This November, remember, remember to read!
This month’s Good Books our books are chosen by Penny Boxall, poet and author of the East Sussex Book Award 2026 nominated Letty and the Mystery of the Golden Thread.
Guest post by Penny Boxhall
Children’s choices
Ghostlines by Katya Balen illustrated by Jill Calder
This is a fabulous adventure story which celebrates friendship and community, a beautiful, wild and brilliantly crafted novel about loss, friendship and the healing power of nature. It explores how you can feel lonely as a newcomer in a place with friendship networks already established. And how tough it is to accept that some things change, even when you don’t want them to.
Reserve the paperback of Ghostlines
The Skylarks’ War by Hilary McKay
Clarry and her older brother Peter live for their summers in Cornwall, staying with their grandparents and running free with their charismatic cousin, Rupert. When Rupert goes off to fight at the front, Clarry feels their skylark summers are finally slipping away from them. Can their family survive this fearful war?
Reserve the paperback of The Skylarks’ War
The Swifts by Beth Lincoln illustrated by Claire Powell
A smart, silly whodunit and gleeful gothic mystery perfect for fans of Lemony Snicket.
Reserve the paperback of The Swifts
Teen choice
The Rose Field by Philip Pullman
In ‘The Rose Field’, the quests of the characters converge in the most dangerous, breathtaking and world-changing ways. They must take help from spies and thieves, gryphons and witches, old friends and new, learning all the while the depth and surprising truths of the alethiometer.
Reserve the hardback of The Rose Field
Adult Fiction
Greek Lessons by Han Kang
In a classroom in Seoul, a young woman watches her Greek language teacher at the blackboard. She tries to speak but has lost her voice. Her teacher finds himself drawn to the silent woman, for day by day he is losing his sight.
Slowly the two discover a profound sense of unity – their voices intersecting with startling beauty, as they move from darkness to light, from silence to expression.
Reserve the paperback of Greek Lessons
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.
Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.
Reserve the hardback of Piranesi
Audiobook
Orbital by Samantha Harvey read by Sarah Naudi
Six astronauts rotate in their spacecraft above the Earth. Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day.
So far from Earth, they have never felt more part – or protective – of it.
Reserve the paperback of Orbital
Borrow the eAudio and eBook of Orbital on Borrowbox
Golden Hill by Francis Spufford read by Sarah Borges
A mysterious British traveller named Mr Smith arrives in New York City in 1746 and upends the lives of the merchant and political classes.
A fast-paced romp of Old Manhattan that keeps its eyes on the moral conundrums of America.
Listen to Golden Hill on Libby
Reserve the paperback of Golden Hill
Non-fiction
Chaucer’s People: Everyday Lives in Medieval England by Liza Picard
Through the assorted cast of pilgrims Chaucer selected for ‘The Canterbury Tales’, Picard brings medieval social history to life and uncovers the detail behind Chaucer’s poetic portraits.
Reserve the hardback of Chaucer’s People: Everyday Lives in Medieval England
Poetry
Jackself by Jacob Polley
In one of the most original books of poetry to appear in the last decade, ‘Jackself’ spins a kind of ‘fictionalised autobiography’ through nursery rhymes, riddles and cautionary tales.
Reserve the paperback of Jackself
