Resources
Reader Reviews: September 2024
Do you know we offer reading groups free sets of books every month? All we ask for in return are reviews. If you’d like to find out more you can sign up to our newsletters. We will be sharing reviews from our readers who have received copies of the latest books from our publisher partners. You can see all of the open offers here. If you are part of an adult reading group, or manage a children’s or young people one, make sure you sign up to our Reading Groups for Everyone where you can find...
Social Media Guide
Reading Groups for Everyone is full of opportunities for reading groups, but publishers are often looking for feedback and reviews in return. They are also increasingly looking for groups who will share their thoughts on social media platforms. If you or your group aren’t familiar with social media, this can seem daunting. We’ve put together a simple social media guide which will enable you to take part and get up to date. Download the guide by clicking the link below. Looking to start a...
How to start a reading group
Interested in joining a reading group or starting one of your own? Download our quick guide to getting started. You can also download icebreaker questions to help get your discussion started, and a social media guide to show how you can share your reading with others online.
September booklist 2024 – Debuts
The debut authors and/or illustrators’ booklist features an exciting array of new voices in publishing, spanning genres from humorous children’s stories to gripping adult thrillers. These fresh perspectives bring unique and compelling narratives to readers, making them a vital addition to the literary landscape. Supporting debut authors is crucial as it encourages diverse storytelling and helps cultivate the next generation of literary talent and we hope you will enjoy reading our picks. Our...
August booklist 2024 – Escape with a Book
Summer is a time for adventures and immersive experiences, so we have created a booklist perfect for readers looking to escape into captivating stories. These sixteen books offer a variety of escapes, from adventurous expeditions and magical journeys to heartwarming romances and engaging puzzles, ensuring every reader finds their perfect summer getaway even if you cannot leave your house. Our librarian readers have shared three words to describe each book to help you decide if the book is for...
And So I Roar by Abi Daré – Library and Book Club Resources
Four years after The Girl with the Louding Voice captured half a million hearts worldwide, Abi Daré returns with a stunning, heart-wrenching new novel. And So I Roar begins in Lagos, Nigeria, when a sudden knock at the gate in the middle of the night threatens to unravel everything plucky fourteen-year-old Adunni has worked for, just as she is set to restart her much-desired education. To celebrate the publication of And So I Roar, we are delighted to offer a range of book club resources,...
Baumgartner by Paul Auster - Reading Group Questions
The life of Sy Baumgartner – noted author, and soon-to-be retired philosophy professor – has been defined by his deep, abiding love for his wife. Now Anna is gone, and Baumgartner is trying to live with her absence. But Anna’s voice is everywhere still, in every spiral of memory and reminiscence, in each recalled episode of the passionate forty years they shared. Rich with feeling, wit and an eye for beauty in the smallest, most transient episodes of ordinary life, Baumgartner is a luminous...
National Reading Group Day - library toolkit
This toolkit will help librarians to plan for National Reading Group Day on 12 September 2024. Contact [email protected] with any questions.
National Reading Group Day - assets
Libraries and other organisations can download these social media assets to promote National Reading Group Day (12 September 2024). Contact [email protected] with any questions.
Download reading group questions for Kala by Colin Walsh
THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER SHORTLISTED FOR THE WATERSTONES DEBUT FICTION PRIZE 2023 ‘Unforgettable’ Observer ‘Masterful’ Irish Times ‘Explosive’ The Telegraph For those of you wanting a captivating and compelling read for your book group this summer, look no further than Kala by Colin Walsh, and use these reading group questions to fuel some invigorating discussions! More about the book: ‘We used to be such a force, back then when she was still with us. What happened to her?’ In the seaside...
My Teeth in Your Heart by Joanna Nadin - Discussion Notes
2024, Cambridge, England Billy’s got problems. A Levels, a mum who checked out of parenting a while ago, and then… there’s what Billy’s done to Cass, her person. Some secrets are too toxic to keep, but there’s no way Billy can let this one loose. 1974, Famagusta, Cyprus Anna’s a good ex-pat girl, focused on her A Levels, dreaming of studying at Cambridge, and definitely not looking for the love of her life. But then love does come, closely followed by war, and Anna’s carefully crafted world...
