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This month, Bookclub, presented by James Naughtie, speaks to the author Christopher Brookmyre, as he takes questions from a live BBC audience about his debut novel, Quite Ugly One Morning. The book is a pacey crime thriller, not so much a 'whodunnit', as a 'whydunnit', and it introduces us to the wily, wise-cracking journalist Jack Parlabane - a character Chris is still writing about some thirty years later. Published in 1996, Quite Ugly One Morning, was a best-seller at the time, and the actor David Tennant read the audiobook.

Producer: Dom Howell Editor: Gillian Wheelan

This was a BBC AUDIO SCOTLAND PRODUCTION.

This month, BBC Bookclub, presented by James Naughtie, speaks to the writer Sara Collins, as she takes questions from a live audience about her award-winning debut novel, The Confessions of Frannie Langton. Sara was the Costa Book Awards First Novel Winner in 2019. She has also adapted the book for television.

Producer: Dom Howell Editor: Gillian Wheelan This was a BBC Audio Scotland production.

James Naughtie and readers quiz Nicholas Shakespeare about his book, Six Minutes In May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister. It chronicles the dramatic political and military events of 1940 which led to the momentous Norway Debate and Chamberlain’s resignation.

Upcoming recordings at BBC Broadcasting House in London:

Wednesday 15 May at 1300: Lucy Caldwell on These Days

Thursday 6 June at 1245: Marlon James on A Brief History of Seven Killings

James Naughtie and readers talk to Clive James about the first volume of his autobiography, Unreliable Memoirs, which has sold over a million copies.

Clive James is a poet, essayist, novelist, documentarist, critic, talk show host, travel writer, cultural commentator - and red-hot tango dancer. The audience talk to Clive about Unreliable Memoirs, which covers his boyhood years in Kogarah, a suburb of Sydney. Clive was born in 1939; the other event that year (he says) was the outbreak of war, from which his father never returned. Clive tells Bookclub how that event has dominated his whole life.

In an extended version, Jennifer Egan talks about A Visit from The Goon Squad.

James Naughtie and a group of readers talk to author Edward St Aubyn, who is best known for his five autobiographical Patrick Melrose novels, which dissect the agonies of family life with honesty, wit and precision. His debut novel Never Mind won a Betty Trask award, while our chosen book is the fourth in the Melrose series, Mother's Milk, and was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker prize.

In Mother's Milk, the middle aged Patrick Melrose is married with two young children. He finds his wife consumed with motherhood and his mother consumed by a New Age Foundation, and about to disinherit him in favour of a suspect Irish shaman. The novel opens with a dazzling scene as Patrick's first son Robert narrates his own birth as it happens, and then grows into a young boy who understands far more about life than he ought. Patrick is caught in the family wreckage of broken promises, child-rearing, adultery and assisted suicide and his once wealthy, illustrious family is in peril.

In this rare interview, Edward St Aubyn admits he does not enjoy discussing his work in public, and says that in Mother's Milk there is less of himself in the character of Patrick than in the previous novels; and he describes the writing processes behind his acerbically funny and disarmingly tender novel.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Edward St Aubyn Producer : Dymphna Flynn

December's Bookclub choice : A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan (2010).

Peter Høeg's internationally bestselling Miss Smilla's Feeling For Snow was the original Scandi-crime thriller. First published in 1992 the novel's runaway success was due to its extraordinary central character, 37 year old Smilla Qaavigaaq Jasperson, as well as the unfamiliar backdrop of snowy Copenhagen and the icy wastes of Greenland. Smilla is half-Dane and half-Inuit; she is unmarried, childless, independent and irascible and yet she forms an unlikely friendship with her neighbour six year old Isaiah.

The book opens when the young boy has fallen to his death from the roof of their apartment building; it's ruled an accident, yet Smilla, an expert on ice and snow, can tell from his footprints that he was running from someone. She begins her own investigation, forming an uneasy friendship with another neighbour, a mechanic. Smilla uncovers a trail of clues, and her sense of snow leads her into a mystery that goes back decades.

