Volunteer Spotlight: Stuart
Fri 06/03/2026
The Great Novel
By Jane Doe
A gripping tale of adventure and mystery.
My Cat Yugoslavia
By Pajtim Statovci
In 1980s Yugoslavia, a young Muslim girl, is married off to a man she hardly knows, but what was meant to be a happy match quickly goes shockingly wrong. Soon thereafter her country is torn apart by war and she and her family flee. Years later, her son, Bekim, grows up a social outcast in present-day Finland, not just an immigrant in a country suspicious of foreigners, but a gay man in an unaccepting society.
On a visit to gay bar, Bekim meets a talking cat who moves in with him and his boa constrictor. It is this witty, charming, manipulative creature who starts Bekim on a journey back to Kosovo to confront his demons and make sense of the cruel history of his family.
Ghosts in the Hedgerow: A hedgehog Whodunnit
By Tom Moorhouse
A body lies motionless on the ground. Small, with a snouty head and covered with spines, it is unquestionably dead before its time. And all of those gathered around the corpse are suspect. So which one of them is responsible for this crime - and for the disappearance of many many thousands of hedgehogs in recent decades? Is it the car driver, the badger, the farmer, the gardener? Who could possibly have it in for a hedgehog? In poll after poll they come out top as our favourite mammal. And yet their numbers are estimated to have halved in less than twenty years. Magnifying glass in hand, Tom Moorhouse investigates the evidence. On a vital mission to bring those responsible to justice, prevent further murder and save a species, he uncovers a story full of twists, turns and uncomfortable truths about the trade-offs that exist between humans and wildlife. But he can also see a solution.
The Three Musketeers
By Alexandre Dumas
When the young d'Artagnan leaves his home in Gascony with the hope of becoming one of the king's musketeers, it is the start of a wonderful adventure. D'Artagnan soon meets the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Together they cry, 'All for one and one for all!'
H is for Hawk
By Helen Macdonald
As a child Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer. She learned the arcane terminology and read all the classic books, including T.H. White's tortured masterpiece, 'The Goshawk', which describes White's struggle to train a hawk as a spiritual contest. When her father dies and she is knocked sideways by grief, she becomes obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She buys Mabel on a Scottish quayside and takes her home to Cambridge. This book is a record of a spiritual journey - an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald's struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk's taming and her own untaming.
Good Dirt
By Charmaine Wilkerson
When Ebby Freeman travels to France to take a three-month hiatus from her complicated home life, the last person she expects to find is her ex-fiancé Henry, with his new girlfriend in tow. Nearly twenty years earlier, the Freemans were the only African American family living in a wealthy coastal enclave in Connecticut when armed robbers invaded their home and tragedy changed their lives forever. Then, just as Ebby thought she had a new chance at happiness, her storybook romance with Henry fell apart. Now, this unexpected encounter with Henry will force Ebby to reckon with her past and to think on the other loss her family suffered that day - the destruction of a beloved stoneware jar crafted by an enslaved ancestor and passed down through the generations. A piece that might hold not only her family history, but also the key to reclaiming her future.
The Great Gatsby
By F. Scott Fitzgerald
A masterpiece, a dazzling social satire, and a milestone in twentieth century literature, The Great Gatsby peels away the layers of the glamorous twenties in the U.S. to display the coldness and cruelty at its heart.
Something is killing the children
By James Tynion IV
When the children of Archer's Peak - a sleepy town in the heart of America - begin to go missing, everything seems hopeless. Most children never return, but the ones that do have terrible stories - impossible details of terrifying creatures that live in the shadows. Their only hope of finding and eliminating the threat is the arrival of a mysterious stranger, one who believes the children and claims to be the only one who sees what they can see. Her name is Erica Slaughter. She kills monsters. That is all she does, and she bears the cost because it must be done.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
By Gabrielle Zevin
Two kids meet in a hospital gaming room in 1987. One is visiting her sister, the other is recovering from a car crash. The days and months are long there. Their love of video games becomes a shared world - of joy, escape and fierce competition. But all too soon that time is over, fades from view. When the pair spot each other eight years later in a crowded train station, they are catapulted back to that moment. The spark is immediate, and together they get to work on what they love - making games to delight, challenge and immerse players, finding an intimacy in digital worlds that eludes them in their real lives. Their collaborations make them superstars.
