

The Thursday Murder Club is the first book in Richard Osman’s series of mystery crime novels. It follows four elderly friends living in a retirement village in England as they attempt to solve local crimes and mysteries. Elizabeth, Joyce, Ibrahim and Ron form the Thursday Murder Club, meeting in the village hall each week to discuss unsolved cases. When a suspicious death occurs in their village, the four friends decide to investigate and uncover a series of dark secrets and conspiracies that had been hidden away. With the help of a local detective, they are able to follow the clues and piece together the puzzle, ultimately leading them to the murderer. Along the way, the group discovers a lot about themselves as well as about their village, and the reader is taken on a thrilling journey of suspense and intrigue as the mystery unfolds. The Thursday Murder Club is a gripping and fast-paced novel that will keep readers on the edge of their seats until the very end.  As the group looks into these murders, Osman also deals humorously and thoughtfully with things like aging, grief, dementia, and so forth. It makes for an entertaining read that gives it a little extra compared to your typical genre mystery.

The Thursday Murder Club: (The Thursday Murder Club 1)

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse is a beautiful and inspiring book written by Charlie Mackesy. It tells the story of four unlikely friends that come together and explore life’s many questions. The book follows the four friends as they have conversations about life, love, friendship, and courage. Through the conversations, the four friends learn about themselves and each other, and ultimately, about the power of friendship and kindness. The book is full of vivid illustrations and wise words that will move readers of all ages. It is a book about hope, empathy, and the possibility of finding light in the darkest of times. Through their conversations, the four friends explore topics such as self-doubt, fear, courage, and belonging. They ask questions and share stories in an effort to better understand life’s complexities. The conversations are full of wit and wisdom, and readers will be inspired by the lessons that each of the four friends learn. The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse is an uplifting story that will bring joy and hope to all who read it.

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse



Where the Crawdads Sing is a beautiful and heartbreaking novel by Delia Owens. It tells the story of Kya Clark, a young girl who survives alone in the marshlands of North Carolina, learning to provide for herself and build a life for herself outside of the world of humans. As she grows up, her only companions are the birds, animals, and plants of the marsh. Kya’s life is changed when two young men are found dead in the marsh and Kya is implicated in their murders. Through the investigation, Kya’s secrets and past slowly unravel, revealing a story of poverty, abuse, and the resilience of the human spirit. Throughout the novel, Kya learns to trust and rely on the support of the people in her community, even as she faces the judgement of society and a tough legal system. Where the Crawdads Sing is an exploration of nature, resilience, and the power of love. It is a powerful story of one woman's journey to find her place in the world and a reminder of the importance of understanding and acceptance.

Where the Crawdads Sing

The Midnight Library is a novel about a woman named Nora Seed who finds herself in a mysterious library that exists outside of time and space. The library is filled with endless shelves of books, each containing the story of a different life that Nora could have lived. As Nora begins to explore the different lives contained within the books, she is forced to confront the choices she has made in her own life and the regrets she has about the paths not taken. With the help of the librarian, a wise and mysterious figure who seems to know more about Nora's past and future than she does herself, Nora begins a journey of self-discovery and redemption. The Midnight Library is a poignant and thought-provoking exploration of the power of choice and the consequences of our actions. As Nora delves deeper into the Midnight Library, she finds that the books contain not only alternate versions of her own life, but also the lives of those she has loved and lost. With each book she reads, Nora is faced with difficult decisions and must confront the realities of the paths she has chosen and the ones she has left behind. Along the way, she is forced to grapple with the weight of her regrets and the pain of her past, and to come to terms with the fact that no life is perfect. Through Nora's journey, The Midnight Library explores themes of love, loss, and the search for meaning in a world that can often feel overwhelming and confusing. It is a poignant and thought-provoking exploration of the power of choice and the consequences of our actions, and a powerful reminder that even in the darkest of times, there is always the possibility of redemption and a chance to start anew.

