasgow childhood in various episodes first read on radio.  Discuss this book online

Rain by Don Paterson
In this, his first volume of original verse since the award-winning Landing Light, Don Paterson is found writing at his most memorable and direct.  Discuss this book online

The death of Lomond Friel by Sue Peebles
A debut novel about a family in crisis, written with extraordinary compassion, humour and grace. A young woman’s life is thrown into disarray when her father has a stroke.  Discuss this book online

The tenderness of wolves by Stef Penney
As winter tightens its grip on the isolated settlement of Dove River, a woman steers herself for the journey of a lifetime. A man has been brutally murdered and her 17-year old son has disappeared. To clear her son’s name, she has no choice but to follow the tracks leaving the dead man’s cabin. Discuss this book online

Mercy by Jodi Picoult
Cameron MacDonald has spent his life guided by duty. As the police chief of a small Massachusetts town that has been home to generations of his Scottish clan, he is bound to the town’s residents by blood & honour. Yet when his cousin arrives at the police station with the body of his wife, Cam immediately places him under arrest. Discuss this book online

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
Tiffany Aching put one foot wrong, made one little mistake and now the spirit of winter is in love with her. But just because the Wintersmith wants to marry you is no excuse for neglecting the chores. Discuss this book online

The naming of the dead by Ian Rankin
The assorted leaders of the G8 countries have gathered in Scotland and with daily marches, demonstrations and scuffles on the streets, the police are stretched to the limits. When a young politician plunges from the walls of Edinburgh Castle, suicide must be proved, and quickly, to avoid distraction from the main event.  Discuss this book online

The girl on the cliff by Lucinda Riley
After a chance meeting on the cliff, Grania and Aurora discover that their lives are intertwined by a secret one hundred years old. It falls to Grania’s mother to explain the compelling and tragic family history which connects the two girls today.  Discuss this book online

The Testament of Gideon Mack by James Robertson
Mack is a minister who doesn’t believe in God, the Devil or an afterlife. One day he discovers a standing stone in the middle of a wood where previously there had been none. Unsure what to make of this apparition, Mack’s life begins to unravel dramatically. Discuss this book online

And the land lay still by James Robertson
An exploratory portrait of Scotland, its politics and its people over the last fifty years. Charting the nation’s changing values and attitudes through protagonist Michael’s struggle to create a lasting memorial to his photographer father.   Discuss this book online

In a dry season by Peter Robinson
When a reservoir dries out, a flooded village emerges and a boy finds a skeleton buried in an outhouse. DI Banks and DS Annie Cabbot try to find out who she was, when she died, and why. In alternating chapters, Crime writer Vivien writes her own account of what happened during WWII when she was an intense unhappy teenager, with plenty of surprises in store. The author’s intense sense of period and celebration of the virtues of solid police investigation, gave his thriller a nomination for the Edgar, the US crime writers’ best of the year award.  Discuss this book online

The Lifeboat by Charlotte Rogan
Charlotte Rogan’s terrific debut novel opens with a bang, when the ship carrying newlyweds Grace and Henry back to New York after the outbreak of war in Europe suffers an explosion and sinks. Somehow, Grace is squeezed into a departing lifeboat, captained by ship’s officer Mr Hardie, and along with a motley crew of passengers, mostly female, they push away from the wreckage, beating off drowning men and beseeching infants as they go  Discuss this book online

Nemesis by Philip Roth
Frequently described as the greatest American modern writer, Roth tackles the polio epidemic of the 1940’s through the eyes of Bucky Cantor, the local PE teacher, as he watches his pupils picked off one by one by the disease. Torn by guilt and duty, Bucky struggles to understand the role of chance in human lives. Discuss this book online

Midnight’s Children by Salman Rusdie
The tale of two children born at midnight on August 15, 1947, the very moment that India claimed its independence from Great Britain – a coincidence of profound consequence for both.  Comic, tragic and fantastic by turns, this is the novel which revolutionised English fiction.  A many-layered narrative in which the complexities of the Indian sub-continent are projected through the minds of its many characters.  Discuss this book online

The boy next door by Irene Sabatini
Vividly evoking the traumatic history of a nation once brimming with promise, ‘The Boy Next Door’ tells an engrossing, unpredictable story of love against the odds, and of the shadows cast by the past.  Discuss this book online

Perfect lives by Polly Samson
A beautiful collection of short stories, the so called ‘perfect lives’ never quite as they seem. Set in an idyllic English seaside town, its community struggles to keep its sinister undertones from brimming over.  Discuss this book online

The bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad
Sultan Khan is the head of a prosperous Kabul family. A bookseller by trade, he has seen his books burnt by one regime, defaced by another, then burnt again. As the Taliban regime falls in 2001, he meets Norwegian war correspondent, Seierstad. They agree that Seierstad should live with his family for several months. Her description of family life exposes life under the Taliban regime.  Discuss this book online

