Our monthly EVENING book club takes place on the first Wednesday of the month, unless otherwise stated. We read a wide range of predominantly modern fiction and always enjoy a very entertaining discussion over a glass of wine or two. We charge £4 per session and everyone is welcome!
Our monthly DAYTIME book clubs take place on the first Monday and Friday of the month, unless otherwise stated. We read the same book for both mornings and usually the same one as the evenings, so you can always swap if the dates clash with other commitments. We charge £3 per session to cover the cost of coffee and cake! We hope you can join us!
APRIL BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE NO LONGER HOLDING A BOOK CLUB MEETING ON THE MONDAY EVENING.
Monday 4th April at 10.30am. Wednesday 6th April at 7pm. Friday 8th April at 10.30am.
Peter Maguire has been kidnapped in Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu. He does not know where he is or what is going to happen to him. The journalist is filled with fear and, as the days go by, this dread of the unknown is shot through with remorse for the mistakes of his past. Peter’s mother Nina comes to Somalia to wait for her son’s release. His plight forces her to relive another trauma – the fatal shooting in Liberia of Shaun Ridge, a young photographer she once loved, and Peter’s real father. Abdi, a Somali teenager working with Peter’s captors strikes a tenuous friendship with the prisoner based on a shared feeling of captivity. He decides to help Peter escape. Together and they set off into the barren vastness of a land filled with danger. Three people must journey into one of the world’s most dangerous places, the human mind, to answer the question: are we ever truly free?
MARCH BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
PLEASE NOTE THAT WE ARE NO LONGER HOLDING A BOOK CLUB MEETING ON THE MONDAY EVENING.
Monday 7th March at 10.30am. Wednesday 9th March at 7pm. Friday 11th March at 10.30am.
Bodies of Light is a deeply poignant tale of a psychologically tumultuous nineteenth century upbringing set in the atmospheric world of Pre-Raphaelitism and the early suffrage movement. Ally (older sister of May in Night Waking), is intelligent, studious and engaged in an eternal – and losing – battle to gain her mother’s approval and affection. Her mother, Elizabeth, is a religious zealot, keener on feeding the poor and saving prostitutes than on embracing the challenges of motherhood.
Even when Ally wins a scholarship and is accepted as one of the first female students to read medicine in London, it still doesn’t seem good enough. The first in a two-book sequence, Bodies of Light will propel Sarah Moss into the upper echelons of British novelists. It is a triumphant piece of historical fiction and a profoundly moving master class in characterisation.
Monday 1st February at 10.30am. Wednesday 3rd February at 7pm. Friday 5th February at 10.30am.
This month we will be reading Patrick Gale’s latest novel A PLACE CALLED WINTER which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2015 and picked for the BBC Radio 2 Simon Mayo Book Club. A shy but privileged elder son, Harry Cane has followed convention at every step. Even the beginnings of an illicit, dangerous affair do little to shake the foundations of his muted existence, until the shock of discovery and the threat of arrest force him to abandon his wife and child and sign up for emigration to Canada.
Remote and unforgiving, his allotted homestead is in a place called Winter, a world away from the golden suburbs of turn-of-the-century Edwardian England. Yet it is here, isolated in a seemingly harsh landscape, under the threat of war and madness that the fight for survival will reveal in Harry an inner strength and capacity for love beyond anything he has ever known before. To find yourself, sometimes you must lose everything.
JANUARY BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
Monday 11th January at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 13th January at 7pm. Friday 15th January at 10.30am.
This month we will be reading the new book by Rachel Joyce – A Snow Garden and other stories. Here we have seven stories to span the Christmas holidays: A Faraway Smell of Lemon: The School Term has ended. It is almost Christmas but Binny, out last-minute shopping couldn’t feel less like wishing glad tidings to all men. Ducking out of the rain she finds herself in the sort of shop she would never normally visit.
The Marriage Manual: Christmas Eve. Two parents endeavour to construct their son’s Christmas present from a DIY kit and in the process find themselves deconstructing their marriage. Christmas at the Airport: A glitch in the system, travellers stranded and all sorts of lives colliding in the face of a sudden birth…The Boxing Day Ball: Maureen has never been out with the local girls before.
