Bravo Two Zero — Andrew McNab

Their location: Iraq. Their mission: to sever a vital enemy underground communication link, to find and destroy mobile Scud launchers. Their call sign: Bravo Two Zero.

When eight members of the elite SAS regiment embark on a highly covert operation, they are each laden with 15 stones of equipment, needing to tab 20km across the desert to reach their objective. But within days, their location is compromised. They engage in a fierce battle. They escape on foot to the Syrian border. Three men die. One escapes. But four men are captured. For them, the worst is yet to come. Delivered to Baghdad, they are tortured with a savagery for which not even their intensive SAS training has prepared them ...

This week's book is Bravo Two Zero by Andrew McNab and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Mayor of Casterbridge — Thomas Hardy

Happiness was but the occasional episode in a general drama of pain.

Drunk and bitter at the world, the young Michael Henchard sells his wife to a sailor at Weydon Priors fair. The next morning he vows to give up drink and mend his terrible ways. Twenty years later he is mayor of Casterbridge, a rich and important figure who little suspects the past is about to rear up and attack him ...

This week's book is The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Half of a Yellow Sun — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Ugwu, a boy from a poor village, works as a houseboy for a university professor. Olanna, a young woman, has abandoned her life of privilege in Lagos to live with her charismatic new lover, the professor. And Richard, a shy English writer, is in thrall to Olanna’s enigmatic twin sister. As the horrific Biafran War engulfs them, they are thrown together and pulled apart in ways they had never imagined.

This week's book is Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Hawksmoor — Peter Ackroyd

There is no Light without Darknesse and no Substance without Shaddowe.

So proclaims Nicholas Dyer, assistant to Sir Christopher Wren and the man with a commission to build seven London churches to stand as beacons of the enlightenment. But Dyer plans to conceal a dark secret at the heart of each church — to create a forbidding architecture that will survive for eternity. Two hundred and fifty years later, London detective Nicholas Hawksmoor is investigating a series of gruesome murders on the sites of certain eighteenth-century churches — crimes that make no sense to the modern mind ...

This week's book is Hawksmoor by Peter Ackroyd and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Island of Missing Trees — Elif Shafak

It is 1974 on the island of Cyprus. Two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided land, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek and Christian, and Defne, who is Turkish and Muslim, can meet, in secret, hidden beneath the blackened beams from which hang garlands of garlic, chilli peppers and wild herbs. This is where one can find the best food in town, the best music, the best wine. But there is something else to the place: it makes one forget, even if for just a few hours, the world outside and its immoderate sorrows.

In the centre of the tavern, growing through a cavity in the roof, is a fig tree. This tree will witness their hushed, happy meetings, their silent, surreptitious departures; and the tree will be there when the war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to rubble, when the teenagers vanish and break apart.

Decades later in north London, sixteen-year-old Ada Kazantzakis has never visited the island where her parents were born. Desperate for answers, she seeks to untangle years of secrets, separation and silence. The only connection she has to the land of her ancestors is a Ficus Carica growing in the back garden of their home.

This week's book is The Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Atonement — Ian McEwan

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house.

Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever, as Briony commits a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

This week's book is Atonement by Ian McEwan and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

A Pale View of Hills — Kazuo Ishiguro

Etsuko is a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter.

Retreating into the past, she finds herself reliving one particular hot summer in Nagasaki, when she and her friends struggled to rebuild their lives after the war. But as she recalls her strange friendship with Sachiko — a wealthy woman reduced to vagrancy — the memories start to take on a disturbing cast.

This week's book is A Pale View of Hills by Kazuo Ishiguro and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Manningtree Witches — A K Blakemore

In Manningtree, depleted of men since the Civil War began, the women are left to their own devices and Rebecca West chafes against the drudgery of her days. But when Matthew Hopkins arrives, asking bladed questions and casting damning accusations, mistrust and unease seep into the lives of the women.

Caught between betrayal and persecution, what must Rebecca West do to survive ?

This week's book is The Manningtree Witches by A K Blakemore and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Absolutist — John Boyne

September 1919: Twenty-year-old Tristan Sadler takes a train from London to Norwich to deliver a clutch of letters to Marian Bancroft. Tristan fought alongside Marian's brother Will during the Great War. They trained together. They fought together.

