RWT Library & Knowledge Services: 'Royal Readers' Book Club

The Promise

Winner of the Booker Prize 2021

Magpie Murders

"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.

the trauma cleaner

The Girl with the Louding Voice

The Girl with the Louding Voice is a powerfully unforgettable story about an extraordinary 14-year-old Nigerian girl’s journey in finding her louding voice to use it to do better, do more. To fight for her choice for a future not only for herself but to help other girls in Nigeria who must obey their fathers and are defined by their marriages find their

Twisted Lies

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.

Fingers in the Sparkle Jar

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.

Shine On

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.

Midnight Library

This is the current title we are reading - why not have a go, read it and join us for the discussion on the 10th February?

The Appeal

In a town full of secrets...

Someone was murdered.

Someone went to prison.

And everyone's a suspect.

Can you uncover the truth?

Dear Listener - enclosed are all the documents you need to solve a case. It starts with the arrival of two mysterious newcomers to the small town of Lockwood and ends with a tragic death.

Someone has already been convicted of this brutal murder and is currently in prison, but we suspect they are innocent. What's more, we believe far darker secrets have yet to be revealed.

Throughout the Fairway Players' staging of All My Sons and the charity appeal for little Poppy Reswick's life-saving medical treatment, the murderer hid in plain sight. Yet we believe they gave themselves away. In writing. The evidence is all here, between the lines, waiting to be discovered.

Will you accept the challenge? Can you uncover the truth?

The standout debut thriller of 2021 that delivers multiple brilliant twists and will change the way you think about the modern crime novel.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage Of Harold Fry

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.

The Thursday Murder Club

A Year of Marvellous Ways

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. 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.

The Diary of a Bookseller

Love, Nina meets Black Books: a wry and hilarious account of life in Scotland's biggest second-hand bookshop and the band of eccentrics and book-obsessives who work there 'The Diary Of A Bookseller is warm (unlike Bythell's freezing-cold shop) and funny, and deserves to become one of those bestsellers that irritate him so much.' (Mail on Sunday) 'Utterly compelling and Bythell has a Bennett-like eye for the amusing eccentricities of ordinary people ... I urge you to buy this book and please, even at the risk of being insulted or moaned at, buy it from a real live bookseller.' (Charlotte Heathcote Sunday Express) Shaun Bythell owns The Bookshop, Wigtown - Scotland's largest second-hand bookshop. It contains 100,000 books, spread over a mile of shelving, with twisting corridors and roaring fires, and all set in a beautiful, rural town by the edge of the sea. A book-lover's paradise? Well, almost ... In these wry and hilarious diaries, Shaun provides an inside look at the trials and tribulations of life in the book trade, from struggles with eccentric customers to wrangles with his own staff, who include the ski-suit-wearing, bin-foraging Nicky. He takes us with him on buying trips to old estates and auction houses, recommends books (both lost classics and new discoveries), introduces us to the thrill of the unexpected find, and evokes the rhythms and charms of small-town life, always with a sharp and sympathetic eye.

Klara and the sun

Starfish

"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.

Ugly

Restless

Any Human Heart

The Weather Woman

Lessons

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER * From the best-selling author of Atonement and Saturday comes the epic and intimate story of one man's life across generations and historical upheavals. From the Suez Crisis to the Cuban Missile Crisis, the fall of the Berlin Wall to the current pandemic, Roland Baines sometimes rides with the tide of history, but more often struggles against it.   "Masterful.... McEwan is a storyteller at the peak of his powers.... One of the joys of the novel is the way it weaves history into Roland's biography.... The pleasure in reading this novel is letting it wash over you." --Associated Press When the world is still counting the cost of the Second World War and the Iron Curtain has closed, eleven-year-old Roland Baines's life is turned upside down. Two thousand miles from his mother's protective love, stranded at an unusual boarding school, his vulnerability attracts piano teacher Miss Miriam Cornell, leaving scars as well as a memory of love that will never fade. Now, when his wife vanishes, leaving him alone with his tiny son, Roland is forced to confront the reality of his restless existence. As the radiation from Chernobyl spreads across Europe, he begins a search for answers that looks deep into his family history and will last for the rest of his life. Haunted by lost opportunities, Roland seeks solace through every possible means--music, literature, friends, sex, politics, and, finally, love cut tragically short, then love ultimately redeemed. His journey raises important questions for us all. Can we take full charge of the course of our lives without causing damage to others? How do global events beyond our control shape our lives and our memories? And what can we really learn from the traumas of the past? Epic, mesmerizing, and deeply humane, Lessons is a chronicle for our times--a powerful meditation on history and humanity through the prism of one man's lifetime.

Good Omens

The classic collaboration from the internationally bestselling authors Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, now a Prime original series starring Michael Sheen and David Tennant. Season 2 of Good Omens coming soon! "Good Omens . . . is something like what would have happened if Thomas Pynchon, Tom Robbins and Don DeLillo had collaborated. Lots of literary inventiveness in the plotting and chunks of very good writing and characterization. It's a wow. It would make one hell of a movie. Or a heavenly one. Take your pick."--Washington Post According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon--both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle--are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist . . .

The Collected Regrets of Clover

The Lost Bookshop

The Familiars

The Second Child

The Mothers

FROM THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLING AUTHOR 'Dazzlingly inventive' Sunday Times, Crime Book of the Month 'A meticulously plotted exploration of friendship, foe-ship and the lies that bind, which builds to a gripping and powerful conclusion' Cara Hunter ********** FIVE WOMEN. They meet at their NCT Group. The only thing they have in common is they're all pregnant. FIVE SECRETS. Three years later, they are all good friends. Aren't they? ONE MISSING HUSBAND. Now the police have come knocking. Someone knows something. THE TROUBLE WITH SECRETS IS THAT SOMEONE ALWAYS TELLS... ********** 'The perfect dose of thrills and suspense, this will keep you engrossed to the very end' Heat 'Original and stylish... will keep you guessing to the last page' Sharon Bolton For fans of Big Little Lies, The Rumour and I Invited Her In, this is first class psychological suspense from the critically acclaimed Sarah J Naughton.

One hundred Years of Lenni and Margot