Book Club Favourites for November

Everyone tells Martha Friel she is clever and beautiful, a brilliant writer who has been loved every day of her adult life by one man, her husband Patrick. A gift - her mother once said - not everybody gets. So why is everything broken? Why is Martha - on the edge of 40 - friendless, practically jobless and so often sad? And why did Patrick decide to leave? Maybe she is just too sensitive, someone who finds it harder to be alive than most people. Or maybe there is something wrong with her. Something that broke when a little bomb went off in her brain, at 17, and left her changed in a way that no doctor or therapist has ever been able to explain. Forced to return to her childhood home to live with her dysfunctional, bohemian parents, Martha has one last chance to find out whether a life is ever too broken to fix - or whether, maybe, by starting over, she will get to write a better ending for herself.

When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he was about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history? 'Abroad in Japan' charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that comes with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one the world's most mysterious and impenetrable cultures. Spanning 10 years and 47 prefectures, Chris takes us from the chilling summit of Mount Fuji to the chaotic neon-lit streets of Tokyo.

Alison was expecting a lot of things about pregnancy - the morning sickness, the bloating, the total lack of any clothes that fit. But what she didn't expect was the loneliness. Having recently moved to the suburbs, with a husband who is working all hours to make ends meet, she finds herself increasingly isolated. So she is delighted when she meets Rebecca, whose baby is due on the same day. As they grow closer, Alison is certain she has a made a friend for life. But when their due date comes and goes, Alison hears nothing for weeks. Maybe Rebecca is just caught up in the chaos of a newborn, but what if something's wrong? Alison is relieved, then, when she tracks her down and finds Rebecca safe and well. But relief turns to shock when her new friend denies ever meeting her - or ever having been pregnant at all.

It is 1792 and Europe is seized by political turmoil and violence. Lizzy Fawkes has grown up in Radical circles where each step of the French Revolution is followed with eager idealism. But she has recently married John Diner Tredevant, a property developer who is heavily invested in Bristol's housing boom, and he has everything to lose from social upheaval and the prospect of war. Soon his plans for a magnificent terrace built above the 200ft drop of the Gorge come under threat.

Amy is thirty-four and has just given up her glittering career in the big (Welsh) city to move back in with her grandfather, returning to work in the small-town Chinese takeaway where she spent her bookish and boring childhood. Why? That's a secret she won't tell. Just like the secret of why her grandfather, Ah Goong, and her father, TC Li, haven't spoken to each other in thirty years. Weirder still, they've lived in the same small flat above the takeaway for the majority of those years, with Amy's mother Joan acting as their unfortunate go-between and buffer. Now Amy's parents have moved, leaving her in charge of looking after the old man. But then Ah Goong collapses in the street and Amy realises time is running out if she wants to play happy families again.

Abandoned at the gates of a London park one winter's night in 1850, baby Lily Mortimer is saved by a young police constable and taken to the London Foundling Hospital. Lily is fostered by an affectionate farming family in rural Suffolk, enjoying a brief childhood idyll before she is returned to the Hospital, where she is punished for her rebellious spirit. Released into the harsh world of Victorian London, Lily becomes a favoured employee at Belle Prettywood's Wig Emporium, but all the while she is hiding a dreadful secret. Across the years, policeman Sam Trench keeps watch over the young woman he once saved. When Sam meets Lily again, there is an instant attraction between them and Lily is convinced that Sam holds the key to her happiness - but might he also be the one to uncover her crime and so condemn her to death?

Timothy West and Prunella Scales are - first and foremost - actors. But their finest roles, it turns out, have always been as husband and wife! Timothy West charts the course of their lives, from the years before they met, to their secret courting and marriage. Diving into their journey to establishing themselves at the heart of British theatre, television and film over the next seventy years, most notably in Fawlty Towers and Brass. Crammed full of funny, poignant, jaw-dropping and occasionally painful stories, 'Pru & Me' also vividly recounts their later blaze of glory that introduced the world to the real Tim and Pru, via Great Canal Journeys.

In an extraordinary story that only he could tell, Matthew Perry takes readers onto the soundstage of the most successful sitcom of all time while opening up about his private struggles with addiction. Candid, self-aware, and told with his trademark humour, Perry vividly details his lifelong battle with the disease and what fuelled it despite seemingly having it all. 'Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing' is an unforgettable memoir that shares the most intimate details of the love Perry lost, his darkest days, and his greatest friends.

Kate, 2019. Kate flees London - and her abusive partner - for Cumbria and Weyward Cottage, inherited from her great-aunt. There, a secret lurks in the bones of the house, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century. Violet, 1942. Violet is more interested in collecting insects and climbing trees than in becoming a proper young lady. Until a chain of shocking events changes her life forever. Altha, 1619. Altha is on trial for witchcraft, accused of killing a local man. Known for her uncanny connection with nature and animals, she is a threat that must be eliminated.

Margaret Atwood is celebrated as one of the most gifted storytellers in the world. These stories explore the full warp and weft of experience, from two best friends disagreeing about their shared past, to the right way to stop someone from choking; from a daughter determining if her mother really is a witch, to what to do with inherited relics such as World War II parade swords.

It's 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, Gaunt signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. The front is horrific, of course, and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him, spurred on by his love of Greek heroes and romantic poetry. Before long, their classmates have followed suit.