The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

Lily has grown up believing she accidentally killed her mother when she was four. She not only has her own memory of holding the gun, but her father's account of the event. Now fourteen, she yearns for her mother, and for forgiveness. Living on a peach farm in South Carolina with her father, she has only one friend: Rosaleen, a black servant whose sharp exterior hides a tender heart. South Carolina in the sixties is a place where segregation is still considered a cause worth fighting for. When racial tension explodes one summer afternoon, and Rosaleen is arrested and beaten, Lily is compelled to act. Fugitives from justice and from Lily's harsh and unyielding father, they follow a trail left by the woman who died ten years before. Finding sanctuary in the home of three beekeeping sisters, Lily starts a journey as much about her understanding of the world, as about the mystery surrounding her mother. (Fantastic fiction)

This is a delightful and heart-warming book that would be great to read in a book club. You can find it at Wagga City Library or reserve it here.

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations is a classic novel by Charles Dickens and is an RRL Book Club book. You don't have to be a fan of classics to enjoy this story as it follows the delightful Pip as his fortunes rise and fall, Miss Havisham, the jilted bride who nevers sees sunlight nor has changed out of her wedding dress in all the years that have passed, the beautiful but cold Estella, brought up by Miss Havisham to get her revenge on men and the scary and surprising Magwitch.

This book is great to read before or after Mr Pip by Lloyd Jones, which is also an RRL Book Club book.

The Same Man: George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh in love and war by David Lebedoff

At first glance there seems to be very little common ground between Orwell and Waugh. Orwell is most famous for writing 1984 and Animal Farm and Waugh for Brideshead Revisited. They were both born into middle class England but while Orwell shunned the class system Waugh was the ultimate social climber. Lebedoff writes that what they had in common "was a hatred of moral relativism. They both believed that morality is absolute, though they defined and applied it differently. But each believed with all his heart, brain and soul that there were such things as moral right and moral wrong, and that these were not subject to changes in fashion."

This fascinating book gives an insight into life in England in the early to mid-twentieth century and how the influential authors participated in and reacted to society. It can be found in the non-fiction section of Wagga City Library at 823.912 ORW. You can also find the novels of George Orwell and Evelyn Waugh.

The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas

Winner of the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for the Best Book in South East Asia and the Pacific, shortlisted for the ALS Gold Medal 2009, shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Prize 2009. The Slap was also discussed on the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club. It is a gritty, confronting look at suburban life in Melbourne. It centres around a barbecue at which a man slaps a child who isn't his own. This event has great consequences for all present and the author tells the story alternately from the perspective of the different characters. It is thought-provoking on many levels looking, not only at parenting and children, but also at love, marriage and tradition.

This book has tended to provoke strong reactions in those who have read it. I did not like any of the characters in the novel and yet still found the book compelling. It is worth a read just to see what all the fuss is about but be wary if you are sensitive to swearing!

The Slap is available from Wagga City Library - you can reserve it here.

Coronation Talkies by Susan Kurosawa

A charming, funny, engaging novel set in India at the end of British rule. It tells the story of Lydia who enters into a hasty marriage with with an Englishman living in India and Mrs Banerjee who comes to the station to set up a talking picture theatre.

Lydia moves from her quiet, English village to the very wet Indian hill station of Chalaili. This sodden, not quite fashionable town is full of fascinating characters, Indian, English and Anglo-Indian. Mrs Banerjee is hilarious as she sets up Coronation Talkies and enliven the society in Chalaili.

There is gossip and scandal, love and hate, betrayal and blackmail and a lovely look at the end of England's rule in India.

44 Scotland Street by Alexander McCall Smith

This is the first book in the delightful series by the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. It is set in a fictitious building in a real street in McCall Smith's home town of Edinburgh. It is full of characters very much a part of Edinburgh and yet recognisable to all of us - a good-looking young man, very used to getting what he wants, the young woman in her second gap year who falls for him though she knows she shouldn't, an eccentric widow, a pushy mother with a 'brilliant' son who just wants to be a little boy, the son of a wealthy man who just can't make a go of anything and many others.
You can borrow 44 Scotland Street at Wagga City Library (reserve it here) as well as the books that follow - Espresso Tales, Love Over Scotland, The World According to Bertie and The Unbearable Lightness of Scones.

Winter Close by Hugh MacKay

Hugh MacKay is a psychologist and social researcher who has written four best-selling books on social psychology and is also well known for his column in the Sydney Morning Herald. This, his fourth novel, is set in the Sydney suburb of Castlecrag and is a study of suburbia and the concept of neighbourhood.
That may sound a little dry but the novel is an engaging look at the residents of Winter Close, told by Tom, a counsellor who has his own inner demons. It is especially interesting if you are familiar with Sydney or have neighbours! Winter Close is one of the RRL Book Club titles.
You can borrow Winter Close, as well as other books by Hugh MacKay, from Wagga City Library - reserve it here.