December 2021
The Toymakers by Robert Dinsdale
It is 1917, and London has spent years in the shadow of the First World War. In the heart of Mayfair, though, there is a place of hope. A place where children’s dreams can come true, where the impossible becomes possible – that place is Papa Jack’s Toy Emporium.
Into Papa Jack’s family comes a young Cathy Wray – homeless and vulnerable. The Emporium takes her in, makes her one of its own. But Cathy is about to discover that while all toy shops are places of wonder, only one is truly magical…
‘What an extraordinary and wonderful achievement this novel is! I was completely swept into the magic of the book…’ – Adam Roberts
Thank you to our volunteer Katy, for choosing this title and creating the resource.
Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
From the author of the highly acclaimed Kintu, this crisp collection of short fiction charts the experiences of Ugandan migrants in Britain in twelve exquisitely crafted vignettes. These vibrant stories re-imagine the journey of Ugandans who choose to make England their home, and then what happens when these people return to Uganda.
Weaving between Manchester and Kampala, the stories are the immigrant experience told in a way which leaves the reader wanting more.
Makumbi’s first novel, Kintu, won The Kwani? Manuscript Project in 2013. She was awarded the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize for Manchester Happened and in 2018 was awarded the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction.
Thank you to our volunteer Neville for choosing this title and creating the resource.
November 2021
Cane Warriors by Alex Wheatle
Moa is fourteen. The only life he has ever known is toiling on the Frontier sugar cane plantation for endless hot days, fearing the vicious whips of the overseers. Then one night he learns of an uprising, led by the charismatic Tacky. Moa is to be a cane warrior, and fight for the freedom of all the enslaved people in the nearby plantations. Time is ticking, and the day of the uprising approaches . . .
Irresistible, gripping and unforgettable, Cane Warriors follows the true story of Tacky’s War in Jamaica, 1760.
Shortlisted for the YA Book Prize, Diverse Book Award, Young Quills Historical Fiction Award and Iris Award Longlisted for the YA Jhalak Prize and the UKLA Book Award Nobody free till everybody free.
‘Alex Wheatle takes the truth, and creates fiction to illuminate that truth. He too is a warrior. A word warrior.’ – Benjamin Zephaniah Thank you to Book Clubs in Schools, the charity of which Alex Wheatle is a patron, for choosing this title and creating the resource.
The Mystery of Henri Pick by David Foenkinos
In the small town of Crozon in Brittany, a library houses manuscripts that were rejected for publication: the faded dreams of aspiring writers. Visiting while on holiday, young editor Delphine Despero is thrilled to discover a novel so powerful that she feels compelled to bring it back to Paris to publish it.
The book prompts fevered interest in the identity of its author – apparently one Henri Pick, a now-deceased pizza chef from Crozon. Sceptics cry that the whole thing is a hoax: how could this man have written such a masterpiece?
The Mystery of Henri Pick is a fast-paced comic mystery enriched by a deep love of books – and of the authors who write them.
Thank you to our volunteer Ella for choosing this title and creating the resource.
October 2021
An American Marriage by Tayari Jones
Newlyweds Celestial and Roy are the embodiment of the American Dream. He is a young executive, and she is an artist on the brink of an exciting career. Until one day they are ripped apart by circumstances neither could have imagined. Roy is arrested and sentenced to twelve years for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit.
A tender and humane dissection of what happens to a relationship when unforeseen events conspire to sabotage it, Tayari Jones’ story subtly probes issues of race and justice with a piercing emotional intelligence and colossal heart.
Winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2019.
‘A moving portrayal of the effects of a wrongful conviction on a young African-American couple.’ – Barack Obama Thank you to our volunteer Katy for choosing this title and creating the resource.
Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe
Okonkwo is the greatest wrestler and warrior alive, and his fame spreads throughout West Africa like a bush-fire. But when he accidentally kills a clansman, things begin to fall apart. Then Okonkwo returns from exile to find missionaries and colonial governors have arrived in the village. With his road thrown radically off-balance, he can only hurtle towards tragedy.
Things Fall Apart is Achebe’s first novel. It has become a milestone book in schools throughout Africa as a study of African literature. It is also widely read and studied in English-speaking countries as a piece of work which shows the traditionally rich, pre-colonisation, African life.
‘The writer in whose company the prison walls fell down’ – Nelson Mandela
Thank you to our volunteer Neville for choosing this title and creating the resource.
September 2021
My Name is Leon by Kit de Waal
It’s 1981, a year of riots and royal weddings,and trying to find a place in it all is nine-year-old Leon. He and his little brother Jake have gone to live with Maureen. They’ve lost one home but have they found another?
Maureen feeds and looks after them. She claims everything will be okay. But will they ever see their mother again? Who are the couple who secretly visit Jake? Between the street violence and the street parties, Leon must find a way to reunite his family…
Shortlisted for the 2017 Desmond Elliot Prize and Costa First Novel Award.