Peter Høeg explains how the character of Smilla came to him in an unlikely way, as he saw a Somalian woman cross the street in Copenhagen and knew his next main character would be called Smilla. For Høeg, books are intuitive and less logical than daily life. He candidly discloses that Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow was written by a young and inexperienced novelist, and how looking back, he is dissatisfied and rather ashamed of its enigmatic ending. He says that writing a novel is like running a marathon, it's an intense experience, and by the end, the writer can lose concentration in his exhaustion. Presented by James Naughtie

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Peter Høeg Producer : Dymphna Flynn

November's Bookclub choice : Mother's Milk by Edward St Aubyn (2006).

Patrick McCabe speaks to James Naughtie about his novel, The Butcher Boy

Anne Patchett on her award winning novel, Bel Canto.

Deborah Levy talks about her novel, Swimming Home.

Michael Chabon talks about The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay with James Naughtie and a group of readers.

The novel follows the story of the teenage Josef Kavalier, who makes a daring escape from the Germans in Prague in 1939, leaving his family behind. He travels across Europe and eventually arrives at his cousin Samuel Clayman's house in Brooklyn. There the pair discover a shared love of the burgeoning comic book world of Superheroes - Joe Kavalier is the artist, and Sam Clay, as he becomes, is the writer.

Together they create a hero of their own, The Escapist, a Houdini-type figure who fights the Nazis, frees the enslaved and leads them home. The novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2001.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Michael Chabon Producer : Dymphna Flynn

June's Bookclub choice : Gods Without Men by Hari Kunzru (2011).

Sunjeev Sahota discusses his novel The Year of the Runaways which was shortlisted for the 2015 Man Booker Prize.

The Year of the Runaways follows the stories of three undocumented Indian men who share a house in Sheffield. Tochi has fled India after his family were killed in a Caste-related massacre; Avtar arrives on a student visa, but intending to work. Randeep, Avtar's friend and neighbour, is the beneficiary of a sham marriage. In a flat on the other side of town lives Randeep's visa-wife, the British-born Narinder. Her cupboards are filled with his clothes, in case Immigration arrives.

Sahota was named as a Granta Best Young British Novelist in 2013. Presented by James Naughtie and including contributions and questions from a group of invited readers.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Sunjeev Sahota Producer : Dymphna Flynn

May's Bookclub choice : The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon (2000).

Jonathan Safran Foer talks about his acclaimed novel Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close.

Set in the aftermath of 9/11, it is the story of a young boy coming to terms with the tragedy of his father's death in the World Trade Centre.

hen he find s an envelope with the word 'Black' written on it in his father's hand he sets out to find everyone in the city called Black, to see if he can pick up a clue.

After finding a mysterious key in a left behind in his father's closet, in an envelope labelled Black, nine year old Oskar sets out to find everyone in the city called Black, to see if he can pick up a clue. The search leads him through the five boroughs of New York and into history to the bombing of Dresden and as well as into the story of his grandparents' marriage.

Presented by James Naughtie and including contributions and questions from a group of invited readers.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Jonathan Safran Foer Producer : Dymphna Flynn

April's Bookclub choice : The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota (2015).

Clare Chambers talks to James Naughtie and readers about her bestselling novel, Small Pleasures. Set in the London suburbs in the 1950s, it tells the story of Jean Swinney, a journalist who is asked to investigate a letter sent to her paper, from a mother claiming her daughter is the result of a virgin birth. Jean meets the mother, Gretchen; her husband, Howard and daughter Margaret and is drawn into their family life. Her investigations soon expand both her world, and her heart.

Upcoming recordings, at BBC Broadcasting House in London:

Wednesday 24 April at 1800 - Nicholas Shakespeare on Six Minutes In May

Wednesday 15 May at 1300 - Lucy Caldwell on These Days.

Thursday 6 June at 1245 - Marlon James on A Brief History of Seven Killings

Wednesday 10 July at 1830 - Ayọ̀bámi Adébáyọ̀ on Stay With Me

Email bookclub@bbc.co.uk to take part. Over 18s only.

