MONTHLY
Pat Allchorne's
Best Reads
A carefully curated monthly selection of books — chosen for the way they speak to readers who love stories, ideas, and the experience of reading itself.
May 2026
This Month's
Reading List
Theme: Historical
May's picks take you somewhere else entirely — across centuries, continents, and civilisations. Whether you prefer your history with a side of mystery, magic, or Dickens, there is something here to pull you in and keep you turning pages well past your bedtime.
Crime, Mystery
A Morbid Taste for Bones
Wales, 1137. The ambitious head of Shrewsbury Abbey has set his sights on the sacred remains of Saint Winifred, buried in a remote mountain village — and sends the canny, worldly Brother Cadfael along on the expedition. When the village's most vocal opponent is found shot dead with a mysterious arrow, and some whisper that the saint herself held the bow, Cadfael knows better.
A murderer walks among them. But uncovering the truth may cost Cadfael far more than he bargained for. The first in the beloved Brother Cadfael series, this is medieval mystery-writing at its very best.
Fantasy, Mystery
The Miniaturist
Amsterdam, 1686. Eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman arrives to begin life as the wife of a wealthy merchant trader, only to find a cold, secretive household ruled by silence and suspicion. When her husband gifts her a cabinet-sized replica of their home, the miniaturist she commissions to furnish it begins sending pieces that seem to know things they should not — mirroring reality in ways that are beautiful and deeply unsettling.
Rich in atmosphere and shimmering with dread, this debut novel set in a city of glittering wealth and repressive piety is the kind of story that stays with you long after the last page.
Middle East, Contemporary
There Are Rivers in the Sky
Three lives, two rivers, one ancient poem — and a single drop of water that binds them across centuries. From the ruins of King Ashurbanipal's great library in ancient Nineveh emerges the Epic of Gilgamesh, whose reach extends to a boy born beside the stinking Thames in 1840, a ten-year-old Yazidi girl racing against time in 2014 Turkey, and a divorced hydrologist on a houseboat in 2018 London who has decided to end her life — until a book changes everything.
From the Booker Prize-shortlisted author of The Island of Missing Trees, this is a dazzling, deeply humane feat of storytelling. Water remembers. It is humans who forget.
Classic, Historical Fiction
A Tale of Two Cities
Set against the violence and upheaval of the French Revolution, Dickens' enduring classic follows Charles Darnay and the brilliant, self-destructive Sydney Carton through a story of sacrifice, resurrection, and the duality of human nature. The novel moves between London and Paris with equal command, balancing sweeping historical drama with deeply personal stakes.
Its opening and closing lines remain among the most recognisable in English literature — and the story between them is every bit as powerful as its reputation suggests.
Historical Fiction, Fantasy
Stonehenge
Four thousand years ago, a stranger's death at the Old Temple of Ratharryn sets in motion a chain of events that will result in one of mankind's most singular achievements. At the heart of it are three brothers — Lengar the ruthless warrior, Camaban the visionary sorcerer, and Saban the youngest, through whose skill and quiet leadership the temple will ultimately be built.
Cornwell brings prehistoric Britain to life with his trademark meticulous research and rousing narrative drive. Epic in scope, intimate in character, and as mysterious as the stones themselves.
April 2026
April's
Reading List
Theme: Humour
April is no time for earnestness. This month Pat has chosen five books that will make you laugh out loud, snort into your tea, and possibly read passages aloud to whoever is nearby whether they asked or not. Consider yourself warned — and delighted.
Humour, Adventure
The Ascent of Rum Doodle
A brilliantly absurd parody of mountaineering expeditions, this cult classic follows an eccentric British team attempting to conquer the fictional peak of Rum Doodle. Narrated by the hopelessly earnest Binder, the story unfolds through a series of increasingly ridiculous mishaps, misunderstandings, and deadpan observations.
Bowman's humour lies in perfect understatement and timing, skewering the stiff-upper-lip attitude of serious exploration narratives with devastating precision. The higher they climb, the less competent they appear — and the funnier it gets.
Middle Grade, Fantasy
The Phantom Tollbooth
For Milo, everything is a bore — until a mysterious tollbooth appears in his room and he drives through it purely because he has nothing better to do. On the other side, he visits the Island of Conclusions (you get there by jumping), learns about time from a ticking watchdog named Tock, and embarks on a quest to rescue Rhyme and Reason.
Somewhere along the way, Milo discovers that life is far from dull. Witty, warm, and packed with wordplay, this is one of those rare books that delights children and quietly floors adults.
Classics, Travel
Three Men in a Boat
Three friends, convinced they are overworked and in need of rest, set off on a week's boating holiday up the Thames — with several hampers of food, a covered boat, and a dog of dubious usefulness. What follows is a succession of glorious mishaps, including getting lost in Hampton Court Maze and falling repeatedly into the river.