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer
Set in 1946, in the form of letters mainly to and from Juliet Ashton, a successful writer, this book highlights her coincidental involvement with some Guernsey people who live through wartime German Occupation. The resilience of the islanders in desperate circumstances, makes for a really interesting and beautifully evoked story, with acute observations, and characters that you really care about.  Discuss this book online

Of mutability by Jo Shapcott
Dealing with change, transience and development, this collection of poetry explores humanity and nature in an approachable and accessible way. Winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2011. Discuss this book online

The secret mandarin by Sara Sheridan
An unforgettable tale set in Victorian London and 1840s China. Shielding her from scandal, Mary’s brother-in-law, the ambitious botanist Robert Fortune, forces her to accompany him on a mission to China to steal tea plants for the East India Company. But Robert conceals his secret motives – to spy for the British forces, newly victorious in the recent Opium War. Disguising themselves as a mandarin and man-servant, Mary revels in her new freedom and the Chinese way of life, finding unexpected reserves of courage when danger strikes.  Discuss this book online

New Republic by Lionel Shriver
Fat and ostracized as a kid, Edgar Kellogg has always yearned to be popular. Bored rigid by his pedestrian life as a solicitor, Edgar decides to risk everything on trying to make it as a journalist. When he’s offered the post of foreign correspondent in Barba, Edgar leaps at the chance.  Discuss this book online

American Wife by Curtis Sittenfeld
In 2000, Alice Blackwell sees her husband become President of the USA. As we follow her through her adjustment into the First Lady, we see an ordinary woman’s life become remarkable, in this novel loosely based on the life of Laura Bush. Discuss this book online

The immortal life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Though buried in a shoddy grave in 1951, Henrietta Lacks lives on due to her unwitting contribution to medical science. Many advancements in cancer research would have been impossible without the HeLa cells, but Henrietta’s family knew nothing of their mother’s legacy. Skloot tells Henrietta, and HeLa’s story in this emotive and interesting read. Discuss this book online

Girl meets boy by Ali Smith
The story of two very different sisters- one free-thinking, likeable and rebellious Anthea, and Imogen, a precious, conservative type who works in advertising. Based around the myth of Iphis – Ovid’s most joyful metamorphosis – the book makes much of the idea that myth can carry wider truths and be applied to a range of situations and characters, in both past and present time.  Discuss this book online

The return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller
A new addition to the historical fiction genre, this book explores Captain Emmett’s suspicious death amidst the aftermath of the First World War. Heavier themes of bereavement and post traumatic stress are leavened in the deeply atmospheric setting of 1920’s London. Discuss this book online

My brother Michael by Mary Stewart
Having impulsively agreed to drive a hire car to Delphi, Camilla finds herself embroiled in a nightmare, both thrilling and perilous. Set amongst the olive groves and grandiose ruins of Greece during its Civil War.  Discuss this book online

The help by Kathryn Stockett
Aibileen is a black maid, raising her 17th white child, but with a bitter heart after the death of her son. Minny is the sassiest woman in Mississippi. Skeeter is a white woman with a degree but no ring on her finger. Seemingly as different as can be, these women will come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk.  Discuss this book online

This sporting life by David Storey
Rugby League football in an industrial northern city is a life of grime, mud, sweat and intrigue. The story follows the fortunes of Arthur Machin from his inclusion in the local team to the match when be begins to feel age creeping up on him.  Discuss this book online

Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale
A story of romance and fidelity, insanity, fantasy and the boundaries of privacy in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sexuality, ‘Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace’ brings vividly to life a complex, frustrated Victorian wife, longing for passion and learning, companionship and love.  Beginning in Edinburgh, based on a true story.  Discuss this book online.

The Door by Magda Szabo
A story of the relationship between two women over a period of 20 years, this novel deals with a busy young writer, struggling to cope with domestic chores, who employs an elderly woman called Emerance recommended by a friend, to be her housekeeper.  From their first encounter, it’s clear that Emerance, with a reputation built on dependable efficiency, is no ordinary maid.  Translated from the Hungarian. Discuss this book online.

The Blinding Absence of Light by Ben Jelloum Tahar
In 1971, disaffected student Salim took part in a failed coup to oust King Hassan II of Morocco.  With 60 others he was incarcerated in a secret prison complex in the Moroccan desert; there to remain there for nearly 20 years.  Translated from the French. Discuss this book online.

The Garden of Evening Mists by Twan Eng Tan
Booker 2012 short listed, this novel set in the lush highlands of Malaya, tells the tale of a woman setting out to build a memorial to her sister, killed at the hands of the Japanese during the brutal occupation of their country. Yun Ling’s quest leads her to ‘The Garden of Evening Mists’, and to Aritomo, a man of extraordinary skill and reputation, once gardener to the Emperor of Japan. Accepting his offer to become his apprentice, she begins a journey into her past, inextricably linked with the secrets of her troubled country’s history.  Discuss this book online. 

