TV Book Club
Find out about some of this year's best reads below.
Before I Go To Sleep
Christine is a 47 year old woman who, following a catastrophic accident in her 20s, is incapable of forming and maintaining new memories for more than a day. She wakes every day believing herself to be single with a lifetime of choice ahead of her, but discovers instead she lives with her husband, Ben, with most decisions already made.
The novel charts her attempts to make sense of her world and her hope that she may be cured. But for Christine, this is a terrifying voyage of discovery that will ultimately have startling consequences for her, leading her to question whether the truth is sometimes better left forgotten.
Sunday 29th January
The Sisters Brothers
Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize, The Sisters Brothers is a dazzlingly original odyssey across gold-rush America. It is the strange tale of two brothers’ encounters with a remarkable cast of characters – losers, cheaters, and ne’er-do-wells from all stripes of life – which beautifully captures the humour, melancholy, and grit of the Old West.
Sunday 5th February
The Somnambulist
Every heart holds a secret. But some secrets are better left buried...
When she spots an enigmatic stranger in the audience one night at Wilton’s Music Hall, seventeen-year-old Phoebe Turner doesn't realise her life is about to change. Mr Samuels offers her the job of companion to his reclusive wife at Dinwood Court - a grand country house that may well be haunted and which holds the darkest of secrets.
Leaving the hustle of London’s East End, Phoebe finds herself disturbed by her new surroundings. She awakes to hear sobbing in the night and it soon becomes clear that she has not been chosen to work there by chance...
A spellbinding tale of lost love, grief, murder and madness in Victorian England.
Sunday 12th February
Into the Darkest Corner
Catherine has been enjoying the single life for long enough to know a good catch when she sees one. Gorgeous, charismatic, spontaneous – Lee seems almost too perfect to be true. And her friends clearly agree, as each in turn falls under his spell.
But there is a darker side to Lee. His erratic, controlling and sometimes frightening behaviour means that Catherine is increasingly isolated. Driven into the darkest corner of her world, and trusting no one, she plans a meticulous escape. Four years later, struggling to overcome her demons, Catherine dares to believe she might be safe from harm. Until one phone call changes everything.
This is an edgy and powerful first novel, utterly convincing in its portrayal of obsession, and a tour de force of suspense.
Sunday 19th February
The Rules of Civility
In a jazz bar on the last night of 1937, watching a quartet because they can't afford to see the whole ensemble, Katey and Eve run into Tinker Grey, all royal blue eyes and cashmere overcoat. It's a meeting that will change all of their lives. Over the next year Katey will learn that riches can turn to rags in the trip of a heartbeat, and that New York can turn you inside out...
Sunday 26th February
Girl Reading
A young orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena, and an artist's servant girl in 17th-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. A young woman reading in a Shoreditch bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture, and a Victorian medium in a photographer's studio casually holds a book while she waits for the exposure.
With each chapter inspired by a real work of art, this richly textured debut novel transports us into a perfectly imagined tale of how each portrait came to be. As the narrative grows through time, from 1333 into the present and beyond, the reader is woven into the subtle connections that grow and thread through the narratives. Unusual, beguiling and full of beauty, Girl Reading is as finely drawn as the portraits that inspired it.
Sunday 4th March
The Report
Inspired by a real wartime disaster, this is a powerful novel about a tragedy and its aftermath. Moving between the event itself, the official investigation, and the experience of one of the survivors several decades later, the novel's shifting perspective allows the voices of the past to speak with searing immediacy, at the same time as it touches on bigger themes - of guilt and innocence, of loss and living on, of private memory and public record. Affecting, compelling and redemptive, this is storytelling at its best.
Sunday 11th March
The Family Fang
Caleb and Camille Fang have dedicated their lives to making great art. But for their children, Annie and Buster, their crazy performances are an embarrassment. When Annie and Buster’s adult lives begin to go wrong, brother and sister have no choice but to return home. And whether the kids agree to participate or not, Caleb and Camille are planning one last performance that will determine what’s more important: their family or their art.
Sunday 18th March
Half of the Human Race
Summer of 1911. The world is on the brink of change.
Connie Callaway is a spirited 21-year-old Londoner who wants votes for women.
Will Maitland is a man of traditional opinions. He is both intrigued and appalled by Connie's outspokenness.
Buffeted and spun by choice and chance, their lives become inextricably entangled, even as the outbreak of war drives them further apart. This is a deeply affecting story of love against all the odds.
Sunday 25th March
You Deserve Nothing
Set in Paris at an international high school catering to the children of wealthy, influential families, You Deserve Nothing is a gripping story of power, idealism and morality. Paris is dazzling and dangerously seductive - a fitting backdrop for a dramatic tale about the tension between desire and action, and about the complex relationship between our public and private selves. It is a thrilling account of what happens when the boundaries that separate teachers and students are crossed.
Sunday 1st April