Published in 1889 and still laugh-out-loud funny today, this is one of the great comic novels in the English language — and a reminder that some things about human nature never change.
Mystery, Romance
Something Fresh
Blandings Castle has impostors the way other houses have mice — and now there are two of them, both pursuing dangerously foolish schemes. The formidable secretary Baxter is on high alert, Freddie Threepwood is hopelessly entangled in yet another romantic disaster, and Lord Emsworth is entirely oblivious to all of it.
This is Wodehouse at his most irresistible — farcical, perfectly plotted, and written with the kind of comic genius that makes everything look effortless. Ideal for anyone who has never read him, and equally essential for those who have.
Fantasy, Contemporary Fiction
Smith
★ Written by our very own Mike Devlin, co-founder of DWC Magazine
Albert Smith wakes up one week to discover he is destined to become the most important person ever to have lived — and that a deadly assassin and a maniacal despot are already on their way. This is not the week he had planned. His companions are no more reassuring: an ex-librarian of uncertain reliability, an elusive woman called Panda, and Sunny, who couldn't care less whether Smith lives or dies.
Featuring hamsters, blueberry muffins, 1970s photo booths, chapless pants, and toasters, this is a wonderfully silly, inventive ride through a world where the absurd is entirely matter-of-fact.
March 2026
March's
Reading List
Theme: Books of Joy
March is for lifting the spirits. These five books won't ask much of you — just that you slow down, open up, and let a little more joy in. From Buddhist wisdom to a boy and his horse, each one is a quiet reminder that the good stuff is closer than you think.
Self-Help, Spirituality
The Things You Can See Only When You Slow Down
Is it the world that's busy, or is it your mind? This bestselling mindfulness guide by renowned Buddhist meditation teacher Haemin Sunim offers a path to inner peace across eight areas of life — relationships, love, spirituality, and more — with the gentle insistence that when you slow down, the world slows down with you.
Accompanied by more than twenty full-colour illustrations that act as visual breathing spaces, it is the kind of book you will pick up again and again whenever life feels like too much.
Self-Help, Memoir
The Joy of Small Things
Hannah Jane Parkinson is a specialist in savouring life's small pleasures — the fluffy dressing gown, the solo cinema trip, the personality of fonts, the gleeful abandonment of a book she is not enjoying. Drawn from her popular Guardian column, these everyday exaltations are warm, funny, and quietly subversive.
The perfect book for a grey Tuesday when you need reminding that delight is everywhere, if you know where to look.
Fiction, Self-Help
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
Four unlikely friends venture out into the Wild together, sharing the kind of conversations we all need to hear but rarely have. Charlie Mackesy's drawings and words have been shared millions of times — appearing on hospital walls, in school classrooms, on lamp posts and café windows — because they speak directly to something true in all of us.
A book to keep close, return to often, and give to anyone who needs a reminder that they are enough.
Poetry, Self-Help
Big Panda & Tiny Dragon
Big Panda and Tiny Dragon set off on a journey through the seasons together. They get lost — as many of us do — but while lost, they discover beautiful sights they would never have found had they gone the right way. Through quiet, sometimes silly conversations rendered in stunning brush-stroke illustrations, they explore the thoughts and emotions that connect us all.
Inspired by Buddhist philosophy, this is a book to dip into whenever you need comfort, a wry smile, or simply permission to enjoy the stillness. Every page is worth framing.
Fantasy, Self-Help
The Alchemist
Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who sets out in search of worldly treasure — and finds something far more valuable along the way. Paulo Coelho's modern classic weaves magic, mysticism, and wisdom into a story about listening to your heart, reading the signs that life offers, and having the courage to follow your dreams.
Millions of readers across generations have been transformed by this book. If you haven't read it yet, March is a very good time to start.
February 2026
February's
Reading List
Theme: Books with Recipes
February's picks are for readers who like a little something extra with their stories — a pinch of butter, a dash of history, and pages you'll want to lick. Five books where food isn't just on the menu, it's woven into every chapter.
NonFiction, Gardening
The Magic Apple Tree: A Country Year
From Moon Cottage, Susan Hill records the sights and smells, the people, gardens, animals, births, festivals, and deaths that mark the changing seasons in a small Oxfordshire community. A quiet, deeply observant book that reminds you what it means to pay attention to a place over time.
Historical Fiction, Romance
The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
London, 1946. Writer Juliet Ashton receives a letter from a stranger on Guernsey — a man who found her name written inside a second-hand book. What follows is an extraordinary correspondence that draws her into the lives of a wonderfully eccentric island community still bearing the scars of German occupation.
The Society itself — born as a spur-of-the-moment alibi when its members were caught breaking curfew — is home to pig farmers, phrenologists, and literature lovers. Written entirely as letters, this is a warm, funny, deeply human celebration of books and the connections they create.
