CHRISTMAS BOOKCASE
Staff Recommended Reading
December 2015
Full details can be found on
www.millhill.org.uk
The Sleeper
Design for a Life: How Behaviour Develops
Emily Barr
Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin
Anyone Here Been Raped & Speaks English?
Edward Behr
A Short Gentleman
Jon Canter
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
Jackie Copleton
Le Boucher De Kpota
M.M.Diabate
Two Brothers
Ben Elton
We are Completely Besides Ourselves
Karen Joy Fowler
Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles
Margaret George
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Thich Nhat Hanh
Dictator
Robert Harris.
Road to Rouen
Ben Hatch
The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
Elizabeth is Missing
Emma Healey
The Wolf of The Plains
Conn Iggulden
The Churchill Factor
Boris Johnson
The Invention of Wings
Sue Monk Kidd
Severed- A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
Frances Larson
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
Laurie Lee
Ghettoside
Jill Leovy
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Joan Lindsay
An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education
Tony Little
H is For Hawk
Helen McDonald
Listen to the Moon
Michael Morpurgo
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
Beloved
Toni Morrison
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
The Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Haruki Murakami
The Rain Tree
Mirabel Osler
Death by Video Game
Simon Parkin
(Un)arranged Marriage
Bali Rai
Stalin’s General
Geoffrey Roberts
Shantaram
Gregory David Roberts
Season of Migration to The North
Taveb Salih
Riotous Assembly
Tom Sharpe
We Need to Talk About Kevin
Lionel Shriver
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair
A Light Between Oceans
M.L.Stedman
Once There was a War
John Steinbeck
A Spool of Blue Thread
Anne Tyler
The House in France
Gully Wells
Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?
Jeanette Winterson
The Easter Parade
Richard Yates
The Sleeper
Emily Barr
Synopsis: Lara Finch is living a lie. Everyone thinks she has a happy life in Cornwall,
married to the devoted Sam, but in fact she is desperately bored. When she is offered a
new job that involves commuting to London by sleeper train, she meets Guy and starts an
illicit affair. But then Lara vanishes from the night train without a trace. Only her friend
Iris disbelieves the official version of events, and sets out to find her. For Iris, it is the
start of a voyage that will take her further than she's ever travelled and on to a trail of old crimes and
dark secrets. For Lara, it is the end of a journey that started a long time ago. A journey she must finish,
before it destroys her...
Recommended By:Sarah Sofroniou
This novel first attracted me because the story begins on the sleeper train between London Paddington
and Cornwall, a route I often take. It's a mystery that revolves around the sudden disappearance of the
main character and which unfolds slowly. It keeps you guessing right up to the last page.
A real page turner, this book is hard to put down and is a great read for the holidays.
Design for a Life: How Behaviour Develops
Patrick Bateson and Paul Martin
Synopsis: How and why does each of us grow up to be the person we are? What role do
genes play in shaping our behaviour and personalities? Are our characters fixed, or can we
change as adults? How does early experience affect our sexual preferences?
Design for a Life explains the science of behavioural development - the biological and
psychological processes that build a unique adult from a fertilised egg. Instead of the
conventional opposition between nature (genes) and nurture (environment), Design for a Life offers a
new approach that synthesises biology and psychology. It explores the developmental cooking
processes that give rise to individuals, and considers in turn how these processes have evolved.
Recommended By:Sam Baldock
This highly readable popular science book successfully connects developmental biology and
developmental psychology, outlining lots of neat experiments to evidence the authors’ arguments.
People can still get confused by the idea of ‘nature versus nurture’ this explains how most components
of human behaviour are a consequence of the environment ‘cooking’ the ‘raw ingredients’ of the
genome. Each chapter is short but packed with interesting examples that you’ll find yourself wanting to
share with others. You’ll finish the book looking at yourself in a completely different way!
Anyone Here Been Raped & Speaks English?
Edward Behr
Synopsis: An account of Edward Behr's time in China and South East Asia during the
60s and 70s.
Recommended By:Andrew Homer
This contains some of the memoirs of a great foreign correspondent in Africa and SE Asia. A
fascinating glimpse into the turmoil of the 50s, 60s and 70s. The title is apparently what some
newspaper reporter shouted across an airport terminal…
A Short Gentleman
Jon Canter
Synopsis: How did Robert Purcell, distinguished barrister and perfect specimen of
the British Establishment, end up in prison? An intellectual giant but an emotional
pygmy, Robert is a man struggling to come to terms with the forces that have brought
him down, from the wife who wanted him to change, to the ex-girlfriend who came back
to haunt him and the childhood bully who turned into an adult bully. Despite everything,
Robert remains the same magnificently self-righteous man he always was, utterly resistant to therapy,
change and the emotional demands of the opposite sex.
Recommended By:Debbie Sharp-Thurgood
Beautifully written and you can really empathise with the main character and see how your childhood
experiences shape your character. It is written with humour but is a really horrendous true story.
A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
Jackie Copleton
Synopsis: When a badly scarred man knocks on the door of Amaterasu Takahashi’s
retirement home and says that he is her grandson, she doesn’t believe him. But if you’ve
become adept at lying, can you tell when someone is speaking the truth? Amaterasu
knows her grandson and her daughter died the day the Americans dropped the atomic
bomb on Nagasaki; she searched for them amongst the ruins of her devastated city and
has spent years burying her memories of that brutal summer. So this man is either a miracle or a cruel
trick. The stranger forces Amaterasu to revisit her past; the hurt and humiliation of her early life, the
intoxication of a first romance, the fierceness of a mother’s love. For years she has held on to the idea
that she did what she had to do to protect her family… but now nothing seems so certain.