James Naughtie and audience talk to Kamila Shamsie about her novel Burnt Shadows

Novelist Barbara Trapido has been delighting readers over a forty year career. In The Travelling Hornplayer (1998) she spins a tale of betrayal, misunderstanding, coincidence and the passions of youth, all with her subversive and entertaining sense of humour.

From its haunting start : "Early on in the morning of my interview, I woke up and saw my dead sister" to its grand finale at an Oxford College, The Travelling Hornplayer zips along with plot twists and character turns, shocking revelations and desperate reactions. Any attempt at summary and character explanation is dizzying, but here are a few hints: for three years, Ellen Dent has been devastated by the loss of her younger sister Lydia who had become an informal student of celebrated novelist Jonathan Goldman. Jonathan's daughter Stella, a precocious and difficult child, is unwittingly involved in Lydia's death, and Stella in turn befriends Ellen at Edinburgh University. Stella's mother Katherine, who had appeared as a dynamic character in Trapido's Brother of the More Famous Jack, becomes a passive mother in The Travelling Hornplayer. All their stories mesh together into a sparky, tragicomic puzzle.

Barbara tells James Naughtie and the gathered group of Bookclub readers how the novel was inspired by Schubert's song cycles, with their lyrics by William Muller, and how her dry wit and acerbic observations, especially of Britain's class system, come from her being an outsider. Brought up under the apartheid system in South Africa, Barbara came to London in the early 60s and became a schoolteacher.

Presenter: James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Barbara Trapido Producer : Dymphna Flynn

March's Bookclub Choice : Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer (2005).

John Lanchester talks to James Naughtie and a group of readers about his novel Capital, which was a major BBC TV drama in 2015.

The residents of an affluent street in London are busy getting on with their lives when one day something strange happens. Every house in the street has an identical, mysterious postcard pushed through their letterboxes that simply states "'We Want What You Have.'

At first, the residents of Pepys Road, who are from mixed racial and social backgrounds, dismiss the notes as some sort of marketing campaign but gradually as events begin to escalate it becomes clear that there is more to this strange occurrence.

John Lanchester is a successful financial journalist as well as novelist. The novel covers multiple contemporary issues in British life including the financial crisis of 2007-08, immigration, radical Islam, celebrity, and property prices. In Capital, there is always mystery at the back of the reader's mind.

Presented by James Naughtie with contributions and questions from a group of invited readers.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : John Lanchester Producer : Dymphna Flynn

February's Bookclub Choice : The Travelling Hornplayer by Barbara Trapido (1998).

American writer Jay McInerney discusses his debut novel Bright Lights, Big City with James Naughtie and a group of readers.

Bright Lights, Big City not only cemented Jay McInerney as a superstar among debut novelists, but came to define the culture of 80s New York in all its gritty yet glamorous glory.

We follow the young unnamed narrator - he's 'You' throughout the book - during a whirlwind week in New York. He is bored with his job on a Manhattan magazine, wants to be a writer, and has been abandoned by his fashion-model wife. By night he roams the brightly lit streets of the city, hanging out in clubs and loft parties, powered by "Bolivian Marching Powder". By the time his crazy week is over the emptiness returns.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Jay McInerney Producer : Dymphna Flynn

January's Bookclub choice : Capital by John Lanchester (2012).

James Naughtie discusses H is for Hawk with Helen Macdonald

James Naughtie talks to Don DeLillo about his novel Underworld

James Naughtie talks to Evie Wyld about After the Fire a Still, Small Voice

James Naughtie talks to Maggie O'Farrell about The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

James Naughtie and Tony Harrison discuss the poem 'v'

James Naughtie talks to Javier Marias about The Infatuations

Bookclub travels to Northumberland to meet best-selling crime writer Ann Cleeves. She joins James Naughtie and listeners to discuss her novel, Hidden Depths: Detective Inspector Vera Stanhope sets out to solve two murders which are apparently linked, although there are no clues to connect the victims.

Upcoming recordings - 1830 BBC Broadcasting House in London :

26 March - Clare Chambers on Small Pleasures 24 April - Nicholas Shakespeare on 6 Minutes In May

Email bookclub@bbc.co.uk to take part. Over 18s only.

