Embedded Files
Summary of current Suggestions List
The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden Suggested by Kevin 27/07/2025
Held by Anne Michaels Suggested by Kevin 04/06/2025
Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout Suggested by Anne 01/07/2025
Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix Suggested by Kevin 26/04/2025
Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan Suggested by Kevin 26/02/2025
Details of each of these suggestions are listed further down this page ---->>
Voting for Suggestions
Voting for Suggestions
We read current fiction and non-fiction from nominations of British and International Prizes including the Golden Booker Prize and Best Sellers from the last 2 years of publication date in paperback.
The summary entered here on this site will be the one you will need to read out at the meeting, so best to keep it informative, with a good pitch, but not too long winded.
We vote on which one is selected, at the meeting, or by email prior to the meet if you cannot attend. Two choices per person across the list of suggestions. You cannot vote for the same book for both of your choices. Several passes of voting may be required to get a definitively agreed choice.
If your suggested book is selected for discussion you will be invited to be the Keynote Speaker on this book at the discussion meeting.
Suggestions are dropped from this list and moved to the Passed Over section of this website when they have been on this list for over 3 rounds of voting. In some circumstances, like a close vote, a book can remain on the list a little longer. Another reason for being moved to the Passed Over list is when they get zero (0) votes when being put forward.
Books which have been suggested but do not currently fit into our guidelines can be found on the Watch List page of this website.
Current Suggestion List
The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden
Current Suggestion List
The Safekeep by Yale van Dee Wouden
Suggested by Kevin 27/07/2025
WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE 2025
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE 2025
LONGLISTED FOR THE WINGATE PRIZE 2025
Paperback 12/06/2025
272 pages
Amazon 4.3 out of 5 stars £8.48 ++
Goodreads 4.1 out of 5 stars
Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, LGBT, Literary Fiction, Queer Historical Romance, Book Club, Lesbian
An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's Atonement.
It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict routine in her late mother's country home, with not a fork or a word out of place. But all is upended when her brother Louis delivers his graceless new girlfriend, Eva, at Isabel's doorstep - as a guest, there to stay for the season…
In the sweltering heat of summer, Isabel's desperate need for control reaches boiling point. What happens between the two women leads to a revelation which threatens to unravel all she has ever known.
'A thrilling, razor-sharp, perfectly plotted debut novel' Sunday Times
'Moving, unnerving and deeply sexy' Tracy Chevalier, bestselling author of GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING
'A brave and thrilling debut about facing up to the truth of history, and to one's own desires… Van der Wouden brings stunning power and control to her page-turner about trauma and repression' Justine Jordan, Booker Prize Judge 2024
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Held by Anne Michaels
WINNER OF THE GILLER PRIZE 2024
SHORTLISTED FOR THE BOOKER PRIZE 2024
**The international bestseller**
**A Guardian Book of the Year**
**Chosen as a book of the year by the independent.co.uk**
The triumphant new novel from the author of the Orange Prize-winning Fugitive Pieces: a soaring and luminous story of chance and change
Suggested by Kevin 04/06/2025
Pages 240
Amazon 3.6 / 5 Paperback £3.68+pp
Goodreads 3.52 / 5
1917. On a battlefield near the River Escaut, John lies in the aftermath of a blast, unable to move or feel his legs. Struggling to focus his thoughts, he is lost to memory - a chance encounter in a pub by a railway, a hot bath with his lover on a winter night, his childhood on a faraway coast - as the snow falls.
1920. John has returned from war to North Yorkshire, near another river - alive, but not still whole. Reunited with Helena, an artist, he reopens his photography business and endeavours to keep on living. But the past erupts insistently into the present, as ghosts begin to surface in his pictures: ghosts whose messages he cannot understand.
So begins a narrative that spans four generations, moments of connection and consequence igniting and re-igniting as the century unfolds. In luminous moments of desire, comprehension, longing, transcendence, the sparks fly upward, working their transformations decades later.
Held is a novel like no other, by a writer at the height of her powers: affecting and intensely beautiful, full of mystery, wisdom and compassion.
'Her prose is a thing of wonder' TELEGRAPH
'Michaels's writing continues to stand head and shoulders above most other fiction' OBSERVER
'Through luminous moments of chance, change, and even grace, Michaels shows us our humanity' MARGARET ATWOOD
'Michaels is exceptionally open to beauty' GUARDIAN
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Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout
From the Pulitzer Prize-winning,
Number One New York Times bestselling
author of Olive Kitteridge and My Name is Lucy Barton
Suggested by Anne 01/07/2025
Pages 304
Amazon 4.5 / 5 , £9.19+pp
Goodreads 4.12 / 5 Goodreads Choice Award
Olive, Again follows the blunt, contradictory yet deeply loveable Olive Kitteridge as she grows older, navigating the second half of her life as she comes to terms with the changes - sometimes welcome, sometimes not - in her own existence and in those around her.
Olive adjusts to her new life with her second husband, challenges her estranged son and his family to accept him, experiences loss and loneliness, witnesses the triumphs and heartbreaks of her friends and neighbours in the small coastal town of Crosby, Maine - and, finally, opens herself to new lessons about life.
'A terrific writer' Zadie Smith
'A superbly gifted storyteller and a craftswoman in a league of her own' Hilary Mantel
'A novel to treasure' Sunday Times
....
Small Boat by Vincent Delacroix
Shortlisted for the International Booker Prize 2025 Paperback – 31 March 2025
Mentioned by Kevin
Amazon 4.3 / 5, £10.21
Goodreads 3.92 / 5
160 pages
A novel about the bystander effect and an examination of our collective desensitisation in respect to everyday horrors.
In November 2021, an inflatable dinghy carrying migrants from France to the United Kingdom capsized in the Channel causing the death of 27 people on board. Despite receiving numerous calls for help, the French authorities wrongly told the migrants they were in British waters and had to call the British authorities for help. By the time rescue vessels arrived on the scene, all but two of the migrants had died.
The narrator of Delecroix’s fictional account of the events is the woman who took the calls. Accused of failing in her duty, she refuses to be held more responsible than others for this disaster. Why should she be more responsible than the sea, than the war, than the crises behind these tragedies?
A shocking, moral tale of our times, Small Boat reminds us of the power of fiction to illuminate our darkest crimes.
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Caledonian Road by Andrew O’Hagan
Suggested by Kevin 26/02/2025
656 pages
The Sunday Times bestseller
A BEST BOOK OF 2024 IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE SPECTATOR, TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT, INDEPENDENT, SCOTSMAN AND THE NEW YORKER
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORWELL PRIZE FOR POLITICAL FICTION
'Extraordinary.' MARINA HYDE
'Pitch-perfect.' OBSERVER
'An utter joy to read.' MONICA ALI
'Majestic.' INDEPENDENT
'A masterpiece.' JOHN LANCHESTER
'Addictively enjoyable.' GUARDIAN
'Sensational.' IRISH INDEPENDENT
He always knew: when his life came tumbling down, it would occur in public.
Campbell Flynn is fuelled by an appetite for wealth and admiration, controversy and novelty. An art historian and celebrity pundit, he has enjoyed a charmed career rubbing shoulders with oligarchs and aristocrats, fashion designers and fine artists, at ease with the highbrow and the mainstream.
Only now, the world is changing. Over the course of an incendiary year a web of secrets and crimes will be revealed, and Campbell Flynn may not be able to protect himself from the shattering exposure of all his privilege really involves.
Amazon £8.49 paperback 13/02/25 4.2/5 stars
Goodreads 3.87/5 stars
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