The Royal Readers Book Club
ISBN: 9781409184607
ISBN: 9780241529720
The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust's Bell Library and Knowledge Hub has launched its first book club and we are called the Royal Readers Book Club.
We would like to invite anyone who is already an avid reader and those who are just curious about what book worms talk about (you may be surprised!) to join our meetings.
During these unsettling times, we could all do with the kind of escapism that books can offer and we aim for these get togethers to be very relaxed and enjoyable. The details of our next meeting are as follows:
VENUE: Via MS Teams
DATE: Wednesday 14th June 2023
TIME: 7pm.
This month's title choice is either/or both The Mothers by Sarah J Naughton or Why has nobody told me this before? by Dr Julie Smith.
If you are interested in joining us please email the Bell Library & Knowledge Hub at rwh-tr.belllibrary@nhs.net and we will send out the MS Teams invitation.
We have purchased some new fiction books for you to enjoy so check out what is now available New Fiction Books December 2021
Recommendations by Royal Readers members
ISBN: 9781529019292
ISBN: 9781784161194
ISBN: 9781399703994
ISBN: 9781447256236There are a set of books in this series - all very easy reading.
ISBN: 9780008297190
The Bullet That Missed by ISBN: 9780593632666Publication Date: 2022-09-27INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER A new mystery is afoot in the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series from million-copy bestselling author Richard Osman. "The quartet of aging amateur sleuths...remain wonderful company," --the New York Times Book Review "The Bullet That Missed hits on every front." --the Wall Street Journal It is an ordinary Thursday, and things should finally be returning to normal. Except trouble is never far away where the Thursday Murder Club are concerned. A decade-old cold case--their favorite kind--leads them to a local news legend and a murder with no body and no answers. Then a new foe pays Elizabeth a visit. Her mission? Kill or be killed. Suddenly the cold case has become red hot. While Elizabeth wrestles with her conscience (and a gun), Joyce, Ron, and Ibrahim chase down the clues with help from old friends and new. But can the gang solve the mystery and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again? From an upmarket spa to a prison cell complete with espresso machine to a luxury penthouse high in the sky, this third adventure of the Thursday Murder Club is full of the cleverness, intrigue, and irresistible charm that readers have come to expect from Richard Osman's bestselling series.
The Reading Agency
At The Reading Agency we work every day towards a world where everyone is reading their way to a better life.
Find Out about the Winter Challenge
Book Review of Good Omens by Joshua Collins
To start the review, I feel it’s best to give some background on the book. Good Omens was released in May of 1990 and was a collaborative effort between Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. The book focuses on the last 11 days before Armageddon.
The book is a comedic if somewhat eccentric look into the argument on nature vs nurture. With several of the characters displaying different aspects of these traits. While making a wider point about the way people are raised and how they can change due to outside influences.
This however does not blunt the books wit if all your looking for is the more comedic side.
All in all the comedic anticks of its cast combined with a wonderfully wacky yet thoughtful take on the end of the world makes Good Omens a joy to read. It’s a credit to both Authors “strange” yet thought provoking styles.
New Fiction Books at the Bell Library
The Promise
Winner of the Booker Prize 2021
Over My Dead Body
The clock is ticking in this roller-coaster ride of a thriller....
In London, the Metropolitan Police set up a new Unsolved Murders Unit - a cold case squad - to catch the criminals nobody else can.
In Geneva, millionaire art collector Miles Faulkner - convicted of forgery and theft - was pronounced dead two months ago. So why is his unscrupulous lawyer still representing a dead client?
On a luxury liner en route to New York, the battle for power at the heart of a wealthy dynasty is about to turn to murder.
And at the heart of all three investigations are Detective Chief Inspector William Warwick, rising star of the Met, and ex-undercover operative Ross Hogan, brought in from the cold.
But can they catch the killers before it’s too late?
Magpie
Sometimes Marisa gets the fanciful notion that Kate has visited the house before. She makes herself at home without any self-consciousness. She puts her toothbrush right there in the master bathroom, on the shelf next to theirs.
In Jake, Marisa has found everything she’s ever wanted. Then their new lodger, Kate, arrives.