We can’t rewrite history, but can we create a new future? Set against the dramatic backdrop of
Nagasaki before and after the bomb, A Dictionary Of Mutual Understanding is about regret,
forgiveness and the exquisite pain of love.
Recommended By:Elizabeth Grainger
This book of Historical fiction set in Japan, is thought provoking although very sad. It tells of a
grandmother’s guilt and how she blames herself for the death of her daughter, when the Americans
dropped the Atomic bomb over Nagasaki. I liked the fact that every chapter begins with a Japanese
word and an explanation of the meaning.
Recommended By:Tricia Newsome
This is a great read as it gave me a first time view (or glimpse) of Japanese culture. I now have so
much more knowledge and therefore respect for a whole new way of looking at life and how valuable it
is. It awakens the reader to the horror of a nuclear bomb and the lasting effects after decades of grief.
(It is about a Nagasaki family killed and torn apart by the nuclear bomb and the story is now told by
the grandmother who survives).
Le Boucher De Kpota
M.M.Diabate
Synopsis:
Recommended By:Andrew Homer
A picture of village life in French West Africa. Utterly pretentious of me to put it in given there is, as
far as I know, no translation in Ingerlish. He also wrote‘Le Coiffeur de Kouta’. Incroyable.
Two Brothers
Ben Elton
Synopsis: A deeply poignant novel set in Berlin between 1920 and 1945
Recommended By:
A sensitively written engaging story that has twists and turns.
We Are Completely Besides Ourselves
Stephanie Isaacs
Karen Joy Fowler
Synopsis: Rosemary's young, just at college, and she's decided not to tell anyone a
thing about her family. So we're not going to tell you too much either: you'll have to find
out for yourselves, what it is that makes her unhappy family unlike any other. Rosemary is
now an only child, but she used to have a sister the same age as her, and an older brother.
Both are now gone - vanished from her life. There's something unique about Rosemary's
sister, Fern. And it was this decision, made by her parents, to give Rosemary a sister like
no other, that began all of Rosemary's trouble. So now she's telling her story: full of hilarious asides
and brilliantly spiky lines, it's a looping narrative that begins towards the end, and then goes back to the
beginning. Twice. It's funny, clever, intimate, honest, analytical and swirling with ideas that will come
back to bite you. We hope you enjoy it, and if, when you're telling a friend about it, you do decide to
spill the beans about Fern - it's pretty hard to resist - don't worry. One of the few studies Rosemary
doesn't quote says that spoilers actually enhance reading.
Recommended By:Orpita Logan
I can’t give a description as it will give the twist away. It was my favourite read over this summer!
Recommended By:Stephanie Isaacs
It's funny, clever, intimate, honest, analytical and swirling with ideas that will come back to bite you.
Mary Queen of Scotland and The Isles
Margaret George
Synopsis: Mary, Queen of Scotland and the Isles is the story of a woman born to rule
a nation – and the glorious pageant of love and tragedy that followed in her wake.
Mary's beauty inspired poetry – yet her birth-right engendered hideous treachery and
terrible, bloody murder. This novel is Margaret George's magnificent recreation of the
life of one of history's greatest legends. A woman accused of murdering her husband to
marry her lover. A woman who became Queen six days after her birth in 1542 – only to
be beheaded forty years later on the orders of her cousin, Elizabeth I . . .
Recommended By:Julie Devitt
Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles is the story of a woman born to rule a nation – and the glorious
pageant of love and tragedy that followed in her wake. Mary’s beauty inspired poetry – yet her birthright generated hideous treachery and terrible, blood murder. An historical novel of exceptional
quality Margaret George spent more than five years researching and writing Mary Queen of Scotland
and the Isles. An epic novel, which I thoroughly enjoyed. This book is highly recommended.
The Miracle of Mindfulness
Thich Nhat Hanh
Synopsis: In this beautifully written book, Buddhist monk and Nobel Peace Prize
nominee Thich Nhat Hanh explains how to acquire the skills of mindfulness. Once we have
these skills, we can slow our lives down and discover how to live in the moment - even
simple acts like washing the dishes or drinking a cup of tea may be transformed into acts of
meditation. Thich Nhat Hanh's gentle anecdotes and practical exercises help us to arrive at
greater self-understanding and peacefulness, whether we are beginners or advanced students.
Irrespective of our particular religious beliefs, we can begin to reap the immense benefits that
meditation has been scientifically proven to offer. We can all learn how to be mindful and experience
the miracle of mindfulness for ourselves.
Recommended By:Tricia Newsome
I am moved to read more of his work; it’s easy to follow and gives a deep understanding of how to live
every moment to the full. I am inspired by this amazing philosophy and way of being. It has changed
my life and I keep buying more copies of this book for friends and family. Perhaps a bit of me wishes I
had known about it a long time ago.
Dictator
Robert Harris
Synopsis: There was a time when Cicero held Caesar’s life in the palm of his hand.
But now Caesar is the dominant figure and Cicero’s life is in ruins. Exiled, separated from
his wife and children, his possessions confiscated, his life constantly in danger, Cicero is
tormented by the knowledge that he has sacrificed power for the sake of his principles.
His comeback requires wit, skill and courage – and for a brief and glorious period, the
legendary orator is once more the supreme senator in Rome. But politics is never static and no
statesman, however cunning, can safeguard against the ambition and corruption of others.
Recommended By:Steve Plummer
The final part of the trilogy about Cicero.
