Reading Group Sets

For too long, Africa's history has been neglected. Dominated by western narratives of slavery and colonialism, its past has been fragmented, overlooked and denied its rightful place in our global story. Now, Zeinab Badawi guides us through Africa's spectacular history, from the origins of humanit...

Anna Alcott is desperate to have a family. But as she balances her increasingly public life as an indie actress with a gruelling IVF regime, she starts to suspect that someone is making sure that never happens. Crucial medicines are lost. Appointments are moved without her knowledge. She's sure s...

Jasmine Yang thought her daughter was dead at birth. But five years after she was taken from her arms, she learns that her controlling husband sent the baby to America to be adopted, a casualty of China's one-child-policy. Fleeing her rural Chinese village, Jasmine arrives in New York City with n...

Lux has lost everything when Else finds her, alone in the woods. Her mother, her lover, her home - all burned. The world she inhabits is full of suspicion for women like her, neither maiden nor mother, especially since the sickness came. But Lux is smart; she knows how to blend into the backgroun...

Hayley swore when she got out of prison that she would turn her life around. But living on the Devil's Estate doesn't make that easy. She spends her days looking after her daughter, and her nights collecting cash from people who can't get loans any other way. But someone has just robbed her. And ...

On a balmy evening in late March, an oligarch's wife hosts a party on a superyacht moored in the Maldives. Tables cover the massive deck, adorned with orchids, champagne bottles, name cards of celebrities. Uniformed staff flank a red carpet on the landing dock. This is what Kata has wanted for a ...

Jessica Jackson has hit all the milestones for turning 30 - the career, the loving boyfriend and a cosy London flat they share with their cat. But a shock diagnosis of breast cancer turns Jess's world upside down, and her contented life implodes with it. Around her, her friends' lives continue to...

It has been many years since Dan Raglan served in the French Foreign Legion, but the bonds forged in adversity are unbreakable and when one of his comrades calls for help, Raglan is duty-bound to answer. An ex-legionnaire, now an intelligence officer at the Pentagon, disappears. He leaves only th...

Simon Serrailler finds himself in devastating new territory as a sophisticated drugs' network sets its sights on Lafferton and the surrounding villages.

Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown. A second chance at love brings her unexpected connection and belonging. The new relationship sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned ...

There's a serial killer on the loose. When bodies start washing up along the banks of the River Thames, DI Henley fears it is the work of Peter Olivier, the notorious Jigsaw Killer. But it can't be him; Olivier is already behind bars, and Henley was the one who put him there. The race is on befor...

When the world is still counting the cost of World War Two and the Iron Curtain descends, young Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. 2,000 miles from his mother's love, stranded at boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory o...

Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth Zott would be the first to point out that there is no such thing. But it's the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute take a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one: Calvin Evans; the lonely,...

The definitive history of the North of England as told through the lives of its inhabitants. It lays out the dramatic events that created the North - waves of migration, invasions and battles, and transformative changes wrought on European culture and the global economy.

Matt Rowland Hill grew up the son of a minister in an evangelical Christian church in south Wales and then south-east England. It was a childhood fraught with bitter family conflict, the ever-present threat of hell and damnation, and a burgeoning cycle of temptation, sin and shame. After a devast...

1926, and in a country still recovering from the Great War, London has become the focus for a delirious new nightlife. In the clubs of Soho, peers of the realm rub shoulders with starlets, foreign dignitaries with gangsters, and girls sell dances for a shilling a time. The notorious queen of this...

Lancashire 1895: Walter has no close family left until a distant cousin and her friend seek refuge with him. He has also asked the son who emigrated to America if one of his grandsons would return and become heir to his farm. However, when the young man turns up, all is not as it seems. Improveme...

Twins Jeanie and Julius have always been different from other people. At 51 years old, they still live with their mother, Dot, in rural isolation and poverty. Inside the walls of their old cottage they make music, and in the garden they grow (and sometimes kill) everything they need for sustenanc...

'American Dirt' explores the experience of attempting to illegally cross the US-Mexico border, a journey which thousands of migrants make each year. Yesterday, Lydia had a bookshop. Yesterday, Lydia was married to a journalist. Yesterday, she was with everyone she loved most in the world. Today, ...

A daughter of the Windrush generation, Janice grew up in a family struggling to bridge thousands of miles of separation. Her parents worked hard to build a new life in Britain. Then, aged just 15, angry and alienated Janice ran away. Groomed to work as a shoplifter in London's West End, Janice en...