Something about Kate isn’t right. Is it the way she looks at Marisa’s boyfriend? Sits too close on the sofa? Constantly asks about the baby they are trying for? Or is it all just in Marisa’s head?
After all, that’s what her Jake keeps telling her, and she trusts him - doesn’t she?
But Marisa knows something is wrong. That the woman sleeping in their house will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
Marisa just doesn’t know why.
How far will she go to find the answer - and how much is she willing to lose?
Cloud Cuckoo Land
Coasting
Elise was spending a lot of time crying on buses. She had just graduated from university; had a shiny new flat, her first proper job and a budding relationship - and they were making her miserable. Sitting at work one day, she hit upon the obvious solution. Run 5,000 miles around the coast of Britain, carrying her kit on her back. Six months later Elise set off, with absolutely no ultra-running experience, unable to read a map and having never pitched a tent before. Over the 301 days that followed, she developed a debilitating fear of farmyard animals, cried on a lot of beaches and saw Britain at its most wild and wonderful. With heart and humour, Elise explores the thrill of taking risks and putting your trust in total strangers, and learns some home truths along the way.
Upcoming Dates
14th June 2023 - There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates loot on treasure island. Walt Disney
12th July 2023 - If you don't like to read, you haven't found the right book. J.K. Rowling
9th August 2023 - Wear the old coat & buy the new book. Austin Phelps
13th September 2023 - Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. Emilie Buchwald
11th October 2023 - Today a reader, tomorrow a leader. Margaret Fuller
8th November 2023 - Reading for me is spending time with a friend. Gary Paulsen
13th December 2023 - Never put off till tomorrow the book you can read today. Holbrook Jackson
Previous Books
These are books previously reviewed by the Royal Readers.
the promise
the trauma cleanerISBN: 9781925603897
The Girl with the Louding Voice by ISBN: 9781529359275Publication Date: 2020
Twisted Lies by
Her stomach lurches as she sits in the windowless room. He throws her phone to the ground, grinds it against the floor with the heel of his shoe and brings his face closer to hers. There was no turning back now, her life as she knew it was gone.
When Detective Kim Stone is called to a local business, what she sees leaves her speechless. The photo on the driving licence bears little resemblance to the man laid out before her, and she knows she’s up against the most twisted killer she has ever encountered.
But as she breaks the devastating news to the victim’s wife, Diane Phipps, Kim can’t help feeling that something isn’t quite right about the woman’s reaction.
ISBN: 9781838887353
Magpie Murders by
"Magpie Murders is a double puzzle for puzzle fans, who don't often get the classicism they want from contemporary thrillers." --Janet Maslin, The New York Times New York Times bestseller | Nominee for the Anthony Award for Best Novel | Nominee for the Barry Award for Best Novel | Winner of the Macavity Award for Best Novel | #1 Indie Next Pick | NPR best book of 2017 | Amazon best book of 2017 | Washington Post best book of 2017 | Esquire best book of 2017 From the New York Times bestselling author of Moriarty and Trigger Mortis, this fiendishly brilliant, riveting thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling, ingeniously original modern-day mystery. When editor Susan Ryeland is given the manuscript of Alan Conway's latest novel, she has no reason to think it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the bestselling crime writer for years, she's intimately familiar with his detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers, Alan's traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if she wants to keep her job. Conway's latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she's convinced that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder. Masterful, clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murders is a deviously dark take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the detective.
ISBN: 9780062645227Publication Date: 2017-06-06
Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by
Voted the UK's Favourite Nature Book The memoir that inspired Chris Packham's BBC documentary, Asperger's and Me Every minute was magical, every single thing it did was fascinating and everything it didn't do was equally wondrous, and to be sat there, with a Kestrel, a real live Kestrel, my own real live Kestrel on my wrist! I felt like I'd climbed through a hole in heaven's fence. An introverted, unusual young boy, isolated by his obsessions and a loner at school, Chris Packham only felt at ease in the fields and woods around his suburban home. But when he stole a young Kestrel from its nest, he was about to embark on a friendship that would teach him what it meant to love, and that would change him forever. In his rich, lyrical and emotionally exposing memoir, Chris brings to life his childhood in the 70s, from his bedroom bursting with fox skulls, birds' eggs and sweaty jam jars, to his feral adventures. But pervading his story is the search for freedom, meaning and acceptance in a world that didn't understand him. Beautifully wrought, this coming-of-age memoir will be unlike any you've ever read.