Road to Rouen
Ben Hatch
Synopsis: Ben Hatch is on the road again. Commissioned to write a guidebook about France
(despite not speaking any French) he sets off with visions of relaxing chateaux and
refined dining. Ten thousand miles later his family's been attacked by a donkey, had a
run-in with a death-cult and, after a near drowning and a calamitous wedding experience
involving a British spy, his own marriage is in jeopardy. A combination of obsessions
about mosquitoes, French gravel and vegetable theme parks mean it's a bumpy ride as
Ben takes a stand against tyrannical French pool attendants, finds himself running with the bulls in
Pamplona and almost starring in a snuff movie after a near fatal decision to climb into a millionaire's
Chevrolet Blazer. Funny and poignant, Road to Rouen asks important questions about life, marriage
and whether it's ever acceptable to tape baguette to your children's legs to smuggle lunch into
Disneyland Paris.
Recommended by
Elizabeth Grainger
After reading last year’s recommendation called Are We Nearly There Yet, I thought I would try Ben
Hatch’s follow up book called Road to Rouen. This time he takes his wife and young children on a
journey through France, very amusing in places, you can just picture the situations he describes.
The Girl on the Train
Paula Hawkins
Synopsis: Rachel catches the same commuter train every morning. She knows it will
wait at the same signal each time, overlooking a row of back gardens. She’s even started
to feel like she knows the people who live in one of the houses. ‘Jess and Jason’, she
calls them. Their life – as she sees it – is perfect. If only Rachel could be that happy. And
then she sees something shocking. It’s only a minute until the train moves on, but it’s
enough. Now everything’s changed. Now Rachel has a chance to become a part of the
lives she’s only watched from afar. Now they’ll see; she’s much more than just the girl on the train…
Recommended by
Sara Martinez
Reminiscent of ‘Gone Girl’ and ‘Before I go to Sleep’, this novel (soon to be a blockbuster by
DreamWorks) takes the concept of the unreliable narrator to the next level: the narrator’s an
alcoholic! With her personal and professional life a mess, the narrator takes us on her journey of
solving a murder that she has witnessed from a train carriage. A great summer read, this page-turner
will keep you guessing until the last chapter.
Elizabeth is Missing
Emma Healey
Synopsis: Maud is forgetful. She makes a cup of tea and doesn't remember to drink it.
She goes to the shops and forgets why she went. Sometimes her home is unrecognizable or her daughter Helen seems a total stranger. But there's one thing Maud is sure of: her
friend Elizabeth is missing. The note in her pocket tells her so. And no matter who tells
her to stop going on about it, to leave it alone, to shut up, Maud will get to the bottom of
it. Because somewhere in Maud's damaged mind lies the answer to an unsolved seventy-year-old
mystery. One everyone has forgotten about. Everyone, except Maud . . .
Recommended by
Sara Martinez
Told from the perspective of an elderly woman suffering from dementia, this novel is original and
touching in the way that it is narrated. Reminding me of my own dear grandmother’s experience with
memory loss, the text sensitively positions us to feel empathy for those individuals in society who suffer
from this condition. The parallel narrative of the narrator’s sister’s disappearance in the 1940s in
cleverly interwoven into the present-day storyline of attempting to solve the mystery surrounding why
the narrator’s friend, Elizabeth, is missing (a tough job when you can’t rely on your memory!).
Overall, the novel is an incredibly moving and engaging read.
The Wolf of the Plains
Conn Iggulden
Synopsis: This is the first book in the bestselling Conqueror series featuring Genghis
Khan and his descendants. Temujin, the second son of the khan of the Wolves tribe, was
only eleven when his father died in an ambush. His family were thrown out of the tribe and
left alone, without food or shelter, to starve to death on the harsh Mongolian plains. It was a
rough introduction to his life, to a sudden adult world, but Temujin survived, learning to
combat natural and human threats. A man, a small family, without a tribe was always at risk but he
gathered other outsiders to him, creating a new tribal identity. It was during some of his worst times
that the image of uniting the warring tribes and bringing the silver people together came to him. He will
become the khan of the sea of grass, Genghis.
Recommended By:Richard Warden
This novel is the first in a series of historical novels and is very readable. It gives a chilling
understanding of the life of Genghis Khan and his successors in the 13 th century, as he establishes the
Mongol nation and battles with the Chin Dynasty. The books enable us to comprehend the brutality
that has existed in history, as well as helping us to empathise with the dilemmas of leadership and
human survival in the harshest conditions. Having read the first book in the series, I was hooked on the
rest, even though they are necessarily bloodthirsty in parts. Beware!A history website says this:
‘Between 1206 and his death in 1227, the Mongol leader Genghis Khan conquered nearly 12 million
square miles of territory—more than any individual in history. Along the way, he cut a ruthless path
through Asia and Europe but he also modernised Mongolian culture, embraced religious freedom and
helped open contact between East and West.
The Churchill Factor
Boris Johnson
Synopsis: ‘The point of the Churchill Factor is that one man can make all the
difference. 'On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of Winston Churchill's death, and
written in conjunction with the Churchill Estate, Boris Johnson explores what makes up
the 'Churchill Factor' - the singular brilliance of one of the most important leaders of the
twentieth century. Taking on the myths and misconceptions along with the outsized
reality, he portrays - with characteristic wit and passion - a man of multiple contradictions, contagious
bravery, breath-taking eloquence, matchless strategizing, and deep humanity. Fearless on the
battlefield, Churchill had to be ordered by the King to stay out of action on D-Day; he embraced largescale strategic bombing, yet hated the destruction of war and scorned politicians who had not
experienced its horrors. He was a celebrated journalist, a great orator and won the Nobel Prize for
Literature. He was famous for his ability to combine wining and dining with many late nights of crucial
wartime decision-making. His open-mindedness made him a pioneer in health care, education, and
social welfare, though he remained incorrigibly politically incorrect. Most of all, as Boris Johnson says,
'Churchill is the resounding human rebuttal to all who think history is the story of vast and impersonal
economic forces'. The Churchill Factor is a book to be enjoyed not only by anyone interested in
history: it is essential reading for anyone who wants to know what makes a great leader.
