The Olive Readers by Chrstine Aziz

AZ: "I cannot recall the exact moment when I decided to become a Reader. This is unusual for me, as I am always precise about beginnings...Imagine a future without a past, a time without memory, a state in which nationality, ancestry, tradition, language, history have no place. Governing this world is a hyper-organised system of corporations, a network of companies, each responsible for a particular product, each with a workforce conditioned to one end...But, somewhere, a clandestine group is operating to preserve the past...In the Olive producing region of Olea, the Readers are smuggling and storing books in a secret library hidden away in the house of Jephzat and her family. When her sister disappears under suspicious circumstances, and her parents are hastily relocated by the Company, Jephzat is ordered to remain behind. Alone and facing the suspicion and hostility of the villagers, she falls in love with Homer, an olive picker she once rescued from the hands of Company Commissioners - and a long-time member of the Readers. As Homer introduces her to the library, and her hunger for knowledge grows, so do her questions, and soon she finds herself closely involved not only in the recovery and preservation of books, but in a secret plan which endangers Jephzat herself..."

Read for the book group and wouldn't have kept going on this fascinating dystopia otherwise. Felt the end chapters a bit unworked but the rest a profound meditation on the precious nature of reading and personal history. Nationalism does cause problems but a sense of place and your place within the world is also essential.

Tamar by Mal Peet

AZ: "When Tamar's grandfather, an intensely private man, falls from a balcony to his death, he leaves behind a box with Tamar's name on it. For a long time Tamar refuses even to think about it...until one hot June day she opens it to reveal a series of clues and hidden messages from her grandfather. She and her cousin Johannes follow the clues and discover that her name also belonged to someone else over half a century before; someone involved in the terrifying world of resistance fighters in Nazi-occupied Holland during the Second World War. As she pieces together the mystery her grandfather left behind, another Tamar's story is unravelled; a story of passionate love, jealousy and tragedy played out amongst the daily fear and horror of war"

Seem to be drawn to war stories at the moment, this one shifting between the Resistance and SOE operations in the occupied Netherlands and the SOE operatives' grandchild Tamar. I understood the switching between the presnt and past as a technique to engage current teenagers but felt the SOE story was powerful enough to stand alone. Good twist I just did not see coming.

The Penalty by Mal Peet

AZ: "As the city of San Juan pulses to summer's sluggish beat, its teenage football prodigy El Brujito, the Little Magician, vanishes without trace. Paul Faustino, South America's top sports journalist, is reluctantly drawn into the mystery. As a story of corruption and murder unfolds, he is forced to confront a bitter history of slavery, and the power of the occult."

Odd, about football and the occult, found it too foreign to take to

Sisterland by Linda Newberry

AZ: "Hilly's German grandmother, HeidiGran, comes to live with her family after she gets Alzheimer's disease; but as her mind becomes more muddled, secrets buried in her past start to emerge. Why does HeidiGran keep talking about a girl called Rachel? And why does she make racist remarks about Hilly's friend, Reuben? As Hilly struggles to cope with revelations about her family's past, she encounters racism and prejudice for herself when a friend becomes the victim of a mindless attack; she also falls in love for the first time."

Have read a couple of books by Newberry and found them intellgent explorations of mid to late teen life. Sisterland is the book I would like Cj to learn about the Holocaust through almost as much as The Diary of Anne Frank. The grandmother of the main character appears to be the only survivor of a German family but as Heidigran's Alzheimer's takes hold she reveals more and more of her past by acting as if she is there again. A book that links the Holocaust and resulting diaspora and the current issues of Israel and Palenstine with sensitivity and never allowing lapse into stereotypes, via racism and anti-Muslim feeling in the UK.

The Element of Water by Stevie Davies

AZ: "In pre-war Germany, two boys grow up together inseparable. However, as adulthood approaches and Nazism continues its inexorable march, Dahl and Quantz can no longer reconcile their childhood friendship as one becomes an SS officer and the other a pawn in the intelligence unit. Thirteen years later, their children meet: a woman and a man exposed to the sins of their fathers."

Found this a very long read. Interesting enough story, about the daughter of an Aryan Nazi deathshead and son of another solider forming a relationship after the war in a former SS hq but just lacked pace and interest for me. Didn't really sympathise with either character and felt there may be better books on the legacy of the war.

Nineteen Minutes by Jodie Picoult

AZ: "Sterling is a small, ordinary New Hampshire town where nothing ever happens – until a student enters the local high school with an arsenal of guns and starts shooting, changing the lives of everyone inside and out. The daughter of the judge sitting on the case is the state’s best witness – but she can’t remember what happened in front of her own eyes. Or can she?"

Didn't disappoint after Perfect Match. Again a female in the legal system, this time a judge, whose daughter is the childhood friend of a boy who kills fellow students at his High School. Utterly convincing depiction of the hell that is school and as good an argument for criminalising firearms as Bowling for Columbine. Accurate on the misery of the teenage years and interesting information on the psychology of the brain of a teenager.

Panic by Jeff Abbott

AZ: "Things are going well for young film-maker Evan Casher - until he receives an urgent phonecall from his mother, summoning him home. He arrives to find her brutally murdered body on the kitchen floor and a hitman lying in wait for him. It is then he realises his whole life has been a lie. His parents are not who he thought they were, his girlfriend is not who he thought she was, his entire existence an ingeniously constructed sham. And now that he knows it, he is in terrible danger. So he is catapulted into a violent world of mercenaries, spies and terrorists. Pursued by a ruthless band of killers who will stop at nothing to keep old secrets buried, Evan's only hope for survival is to discover the truth behind his past."

Cracking good read as fast as possible book about a man who discovers his parents are living secret lives. Convincing and involving.

Grasshopper by Barbara Vine

AZ: "Blamed by her parents for the tragic death of a friend, Clodagh has been banished from their home in the countryside to a dingy basement flat in the city. Her life is transformed when she meets the inhabitants on the top floor of 15 Russia Road. An exotic range of young people who explore a London of roofs, eaves and ledges, thrilling in the freedom and danger. Clodagh, haunted still by the accident, finds that running the roofs brings her back to life, but it seems that tragedy and misfortune may not be done with her yet"

Very good but I thought overlong, I understand that Vine was trying to speak about the characters as much as the precipitating events but although the events (the death on a pylon of a childhood friend and the stabbing of another character) were interesting and the characters did linger in my head I thought it was too long. Like Vine's Brimstone Wedding which I have on tape I felt it was missing something.