ISBN: 9781785033506Publication Date: 2017-07-01
Shine On by
Across thousands of years, people have described one of the most astonishing of all human phenomena: the near-death experience (NDE), the subjective experience of an Afterlife, a place where we apparently survive death. The more powerful the NDE, the more profound the after effects. The ambitious reset their priorities. Atheists change their values. Doctors rethink their beliefs. But what if the after effects of an NDE were undeniable? What if someone suddenly developed the ability to produce high quality paintings of their NDE, a new-found skill that went far beyond the artistic ability they had before? And what if that same person then suddenly acquired the ability to compose classical symphonies after their NDE? And their symphonies were then premiered at sell out orchestral concerts, even though, to this day, they are unable to read or write a single note of musical notation. Wouldn't this be proof that even a cynic would have a hard time explaining? After his NDE, this is exactly what happened to David. And this is his story.
ISBN: 9781789043655Publication Date: 2020-07-01
Midnight Library by scored 9/10 by the Royal Readers Book Group
the Appeal by ISBN: 9781788165303
The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry by
When Harold Fry nips out one morning to post a letter, leaving his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other.
He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking. To save someone else's life. Harold Fry is the most ordinary of men. He just might be a hero for us all.
ISBN: 9780552778091Publication Date: 2013-01-02
The Thursday Murder Club by ISBN: 9780241425442Publication Date: 03/09/2020scored 8/10 by the Royal Readers Book Group
A Year of Marvellous Ways by
*A Richard & Judy Bookclub Pick Spring 2016* A YEAR OF MARVELLOUS WAYS is the unforgettable and completely captivating new novel from Sarah Winman, author of the international bestseller WHEN GOD WAS A RABBIT and a Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller. Marvellous Ways is eighty-nine years old and has lived alone in a remote Cornish creek for nearly all her life. Lately she's taken to spending her days sitting on a mooring stone by the river with a telescope. She's waiting for something - she's not sure what, but she'll know it when she sees it. Drake is a young soldier left reeling by the Second World War. When his promise to fulfil a dying man's last wish sees him wash up in Marvellous' creek, broken in body and spirit, the old woman comes to his aid. A Year of Marvellous Ways is a glorious, life-affirming story about the magic in everyday life and the pull of the sea, the healing powers of storytelling and sloe gin, love and death and how we carry on when grief comes snapping at our heels.
ISBN: 9780755390939Publication Date: 2016-05-03
The Diary of a Bookseller by ISBN: 9781781258637
Klara and the sunISBN: 9780571364886
Starfish by
"Sepsis strikes up like a fire in the forest, kills quickly, switching off the lights of life in hours, tearing limb from limb, leaving a shaking and humiliated half of you alive to grin and bear it like a wounded animal." The true story of a couple whose love is tested to its limit after their perfect life falls apart in a single moment. When Tom puts his small daughter to bed one chilly December evening, he has everything he could ever want - the house of his dreams, the life of a writer, a beautiful wife and a second baby on the way. By the next morning all of this is in jeopardy as Tom succumbs to the devastating illness that is sepsis.This is the incredible story of a family coming to terms with a life-changing diagnosis while battling to hold their family and their marriage together.
ISBN: 9781786065124Publication Date: 2017-12-01
Ugly by ISBN: 9780340994658
ISBN: 9780747586203
ISBN: 9780141044170
ISBN: 9781786695253
Lessons by ISBN: 9780593468630Publication Date: 2023-08-08NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER
ISBN: 9781529176247
Good Omens by ISBN: 9780060853976Publication Date: 2007-08-07.
Bestsellers List
- Sunday Times Best SellersSunday Times Best Sellers List
Comments, Suggestions & Ideas
We would love to hear from you!
If you have any ideas or suggestions you would like to put forward about how the club is taking shape please leave your comments in the discussion box.