First read of the month was The Volunteer by Jack Fairweather all about a man who well volunteered to go in to Auschwitz
In the Summer of 1940, after the Nazi occupation of Poland, an underground operative called Witold Pilecki accepted a mission to uncover the fate of thousands of people being interned at a new concentration camp on the border of the Reich.
His mission was to report on Nazi crimes and raise a secret army to stage an uprising. The name of the detention center — Auschwitz.
It was only after arriving at the camp that he started to discover the Nazi’s terrifying plans. Over the next two and half years, Witold forged an underground army that smuggled evidence of Nazi atrocities out of Auschwitz. His reports from the camp were to shape the Allies response to the Holocaust – yet his story was all but forgotten for decades.
This is the first major account to draw on unpublished family papers, newly released archival documents and exclusive interviews with surviving resistance fighters to show how he brought the fight to the Nazis at the heart of their evil designs.
The result is an enthralling story of resistance and heroism against the most horrific circumstances, and one man’s attempt to change the course of history.
We then took a trip to Brazil during the building of the Christ De Redeemer – The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley.
Maia D’Aplièse and her five sisters gather together at their childhood home – a fabulous, secluded castle situated on the shores of Lake Geneva – having been told that their beloved adoptive father, the elusive billionaire they call Pa Salt, has died.
Each of them is handed a tantalising clue to their true heritage – a clue which takes Maia across the world to a crumbling mansion in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil . . .
Eighty years earlier, in the Belle Époque of Rio, 1927, Izabela Bonifacio’s father has aspirations for his daughter to marry into aristocracy. But Izabela longs for adventure, and convinces him to allow her to accompany the family of a renowned architect on a trip to Paris. In the heady, vibrant streets of Montparnasse, she meets ambitious young sculptor Laurent Brouilly, and knows at once that her life will never be the same again.
The War of the Worlds by H G Wells was an 1987 attack from Mars.
When an alien capsule lands on Horsell Common, Woking, crowds of astonished onlookers gather. But wonder soon turns to terror when the Martians emerge. Armed with deadly heat rays, the aliens begin their conquest of earth. Confronted by powers beyond our control, a technology far in advance of our own, and a race of alien invaders which regard us as no more than ants, humankind faces extinction.
While the world crumbles under the shadow of the Martian menace, one man sets out alone across the desolate wasteland to find his wife.
Kings of a Dead World by Jamie Mollart tackled climate change in a very extreme way.
The Earth’s resources are dwindling. The solution is the Sleep.
Inside a hibernating city, Ben struggles with his limited waking time and the disease stealing his wife from him. Watching over the sleepers, lonely Peruzzi craves the family he never knew.
Everywhere, dissatisfaction is growing.
The city is about to wake.
And Mortal Engines by Philip Reeve gave us meals on wheels!
In a dangerous future, huge motorized cities hunt, attack and fight each other for survival.
As London pursues a small town, young apprentice Tom is flung out into the wastelands, where a terrifying cyborg begins to hunt him down...
Lastly The Northumbrians by Dan Jackson took a very detailed look at the North East and its people.
The Northumbrians have been overlooked by British and global history, but they’ve made astonishing contributions to both. Dan Jackson sets out to recover this lost history, exploring the deep roots of Northumbrian culture―hard work and heavy drinking, sociability and sentimentality, militarism and masculinity―through centuries of border warfare and dangerous industry. He explains what we can learn about Northumbria’s people from its landscape and architecture, and revisits the Northumbrian Enlightenment that gave the world the locomotive and the lightbulb. This story reaches right to the present day, as this extraordinary region finds itself caught between an indifferent south and an increasingly confident Scotland. From the Venerable Bede and the prince-bishops of Durham to Viz and Geordie Shore, this vital new history reveals a part of England with an uncertain future, but whose people remain as remarkable as ever.
Elsewhere in September
Our books of the month were Such A Fun Age by Kiley Reid and We Were Wolves by Jason Cockcroft and I finally made it to Bloody Scotland to see the Fun Loving Crime Writers – AMAZING
