The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society - Mary Ann Shaffer

It's 1946 and author Juliet Ashton can't think what to write next. Out of the blue, she receives a letter from Dawsey Adams of Guernsey - by chance, he's acquired a book that once belonged to her - and, spurred on by their mutual love of reading, they begin a correspondence. When Dawsey reveals that he is a member of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, her curiosity is piqued and it's not long before she begins to hear from other members. As letters fly back and forth with stories of life in Guernsey under the German Occupation, Juliet soon realizes that the society is every bit as extraordinary as its name.

Bonk - Mary Roach

Few things are as fundamental to human happiness as sex, and few writers are as entertaining about the subject as Mary Roach. Can a woman think herself to orgasm? Is your penis three inches longer than you think? Why doesn't Viagra help women - or, for that matter, pandas? Does orgasm boost fertility? Or cure hiccups? The study of sexual physiology - what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better - has been taking place behind closed doors for hundreds of years. In this fascinating and funny book, Mary Roach steps inside laboratories, brothels, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs - even Alfred Kinsey's attic - to tell us everything we wanted to know about sex, and a lot we'd never even thought to ask.

Follow the Money - Steve Boggan

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Celebrity - Marina Hyde

These days, entertainers no longer just entertain: they advocate dubious 'religions', work for the United Nations, get face-time with heads of state and monopolise problems they are infinitely qualified to solve - problems like Africa, the Middle East, and AIDS.

We stand at the beginning of a bright new chapter in human history. Feast your eyes, then, on Sharon Stone's peace mission to Israel, on a world where Angelina Jolie advises on the Iraqi reconstruction effort or Charlie Sheen analyses 9/11, and in which Jude Law's attempts to establish contact with the Taliban are reported without irony.

Celebrity is a roadmap, a survivalist's guide, a Rosetta Stone for our times: without a copy you are not equipped to engage with the world...

The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

From the author of ‘Freedom’, a richly realistic and darkly hilarious masterpiece about a family breakdown in an age of easy fixes.
After fifty years as a wife and mother, Enid Lambert is ready to have some fun. Unfortunately her husband, Alfred, is losing his sanity, and their children have long since fled for the catastrophes of their own lives. As Alfred’s condition worsens and the Lamberts are forced to face their secrets and failures, Enid sets her heart on one last family Christmas.
Bringing the old world of civic virtue and sexual inhibition into violent collision with the era of hands-off parenting, do-it-yourself mental healthcare and globalised greed, ‘The Corrections’ confirms Jonathan Franzen as one of the most brilliant interpreters of the American soul.

The Code Book - Simon Singh

The Science of Secrecy from Ancient Egypt to Quantum Cryptography
From the best-selling author of Fermat’s Last Theorem, The Code Book is a history of man’s urge to uncover the secrets of codes, from Egyptian puzzles to modern day computer encryptions.
As in Fermat’s Last Theorem, Simon Singh brings life to an anstonishing story of puzzles, codes, languages and riddles that reveals man’s continual pursuit to disguise and uncover, and to work out the secret languages of others.
Codes have influenced events throughout history, both in the stories of those who make them and those who break them. The betrayal of Mary Queen of Scots and the cracking of the enigma code that helped the Allies in World War II are major episodes in a continuing history of cryptography. In addition to stories of intrigue and warfare, Simon Singh also investigates other codes, the unravelling of genes and the rediscovery of ancient languages and most tantalisingly, the Beale ciphers, an unbroken code that could hold the key to a $20 million treasure.

The Crying Tree - Naseem Rakha

Irene Stanley thought her world had come to an end when her 15-year-old son, Shep, was murdered in a robbery at their Oregon home. Daniel Robbin, who had spent his teenage years in and out of trouble, gave himself up to the police and was imprisoned in the State Penitentiary. Now, eighteen years later, Robbin is placed on Death Row awaiting a date for his execution. Irene's husband, Nate, has demons from the past of his own which he needs to face, and Shep's sister, Bliss, quickly learns that she too has a part to play in the healing of her family shattered by the tragedy. Irene, having reached the brink of suicide, comes to the realization that to survive she needs to overcome her grief and her hate for Robbin, and that she must face the secrets that she suspects surround Shep's murder. She turns full circle, defying both her family and the church, and finds that she is not only capable of forgiveness for the man who murdered her son, but also she comes to terms with understanding much more about events that happened that fateful afternoon back in Carlton. And perhaps the most painful realization of all, how little they as a family understood Shep.