Who knew that a disco in the Village Hall could be life-changing? A Snow Garden: Two little boys, dumped with their divorced father for his share of the Christmas holidays and none of them with a clue how to enjoy it. I’ll Be Home for Christmas The most famous boy in the world comes home hoping to escape the madness with a normal family Christmas. Trees: As if Christmas wasn’t wearing enough, now his elderly parent is asking for a hole in the ground…Father and son break old habits and plant a tree to mark the start of the new year.
Seven stories as funny, joyous, poignant and memorable as Christmas should be.
DECEMBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
Monday 30th November at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 2nd December at 7pm. Friday 4th December at 10.30am.
The island has always seemed such a safe place, such a friendly community. Now the possibility of a killer on Bancree is dangerously close to home. Nobody moves to the remote Scottish island of Bancree, and few leave – but leaving is exactly what seventeen-year-old Flora intends to do. So when a mysterious man and his daughter move into isolated Dog Cottage, Flo is curious. What could have brought these strangers to the island? The man is seductively handsome but radiates menace; and there’s something about his daughter Ailsa that Flo can’t help but feel drawn towards. People aren’t only arriving on Bancree – they are disappearing too. Reports of missing islanders fill the press and unnerve the community. When a body washes ashore, suspicion turns to the strange newcomers on Dog Rock. Convinced of their innocence, Flo is fiercely determined to protect her friend Ailsa. Could the answer to the disappearances, and to the pull of her own heart, lie out there, beyond the waves?
NOVEMBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
Monday 2nd November at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 4th November at 7pm. Friday 6th November at 10.30am.
Since the publication of her first book in 1920, Agatha Christie wrote 33 novels, two plays and more than 50 short stories featuring Hercule Poirot. Now, for the first time ever, the guardians of her legacy have approved a brand new novel featuring Dame Agatha’s most beloved creation.
Hercule Poirot’s quiet supper in a London coffee house is interrupted when a young woman confides to him that she is about to be murdered. She is terrified, but begs Poirot not to find and punish her killer. Once she is dead, she insists, justice will have been done.
Later that night, Poirot learns that three guests at the fashionable Bloxham Hotel have been murdered, a cufflink placed in each one’s mouth. Could there be a connection with the frightened woman? While Poirot struggles to put together the bizarre pieces of the puzzle, the murderer prepares another hotel bedroom for a fourth victim…
In the hands of internationally bestselling author Sophie Hannah, Poirot plunges into a mystery set in 1920s London – a diabolically clever puzzle that can only be solved by the talented Belgian detective and his ‘little grey cells’.
OCTOBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
Monday 5th October at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 7th October at 7pm. Friday 9th October at 10.30am.
This book is Short-listed for the 2014 Costa Novel Awards and the 2015 Folio Prize. Nora Webster is the heartbreaking new novel from one of the greatest novelists writing today. It is the late 1960s in Ireland.
Nora Webster is living in a small town, looking after her four children, trying to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. She is fiercely intelligent, at times difficult and impatient, at times kind, but she is trapped by her circumstances, and waiting for any chance which will lift her beyond them. Slowly, through the gift of music and the power of friendship, she finds a glimmer of hope and a way of starting again.
As the dynamic of the family changes, she seems both fiercely self-possessed but also a figure of great moral ambiguity, making her one of the most memorable heroines in contemporary fiction. The portrait that is painted in the years that follow is harrowing, piercingly insightful, always tender and deeply true. Colm Toibin’s Nora is a character as resonant as Anna Karenina or Madame Bovary and Nora Webster is a novel that illuminates our own lives in a way that is rare in literature.
Its humanity and compassion forge an unforgettable reading experience. “A profoundly gifted world writer.” (Sebastian Barry).
SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
PLEASE NOTE THAT WE WILL NOT BE HAVING A MONDAY EVENING THIS MONTH DUE TO OTHER COMMITMENTS
Monday 7th September at 10.30am ONLY. Wednesday 9th September at 7pm. Friday 11th September at 10.30am.
A.J. Fikry, the grumpy owner of Island Books, is going through a hard time: his bookshop is failing, he has lost his beloved wife, and a prized rare first edition has been stolen.
But one day A.J. finds two-year-old Maya sitting on the bookshop floor, with a note attached to her asking the owner to look after her. His life – and Maya’s – is changed forever.
