viennalit - book group

Monday 10 November 2025:
6.00pm - 7.30pm

The God of the Woods
by Liz Moore

“The Van Laar banking family own a chunk of land in New York state’s Adirondack Mountains, including a summer camp for teenagers. When their 13-year-old daughter Barbara goes missing from her cabin in August 1975, history seems to be repeating itself – her older brother Bear vanished without trace in 1961, aged eight. Speculation grows that Barbara has been taken by a recently escaped prisoner, serial killer Jacob “Slitter” Sluiter. Sluiter is thought by many to have been responsible for Bear’s disappearance, rather than the groundsman who was arrested and died in police custody. But nobody is sure, as, despite loudly banging the drum for self-reliance, the Van Laar clan, to whom reputation is all, have a habit of getting others to do their dirty work … Told through multiple points of view, and shifting between the 1950s and the summer of Barbara’s disappearance, this is an intricate and emotionally engaging exploration of class and family dynamics, and a top-notch literary thriller.”

Laura Wilson, The Guardian

Preview 15 December:
The Turnglass
by Gareth Rubin

Percival Everett: James
Abraham Verghese: The Covenant of Water
Sandra Newman: Julia
Malachy Tallack: That Beautiful Atlantic Waltz
Samantha Harvey: Orbital
Carmen Maria Machado: In the Dream House
Emma Cline: The Guest
Susan Abulhawa: Against a Loveless World
Rachel Cusk: Outline
Jesmyn Ward: Sing, Unburied, Sing
Caleb Azumah Nelson: Open Water
Siri Hustvedt: The Blazing World
Paul Lynch: Prophet Song
Lauren Groff: Matrix
Colm Tóibín: The Magician
Becky Chambers: The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet
Julia Armfield: Our Wives Under the Sea
Eliza Clark: Penance: A Novel
R.F. Kuang: Babel: An Arcane History
Gabrielle Zevin: Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Ottessa Moshfegh: Lapvona
Claire-Louise Bennett: Checkout 19
Susanna Clarke: Piranesi
Yaa Gyasi: Homegoing
Stephen Markley: Ohio
Katie Kitamura: Intimacies: A Novel
Emma Donoghue: The Pull of the Stars
Emily St John Mandel: Station Eleven
David Grossman: More Than I Love My Life
Sarah Perry: The Essex Serpent
Ali Smith: Autumn
Lionel Shriver: The Motion of the Body Through Space
Min Jin Lee: Pachinko: A Novel
C. Pam Zhang: How Much of These Hills Is Gold
Damon Galgut: The Promise
Natasha Brown: Assembly
Sally Rooney: Beautiful World, Where Are You
Emily Danforth: Plain Bad Heroines
Nicole Krauss: To Be A Man
Imbolo Mbue: How Beautiful We Were
Salena Godden: Mrs Death Misses Death
Patricia Lockwood: No One Is Talking About This
Rebecca Makkai: The Great Believers
Jessica Anthony: Enter the Aardvark
Douglas Stuart: Shuggie Bain
Patrick Ness: And the Ocean Was Our Sky
Maggie O'Farrell: Hamnet
Neil Mukherjee: A State of Freedom
Tayari Jones: An American Marriage
Madeline Miller: Circe
Anna Wiener: Uncanny Valley
Margaret Atwood: Oryx and Crake
Sarah Moss: Ghost Wall
Bernadine Evaristo: Girl, Woman, Other
Nicola Barker: H(a)ppy
Ocean Vuong: On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous
Kim Stanley Robinson: New York 2140
Russell Hoban: Riddley Walker
William Siegfried: Virtual Enchantment
Kei Miller: Augustown
Daisy Johnson: Everything Under
Craig Thompson: Blankets: A Graphic Novel
Elif Batuman: The Idiot
DBC Pierre: Vernon God Little
Anna Burns: Milkman
Fiona Melrose: Midwinter
Rachel Kushner: The Mars Room
Helen Macdonald: H is for Hawk
Andrew Greer: Less
Philip Pullman: La Belle Sauvage
Gillian Tindall: The House by the Thames
Lidia Yuknavitch: The Book of Joan
Emily Ruskovich: Idaho
George Saunders: Lincoln in the Bardo
Nicole Krauss: Forrest Dark
Sebastian Barry: Days Without End
Lidia Yuknavitch: The Power
Joanne Harris: Gentlemen and Players
Julian Barnes: The Noise of Time
Colson Whitehead: The Underground Railroad
Donna Tartt: The Goldfinch
Margaret Atwood: Hag-Seed
