The Player of Games — Iain M Banks

The Culture — a human/machine symbiotic society — has thrown up many great Game Players, and one of the greatest is Gurgeh. Jernau Morat Gurgeh. The Player of Games. Master of every board, computer and strategy.

Bored with success, Gurgeh travels to the Empire of Azad, cruel and incredibly wealthy, to try their fabulous game ... a game so complex, so like life itself, that the winner becomes emperor. Mocked, blackmailed, almost murdered, Gurgeh accepts the game, and with it the challenge of his life — and very possibly his death.

This week's book is Iain M Banks's The Player of Games and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

The Reluctant Fundamentalist — Mohsin Hamid

'Excuse me, sir, but may I be of assistance ? Ah, I see I have alarmed you. Do not be frightened by my beard. I am a lover of America ... '

So speaks the mysterious stranger at a Lahore cafe as dusk settles. Invited to join him for tea, you learn his name and what led this speaker of immaculate English to seek you out. For he is more worldy than you might expect; better travelled and better educated. He knows the West better than you do. And as he tells you his story, of how he embraced the Western dream — and a Western woman — and how both betrayed him, so the night darkens. Then the true reason for your meeting becomes abundantly clear ...

This week's book is Mohsin Hamid's The Reluctant Fundamentalist and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Engelby — Sebastian Faulks

My name is Mike Engleby, and I'm in my second year at an ancient university.

Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think. When the novel opens in the 1970s, he is a university student, having survived a 'traditional' school. A man devoid of scruple or self-pity, Engleby provides a disarmingly frank account of English education. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power. One of his contemporaries unaccountably disappears, and as we follow Engleby's career, which brings us up to the present day, the reader has to ask: is Engleby capable of telling the whole truth ?

This week's book is Sebastian Faulks' Engelby and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Endless Night — Agatha Christie

Gipsy’s Acre was a truly beautiful upland site with views out to sea — and in Michael Rogers it stirred a child-like fantasy. There, amongst the dark fir trees, he planned to build a house, find a girl and live happily ever after. Yet, as he left the village, a shadow of menace hung over the land. For this was the place where accidents happened. Perhaps Michael should have heeded the locals' warnings: ‘There’s no luck for them as meddles with Gipsy’s Acre’. Michael Rogers is a man who is about to learn the true meaning of the old saying ‘In my end is my beginning’.

This week's book is Agatha Christie's Endless Night and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Strangers On A Train — Patricia Highsmith

Strangers on a Train is a psychological thriller novel about two men whose lives become entangled after one of them proposes they trade murders. He then goes ahead and fulfills his end of the imaginary bargain, and then tries to force the other to complete his side of the bargain ...

This week's book is Patricia Highsmith's Strangers On A Train and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Slow Horses — Mick Herron

You don't stop being a spook just because you're no longer in the game. Banished to Slough House from the ranks of achievers at Regent's Park for various crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal, Jackson Lamb's misfit crew of highly trained joes don't run ops, they push paper. But not one of them joined the Intelligence Service to be a ‘slow horse’. A boy is kidnapped and held hostage. His beheading is scheduled for live broadcast on the net. And whatever the instructions of the Service, the slow horses aren't going to just sit quiet and watch ...

This week's book is Mick Herron's Slow Horses and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be choosing books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list.

Annihilation — Jeff VanderMeer

For thirty years, Area X has remained mysterious and remote behind its intangible border — an environmental disaster zone, though to all appearances an abundant wilderness. The Southern Reach, a secretive government agency, has sent eleven expeditions to investigate Area X. One has ended in mass suicide, another in a hail of gunfire, the eleventh in a fatal cancer epidemic. Now four women embark on the twelfth expedition into the unknown.

This week's book is Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be choosing books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list. We'll also be choosing books at the next meeting.

Sophie's Choice — William Styron

Stingo, an inexperienced twenty-two year old Southerner, takes us back to the summer of 1947 and a boarding house in a leafy Brooklyn suburb. There he meets Nathan, a fiery Jewish intellectual; and Sophie, a beautiful and fragile Polish Catholic. Stingo is drawn into the heart of their passionate and destructive relationship as witness, confidant, and supplicant. Ultimately, he arrives at the dark core of Sophie's past: her memories of pre-war Poland, the concentration camp and — the essence of her terrible secret — her choice.

