The Wild One by Janet Gover and Us by David Nicholls

August 2015

The Wild One by Janet Gover

Iraq war veteran Dan Mitchell once disobeyed an order – and it nearly destroyed him. Now a national park ranger in the Australian outback, he’s faced with another order he is unwilling to obey ... 

Photographer Rachel Quinn seeks out beauty in unlikely places. Her work comforted Dan in his darkest days. But Quinn knows darkness too – and Dan soon realises she needs his help as much as he needs hers. 

Carrie Bryant was a talented jockey until a racing accident broke her nerve. Now Dan and Quinn need her expertise, but can she face her fear? And could horse breeder, Justin Fraser, a man fighting to save his own heritage, be the man to help put that fear to rest? 

The wounds you can’t see are the hardest to heal...

Buy from Amazon

Us by David Nicholls

Douglas Petersen understands his wife's need to 'rediscover herself' now that their son is leaving home.

He just thought they'd be doing their rediscovering together.

So when Connie announces that she will be leaving, too, he resolves to make their last family holiday into the trip of a lifetime: one that will draw the three of them closer, and win the respect of his son. One that will make Connie fall in love with him all over again.

The hotels are booked, the tickets bought, the itinerary planned and printed.

What could possibly go wrong?

Buy from Amazon

Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack and State of Emergency by Andy McNab

September 2015

discuss at October meeting

Sixty Degrees North by Malachy Tallack

The sixtieth parallel marks a borderland between the northern and southern worlds. Wrapping itself around the lower reaches of Finland, Sweden and Norway, it crosses the tip of Greenland and the southern coast of Alaska, and slices the great expanses of Russia and Canada in half. The parallel also passes through Shetland, where Malachy Tallack has spent most of his life.

In Sixty Degrees North, Tallack travels westward, exploring the landscapes of the parallel and the ways that people have interacted with those landscapes, highlighting themes of wildness and community, isolation and engagement, exile and memory.


Sixty Degrees North is an intimate book, one that begins with the author's loss of his father and his own troubled relationship with Shetland, and concludes with an acceptance of loss and an embrace -- ultimately a love -- of the place he calls home.
Those in the group who had read this had mixed opinions.  Some found it slow, others found it interesting and thought provoking.

Buy from Amazon

State of Emergency by Andy McNab

3 AM on a frozen winter’s night, only hours after the results of the general election. A small craft skims the Thames closing in on London’s most exclusive new riverside hotel. On board is a lone assassin, his target - Britain’s most powerful new politician. In a nation threatened by extremist jihadis and torn apart by civil unrest, Vernon Rolt has just been catapulted into government on an extreme anti-terror platform.

Rolt’s plans for a zero-tolerance crackdown on ethnic violence has touched a popular nerve. But his move into politics has made him some unlikely enemies – British ex-servicemen, once his most committed supporters who now want him dead.


Ex-SAS trooper turned MI5 operative Tom Buckingham is undercover inside Rolt’s organisation. His mission: to neutralise the rogue assassins for whom he also has become a target, and to discover the deadly intentions of Rolt’s new financier, shadowy Crimean oligarch Oleg Umarov. But all too soon, Tom gets caught up in a far more devastating plot which will change the political landscape of Europe - for ever...

Never having read any of Andy McNab's books before I did not know what to expect.  I was grabbed straight away.  The descriptions were so detailed I really felt that I was viewing the scenes for real.  Gripping from the start and no hint of what the ending would be.
Others who read the book felt that although it was good it could have been written by anyone and was not out of the ordinary.

Buy from Amazon