Karen Jay Fowler: We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
Adam Biles: Feeding Time
Rabih Alameddine: An Unnecessary Woman
Tsitsi Dangarembga: Nervous Conditions
Ali Smith: How To Be Both
Paul Beatty: The Sellout
Paula Hawkins: The Girl on the Train
Graeme Macrae Burnet: His Bloody Project
Kazuo Ishiguro: The Buried Giant
Rachel Joyce: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry
Adam Johnson: Parasites Like Us
Nicole Krauss: The History of Love
Anne Tyler: A Spool of Blue Thread
Bernadine Evaristo: Blonde Roots
Naomi J. Williams: Landfalls
Sunjeev Sahota: The Year of the Runaways
Miranda July: The First Bad Man
Claire Fuller: Our Endless Numbered Days
Anthony Doerr: All the Light We Cannot See
Emma Healey: Elizabeth Is Missing
Ian McEwan: The Children Act
Junot Díaz: The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Americanah: A Novel
Joshua Ferris: To Rise Again at a Decent Hour
Neil Gaiman: The Ocean at the End of the Lane
M. R. Carey: The Girl with All the Gifts
Bret Anthony Johnston: Remember Me Like This
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Andrew O'Hagan: The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog, and of his Friend Marilyn Monroe
Ruth Ozeki: A Tale for the Time Being
Salman Rushdie: The Enchantress of Florence
Patrick Ness: The Crane Wife
Lauren Groff: Arcadia
Eleanor Catton: The Rehearsal
Stevie Davies: Awakening
Carol Anshaw: Carry The One
Daniel Woodrell: The Maid's Version
A.M. Homes: May We Be Forgiven
Toni Morrison: Home
Gillian Flynn: Gone Girl
Aravind Adiga: The White Tiger
Elizabeth Strout: Olive Kitteridge
Ben Fountain: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
China Miéville: The City and the City
Patrick deWitt: The Sisters Brothers
Michel Faber: The Crimson Petal and the White
Amy Waldman: The Submission
Miriam Toews: Irma Voth
David Nicholls: One Day
Colum McCann: Let the Great World Spin
Michael Chabon: The Yiddish Policemen's Union
Andrew Miller: Pure
Jennifer Egan: A Visit from the Goon Squad
Emma Tennant: The Ballad of Sylvia and Ted
Stephen Kelman: Pigeon English
Ann Patchett: Bel Canto
Jane Gardam: Old Filth
Austin Wright: Tony & Susan
Dara Horn: The World To Come
Siri Hustvedt: The Summer Without Men
Åsne Seierstad: The Bookseller of Kabul
Kathryn Stockett: The Help
Daniel Woodrell: Winter's Bone
Kei Miller: The Last Warner Woman
Sebastian Faulks: Birdsong
Ian McEwan: Solar
Tash Aw: Map of the Invisible World
Marilynne Robinson: Gilead
Caryl Phillips: Cambridge
Fay Weldon: The Stepmother's Diary
Nicholas Baker: A Box of Matches
Audrey Niffenegger: The Time Traveler's Wife
Alan Bennett: The Uncommon Reader
Philip Pullman: His Dark Materials
Michel Faber: Under The Skin
John Burnside: The Devil's Footprints
David Mitchell: Cloud Atlas
Lloyd Jones: Mr Pip
Douglas Coupland: The Gum Thief
Graham Swift: The Light of Day
Gail Jones: Sorry
Iain Banks: The Crow Road
Anne Enright: Taking Pictures
J. M. Coetzee: Disgrace
Jackie Kay: The Adoption Papers
Paul Auster: New York Trilogy
Martin Amis: House of Meetings
Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie: Half of a Yellow Sun
J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
Mordecai Richler: Barney's Version
David Lodge: Author, Author
Julian Barnes: Arthur & George
Vienna Lit (eds): Vienna Views
Marina Lewycka: A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian
Carol Ann Duffy: The World's Wife
Zadie Smith: On Beauty
John Updike: Terrorist
Ali Smith: The Accidental
Mitch Albom: Tuesdays with Morrie
Mitch Albom: The Five People You Meet in Heaven
Nick Hornby: A Long Way Down
Lionel Shriver: We Need To Talk About Kevin
Kate Fox: Watching the English
Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go
Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: Purple Hibiscus
Ian McEwan: Saturday
Jasper Fforde: The Eyre Affair
Andrea Levy: Small Island

vienna lit book group

!! Everyone welcome !!

books previously discussed: