BOOKMARK October 2024 Book recommendations
View previous months
October's Titles
All books are available from Waterstones in Perth and Adventure Into Books in Blairgowrie.
My Italian Bulldozer by Sir Alexander McCall Smith
(Little Brown Book, 2018)
Fiction
My Italian Bulldozer (ISBN: 9780349142296, paperback). The moral being either: be wary of relying on a hire car booking being honoured on an Italian holiday weekend; or in the event of the hire car being substituted with a yellow bulldozer, take the opportunity to help a local vineyard by moving a bit of wall.
Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson
(John Murray Press, 2025)
Historical Fiction
Sally Magnusson’s Music in the Dark (ISBN: 9781529345957, paperback). A song writer, raised in the Highlands, Jamesina Ross, like many, was forced to leave her glen when her community was cleared from the land. The trauma she experienced scarred her in more ways than one, making her hesitant to trust and love.
Odyssey by Stephen Fry
(Penguin, 2024)
Classics
Stephen Fry’s Odyssey (ISBN: 9780241486351, hardback). Billed as ‘the most famous heroic story of all time’, the Odyssey is full of monsters, murder and maelstroms, and the cunning hero Odysseus will need all of his wits to survive the malicious devilment of the gods. A classic story, given new life with Fry’s retelling.
Gabriel's Moon by William Boyd
(Penguin, 2024)
Fiction
Gabriel’s Moon by William Boyd (ISBN: 9780241542057, hardback). Gabriel is an accidental spy in Cold War, 1960s London and Europe, caught up in shadow world of lies and intrigues.
Orbital by Samantha Harvey
(Vintage Publishing, 2025)
Fiction
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (ISBN: 9781529922936, hardback) is a story of astronauts – in this case six, rather than two – orbiting the earth. This slim novel is extraordinary: the scale of the setting is huge – space, the Earth, the Moon; the astronauts, in their spacecraft, feel tiny by comparison, a mini collection of weightless humans, tethered to the Earth; and their view of us down here unsettles, distorted by their worries and hopes.