James Naughtie and audience talk to Elizabeth Strout about Olive Kitteridge

James Naughtie and audience talk to Michael Holroyd about A Strange Eventful History

James Naughtie and audience talk to Kamila Shamsie about Burnt Shadows

James Naughtie talks to Richard Flanagan about The Narrow Road to the Deep North

James Naughtie talks to Colum McCann about TransAtlantic.

James Naughtie talks to China Mieville about The City and the City

James Naughtie talks to Tessa Hadley about Married Love

David Nicholls talks to James Naughtie and a group of readers about his novel One Day

A M Homes talks to James Naughtie about her book May We Be Forgiven

Jon McGregor discusses his novel If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things

Graeme Macrae Burnet joins James Naughtie and readers to reveal the secrets behind his award-winning historical novel, His Bloody Project. Set in the Scottish Highlands in 1869, His Bloody Project explores crime, justice and retribution through the confessions of a young man accused of murder, and an account of his trial.

Upcoming recordings at BBC Broadcasting House in London:

Tuesday 26 March 1830 - Clare Chambers discusses her bestselling novel, Small Pleasures.

Wednesday 24 April 1830- Nicholas Shakespeare discusses Six Minutes In May: How Churchill Unexpectedly Became Prime Minister

With James Naughtie.

Doctors work under the oath 'do no harm', but the neurosurgeon Henry Marsh says the decision whether to operate on a brain is rarely that simple.

His account of his working life Do No Harm has caught the attention of readers all round the country since its publication a year ago and has this week Do No Harm won the South Bank Award for Literature, as well being shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson, Costa, and Wellcome book prizes this year.

Henry discusses his memoir Do No Harm which is startling in its candour. He gives an extraordinary insight into his own thought processes as well as into the world of neurosurgical briefing meetings and hospital policies. Each chapter's starting point is a real-life case study and the book conveys his fascination with the human brain as well as the compassion required of a brain surgeon.

Henry is honest about how a doctor must strive for balance between personal involvement with the patient and objectivity about their case. He talks about his failures, and the exhilaration of success.

As always on Bookclub a group of readers, this month including members of the medical profession, join in the discussion.

July's Bookcub choice : If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Henry Marsh Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

James Naughtie and readers talk to Hisham Matar about his gripping debut novel In The Country Of Men.

This international bestseller is set in Colonel Gaddafi's Libya of 1979, as the narrator Suleiman looks back on his childhood summer and tries to makes sense of the bewildering world around him. His best friend's father disappears and is next seen on state television at a public execution, a mysterious man sits outside the house all day, gives him sweets and asks for the names of his father's friends; and it seems his father has finally disappeared for good.

Hisham Matar explains now the novel is not autobiographical but that he remembers that time well, how life in Libya 'went indoors' with cinemas closed and access to bookshops restricted. He remembers how fears, secrets and betrayal threatened individuals and families. He also talks about how his own father disappeared in the 1980s.

In The Country Of Men was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Hisham Matar Producer : Dymphna Flynn

June's Bookclub choice is Do No Harm by Henry Marsh.

Adam Foulds discusses his Man Booker shortlisted novel The Quickening Maze with James Naughtie and a group of readers.

Set in the 1840s, The Quickening Maze tells the story of the poet John Clare, and his incarceration at High Beach Asylum in London's Epping Forest. Run by the charismatic and reformist Dr Matthew Allen, its principles include occupational and talking therapies. Based on real life events, amongst the patients is Septimus Tennyson, brother to the young poet Alfred Tennyson. The Tennysons suffered from the English affliction : depression, and Alfred moves to be near his brother, and enjoy the peace of the forest.

In the programme Foulds describes how his discovery of Tennyson and Clare being at the asylum at the same time inspired the novel, and how the closed world of the asylum is a gift for a novelist. He grew up on the edges of the forest himself and spent his teenage years birdwatching there, before he discovered a love of poetry.

This intensely lyrical novel draws on John Clare's love of nature, how the Enclosure laws of the time contributed to his alienation and the deterioration of his mental health after a lifetime's struggle with alcohol and critical neglect. Foulds shows us Nature's paradise outside the walls, and Clare's dreams of home, of redemption and escape.

