Group Organiser: Janice Hargreaves

Venue: Meetings are via Zoom

When: 4th Tuesday monthly at 3pm

The aim of the Group is to read a book a month and to discuss members' reactions to it. The Group will cover a wide variety of literature from new and classic fiction to biography and travel writing. Please contact the organiser if you wish to attend the group.

2026 Reading List

January  

Thursday Murder Club- Richard Osman

In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet up once a week to investigate unsolved murders. But when a brutal killing takes place on their very doorstep, the Thursday Murder Club find themselves in the middle of their first live case. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron might be pushing eighty, but they still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

 

February

The Glassmaker – Tracey Chevalier

Venice, 1486. Across the lagoon lies Murano. Time flows differently here – like the glass the island’s maestros spend their lives perfecting. In secret, Orsola Rosso learns to craft glass. As a woman, she must flout convention to save her family from ruin. We follow her through hundreds of years of war and plague, tragedy and triumph, love and loss..

 

March

A summer of Lies - Louise Douglas

As wildfires creep a devastating path towards the idyllic town of Morranez, a vulnerable girl goes missing. But was she taken - or was she escaping...The summer is the hottest yet in the Brittany coastal town of Morranez, but when a new case lands on the desk of the Toussaints detective agency, there can be no time to relax. As wildfires bear down on the town, the alert goes out for a missing girl.

 April

Annie Dunne – Sebastian Barry 

Annie Dunne and her cousin Sarah live and work on a small farm in a remote and beautiful part of Wicklow in late 1950s Ireland. All about them the old green roads are being tarred, cars are being purchased, a way of life is about to disappear. Like two old rooks, they hold to their hill in Kelsha, cherishing everything. When Annie's nephew and his wife are set to go to London to find work, their two small children, a little boy and his older sister, are brought down to spend the summer with their great-aunt

May

Cathy Rentzenbrink -Ordinary Time

Ann is a reluctant Vicar's wife. She tries her best, but her husband only has eyes for God, her son is asking questions she can't answer, and it is all too easy to displease the congregation.
When her brother needs her help, Ann travels from Cornwall up to London. There she meets Jamie, and a new world unexpectedly opens up. Ann knows what the older women of the parish would say - she's made her bed and now she has to lie in it. But once she has been led into temptation, it may prove impossible to resist

June

The giver of stars- Jojo Moyes

Alice Wright doesn't love her new American husband. Nor her domineering father-in-law or the judgmental townsfolk of Baileyville, Kentucky. Stifled and misunderstood, she yearns for escape and finds it in defiant Margery O'Hare and the sisterhood bringing books to the isolated and vulnerable. But when her father-in-law and the town turn against them, Alice fears the freedom, friendship and the new love she's found will be lost.

July

Two Caravans -Monica Lewycka

A field of strawberries in Kent...And sitting in it are two caravans - one for the men and one for the women. The residents are from all over: miner's son Andriy is from the old Ukraine, while sexy young Irina is from the new: they each other warily. There are the Poles, Tomasz and Yola; two Chinese girls; and Emauel from Malawi. They're all here to pick strawberries in England's green and pleasant land. But these days England's not so pleasant for immigrants. Not with Russian gangster-wannabes like Vulk, who's taken a shine to Irina and thinks kidnapping is a wooing strategy. And so Andriy - who really doesn't fancy Irina, honest - must set off in search of that girl he's not in love with.

August

Marlow Murder Club – Robert Thorogood

Seventy-seven-year-old Judith Potts is blissfully happy. She lives alone in a faded mansion in Marlow, sets crosswords for The Times, and there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink. One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. When the local police don’t believe her story, Judith and two unlikely friends decide to investigate for themselves. Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.

September

As I walked out one midsummer morning - Laurie Lee

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 

October

French Braid – Anne Tyler

All she wants is space and silence. No clutter. Not even their cat, Desmond.
But it turns out family life is impossible to escape - particularly when it's in your past. For Mercy it all begins in 1959, with a holiday to a cabin by a lake. It's the only one the Garretts will ever take, but its effects will ripple through the generations.

November

“Wild card” A recommendation from members of a book they have read during 2026.

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