The tin-kin by Eleanor Thom
When her aunt Shirley dies, Dawn finds herself back in her claustrophobic hometown of Elgin in Scotland. In an attempt to avoid contact with anyone from her former life, Dawn busies herself cleaning Shirley’s flat, until one day she comes across the key to a cupboard that she was never allowed to open as a child.  Discuss this book online

Swing Hammer Swing by Jeff Torrington
Tam Clay, 1960s slum-dweller, father-in-waiting and wordsmith manqué, stumbles through the drink-sodden world of the Gorbals underclass on a mini-odyssey of self-discovery.  A rediscovered classic, from ‘Scotland’s Bookshelf’  Discuss this book online.

The Shoemaker’s Wife by by Adriana Trigiani
Nestled high in the Alps lies Vilminore, home to Ciro. Close by lives Enza, who longs only for a happy life for her family. When the two meet, it seems it could be the start of a life together. Then Ciro catches the local priest in a scandal and is sent to America as an apprentice to a shoemaker in Little Italy, leaving Enza behind.  Discuss this book online.

The slap by Christos Tsiolkas
Christos Tsiolkas presents an apparently harmless domestic incident as seen from eight very different perspectives. The result is an unflinching interrogation of our lives today; of the modern family and domestic life in the 21st century, a deeply thought-provoking novel about boundaries and their limits.  Discuss this book online

Digging to America by Anne Tyler
Dealing with themes such as belonging, pride, prejudice and love, this is the story of two extended families who are brought together thanks to the birth of two tiny Korean babies on the same night.  Discuss this book online

A gambling man: Charles II and the Restoration by Jenny Uglow
From acclaimed biographer Jenny Uglow, this is a portrait of Charles II and the first decade of the Restoration: a time of glamour and gossip, charade and risk.  Discuss this book online

The forgotten Highlander by Alastair Urquhart
This is the extraordinary and moving tale by an ex-POW and last surviving member of the Gordon Highlanders regiment that was captured by the Japanese in Singapore.   Discuss this book online

The House by the Medlar Tree (I Malavoglia) by Giovanni Verga
The House by the Medlar Tree’ depicts a Sicilian fishing village, still untouched by modernisation and industrialisation, coping with the hardships of life. Verga makes no judgement on his characters leaving the reader to form his own opinions. A sad and moving tale, translated from the Italian, pub. 1889.  Discuss this online.

Cutting for stone by Abraham Verghese
A richly descriptive depiction of life and death in Ethiopia, following twin Doctors in their struggle to save lives and forgive each other for a past betrayal in the process. Discuss this book online

The color purple by Alice Walker
This compelling and cherished classic tells the story of Celie. Raped by the man she calls father, her two children taken from her and forced into an ugly marriage, she has no one to talk to but God, until she meets a woman who offers love and support. Discuss this book online

The Deadman’s Pedal by Alan Warner
It is the early 1970s and for 16-year-old Simon Crimmons there’s really not much to do in the Highlands of Scotland. The only local drama and romance is the West Highland Line, so Simon joins up as a train driver. But that summer he is introduced to a world far more glamorous and strange than the railways can provide.  Discuss this book online.  Discuss this book online.

Beyond the blossoming fields by Junichi Watanabe
Ginko Ogino seems set for a conventional life in male-dominated society of 19th century Japan. After contracting gonorrhoea from her husband, she suffers the ignominy of divorce. Forced to bear the humiliation of being treated by male doctors, she resolves to become a doctor herself to treat fellow female sufferers and spare them some of the shame she had to endure. As more and more obstacles are placed before her, will she give in to social pressure or continue to fight against her world and her times?  Discuss this book online

“We cultivate literature on a little oatmeal”
Edinburgh is truly a city built on books – and in this special ‘City Of Literature Trust’ title you can read about our literary past, find out about City of Literature’s vision for a literary future, and explore the historical and contemporary wealth of words and ideas on offer in Scotland. Discuss this book online

Naming the bones by Louise Welsh
Murray Watson, a Glasgow University professor, seeks to restore the reputation of forgotten poet Archie Lunan, but embarks on a sinister journey of discovery having uncovered murky circumstances around his death. Discuss this book online

The spirit level: why equality is better for everyone by Richard Wilkinson
It is common knowledge that, in rich societies, the poor have worse health and suffer more from almost every social problem. This book explains why inequality is the most serious problem societies face today.  Discuss this book online

When God was a rabbit by Sarah Winman
The story of Elly Portman, who narrates from 1968 in Cornwall and 1995 in New York. A tale of family and relationships, its pages are packed full of all life’s eventualities, good and bad. A highly recommended first novel.  Discuss this book online

Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
This book is the story of a life’s work to find happiness. It is the story of how the painful past Jeanette Winterson thought she had written over and repainted returned to haunt her later life, and sent her on a journey into madness and out again, in search of her real mother. Discuss this book online.

Revolutionary road by Richard Yates
This rediscovered American suburban novel, tells the tale of April and Frank Wheeler,a young, ostensibly thriving couple living with their two children in prosperous suburban mid-1950s Connecticut. Their inability to feel fulfilled or happy in their relationships or careers, pinpoints with brilliant erudition, the poverty at the soul of many wealthy Americans and the exacting cost of chasing the American Dream.  Discuss this book online