The Imagined Things Book Club

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Scapegoat by Taylor Jenkins Reid

8.75/10

The glamour of golden age Hollywood, an enigmatic actress and quite a few secrets…

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere.

Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career. Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love.

Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

May 2021

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

8.75/10

The glamour of golden age Hollywood, an enigmatic actress and quite a few secrets…

Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere.

Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career. Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the ’80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love.

Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.

April 2021

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid

7.25/10

Thought-provoking and real. A young black woman is accused of kidnapping the white child she’s babysitting.

Alix Chamberlain is a woman who gets what she wants and has made a living showing other women how to do the same. So she is shocked when her young black babysitter, Emira Tucker, is accused by a security guard of kidnapping the Chamberlains’ toddler at the supermarket one night. A small crowd gathers, a bystander films everything, and Emira is furious and humiliated. Alix resolves to make it right. But Emira herself is aimless, broke and wary of Alix’s desire to help. When the video of Emira unearths someone from Alix’s past, both women find themselves on a crash course that will upend everything they think they know about themselves, and each other.

March 2021

Shadow of a Doubt by Michelle Davies

7.55/10

Unsettling & smart – could you fight for the truth when your entire family turns their back?

The whole world believed eight-year-old Cara killed her younger brother but she blamed it on a paranormal entity she swears was haunting her house. No one believed her & after treatment in a psychiatric unit she was shunned by her remaining family & put into foster care. Now she’s being forced to return to the family home, but what if she’s about to re-discover the evil that was lurking inside its walls?

February 2021

The Doll Factory by Elizabeth Macneal

8.4/10

Art, obsession & intoxication in Victorian England. 

London. 1850. The Great Exhibition is being erected & among the crowd two people meet. For Iris it is quickly forgotten, but for Silas, a collector entranced by the strange & beautiful, that meeting marks a new beginning. Iris is later asked to model for pre-Raphaelite artist Louis Frost, and agrees on the condition that he will teach her to paint. Her world expands to become a place of art & love. But Silas has only thought of one thing since their meeting & his obsession is darkening.

January 2021

The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa

7.45/10

Haunting, powerful and beautiful.  A cross between a dystopia & a dream. 

Hat, ribbon, bird, rose. To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed. When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him.

December 2020

Away with the Penguins by Hazel Prior 

7.11/10

A heartwarming, cosy tale of a life lived, secrets kept and how penguins can help an elderly lady re-evaluate entire her life. 

Veronica McCreedy, 85, lives alone in a mansion by the sea with no family to speak of. She has no idea where she’s going to leave her considerable wealth when she dies. But Veronica is going to make a decision that will change all of this, and it involves penguins!

November 2020

Firewatching by Russ Thomas

7.31/10

Brilliant new fast paced crime novel with an intriguing protagonist – fires, concealed bodies and long held secrets connect in this investigative thriller.

A cold case is anything but cold for Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler when a body concealed in a wall of the Old Vicerage is linked to fires popping up around the city. Someone is watched Tyler closely – can he work out the connections before it’s too late?

October 2020

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

7.7/10

A literary wonder. A fantastical adventure that has its heart in what stories mean & how they bind us together. A TRIUMPH, from the author of The Night Circus. 

Zachary Rawlins stumbles across a strange book that leads him on a quest unlike any other. Its pages describe something impossible – a moment from his life nobody could know about.  Determined to solve the puzzle he follows clues that guide him to a bibliophile masquerade ball, a dangerous secret club & finally through a magical doorway that leads to a subterranean labyrinth filled with stories, hidden far beneath the surface of the earth.

September 2020

The Wayward Girls by Amanda Mason

7.45/10

A multi-layered Yorkshire ghost story – “The knocking in the walls – the girls heard it first.” 

August 2020

The Institute by Stephen King 

7.67/10

Bizzare & believeable – the perfect way to question the abuses of power and debate what’s worth sacrificing for the greater good. This is King at his absolute BEST.

Luke Ellis is twelve when he wakes up in a bedroom that looks mysteriously like his own, but isn’t. He’s twelve when he wakes up after being abducted and taken to The Institute. There seems to be no hope of escape – but perhaps the children have more power than they’re given credit for.

July 2020

The Naseby Horses Dominic Brownlow

5.98/10

Intriguing, thought-provoking and unique. 

Simon’s sister is missing. She came to see him the night she disappeared but he’s sturggling to remember what happened as he had a massive epileptic fit that very night. This gorgeously written novel makes you question the way we all see the world as we see events through Simon’s unique lense. It makes you wonder about stories, and the truth, memories and reality. It makes you question how we even work out what is real and what is in our minds, and where the two cross over.

June 2020

The Binding by Bridget Collins

6.92/10

Set in a universe where books aren’t just words on a page – they’re memories extracted from people’s minds.

Emmett Farmer is a book binder’s apprentice – learning the art of binding memories into books. Below his mentor’s workshop, row upon row of books – and secrets – are meticulously stored and recorded. Then one day Emmett makes an astonishing discovery: one of the volumes has his name on it.

May 2020

Little Darlings Melanie Golding

8.06/10

Lauren has given birth to twins, but after a strange encounter on the labour ward she’s convinced someone is trying to steal them.

