The Book Club

Clade canvasses three generations from the very near future to late this century. Central to the novel is the family of Adam, a scientist, and his wife Ellie, an artist. The novel opens with this couple wanting a child and Adam in a quandary about the wisdom of this. Their daughter proves to be an elusive little girl and then a troubled teenager, by which time cracks have appeared in her parents’ marriage. Their grandson is in turn a troubled boy, but when his character reappears as an adult he’s an astronomer, one set to discover something astounding in the universe. Clade shifts through the decades, through disasters and plagues, miraculous small moments and acts of great courage. This is a provocative novel about time, family and how a changing planet might change our lives.

Stylish, suburban Katherine is eighteen when she is propelled into the centre of Professor Jacob Goldman's rambling home and his large eccentric family. As his enchanting yet sharp-tongued wife Jane gives birth to her sixth child, Katherine meets the volatile, stroppy Jonathan and his older, more beautiful brother Roger, who wins her heart. First love quickly leads to heartbreak and sends her fleeing to Rome but, ten years on, she returns to find the Goldmans again. A little wiser and a lot more grown-up, Katherine faces her future.

THE BOOK CLUB host Jennifer Byrne plus regular clubbers Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger are joined by Australian comedian Kitty Flangan plus novelist and writer Graeme Simsion. For the December show we bring you an hour-long end of year special, counting down the top "10 Classic Beach Books" as voted by you, the audience.

Tsukuru Tazaki is drifting…living in Tokyo and working as an engineer designing train stations, his existence is marked by isolation and sadness. When Tsukuru was in his second year of university, his close-knit group of friends cut all ties with him without explanation. Tsukuru was rocked by their rejection and fell into a deep depression. A decade and a half later, his new girlfriend Sara senses Tsukuru harbors wounds from the past and encourages him to track down his old friends to find out why they abandoned him. So Tsukuru embarks on a physical and spiritual exploration of his past. Reconnecting with his old friends and unearthing heart-breaking revelations in the process.

In a rough government housing ghetto, Jake and Beth Heke live amongst entrenched poverty, drug abuse and violence. When the Heke's daughter Grace becomes a victim of the community's brutality, Beth is inspired to transcend the patterns of ghetto life and transform her existence.

What happens when three ordinary people undergo radical medical treatments that make them international curiosities? They become wonders. Leon has a small visible mechanical heart; Kathryn has been cured of a rare genetic disorder but is now covered in curly black wool; while performance artist Christos has metal wings implanted into his back. Brought together by a canny entrepreneur, the Wonders are transformed into a glamorous, genre-defying, twenty-first-century freak show. But what makes them objects of fascination also places them in danger.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time is a murder mystery novel like no other. The detective, and narrator, is Christopher Boone. Christopher is fifteen. He knows a very great deal about maths and very little about human beings. He loves lists, patterns and the truth. He hates the colours yellow and brown and being touched. He has never gone further than the end of the road on his own, but when he finds a neighbour's dog murdered he sets out on a terrifying journey which will turn his whole world upside down.

When a medical procedure goes horribly wrong and famous actor Ralph Meier winds up dead, Dr. Marc Schlosser needs to come up with some answers. After all, reputation is everything in this business. Personally, he’s not exactly upset that Ralph is gone, but as a high profile doctor to the stars, Marc can't hide from the truth forever. It all started the previous summer. Marc, his wife, and their two beautiful teenage daughters agreed to spend a week at the Meier’s extravagant summer home on the Mediterranean. Joined by Ralph and his striking wife Judith, her mother, and film director Stanley Forbes and his much younger girlfriend, the large group settles in for days of sunshine, wine tasting, and trips to the beach. But when a violent incident disrupts the idyll, darker motivations are revealed, and suddenly no one can be trusted. As the ultimate holiday soon turns into a nightmare, the circumstances surrounding Ralph’s later death begin to reveal the disturbing reality behind that summer’s tragedy.