Recommended by
Adam Morton
A fascinating and wonderfully readable book which, without shying away from his blunders, powerfully
argues the case for Churchill‘s status as a truly great statesman. Whatever you may think of Boris, the
man can write.
The Invention of Wings
Sue Monk Kidd
Synopsis: Sarah Grimké is the middle daughter. The one her mother calls difficult and
her father calls remarkable. On Sarah's eleventh birthday, Hetty 'Handful' Grimké is taken
from the slave quarters she shares with her mother, wrapped in lavender ribbons, and
presented to Sarah as a gift. Sarah knows what she does next will unleash a world of trouble.
She also knows that she cannot accept. And so, indeed, the trouble begins ... A powerful,
sweeping novel, inspired by real events, and set in the American Deep South in the
nineteenth century, The Invention Of Wings evokes a world of shocking contrasts, of beauty and
ugliness, of righteous people living daily with cruelty they fail to recognise; and celebrates the power
of friendship.
Recommended By:Elizabeth Grainger
I have an interest in books about the American Deep South and Slavery and this book based on
historical fact about two abolitionist sisters did not disappoint me. On her eleventh birthday Sarah
became a mistress, of a slave who was given to her as a birthday present. Given her firm anti- slavery
views, it is interesting to see what unfolds.
Severed- A History of Heads Lost and Heads Found
Frances Larson
Synopsis: Our history is littered with heads. Over the centuries, they have decorated
our churches, festooned our city walls and filled our museums; they have been props for
artists and specimens for laboratory scientists, trophies for soldiers and items of barter.
Today, as videos of decapitations circulate online and cryonicists promise that our heads
may one day live on without our bodies, the severed head is as contentious and
compelling as ever. From shrunken heads to trophies of war; from memento mori to Damien Hirst's
With Dead Head; from grave-robbing phrenologists to enterprising scientists, Larson explores the
bizarre, often gruesome and confounding history of the severed head. Its story is our story.
Recommended By:Jane Sweeney
It is a very interesting and thought provoking read.
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
Laurie Lee
Synopsis: As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is a beautiful and moving followup to Laurie Lee's acclaimed Cider with Rosie
Abandoning the Cotswolds village that raised him, the young Laurie Lee walks to London.
There he makes a living labouring and playing the violin. But, deciding to travel further
afield and knowing only the Spanish phrase for 'Will you please give me a glass of water?', he heads
for Spain. With just a blanket to sleep under and his trusty violin, he spends a year crossing Spain, from
Vigo in the north to the southern coast. Only the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War puts an end to his
extraordinary peregrinations . . .Laurie Lee has written some of the best-loved travel books in the
English language. Born in Stroud, Gloucestershire, in 1914, he was educated at Slad village school and
Stroud Central School. At the age of nineteen he walked to London and then travelled on foot through
Spain, where he was trapped by the outbreak of the Civil War. He later returned by crossing the
Pyrenees, as he recounted in A Moment of War. In 1950 he married Catherine Polge and they had one
daughter.
Recommended By:Richard Searby
This work is autobiographical, charting Lee’s departure as a 19 year old from his family home in
Gloucestershire in 1934. He was off on that most romantic but often hard of journeys – to make his
fortune. Initially Lee heads to London (via Southampton as he had never seen the sea!). He works
briefly on a building site but leaves soon after for Spain. With only a small bindle and his violin on his
back he lands on the Basque coast and then walks the length of the country, ending up on the
Andalucian coast near Malaga. The story charts his many adventures on the way, including being
attacked by a pack of wild dogs as he sleeps rough on a mountainside, encounters with various dodgy
characters and his rescue by the British Royal Navy after civil war breaks out in 1936. Lee keeps body
and soul together by playing his fiddle in streets and marketplaces, and it proves also to be a way to
meet so many of the local people and to make some fleeting friendships.
Although this is a novel it is highly poetic in style, a lyrical and lucid picture of a beauty and violence
of Spain in the 1930s. Later Lee returned to Spain to fight on the side of the Republicans in the civil
war, and this experience is captured in ‘A Moment of War’. George Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’ ,
which describes that author’s time fighting against Franco’s fascist forces as a mercenary, is worth
reading alongside Lee’s works as so much of Spanish life at this time is then set in its context.
Ghettoside
Jill Leovy
Synopsis: On a warm spring evening in South Los Angeles, a young man is shot and
killed on a sidewalk minutes away from his home, one of the thousands of black Americans
murdered that year. His assailant runs down the street, jumps into an SUV, and vanishes,
hoping to join the scores of killers in American cities who are never arrested for their
crimes. But as soon as the case is assigned to Detective John Skaggs, the odds shift.
Here is the kaleidoscopic story of the quintessential, but mostly ignored, American
murder—a “ghettoside” killing, one young black man slaying another—and a brilliant and driven cadre
of detectives whose creed is to pursue justice for forgotten victims at all costs. Ghettoside is a fastpaced narrative of a devastating crime, an intimate portrait of detectives and a community bonded in
tragedy, and a surprising new lens into the great subject of why murder happens in our cities—and how
the epidemic of killings might yet be stopped.