The Great Novel
By Jane Doe
A gripping tale of adventure and mystery.
Utopia Avenue
By David Mitchell
Utopia Avenue might be the most curious British band you've never heard of. Emerging from London's psychedelic scene in 1967, folksinger Elf Holloway, blues bassist Dean Moss, guitar virtuoso Jasper de Zoet and jazz drummer Griff Griffin together created a unique sound, with lyrics that captured their turbulent times. The band produced only two albums in two years, yet their musical legacy lives on. This is the story of Utopia Avenue's brief, blazing journey from Soho clubs and draughty ballrooms to the promised land of America, just when the Summer of Love was receding into something much darker - a multi-faceted tale of dreams, drugs, love, sexuality, madness and grief; of stardom's wobbly ladder and fame's Faustian pact; and of the collision between youthful idealism and jaded reality as the Sixties drew to a close.
Oryx and Crake
By Margaret Atwood
Pigs might not fly, but they are strangely altered. So, for that matter, are wolves and raccoons. A man, once named Jimmy, now calls himself Snowman and lives in a tree, wrapped in an old bed sheet. The voice of Oryx, the woman he loved, teasingly haunts him. The green-eyed children of Crake are his responsibility.
Convenience Store Woman
By Sayaka Mrata
Keiko has never really fitted in. At school and university people find her odd and her family worries she'll never be normal. To appease them, Keiko takes a job at a newly opened convenience store. Here, she finds peace and purpose in the simple, daily tasks and routine interactions. She is, she comes to understand, happiest as a convenience store worker. But in Keiko's social circle it just won't do for an unmarried woman to spend all her time stacking shelves and re-ordering green tea.
Fire Rush
By Jacqueline Crooks
Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London. A young woman unsure of her future, the sound is her guide - a chance to discover who she really is in the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights. In the dance-hall darkness, dub is the music of her soul, her friendships, her ancestry. But everything changes when she meets Moose, the man she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape. When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation where past and present collide with explosive consequences.
Lily and the Octopus
By Steven Rowley
The world over, man and his dog remain the most faithful of friends. But for Ted, the unexpected arrival of a small 'octopus' that affixes itself to his beloved daschund Lily's head threatens the bond with his one true friend and throws his life into turmoil. Reminiscent of 'The Life of Pi' and 'The Art of Racing in the Rain', 'Lily and the Octopus' captures the search for meaning in death and introduces a dazzling new voice in fiction.
The rest of our lives
By Benjamin Markovits
When Tom Layward's wife had an affair he resolved to leave her as soon as his youngest daughter turned eighteen. Twelve years later, while driving her to Pittsburgh to start university, he remembers his pact. He is also on the run from his own health issues, and the fact that he's been put on leave at work after students complained about the politics of his law class - something he hasn't yet told his wife. So, after dropping Miriam off, he keeps driving, with the vague plan of visiting various people from his past - an old college friend, his ex-girlfriend, his brother, his son - on route, maybe, to his father's grave in California.
The Great Novel
By Jane Doe
A gripping tale of adventure and mystery.
The Great Novel
By Jane Doe
A gripping tale of adventure and mystery.
The Ministry of Time
By Kaliane Bradley
In the near future, a disaffected civil servant is offered a job in a new government ministry gathering 'expats' from across history to test the limits of time-travel. Her role is to work as a 'bridge': living with, assisting and monitoring the expat known as '1847' - Commander Graham Gore. As far as history is concerned, Commander Gore died on Sir John Franklin's doomed expedition to the Arctic, so he's a little disoriented to find himself alive and surrounded by outlandish concepts such as 'washing machine', 'Spotify' and 'the collapse of the British Empire'. With an appetite for discovery and a seven-a-day cigarette habit, he soon adjusts; and during a long, sultry summer he and his bridge move from awkwardness to genuine friendship, to something more. But as the true shape of the project that brought them together begins to emerge, they are forced to confront their past choices and imagined futures.
