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 conflicts of their own. But are the Ayres 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 entwined with his.

 

 

 

A young boy writes to the serial killer to find out where his uncle’s body is buried. By Belinda Bauer.
Twelve-year-old Steven Lamb digs holes on Exmoor, hoping to find a body. Every day after school, while his classmates swap football stickers, Steven goes digging to lay to rest the ghost of the uncle he never knew, who disappeared aged eleven and is assumed to have fallen victim to the notorious serial killer Arnold Avery. Only Steven’s nan is not convinced that her son is actually dead. She still waits for him to come home, standing bitter guard at the front window while her family fragments around her. Steven is determined to heal the widening cracks between them before it’s too late. And if that means presenting his grandmother with the bones of her murdered son, he’ll do it. So the boy takes the next logical step, carefully crafting a letter to Arnold Avery in prison. and so begins a dangerous cat-and-mouse game between a desperate child and a bored serial killer.

Book 3 – Sacred Hearts.

 

 Book 4 – Juliet, Naked.

Humour, obsessive men, the internet, music and relationships, from Nick Hornby.
Annie and Duncan are a mid-thirties couple who have reached a fork in the road, realising their shared interest in the reclusive musician Tucker Crowe (in Duncan’s case, an obsession rather than an interest) is not enough to hold them together any more. When Annie hates Tucker’s ‘new release’ - a terrible demo of his most famous album – it’s the last straw. Duncan cheats on her and she promptly throws him out. Via an internet discussion forum, Annie’s harsh opinion reaches Tucker himself, who couldn’t agree more. He and Annie start an unlikely correspondence which teaches them both something about moving on from years of wasted time.

Book 5 – Cutting for Stone. 

An unforgettable journey into one man’s remarkable life, and an epic story about the power, intimacy, and curious beauty of the work of healing others. A novel by Abraham Verghese.
Marion and Shiva Stone are twin brothers born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon at a mission hospital in Addis Ababa. Orphaned by their mother’s death in childbirth and their father’s disappearance, bound together by a preternatural connection and a shared fascination with medicine, the twins come of age as Ethiopia hovers on the brink of revolution. Yet it will be love, not politics – their passion for the same woman – that will tear them apart and force Marion, fresh out of medical school, to flee his homeland. He makes his way to America, finding refuge in his work as an intern at an underfunded, overcrowded New York City hospital. When the past catches him up – nearly destroying him – Marion must entrust his life to the two men he thought he trusted least in the world: the surgeon father who abandoned him and the brother who betrayed him.

 

 

 

Book 6 – The Rapture.

A terrifying near-future thriller about the human will to survive, by Liz Jensen
Apocalyptic global climate change fuels Jensen’s new novel. For Bethany Krall, a psychic psychotic teen who stabbed her mother to death, it fuels a will to embrace death. Bethany, a patient at Oxsmith Adolescent Secure Psychiatric Hospital in Hadport, England, forms a strong bond with her wheelchair-bound psychologist, Gabrielle Fox. As Gabrielle treats her patient, the world outside the hospital suffers natural disasters foreseen by Bethany after ECT shock therapy. Meanwhile, Bethany has been traumatized by the Faith Wave views of her father, Rev. Leonard Krall, who believes the Rapture is approaching. Since Bethany is convinced she bears the mark of the beast, she fears she won’t go to heaven. Gabrielle seeks help from Frazer Melville, a physicist who takes Bethany’s catastrophe calendar seriously.

 

Book 7 – Brixton Beach.

A child’s journey from war-torn Sri Lanka to immigrant life in South London, by Roma Tearne.
On a bright July morning a series of bombs bring the capital to a halt. Simon Swann, a medic from one of the large teaching hospitals, is searching frantically amongst the chaos and the rubble. But who is he looking for? To find out we have first to go back thirty years to a small island in the Indian Ocean where a little girl named Alice Fonseka is learning to ride a bicycle on the beach. The island is Sri Lanka, with its community on the brink of civil war. Alice’s life is about to change forever. Soon she will have to leave for England, abandoning her beloved grandfather, and accompanied by her mother Sita, a woman broken by a series of terrible events.

Book 8 – The Way Home.

A brilliant US crime book from George Pelecanos, one of the writers of The Wire.
When Thomas Flynn leaves his son, seventeen-year-old Chris, at Pine Ridge, a juvenile prison near Washington DC, his heart is broken but his mind is made up: Chris will have to pay for the mistakes he’s made. Inside, Chris is exposed to kids from a different DC than the comfortable one he knew – one less remote from the street fights, car chases, and marijuana deals that got him here in the first place. A decade later, Chris and the friends he made at Pine Ridge seem reformed. Chris has a job, thanks to his father, a girlfriend and his own apartment. But when he and the others are inadvertently caught up in a burglary, old habits and worse instincts rise to the surface, threatening this new-found stability with sudden treachery and violence. The Way Home travels the streets of Washington, DC, and tells the story of its people, and the tensions that always linger just out of sight, circling back again and again to that clapboard house on Livingston Street where Thomas and Chris Flynn’s rocky relationship moves from distrust and scorn toward a flawed, but real, redemption.

Book 9 – Wedlock.

A fascinating non-fiction story from Wendy Moore of how Britain’s worst husband met his match.
When he died in 1760, the coal-mining magnate George Bowes left his only child, the precocious 11-year-old Mary Eleanor, the richest heiress in England, worth between £80m and £150m in today’s money. How shocked Bowes would have been to see Mary 23 years later – cowed, a nervous twitch in her jaw, hungry, covered in bruises and wearing underwear and stockings borrowed from her maids. This transformation was the result of her second marriage. At 18 Mary wed John Lyon, the icy Earl of Strathmore. Widowed at 27, the countess then walked down the aisle with an Irish soldier. ‘Captain’ Andrew Robinson Stoney was described by his own father as ‘the most wretched man I ever knew’ and inspired Thackeray’s novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon. Wedlock relates the landmark case which saw Mary, with the help of four maidservants, extricate herself from her eight-year ordeal.

Book 10 – The Silver Linings Playbook.

A feel-good story of hope and silver linings, by Matthew Quick.

During the years he spends in a neural health facility, Pat Peoples formulates a theory about silver linings: he believes his life is a movie produced by God, his mission is to become physically fit and emotionally supportive, and his happy ending will be the return of his estranged wife, Nikki. When Pat goes to live with his parents, everything seems changed: no one will talk to him about Nikki; his old friends are saddled with families; the Philadelphia Eagles keep losing, making his father moody; and his new therapist seems to be recommending adultery as a form of therapy. When Pat meets the tragically widowed and clinically depressed Tiffany, she offers to act as a liaison between him and his wife, if only he will give up watching football, agree to perform in this year’s Dance Away Depression competition, and promise not to tell anyone about their ‘contract’. All the while, Pat keeps searching for his silver lining.