Avid Reader Book Club

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Anna Karenina tells of the doomed love affair between the sensuous and rebellious Anna and the dashing officer, Count Vronsky. Tragedy unfolds as Anna rejects her passionless marriage and must endure the hypocrisies of society. Set against a vast and richly textured canvas of nineteenth-century Russia, the novel's seven major characters create a dynamic imbalance, playing out the contrasts of city and country life and all the variations on love and family happiness.

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• Synopsis
• Discuss Anna Karenina
• About the Book
• Leo Tolstoy Biography
• Other Works by Leo Tolstoy
• Movie Adaptations
• Reading Guide

Thirty-Nine Steps by John Buchan

Richard Hannay's ennui comes to an abrupt end when a murder is committed in his flat - only a few days before the dead man had revealed to him an assassination plot which would have terrible consequences for international peace.

Fearing the police will see him as the obvious suspect, and desperate to escape the killers, Hannay goes on the run in his native Scotland. There, among the wild moors, he needs all his courage and ingenuity to stay one step ahead of his pursuers...

The Long-Shadowed Forest by Helen Hoover

In 1954, Helen Hoover and her husband Adrian left their careers and the big-city life of Chicago to live in a small cabin in the north woods that border Minnesota and Canada. Living without electricity, telephone, or a car, the Hoovers became part of the environment, peacefully coexisting with their wild neighbours.

The Long-Shadowed Forest is the amazing record of the Hoovers' relationship with deer, mice, birds, squirrels, moose, and other creatures of the forest. First published in 1963, these stories of daily life in the woods and vivid descriptions of a fascinating variety of plants and animals delighted readers for years and have an enduring popularity.

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A House of Children by Joyce Cary

A House of Children is the late English novelist Joyce Cary's nearly autobiographical story of childhood summers spent in Donegal. The organization—the progress of children toward maturity by means of sudden epiphanies—is remarkable. The characters, based on Cary's cousins and aunts and the author himself, are charming. The language is intoxication.

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Listening Point by Sigurd Olson

Listening Point is about the spiritual human connection to the environment. “Each time I have gone there I have found something new which has opened up great realms of thought and interest”, Sigurd F. Olson writes. “For me it has been a point of discovery and, like all such places of departure, has assumed meaning far beyond the ordinary”. Considered by some to contain Olson's most vivid and moving passages, Listening Point is the nature lover's companion for hearing the depth and beauty of the great outdoors.

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