Fred. Olsen Book Club
With ample time and space to relax, many of our guests make the most of the opportunity to get stuck in to a good book during a cruise holiday on board one of Fred. Olsen’s smaller, friendlier ships. This is why to enhance reading enrichment further, we have introduced the Fred. Olsen Book Club on selected sailings, a chance to talk all things ‘bookish’ with like-minded people.
Hosted by the Cruise Directors and their Team, the Book Club provides a welcoming, social space in which you can openly and informally discuss thoughts and views on bestselling lighter reads, crime-thrillers and traditional or contemporary classics.[ReadMoreMob] Specific categories and titles to discuss at the Book Club on each cruise are chosen in advance and listed below, allowing you time to purchase the books or download them to your kindle, and read them before you set sail.
So, if you love a good book while discovering the world with Fred. Olsen, what better way to indulge your passion than joining your friends and fellow guests at the Book Club?
To enhance your Book Club experience even further, why not enjoy a delicious speciality coffee as you immerse yourself in your book with our Coffee Card, with 7 hot drinks (teas, coffees, or hot chocolates) for you to enjoy and a bag of milk or mixed truffles priced at just £25?
We look forward to welcoming you!
Cruises departing from January 2026
The Place of Tides
Book Title: The Place of Tides
Author: James Rebanks
Genre: Non-Fiction
Pages: 304
One afternoon many years ago, James Rebanks met an old woman on a remote Norwegian island. She lived and worked alone on a tiny rocky outcrop, caring for wild Eider ducks and gathering their down. Hers was a centuries-old trade that had once made men and women rich, but had long been in decline. Still, somehow, she seemed to be hanging on.[ReadMore]
Back at home, Rebanks couldn’t stop thinking about the woman on the rocks. She was fierce and otherworldly – and yet strangely familiar. Years passed. Then, one day, he wrote her a letter, asking if he could return. Bring work clothes, she replied, and good boots, and come quickly: her health was failing. And so he travelled to the edge of the Arctic to witness her last season on the island.
This is the story of that season. It is the story of a unique and ancient landscape, and of the woman who brought it back to life. It traces the pattern of her work from the rough, isolated toil of bitter winter, to the elation of the endless summer light, when the birds leave behind their precious down for gathering, like feathered gold.
Slowly, Rebanks begins to understand that this woman and her world are not what he had previously thought. What began as a journey of escape becomes an extraordinary lesson in self-knowledge and forgiveness.
The Air Raid Book Club
Book Title: The Air Raid Book Club
Author: Annie Lyons
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 340
London, 1938. Bookseller Gertie Bingham is facing difficult times, having just lost her beloved husband, Harry, and with a lingering sadness at never having been able to have a child of her own. Struggling to face running the bookshop she and Harry opened together, Gertie is preparing to sell up and move away when she is asked if she would be willing to take in a young Jewish refugee from Germany. Gertie is unsure and when sullen teenager Hedy Fischer arrives, Gertie fears she has nothing left to give the troubled girl.[ReadMore]
But when the German bombers come and the lights go out over London, Gertie and Hedy realise that joining forces will make them stronger, and that books have the power to bring young and old together and unite a community in need in its darkest hour...
The Dinner Guest
Book Title: The Dinner Guest
Author: B P Walter
Genre: Thriller
Pages: 416
Four people walked into the dining room that night. One would never leave.[ReadMore]
Matthew: the perfect husband.
Titus: the perfect son.
Charlie: the perfect illusion.
Rachel: the perfect stranger.
Charlie didn’t want her at the book club. Matthew wouldn’t listen.
And that’s how Charlie finds himself slumped beside his husband’s body, their son sitting silently at the dinner table, while Rachel calls 999, the bloody knife still gripped in her hand.
Classic crime meets Donna Tartt in this nerve-shredding domestic noir thriller that weaves a sprawling web of secrets around an opulent West London world and the dinner that ends in death.
Cruises departing from 14th April 2026
The Arctic Cruise
Book Title: The Arctic Cruise
Author: Caroline James (written whilst sailing on Borealis)
Genre: Romantic Fiction
Pages: 379
Will the Arctic wonderland work its magic this winter?
Joy never imagined stepping aboard a cruise ship without her husband, Tom. Now widowed, Joy wonders what her voyage on the Emerald Dream will hold – and as it glides through breathtaking Norwegian fjords, she longs to believe in happiness again. However, she carries a secret that could unravel her fragile hopes if it ever came to light…[ReadMore]
Elsewhere on deck, as the sun dips below the horizon and the polar night sets in, Henry, a lifelong bachelor, is living his dream of seeing the Northern Lights. Having long since given up on love, he now dedicates himself to his passion for photography. But when he meets Joy, is it more than the aurora borealis that catches his eye?
As they embark on a snow-dusted adventure which takes them from bustling ports to reindeer-drawn sleigh rides, will Joy and Henry find the courage to embrace love again? Or will hidden truths sink the possibility of a new beginning?
The Barbecue at No. 9
Book Title: The Barbecue at No. 9
Author: Jennie Godfrey
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 371
It's the summer of 1985 and the residents of Delmont Close are preparing a neighbourhood barbecue to watch the biggest music event in history: Live Aid. A day like no other that will end having reached millions and changing the lives of all who attend.[ReadMore]
House-proud Lydia Gordon, whose idols are Princess Di and Delia Smith, is determined to put on a show that will impress everyone - with her posh garden and state-of-the-art television, and her sweet husband and two children, Hanna and David.
But as the guests flood into number nine, so do all of the secrets that have been kept in the close.
Rita, a new neighbour from Australia, is hoping for a fresh start but harbours a shocking event in her past; Steve, a young Falklands veteran, battles his own demons; and Mr Wilson is surely too good-looking to ever be trusted.
But as the hours count down to the last performance of the night, it's Lydia who faces the heart-breaking truth that her immaculate home and flawless family might not be so perfect after all.
And if each of their neighbours is guilty of hiding something, so are the Gordons at number nine...
The Trial
Book Title: The Trial
Author: Rob Rinder, Britain's best known Barrister
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 368
ONE MURDER. ONE IMPOSSIBLE CASE. WHO IS GUILTY?[ReadMore]
When hero policeman Grant Cliveden dies from a poisoning in the Old Bailey, it threatens to shake the country to its core.
The evidence points to one man. Jimmy Knight has been convicted of multiple offences before and defending him will be no easy task. Not least because this is trainee barrister Adam Green's first case.
But it will quickly become clear that Jimmy Knight is not the only person in Cliveden's past with an axe to grind.
The only thing that's certain is that this is a trial which will push Adam - and the justice system itself - to the limit...
The Book Club will run on cruises with more than four sea days.