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RUTLAND Set In Stone by Robert Goddard Synopsis: Recovering from the recent death of his wife in a tragic accident, Tony Sheridan goes to stay with his sister-in-law, Lucy, and her husband, long-time friend Matt Prior, at their new home in the country - Otherways. It is a strange, circular, moated house, the only surviving creation of an eccentric and reclusive Edwardian architect. Disturbed by memories of his wife, and a growing attraction to Lucy, Sheridan is also troubled by weird and vivid dreams. He learns that a murder committed at Otherways in 1939 still has a strange and malign power over those living in or near the house, as does a later scandal surrounding the murderer's brother, a nuclear scientist who defected to the Soviet Union. These and other mysteries forewarn Sheridan of disaster as he and Lucy embark on a passionate affair. But disaster, when it strikes, is far worse than a wrecked marriage or a friendship betrayed. In uncovering the truth about Otherways, Sheridan realises too late that he is merely adding to the list of its victims - and that those closest to him may soon be among them. Other Rutland books:

SOUTH YORKSHIRE A Kestral For A Knave by Barry Hines Synopsis: Life is tough and cheerless for Billy Casper, a disillusioned teenager growing up in a small Yorkshire mining town. Violence is commonplace and he is frequently cold and hungry. Yet he is determined to be a survivor and when he finds Kes, a kestrel hawk he discovers a passion in life. Billy identifies with her proud silence and she inspired in him the trust and love that nothing else can. Intense and raw and bitingly honest, A KETREL FOR A KNAVE was first published in 1968 and was also madeinto a highly acclaimed film, 'Kes', directed by Ken Loach. Other South Yorkshire books:

GREATER MANCHESTER North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell Synopsis: Set in the mid-19th century, and written from the author's first-hand experience, North and South follows the story of the heroine's movement from the tranquil but moribund ways of southern England to the vital but turbulent north. Elizabeth Gaskell's skilful narrative uses an unusual love story to show how personal and public lives were woven together in a newly industrial society. This is a tale of hard-won triumphs - of rational thought over prejudice and of humane care over blind deference to the market. Readers in the twenty-first century will find themselves absorbed as this Victorian novel traces the origins of problems and possibilities which are still challenging a hundred and fifty years later: the complex relationships, public and private, between men and women of different classes. Other Greater Manchester books: Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell Love on the Dole by Walter Greenwood

LINCOLNSHIRE The Mill on the Floss by George Eliot Synopsis: If life had no love in it, what else was there for Maggie? Tragic and moving, The Mill on the Floss is a novel of grand passions and tormented lives. As the rebellious Maggie's fiery spirit and imaginative nature bring her into bitter conflict with her narrow provincial family, most painfully with her beloved brother Tom, their fates are played out on an epic scale. George Eliot drew on her own frustrated rural upbringing to create one of the great novels of childhood, and one of literature's most unforgettable heroines. Other Lincolnshire books: Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis

ISLE OF WIGHT England, England by Julian Barnes Synopsis: As every schoolboy knows, you can fit the whole of England on the Isle of White. Grotesque, visionary tycoon Sir Jack Pitman takes the saying literally and does exactly that. He constructs on the island 'The Project', a vast heritage centre containing everything 'English', from Big Ben to Stonehenge, from Manchester United to the white cliffs of Dover. The project is monstrous, risky, and vastly successful. In fact, it gradually begins to rival 'Old' England and even threatens to supersede it...One of Barnes's finest and funniest novels, England, England calls into question the idea of replicas, truth vs fiction, reality vs art, nationhood, myth-making, and self-exploration. Alternative: The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (link to book discussion thread) Other Isle of Wight books: Wish You Were Here by Graham Swift The Trespasser by D. H. Lawrence

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Arthur Conan Doyle Synopsis: The terrible spectacle of the beast, the fog of the moor, the discovery of a body: this classic horror story pits detective against dog, rationalism against the supernatural, good against evil. When Sir Charles Baskerville is found dead on the wild Devon moorland with the footprints of a giant hound nearby, the blame is placed on a family curse. It is left to Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson to solve the mystery of the legend of the phantom hound before Sir Charles' heir comes to an equally gruesome end. The Hound of the Baskervilles gripped readers when it was first serialised and has continued to hold its place in the popular imagination. Go to main Devon thread

MERSEYSIDE An Awfully Big Adventure by Beryl Bainbridge Synopsis: It is 1950 and the Liverpool reporatory theatre company is rehearsing its Christmas production of Peter Pan, a story of childhood innocence and loss. Stella has been taken on as assistant stage manager and quickly becomes obsessed with Meredith, the dissolute director. But it is only when the celebrated O'Hara arrives to take the lead, that a different drama unfolds. In it, he and Stella are bound together in a past that neither dares to interpret. Other Merseyside books: Educating Rita by Willy Russell (play)