But in 1917, Will laid down his guns on the battlefield and declared himself a conscientious objector, an act which has brought shame and dishonour on the Bancroft family.

The letters, however, are not the real reason for Tristan's visit. He holds a secret deep within him. One that he is desperate to unburden himself of to Marian, if he can only find the courage. Whatever happens, this meeting will change his life — forever.

This week's book is The Absolutist by John Boyne and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

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.

A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian — Marina Lewycka

Sisters Vera and Nadezhda must aside a lifetime of feuding to save their widowed, tractor-obsessed Ukrainian father from the voluptuous, wealth-obsessed Valentina. With her proclivity for green satin underwear and boil-in-the-bag cuisine, she outmanoeuvres the sisters at every turn.

But their campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets, uncovers fifty years of European and Ukrainian history, and sends them back to roots they'd much rather forget ...

This week's book is A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian by Marina Lewycka and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

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.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man — James Joyce

The portrayal of Stephen Dedalus's Dublin childhood and youth, his quest for identity through art and his gradual emancipation from the claims of family, religion and Ireland itself ...

This week's book is A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Before and After — Andrew Shanahan

Ben Stone is terrified. He's terrified because he weighs 601 pounds and needs his right leg amputating. He's terrified because a crane will shortly lift him from his fourth-floor flat and lower him 44 feet to an ambulance waiting below. He's terrified because he hasn't been outside in nine years and he doesn't know who will look after his beautiful dog.

He needn't worry though, because the world is about to end.

This week's book is Before and After by Andrew Shanahan and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

God's Own Country — Ross Raisin

Expelled from school and cut off from the town, mistrusted by his parents and avoided by city incomers, Marsdyke is a loner until he meets rebellious new neighbour Josephine. But what begins as a friendship and leads to thoughts of escape across the moors turns to something much, much darker with every step.

This week's book is God's Own Country by Ross Raisin and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Portrait in Sepia — Isabel Allende

As a young girl, Aurora del Valle suffered a brutal trauma that has shaped her character and erased from her mind all recollection of the first five years of her life. Raised by her ambitious grandmother, the regal and commanding Paulina del Valle, she grows up in a privileged environment, free of the limitations that circumscribe the lives of women at that time, but tormented by terrible nightmares. When she finds herself alone at the end of an unhappy love affair, she decides to explore the mystery of her past, to discover what it was, exactly, all those years ago, that had such a devastating effect on her young life.

This week's book is Portrait in Sepia by Isabel Allende and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Underground Railroad — Colson Whitehead

If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.

Cora is a slave on a cotton plantation in Georgia. All the slaves lead a hellish existence, but Cora has it worse than most; she is an outcast even among her fellow Africans and she is approaching womanhood, where it is clear even greater pain awaits. When Caesar, a slave recently arrived from Virginia, tells her about the Underground Railroad, they take the perilous decision to escape to the North.

As censored by the University of Essex !

This week's book is The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Death and the Penguin — Andrey Kurkov

All that stands between one man and murder by the mafia is a penguin.

Viktor is an aspiring writer in Ukraine with only Misha, his pet penguin, for company. Although he would prefer to write short stories, he earns a living composing obituaries for a newspaper. He longs to see his work published, yet the subjects of his obituaries continue to cling to life. But when he opens the newspaper to see his work in print for the first time, his pride swiftly turns to terror. He and Misha have been drawn into a trap from which there appears to be no escape.

This week's book is Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Little Fires Everywhere — Celeste Ng

Everyone in Shaker Heights was talking about it that summer: how Isabelle, the last of the Richardson children, had finally gone around the bend and burned the house down.

In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive suburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned — from the layout of the winding roads, to the colours of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this spirit more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principal is playing by the rules.

Enter Mia Warren — an enigmatic artist and single mother — who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons.

Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregard for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.

When old family friends attempt to adopt a Chinese-American baby, a custody battle erupts that dramatically divides the town — and puts Mia and Elena on opposing sides. Suspicious of Mia and her motives, Elena is determined to uncover the secrets in Mia's past. But her obsession will come at an unexpected and devastating cost ...

This week's book is Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.