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Escape into books with 16 winter reads from Between the Covers

22 December 2022

As Between the Covers wraps another series, which is all available to watch on iPlayer, lift the spirits with this bumper list of books discussed on the show over the past six weeks.

A mix of classics and current releases

Each week on Between the Covers, Sara Cox reviews this season’s hottest new novels, and revisits favourites from the Booker Prize back catalogue. She also talks to some of her guests about their own literary efforts. Graham Norton, Jenny Eclair, Clara Amfo and Kerry Godliman are just some of the famous book boffins joining Britain's liveliest Book Club.

Relish reading over winter with these 16 recommended books

Forever 成人快手 by Graham Norton

Carol is a divorced teacher living in a small town in Ireland, her only son now grown. A second chance at love sparks local speculation: what does a woman like her see in a man like that? What happened to his wife who abandoned them all those years ago?

When Declan becomes ill, things start to fall apart. His children are untrusting and cruel, and Carol is forced to leave their beloved home with its worn oak floors and elegant features and move back in with her parents. Carol’s mother is determined to get to the bottom of things, and it seems there are secrets in Declan’s past.

Graham Norton joins Sara in episode one.

The Perfect Golden Circle by Benjamin Myers

England, 1989. Over the course of a burning hot summer, two very different men - traumatized Falklands veteran Calvert, and affable, chaotic Redbone - set out nightly in a clapped-out camper van to undertake an extraordinary project. Under cover of darkness, the two men traverse the fields of rural England in secret, forming crop circles in elaborate and mysterious patterns. As the summer wears on, and their designs grow ever more ambitious, the two men find that their work has become a cult international sensation - and that an unlikely and beautiful friendship has taken root as the wheat ripens from green to gold.

Moving and exhilarating, tender and slyly witty, The Perfect Golden Circle is a captivating novel about the futility of war, the destruction of the English countryside, class inequality - and the power of beauty to heal trauma and fight power.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A 19th Century lawyer believes he is suffering from a fatal parasitic infection. Several decades later, a destitute musician finds his journal. So begins Mitchell’s Russian Doll of a novel in which six very different stories are intertwined.

Six interlocking lives - one amazing adventure. In a narrative that circles the globe and reaches from the 19th century to a post-apocalyptic future, Cloud Atlas erases the boundaries of time, genre and language to offer an enthralling vision of humanity’s will to power, and where it will lead us.

Cloud Atlas was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2004.

Love Untold by Ruth Jones

Grace is about to turn ninety. She doesn’t want parties or presents or fuss. She just wants to heal the family rift that’s been breaking her heart for decades. But to do that she must find her daughter Alys - the only person who can help to put things right.

When she finds her - if she does - she risks betraying grand-daughter Elin, who is far less forgiving of the past, with its hurts and secrets and lies. Meanwhile Grace’s great-grand-daughter Beca is oblivious to all these worries, too busy navigating the highs and lows of teenage life and keeping secrets of her own.

All families have their problems. And most of them get resolved. But Grace’s problem is thirty years old. And she doesn’t have time on her side.

Ruth Jones joins Sara in episode two.

The Second Sight of Zachary Cloudesley by Sean Lusk

Zachary Cloudesley is gifted in a remarkable way. But not all gifts are a blessing...

Raised amongst the cogs and springs of his father’s workshop in London in the 1750s, Zachary Cloudesley has grown up surrounded by strange and enchanting clockwork automata. He is a happy child, beloved by his father Abel and the workmen who help bring his father's creations to life.

He is also the bearer of an extraordinary gift; at the touch of a hand, Zachary can see into the hearts and minds of the people he meets. But then a near-fatal accident will take Zachary away from the workshop and his family. His father will have to make a journey that he will never return from. And, years later, only Zachary can find out what happened.

Snap by Belinda Bauer

On a stifling summer’s day, eleven-year-old Jack and his two sisters sit in their broken-down car, waiting for their mother to come back and rescue them. Jack’s in charge, she'd said. I won’t be long.

But she doesn’t come back. She never comes back. And life as the children know it is changed for ever.

Three years later, Jack is still in charge - of supporting his sisters, of making sure nobody knows they’re alone in the house, and - quite suddenly - of finding out the truth about what happened to his mother.

Snap was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2018.

The Secret Diaries of Charles Ignatius Sancho by Paterson Joseph

It is 1746 and Georgian London is not a safe place for a young Black man, especially one who has escaped slavery. After the twinkling lights in the Fleet Street coffee shops are blown out and the great houses have closed their doors for the night, Sancho must dodge slave catchers and worse. The man he hoped would help - a kindly duke who taught him to write - is dying. Sancho is desperate and utterly alone.

How then does Charles Ignatius Sancho meet the King, write and play highly acclaimed music, become the first Black person to vote in Britain and lead the fight to end slavery? It’s time for him to tell his story, one that begins on a tempestuous Atlantic Ocean, and ends at the very centre of London life. And through it all, he must ask: born amongst death, how much can you achieve in one short life?

