Avid Reader Book Club

The Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Richard Hannay's ennui comes to an abrupt end when a murder is committed in his flat - only a few days before the dead man had revealed to him an assassination plot which would have terrible consequences for international peace.

Fearing the police will see him as the obvious suspect, and desperate to escape the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland. There, among the wild moors, he needs all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers...

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The Long-Shadowed Forest by Helen Hoover

In 1954, Helen Hoover and her husband Adrian left their careers and the big-city life of Chicago to live in a small cabin in the north woods that border Minnesota and Canada. Living without electricity, telephone, or a car, the Hoovers became part of the environment, peacefully coexisting with their wild neighbours.

The Long-Shadowed Forest is the amazing record of the Hoovers' relationship with deer, mice, birds, squirrels, moose, and other creatures of the forest. First published in 1963, these stories of daily life in the woods and vivid descriptions of a fascinating variety of plants and animals delighted readers for years and have an enduring popularity.

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The Arabian Nights translated by Husain Haddawy

Full of mischief, valor, ribaldry, and romance, The Arabian Nights has enthralled readers for centuries. These are the tales that saved the life of Shahrazad, whose husband, the king, executed each of his wives after a single night of marriage. Beginning an enchanting story each evening, Shahrazad always withheld the ending: A thousand and one nights later, her life was spared forever.

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100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendía family. It is a rich and brilliant chronicle of life and death, and the tragicomedy of humankind. In the noble, ridiculous, beautiful, and tawdry story of the Buendía family, one sees all of humanity, just as in the history, myths, growth, and decay of Macondo, one sees all of Latin America. Alternately reverential and comical, One Hundred Years of Solitude weaves the political, personal, and spiritual to bring a new consciousness to storytelling.

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The Lusiads by Luis Vaz de Camoes

First published in 1572, The Lusiads is one of the greatest epic poems of the Renaissance, immortalizing Portugal's voyages of discovery with an unrivalled freshness of observation.

At the centre of The Lusiads is Vasco da Gama's pioneer voyage via southern Africa to India in 1497-98. The first European artist to cross the equator, Camoes's narrative reflects the novelty and fascination of that original encounter with Africa, India and the Far East. It speaks powerfully of the precariousness of power, and of the rise and decline of nationhood, threatened not only from without by enemies, but from within by loss of integrity and vision.

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