Garden of her Heart by Zoe Richards - Discussion Notes
A story of healing and recovery that will warm your soul…and get you into the garden. Garden of Her Heart is the story of one loner, two secrets, and three weeks at the Pinewoods Retreat. When Holly Bush (yes, she still hasn’t forgiven her mother for that combination) is made redundant with gardening leave, after a brutal attack, she decides to visit a retreat not far from home. There she finds friendship and a garden in need of love, she ends up doing literal gardening leave, bringing the...
Radio 2 Book Club extract of The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
In the wake of environmental catastrophe, January, once a principal in London’s Royal Ballet, has become a refugee on Tharsis, the terraformed colony on Mars. In Tharsis, January’s life is dictated by his status as an Earthstronger – a person whose body is not adjusted to Mars’s lower gravity and so poses a danger to those born on, or naturalized to, Mars. January’s job choices, housing, and even transportation options are dictated by this second-class status, and now a xenophobic politician...
How To Say Babylon: A Jamaican Memoir by Safiya Sinclair - author video and book club questions
There is an opportunity for book clubs to review the Women’s Prize for Non-fiction shortlisted book, How To Say Babylon. Apply by 23 May LONGLISTED FOR THE 2024 WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION You can find out more about the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction shortlist. ‘Dazzling. Potent. Vital’ TARA WESTOVER ‘To read it is to believe that words can save’ MARLON JAMES ‘I adored this book … Unforgettable, heartbreaking and heartwarming’ ELIF SHAFAK An extraordinary and inspiring memoir of family,...
Radio 2 Book Club extract of Where the Heart Should Be by Sarah Crossan
Ireland, 1846 Nell is working as a scullery maid in the kitchen of the Big House. Once she loved school and books and dreaming. But there’s not much choice of work when the land grows food that rots in the earth. Now she is scrubbing, peeling, washing, sweeping for Sir Philip Wicken, the man who owns her home, her family’s land, their crops, everything. His dogs are always well fed, even as famine sets in. Upstairs in the Big House, where Nell is forbidden to enter, is Johnny Browning, newly...
The Reading Agency’s April booklist - Nature and Conservation
Earth Day 2024 will take place on 22 April. To support any activity you may want to run, we have collated a booklist with a mix of poetry, fiction and non-fiction books with strong themes of nature and conservation. We would love to hear what books you’d recommend on social media using #booklist and tagging @readingagency. You can see our past booklists here. Our monthly booklists The monthly themed booklists are co-ordinated in-house by the Reading Partners team. The aim of our booklist...
The Secret Hours by Mick Herron - digital resources
Shortlisted for the British Book Awards Crime & Thriller Book of the Year 2024 About the book Two years ago, the Monochrome inquiry was set up to investigate the British secret service. Monochrome’s mission was to ferret out misconduct, allowing the civil servants seconded to the inquiry, Griselda Fleet and Malcolm Kyle, unfettered access to confidential information in the service archives. But with progress blocked at every turn, Monochrome is circling the drain . . . Until the OTIS file...
Radio 2 Book Club extract of Clear by Carys Davies
1843. On a remote Scottish island, Ivar, the sole occupant, leads a life of quiet isolation until the day he finds a man unconscious on the beach below the cliffs. The newcomer is John Ferguson, an impoverished church minister sent to evict Ivar and turn the island into grazing land for sheep. Unaware of the stranger’s intentions, Ivar takes him into his home, and in spite of the two men having no common language, a fragile bond begins to form between them. Meanwhile on the mainland, John’s...
GollanczFest - digital assets
Gollancz is the UK’s #1 Sci-fi, Fantasy & Horror publisher, bringing you epic books by the likes of Brandon Sanderson, Victoria Aveyard, Patrick Rothfuss, Joe Abercrombie, Natasha Pulley, and many more. Its fan-favourite festival GollanczFest returns on 16 March, and to celebrate, we’re taking over libraries nationwide! Download a digital pack to help you put a fantastical spin on your library. Dig out your favourite sci-fi classics and celebrate the romantasy stars of tomorrow with an...
The Reading Agency’s March booklist - Wonder Women
To mark International Women’s Day (8 March) and celebrate the achievements, triumphs and general brilliance of women and girls around the world, we have created a booklist with stories about wonder women and girls. We would love to hear what books you’d recommend on social media using #booklist and tagging @readingagency. You can see our past booklists here. Our monthly booklists The monthly themed booklists are co-ordinated in-house by the Reading Partners team. The aim of our booklist...