Paterson Joseph joins Sara in episode three.

Sometimes People Die by Simon Stephenson

The year is 1999. Returning to practice after a suspension for stealing opioids, a young Scottish doctor takes the only job he can find: a post as a senior house officer in the struggling east London hospital of St Luke’s.

Amid the maelstrom of sick patients, over-worked staff and underfunded wards a darker secret soon declares itself: too many patients are dying. Which of the medical professionals our protagonist has encountered is behind the murders? And can our unnamed narrator’s version of the events be trusted?

The Long Song by Andrea Levy

“You do not know me yet. My son Thomas, who is publishing this book, tells me, it is customary at this place in a novel to give the reader a little taste of the story that is held within these pages. As your storyteller, I am to convey that this tale is set in Jamaica during the last turbulent years of slavery and the early years of freedom that followed.”

Levi’s novel, set in the last days of slavery in Jamaica, recounts the lives of the people who live and work on the Amity sugar plantation.

The Long Song was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2010.

Too Much by Tom Allen

Happily settled in a new relationship and with a dream house of his own, comedian Tom Allen had finally moved on from the arrested development of millennial life and could at last call himself an adult.

But when his father died suddenly in late 2021, Tom's newfound independence was rocked by a fresh set of challenges, and he began to find solace in the past (and his new vegetable patch). Told through snapshots from Tom's busy life - whether reflecting on the campness of funeral customs, muddy lockdown walks in unsuitable footwear or just reminiscing on his childhood obsession with Patricia Routledge - Too Much is a hilarious joyride of stories as well as an emotional ode to Tom's beloved dad, and a touching manifesto on how to navigate the complexities of grief.

Tom Allen joins Sara in episode four.

The Night Ship by Jess Kidd

1628. Embarking on a journey in search of her father, a young girl called Mayken boards the Batavia, the most impressive sea vessel of the age. During the long voyage, this curious and resourceful child must find her place in the ship’s busy world, and she soon uncovers shadowy secrets above and below deck. As tensions spiral, the fate of the ship and all on board becomes increasingly uncertain.

1989. Gil, a boy mourning the death of his mother, is placed in the care of his irritable and reclusive grandfather. Their home is a shack on a tiny fishing island off the Australian coast, notable only for its reefs and wrecked boats. This is no place for a child struggling with a dark past and Gil’s actions soon get him noticed by the wrong people.

The Night Ship is an enthralling tale of human brutality, providence and friendship, and of two children, hundreds of years apart, whose fates are inextricably bound together.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his past...

A contemporary classic, The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House, of lost causes and lost love.

The Remains of the Day won the Booker Prize in 1989.

Take My Hand by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Montgomery, Alabama. 1973. Fresh out of nursing school, Civil Townsend has big plans to make a difference in her community. At the Montgomery Family Planning Clinic, she intends to help women make their own choices for their lives and bodies. But when her first week on the job takes her down a dusty country road to a tumbledown cabin, she's surprised to find that her new patients are just eleven and thirteen years old.

Neither of the Williams sisters has even kissed a boy, but they are poor and Black, and for those handling their welfare benefits, that's reason enough to have the girls on birth control. As Civil grapples with her new responsibilities, she takes India and Erica into her heart and comes to care for their family as though they were her own. But one day she arrives at their door to discover the unthinkable has happened, and nothing will ever be the same.

Take My Hand is inspired by real events and a shocking chapter of American history.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Claudia Hampton is beautiful, famous, independent - and dying. However, she remains defiant to the last, telling her nurses that she will write a 'history of the world, and in the process, my own'.

Moon Tiger is Claudia's story, from a childhood just after the First World War through the Second and beyond. Her life is entwined with others and she must allow those who knew her the chance to put across their point of view. There is Gordon, brother and adversary; Jasper, her untrustworthy lover and father of Lisa, her cool conventional daughter. Then there is Tom, her one great love, found and lost in wartime Egypt.

Moon Tiger won the Booker Prize in 1987.

The Dance Tree by Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Strasbourg, 1518. In the midst of a blisteringly hot summer, a lone woman begins to dance in the city square. She dances for days without pause or rest, and as she is joined by hundreds of others, the authorities declare an emergency. Musicians will be brought in to play the Devil out of these women.

Just beyond the city’s limits, pregnant Lisbet lives with her mother-in-law and husband, tending the bees that are their livelihood. And then, as the dancing plague gathers momentum, Lisbet’s sister-in-law Nethe returns from seven years’ penance in the mountains for a crime no one will name. It is a secret that Lisbet is determined to uncover. As the city buckles under the beat of a thousand feet, she finds herself thrust into a dangerous web of deceit and clandestine passion, but she is dancing to a dangerous tune . . .

Set in an era of superstition, hysteria, and extraordinary change, and inspired by the true events of a doomed summer, The Dance Tree is an impassioned story of family secrets, forbidden love, and women pushed to the edge.

Us by David Nicholls

Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home. He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together. So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again.

The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed. What could possibly go wrong?

Us was longlisted for the Booker Prize in 2014.

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