Recommended By:Alex Frazer
It’s a factual account of a homicide investigation in Los Angeles and an exploration of why young
black men are disproportionately likely to be the victims of unsolved murders in the USA.
Picnic at Hanging Rock
Joan Lindsay
Synopsis: It was a cloudless summer day in the year nineteen hundred. Everyone at
Appleyard College for Young Ladies agreed it was just right for a picnic at Hanging Rock.
After lunch, a group of three of the girls climbed into the blaze of the afternoon sun,
pressing on through the scrub into the shadows of Hanging Rock. Further, higher, till at last
they disappeared. They never returned.
Recommended By:Elizabeth Grainger
Was this fact or fiction! Whatever you want to believe, although this story is actually fiction, you could
believe that it was a true account of a Picnic at Hanging Rock. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book.
An Intelligent Person's Guide to Education
Tony Little
Synopsis: Tony Little is The Head Master of Eton. One of the most progressive and
imaginative people in British education today he has hitherto kept a low profile. This
book, published to coincide with his retirement, sets out his educational fundamentals.
There is a crisis in the British education system. Year on year GCSE and A Level pupils
post better exam results, with more students achieving top grades. Yet business leaders
and employers complain bitterly that our schools are not producing people fit for
purpose. Far from being locked in an ivory tower, a bastion of privilege, Mr Little has used his time as
a teacher and headmaster to get to grips with fundamental questions concerning education. He wants to
produce people fit to work in the modern world. How do children absorb information? What kind of
people does society need? What is education for? Not only is the author one of the great reforming
headmasters of our time but he has planted Academies in the East end of London, founded a state
boarding school near Windsor and yet is a passionate advocate of single sex schools.
This book is not a text book for colleges of education - it is a book to enlighten the teaching profession
and just as much for anxious parents. The book is simply arranged under topics such as authority,
expectations, progress, self-confidence, sex, crises and creativity.
Tony Little thinks it is time to ask some fundamental questions, and to make brave decisions about how
we make our schools and our schoolchildren fit for purpose.
Recommended By:Lindsey Farrant
Calmly understated, yet often uncomfortably sharp and always perceptive, Little takes aim assessment
strait jackets, helicopter parenting and school’ cultural impoverishment. ’An intelligent person’ Guide
to Education’ is entertaining, humble and thought-provoking with a streak of common-sense and
humanity at its core.
H is for Hawk
Helen McDonald
Synopsis: As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning
the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died
and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own
goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to
Cambridge, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of
animals. H is for Hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during
the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming. This is a book about memory, nature
and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.
Recommended By:Katie Seecharan
I loved this book because it explores the relationship between people and birds and how that
relationship can be therapeutic for people going through difficult times in their lives. It is a beautiful
story for non- bird lovers and bird lovers alike.
Listen to the Moon
Michael Morpurgo
Synopsis: Alfie and his fisherman father find a girl on an uninhabited island in the
Scillies – injured, thirsty, lost… and with absolutely no memory of who she is, or how she
came to be there. She can say only one word: Lucy. Where has she come from? Is she a
mermaid, the victim of a German U-boat, or even – as some islanders suggest – a German
spy…? Only one thing is for sure: she loves music and moonlight, and it is when she
listens to the gramophone that the glimmers of the girl she once was begin to appear. WW1 is raging,
suspicion and fear are growing, and Alfie and Lucy are ever more under threat. But as we begin to see
the story of Merry, a girl boarding a great ship for a perilous journey across the ocean, another melody
enters the great symphony – and the music begins to resolve… A beautiful tour de force of family,
love, war and forgiveness, this is a major new novel from the author of Private Peaceful – in which
what was once lost may sometimes be found, washed up again on the shore…
Reecommended By:Kate Thompson
I’ve just read Listen to the moon by Michael Morpurgo. Of course it is a children’s book, but it is over
400 pages so presumably aimed at older teenagers. It tells the story of a girl who survives the sinking
of the ‘Lusitania’ in 1915 and who is subsequently rescued by a German Uboat crew who leave her on
one of the Scilly Islands. Unfortunately, the island is uninhabited but she is finally rescued and housed
by a local family. The trauma robs her of her voice, which only returns right at the end of the book. I
thought it was a gripping story and certainly adults will enjoy it.
Song of Solomon
Toni Morrison
Synopsis: Song of Solomon is a work of outstanding beauty and power, whose
story covers the years from the 1930's to the 1960's in America. At its centre is Macon
Dead Jr, the son of a wealthy black property owner, who has been brought up to revere
the white world. Macon learns about the tyranny of white society from his friend Guitar,
though he is more concerned to escape the tyranny of his father. So while Guitar joins a
terrorist group of poor blacks, Macon goes home to the South, lured by tales of buried
family treasure. His journey leads to the discovery of something more valuable than gold, his past. Yet
the truth about his origins and his true self is not fully revealed to Macon until he and Guitar meet once
again in powerful, and deadly confrontation.
Beloved
Toni Morrison
Synopsis: It is the mid-1800s and as slavery looks to be coming to an end, Sethe is
haunted by the violent trauma it wrought on her former enslaved life at Sweet Home,
Kentucky. Her dead baby daughter, whose tombstone bears the single word, Beloved,
returns as a spectre to punish her mother, but also to elicit her love. Told with heartstopping clarity, melding horror and beauty, Beloved is Toni Morrison’s enduring
masterpiece.
Recommended By:Sujata Biswas
Both books are an intriguing insight in to black American culture, both past and present. They include
references to historical fact, interwoven with the suspense of fictional writing.
