Here's what Karen Hardy is reading this month, maybe for book club

I tried to start a bookclub once about 20 years ago. We all had new babies and I earnestly suggested The Handmaid's Tale. It was always going to fail.

I've tried very hard to recommend some of my favourite books to people over the years without much luck.

The Bees by Laline Paul is still in my top 10. But trying to sell a book that's set entirely within a beehive is not easy. It's violent and sexy and the heroine, Flora 717, is a feisty little worker bee destined for bigger things.

I couldn't sell Harriet Alida Lye's The Honey Farm to anyone either. It was hard to describe. A seductive, menacing thriller set on a farm where artists are given accommodation in return for a little light work. But when the water runs red and frogs swarm, something's not right.

Maybe these ones, currently on the bedside table, might work for this new bookclub. Better start reading.

Lola's a 30-something New Yorker struggling to move on from her past relationships. Particularly when she starts running into a bunch of them. It turns out she's part of a project called Golconda, which arranges elaborately staged encounters with past lovers, in the hope it gives people the chance to work out what went wrong. Lord, imagine it.

Loved the first book in this trilogy, and was lucky enough to interview Winslow. City on Fire was a cracker read; it's confronting, full of bigoted, racist, misogynistic characters who you despise but can't help loving at the same time. Can't wait to catch up with Danny Ryan now he's in Hollywood.

Can you stop a murder after it's happened? A mother witnesses her teenage son stab a man and then seizes on an unconventional way to try to save him. Every day she wakes up it's another day before the murder, does the answer lie in the past? Twisty and turny, and a intriguing take on the old "how far would you go to save your children?" trope.

This one's been described as "Rebecca meets Fleabag". Another story about 30-somethings dating in the internet age, but I'm looking forward to the touch of darkness to this one. At the same time, it's meant to be witty and humorous. Hang on, that would make a good dating app profile: dark but witty and humorous.

Three women, three secrets, one weekend is the tag line for this one. Feast is the story of three women connected beyond blood, and what happens when their darkest secrets are hauled into the light. O'Grady's debut novel, The Yellow House, won the 2018 Australian/Vogel's literary award so the standard is set.

When journalist Kate Legge found out her husband was having an affair, she discovered a fault line of betrayal running through generations. I've read all the reviews of this one. And I'm fascinated by how it might all unfold.

I recently finished the translation of Annie Ernaux's Getting Lost, her record of an obsessive affair with a Russian diplomat during the late 1980s. "Intense desire keeps me from working," says the award-winning French writer.

I know how she feels.