The Radio 2 Book Club has just announced the Autumn Season booklist! As well as coverage on Sara’s show, and other shows on Radio 2, there is a weekly podcast on BBC Sounds.
The Radio 2 Book Club’s weekly podcast will shine a light on some of the best new fiction being published in the UK, across all genres. The books are chosen with help from library staff and other reading experts from across the UK to ensure a fair and unbiased selection process.
As it always has done, the Radio 2 Book Club will champion new voices as well as featuring some of the most popular authors writing today, with a range of novels that listeners will love. Sara will also get an insight into the craft and writing process of the chosen authors and hear from listeners about what they have been reading and enjoying too.
We’re delighted to share the six books that will be featured in this season of the Radio 2 Book Club with Sara Cox:
The Murder at World’s End by Ross Montgomery
Secrets, murder and mayhem collide as this unlikely sleuthing duo – an under-butler and a foul-mouthed octogenarian – hunt a killer in a manor sealed against the end of the world.
Cornwall, 1910. On a remote tidal island, the Viscount of Tithe Hall is absorbed in feverish preparations for the apocalypse that he believes will accompany the passing of Halley’s Comet. The Hall must be sealed from top to bottom – every window, chimney and keyhole closed off before night falls. But what the pompous, dishonest Viscount has failed to take into account is the danger that lies within…By morning, he will be dead in his sealed study, murdered by his own ancestral crossbow.
All eyes turn to Stephen Pike, Tithe Hall’s newest under-butler. Fresh out of Borstal for a crime he didn’t commit, he is the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time. His unlikely ally? Miss Decima Stockingham, the foul-mouthed, sharp as a tack, 80-year-old family matriarch. Fearless and unconventional, she relishes chaos and puzzles alike, and a murder is just the thrill she’s been waiting for.
Together, this mismatched duo must navigate secret passages, buried grudges and rising terror to unmask the killer before it’s too late…
Reader comments
“This is a cracking story full of twists, turns, red headed herrings and a finale I did not see coming.”
“I enjoyed this one! It’s a good book club pick because it is accessible and engaging.”
" A great, crime romp! The characters were very well described and believable."
The Eleventh Hour by Salman Rushdie
If old age was thought of as an evening, ending in midnight oblivion, they were well into the eleventh hour.
Two quarrelsome old men in Chennai, India, experience private tragedy against the backdrop of national calamity. Revisiting the Bombay neighbourhood of Midnight’s Children, a magical musician is unhappily married to a multibillionaire. In an English university college, an undead academic asks a lonely student to avenge his former tormentor.
These five dazzling works of fiction move between the three countries that Salman Rushdie has called home – India, England and America – and explore what it means to approach the eleventh hour of life. They are the reckoning with mortality that we all must one day make, and speak deeply to what the author has come from and through.
Do we accommodate ourselves to death, or rail against it? How can we bid farewell to the places that we have made home? How do we achieve fulfilment with our lives if we don’t know the end of our own stories? The Eleventh Hour ponders life and death, legacy and identity with the penetrating insight and boundless imagination that have made Salman Rushdie one of the most celebrated writers of our time.
Reader comments
“This was an incredible read – my best read of the year so far. The writing was witty, engaging and erudite throughout.”
“An excellent collection of stories!”
“This is the first writing by Salman Rushdie that I have read and it will definitely not be the last. The writing is outstanding and I just felt totally caught up in his story-telling magic from page one!”
King Sorrow by Joe Hill
Bookish dreamer Arthur Oakes is a student at Rackham College, Maine, renowned for its frosty winters and beautiful buildings.
But his idyll – and burgeoning romance with Gwen Underfoot – is shattered when local drug dealers force him into a terrible crime: stealing rare and valuable books from the exceptional college library.
Trapped and desperate, Arthur turns to his closest friends for help: the wealthy, irrepressible Colin Wren; brave, beautiful Alison Shiner; the battling twins Donna and Donovan McBride; and brainy, bold Gwen. Together they dream up an impossible, fantastical scheme that they scarcely imagine will work: to summon the fabled dragon King Sorrow to kill those tormenting Arthur.
But the six stumble backwards into a deadly bargain – they soon learn they must choose a new sacrifice for King Sorrow each year or one of them will become his next victim. Unleashing consequences they can neither predict nor control, this promise will, over the course of four decades, shape and endanger their lives in ways they could never expect.
