Silversurfers Book Club Autumn 2022
Welcome to the Silversurfers Book Club!
Each season we share a selection of popular book titles and new releases which you may like to read as part of our Silversurfers Book Club.
How and when you read is up to you; you can choose to read them on a tablet or an actual paperback, and you can read them in your own time.
When you’ve finished reading, join us in the comments section below this post and write a review of the book and share your feedback with others who have read along too.
To get you started, below are some suggested titles to kick off the new Autumn 2022 Silversurfers Book Club Season… Simply select the title you would like to read, and if you would like to buy it or download it for your Kindle or other tablets, there is a link next to the book title, which will direct you to Amazon, making it simple for you to buy.
Alternatively, you may wish to buy the book elsewhere, or borrow it from your local library.
SIMPLY CLICK ON THE IMAGE OF THE BOOK YOU FANCY AND YOU WILL BE DIRECTED TO THE BOOK ON AMAZON … Most titles are available on Kindle
If you have previously read another book and would like to recommend it as a future read for the Silversurfers book club, feel free to leave the title and author in the comments section, with a brief synopsis, and your review.
The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman (released in hardcover on 15th September)
Book Synopsis
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 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.
As the cold case turns white hot, Elizabeth wrestles with her conscience (and a gun), while Joyce, Ron and Ibrahim chase down clues with help from old friends and new. But can the gang solve the mystery and save Elizabeth before the murderer strikes again?
Undoctored by Adam Kay
Book Synopsis
The Story of a Medic Who Ran Out of Patients. Adam Kay’s secret diary from his time as a junior doctor This is Going to Hurt was the publishing phenomenon of the century. It has been read by millions, translated into 37 languages, and adapted into a major BBC television series. But that was only part of the story.
Now, Adam Kay returns and will once again have you in stitches in his painfully funny and startlingly powerful follow-up, Undoctored: The Story of a Medic Who Ran out of Patients. In his most honest and incisive book yet, he reflects on what’s happened since hanging up his scrubs and examines a life inextricably bound up with medicine. Battered and bruised from his time on the NHS frontline, Kay looks back, moves forwards and opens up some old wounds.
Hilarious and heartbreaking, horrifying and humbling, Undoctored is the astonishing portrait of a life by one of Britain’s best-loved storytellers.
Lily by Rose Tremain
Book Synopsis
Despite being abandoned as a newborn baby, on a cold and foggy night in Victoria Park, London in 1850, her first six were absolutely idyllic. having been fostered by Nellie and Perkin Buck and their sons, she was brought up on their loving farm and they loved her like their own. Lily was really happy but as were the rules, after six years she was sent back to the Foundling Hospital where she was taken as a baby. The parting was heartbreaking for all involved and they all knew that the hospital was no place for a child of any age to be.
The Foundling Hospital was cruel and harsh, children were shown no love and were constantly reminded of how worthless they were. Lily was eventually sent to Belle Prettywood’s Wig Emporium, thanks to the exceptional sewing skills that she picked up from her foster mother. She was highly regarded for her skills but no one knew the dark secret she was hiding that would threaten her very existence and could seal her fate with gallows!
A delicious thriller from Rose Tremain who expertly brings 19th Century, Victorian England to life. A fabulous tale of rejection, poverty, survival, guilt and redemption!
Act Of Oblivion by Robert Harris
Book Synopsis
The year is 1660 and two English colonels are on the run in America, accused of high treason. On their trail is a man tasked with bringing to justice those responsible for the murder of Charles I. The stakes could not be higher for the fugitives – faced with a mandatory death sentence of the most grisly and painful kind.
Billed as the greatest manhunt of the 17th century, Act Of Oblivion does not disappoint. Harris breathes life into historical events as they may have played out, through his beautifully crafted characters, who are not simply products of the turbulent times. He also achieves what historians often fail to do, by remembering the stoic women left behind to fend for themselves and take care of their families. A gripping thriller and a timely reminder of the dangers of a deeply divided and intolerant society.
The Marriage Portrait by Maggie O’Farrell
Book Synopsis
An electrifying new novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de Medici.
Florence, the 1550s. Lucrezia, third daughter of the grand duke, is comfortable with her obscure place in the palazzo: free to wonder at its treasures, observe its clandestine workings, and to devote herself to her own artistic pursuits. But when her older sister dies on the eve of her wedding to the ruler of Ferrara, Moderna and Regio, Lucrezia is thrust unwittingly into the limelight: the duke is quick to request her hand in marriage, and her father just as quick to accept on her behalf.
Having barely left girlhood behind, Lucrezia must now make her way in a troubled court whose customs are opaque and where her arrival is not universally welcomed. Perhaps most mystifying of all is her new husband himself, Alfonso. Is he the playful sophisticate he appeared to be before their wedding, the aesthete happiest in the company of artists and musicians, or the ruthless politician before whom even his formidable sisters seem to tremble?
As Lucrezia sits in constricting finery for a painting intended to preserve her image for centuries to come, one thing becomes worryingly clear. In the court’s eyes, she has one duty: to provide the heir who will shore up the future of the Ferranese dynasty. Until then, for all of her rank and nobility, the new duchess’s future hangs entirely in the balance.
Lessons by Ian McEwan
Book Synopsis
In the spring of 1986, Roland Baines’ wife vanishes and suspicion falls on the husband she left behind. Flashing back nearly three decades, 11-year-old Roland is sent from Libya to attend boarding school in England, where he starts taking piano lessons from a teacher whose interest in her prodigious student goes beyond the didactic.
And so begins the dual narrative that traces the main character’s tumultuous life from childhood through to the present day. Bookended by the Cuban Missile Crisis and the coronavirus pandemic, McEwan grapples with familiar themes – lost youth, lost love, the mishaps and misunderstandings that shape our lives – but on a grander scale. At nearly 500 pages, it’s not a short book, and it feels a lot like an autobiography (some aspects of it are loosely based on McEwan’s life). Readers may find themselves rushing through some of the early chapters, but the beautiful prose and twisting plot, flitting between past and present, will soon have them engrossed. Magnificent and moving, Lessons is up there with McEwan’s greatest works.A Slow Fire Burning by Paula Hawkins
All the Broken Places by John Boyne
Book Synopsis
Are the sins of the father truly to be laid upon the children? 91-year-old Gretel Fernsby is living out her days in a comfortable apartment block in London, when she encounters Henry, a child in trouble living in the flat below. She finds herself at a crossroads. To intervene will risk uncovering her darkest and most traumatic secrets, an act which will have repercussions. But more importantly, it will force her to face her own demons, the cruelties and decisions inflicted on her as a child – which she has lived with ever since.
This is a really engaging novel about a terrible time in history, about grief, and about whether or not anyone can be held accountable for the deeds of people they love. Gretel’s acts of kindness are interspersed with moments of rage and cruelty, demonstrating with Boyne’s gentle touch, that nothing – even the most extreme of acts – are as black and white as they seem.
ENJOY YOUR READING AND DON’T FORGET WE’D LOVE TO READ YOUR VIEWS BELOW … HAPPY READING!