Is Lauren imagining things due to the exhaustion of labour and the challenges of being a new parent, or is there really someone who wants to take her twins away from her? When DS Harper gets involved, will she find evidence for what Lauren is claiming?

March 2020

One Moment by Linda Green

8.26/10

Touching, heart-breaking & uplifting. 

Ten-year-old Finn has troubles – his parents are arguing & is having a tough time at school. Kaz, 59, hasn’t had the easiest of lives herself. Finn and Kaz become unlikely friends after one moment that changes both of their lives forever. This is a hear-warming story of love, loss and friendship with characters so real I half expected them to show up at the event we had for this book!

February 2020

Diary of a Somebody

7.59/10

Hilarious, enthralling and unique. 

Brian’s life isn’t going so well – his ex-wife has a new man (a motivational speaker), he’s a disappointment to his son and he’s drowning in spreadsheets at work. Brian’s New Year’s resolution is to write a poem a day, with mixed results. Particularly in the face of his arch nemesis Toby Salt – a published poet who then goes missing. Part tender love story, part murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound.

January 2020

The Nightjar by Deborah Hewitt

7.22/10

An absorbing & action-packed fantasy set in our world with a few differences!

Alice is living an ordinary life until she meets an old lady on the bus who knows all about Alice’s life-long fear of birds. Soon Alice is launched into a magical world she knew nothing of, and learns she is an Aviarist – a rare magical talent that allows her to see Nighjars that guard each of our souls. A shadowy faction wants to use her gift to hunt the magically gifted, and a life hangs in the balance Alice must search for a missing Nightjar but to do so she could risk losing her own life.

December 2019

Twelve Strange Days of Christmas by Syd Moore

5.75/10

Peculiar tales of Yuletide Mayhem!

From an elderly lady at home with her cats, to a policewoman who can see Death, a talking hoover, shipwrecks, stolen limbs and a strange night at the Essex Witch Museum. This stand-alone from the author of The Essex Witch Museum Mystery Series is a unique collection of sort-of-spooky Christmas tales that are bizarre and beguiling.

November 2019

My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite

6.34/10

A dark & intense black comedy about sisterhood & the lengths we’ll go to for passion & love.

Ayoola’s sister Korede is young & beautiful, and also a killer. Ayoola is asked to help clean up the blood and body of Korede’s boyfriend and it’s not the first time. When Korede catches the eye of the doctor Ayoola has a crush on at the hospital where she works as a nurse Korede is upset not just because he didn’t want her but because he might end up dead.

October 2019

The Wall by John Lanchester

6.71/10

Stunning. A rare story that genuinely works on two levels: a human story & a comment on humanity. An almost allegory. 

Kavanagh must patrol the wall. He must protect it from the others. If he does he can get away from the wall after he’s served his two years, if nothing goes wrong he can get as far away from the wall as possible. On those cold nights & days on the wall Kavanagh starts to wonder what if something did happen? What if he had to fight for his life?

September 2019

The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker

6.89/10

Beautiful, eerie and thought-provoking. Julia is growing up in a world where the turning of the Earth is slowing causing days & nights to be longer. 

Julia’s day-to-day life continues despite the Slowing, she still faces many of the challenges of growing up. She has not even learnt the ways of the world and they are already changing as society struggles to cope with how to carry on as the days & nights grow continually longer.

August 2019

The Passengers by John Marrs 

7.35/10

A near-future thriller where cars are not only automated but some have no manual controls at all.

This becomes a serious problem for eight passengers in such cars when a hacker takes control of them, saying they will all likely be dead soon as they will all collide, except one. The choices are diverse – a pregnant woman, an elderly actress, an immigrant who speaks no English and more. Who would you decide to save? Cleverly exploring our perceptions and judgements of others, how there is so much that is unknown in other’s lives and about who has a right to live and who doesn’t.

July 2019

Our House by Louise Candlish

Rated 6.66/10

Imagine someone else moving into your home, when you didn’t put it up for sale, what would you do?

This happens to Fi as she comes home to her expensive, and adored home in London. The novel tells the story of how this came to be – half through Fi’s version of events and half through her husband’s. It’s a satisfyingly convulted, cautionary tale of how things can quickly spiral out of control and how decisions you make without the full facts can have allsorts of unforseen consequences.

June 2019

Vox by Christina Dalcher

Rated 7.5/10

Scary, thought-provoking, claustrophobic and horribly pertinent.

Imagine you could only speak 100 words a day… if you were a woman, or a girl. Welcome to near-future America (it is fiction, at least for now) where all females have to wear devices that count their words and electorcute them for exceeding their daily count. Follow Jean McClellan, silent whilst her husband and sons chatter around her, a scientist before the change of government stripped her of her job, her money and her words…

May 2019

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

Rated 6.7/10

Complex and enthralling. Agatha Christie mixed with Groundhog Day.

A murder that doesn’t look like a murder and Aiden Bishop is tasked with solving it. Forced to relive the day repeatedly in the bodies of different hosts as Evelyn Hardcastle dies again and again.  There are forces at work in Blackheath that Aiden can’t begin to understand and someone who wants to stop him from leaving. Getting to the bottom of all of the secrets, and the murder will not be easy.

