This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Fall foliage and pumpkin spice lattes are nice and all, but there’s nothing like a new Richard and Judy Book Club selection to get you in the mood for a new season, right? Eight brand new titles were revealed for the Autumn 2015 book club today, and the selection is spot on, as ever.
Once again, this season’s book club is mostly comprised of female writers – five of the eight books have been penned by women – and there’s a broad mix of genres.
Kate Mosse, whose debut novel Labyrinth was picked for the first ever Richard and Judy Book Club in 2005, is on this season’s list with her novel The Taxidermist’s Daughter.
The Baileys Prize for Women’s Fiction shortlisted A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler made the cut, too, as did The Tea Planter’s Wife by Dinah Jefferies, which our editor here at Novelicious has been raving about for several weeks.
Here’s the full list for you:The Taxidermist’s Daughter by Kate Mosse – 1912. A Sussex churchyard. Villagers gather on the night when the ghosts of those who will not survive the coming year are thought to walk. And in the shadows, a woman lies dead …
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler – This novel follows four generations of Whitshanks, their lives unfolding in and around the sprawling, lovingly worn Baltimore house that has always been their home.
The Tea Planter's Wife by Dinah Jefferies – Nineteen-year-old Gwendolyn Hooper steps off a steamer in Ceylon full of optimism, eager to join her new husband. But the man who greets her at the tea plantation is not the same one she fell in love with in London. Distant and brooding, Laurence spends long days wrapped up in his work, leaving his young bride to explore the plantation alone. It's a place filled with clues to the past – locked doors, a yellowed wedding dress in a dusty trunk and an overgrown grave hidden in the grounds.
Life After You by Lucie Brownlee – Sudden death is rude. It just wanders in and takes your husband without any warning; it doesn’t even have the decency to knock. At the impossibly young age of 37, as they were making love one night, Lucie Brownlee’s beloved husband Mark dropped dead. As Lucie tried to make sense of her new life – the one she never thought she would be living – she turned to writing to express her grief. Me After You is the result.
The Well by Catherine Chanter – When Ruth Ardingly and her family first drive up from London in their grime-encrusted car and view The Well, they are enchanted by a jewel of a place, a farm that appears to offer everything the family are searching for. An opportunity for Ruth. An escape for Mark. A home for their grandson Lucien. But The Well's unique glory comes at a terrible price. As The Well envelops them, Ruth's paradise becomes a prison, Mark's dream a recurring nightmare, and Lucien's playground a grave.
The Ice Twins by S.K. Tremayne – A year after one of their identical twin daughters, Lydia, dies in an accident, Angus and Sarah Moorcraft move to the tiny Scottish island Angus inherited from his grandmother, hoping to put together the pieces of their shattered lives. But when their surviving daughter, Kirstie, claims they have mistaken her identity – that she, in fact, is Lydia – their world comes crashing down once again.
Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon – Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the crosshairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start, things go fatally wrong.
The Kind Worth Killing by Peter Swanson – Delayed in London, Ted Severson meets a woman at the airport bar. Over cocktails they tell each other rather more than they should, and a dark plan is hatched – but are either of them being serious, could they actually go through with it and, if they did, what would be their chances of getting away with it?
Have you read any of these titles already? Which will you be starting with?