The autumn season of the Radio 2 Book Club is out now, with brilliant brand-new fiction titles to discover.
The BBC Radio 2 Book Club on the Zoe Ball Breakfast Show features a wide range of titles and authors, recommending great reads from both new and much-loved writers, encouraging listeners to perhaps try out a genre they might not have read before, and share their opinions and insights on the titles and great reads they’re enjoying right now.
As well as being featured on Zoe’s show, The Radio 2 Book Club is available as a weekly podcast on BBC Sounds with bitesize episodes of around 10-20 minutes. Across the episodes, Zoe chats to some of the best fiction authors around to learn more about their latest novels, writing routines and literary loves; she speaks to librarians and reading champions to find out which books are flying off the library shelves; and she chats with Radio 2 listener book groups to find out what reads they are currently enjoying.
Take a look at the featured titles below:
Thieves’ Gambit by Kayvion Lewis
Rosalyn Quest was raised by a legendary family of thieves with one rule: trust no one. Trapped in a glamorous world of riches and double-crosses, she is about to escape the family business when her mother is kidnapped. Her only chance to save her is to win the Thieves’ Gambit – a deadly competition for the world’s up-and-coming thieves, where the victor is granted one wish.
To win, she must outwit all of her backstabbing competitors, including her arch-nemesis. But can she take victory from the handsome, charming boy who makes a play for her heart? The one who might be hiding the most dangerous secret of all?
The Day We Left by Caroline Bond
Oli and Joe are identical twins. But they will never be the same.
Lizzie Truman gives birth to her sons at thirty-one weeks. From the start, the differences between the twins are clear. Oli is bigger, stronger, healthier. Joe is small and much less robust, his future inexorably altered by the trauma of his premature delivery. As soon as the boys are well enough, Lizzie checks out of the maternity hospital and leaves her old life behind.
By the time Oli and Joe are grown, Beth has a new name, a thriving business, and she has successfully raised her sons alone. But when the truth about their past emerges, the twins are forced to reassess everything they thought they knew about their mother, their upbringing and themselves.
The Year of the Locust by Terry Hayes
If, like Kane, you’re a Denied Access Area spy for the CIA, then boundaries have no meaning. Your function is to go in, do whatever is required, and get out again – by whatever means necessary. You know when to run, when to hide – and when to shoot.
But some places don’t play by the rules. Some places are too dangerous, even for a man of Kane’s experience. The badlands where the borders of Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan meet are such a place – a place where violence is the only way to survive.
Kane travels there to exfiltrate a man with vital information for the safety of the West – but instead he meets an adversary who will take the world to the brink of extinction. A frightening, clever, vicious man with blood on his hands and vengeance in his heart…
Gaslight by Femi Kayode
Bishop Jeremiah Dawodu, pastor of a Nigerian megachurch, has been arrested and charged with the murder of his wife, Folasade, the ‘First Lady’ of the church. The arrest was public, humiliating and sensational – sending shockwaves through Lagos – but throughout it all, Bishop Dawodu maintains his innocence.
Philip Taiwo, an acclaimed investigative psychologist, is asked by his sister, a member of the church’s congregation, to clear the pastor’s name. With no actual body, it looks to be a simple case and despite Philip’s dislike of organised religion, he agrees to take it on as a favour to his sister. Then the First Lady’s body is found in a nearby lake just as Philip’s beloved family come under attack from someone warning him off the case, and he realises that nothing to do with this investigation will be straightforward.
Was it murder or suicide? Is someone framing the Bishop or the First Lady?
A True Account by Katherine Howe
In Boston, as the Golden Age of Piracy comes to a bloody close, Hannah Masury – bound into service at a waterfront inn since childhood – is ready to take her life into her own hands. When William Fly is hanged for piracy in the town square, the teenage Hannah is watching. Forced to flee for her life, Hannah disguises herself as a cabin boy and joins the pitiless crew of another notorious real-life pirate, Edward ‘Ned’ Low. To earn her freedom and finally change the tide of her own future, Hannah must hunt down William Fly’s lost treasure.
Meanwhile in 1930, Professor Marian Beresford pieces this bewitching story together, seeing her own lack of freedom reflected back at her as she watches Hannah’s transformation. At the centre of Hannah Masury’s account, however, lies a centuries-old mystery that Marian is determined to solve. It soon becomes clear that Hannah was once just as determined to take this secret to her grave…
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