‘In this sweet, uplifting homage to bookstores, Zevin perfectly captures the joy of connecting people and books . . . Filled with interesting characters, a deep knowledge of bookselling, wonderful critiques of classic titles, and very funny depictions of book clubs and author events, this will prove irresistible to book lovers everywhere’ (Booklist)
No surprise that we chose this one then – very close to our hearts! We hope you enjoy it too!
A
UGUST BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
Monday 3rd August at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 5th August at 7pm. Friday 7th August at 10.30am.
WINNER OF THE FOLIO PRIZE 2015
For eight-year-old Ajay and his older brother Birju, life in Dehli in the late 1970s follows a comfortable, predictable routine: bathing on the roof, queuing for milk, playing cricket in the street. Yet, everything changes when their father finds a job in America – a land of carpets and elevators, swimsuits and hot water on tap. Life is exciting for the two brothers as they adjust to prosperity, girls and 24-hour TV, until one hot, sultry day when everything falls apart.
Darkly comic, Family Life is a story of a boy torn between duty and survival amid the ruins of everything he once knew.
JULY BOOK CLUBS in the Shop:
Monday 6th July at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 8th July at 7pm. Friday 10th July at 10.30am.
To offer a quite dramatic change from our last book club read, we have chosen The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. Love isn’t an exact science – but no one told Don Tillman. A thirty-nine-year-old geneticist, Don’s never had a second date. So he devises the Wife Project, a scientific test to find the perfect partner. Enter Rosie – ‘the world’s most incompatible woman’ – throwing Don’s safe, ordered life into chaos. But what is this unsettling, alien emotion he’s feeling? ‘Don Tillman is one of the most endearing, charming and fascinating literary characters I have met in a long time’ The Times.
PLEASE NOTE THAT THERE WILL BE NO MAY BOOK CLUB!
JUNE BOOK CLUBS in the Shop: Monday 1st June at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 3rd June at 7pm. Friday 5th June at 10.30am. We will have 6 weeks to read our next book, but then we will be back on course! The book we have chosen is: THE NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER **WINNER OF THE COSTA BOOK OF THE YEAR** **WINNER OF THE SAMUEL JOHNSON PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION**
As a child, Helen Macdonald was determined to become a falconer, learning the arcane terminology and reading all the classic books. Years later, when her father died and she was struck deeply by grief, she became obsessed with the idea of training her own goshawk. She bought Mabel for £800 on a Scottish quayside and took her home to Cambridge, ready to embark on the long, strange business of trying to train this wildest of animals.
H is for Hawk is an unflinchingly honest account of Macdonald’s struggle with grief during the difficult process of the hawk’s taming and her own untaming. This is a book about memory, nature and nation, and how it might be possible to reconcile death with life and love.
APRIL BOOK CLUB NEWS
Due to Sally disappearing to Oz for her nephew’s wedding, April’s Book Club has moved from the first week to the week beginning 20th April. Monday 20th April at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 22nd April at 7pm. Friday 24th April at 10.30am. We will be reading the Costa First Novel Award winner, Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey. The novel is both a gripping detective yarn and a haunting depiction of mental illness, but also more poignant and blackly comic than you might expect from that description… perhaps Healey’s greatest achievement is the flawless voice she creates for Maud. (The Observer). We loved it and hope you will too!
MARCH BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 2nd March at 10.30am
PLEASE NOTE THERE WILL NOT BE A BOOK CLUB ON MONDAY EVENING AS WE ARE HELPING WITH THE ESSEX BOOK FESTIVAL
Wednesday 4th March at 7pm. Friday 6th March at 10.30am.
There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed . . . Beautiful, intoxicating and filled with heart-pounding suspense, The Miniaturist is a magnificent story of love and obsession, betrayal and retribution, appearance and truth.
On an autumn day in 1686, eighteen-year-old Nella Oortman knocks at the door of a grand house in the wealthiest quarter of Amsterdam. She has come from the country to begin a new life as the wife of illustrious merchant trader Johannes Brandt, but instead she is met by his sharp-tongued sister, Marin. Only later does Johannes appear and present her with an extraordinary wedding gift: a cabinet-sized replica of their home. It is to be furnished by an elusive miniaturist, whose tiny creations mirror their real-life counterparts in unexpected ways . . .