The Midnight Library

The book tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a German soldier who—urged on by his school teacher—joins the German army shortly after the start of World War I. Bäumer arrives at the Western Front with his friends and schoolmates (Tjaden, Müller, Kropp and a number of other characters). There they meet Stanislaus Katczinsky, an older soldier, nicknamed Kat, who becomes Paul''s mentor. While fighting at the front, Bäumer and his comrades have to engage in frequent battles and endure the dangerous and often dirty conditions of warfare. At the very beginning of the book Erich Maria Remarque says "This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war." The book does not focus on heroic stories of bravery, but rather gives a view of the conditions in which the soldiers find themselves. The monotony between battles, the constant threat of artillery fire and bombardments, the struggle to find food, the lack of training of young recruits (meaning lower chances of survival), and the overarching role of random chance in the lives and deaths of the soldiers are described in detail. The battles fought here have no names and seem to have little overall significance, except for the impending possibility of injury or death for Bäumer and his comrades. Only pitifully small pieces of land are gained, about the size of a football field, which are often lost again later. Remarque often refers to the living soldiers as old and dead, emotionally drained and shaken. "We are not youth any longer. We don''t want to take the world by storm. We are fleeing from ourselves, from our life. We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces." Paul''s visit on leave to his home highlights the cost of the war on his psyche. The town has not changed since he went off to war; however, he finds that he does "not belong here anymore, it is a foreign world." He feels disconnected from most of the townspeople. His father asks him "stupid and distressing" questions about his war experiences, not understanding "that a man cannot talk of such things." An old schoolmaster lectures him about strategy and advancing to Paris, while insisting that Paul and his friends know only their "own little sector" of the war but nothing of the big picture. Indeed, the only person he remains connected to is his dying mother, with whom he shares a tender, yet restrained relationship. The night before he is to return from leave, he stays up with her, exchanging small expressions of love and concern for each other. He thinks to himself, "Ah! Mother, Mother! How can it be that I must part from you? Here I sit and there you are lying; we have so much to say, and we shall never say it." In the end, he concludes that he "ought never to have come [home] on leave." Paul feels glad to be reunited with his comrades. Soon after, he volunteers to go on a patrol and kills a man for the first time in hand-to-hand combat. He watches the man die, in pain for hours. He feels remorse and asks forgiveness from the man''s corpse. He is devastated and later confesses to Kat and Albert, who try to comfort him and reassure him that it is only part of the war. They are then sent on what Paul calls a "good job." They must guard a village that is being shelled too heavily. The men enjoy themselves but while evacuating the villagers, Paul and Albert are wounded. They recuperate in a Catholic hospital and Paul returns to active duty. By now, the war is nearing its end and the German Army is retreating. In despair, Paul watches as his friends fall one by one. It is the death of Kat that eventually makes Paul careless about living. In the final chapter, he comments that peace is coming soon, but he does not see the future as bright and shining with hope. Paul feels that he has no aims left in life and that their generation will be different and misunderstood. When he finally dies at the end of the novel, the situation report from the frontline states, "All is Quiet on the Western Front," symbolizing the cheapness of human life in war.