April 2019

The Tattooist of Auschwitz by Heather Morris 

6.25/10

A love story set in the most horrific place on earth. 

This is the novelisation of the story of Lale, a jew who was imprisoned by the Nazis and became the tattooist of Auschwitz. It is an unusual tale of love in the most horrendous of places. It gives a rather sanitised view of Auschwitz, with jolts of horror and isn’t as heavy reading as you would imagine. 

March 2019

Dear Mrs Bird by A J Pearce

8/10

Uplifting, hilarious and compelling. The pefect tonic for a weary nation!

Emmy is a young lady living during the Blitz who dreams of being a lady war correspondant but instead inadvertently ends up working for the women’s problem page of a magazine for the formidable Mrs Bird. Mrs Bird will not deal with any letters concerning any “unpleasantness” and Emmy is tasked with filtering them. Feeling for the poor women Emmy decides to take matters into her own hands and reply to them. 

February 2019

The Colour of Bee Larkham’s Murder by Sarah J Harris

Rated 8.19/10

Uplifting, page-turning & wonderful! Fall into Jasper’s unique world of colour. 

Jasper can’t see faces (even his own) but he can see sounds as colours. Something has happened to his neighbour Bee Larkham, and Jasper was somehow involved. Yet it’s difficult to make sense of things when you can’t understand all of the clues. This unique mystery is wonderful, multi-layered and satisfying. You’ll fall into Jasper’s world and see the world in a way you’ve never seen it before. 

January 2019

All Rights Reserved by Gregory Scott Katsoulis 

Rated 7.2/10

Imagine if you had to pay for every word you spoke from the age of fifteen.

Speth, about to turn fifteen, will soon have to pay for every word she speaks – which won’t be much since her and her siblings are orphaned and unable to afford much of anything.  Not only are words owned, but so are hairstyles, curtains, even names. And you need to pay to use them. Speth is contracted to speak for a corporation as her first paid for words but instead decides not to speak at all. Leading her to be an unlikely icon for change. 

December 2018

If Cats Disappeared From The World by Genki Kawamura 

Rated 6.79/10

Thought-provoking, strange & moving. What would you give for another day of life?

The narrator’s days are numbered. He lives an isolated life with his cat Cabbage, and is dying of a brain tumour. The devil appears to him and offers him an exchange – one extra day of life for making one thing in the world dissapear. What follows is a story of loss, a journey to discover what really matters and a bizzare relationship with the devil. 

November 2018

Dark Pines by Will Dean

Rated 8/10

A gripping plot, a stunning setting and a unique, loveable character !

Tuva is a deaf reporter is looking for a story that could make her career and let her escape the isolated, rural town of Gavrik. Two bodies lie deep in the forest she is frightened of, linked to a murder twenty years ago. She has to face her demons to investigate and find out what is really going on in the forest. 

October 2018

Elefant by Martin Suter

Rated 6.81/10

Human, uplifting, fascinating & featuring an adorable glow-in-the-dark tiny pink elephant! 

Genetically engineered and escaped from the group of scientists who don’t care for her, you can’t help but fall in love with the tiny elephant! This is a lovely, heart-warming story about what matters, how fates can collide and how second chances can come in the strangest (glow-in-the-dark) packages! 

September 2018

The Exphoria Code by Antony Johnston

Rated 7.14/10

Modern cyber-espionage in this strong tech thriller featuring a damaged M16 cyber-analyst. 

Brigitte Sharp is haunted by her experiences in the field. But when her friend is murdered, in connection to strange, coded internet posts Brigitte is compelled to go undercover again inside a top secret Anglo-French military project to hunt a mole. The trouble is the truth behind the Exphoria Code is worse than anyone imagined.

August 2018

A Skinful of Shadows by Frances Hardinge

Rated 8/10

Immersive & compelling. Imagine if some people had a space inside them, a space where a spirit could hide?

As the English Civil War errupts around her Makepeace defends herself againsts nightly ghosts who try to possess her whilst trying to unravel the mystery of her heritage. Though when she lets down her guard down a wild spirit gets in, and may be her only defence in the dark times to come. You can’t help but become enthralled by Makepeace’s story! 

July 2018

The End We Start From by Megan Hunter

Rated 7/10

Gorgeous & haunting. Perfectly captures the claustrophobia and wonder of motherhood set on the backdrop of a flooded London. 

Unusual in style & form – names conveyed by letters and the entire book in brief prose, yet so much is captured in such short form. It is beautiful, harrowing and hopeful. It draws you in and takes you on a strange, uncertain journey as the baby’s new life contrasts with the backdrop. A truly beautiful tale. 

June 2018

The History of Bees by Maja Lunde

Rated 8/10

Powerful. Worrying. Essential.

This stunning novel spans 250 years. From England in 1851 following William, a biologist & seed merchant who sets out to build a new kind of beehive. To the USA in 2007 following George, a beekeeper, who struggles to fight collany collapse disorder and worries for the future of his farm. To China in 2098, following Tao, a mother, who lives in a world where the bees are gone.