My Name is Leon balances the gritty with the feel good. Thank you to our volunteer Katy for choosing this title and creating the resources.
Uglies by Scott Westerfeld
Set in a near dystopian future, Uglies presents a world where everyone is considered unattractive until they are forced to perform extreme cosmetic surgery to turn them “pretty”. But Tally, just a few weeks from her surgery, decides to rebel against the standards society has set. The book shows the sinister side of material beauty.
Scott Westerfeld is an American writer of young adult fiction. A major theme in his work is the idea of free thinking or questioning authority.
Thank you to our volunteer Kousiha for choosing Uglies and creating the resources.
August 2021
Who They Was by Gabriel Krauze
An urgent and electrifying work of autofiction: the first-hand account of a young man who has lived a life of violent crime, and who expresses it boldly, accurately, and at times even beautifully.
Gabriel Krauze came of age among the high rises and back streets of South Kilburn. He was not an observer on the periphery of violence. He was – personally – heavily involved in gangs, drugs, guns, stabbing and robbery – all while completing an English degree at Queen Mary’s University.
Who They Was comes directly from that experience and as such it is confronting, exhilarating, morally complex, and utterly unique.
House of Correction by Nicci French
She’s a murderer. Everyone knows she killed Stuart Rees-why else would his dead body be found in her shed? So now Tabitha is in prison, awaiting trial. Coming back to the remote coastal village where she grew up was a mistake.
That day is such a blur, she can’t remember clearly what happened. There is something she is missing, something important… She only knows one thing. She is not capable of murder. And the only one she can trust to help her out of this situation is herself.
Highly commended for The Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award 2021.
Thank you to our volunteer Cathy for choosing House of Correction and creating the resources:
July 2021
This month, we are delighted to have copies of The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed. Thanks to a kind member of the public, who ordered us copies of the book from Newham Bookshop – supporting an independent bookshop and PRG at the same time!
Thank you to Penguin Random House for organising this donation and providing resources below.
The Fortune Men by Nadifa Mohamed
Mahmood Mattan is a fixture in Cardiff’s Tiger Bay, 1952, which bustles with Somali and West Indian sailors, Maltese businessmen and Jewish families. He is a father, chancer, some-time petty thief. He is many things, in fact, but he is not a murderer.
So when a shopkeeper is brutally killed and all eyes fall on him, Mahmood isn’t too worried. It is true that he has been getting into trouble more often since his Welsh wife Laura left him. But Mahmood is secure in his innocence in a country where, he thinks, justice is served.
It is only in the run-up to the trial, as the prospect of freedom dwindles, that it will dawn on Mahmood that he is in a terrifying fight for his life – against conspiracy, prejudice and the inhumanity of the state. And, under the shadow of the hangman’s noose, he begins to realise that the truth may not be enough to save him.
‘Chilling and utterly compelling, The Fortune Men shines an essential light on a much-neglected period of our national life’ Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireland
The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
The Vignes twin sisters will always be identical. But after growing up together in a small, southern black community and running away at age sixteen, it’s not just the shape of their daily lives that is different as adults, it’s everything: their families, their communities, their racial identities.
Ten years later, one sister lives with her black daughter in the same southern town she once tried to escape. The other secretly passes for white, and her white husband knows nothing of her past. Still, even separated by so many miles and just as many lies, the fates of the twins remain intertwined. What will happen to the next generation, when their own daughters’ story lines intersect?
Thank you to our volunteer Liz for creating resources for The Vanishing Half:
June 2021
On the Come Up by Angie Thomas
A powerful story about hip hop, freedom of speech – and fighting for your dreams, even as the odds are stacked against you.
Bri wants to be one of the greatest rappers of all time. As the daughter of an underground hip hop legend who died right before he hit big, Bri’s got massive shoes to fill.
But when her first song goes viral for all the wrong reasons, Bri finds herself at the centre of controversy and portrayed by the media as more menace than MC. And with an eviction notice staring her family down, Bri no longer just wants to make it – she has to. Even if it means becoming the very thing the public has made her out to be.
By Angie Thomas, author of bestselling YA novel The Hate U Give.
Pompeii by Robert Harris
A sweltering week in late August. Where better to enjoy the last days of summer than on the beautiful Bay of Naples? But even as Rome’s richest citizens relax in their villas around Pompeii and Herculaneum, there are ominous warnings that something is going wrong. Wells and springs are failing, a man has disappeared, and now the greatest aqueduct in the world – the mighty Aqua Augusta – has suddenly ceased to flow.
Through the eyes of four characters – a young engineer, an adolescent girl, a corrupt millionaire and an elderly scientist – Robert Harris brilliantly recreates a luxurious world on the brink of destruction.
May 2021
Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
For years, rumors of the “Marsh Girl” have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say.
Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life – until the unthinkable happens.
A thoughtful page-turner – at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder.
My Name is Why by Lemn Sissay
At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a fostered family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth.
This is Lemn’s story; a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. Sissay reflects on a childhood in care, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home.
April 2021
For World Book Night….
Join in with the World Book Night experience by reading this Stephen King novella in April. We will share feedback from the groups on Twitter on World Book Night (23rd April).
Elevation, by Stephen King
In the small town of Castle Rock word gets around quickly. That’s why Scott Carey only confides in his friend Doctor Bob Ellis about his strange condition. Every day he’s losing weight – but without looking any different.
Meanwhile a new couple, Deirdre and Missy, owners of a ‘fine dining experience’ in town, have moved in next door. Scott is not happy that their dogs keep fouling on his lawn.
But as the town prepares for its annual Thanksgiving 12K run, Scott starts to understand the prejudices his neighbours face. Soon, they forge a friendship which may just help him through his mysterious affliction…
You can read an extract here. This book is perfect for less confident readers too.
Or join in the read-along book club!
Set up by one of our volunteers, a virtual public reading group has been set up to read books alongside our prison groups. We will share feedback anonymously between the groups.
Lanny by Max Porter
‘Longlisted for the Booker Prize, Porter’s second novel is a fable, a collage, a dramatic chorus, a joyously stirred cauldron of words.’ – The Guardian
A child, a family, a village; a community built on ancient soil, shelter to generations of lives and the tales they tell. For all time, Dead Papa Toothwort has forever walked amongst them all. Now, he is drawn again from his slumber, drawn to something new and precious. The boy. Lanny.
Fusing the modern with the mythic and the prosaic with the polyphonic, Porter’s spare, spectral novel mines folklore, fable and the deep-dug tendrils of village life for something both age-old and vibrantly alive.
March 2021
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet
Be transported to a place like no other: a tiny, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki, for two hundred years the sole gateway between Japan and the West. Here, in the dying days of the 18th-century, a young Dutch clerk arrives to make his fortune. Instead he loses his heart.
Step onto the streets of Dejima and mingle with scheming traders, spies, interpreters, servants and concubines as two cultures converge. In a tale of integrity and corruption, passion and power, the key is control – of riches and minds, and over death itself.
The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller, from the author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS.
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
In a peaceful retirement village, four unlikely friends meet weekly in the Jigsaw Room to discuss unsolved crimes; together they call themselves the Thursday Murder Club.
When a local developer is found dead with a mysterious photograph left next to the body, the Thursday Murder Club suddenly find themselves in the middle of their first live case.
As the bodies begin to pile up, can our unorthodox but brilliant gang catch the killer, before it’s too late?
The debut novel from Richard Osman, presenter and producer of Pointless.
February 2021
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Set in the deep American South between the wars, The Color Purple is the classic tale of Celie, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation.
Raped repeatedly by the man she calls ‘father’, she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister Nettie and is trapped into an ugly marriage.
But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic-maker – a woman who has taken charge of her own destiny. Gradually Celie discovers the power and joy of her own spirit, freeing her from her past and reuniting her with those she loves.
A great book to explore in LGBT+ History month.
My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite
As smart and murderous as Killing Eve, My Sister, the Serial Killer is a blackly comic novel about how blood is thicker – and more difficult to get out of the carpet – than water…
When Korede’s dinner is interrupted one night by a distress call from her sister, Ayoola, she knows what’s expected of her: bleach, rubber gloves, nerves of steel and a strong stomach. This’ll be the third boyfriend Ayoola’s dispatched in “self-defence” and the third mess that her lethal little sibling has left Korede to clear away. She should probably go to the police for the good of the menfolk of Nigeria, but she loves her sister and, as they say, family always comes first. Until, that is, Ayoola starts dating the doctor where Korede works as a nurse. Korede’s long been in love with him, and isn’t prepared to see him wind up with a knife in his back: but to save one would mean sacrificing the other…
January 2021
The Sisters Brothers by Patrick deWitt
Shortlisted for the 2011 Man Booker Prize.
Hermann Kermit Warm is going to die.
Across 1000 miles of Oregon desert his assassins, the notorious Eli and Charlies Sisters, ride – fighting, shooting, and drinking their way to Sacramento. But their prey isn’t an easy mark, the road is long and bloody, and somewhere along the path Eli begins to question what he does for a living – and whom he does it for.
“So good, so funny and so sad” Irish Times
Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
A striking and surprising debut novel from an exhilarating new voice, Such a Fun Age is a page-turning and big-hearted story about race and privilege, set around a young black babysitter, her well-intentioned employer, and a surprising connection that threatens to undo them both.
With empathy and piercing social commentary, Such a Fun Age explores the stickiness of transactional relationships, what it means to make someone “family,” and the complicated reality of being a grown up.