The spring season of the Radio 2 Book Club is out now, with four brand-new fiction titles to discover.
The BBC Radio 2 Book Club is on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show. It features a wide range of titles and authors, recommending great reads from both new and much-loved writers, encouraging listeners to perhaps try out a genre they might not have read before, and share their opinions and insights on the titles and great reads they’re enjoying right now.
As well as being featured on Zoe’s show, The Radio 2 Book Club is available as a weekly podcast on BBC Sounds with bitesize episodes of around 10-20 minutes. Across the episodes, Zoe chats to some of the best fiction authors around to learn more about their latest novels, writing routines and literary loves; she speaks to librarians and reading champions to find out which books are flying off the library shelves; and she speaks to Radio 2 listener book groups to find out what reads they are currently enjoying.
Take a look at the featured titles below:
Tell Me How This Ends by Jo Leevers
Haunted by the past, Henrietta throws herself into a new job transcribing other people’s life stories, vowing to stick to the facts and keep emotions at arm’s length. But when she meets the eccentric and terminally ill Annie, she finds herself inextricably drawn in. And when Annie reveals that her sister drowned in unexplained circumstances in 1974, Henrietta’s methodical mind can’t help following the story’s loose ends…
Unlike Henrietta, Annie is brimming with confidence―but even she has limits when it comes to opening up. Ever since that terrible night when her sister left a pile of clothes beside the canal and vanished, Annie has been afraid to look too closely into the murky depths of her memories. When her attempts to glide over the past come up against Henrietta’s determination to fill in the gaps, both women find themselves confronting truths they’d thought were buried forever―especially when Henrietta’s digging unearths a surprising emotional connection between them.
Could unlocking Annie’s story help Henrietta rewrite the most devastating passages in her own life? And, in return, can she offer Annie a final twist in the tale, before it’s too late?
bq.
Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yaros
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general-also known as her tough-as-talons mother-has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders. But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter – like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant. She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret. Alliances will be forged. Lives will be lost. Traitors will become allies…or even lovers. But sleep with one eye open because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
Grave Expectations by Alice Bell
When 30-something freelance medium Claire Hendricks is invited to an old university friend’s country pile to provide entertainment for a family party, her best friend Sophie tags along. In fact, Sophie rarely leaves Claire’s side, because she’s been haunting her ever since she was murdered at the age of seventeen. On arrival at The Cloisters, it quickly becomes clear that this family is hiding more than just the good china, as Claire learns someone has recently met an untimely end at the house.
Teaming up with the least unbearable members of the Wellington-Forge family – depressive ex-cop Basher and teenage radical Alex – Claire and Sophie determine to figure out not just whodunnit, but who they killed, why and when. Together they must race against incompetence to find the murderer – before the murderer finds them…in this funny, modern, media-literate mystery for the My Favourite Murder generation.
The Cassandra Complex by Holly Smale
Cassandra Penelope Dankworth is a creature of habit. She likes what she likes (museums, jumpsuits, her boyfriend Will) and strongly dislikes what she doesn’t (mess, change, her boss drinking out of her mug). Her life runs in a pleasing, predictable order. Until now.
She’s just been dumped.
She’s just been fired.
Her local café has run out of banana muffins.
Then, something truly unexpected happens: Cassie discovers she can go back and change the past. Now, Cassie should be able to find a way to fix the life she accidentally obliterated. And with time on her side, how hard can it be…?
Get involved
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