Book 1 – Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Winner of the 2009 Booker Prize
England, the 1520s. Henry VIII is on the throne, but has no heir. Cardinal Wolsey is his chief advisor, charged with securing the divorce the pope refuses to grant.
Into this atmosphere of distrust and need comes Thomas Cromwell, first as Wolsey’s clerk, and later his successor. Cromwell is a wholly original man: the son of a brutal blacksmith, a political genius, a briber, a charmer, a bully, a man with a delicate and deadly expertise in manipulating people and events. Ruthless in pursuit of his own interests, he is as ambitious in his wider politics as he is for himself.
Book 2 – The Prostrate Years by Sue Townsend
Adrian Mole is 39 and a quarter. Unable to afford the mortgage on his riverside apartment, he has been forced to move into a semi-detached converted pigsty next door to his parents, George and Pauline. His ravishing wife Daisy loathes the countryside, longs for Dean Street and has yet to buy a pair of Wellingtons; they are both aware the passion has gone out of their marriage, but neither knows how to reignite the flame.
To cap it all off, Adrian is leaving his bed numerous times a night to go to the lavatory and has other alarming symptoms, leading him to suspect prostate trouble. Meanwhile, his mother thinks that an appearance on the Jeremy Kyle show might solve the mystery of her daughter’s paternity once and for all. And when George is asked to provide a DNA sample, will the shock kill him? He is already disabled, though still chain smoking and has had an ashtray welded onto the arm of his wheelchair.
Book 3 – A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux
When Jerry Delfont, a travel writer with writer’s block receives a letter from an American philanthropist, with news of a scandal involving an Indian frien of her son’s, he is sufficiently intrigued to pursue the story. A dramatic depiction of obsession and need
Book 4 – Love and Summer by William Trevor
It’s summer and nothing much is happeing in Rathmoye. Eo it doesn’t go unnoticed when a dark-haired stranger called Florian appears on his bicycle in the town. Miss Connulty, liberated at last by the death of her mother, resolves to keep an eye on him, and it’s she wo comes to witness Ellie, a farmer’s wife fall in love with the young man.
Evoking the passions and frustrations felt by the people of small Irish town during one long summer.