Nella is at first mystified by the closed world of the Brandt household, but as she uncovers its secrets she realizes the escalating dangers that await them all. Does the miniaturist hold their fate in her hands? And will she be the key to their salvation or the architect of their downfall?
FEBRUARY BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 2nd February at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 4th February at 7pm. Friday 6th February at 10.30am.
This month we are reading the SUNDAY TIMES and NEW YORK TIMES bestseller The Guest Cat.
A couple in their thirties live in a small rented cottage in a quiet part of Tokyo. They work at home as freelance writers. They no longer have very much to say to one another.
One day a cat invites itself into their small kitchen. She is a beautiful creature. She leaves, but the next day comes again, and then again and again. New, small joys accompany the cat; the days have more light and colour. Life suddenly seems to have more promise for the husband and wife; they go walking together, talk and share stories of the cat and its little ways, play in the nearby Garden. But then something happens that will change everything again.
The Guest Cat is an exceptionally moving and beautiful novel about the nature of life and the way it feels to live it. Written by Japanese poet and novelist Takashi Hiraide, the book won Japan’s Kiyama Shohei Literary Award, and was a bestseller in France and America
JANUARY BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 5th January at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 7th January at 7pm. Friday 9th January at 10.30am.
Antonia Hodgson’s London of 1727 offers that rare achievement in historical fiction: a time and place suspensefully different from our own, yet real. THE DEVIL IN THE MARSHALSEA reminds us at every turn that we ourselves may not have evolved far from its world of debtors and creditors, crime and generosity, appetite and pathos. A damn’d good read. (Elizabeth Kostova, internationally bestselling author of THE HISTORIAN)
DECEMBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 1st December at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 3rd December at 7pm. Friday 5th December at 10.30am.
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves is a dark cautionary tale hanging out, incognito-style, in what at first seems a traditional family narrative. It is anything but. This novel is deliciously jaunty in tone and disturbing in material. Karen Joy Fowler tells the story of how one animal-the animal of man-can simultaneously destroy and expand our notion of what is possible (Alice Sebold).
NOVEMBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 3rd November at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 5th November at 7pm. Friday 7th November at 10.30am. Retired teacher Lewis Sullivan always imagined living by the sea. He lives instead in the Midlands village in which he was born. His grown-up daughter visits every day, bringing soup. He does not want soup. He frequents his second-favourite pub, where he can get half a shandy, a speciality sausage and a bit of company.
When a childhood friend appears on the scene, Lewis finds his life and comfortable routine shaken up.
In Moore’s inimitable, haunting style, this seemingly simple but in fact multi-layered narrative unfolds with compelling assurance. Moving between memories of childhood and Lewis’s current life of cosy habit, plot twists thicken and weave with stealthily increasing tension. Always unexpected, sparely written and beautifully crafted, He Wants deftly dissects the themes of loneliness, anxiety, the weight of recollection and the complex nature of friendship and family ties. A surprising, lingering and intensely moving tale from one of our most exciting novelists.
OCTOBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 29th September at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 1st October at 7pm. Friday 3rd October at 10.30am. This month we are reading The Blind Man’s Garden – Nadeem Aslam. This is a stunning novel set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the months following 9/11. Embedded in a moving family saga, the reader gains a real insight into life in Pakistan; its traditions and beliefs and a fascinating account of the war in Afghanistan from the point of view of the Afghan people. Beautifully written and deeply affecting.
SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 1st September at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 3rd September at 7pm. Friday 5th September at 10.30am. This month we will be reading The Humans by Matt Haig. Described by The Times as ‘wonderfully funny, gripping and inventive’, this is a brilliant analysis of the human condition, which will make you laugh and cry!
AUGUST BOOK CLUBS in the Shop - Monday 4th August at 10.30am and 7pm. Wednesday 6th August at 7pm. Friday 8th August at 10.30am. This month we will be talking about Light Between Oceans by M L Stedman. A beautifully crafted and compelling story of right and wrong and how sometimes they look the same…
JULY 3RD – BOOK CLUB SUMMER PARTY!
Two Bloomsbury authors – Elizabeth Day and Kerry Young – will be joining us in a Beautiful Kirby-le-Soken garden on Thursday 3rd July 2014 6.30 for 7pm. Tickets £15 to include book, a glass of wine & canapés. The second book is available with a £1 off should you wish to read both. A pay bar will be available.
