Reading Group Roundup: March 2026

PRG groups hit the ground running in 2026 and we’ve had great feedback from up and down the country. Our selection this month shows the variety of groups, the range of book choices and how discussions shift and turn.

The group at Lincoln chose Gillian McAllister’s Wrong Place, Wrong Time.

Can you stop a murder after it’s already happened? It’s late. You’re waiting up for your son. Then you spot him: he’s with someone. And – you can’t believe what you see – your funny, happy teenage boy stabs this stranger. You don’t know who. You don’t know why. You only know your son is charged with murder. His future is lost. That night you fall asleep in despair. But when you wake … it is yesterday. The day before the murder. Somewhere in the past lie the answers – a reason for this crime. And your only chance to stop it…

A universal thumbs up from all 10 members. ‘The book grabs you in the first few pages and from there it’s hard to put down.’

For one member the biggest question raised by the book was ‘how far do you have to go back to prevent a crime from happening, or yourself from committing it?’ Before he read the book, he reckoned his answer would have been the night of the crime itself but now he thought he’d have to go ‘a lot further back’. And others too said it had made them think more about their lives.

One of the Pentonville groups tackled Gary Stevenson’s The Trading Game. From the back cover:
Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken footballs on the streets of East London in the shadow of Canary Wharf’s skyscrapers, Gary wanted something better. Something a whole lot bigger. Then he won a competition run by a bank: ‘The Trading Game’. The prize: a golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader in the whole city. Where soon you’re the bank’s most profitable trader, dealing in nearly a trillion dollars. A day. But what happens when winning starts to feel like losing? When the easiest way to make money is to bet on millions becoming poorer and poorer – and, as the economy starts slipping off a precipice, your own sanity starts slipping with it? You want to stop, but you can’t. Because nobody ever leaves.

Great reading group sessions don’t depend on great books. The Pentonville group were sceptical about this one – they didn’t quite believe his story, they thought it was ghost-written, and they wanted more reflection from him. But there was plenty to talk about and some very funny one-liners: ‘Nobody likes sushi. It’s like Russian literature, they just pretend to’, ‘I’ve never seen the point of Ilford’.

At Maidstone the group treated themselves to Dan Brown’s Origins. It’s a rollercoaster thriller with all his signature themes: art, religion, technology and hidden history. And it hit the spot: ‘Gripping, a fanatic villain with a traumatic past, a murder, a chase around Europe. The tension is sky high’. But the book also felt worthwhile and led to thoughtful discussion.

‘I like that all the places, works of art, science and organisations are real… so it feels like an education too. There were times when I wished I could google stuff.’

‘Religion is designed to fill gaps in our knowledge. The more advances in science, the less need we have for it.’

‘Every discovery we’ve made since fire can be used for the benefit or harm of mankind.’

And Brown’s sense of place drew readers as well: ‘It made me want to visit Barcelona!’