1. Jan 12. THE SPIRE by William Golding. Jocelin, the Dean of a medieval English cathedral, under the delusion that he is working directly for God, orders the erection of a four-hundred foot spire on top of the cathedral. Everyone, including the master builder,tells him he is crazy, that the foundations won't bear the additional weight. He persevers; it is built, but it is unstable and will fall down at the next heavy storm. His underlings and the people of the parish grow to hate him, because he has squandered their money and rendered the church unusable. A tale of how remarkable things are created and the suffering and chaos they leave in their wake. Gripping.
2. Jan 23. RITES OF PASSAGE by William Golding. A novel set aboard an old English ship sailing to Australia (termed the Antipodes in the early 19th century). The narrator, Edmund Talbot,  is an aristocrat, who observes closely the social niceties of the interaction of the crew, the gentry, and the common people, including the immigrants. A clergyman, ill at ease in any of the social groups, is hazed and humiliated by two of the officers , who induce the crew to make him drunk and brutalize him.
3. Jan 27. THE LOST PAINTING by Jonathan Harr. The story of the rediscovery of the famous painting The Taking of Christ by Caravaggio. The book, written in a very clear reportorial style, describes first the efforts of two women art historical graduate students at the U of Rome to trace the long-lost painting in the archives of the Mattei family, of Rome and Recanati, a small town near the Adriatic Sea. Then the scene shifts to London and finally to Dublin, where the actual discoverer of the painting, Sergio Benedetti, worked as a restorer in the National Gallery of Ireland.
4. May 24. WODEHOUSE by Robert McCrum. The great humorist, creator of Jeeves and Bertie, followed, perhaps too closely, for 530 pages.  What surprised me? First, Wodehouse worked for many years writing dialog for plays on Broadway (Jerome Kern one of his most frequent collaborators), and also in Hollywood. His experience with Hollywood mostly unsuccessful, as with other great writers. Second, he wrote for 25-30 years before coming up with the winning combination of the genius butler, Jeeves, and the mentally negligible Bertie Wooster (according to Jeeves).
5. Jun 9. A CERTAIN JUSTICE by P D James. The brilliant criminal lawyer, Venetia Aldridge, is stabbed to death at her desk in chambers. Two more murders follow. In a masterly fashion, we are led through the lives of a dozen or so Londoner suspects. The first murder is never solved by Adam Dalgleish, the super sleuth of Scotland Yard, but the two following murders are explained. A masterpiece of plotting a very complicated tale.
6. June 26. THE LOVED ONE by Evelyn Waugh. A vicious satire on the California undertaking business. A young Englishman, failing in the film business, makes his living cremating pets. He falls in love with a young woman, a cosmetics expert for an undertaker, who also loves their chief embalmer. She is torn apart by the two and commits suicide. The embalmer then pays the Englishman to cremate her so that there will be no nasty scandal.
7. July 8. SNOBS by Julian Fellows, Kilwillie in Monarch of the Glen, screenwriter of Gosford Park and Vanity Fair. Detailed observations of snobbery in the English upper crust.  Edith, the daughter of an accountant, meets and marries Charles Broughton, an earle, considered one of the most eligible young aristocrats in England. She becomes quickly bored with her life in the country and falls in love with a handsome actor, for whom she leaves her mansion. After a year or so she tires of their (by comparison with Charles) squalid life and returns to the fold. Told in an expertly nuanced manner by someone who knows the manners of the upper classes.
8. July 16. SEED TIME AND HARVEST by Herman Bosman. Stories of the Boers living in the Groot Marico, in northwest Transvaal province in South Africa. Oom Schalk Laurens, the narrator of these stories was a farmer, then a member of the commandos fighting the English, then a story teller. The stories concern bravery, cowardice, love and racism, as told by Oom Schalk. According to Bosman, a story depends more on what is not said than what is related by the narrator. The stories have recently appeared in a 2001 edition. Previously, they were not available in America. (Peter Barrett introduced me to Bosman in the seventies, when I visited the University of Natal in Durban.)
9. Aug 12. ROTTWEILER by Ruth Rendell. Well written thriller about a serial killer in London, who specializes in garroting pretty young girls. The madman lives on the top floor of a London building housing an antique shop on the first floor. RR"s touch in establishing the relationships among the people in the building is perfect.

Aug 14. LAKE OF DARKNESS by Ruth Rendell. Man wins 100,000 pounds in the football lottery, urged on by his friend Tim. Quixotically, he gives all the money away, not to his friend or to his family, but to poor people he knows only slightly. Disaster strikes: most people are suspicious and quarellsome, one old man dies of a heart attack, another is a killer, who mistakenly thinks he wants his girl friend bumped off. Complete mayhem.