Reading Group Book List

Portsmouth Library Service has over 90 book sets that are available for reading groups in the local area to use and enjoy. To take a closer look at our collection, please use the book title links below. Each page has a synopsis and perhaps reviews from the reading groups themselves.

Our mission is to challenge your comfortable reading choices and our book sets are a mixture of 19th and 20th century classics as well as contemporary novels and narrative non-fiction. Titles are suggested by reading group members and staff, and then the group facilitators decide which books will be best for encouraging debate and discussion. Generally speaking we select mainstream titles in paperback. Quite often they have won, or been shortlisted for an award. We occasionally choose books to tie in with a literary event or author visit.

If you would like to suggest a book you think would make a good reading group selection, please start a thread below.

A prayer Owen Meany by John Irving

A short history of tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka

A town like Alice by Nevil Shute

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

And when did you last see your father? by Blake Morrison

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

Birthdays by Heidi Pitlor

Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant

Bitter sweets by Roopa Farooki

Bone people by Keri Hulme

Book of Revelation by Rupert Thomson

Bookseller of Kabul by Asne Seierstad

Brighton rock by Graham Greene

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons

Colour of heaven by James Runcie

Curious incident of the dog in the night time by Mark Haddon

Daughter of fortune by Isabel Allende

Day by A L Kennedy

Deafening by Frances Itani

English harem by Anthony McCarten

English passengers by Matthew Kneale

Family matters by Rohinton Mistry

Fingersmith by Sarah Waters

Four letters of love by Niall Williams

Fragrant Harbour by John Lanchester

Grass is singing by Doris Lessing

Guernica by Dave Boling

Guernsey literary and potato peel society by Helen Shaffer

Happenstance by Carole Shields

Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd

Heart of the matter by Graham Greene

Highest tide by Jim Lynch

History of love by Nicole Krauss

Hours by Michael Cunningham

House on the Strand by Daphne Du Maurier

Howling miller by Arto Paasilinna

I capture the castle by Dodie Smith

Icarus girl by Helen Oyeyemi

If nobody speaks of remarkable things by Jon McGregor

Julius Winsome by Gerard Donovan

Kingdom by the sea by Paul Theroux

Kite runner by Khaled Hosseini

Labyrinth by Kate Mosse

Life of Pi by Yann Martel

Lightning Keeper by Starling Lawrence

Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle

Love in the time of cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Me and Emma by Elizabeth Flock

Memoirs of a geisha by Arthur Golden
Miss Garnet's angel by Salley Vickers

Moon tiger by Penelope Lively

My sister's keeper by Jodi Picoult

Name of the rose by Umberto Eco

Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Ninth life of Louis Drax by Liz Jensen

Notes on a scandal by Zoe Heller

Number one ladies detective by Alexander McCall Smith

Only boy for me by Gil McNeil

Perfume by Patrick Suskind

Persuasion by Jane Austen

Portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce

Promise of happiness by Justin Cartwright

Reader by Bernard Schlink

Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi

Red tent by Anita Diamant

Regeneration by Pat Barker

Rendezvous and other stories by Daphne Du Maurier

Requiem for the East by Andrei Makine

Road by Cormac McCarthy

Road Home by Rose Tremain

Rough Music by Patrick Gale

Saturday by Ian McEwan

Sea by John Banville

Secret history by Donna Tartt

Secret river by Kate Grenville

Seventh Sacrament by David Hewson

Shack, The by William P. Young

Shadow dance by Angela Carter

Shadow of the wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Small island by Andrea Levy

Spies by Michael Frayn

Suite Francaise by Irene Nemirovsky

Summer book by Tove Jansson

Super-Cannes by JG Ballard

Suspicions of Mr Whicher by Kate Summerscale

Temples of delight by Barbara Trapido

Tenderness of wolves by Stef Penney

This time of dying by Reina James

Three men in a boat by Jerome K. Jerome

To kill a mockingbird, by Harper Lee

Unbearable lightness of being by Milan Kundera

Vanishing act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O'Farrell

Wasp factory by Iain Banks

We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver

What I loved by Siri Hustevedt

When we were orphans by Kazuo Ishiguru

Yacoubian building by Alaa Al Aswany

When leaving a review, please be careful not to write a plot spoiler. If this is unavoidable, mention the world 'spoiler' in the subject line.


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