This week's book is William Styron's Sophie's Choice and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Lady Chatterley's Lover — D H Lawrence

Would you approve of your young sons, young daughters — because girls can read as well as boys — reading this book ? Is it a book you would have lying around your own house ? Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or your servants to read ?

This week's book is D H Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Please note the change of book. We'll be reading the previous choice, The Immortalists on 21 February 2019.

Days Without End — Sebastian Barry

After signing up for the US army in the 1850s, aged barely seventeen, Thomas McNulty and his brother-in-arms, John Cole, go on to fight in the Indian wars and, ultimately, the Civil War. Having fled terrible hardships they find these days to be vivid and filled with wonder, despite the horrors they both see and are complicit in. Their lives are further enriched and imperilled when a young Indian girl crosses their path, and the possibility of lasting happiness emerges, if only they can survive.

This week's book is Sebastian Barry's Days Without End and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Neuromancer — William Gibson

Things aren't different. Things are things.

Case had been the sharpest data-thief in the business, until vengeful former employers crippled his nervous system. But now a new and very mysterious employer recruits him for a last-chance run. The target: an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence orbiting Earth in service of the sinister Tessier-Ashpool business clan. With a dead man riding shotgun and Molly, mirror-eyed street-samurai, to watch his back, Case embarks on his last job.

This week's book is William Gibson's Neuromancer and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Sorcerer to the Crown — Zen Cho

In Regency London, Zacharias Wythe is England's first African Sorcerer Royal. He leads the eminent Royal Society of Unnatural Philosophers, but a malicious faction seeks to remove him by fair means or foul. Meanwhile, the Society is failing its vital duty — to keep stable the levels of magic within His Majesty's lands. The Fairy Court is blocking its supply, straining England's dangerously declining magical stores. And now the government is demanding to use this scarce resource in its war with France. Ambitious orphan Prunella Gentleman is desperate to escape the school where she's drudged all her life, and a visit by the beleaguered Sorcerer Royal seems the perfect opportunity. For Prunella has just stumbled upon English magic's greatest discovery in centuries — and she intends to make the most of it.

This week's book is Zen Cho's Sorcerer to the Crown and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

The Immortalists — Chloe Benjamin

It's 1969, and holed up in a grimy tenement building in New York's Lower East Side is a travelling psychic who claims to be able to tell anyone the date they will die. The four Gold children, too young for what they're about to hear, sneak out to learn their fortunes. The prophecies could be dismissed as trickery and nonsense, yet the Golds bury theirs deep. Over the years that follow they attempt to ignore, embrace, cheat, and defy the knowledge given to them that day — but it will shape the course of their lives forever.

This week's book is Chloe Benjamin's The Immortalists and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

Please note the change of book. We'll be reading the previous choice, Lady Chatterley's Lover on 18 April 2019.

Americanah — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London. Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face ?

This week's book is Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's Americanah and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

The Magician's Nephew — C S Lewis

The Magician's Nephew is a prequel to the Narnia series and is set a thousand years before The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The frame story is set in England and features two children ensnared in experimental travel via ‘the wood between the worlds’. Thus, the novel shows Narnia and our middle-age world to be only two of many in a multiverse, which changes as some worlds begin and others end. It also explains the origin of foreign elements in Narnia, not only the lamp-post but also the White Witch and a human king and queen.

This week's book is C S Lewis's The Magician's Nephew and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

The Terror — Dan Simmons

A fictionalized account of Captain Sir John Franklin's lost expedition of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to the Arctic, in 1845–1848, to locate the Northwest Passage. In the novel, while Franklin and his crew are plagued by starvation and illness, and forced to contend with mutiny and cannibalism, they are stalked across the bleak Arctic landscape by a monster.

This week's book is Dan Simmons's The Terror and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

The Franklin Expedition is well worth reading about, and you may like to consider Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition by John G. Geiger and Owen Beattie, or Ice Ghosts: The Epic Hunt for the Lost Franklin Expedition by Paul Watson.

Norse Mythology — Neil Gaiman

Gaiman's retelling of the great northern tales, beginning with the genesis of the nine worlds, delving into the exploits of the deities, dwarves, and giants and culminating in Ragnarok, the twilight of the gods and the rebirth of a new time and people, vividly brings to like Odin, the highest of the high, wise, daring, and cunning; Thor, Odin's son, incredibly strong yet not the wisest of gods; and Loki, the son of giants, a trickster and unsurpassable manipulator.

This week's book is Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.

This is our last book this year, and we meet next on 10 January 2019 for The Terror.