All Quiet on the Western Front

The novel posits that space around the Milky Way is divided into concentric layers called Zones, each being constrained by different laws of physics and each allowing for different degrees of biological and technological advancement. The innermost, the "Unthinking Depths", surrounds the galactic core and is incapable of supporting advanced life forms at all. The next layer, the "Slow Zone", is roughly equivalent to the real world in behavior and potential. Further out, the zone named the "Beyond" can support futuristic technologies such as AI and FTL travel. The outermost zone, the "Transcend", contains most of the galactic halo and is populated by incomprehensibly vast and powerful posthuman entities. A human expedition investigates a five-billion-year-old data archive that offers the possibility of unimaginable riches for the ambitious young civilization of the Straumli Realm. The expedition''s facility, called High Lab, is gradually compromised by a dormant super-intelligent entity (actually encoded within the archive) later known as the Blight. The Blight rapidly learns how to infiltrate and control the computer systems of High Lab, and even develops the ability to possess and control the living humans. The novel starts with an imaginative description of the evolution of this superintelligence through exponentially accelerating developmental stages, culminating in a transcendent, nigh-omnipotent power that is unfathomable to mere humans. Shortly before its final "flowering", the changes in a single minute of the Blight''s life are said to exceed those of 10,000 years of human civilization. Recognizing the danger of what they have awakened, the researchers at High Lab attempt to flee in two ships. Suspicious, the Blight discovers that one of the ships contains a data storage device in its cargo manifest; assuming it contains information that could harm it, the Blight destroys the ship. The second ship is allowed to escape, unharmed, as the Blight assumes that it is no threat; but later realizes that it actually held a countermeasure, one of the few things in the universe that the Blight fears. The ship lands on a distant planet with a medieval-level civilization of dog-like creatures dubbed "Tines", who live in packs as group minds. The ship is revealed to be a sleeper ship, carrying most of High Lab''s children in "coldsleep boxes". The boxes are rapidly failing and the surviving adults begin unloading them, but are killed when one of two rival forces of Tines seize the ship. The faction that initially contacts the humans, led by a Tine known as Steel, kills the adults and destroys many of the coldsleep boxes. They also capture a boy named Jefri Olsndot, whom Steel intended on killing but eventually exploits in order to develop advanced technology (such as cannon and radio communication). Jefri''s older sister, Johanna, is rescued by Pilgrim and Scriber, wandering Tines who bring her to the rival faction, led by Woodcarver. She is asked to help develop technology that could gain the upper hand in the impending war. A distress signal from the sleeper ship eventually reaches "Relay", a major node in the galactic communications network. A benign transcendent entity (known as a "Power") named "Old One" contacts Relay, seeking information about the Blight and the humans who released it. Old One constructs a seemingly human man, Pham Nuwen, to act as its agent. Pham and Ravna Bergsndot – a human employee of Relay''s owners, the wealthy Vrinimi Organization – trace the sleeper ship''s signal to the Tines world. Old One designs a vessel, the Out of Band II, to reach the Tines world and to investigate what the ship carried with it from the High Lab. The Blight attacks Relay and Old One. Old One gives Pham the information necessary to activate the Blight Countermeasure while dying (a process known as godshatter), and Pham and Ravna escape Relay''s destruction in the Out of Band II. After arriving at the Tines homeworld and allying with Woodcarver to defeat Steel, Pham initiates the Countermeasure, which extends the Slow Zone by thousands of light-years to enclose the Blight. This ends the threat of the Blight at the cost of wrecking thousands of uninvolved civilizations, causing trillions of deaths and potentially the extinction of several galactic races. The process also kills Pham and strands the other humans on the Tines world, now in the depths of the "Slow Zone" where rescue by an advanced civilization is impossible.

A Fire Upon the Deep

May Norman and Ethel arrive at the summer house, finding it in need of repairs. There are hints that Norman is having problems with his memory. June Norman makes a nominal effort to find a job in the classified ads, to Ethel''s chagrin. The mailman, Charlie, stops by and reminisces about the Thayer''s daughter, Chelsea, whom he used to date. A letter arrives from Chelsea saying that she is coming from California with her boyfriend Bill to celebrate Norman''s 80th birthday. It becomes clearer that Norman is struggling with memory loss, as he continues to forget names and places that should be familiar. July Chelsea arrives with Billy Ray and his 13-year-old son, Billy Ray Jr. Chelsea asks her parents if Billy Jr. can stay with them while she and Billy go to Europe. Norman (a bit reluctantly) and Ethel agree to keep Billy Jr. August Norman and Billy Jr. have become friends, and spend much of their time fishing. Chelsea returns, and reveals that she and Billy are now married. Ethel shows her impatience with Chelsea''s habit of bitterly harping on the past. Chelsea confronts her father about their troubled relationship, and the two have a reconciliation. September Norman and Ethel are packing to leave for the winter. Chelsea calls, and they agree to go visit her in California. Norman seems to suffer a heart attack, (whilst picking up a box of his mother-in-law''s heavy china) but recovers, and the pair leave their home along Golden Pond.

On Golden Pond

Marcia, Letty, Norman and Edwin all work together in the same office, are all unmarried (Edwin being a widower) and have all reached retirement age. Letty, the "heroine" of the book, has plans to share a country retreat with her old friend, Marjorie, but her hopes are dashed when Marjorie suddenly announces that she is to marry a clergyman some years younger than herself. All four find retirement difficult to cope with, but the effects are most noticeable for the eccentric Marcia. She gradually withdraws from the outside world, gives up eating, and eventually dies in pathetic circumstances. She has unexpectedly left her estate to Norman, in whom she had indulged a brief and secret romantic interest. When Marjorie''s fiancé deserts her for a younger widow, Letty has the opportunity to take the country cottage after all. By now she has come to terms with retirement and does not move. At the end of the book, she is considering whether to introduce Edwin and Norman to Marjorie in the hope of matchmaking.

