6.30pm Thursday 6th March 

Convenor: Vicky Tosh

Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapido

Eighteen-year-old Katherine - bright, stylish, frustratedly suburban - doesn't know how her life will change when the brilliant Jacob Goldman first offers her a place at university. When she enters the Goldmans' rambling bohemian home, presided over by the beatific matriarch Jane, she realises that Jacob and his family are everything she has been waiting for.But when a romantic entanglement ends in tears, Katherine is forced into exile from the family she loves most. And her journey back into the fold, after more than a decade away, will yield all kinds of delightful surprises...'

6.30pm Thursday 5th June

Convenor: Suzy Wilson

Wanting by Richard Flanagan

The bestselling, universally lauded novel of desire and its denial from acclaimed writer Richard Flanagan.Van Diemen's Land, 1841. Mathinna, the adopted Aboriginal daughter of the island's governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, sits for her portrait. She is the subject of a grand experiment in civilisation - one that will determine whether science and reason can be imposed in place of savagery and desire.Years pass. Sir John Franklin disappears on an Arctic expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. England is horrified as reports of cannibalism filter back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, for whom Franklin's story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his own soul.As several lives become entwined, Wanting transforms the classical myth of Leda and the swan into a novel about the ways in which desire - and its denial - shape us all.

6.30pm Thursday 4th September

Convenor: Laura Sweeney

The Wild Laughter by Caoilinn Hughes

It's 2008, and the Celtic Tiger has left devastation in its wake. Brothers Hart and Cormac Black are waking up to a very different Ireland - one that widens the chasm between them and brings their beloved father to his knees. Facing a devastating choice that risks their livelihood, if not their lives, their biggest danger comes when there is nothing to lose.

A sharp snapshot of a family and a nation suddenly unmoored, this epic-in-miniature explores cowardice and sacrifice, faith rewarded and abandoned, the stories we tell ourselves and the ones we resist. Hilarious, poignant and utterly fresh, The Wild Laughter cements Caoilinn Hughes' position as one of Ireland's most audacious, nuanced and insightful young writers.

6.30pm Thursday 4th December

Convenor: Fiona Stager

Bel Canto by Ann Patchett

The poignant - and at times very funny - novel from the internationally bestselling author of The Dutch House and Commonwealth.
Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honour of the powerful businessman Mr. Hosokawa. Roxane Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerised the international guests with her singing.
It is a perfect evening - until a band of gun-wielding terrorists takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, a moment of great beauty, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different continents become compatriots, intimate friends, and lovers.