20th February 2012: The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain

First published in 1934, The Postman Always Rings Twice caused a scandal with its explosive mix of violence and sex, and immediately became a bestseller. The torrid story of Frank Chambers, the amoral drifter, Cora, the sullen and brooding wife, and Nick Papadakis, the amiable but inconvenient husband, has become a classic of its kind, and established Cain as a major novelist with a spare and vital prose style and a bleak vision of America.

(Proposed by Mike N)

Posted on 17/01/2012

16th January 2012: The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

'I have so much and my feeling for her devours everything, I have so much and without her everything is nothing.'

You only find true love once. When Werther dances with the beautiful Lotte, it seems as though he is in paradise. It is a joy, however, that can only ever be short-lived. Engaged to another man, she tolerates Werther's adoration and encourages his friendship. She can never return his love. Broken-hearted, he leaves her home in the country, trying to escape his own desire. But when he receives a letter telling him that she is finally married, his passion soon turns to destructive obsession. And as his life falls apart, Werther is haunted by one certainty: He has lost his reason for living.

(Proposed by Russell)

Posted on 01/01/2012

19th December 2011: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

First published on 19 December 1843 and written at a time of decline in festive tradition, A Christmas Carol became an instant classic. It reinforced expectations for Christmas Day as a time of peace and goodwill to all men - and it even put turkey on the menu as the staple meal for many in the western world.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a mean, miserable, bitter old man with no friends. One cold Christmas Eve, three ghosts take him on a scary journey to show him the error of his nasty ways. By visiting his past, present and future, Scrooge learns to love Christmas and the people all around him.

(Proposed by All)

Posted on 22/11/2011

21st November 2011: Fugitive Pieces by Anne Michaels

Jakob Beer is seven years old when he is rescued from the muddy ruins of a buried village in Nazi-occupied Poland. Of his family, he is the only one who has survived. Under the guidance of the Greek geologist Athos, Jakob must steel himself to excavate the horrors of his own history. A novel of astounding beauty and wisdom, Fugitive Pieces is a profound meditation on the resilience of the human spirit and love’s ability to resurrect even the most damaged of hearts.

(Proposed by Russell)

Posted on 18/10/2011

17th October 2011: A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Set in mid-1970s India, A Fine Balance is a subtle and compelling narrative about four unlikely characters who come together in circumstances no one could have foreseen soon after the government declares a 'State of Internal Emergency'. It is a breathtaking achievement: panoramic yet humane, intensely political yet rich with local delight; and, above all, compulsively readable.

(Proposed by Paul)

Posted on 27/09/2011

19th September 2011: Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America’s westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.

(Proposed by Jim)

Posted on 04/08/2011

18th July 2011: The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

The beautiful but sharp-tongued Katherina has sworn never to accept the demands of any would-be husband. But when she is pursued by the wily Petruchio, it seems that she has finally met her match. And as he meets her own caustic words with a feigned, capricious cruelty, Katherina quickly comes to understand the absurdity of her shrewish behaviour, in one of the greatest of all comic battles of the sexes.

(Proposed by Mike)

Posted on 23/06/2011

20th June 2011: The Painted Veil by W. Somerset Maugham

'She did not know what to say. She was undecided whether indignantly to assert her innocence or to break out into angry reproaches. He seemed to read her thoughts. 'I've got all the proof necessary' '

Kitty Fane is the beautiful but shallow wife of Walter, a bacteriologist stationed in Hong Kong. Unsatisfied by her marriage, she starts an affair with Charles Townsend, a man whom she finds charming, attractive and exciting. But when Walter discovers her deception, he exacts a strange but terrible vengeance: Kitty must accompany him to his new posting in remote mainland China, where a cholera epidemic rages.First published to a storm of protest, The Painted Veil is a classic story of a woman's spiritual awakening.

(Proposed by John)

Posted on 20/05/2011

16th May 2011: Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse

'The unhappiness that I need and long for . . . is of the kind that will let me suffer with eagerness and die with lust. That is the unhappiness, or happiness, that I am waiting for.'

Alienated from society, Harry Haller is the Steppenwolf, wild, strange and shy. His despair and desire for death draw him into an enchanted, Faust-like underworld. Through a series of shadowy encounters, romantic, freakish and savage by turn, Haller begins to rediscover the lost dreams of his youth.

Adopted by the Sixties counterculture, Steppenwolf captured the mood of a disaffected generation that was beginning to question everything.

(Proposed by Russell)

Posted on 21/04/2011