There’s a serial killer on the loose, bent on working his way through the alphabet. And as a macabre calling card he leaves beside each victim’s corpe the ABC Railway Guide open at the name of the town where the murder has taken place.
Having begun with Andover, Bexhill and then Churston, there seems little chance of the murderer being caught – until he makes the crucial and vain mistake of challenging Hercule Poirot to frustrate his plans . . .
First came the virus. And then came the dreams . . .
A man escapes from a biological testing facility, unknowingly carrying a deadly weapon: a mutated strain of super-flu that will wipe out over 99 percent of the world’s population within a few weeks. Those who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge - Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the “dark man'”, the apostate of death, the warlord of the charnel house and Prince of Evil.
Now the survivors must choose between them - and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.
A penniless and out-of-work actor picks up a job working for Dr Blend, a university professor who is conducting a psychological experiment. How will Dr Blend's students react to someone zipped into on oversized bag, sitting at the back of the lecture hall over a series of autumn term lectures? The role, eagerly accepted, soon has unexpected consequences. A professor of post-humanism develops research questions of her own, in particular can you love someone secreted away inside a black bag? Meanwhile, the actor's childhood friend and flatmate forms a vision for monetising this new situation . . .
With this project we have a long-term commitment to read and review all Booker Prize winners since 1969.
The Booker Prize winner for 2025 is Flesh by David Szalay.
‘At the end of the novel, we don’t know what the protagonist, István, looks like but this never feels like a lack; quite the opposite. Somehow, it’s the absence of words – or the absence of István’s words – that allow us to know István. Early in the book, we know that he cries because the person he’s with tells him not to; later in life, we know he’s balding because he envies another man’s hair; we know he grieves because, for several pages, there are no words at all.
‘I don’t think I’ve read a novel that uses the white space on the page so well. It’s as if the author, David Szalay, is inviting the reader to fill the space, to observe – almost to create – the character with him. The writing is spare and that is its great strength. Every word matters; the spaces between the words matter. The book is about living, and the strangeness of living and, as we read, as we turn the pages, we’re glad we’re alive and reading – experiencing – this extraordinary, singular novel.’
The 2025 Shortlist for the Booker Prize also included:
The Booker Project also involves a long-term commitment to read and review all International Booker Prize winners since 2016.
The International Booker Prize winner for 2026 is Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ.
‘This book doesn’t shy away from the complexities (both real and fictional) of its journey into the English language. Instead, it uses the hallmarks of a more traditional text – introductions, footnotes, afterwords – to wrap an intriguing metafictional layer around its core love story. Lin King’s deft translation perfectly conveys the nuances of the novel’s narrative voices.
‘Taiwan Travelogue pulls off an incredible double feat: it succeeds as both a romance and an incisive postcolonial novel. As judges, we’ve enjoyed rich discussions about the many layers of this book. It’s a captivating, slyly sophisticated novel.’
The 2026 Shortlist for the International Booker Prize also included:
This project is based around a reading of Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey as well as sources that help us reconstruct the lost poems of The Epic Cycle, books related to the myths of the Trojan War, now lost to us. These books told stories well-known to us but not included in Homer’s surviving poems: the Judgement of Paris; the Trojan Horse; the death of Achilles and other stories.
For each of these lost books we will provide our own summary and commentary using retellings, sources based on the lost poems and scholarship, as well as look at art inspired by the stories. For Homer’s poems we will provide summaries and provide analyse of aspects specific to each book in the epic poems. Each book has a dedicated page which includes art inspired by moments from these epic poems.
Long regarded as one of the pinnacles of Western literature, The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War in its final days, as Achilles, the supreme Grecian warrior, withdraws from the conflict over a disagreement with Agamemnon.
The Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’ long trek home after the war ends.
The ancient Greeks regarded these poems as a representation of real history, and in the 19th century the Homer enthusiast and amateur archaeologist, Heinrich Schliemann, excavated what is now believed to be the site of the ancient conflict.
Click here to visit the main page for this special reading project.
(Please Note: This is an ongoing project and pages related to the Epic Cycle remain incomplete)
The Golden Age of Crime Project is an ongoing commitment to read and review books from the Golden era of Crime Fiction.
The Golden Age of Detective Fiction was an era of classic murder mystery novels, predominantly from the 1920s and 1930s. Well known writers of the Golden Age include Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ronald Knox, Anthony Berkeley and G. K. Chesterton.
But these books have roots in earlier works of detective fiction, and there are still mysteries being written today that would fit in with the ‘feel’ of the Golden Age (Anthony Horowitz is an excellent example of a modern day writer of contemporary ‘Golden Age’ mysteries).
For this special reading project I am reading as widely as possible from this era, but especially books by authors suggested by Martin Edwards' study of the period, The Golden Age of Murder.
Martin Edward's The Golden Age of Murder is an account of the Detection Club, featuring some of the most famous crime writers of the first half of the 20th Century, as well as the background to famous and obscure crime fiction from this era. This book was the initial inspiration for this project. You can read our review of this book here.
Click here to visit the main page for this special reading project.
I read Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo as a long term reading project. The book is long, over 1000 pages of small print and 118 chapters. I decided as I read, since I would not always have time to read it consistently, that I would make a chapter by chapter summary.
The novel begins in the period just before Napoleon's escape from the island of Elba. Edmond Dantes is arrested and imprisoned after he is framed as a Napoleon conspirator. This is the story of his escape, how he finds his fortune and seeks revenge on those who betrayed him.
For those interested in reading the book, or simply curious to find out more, click on the cover of the book or click here. You will have access to the full summary I wrote, character notes on the major characters, a downloadable character map I produced, as well as a quick access to my review of the book and a link to the Gutenberg Project, where you can download the book for free.
The Federalist Papers were written in 1787 to 1788 to defend the new American Constitution against its critics. They explained the Constitution and have provided future generations guidance as to how the Founding Fathers intended the Constitution to be interpreted.
The Federalist Papers, written by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and America's fourth president, James Madison, cover issues of America's independence, including the need to ensure against foreign influence, as well as how the new Federal Government would operate. The Federalist Papers also deal with the separation of the powers of each branch of government, as well as government oversight, which includes the power of Congress to impeach. For these reasons, The Federalist Papers are still important documents which have been referred to in debates about the presidency of Donald Trump.
You can now read summaries and commentaries of all 85 Federalist papers here on the Reading Project.
Michael Duffy profiles some great writers of the last few centuries in a series of interviews that never happened based on things the authors actually said!
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