NonFiction, Travel
Lunch in Paris: A Love Story, with Recipes
Elizabeth Bard came to Paris for a weekend, sat down to lunch with a handsome Frenchman, and never went home again. This memoir follows two simultaneous love affairs — one with her new beau, the other with French cuisine — as she navigates bustling markets, hipster bistros, and a culture as complex and rewarding as a well-ripened cheese.
Peppered with recipes for summer ratatouille, swordfish tartare, and molten chocolate cake, this is a book about falling in love, redefining success, and discovering what it truly means to feel at home.
NonFiction, Cooking
Voracious: A Hungry Reader Cooks Her Way through Great Books
Growing up reading in her grandfather's butcher shop, Cara Nicoletti understood early that books and food bring people to life in the same way. Now a butcher, cook, and writer, she serves up fifty recipes inspired by the foods that give beloved literary characters their depth — from the perfect soft-boiled egg in Jane Austen's Emma to brown butter crêpes from Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.
Beautifully illustrated and full of heart, this is the book for anyone who has ever finished a novel and immediately wanted to cook something from it.
NonFiction, Grief
The Year of Miracles: Recipes About Love + Grief + Growing Things
A month-by-month chronicle of a year spent cooking through grief, hope, and change — cardamom chicken rice, chimichurri courgettes, blackberry miso birthday cake, sticky toffee Guinness brownie pudding. This is a book about loss and every kind of romance, about seedlings and pancakes, about falling in love and getting up again.
Shortlisted for the André Simon Best Cookbook Award 2022, it is a powerful testament to how cooking can serve as a light in the darkest of days — and a reminder that having seconds of everything is always allowed.
January 2026
January's
Reading List
Theme: Books About Books
This month's book list is all about books that love books back. Thoughtful, immersive reads that reflect on reading, writing, and the quiet worlds that exist within pages.
NonFiction, Memoir
Howards End Is on the Landing
Early one autumn afternoon, in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others she had never read, forgotten she owned, or wanted to revisit. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her own collection, forsaking new purchases entirely.
A book left on a shelf for a decade is a dead thing — but also a chrysalis, packed with the potential to burst into new life. This is the story of one of Britain's most accomplished authors as she revisits the conversations, libraries, and bookshelves of the past that have informed a lifetime of reading and writing.
NonFiction, Memoir
Dear Reader: The Comfort and Joy of Books
For as long as she can remember, Cathy Rentzenbrink has lost and found herself in stories. Growing up she was rarely seen without her nose in a book, and read in secret long after lights out. When tragedy struck, books kept her afloat — and eventually lit the way to a new path, first as a bookseller and then as a writer.
A moving, funny, and joyous exploration of how books can change the course of a life, packed with recommendations from one devoted reader to another.
Historical Fiction, Book Club
The Paris Library
Paris, 1939. Odile Souchet has her dream job at the American Library in Paris — until the Nazis march in and she stands to lose everything she holds dear. Together with her fellow librarians, she joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books.
Montana, 1983. A lonely teenager uncovers the mysterious past of her elderly neighbour, discovering a shared love of language and a dark secret that connects them across the decades. A powerful novel about the consequences of our choices and the relationships that make us who we are.
Romance, Contemporary
Found in a Bookshop
Loveday Cardew's beloved Lost for Words bookshop has fallen quiet — and at the very moment people most need books to widen their horizons or ease their fears, the doors are closed. Then the first letter arrives, from Rosemary and George, married fifty years, setting out on their last journey together from the bench at the bottom of their garden in Whitby.
It becomes clear that Loveday and her team can do something useful in a crisis: recommend the right books to people in the right moment — for fear, boredom, loneliness, or the desire for laughter and escape. And so it begins.
Historical Fiction
The Wartime Book Club
The Isle of Jersey, 1943. German soldiers patrol the cobbled streets and Nazis have ordered Grace La Mottée, the island's only librarian, to destroy books that threaten the new regime. Instead, she hides them. Together with her headstrong best friend, she forms the Wartime Book Club — a lifeline offering fearful islanders the joy and escapism of reading.
Inspired by true events, this is an unforgettable story of everyday bravery, romance, and camaraderie — a love letter to the power of books in the darkest of times, and a moving tribute to the remarkable, untold story of an island at war.
DWC Book Reviewer
About Pat Allchorne
Book Reviewer · DWC Magazine
For nearly 20 years Pat ran a second-hand bookshop in Warrington in North-West England — over 2,000 square feet, with around 40,000 books on every subject imaginable.
Since learning to read at the age of three and a half, she has never been without books in her life. Now retired, she reads with the same joy she always has — especially when she discovers new authors.
Read more of
Pat's reviews
Every edition of DWC Magazine carries Pat's considered, honest reviews. Discover more from the full archive.