Hamm Court Book Club – Page 22 – For the enjoyment of friends, books and wine …

The Overstory by Richard powers

An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies, and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. An Air Force crewmember in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan.

This is the story of these and five other strangers, each summoned in different ways by the natural world, who are brought together in a last stand to save it from catastrophe.

Just read Part 1 ‘Roots’, approximately the first 190 pages.

Pauline 8, June 9, Trude 7, Jane 4, Janet 5, Christine 8, Elaine 5, Cai 3, Sally 6

Father of the Lions by Louise Callaghan

Between 2014 and 2017, the ‘Islamic State’ ruled the city of Mosul, in northern Iraq, killing ‘traitors’, destroying books and oppressing women. But miraculously, in a park on the eastern edge of the Tigris, a zoo was kept open.

Father of Lions is the story of Mosul Zoo. It survived under the stern hand of Abu Laith, the zookeeper, a man with an interesting past and a lifelong animal lover. His real name was Imad, but for as long as he could remember everyone had called him by his nickname, Abu Laith – ‘Father of Lions’. And the lions and bears survived not only two years of Isis occupation but starvation and bombardment by liberating forces.

As the animals began to starve, Abu Laith and his family and helpers went hungry to keep them alive. They risked their lives to pick through bins for leftovers in Isis-occupied neighbourhoods. In a final heroic effort, the surviving animals were smuggled out of Iraq in a daring rescue operation.

This is a story of human decency in the midst of barbarism.

Elaine 8, Pauline 7, Trude 8, Rebecca 9, Jane 6, Cai 7, Christine 8

All done by Zoom!

The Passengers by John Marr

The new gripping page-turning thriller for fans of BLACK MIRROR from the bestselling author of HER LAST MOVE and THE ONE – soon to be a major Netflix series.

When someone hacks into the systems of eight self-drive cars, their passengers are set on a fatal collision course.

The passengers are: a TV star, a pregnant young woman, a disabled war hero, an abused wife fleeing her husband, an illegal immigrant, a husband and wife – and parents of two – who are travelling in separate vehicles and a suicidal man. Now the public have to judge who should survive but are the passengers all that they first seem?
E6, June 7, Jane 7, Sally 7, Trude 7, cai 7, Christine 7, Pauline 7, Rebecca 7, Janet 7