The Lottery, and Other Stories
By Shirley Jackson
'The Lottery' is considered a classic work of short fiction, remarkable for its combination of subtle suspense and pitch-perfect descriptions of both the chilling and the mundane
The Color Purple
By Alice Walker
This compelling and cherished classic tells the story of Celie. Raped by the man she calls father, her two children taken from her and forced into an ugly marriage, she has no one to talk to but God, until she meets a woman who offers love and support.
The Great Novel
By Jane Doe
A gripping tale of adventure and mystery.
Remarkably Bright Creatures
By Shelby Van Pelt
When Tova Sullivan's husband died two years ago, she talked her way into a job mopping floors at Sowell Bay Aquarium. Keeping busy helps her cope, which she's been doing since her 18-year-old son, Erik, mysteriously vanished. 30 and headlining for washed-up band Moth Sausage, Cameron Cassmore has some serious growing up to do. Then the discovery of an old class ring sends him on a mission to Sowell Bay to track down the father he's never known. Marcellus, a 'prisoner' at the Aquarium, wouldn't lift one of his eight tentacles for his human captors until he forms a friendship with the cleaning lady. Keenly observant, but with time running out, Marcellus deduces that Cameron is a missing key to what happened the fateful night of Erik's disappearance. Now Marcellus must use every trick his old, invertebrate body can muster to unearth the truth for Tova before it's too late.
Wonder
By R. J. Palacio
'Wonder' is the funny, sweet and incredibly moving story of Auggie Pullman. Born with a terrible facial abnormality, this shy, bright ten-year-old has been home-schooled by his parents for his whole life, in an attempt to protect him from the stares and cruelty of the outside world.
Volunteer Spotlight: Stuart
In this blog we talk to Stuart, Sutton Libraries Customer Service Assistant and soon to be Project Officer for The Reading Retreat. He shares how volunteering with Sutton Council's Cultural Services has helped him into full time employment.
For those that don’t know, tell us a bit about yourself.
Hi! My name is Stuart, and I currently work as a customer service assistant within Sutton libraries. I really like my job, every day is different, and there's a huge variety in the skill-sets we get to use. I have a background in customer service, however this is definitely my favourite role to work in so far, as you are at the heart of the community and get a real sense that you’re making a difference.
For someone who works in a library, it’s probably surprising how few books I actually read, although It is rare for me to go a day without listening to an audiobook. Like a lot of people my age I spend a good amount of my free time browsing the internet and playing video games, but has come in useful when helping others to access computers within the libraries.
Why did you apply to volunteer with the Cultural Services team?
When I first applied to volunteer I had been unemployed for a while, and was really just looking for a way to spend some time productively, and I guess have something new to put on a CV. I have always been interested in books, and having done a degree in English, I thought libraries would be a great place to give back; especially as they had been so helpful to me in the past. Volunteering made me feel a lot more connected to the community, and gave me a real sense of belonging at a time when I didn't particularly have that otherwise.
What are you looking forward to during your time in your new role?
I'm about to move into a new role within Sutton’s Council's Cultural Services (Project Officer for The Reading Retreat), and I’m really excited about the opportunities it will give me to both connect with the community and to further my own personal development. The role will actually involve coordinating with volunteers, so I think it will be very interesting to see how I can use my previous experience in the role.
Why should people consider volunteering?
I think it’s just a great way to use your free time. Volunteering gave me a space to give back to my community, to develop skills, and to meet new, like minded people. It was an amazingly rewarding experience, and is at least somewhat responsible for the position I've now found myself in. If you want to help others, and to help your community, I really can't think of an easier way to do so.
If someone wrote a biography about you, what would the title be and why?
It’s hard to think of anyone actually writing a biography about me. Barring any unscrupulous events I hesitate to disclose here, I think I’ve lived a fairly normal life up until now. “A series of ordinary events” does have a certain ring to it.
Find out more about volunteering with Sutton Council's Cultural Services.