One Hundred Years of Solitude chronicles, through the course of a century, life in the fictional town of Macondo. The story follows six generations of the Buendia family - from Jose Arcadio and Ursula, through, finally, to the last – Aureliano – the child of an incestuous union. As babies are born and the world's "great inventions" are introduced into Macondo, the village grows and becomes more and more subject to the workings of the outside world, to its politics and progress, and to history itself. And the Buendias and their fellow Macondons advance in years, experience, and wealth ... until madness, corruption, and death enter their homes.

Lord Copper, newspaper magnate and proprietor of the Daily Beast, has always prided himself on his intuitive flair for spotting ace reporters. That is not to say he has not made the odd blunder, however, and may in a moment of weakness make another. Acting on a dinner party tip from Mrs. Algernon Stitch, Lord Copper feels convinced that he has hit on just the chap to cover a promising war in the African Republic of Ishmaelia. So begins Scoop, Waugh's exuberant comedy of mistaken identity and brilliantly irreverent satire of the hectic pursuit of hot news based on his own experience as a war correspondent in Ethiopia, where he reported for the Daily Mail on Mussolini's 1935 invasion.

Berlin, Summer 2011. Adolf Hitler wakes up on a patch of open ground, alive and well. Things have changed - no Eva Braun, no Nazi party, no war. Hitler barely recognises his beloved Fatherland, filled with immigrants and run by a woman. People certainly recognise him, albeit as a flawless impersonator who refuses to break character. The unthinkable, the inevitable happens, and the ranting Hitler goes viral, becomes a YouTube star, gets his own T.V. show, and people begin to listen. But the Frer has another programme with even greater ambition - to set the country he finds a shambles back to rights.

When Catherine Gehrig, a museum conservator in London, falls into grief after her lover's sudden death, her boss gives her a special project. She will bring back to "life" a nineteenth-century mechanical bird. As she begins to piece the automaton together, Catherine also uncovers the diaries of Henry Brandling, who, more than a hundred years prior, had commissioned the bird for his very ill son. Catherine finds resonance and comfort in Henry's story. But it is the mechanical creature itself, in its uncanny imitation of life, that will link these two people across a century. Through the clockwork bird, Henry and Catherine will confront the mysteries of creation, the power of human invention, and the body's astonishing chemistry of love and feeling.

As a child, Rosemary Cooke never stopped talking; as a young woman, she has wrapped herself in silence: the silence of intentional forgetting, of protective cover. Something happened, something so awful she has buried it in the recesses of her mind. Now her adored older brother is a fugitive, wanted by the FBI for domestic terrorism. And her once lively mother is a shell of her former self, her clever and imperious father now a distant, brooding man. And Fern, Rosemary's beloved sister, her accomplice in all their childhood mischief? Fern's is a fate the family, in all their innocence, could never have imagined.

As 85 year old Pearl Tull lies on her deathbed, she thinks back over her life. The defining moment for Pearl was 35 years before, when her husband walked out on her and her three young children. Pearl struggled to raise her children and provide for them, always searching for the reasons why she was abandoned. Her children, Ezra, Cody and Jenny reflect on their upbringing, the decisions they made and the events that shaped their lives forever. With shifting perspectives, their memories all combine to paint a fuller picture of the Tulls, their lives and their relationships with each other.

When Walter Moody arrives in the goldrush town of Hokitika on New Zealand's South Island, he promptly heads to the nearest bar. Once inside, Walter realizes he has unwittingly disturbed a very unusual meeting, the 12 men in attendance admit they have assembled in secret to discuss a series of violent and unsolved crimes in the town. A murdered drunkard, a stash of gold, a suicidal prostitute and a missing man... Soon Moody is lured into the search for answers. As the men's connections to each other and the crimes that occurred become clearer; chance and fate, the cosmic dance of the stars and planets all work to determine each man's destiny until the complex truth behind the mysteries are revealed.

Mae Holland can't believe her luck when she lands a job at the Circle, the most influential internet company in the world. Starting out as an eager Customer Experience employee, she soon becomes an integral part of the Circle's plans for a new age of digital transparency. As the company moves towards its goal of total global surveillance, Mae fails to recognise the threat to privacy and democracy as she quickly loses sight of her friends, family, and sense of self in favour of the Circle and its frightening visions for a brave new world.

