Item category 2: Reading group closed access

'Cloud Cuckoo Land' follows three storylines: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the formidable city wall during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and gentle octogenarian Zeno, in an attack on a public library in present day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship...

It begins with a small white lie. The kind of lie you might tell to keep your child out of trouble - especially when he begs you to confirm that he came home early last night and has been up in his room ever since. And so you back him up. You give him an alibi. Instead of telling the truth: that ...

Roach - bookseller, loner and true crime obsessive - is not interested in making friends. She has all the company she needs in her serial killer books, murder podcasts and her pet snail, Bleep. That is, until Laura joins the bookshop. Smelling of roses, with her cute literary tote bags and beauti...

The House of Atreus is cursed. A bloodline tainted by a generational cycle of violence and vengeance. This is the story of three women, their fates inextricably tied to this curse, and the fickle nature of men and gods. Clytemnestra's hopes of averting the curse are dashed when her sister, Helen,...

Emily Wilde is good at many things: she is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encylopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party - much less g...

Stephanie and Patrick are recently married, with new-born twins. While Stephanie struggles with the disorienting effects of sleep deprivation, there's one thing she knows for certain - she has everything she ever wanted. Then a woman from his past arrives and makes a shocking accusation about his...

Autumn 1945. Off the east coast of England, a Japanese sub surfaces, unloads its mysterious cargo, then blows itself to pieces. Former spy Professor Tom Wilde is enjoying peacetime in Cambridge, settling back into teaching and family life. Until a call from senior MI5 boss Lord Templeman brings h...

A mother disappears from a busy festival on a warm spring night. Her baby lies alone in the pram, her mother's possessions surrounding her, waiting for a return which never comes. A year later, Kim Gillespie's absence still casts a long shadow as her friends and loved ones gather to welcome a new...

Of all the ancient art that captures the imagination, none is more appealing than the Cycladic figurine. An air of mystery swirls around these statuettes from the Bronze Age and they are highly sought after by collectors - and looters - alike. When Helena inherits her grandparents' apartment in A...

It is 1873. Mrs Eliza Touchet is the Scottish housekeeper - and cousin by marriage - of a once-famous novelist, now in decline, William Ainsworth, with whom she lived for thirty years. She is a woman of many interests: literature, justice, abolitionism, class, her cousin, his wife, this life and...