More from the Cheese Scone Set - AKA Tea with Tales

In today’s meeting our discussions went from reading genres we had never read to the history of words and meanings - all while enjoying a cuppa and a cheese scone.

After listening to a short extract from The Great Alone by Kristen Hannah we talked about the books we had read in the last month.

Historical novelist Catherine Gaskin’s main character in her novel Sara Dane is based on the Australian convict businesswoman Mary Reibey. The fictional retelling documents Sara’s rise from convict to one of the pioneers of the Australian wool industry.

One of our readers had a connection to the author of our next book View From the Second Row by Sam Whitelock. The Whitelock farm adjoins the farm his family owns and he enjoyed reading about Whitelock’s early life. Our reader found the descriptions of life as a professional sportsmen quite revealing.

It was a surprise for one of our readers to discover Robert Harris was just not the name of a coffee brand but an author. In his novel Precipice, Harris tells the story of the affair of the then UK Prime Minster, Henry Asquith, and the much younger aristocrat Venetia Stanley. Our reader is keen to find how much of this is based on fact. Spoiler alert: it includes Asquith throwing highly classified telegrams out the car window.

Susan Mallery has added to her stable of novels on family, friendship and romance with The Vineyard at Painted Moon, the story of elite winemaker Mackenzie Dienes.

The third book in Ruth Rendell’s Chief Inspector Wexford series, Wolf to the Slaughter, was another good read from this crime writing author.

Things are getting very tricky for Stuart MacBride’s fictional detective Logan McRae in the ninth instalment The Missing and the Dead.

A blast from the past was our next author Nevil Shute who most of the room had read many years earlier. Trustee from the Toolroom, Shute’s last novel about the recovery of a lost legacy of diamonds from a wrecked yacht, stands the test of time for our reader.

We finished with the Pulitzer Prize winner All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. It tells the story of French girl Marie-Laure, blind since the age of six, and Werner, a German orphan, against the backdrop of World War two. Delightful was the verdict.

Posted by Miss Moneypenny

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