Our book group choice for March 2026 is TonyInterruptor by Nicola Barker. In a dimly lit Canterbury jazz club, trumpeter Sasha Keyes is deep in a fearless improvisational solo when the unthinkable happens: a middle-aged man stands up and politely asks, “Is this honest? Are we all being honest here?”
Our book group choice for February 2026 is The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald. Set in 1959 in the damp, windswept Suffolk coastal town of Hardborough, The Bookshop is a clinical, unsentimental examination of how a small, entrenched community reacts to an outsider’s modest ambition. The outsider is Florence Green, a middle-aged widow with a small inheritance and a quiet resolve.
Our book group choice for January 2026 is Exhalation by Ted Chiang. Exhalation is a collection of nine speculative fiction stories; rather than a single novel, this book functions as an anthology of distinct narratives, each exploring profound philosophical questions through the lens of science fiction and fantasy.
Our book group choice for December 2025 is Village Christmas by Laurie Lee. For many readers, Laurie Lee is synonymous with the sun-drenched, cider-hazed memories of the Slad Valley immortalised in his classic, Cider with Rosie. But if Cider with Rosie is the golden heat of high summer, Village Christmas is the crisp, woodsmoke-scented chill of midwinter.
Our book group choice for November 2025 is Poor Cow by Nell Dunn. Poor Cow offers a raw, unsentimental portrait of Joy, a working-class young woman struggling to survive in the impoverished corners of Swinging Sixties London. The narrative is told largely through Joy’s vibrant, ungrammatical, first-person voice, interspersed with third-person commentary and her badly-spelt letters from prison, giving the
Our book group choice for October 2025 is The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich. A work of historical fiction set in the 1950s, the narrative takes place on a Chippewa reservation in North Dakota and examines the political and personal ramifications of a proposed piece of legislation.
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Our book group choice for September 2025 is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. The novel is a seminal work of science fiction that delves into the complexities of gender, politics, and communication through the lens of a lone human envoy’s journey to a distant, icy planet.
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Our book group choice for July 2025 is I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. The book is a haunting and thought-provoking dystopian novel that explores themes of isolation, humanity, and the search for meaning in an absurd world.
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Our book group choice for June 2025 is Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. A passionate and bleak tale of love, revenge, and obsession set on the windswept Yorkshire moors, the story is primarily narrated by Nelly Dean, a housekeeper, and Lockwood, a bewildered tenant, who unravel the tragic history of the Earnshaw and Linton families.
Our book group choice for May 2025 is Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym. The book is a delightful dance around the lives of two very different women in post-war England. Jane Cleveland, a vicar’s widow in her late fifties, potters gently through her days, finding solace in Trollope novels and the comforting routines of village life. She’s a kind