BRISTOL The Misses Mallett by E. H. Young (also published as The Bridge Dividing) Synopsis: "She sat there, vividly conscious of herself, and sometimes she saw the whole room as a picture and she was part of it; sometimes she saw only those three whose lives, she felt, were practically over, for even Aunt Rose was comparatively old. She pitied them because their romance was past, while hers waited for her outside; she wondered at their happiness, their interest in their appearance, their pleasure in parties; but she felt most sorry for Aunt Rose, midway between what should have been the resignation of her stepsisters and the glowing anticipation of her niece." The virtue of this quiet and accomplished piece of writing lies in its quality and in its character-drawing to summarize it would be to give no idea of its charm. Neither realism nor romance, it is a book by a writer of insight and sensibility. Other Bristol books: A Respectable Trade by Philippa Gregory Evelina by Fanny Burney Junk by Melvin Burgess Only Time Will Tell by Jeffrey Archer

SOMERSET Lorna Doone by R. D. Blackmore Synopsis: First published in 1869, Lorna Doone is the story of John Ridd, a farmer who finds love amid the religious and social turmoil of seventeenth-century England. He is just a boy when his father is slain by the Doones, a lawless clan inhabiting wild Exmoor on the border of Somerset and Devon. Seized by curiosity and a sense of adventure, he makes his way to the valley of the Doones, where he is discovered by the beautiful Lorna. In time their childish fantasies blossom into mature love—a bond that will inspire John to rescue his beloved from the ravages of a stormy winter, rekindling a conflict with his archrival, Carver Doone, that climaxes in heartrending violence. Beloved for its portrait of star-crossed lovers and its surpassing descriptions of the English countryside, Lorna Doone is R. D. Blackmore’s enduring masterpiece. Other Somerset books: Persuasion by Jane Austen Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling by Henry Fielding Far Distant Oxus by Arthur Ransome

CUMBRIA Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome Synopsis: It is the wholesome story of four young children, John, Susan, Titty and Roger, who set out in their boat (the Swallow of the title) to an island of adventure. All seems well until they encounter their enemy. At first they are angry at the invasion of their peaceful haven by these Amazon pirates, Nancy and Peggy, who claim ownership of the land. But in time a truce is called and the Swallows and Amazons become firm friends. Camping under open skies, swimming in clear water, fishing, exploring and making discoveries is the stuff of dreams which serves to make this so charming a tale. The author manages to capture the innocence of a time when all this was real and possible. Swallows and Amazons will transport children to a fantastical place where they can play safely and roam freely, without an adult in sight. Alternative: The Maid of Buttermere by Melvyn Bragg (link to book discussion thread) Other Cumbria books: The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins

STAFFORDSHIRE The Old Wives' Tale by Arnold Bennett Synopsis: First published in 1908, The Old Wives' Tale affirms the integrity of ordinary lives as it tells the story of the Baines sisters--shy, retiring Constance and defiant, romantic Sophia--over the course of nearly half a century. Bennett traces the sisters' lives from childhood in their father's drapery shop in provincial Bursley, England, during the mid-Victorian era, through their married lives, to the modern industrial age, when they are reunited as old women. The setting moves from the Five Towns of Staffordshire to exotic and cosmopolitan Paris, while the action moves from the subdued domestic routine of the Baines household to the siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Other Staffordshire books: Anna of the Five Towns by Arnold Bennett

CHESHIRE Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell Synopsis: Mary Smith and her friends live in Cranford, a town predominantly inhabited by women. The return of a long-lost brother named Peter is the most dramatic event to occur over the course of the sixteen tales that comprise the novel. Elizabeth Gaskell’s “Cranford” is an ironic portrayal of female life in a secluded English village. Other Cheshire books:

WEST SUSSEX Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons Synopsis: When sensible, sophisticated Flora Poste is orphaned at nineteen, she decides her only choice is to descend upon relatives in deepest Sussex. At the aptly-named Cold Comfort Farm, she meets the doomed Starkadders: cousin Judith, heaving with remorse for unspoken wickedness; Amos, preaching fire and damnation; their sons, lustful Seth and despairing Reuben; child of nature Elfine; and crazed old Aunt Ada Doom, who has kept to her bedroom for the last twenty years. But Flora loves nothing better than to organise other people. Armed with common sense and a strong will, she resolves to take each of the family in hand. A hilarious and ruthless parody of rural melodramas and purple prose, Cold Comfort Farm is one of the best-loved comic novels of all time. Other West Sussex books:

We're having another group read for the English Counties Challenge, and this time we've decided on Middlemarch by George Eliot. It comprises eight books within the one volume, so we're going to try and read one book at a time, but we're unsure about timing, so for the first book, we're aiming to read it in over the next three weeks, and then see how the timing has worked, and go from there. We'll be discussing our progress along the way, so there will be spoilers! Synopsis (from the back cover): George Eliot's most ambitious novel is a masterly evocation of diverse lives and changing fortunes in a provincial community. Peopling its landscape are Dorothea Brooke, a young idealist whose search for intellectual fulfilment leads her into a disastrous marriage to a pedantic scholar Casauban; the charming but tactless Dr Lydgate, whose pioneering medical methods, combined with an imprudent marriage to the splendid beauty Rosamond, threaten to undermine his career; and the religious hypocrite Bulstrade, hiding scandalous crimes from his past. As their stories entwine, George Eliot creates a richly nuanced and moving drama, hailed by Virginia Woolf as 'one of the few English novels written for grown up people'. Please feel free to join in! We may find we need to change the timescales as we go along, but will update this first post to say what instalment we're currently reading, with links to where each discussion starts, but please bear in mind, there will be spoilers! BOOK ONE: Miss Brooke (chapters 1-12) reading until Sunday 22nd Feb 2015 BOOK TWO: Old and Young (chapters 13-22) reading until Sunday 22nd Mar 2015 - spoilers for Book 2 start here. BOOK THREE: Waiting for Death (chapters 23-33) reading until Sunday 12th Apr 2015 - spoilers for Book 3 start here. BOOK FOUR: Three Love Problems (chapters 34-42) reading until Sunday 3rd May 2015 - spoilers for Book 4 start here BOOK FIVE: The Dead Hand (chapters 43-53) reading until Sunday 24th May 2015 - spoilers for Book 5 start here BOOK SIX: The Widow and the Wife (chapters 54-62) reading until Sunday 15th June 2015 - spoilers for Book 6 start here BOOK SEVEN: Two Temptations (chapters 63-71) reading until Sunday 5th July 2015 BOOK EIGHT: Sunset and Sunrise (chapters 72-85) and FINALE reading until Sunday 26th July 2015 All reading dates subject to change after discussion.

GLOUCESTERSHIRE Cider With Rosie by Laurie Lee Synopsis: Cider with Rosie is a wonderfully vivid memoir of childhood in a remote Cotswold village, a village before electricity or cars, a timeless place on the verge of change. Growing up amongst the fields and woods and characters of the place, Laurie Lee depicts a world that is both immediate and real and belongs to a now-distant past. Other Gloucestershire books: The Bell by Iris Murdoch John Halifax, Gentleman by Dinah Craik

ESSEX The Turn Of The Screw by Arthur Ransome Synopsis: The Turn of the Screw tells the story of a young governess sent to a country house to take charge of two orphans. Unsettled by a sense of intense evil in the house she soon becomes obsessed with the idea that something malevolent is stalking the children in her care. Meanwhile The Aspern Papers explores obsession of a more worldly kind, with its tale of a literary historian determined to get his hands on some letters written by a great poet. Such is his drive, he is quite prepared to use trickery and deception to achieve his aims... Other Essex books: Mr Britling Sees It Through by H G Wells Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens The Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson Secret Water by Arthur Ransome

WILTSHIRE Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope Synopsis: Trollope's comic masterpiece of plotting and backstabbing opens as the Bishop of Barchester lies on his deathbed. Soon a pitched battle breaks out over who will take power, involving, among others, the zealous reformer Dr Proudie, his fiendish wife and the unctuous schemer Obadiah Slope. Barchester Towers is one of the best-loved novels in Trollope's Chronicles of Barsetshire series, which captured nineteenth-century provincial England with wit, worldly wisdom and an unparalleled gift for characterization. The second book in the Chronicles of Barsetshire. Other Wiltshire books: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon Brideshead Revisted by Evelyn Waugh

NORFOLK The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley Synopsis: 'The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there' When one long, hot summer, young Leo is staying with a school-friend at Brandham Hall, he begins to act as a messenger between Ted, the farmer, and Marian, the beautiful young woman up at the hall. He becomes drawn deeper and deeper into their dangerous game of deceit and desire, until his role brings him to a shocking and premature revelation. The haunting story of a young boy's awakening into the secrets of the adult world, The Go-Between is also an unforgettable evocation of the boundaries of Edwardian society. Other Norfolk books: Love on a Branch Line by John Hadfield Restoration by Rose Tremain Devices and Desires by P. D. James

