Moera Book Club
Oxbridge
August 2015
Brideshead revisited / Evelyn Waugh
Evelyn Waugh's most celebrated novel, written at the end of the Second World War,
mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and recalls the
sensuous pleasures denied him by the austerities of wartime.
The whores' asylum / Katy Darby
When Stephen Chapman, a brilliant young medical student, is persuaded to volunteer
at a shelter devoted to reforming the fallen women of Oxford, his closest friend Edward
feels a strange sense of dread. But even Edward who already knows the devastating
effect of falling in love with the wrong woman cannot foresee the macabre and violent
events that will unfold around them.
The lessons / Naomi Alderman
Hidden away in an Oxford back street is a crumbling Georgian mansion, unknown to
any but the few who possess a key to its unassuming front gate. Its owner is the
mercurial, charismatic Mark Winters. Mark gathers around him an impressionable
group of students and for a time they live in a charmed world of learning and parties
and love affairs. But university is no grounding for adult life, and when, years later,
tragedy strikes they are entirely unprepared.
The ingenious Edgar Jones / Elizabeth Garner
In nineteenth-century Oxford, an extraordinary child is born - Edgar Jones, a porter's
son with a magical talent. Though his father cannot see beyond his academic
slowness, his abilities as a metalworker and designer are quickly noticed. Edgar
comes to the attention of a professor at work on a museum of the natural sciences,
and he is at once plucked from obscurity and plunged into the heart of a debate which
threatens to tear apart the university.
Crampton Hodnet / Barbara Pym
Formidable Miss Doggett fills her life by giving tea parties for young academics and
acting as a watchdog for the morals of North Oxford. But the only liason Miss Doggett
isn't aware of is taking place under her very own roof: the lodger has proposed to her
paid companion Miss Morrow. She wouldn't approve of that at all.
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Moera Book Club
Oxbridge
August 2015
After I left you / Alison Mercer
Anna hasn't been back to Oxford since her last summer at university. She tries not to
think about her time there. She has almost forgotten the sting of betrayal, the secret
she carries around, the last night she spent with her friends. Then a chance meeting
one day in London brings her past tumbling back into her present. Can Anna finally
face up to the memories of that summer and the people she left behind?
Case histories / Kate Atkinson
Cambridge is sweltering, during an unusually hot summer. To Jackson Brodie, former
police inspector turned private investigator, the world consists of one accounting sheet
Lost on the left, Found on the right and the two never seem to balance. Jackson has
never felt at home in Cambridge, and has a failed marriage to prove it. Surrounded by
death, intrigue and misfortune, his own life haunted by a family tragedy, he attempts to
unravel three disparate case histories and begins to realise that in spite of apparent
diversity, everything is connected.
Black chalk / Christopher J. Yates
One game. Six students. Five survivors. It was only ever meant to be a game. A game
of consequences, of silly forfeits, childish dares. A game to be played by six best
friends in their first year at Oxford University. But then the game changed: the stakes
grew higher finally evolving into a vicious struggle with unpredictable and tragic
results. Now, 14 years later, the remaining players must meet again for the final round.
Suspense fiction.
Blenheim Orchard / Tim Pears
Blenheim Orchard is both human drama at its most powerful and an acute portrait of
the times we live in. Ezra and Sheena Pepin live in Blenheim Orchard in North Oxford
with their three children. Ezra is asked to head a bold new campaign at his workplace
that could jump-start his stagnant career; Sheena in the meantime has an idea that
she believes will refresh and renew her family; and Blaise - restless and curious takes her first, heady steps into the adult world of sex and desire. The Pepin family will
never be quite the same again.
Comfort zone : a novel of present day discontents / Brian Aldiss
Set in contemporary Oxford, this incisive novel charts the breakdown of a community.
A new mosque is to be built on the site of a derelict pub and gradually, half-hidden
prejudices begin to surface, and relationships between the residents start to sour.
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Moera Book Club
Oxbridge
August 2015
Heresy / S.J. Parris
England 1583. A country awash with paranoia and conspiracy, but a safe haven for a
radical monk on the run. Giordano Bruno, with his theories of astronomy and
extraterrestrial life, has fled the Inquisition for the court of Elizabeth I. Bruno is sent
undercover to Oxford University, believed to be a hotbed of religious dissent. Before
long the close-knit college life is rocked by a series of murders and he becomes a
stalker of a cunning and determinded killer.
Every contact leaves a trace / Elanor Dymott
Alex is in his thirties, a solitary man who has finally found love in the form of his
beautiful and vivacious wife, Rachel. When Rachel is brutally murdered one
Midsummer Night by the lake in the grounds of their alma mater, Worcester College,
Oxford, Alex's life as he knew it vanishes. He returns to Oxford that winter, and
through the shroud of his shock and grief, begins to try to piece together the mystery
surrounding his wife's death.
Dead scared / S. J. Bolton
When a Cambridge student dramatically attempts to take her own life, DI Mark
Joesbury realizes that the university has developed an unhealthy record of young
people committing suicide in extraordinary ways.
Ghostwalk / Rebecca Stott
Cambridge, 2003: Cameron Brown, the son of a reclusive historian, discovers his
mother's body floating in the muddy waters of the river that runs through her orchard.
Cameron asks a friend to ghost-write the missing chapter of his mother's unfinished
book. Soon Lydia (the friend) comes to see that the shadow of violence that has fallen
across present-day Cambridge may have its origins in the past.
Maurice / E.M. Forster
Maurice Hall is a young man who grows up confident in his privileged status and well
aware of his role in society. Modest and generally conformist, he nevertheless finds
himself increasingly attracted to his own sex. Compellingly honest and beautifully
written, it offers a powerful condemnation of the repressive attitudes of British society,
and is at once a moving love story and an intimate tale of one man's erotic and
political self-discovery.
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Moera Book Club
Oxbridge
August 2015
One perfect summer / by Paige Toon
Alice is18 and about to start university while Joe's life is seemingly going nowhere. A
Dorset summer, a chance meeting, and the two of them fall into step as if they have
known each other forever. But their idyll is shattered, suddenly, unexpectedly. Alice
heads off to Cambridge and slowly picks up the pieces of her broken heart. Then Joe
is there, but life has moved on, surely it is far too late to relive those perfect summer
days of long ago?
Red Joan / Jennie Rooney
Cambridge University in 1937 is awash with ideas and idealists, yet unworldly Joan
feels better suited to a science lecture and a cup of cocoa. But a chance meeting with
the Russian-born Sonya and her cousin Leo blurs the edges of the things Joan
thought she knew about the world. In the post-War world of smoke and mirrors,
allegiance is a slippery thing. Would you betray your country, your family, even the
man you love?
Young Philby : [a novel] / Robert Littell
A work of suspense based on true-life historical characters imagines the early years
and long-time Russian allegiance of double agent Kim Philby, whose 1963 defection
from Britain's intelligence service to Moscow exposes the Cambridge Five double
agents and raises innumerable questions about his ideals.
Jacob's room / Virginia Woolf
A portrait of a young man, who is both representative and victim of the social values
which led Edwardian society into war. Jacob's life is traced from childhood, through his
experiences at Cambridge University to his early adult life in London. Jacob yearns for
something greater and he embarks on a voyage to the Mediterranean before the war
begins and his fate is forever altered.
More books related to theme:
Fiction:
The reluctant canibals / Ian Flitcroft
Engleby / Sebastian Faulks
Peter Wimsey inv The late scholar / Jill Paton Walsh
Be near me / Andrew O’Hagan
Non fiction:
Oxford revisited / Justin Cartwright
The shop girls : a true story of hard work, friendship and fashion in an exclusive 1950s department
store / Ellee Seymour
The meaning of everything : the story of the Oxford English Dictionary / Simon Winchester.
The surgeon of Crowthorne : a tale of murder, madness and the Oxford English dictionary / Simon
Winchester
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