May's Bookclub choice : In the Country of Men by Hisham Matar.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Adam Foulds Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Wilbur Smith discusses his novel When the Lion Feeds with James Naughtie and a group of readers.

With James Naughtie.

Judith Kerr discusses her novel When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit. First published in 1971, she wrote it for her son in order to explain the story of her own family's flight from Nazi Germany. Her father was a drama critic and a distinguished writer whose books were burned by the Nazis. The family passed through Switzerland and France before arriving finally in England in 1936.

Kerr found herself a fairly willing refugee, seeing her long travels as a great adventure. Her parents went to great pains to confirm and support this view, often hiding their own personal and professional privations and struggles from their young children.

When Hitler Stole the Pink Rabbit is now used as a set text in German schools, used as an easy introduction to a difficult period of German history.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Judith Kerr Producer : Dymphna Flynn

March's Bookclub choice : When the Lion Feeds by Wilbur Smith.

James Naughtie's first guest on Bookclub for 2015 is Marina Lewycka.

Marina was born in Kiel, Germany, after the war, and moved to England with her family when she was about a year old.

Her first novel, A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, has sold more than a million copies in the UK alone and was shortlisted for the Orange Prize, longlisted for the Man Booker and won the Bollinger Everyman Prize for Comic Fiction 2005.

Nadezhda and her sister Vera are dismayed when their eighty-four year old father falls in love with a thirty-six year old Ukrainian divorcee. Their campaign to oust Valentina unearths family secrets going back fifty years into some of Europe's darkest history, and the two sisters must put aside a lifetime of feuding to save their father.

James Naughtie presents and a group of readers - including some from the Ukrainian community in London - join in the discussion.

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Marina Lewycka Producer: Dymphna Flynn February's Bookclub choice : When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr.

With James Naughtie. In a special 200th edition of the programme we celebrate the centenary of author Patrick O'Brian and Allan Mallinson is our guide to the first in his hugely popular series of Napoleonic naval stories, Master and Commander.

Known as the Aubrey/Maturin novels, the twenty books are regarded by many as the most engaging historical novels ever written. Master and Commander establishes the friendship between Captain Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin, who becomes his ship's surgeon and an intelligence agent.

O'Brian won fans not just because of the story-telling and his power of characterisation but also his detailed depiction of life aboard a Nelsonic man-of-war : the weapons, food, conversation and ambience, the landscape and the sea.

Master and Commander was first published in 1969 and the twentieth novel in the series Blue at the Mizzen, in 1999, a year before O'Brian died.

Allan Mallinson also writes novels about the Napoleonic wars and knew O'Brian. And as always on Bookclub a group of invited readers join in the discussion.

December's programme marks the 200th edition of Bookclub which began in 1998 and has featured the world's leading authors from the late 20th/early 21st century like Toni Morrison, JK Rowling, Hilary Mantel, Salman Rushdie, Martin Amis, Paul Auster, Alan Bennett. James Naughtie's impressive list of guests also includes writers who are no longer with us like Muriel Spark, Gore Vidal, Douglas Adams, Carol Shields, and Sue Townsend. All are available online to download and keep forever, via the programme's website bbc.in/r4bookclub .

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed guest : Allan Mallinson Producer: Dymphna Flynn January's Bookclub choice : A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka.

With James Naughtie. Poet Blake Morrison talks about his memoir of growing up in Yorkshire in the fifties and sixties, the son of two local GPs. It's an honest account of family life, father-son relationships and bereavement.

The book also movingly chronicles his father's death in 1991, and attempted to resolve some of the secrets in his father's life.

First published in 1993, And When Did You Last See Your Father? became a bestseller, was adapted into a film starring Colin Firth and Jim Broadbent, and inspired a whole genre of literary confessional memoirs. Recorded at the Ilkley Literature Festival, Yorkshire.

December's Bookclub choice : Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian (1969)

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Blake Morrison Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. Celebrated Australian writer Tim Winton discusses his novel Dirt Music with a group of readers.