Kafka on The Shore
Haruki Murakami
Synopsis: Kafka Tamura runs away from home at fifteen, under the shadow of his
father's dark rophesy. The aging Nakata, tracker of lost cats, who never recovered
from a bizarre childhood affliction, finds his pleasantly simplified life suddenly turned
upside down. As their parallel odysseys unravel, cats converse with people; fish
tumble from the sky; a ghost-like pimp deploys a Hegel-spouting girl of the night; a
forest harbours soldiers apparently un-aged since World War II. There is a savage
killing, but the identity of both victim and killer is a riddle - one of many which combine to create an
elegant and dreamlike masterpiece.
Recommended By:Will Hughes-Caley
Murakami’s descriptions of the surroundings and the event really help to weave a realistic image and I
got absorbed into the book.
The Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami
Synopsis: Tsukuru Tazaki had four best friends at school. By chance all of their
names contained a colour. The two boys were called Akamatsu, meaning ‘red pine’, and
Oumi, ‘blue sea’, while the girls’ names were Shirane, ‘white root’, and Kurono, ‘black
field’. Tazaki was the only last name with no colour in it. One day Tsukuru Tazaki’s
friends announced that they didn't want to see him, or talk to him, ever again. Since that
day Tsukuru has been floating through life, unable to form intimate connections with anyone. But then
he meets Sara, who tells him that the time has come to find out what happened all those years ago.
Recommended By:Sara Martinez
This is typical Murakami: weird and wonderful and hugely engaging. The plot centres around Tsukuru
who must re-visit difficult memories from the past to try and find peace with why his tightly-knit
friendship group in high-school callously rejected him without warning in early adulthood. The
emotional and psychological scars from being ostracised from the friends he loved so dearly shape
Tsukur’s troubled identity later in life. He is unable to form meaningful relationships and struggles
largely with the idea of ‘living’. When a love-interest Sara (great name for a character!), forces him to
deal with his inner demons, Tsukuru takes us on a pilgrimage when he must confront painful ghosts
form the past.
The Rain Tree
Mirabel Osler
Synopsis: A host of vividly caught characters are here: Mirabel's extrovert, freespirited mother Phyllis; Aylmer Vallance, who with extraordinary love letters would
rescue her mother from a twilight life; Stella Bowen, Phyllis's lifelong friend and fellow
student under Ezra Pound, their introduction to the London literati, notably Ford Madox
Ford. Throughout Mirabel's childhood, it was Stella who would be the one fast colour
amid her mercurial mother's love affairs. Turning closer to the present - to new friendships, the paring
away of previous assumptions and conventions and the serendipities of chance acquaintance - we
encounter Michael, Mirabel's late husband, who's barbaric public-school childhood contrasted so
dramatically with Mirabel's own, affectionate and carefree; whose repressed father so adored roses;
their childhood meeting; their delight in their children and beloved Shropshire garden, a character in its
own right, full of the joy of the unexpected.
Recommended By:Debbie Sharpe-Thurgood
I love the language and poetry in this book.
Death By Video Game
Simon Parkin
Synopsis: “Whether it's Space Invaders, Candy Crush Saga or Grand Theft Auto, video
games draw us in and don't let go. In Taiwan, a spate of deaths at gaming cafés is raising a
question: why is it that some of us are playing games beyond the limits of our physical
wellbeing? Death by Video Game uncovers the real stories behind our video game
obsession. Along the way, award-winning journalist Simon Parkin meets the players and
game developers at the frontline of virtual extremism, including the New York surgeon attempting to
break the Donkey Kong world record; The Minecraft player three years into an epic journey towards
the edge of the game's vast virtual world and the German hacker who risked prison to discover the
secrets behind Half-Life 2. Investigating the impact of video games on our lives, Death by Video
Game will change the way we think about our virtual playgrounds.”
Recommended By
Callum Watterstone
Don’t let the clickbait title fool you. This book offers a fascinating insight into how people interact with
videogames which will be of interest to both avid gamers and complete technophobes. As the medium
has developed the word game seems less and less appropriate considering what can be accomplished
in it.
(Un)arranged Marriage
Bali Rai
Synopsis: Manny Wants To Be A Footballer. Or A Pop Star. Or Write A Bestseller.
He Doesn't Want To Get Married... 'Harry and Ranjit were waiting for me - waiting to
take me to Derby, to a wedding. My wedding. A wedding that I hadn't asked for, that I
didn't want. To a girl who I didn't know... If they had bothered to open their eyes, they
would have seen me: seventeen, angry, upset but determined - determined to do my own thing, to
choose my own path in life...' Set partly in the UK and partly in the Punjab region of India, this is a
fresh, bitingly perceptive and totally up-to-the-minute look at one young man's fight to free himself
from family expectations and to be himself, free to dance to his own tune.
Recommended By
Tricia Newsome
This book raises the subject of an arranged marriage for an ordinary boy, of Indian origin, growing up
in England. The language is common and very accessible but accented. The story draws you in and
shocks, saddens and makes you laugh. This is still an issue for many young people and helps us
outsiders to understand the clichés and debates about arranged marriage. Hope others will enjoy it
too.