Reader comments
“I liked the realistic setting which slipped into fantasy/horror in a very believable way.”
“I was totally gripped from page one. A fantastic read and a really good story.”
“It’s a lot to read but I never found it hard to read or digest, it has a lot of magnetism. I’m impressed with the research and attention to detail.”
The Shapeshifter’s Daughter by Sally Magnusson
Nothing, on earth or below it, freezes faster than the worthless heart.
Before she was a hideous monster, the queen of the underworld was simply Hel. But cast as a girl out of lofty Asgard, realm of the gods, by Odin the Allfather, Hel’s fate as the terrible goddess of death is sealed. Half beauty, half crone, she has reigned for aeons in the starless darkness of Niflheim, grimly welcoming the most pitiful of death’s travellers to her ice-locked prison. Until one day a memory shifts, and she is forced to seek out the sun in Midgard, where humans have made their home.
Faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis, Helen Firth makes the impulsive decision to return to Orkney after forty years to make peace with her past. Under the wintering solstice sun, she reconnects with the ungainly but affable Thorfinn Coffin, who helps her address the real reason she has returned to the islands: to die.
As Helen draws closer to death and ever closer to Thorfinn, Hel in turn is intrigued by Helen. She, too, has a past to confront and a lesson to learn: that perhaps who she thinks she is isn’t who she is really meant to be.
Reader comments
“I truly loved this book. Its short, alternating chapters give the story a wonderful rhythm.”
“Using a wonderful twist on the ancient Norse Myth, the story intertwines modern day with ancient myth. Well written and engaging.”
“A really lovely memorable book that shouldn’t work but does.”
The Merge by Grace Walker
Once the process begins, there can be no going back, we will always be together…
Laurie is sixty-five and living with Alzheimer’s. Her daughter Amelia, a once fiery and strong-willed activist, can’t bear to see her mother’s mind fade. Faced with the reality of losing her forever, Amelia signs them up to take part in the world’s first experimental merging process for Alzheimer’s patients, in which Laurie’s ailing mind will be transferred into Amelia’s healthy body and their consciousness will be blended as one.
Soon Amelia and Laurie join the opaque and mysterious group of other merge participants: teenage Lucas, who plans to merge with his terminally ill brother Noah; Ben, who will merge with his pregnant fiancée Annie; and Jay, whose merging partner is his addict daughter Lara. As they prepare to move to The Village, a luxurious rehabilitation centre for those who have merged, they quickly begin to question whether everything is really as it seems.
Reader comments
“Thought provoking and a very good read!”
“Interesting premise and well written, great characterisation.”
“The writing is excellent and the book itself original and fresh and engaging. There is an absolute wealth of material to discuss and it would be an excellent choice for the Book Club.”
The White Octopus Hotel by Alexandra Bell
Journey to a magical hotel in the Swiss Alps, where two lost souls living in different centuries meet and discover that behind its many doors, they may just find a second chance.
‘Have you travelled a long way?’ she asked carefully. A smile twitched at the corner of his mouth. ‘Well, yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, you could say that. But it was worth the wait.’
London, 2015
When reclusive art appraiser Eve Shaw shakes the hand of a silver-haired gentleman in her London office, the warmth of his palm sends a spark through her.
His name is Max Everly – curiously, the same name as Eve’s favourite composer, born one hundred sixteen years prior. And she can’t shake the feeling that she’s held his hand before…but where, and when?
The White Octopus Hotel, 1935
Decades earlier, high in the snowy Swiss Alps, Eve and a young Max Everly wander the winding halls of the grand belle epoque White Octopus Hotel, lost in time.
Each of them has been through the trenches – Eve in a family accident and Max on the battlefields of the Great War – but for an impossible moment, love and healing are just a room away…if only they have the courage to step through the door.
Reader comments
“I really enjoyed this book, finding it captivating and intriguing.”
“This was beautiful – detailed, gripping and uplifting. It was engaging, romantic and soul fulfilling with a sweet, atmospheric storyline. I read it as slowly as possible to savour every page.”
“Beautifully written, atmospheric and magical, the story weaves across time and through many magical doors to follow the story of Eve and Max – bound together by love, music and magic. Great escapism.”
For all the latest Book Club content, including interviews with the authors, visit BBC Sounds. You can even subscribe, to make sure you never miss an episode!
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