Newsletter

To celebrate this, our 100th newsletter and the coming festive we have a fantastic competition. Win tickets to see WUTHERING HEIGHTS, the brilliant new film by Academy Award winning writer-director Andrea Arnold. There are also books, DVDs and posters for 3 lucky winners in our special competition. Try your luck here.

Our Book of the Month is a wonderfully atmospheric thriller CROOKED LETTER, CROOKED LETTER by Tom Franklin. See the competition page to win a copy and read an interview with the author.

The other recommended titles this month are a surreal satire, GOOD OFFICES by Evelio Rosaro, and Philip Roth's new novel, NEMESIS.

Let us know what you think of our reviews. Leave your comments at the bottom of any review - we’d love to hear them.

See five of our favourite novels set in the American South.

Can you Spot the Bookshop? Congratulations to Lucinda Fountain the winner of our November competition for spotting Any Amount of Books in Charing Cross Road, London. A £10 voucher is on its way.

The 10 winners of THE INVISIBLE BRIDGE  by Julie Orringer are: Tom Hawes, Southend on Sea; Mandy Hussey, Leighton Buzzard; Diane Whale, Bristol; Lorraine Wilson, Fareham; Nina Crozier; Sarah Burrell, London; Sharne Stiggants, Poole; Duncan Wheeler, Crawley; Kelly Koya, Ascot and James Eyles, Hyde. Many thanks to Penguin, the publishers.

Welcome to all the new groups who have recently registered with us. Now is the time to request your FREE BOOKS! Just go to the offers page. This is for ALL registered groups (sorry, UK and N. Ireland groups only) not just new ones. If your group is not registered then just fill in the form. It’s a very simple process.
N.B. You only need to register once. Does your bookgroup info need updating? Email us at info@bookgroup.info and we’ll amend your directory entry for you.
 
Read about this month’s Bookgroup of the Month, Book Group @ The Point, an inclusive group based in a community arts organisation in Doncaster. Do you want to be our BGoTM? Just fill in the questionnaire and win a £10 Amazon voucher if you’re chosen.

We are very sad to say that Russell Hoban died on 13 December, aged 86. He was a complete one-off: an extraordinarily imaginative and prolific writer, probably best known for his brilliant post-apocalyptic novel, RIDDLEY WALKER. We met him a couple of days before his 78th birthday and were totally charmed by him.( read our interview and reviews of several of his books).

David Guterson has won the Literary Review Bad Sex Award 2011. Read the offending piece here.

The third Wellcome Trust Book Prize (for a work of fiction and non-fiction on the theme of health, illness or medicine) has been awarded to Alice LaPlante for her debut novel TURN OF MIND, “a tale of a family’s secrets exposed by murder and a brilliant mind in terminal decline”. It is the first work of fiction to win the prize. Bookgroups can download reading packs of the shortlist here.

Siddhartha Mukherjee's Pulitzer prize-winning biography of cancer has won the Guardian First Book Award

The short list for the Costa Book Awards has been announced and includes our recommended title, TINY SUNBIRDS FAR AWAY (see our review). To see all 20 shortlisted books from all categories go to the website.

Margaret Drabble is the winner of the 2011 Golden PEN Award. The award is given each year by English PEN to a writer whose body of work has had a profound impact on readers and who is held "in high regard" by the literary community. See our 2008 interview with this most distinguished author.

In 2012 Two Ravens Press will begin publishing EarthLines, a full-colour A4-sized magazine dedicated to high quality writing which explores the relationship between people and the natural world, and encourages reconnection. They are now looking for submissions of essays, feature articles and poetry from writers who are interested in working with them both to celebrate and to develop the field of writing about nature, place and the environment. Read more here.

December's Radio 4 Bookclub author is Sebastian Barry who will be discussing THE SECRET SCRIPTURE with James Naughtie and readers, on Sunday 4th at 4pm and Thursday 8th at 3.30pm.  It’s available online on the i-player and as a podcast. See our review of this moving novel before tuning in.

See what’s on in your area on our list of festivals and events. If you want us to include something free on the listings page then complete the registration form or contact us at info@bookgroup.info

If you’re looking for an independent bookshop in your town our list could tell you if there’s one near you,
or if you own or manage an independent bookshop we can list your shop free on the site. Just complete the registration form or email us at info@bookgroup.info for more information.

If you enjoy Bookgroup Info and find it useful, please help support the site by buying books through us. If you click through from any link to Amazon from this site and buy books (or anything),
Bookgroup Info gets a small percentage. It all helps to keep us going!

Please do remember to forward the newsletter to other members of your group so that they can take advantage of the offers and competitions.
Please email us at info@bookgroup.info if you wish to unsubscribe to the newsletter.

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