Stalin’s General
Geoffrey Roberts
Synopsis: Marshal Georgy Zhukov is one of military history's legendary names. He
played a decisive role in the battles of Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk that brought
down the Nazi regime. He was the first of the Allied generals to enter Berlin and it was
he who took the German surrender. He led the huge victory parade in Red Square,
riding a white horse, and in doing so, dangerously provoking Stalin's envy. His postwar career was equally eventful - Zhukov found himself sacked and banished twice,
and wrongfully accused of disloyalty. However, he remains one of the most decorated
officers in the history of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Since his death in 1974, Zhukov has
increasingly been seen as the indispensable military leader of the Second World War, surpassing
Eisenhower, Patton, Montgomery and MacArthur in his military brilliance and ferocity. Making use of
hundreds of documents from Russian military archives, as well as unpublished versions of Zhukov's
memoirs, Geoffrey Roberts fashions a remarkably intimate portrait of a man whose personality was as
fascinating as it was contradictory. Tough, decisive, strong-willed and brutal as a soldier, in his private
life he was charming and gentle. Zhukov's relations with Stalin's other generals were often prickly and
fraught with rivalry, but he was the only one among them to stand up to the Soviet dictator. Piercing
the hyperbole of the Zhukov personality cult, Roberts debunks many of the myths that have sprung up
around Zhukov's life, to deliver fresh insights into the marshal's relations with Stalin, Khrushchev and
Eisenhower. A highly regarded historian of Soviet Russia, Roberts has fashioned the definitive
biography of this seminal 20th-century figure.
Recommended by
Andrew Homer
An excellent read about one of WW2’s finest military tacticians. Fell out somewhat with Uncle Joe…as
did many others.
Santaram
Gregory David Roberts
Synopsis: A novel of high adventure, great storytelling and moral purpose, based on
an extraordinary true story of eight years in the Bombay underworld. In the early 80s,
Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian
prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health
clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier.
He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over
in an Indian jail. Then, in case anyone thought he was slacking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with
the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan . . . Amazingly, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after prison
guards trashed the first two versions. It's a profound tribute to his willpower . . .
Recommended by
Gavin Saint
I read Shantaram in Tamil Nadu by Gregory David Roberts. It his own account about escaping prison,
living in Bombay's slums, acting in Bollywood, being part of the Bombay underworld, fighting for the
Mujahedeen and writing this book in an Indian prison. Unbelievably it is based on his own true story.
Season of Migration to the North
Taveb Salih
Synopsis: When a young man returns to his village in the Sudan after many years of
studying in the Europe, he finds that among the familiar faces there is now a stranger- the
enigmatic Mustafa Sa’eed. As the two become friends Mustafa tells the young man the
disturbing story of his own life in London after the First World War. Lionized by society
and desired by women as an exotic novelty, Mustafa was driven to take brutal revenge on
the decadent west, and was in turn destroyed by it. Now the terrible legacy of his actions
has now come to haunt the small village at the bend in the Nile. The story of a man undone by a culture
that in part created him Season of Migration to the North is a powerful and evocative examination of
Colonisation in two vastly different worlds.
Recommended by
Andrew Homer
An accurate telling of the internal conflicts faced by Sudanese migrants returning to their motherland.
Riotous Assembly
Tom Sharpe
Synopsis: When Miss Hazelstone of Jacaranda Park kills her Zulu cook in a sensational
crime passionel, the gallant members of the South African police force are soon on the
scene: Kommandant van Heerden, whose secret longing for the heart of an English
gentleman leads to the most memorable transplant operation yet recorded; Luitenant
Verkramp of the Security Branch, ever active in the pursuit of Communist cells; Konstabel
Els, with his propensity for shooting first and not thinking later - and also for forcing
himself upon African women in a manner legally reserved for male members of their own race.
In the course of the strange events which follow, we encounter some very esoteric perversions when
the Kommandant is held captive in Miss Hazelstone's remarkable rubber room; and some even more
amazing perversions of justice when Miss Hazelstone's brother, the Bishop of Barotseland, is sentenced
to be hanged on the ancient gallows in the local prison. Not a 'political' novel in any previously
imagined sense, Riotous Assembly provided a completely fresh approach to the South African scene an approach startling in its deadpan savagery and yet also outrageously funny.
Recommended by
Andrew Homer
Hilarious, and so true of apartheid-era South Africa. Led to the author being deported. Reminded me
so much of the Afrikaaners who had (almost unbelievably) migrated to Kenya in the period
immediately after Kenyan independence from the UK in 1963.
We need to talk about Kevin
Lionel Shriver
Synopsis: Eva never really wanted to be a mother; certainly not the mother of the
unlovable boy who murdered seven of his fellow high school students, a cafeteria worker
and a teacher who tried to befriend him. Now, two years later, it is time for her to come to
terms with marriage, career, family, parenthood and Kevin's horrific rampage in a series of
startlingly direct correspondences with her absent husband, Franklyn. Uneasy with the sacrifices and
social demotion of motherhood from the start, Eva fears that her alarming dislike for her own son may
be responsible for driving him so nihilistically off the rails.
Recommended By:Angela Hedger
It is about a fictional school massacre and is written from the perspective of the killer's mother, Eva
Khatchadourian, and documents her attempt to come to terms with her son Kevin and the murders he
committed.
The Jungle
Upton Sinclair
S ynopsis: Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, is a work of fiction describing the lives of
immigrants working in Chicago's meatpacking industry.
Recommended by
Andrew Homer
The meat-packing trade in the early 20th century in Chicago. Brutal and brilliant.
A Light Between Oceans
M.L.Stedman
S ynopsis A boat washes up on the shore of a remote lighthouse keeper's island. It holds a
dead man - and a crying baby. The only two islanders, Tom and his wife Izzy, are about to
make a devastating decision. They break the rules and follow their hearts. What happens
next will break yours
.