Thomas Fowler is a jaded, apathetic English foreign correspondent, two years into his assignment in Vietnam simultaneously covering the French War and documenting the dying days of French rule. By chance, Fowler meets the young American Alden Pyle, an undercover CIA Agent, and is immediately struck by the young man’s innocence. As a friendship develops between the pair, Pyle falls in love with Fowler’s Vietnamese mistress, Phuong and a love triangle develops. Pyle’s ill-informed and clumsy attempts to “improve” the situation in Vietnam results in meaningless bloodshed and Fowler is forced to question his friendship and put a stop to Pyle’s dangerous idealism.

Perfume critic, curator and journalist Chandler Burr follows the creation of two very different perfumes and unravels the process behind their creation. American actress Sarah Jessica Parker works with the perfume conglomerate Coty to create her scent, Lovely and the French perfumer Jean-Claude Ellena creates a scent inspired by the Great Nile, Un Jardin sur le Nil for the elite atelier Hermes. Burr breaks down the olfactory art form, the science and molecules behind the mysterious multi-billion dollar perfume industry.

Decades after the unfortunate events at the Overlook Hotel, Dan Torrance is wrestling with his own demons. Struggling with his telepathic powers and his alcohol addiction, Dan eventually joins AA and gets a steady job in a hospice. Using his mind-reading skills, Dan guides his terminally ill patients as they pass on. Dan meets Abra Stone, a young girl whose "shining" dwarfs his own psychic talents. Abra attracts the attention of the True Knot, a group who travel around America in non-descript RVs, feeding off "steam" (the special essence of children who "shine"). The steam provides the clan with eternal life, but they must brutally murder their victims to capture it. An outbreak of measles within the Knot leaves them desperate and Abra's powerful steam is the only solution. Dan and Abra must work together to save her from the True Knot in a fast paced battle of good vs evil.

When troubled supermodel Lula Landry falls to her death from her upscale apartment balcony, the case is determined a textbook suicide. Lula's brother believes otherwise and hires disheveled private detective and ex-military police war hero, Cormoran Strike to reinvestigate the case. Was she pushed or did she jump? Cormoran and his temp-cum-trainee detective, Robin explore the ritziest and dingiest corners of London to discover the true story behind Lula's death.

Hunter S Thompson is on his way to Las Vegas with his attorney to cover the Mint 500 motorcycle race, he is also on a mission to find the American dream. Armed with an impressive arsenal of drugs, the pair take on Vegas with nightmarish, hallucinogenic results. The duo's tripped-out adventures paint a disturbing picture of the state of America at the end of sixties.

Jimmy Corrigan is middle-aged, socially isolated and paralysed by self doubt. Stuck in a lonely cubicle job, his days are punctuated by his mother’s regular calls to nag him. One day Jimmy receives a letter from his absent father, who finally wants to meet his grown son. Jimmy makes the journey to meet him and through parallel timelines, memories and fantasies we learn the stories of Jimmy, his father and grandfather, their inner desires, suffering and the emotional costs of abandonment.

August, 1943. In the despair of a Japanese POW camp on the Thai-Burma death railway, Australian surgeon Dorrigo Evans is haunted by his love affair with his uncle's young wife two years earlier. Struggling to save the men under his command from starvation, from cholera, from beatings, he receives a letter that will change his life forever. This savagely beautiful novel is a story about the many forms of love and death, of war and truth, as one man comes of age, prospers, only to discover all that he has lost.

In an isolated Italian seaside village in 1962, innkeeper Pasquale is exhilarated by the arrival of glamorous American actress, Dee Mornay, fresh off the film set of Cleopatra. Dee has been sent to Pasquale's pensione to recover from her supposed terminal illness. Dee draws Pasquale into the glittering world of Hollywood and an experience that has a lasting effect on his life. Spanning decades and continents, this is a vibrant story about fate, love, success, fame and art.