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence Synopsis: Banned and vindicated, condemned and lauded, Lady Chatterley's Lover is D.H. Lawrence's seminal novel of illicit passion and forbidden desire. This Penguin Classics edition is edited with notes by Michael Squires and an introduction by Doris Lessing. Lady Constance Chatterley feels trapped in her sexless marriage to the Sir Clifford. Paralysed in the First World War, Sir Clifford is unable to fulfil his wife emotionally or physically, and encourages her instead to have a liaison with a man of their own class. But Connie is attracted instead to Oliver Mellors, her husband's gamekeeper, with whom she embarks on a passionate affair that brings new life to her stifled existence. Can she find true love with Mellors, despite the vast gulf between their positions in society? One of the most controversial novels in English literature, Lady Chatterley's Lover is an erotically charged and psychologically powerful depiction of adult relationships. Other Nottinghamshire books: The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood of Great Renown in Nottinghamshire by Howard Pyle Saturday Night and Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe

SHROPSHIRE Summer Lightning by P. G. Wodehouse Synopsis: The Empress of Blandings, prize-winning pig and all-consuming passion of Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, has disappeared. Blandings Castle is in uproar and there are suspects a-plenty - from Galahad Threepwood (who is writing memoirs so scandalous they will rock the aristocracy to its foundations) to the Efficient Baxter, chilling former secretary to Lord Emsworth. Even Beach the Butler seems deeply embroiled. And what of Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe, Clarence's arch-rival, and his passion for prize-winning pigs? With the castle full of deceptions and impostors, will Galahad's memoirs ever see the light of day? And will the Empress be returned...? Other Shropshire books: A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters Precious Bane by Mary Webb

HAMPSHIRE Watership Down by Richard Adams Synopsis: This stirring tale of courage and survival against the odds has become one of the best-loved animal adventures of all time. 'We've got to go away before it's too late.' Fiver could sense danger. Something terrible was going to happen to the warren - he felt sure of it. So did his brother Hazel, for Fiver's sixth sense was never wrong. They had to leave immediately, and they had to persuade the other rabbits to join them. And so begins a long and perilous journey of a small band of rabbits in search of a safe home. Fiver's vision finally leads them to Watership Down, but here they face their most difficult challenge of all . . . Other Hampshire books: The Woman In White by Wilkie Collins

TYNE AND WEAR Another World by Pat Barker Synopsis: At 101 years old, Geordie, a proud Somme veteran, lingers painfully through the days before his death. His grandson Nick is anguished to see this once-resilient man haunted by the ghosts of the trenches and the horror surrounding his brother's death. But in Nick's family home the dark pressures of the past also encroach on the present. As he and his wife Fran try to unite their uneasy family of step- and half-siblings, the discovery of a sinister Victorian drawing reveals the murderous history of their house and casts a violent shadow on their lives . . . Other Tyne and Wear books: The Machine Gunners by Robert Westall Skellig by David Almond

WORCESTERSHIRE The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall Synopsis: A powerful novel of love between women, THE WELL OF LONELINESS brought about the most famous legal trial for obscenity in the history of British law. Banned on publication in 1928, it then went on to become a classic bestseller. Stephen Gordon (named by a father desperate for a son) is not like other girls: she hunts, she fences, she reads books, wears trousers and longs to cut her hair. As she grows up amidst the stifling grandeur of Morton Hall, the locals begin to draw away from her, aware of some indefinable thing that sets her apart. And when Stephen Gordon reaches maturity, she falls passionately in love - with another woman. Other Worcestershire books: Black Swan Green by David Mitchell

SURREY Emma by Jane Austen Synopsis: Beautiful, clever, rich - and single - Emma Woodhouse is perfectly content with her life and sees no need for either love or marriage. Nothing, however, delights her more than interfering in the romantic lives of others. But when she ignores the warnings of her good friend Mr Knightley and attempts to arrange a suitable match for her protégée Harriet Smith, her carefully laid plans soon unravel and have consequences that she never expected. With its imperfect but charming heroine and its witty and subtle exploration of relationships, Emma is often seen as Jane Austen's most flawless work. Alternative: The War of the Worldsl by H. G. Wells (link to book discussion thread) Other Surrey books: A Room With a View by E. M. Forster

OXFORDSHIRE The Pursuit of Love by Nancy Mitford Synopsis: Oh, the tedium of waiting to grow up! Longing for love, obsessed with weddings and sex, Linda and her sisters and cousin Fanny are on the lookout for the perfect lover. But finding Mr Right is much harder than any of the sisters had thought. Linda must suffer marriage first to a stuffy Tory MP and then to a handsome and humourless communist, before finding real love in war-torn Paris. . . Other Oxfordshire books: Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson Some Tame Gazelle by Barbara Pym Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter