Duchess of Cornwall’s new The Reading Room book club: The titles to add to your list

The long-awaited conclusion to Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall trilogy about the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell, The Mirror & the Light carries the reader spellbound. At 912 pages long, it's a rollercoaster of Cromwell's political scheming and robust imagination. Mantel's prose and ability to build such a rich historical context is uniquely powerful, making this one a classic not to be missed. It also featured in our review of the best novels for 2020, with our writer praising it for being a “dazzling masterpiece of a novel”. 

One of Amazon's bestselling books of 2020, the hype for Delia Owens’s debut novel has been immense. Where the Crawdads Sing is at once a murder mystery, coming-of-age novel, and a celebration of nature. Set in date jumbling and tension building order from 1952 to 1970, the story follows Kya Clarke from aged six to 25 as she grows up in a North Carolina swamp after being abandoned by her family. After years of surviving alone, Kya pines for touch and love, and as two boys from the local town become intrigued by her, she opens up to the idea of a new life. Until the unimaginable happens. Character-driven, with a poignant sense of place and time, Where the Crawdads Sing is an animated story of a community beset by tragedy.

An espionage thriller that intertwines of the life story of Eva, a Russian woman living in Paris and former British spy, and her daughter Ruth, a single mother who teaches English as a foreign language. The book opens with Eva handing Ruth a memoir of her life as a young woman in World War II. What ensues is a pacy exploration into buried secrets and identities. Featuring in the Duchess of Cornwall’s Easter reading list, she’s clearly a big fan. 

This historical novel is set in sixteenth-century Istanbul and follows the young Jahan and a rare white elephant Chota as he escapes from his abusive stepfather by pretending to be an elephant trainer. Spanning most of Jahan’s life, the pages are full of characters that Shafak has painstakingly researched in order to give the novel a vibrant and authentic feel. Covering themes of love, betrayal and war, this poignant tale is well worth a read.