Tim reveals how after seven years of writing Dirt Music, he was unable to hand it in to his publisher on the agreed date. He felt ashamed of the novel and that it wasn't ready; if he found himself getting lost in it so would the reader. He spent the next fifty-five days redrafting and rewriting, and the novel went on to be short-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2002 and is considered one of his best.

Dirt Music is set on the coast of Western Australia and in its vast isolated deserts. Forty year old Georgie Jutland is a mess, with her career in ruins she's torn between two men who are both bereaved and grieving. These characters' lives are in stasis, they are incapable of articulating their emotions and instead resort to alcohol and petty crime. Tim Winton explains :

"I'm interested in people who have very few words to express feelings, it's not that they don't have feelings but they have no language, and I'm interested in finding ways to portray that ... and in this instance it's space, memory and music by which they express themselves or communicate."

November's Bookclub choice : And When Did You Last See Your Father? by Blake Morrison (1993)

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Tim Winton Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie. Recorded at the BBC at the Edinburgh Festivals, Allan Massie discusses his novel A Question of Loyalties. First published in 1989, the book is widely acclaimed as his finest.

The novel engages with all the complexities and ambiguities of loyalty and nationality as it follows a family through the divisions in France during World War II, and the repercussions which last for decades.

In the early 1950s Etienne de Balafré strives to find out what happened to his father when the German invasion of 1940 divided the country between collaboration and resistance. Where some might see an accomplice, the author Allan Massie seeks to understand a human being making difficult choices.

As always on Bookclub, a group of especially invited readers join in the discussion.

October's Bookclub choice : Dirt Music by Tim Winton (2002)

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Allan Massie Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

Marking 200 years since the birth of Wilkie Collins, crime writer, and Collins admirer, Elly Griffiths discusses one of his best known works -The Moonstone - with James Naughtie and a group of readers.

Upcoming recording

Wednesday 24th January at 1830 at BBC Broadcasting House, London: Graeme Macrae Burnet on His Bloody Project.

With James Naughtie. Sadie Jones talks about her novel The Outcast which won the Costa First Novel award in 2008.

The book is about a boy called Lewis - his childhood and adolescence - as he grows up in the stultifying world of the home counties in the late forties and fifties. It's a tale of drunkenness, violence and a fair amount of sex, set amongst the well-brought-up professional classes. It is also a love story.

Sadie says : There's something fascinating about the 50s, the cataclysm of the war and the 60s. We all think about this explosion of freedom, but caught in between it was ten years of breath held and that fascinated me.

August's Bookclub : A Question of Loyalties by Allan Massie (1989)

Presenter : James Naughtie Interviewed Guest : Sadie Jones Producer : Dymphna Flynn.

With James Naughtie.

The celebrated American writer Lorrie Moore discusses her short novel Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? In the early nineties, Lorrie Moore was wandering through an art gallery when she came upon a painting with this same intriguing title, depicting two young girls looking at a pair of bandaged frogs. Lorrie Moore bought the painting, and borrowed its name and imagery for her second novel.

She says the book is not autobiographical except "in a spiritual way." Her intent was to examine the passion and purity of adolescence and the special quality of girls' friendships in those teenage years.

August's Bookclub choice : The Outcast by Sadie Jones (2008).

With James Naughtie. Emma Donoghue discusses her novel Room with an invited group of readers.

Donoghue, an Irish writer living in Canada, tells the story of a five-year-old boy, Jack, who has been imprisoned with his mother in a tiny room - 11 feet by 11 feet - for his whole life. Emma was inspired to write Room after reading about European kidnapping cases such as the Fritzls in Austria, and so Jack was born into captivity after his mother was taken by a stranger at the age of 19 and held prisoner in a converted garden shed.

Told in Jack's voice as he learns of a world outside his small prison, Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010. But Emma says that the premise of the novel is to explore the myths and realities of motherhood and parenting rather than focus on the crime of kidnapping - and one reader tells her how surprised she was find so much humour in the novel.

July's Bookclub choice : Who Will Run the Frog Hospital? By Lorrie Moore (1994).