Quartet in Autumn

Alice from Alice''s Adventures in Wonderland (now grey-haired, and called "Lady Fairchild"), Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz (now in her 20s) and Wendy from Peter Pan (now in her 30s, and married to a man in his 50s named Harold Potter) are visiting the expensive mountain resort "Hotel Himmelgarten" in Austria on the eve of World War I (1913–1914). The women meet by chance and begin to exchange erotic stories from their pasts. The stories are based on the childhood fantasy worlds of the three women: *Wendy Durling. Wendy''s sexual escapades begin when she meets a homeless teenage boy named Peter and his sister Annabel in Kensington Gardens. Peter follows the three siblings home and teaches them sexual games, and the siblings begin regular meetings with Peter and his group of homeless boys in the park for sex. These encounters are watched by The Captain, a co-worker of Wendy''s father, who later hires Peter as a male prostitute and brutally rapes Annabel. He attacks Wendy, who escapes by confronting him with his fear of aging. She only sees Peter once more, hustling in a train station. She marries the much older Harold Potter because she is not attracted to him, and would not have to think about enjoying sex ever again. *Dorothy Gale. While trapped in her house during a cyclone, she begins masturbating and experiences her first orgasm at the age of sixteen. She has sexual encounters with three farm hands whom she refers to as The Straw Man, The Cowardly Lion and The Tin Man. Throughout most of her stories, she refers to her "aunt" and "uncle", whom she later admits were her step-mother and father, who discover her affairs. Her father takes her to New York City, under the pretense of seeking psychological help, but has sex with her repeatedly while they are in the city. Dorothy feels guilty of destroying her father''s marriage, and leaves to travel the world. *Alice Fairchild. At fourteen, Alice is coerced into sex with her father''s friend, which she endures by staring into a mirror and imagines she is having sex with herself. At an all-girls boarding school, Alice convinces many of her schoolmates to sleep with her, and develops a strong attraction to her P.E. teacher, who offers Alice a job as a personal assistant (and sexual plaything) when she leaves employment at the school. Alice''s employer marries a Mr. Redman, but begins hosting extravagant, drug-fueled lesbian sex parties. Alice becomes addicted to opium, and watches a young girl named Lily, among many others, abused just as she was. When Lily is instructed by Mrs. Redman to secretly perform cunnilingus on Alice under the table during a dinner party, Alice exposes her employer''s secrets to the guests. Mrs. Redman has Alice declared insane, and she is put into a mental hospital where she is systematically raped by the staff. Upon release Alice resumes her lesbian activity and drug use. Disowned by her family, she moves to Africa to run a family-owned diamond mine. In addition to the three women''s erotic flashbacks, the graphic novel depicts sexual encounters between the women and other guests and staff of the hotel. The erotic adventures are set against the backdrop of unsettling cultural and historic events of the period, such as the debut of Igor Stravinsky''s The Rite of Spring and the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The graphic novel ends with Alice''s mirror being destroyed by German soldiers who burn down the Hotel.

Lost Girls

Pine Cove suffers a major crisis when the town psychiatrist, Val Riordan &mdash; who has been haphazardly issuing prescriptions instead of dealing with the real mental problems of her patients &mdash; suffers a sudden bout of guilt and substitutes all of her patients'' anti-depressants with placebos. At this same time, by coincidence, human-generated environmental activity stirs a prehistoric sea-beast from its underwater keep to come ashore. In addition to its ability to change form, the beast exudes a pheromone that inspires uncontrollable lust among the residents of Pine Cove and also lures some of them as prey. After mistakenly trying to mate with a fuel truck (causing an explosion), the beast hides in a trailer park, attracting the curiosity of local crazy lady and former B-movie star Molly Michon, who builds a rapport with the injured beast. Meanwhile, Theophilus Crowe, the town constable, investigates a strange suicide, the activities of his corrupt boss, and his adversely affected marijuana habit. When the beast (whom Molly has named "Steve") starts eating residents of Pine Cove and interfering with Theo''s boss''s meth business, Molly (who has become romantically involved with the beast) and Theo band together to make possible the beast''s safe escape and to take down the boss at the same time.

New Books

The Thursday Murder Club: (The Thursday Murder Club 1)

By Richard Osman

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse

By Charlie Mackesy

Where the Crawdads Sing

By Delia Owens

The Midnight Library

By Matt Haig

All Quiet on the Western Front

By Erich Maria Remarque

A Fire Upon the Deep

By Vernor Vinge

On Golden Pond

By Ernest Thompson

Quartet in Autumn

By Barbara Pym

Lost Girls

By Alan Moore

The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove

By Christopher Moore