Radio 2 Book Club extract of The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey
Yorkshire, 1979 Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South. Because of the murders. Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn’t an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv’s mum stopped talking. Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all? So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a...
The Reading Agency’s February booklist - LGBT+ History Month
LGBT+ History Month takes place every February. Our booklist this month is for librarians and teachers to help them celebrate stories with strong LGBTQ+ representation or that are by LGBTQ+ creators. LGBT+ History Month is an opportunity to discover LGBT+ past and celebrate its present and future. Every year, Schools OUT sets a different theme for the month and provides free resources for education settings, businesses, services and organisations to help them celebrate and ‘Usualise’ LGBT+...
Radio 2 Book Club extract of The Painter's Daughters by Emily Howes
1759, Ipswich. Sisters Peggy and Molly Gainsborough are the best of friends and do everything together. They spy on their father as he paints, they rankle their mother as she manages the books, they tear barefoot through the muddy fields that surround their home. But there is another reason they are inseparable: from a young age, Molly has had a tendency to forget who she is, to fall into mental confusion, and Peggy knows instinctively that no one must find out. When the family move to Bath,...
The List of Suspicious Things by Jennie Godfrey - Book Club question cards
Yorkshire, 1979 Maggie Thatcher is prime minister, drainpipe jeans are in, and Miv is convinced that her dad wants to move their family Down South. Because of the murders. Leaving Yorkshire and her best friend Sharon simply isn’t an option, no matter the dangers lurking round their way; or the strangeness at home that started the day Miv’s mum stopped talking. Perhaps if she could solve the case of the disappearing women, they could stay after all? So, Miv and Sharon decide to make a list: a...
The Wartime Book Club by Kate Thompson - book club kit
Jersey, 1943. Once a warm and neighbourly community, now German soldiers patrol the cobbled streets, imposing a harsh rule on the people of the island. Grace La Mottée, the island’s only librarian, is ordered to destroy books which threaten the new regime. Instead, she hides the stories away in secret. Along with her headstrong best friend, postwoman Bea Rose, she wants to fight back. So she forms the wartime book club: a lifeline, offering fearful islanders the joy and escapism of...
Radio 2 Book Club extract of The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan
Her decision changed history. Now her family must survive it. British Malaya, 1930s Discontented housewife Cecily is seduced by Japanese general Fujiwara and the glorious future he is promising for ‘independent’ Malaya, free from British colonialism. As she becomes further embedded as his own personal spy, she unwittingly alters the fate of her country by welcoming in a punishing form of dictatorship under the Japanese in WWII. Japanese-occupied Malaya, 1945 Cecily and her family are barely...
Reader Reviews January 2024
Did you know that we offer free reading group sets of books for groups every month? All we ask for in return are reviews. If you’d like to find out more you can sign up to our newsletters. Every month we will be sharing reviews from our readers who have received copies of the latest books from our publisher partners. If you are part of an adult reading group, make sure you sign up to our Reading Groups for Everyone where you can find lots more reviews from readers and apply for sets of books...
The Reading Agency’s January booklist - New Year, New Adventures
To kick off 2024 we have picked books that will either help you learn something new or will take you away on new adventures. Whether you’re looking to delve into some self-improvement, explore the wonders of nature, conduct mind-boggling science experiments, or embark on thrilling fictional journeys, our picks should help to start your year of exciting adventures. Tell us on social media by tagging readingagency and using #booklist. You can also find the booklists on our Bookshop.org page...
Reading Friends resource pack: The Imperfect Art of Caring
This free resource pack for The Imperfect Art of Caring by Jessica Ryn has been designed for Reading Friends projects. It contains an extract from the book and discussion questions intended to support conversations and reflections on personal experiences and stories. About the book Violet Strong is strong by name but not by nature, or so she thinks. She listens but never talks about herself. She’s friendly but doesn’t have many real friends. She’s become good at keeping people at a distance...
The Reading Agency’s December booklist for adults - Books of the Year!
At The Reading Agency, we have read a lot of brilliant books over the past year; books that have made us laugh, cry and left us with a lot to discuss. Members of our team have picked the books that have stood out for them in 2024. We hope you find some inspiration for your next read, or perhaps spot a few titles you have enjoyed yourself! Tell us on social media by tagging readingagency and using #BooksOfTheYear. You can also find the booklists on our Bookshop.org page where you can buy...
