September reading groups round-up
Looking for a new title for your bookgroup or reading circle? Look no further – here are three titles that have reading group resources available right here on Bookhugger.
The Gathering Night, by Margaret Elphingstone
Between Grandmother Mountain and the cold sea, Alaia and her family live off the land. But when her brother goes hunting and never returns, the fragile balance of life is upset. Half-starved and maddened with grief, Alaia’s mother follows her visions and goes in search of her lost son. The Gathering Night is a story of conflict, loss, love, adventure and devastating natural disaster. This gripping novel is set deep in our stone-age past, but resonates as a parable for our troubled planet 8,000 years on.
Cover Her Face, by PD James
St Cedd’s Church fête had been held in the grounds of Martingale manor house for generations. As if organizing stalls, as well as presiding over luncheon, the bishop and the tea tent, were not enough for Mrs Maxie on that mellow July afternoon, she also had to contend with the news of her son’s sudden engagement to her new parlour maid, the sly single mother, Sally Jupp. On the following morning Martingale and the whole village are shocked by the discovery of Sally Jupp’s body.
Investigating the violent death at the manor house, Detective Chief Inspector Adam Dalgliesh is embroiled in the complicated passions beneath the calm surface of English village life.
Snow, by Orhan Pamuk
The year is 1992. Ka, a poet and political exile, returns to Turkey as a journalist, assigned to write an investigative piece about troubling events in the small and mysterious city of Kars near the Armenian border.
The snow is falling fast as Ka arrives, and soon all roads are closed. He discovers a city plagued by a ‘suicide epidemic’ amongst young women, and where the Islamists are poised to win the municipal elections. If he wants to understand what’s happened to this part of the world during his absence, this is the place to begin.
But the rogue coup that unfolds before his eyes over the next three days tells him far more than he wants to know. He sees a city wasting away under the shadow of Europe, consumed by religious and political conspiracies, and haunted by the silences of its own history.
Snow angered Islamists and westernised Turks alike when it came out in early 2002 – and promptly sold more than 100,000 copies. A spectacular tour de force, it evokes the spiritual fragility of the non-western world, its ambivalence about the godless West, and its fury.