Recommended by
Stephanie Isaacs
M. L. Stedman’s mesmerizing, beautifully written novel seduces us into accommodating Isabel’s
decision to keep this “gift from God,” a baby they discover alive in a boat that has washed up against
the lighthouse Isabel and her husband live in. We are swept into a story about extraordinarily
compelling characters seeking to find their North Star in a world where there is no right answer, where
justice for one person is another’s tragic loss. A wonderful novel!
Once There Was a War
John Steinbeck
S ynopsis: A collection of some of the finest correspondence from the Second World
War, courtesy of one of America's most distinguished authors, the Penguin Modern
Classics edition of John Steinbeck's Once There Was a War includes the author's original
introduction. 'Do you know it, do you remember it, the drives, the attitudes, the terrors and,
yes, the joys?' Thus Steinbeck introduces his collection of poignant and hard-hitting
dispatches for the New York Herald Tribune when the Second World War was at its height.
He begins in England, recounting the courage of the bomber crews, the tragic air-raids and the
strangeness of the British, before being sent to Africa and joining a special operations unit off the coast
of Italy. Eating, drinking talking and fighting alongside the soldiers, Steinbeck's empathy for the
common man is always in evidence in these pieces, and he never fails to evoke the human side of an
inhuman war.
Recommended by
Andrew Homer
A brilliant war correspondent’s diary by one of the greatest of 20th century American writers. Never
mind the F Scott Fitzgerald rubbish studied in schools. Try any of Steinbeck’s work.
A Spool of Blue Thread
Anne Tyler
S ynopsis: ‘It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…’
This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love
that summer’s day in 1959. The whole family on the porch, half-listening as their mother
tells the same tale they have heard so many times before. From that porch we spool back
through the generations, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to
define the family. From Red’s father and mother, newly arrived in Baltimore in the 1920s, to Abby and
Red’s grandchildren carrying the family legacy boisterously into the twenty-first century – four
generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore
house that has always been their home…
Recommended By:Daniel Bingham
An absorbing and often irrepressibly comic portrait of a family across several generations. Tyler
makes the ordinary extraordinary. A streak of melancholy runs through much of her work. Tyler is
arguably America’s greatest living writer and this is one of her very finest.
The House in France
Gully Wells
Synopsis: In 2009, six years after her mother's death, Gully Wells returns to La
Migoua, the house in Provence which belonged to her mother - the glamorous, funny,
unpredictable and furiously rude American journalist, Dee Wells. Surrounded by the
clutter of decades, Gully is taken back to her childhood, to her mother, her adored
stepfather - the celebrated, brilliant, womanising Oxford philosopher, A. J. Ayer - and to
the rich, sensual memories that the house evokes. Gully's beautiful, rebellious mother Dee fled Boston
when she was seventeen to join the Canadian Army, where she became a Sergeant Major. She married,
had Gully, divorced and moved to London where she would meet, and fall madly in love with, the icon
of logical positivism, Ayer, who she would later persuade to marry her. There they lived in an
extraordinary, liberated and intellectual world, with friends and acquaintances including Bobby
Kennedy, Mary Quant, Iris Murdoch, Jonathan Miller, George Melly and Bertrand Russell. In the
turbulent and vibrant milieu of sixties London, Gully develops from a cautious only child to a studious
teenager. She has a childhood infatuation with the aristocratic homosexual Michael Pitt-Rivers, loses
her virginity to a Provençal hairdresser and wins a scholarship to St Hilda's at Oxford, where she
blossoms, studies French history under Theodore Zeldin, and falls in love with fellow student, Martin
Amis. But as the affair ends, Gully moves on, explores love and travel, eventually settling down in
New York. La Migoua, perched on a hill above Bandol, halfway between Toulon and Marseilles, is
inextricably woven into Gully's existence. Unsentimental and gloriously witty, The House in France is
a vivid and moving love letter to a beloved mother, and a celebration of family, of growing up and of
the spirit of a cherished house.
Recommended By:Debbie Sharpe-Thurgood
This book completely transports you to other lands. You can almost smell the smells and taste the
tastes. I love the language and poetry in this book.
Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal?
Jeanette Winterson
Synopsis: In 1985 Jeanette Winterson's first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit,
was published. It was Jeanette's version of the story of a terraced house in Accrington, an
adopted child, and the thwarted giantess Mrs Winterson. It was a cover story, a painful
past written over and repainted. It was a story of survival. This book is that story's the
silent twin. It is full of hurt and humour and a fierce love of life. It is about the pursuit of
happiness, about lessons in love, the search for a mother and a journey into madness and out again. It is
generous, honest and true.
Recommended By:Debbie Sharpe-Thurgood
The Easter Parade
Richard Yates
Synopsis: Even as little girls, Sarah and Emily are very different from each other.
Emily looks up to her wiser and more stable older sister and is jealous of her relationship
with their absent father, and later her seemingly golden marriage. The path she chooses for
herself is less safe and conventional and her love affairs never really satisfy her. Although
the bond between them endures, gradually the distance between the two women grows,
until a tragic event throws their relationship into focus one last time.
Recommended By:Emily Kaplan
Set in mid-century New York, this well-paced and insightful novel explores the relationship between
two sisters - Laura and Emily. As quietly subversive as the better known Revolutionary Road, The
Easter Parade raises questions about marriage, motherhood and the role of the childless woman in
society. Its controlled yet powerful prose makes for a compelling and, ultimately, shocking read.
Thank you to all members of staff who contributed to this
reading list.
Season’s Greetings To You All
Mrs Elizabeth A. Grainger, Librarian, Piper Library