Home Fires by Elizabeth Day: Max Weston, twenty-one, leaves for his first army posting in central Africa. What happens to him changes the lives of his family forever. At home, his parents struggle to cope. The overwhelming love Caroline has always felt for her only child is now matched by the intensity of Max’s absence. The silence is broken by the arrival of Caroline’s mother-in-law, Elsa, who at the age of ninety-eight can no longer look after herself. After years of living in fear of putting a foot wrong in front of this elegant, cuttingly courteous lady, finally, Caroline has the upper hand.
Gloria by Kerry Young: Jamaica, 1938. Gloria Campbell is sixteen years old when a single violent act changes her life forever. She and her younger sister flee their hometown to forge a new life in Kingston. As all around them the city convulses with political change, Gloria’s desperation and striking beauty lead her to Sybil and Beryl, and a house of ill-repute where she meets Yang Pao, a Kingston racketeer whose destiny becomes irresistibly bound with her own.
JUNE BOOK CLUB Monday 2nd June at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 4th June at 7pm and Friday 6th June at 10.30am in the Bookshop. This month we are reading the winner of the Costa Book of the Year 2013 – The Shock of the Fall by Nathan Filer. Nathan is a writer and lecturer in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University. He has worked as a researcher in the academic unit of psychiatry at the University of Bristol and as a mental health nurse on in-patient wards. He has written for television and radio. The Shock of the Fall is his first novel and is accurately described by the Observer Magazine as ‘a compelling story of grief, madness and loss. Filer has an ear for the dark comedy of life, and Matthew is a charismatic lead character who draws you in even as his world falls apart’. It is very unusual and may appear daunting but it really is a very good read!
MAY BOOK CLUB (IN APRIL!!) Monday 28th April at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 30th April at 7pm and Friday 2nd May at 10.30am in the Bookshop. Longbourn by Jo Baker is the reimagining of Pride and Prejudice from the perspective of the servants, offering a fascinating insight into the lives of Jane Austin’s much loved protagonists! ‘If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats,’ Sarah thought, ‘she would be more careful not to tramp through muddy fields.
APRIL BOOK CLUB – Monday 31st March at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 2nd April at 7pm and Friday 4th April at 10.30am in the Bookshop. This month we will be reading Stoner by John Williams. This is a classic novel about university life, first published in Great Britain in 1973. It has recently come back to the fore to great acclaim. ‘It is a novel which uncovers a story of universal value. Stoner tells of the conflicts, defeats and victories of the human race that pass unrecorded by history, and reclaims the significance of an individual life. A reading experience like no other, itself a paean to the power of literature, it is a novel to be savoured’.
MARCH BOOK CLUB - Monday 3rd March at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 5th March at 7pm and Friday 7th March at 10.30am. This month we will be reading the 2013 Costa Novel Award, Life After Life by Kate Atkinson. “Kate Atkinson’s new novel is a box of delights. Ingenious in construction, indefatigably entertaining, it grips the reader’s imagination on the first page and never lets go. If you wish to be moved and astonished, read it. And if you want to give a dazzling present, buy it for your friends.” (Hilary Mantel)
FEBRUARY BOOK CLUB – Monday 3rd February at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 5th February at 7pm and Friday 7th February at 10.30am in the Bookshop. In a little coffee shop in one of the most dangerous places on earth, five very different women come together. As they discover that there’s more to one another than meets the eye, they form a unique bond that will for ever change their lives and the lives of many others. ‘A brilliant story of strength and appreciation of difference that restores belief in humanity’ (Daily Telegraph).
JANUARY BOOK CLUB – Monday 6th January at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 8th January at 7pm and Friday 10th January at 10.30am in the Bookshop. This month we will be reading Sebastian Faulk’s new ‘novel in five parts’ – A Possible Life – described by the Independent on Sunday as ‘Faulk’s most intriguing fictional offering…Moving…engaging…poignant.’
DECEMB
ER BOOK CLUB – Monday 2nd December at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 4th December at 7pm and Friday 6th December at 10.30am in the Bookshop. This month we will be reading The Last Runaway, the stunning new novel from the bestselling author of Girl with a Pearl Earring, Tracy Chevalier. It is the tale of Honor Bright, a sheltered Quaker who has rarely ventured out of 1850s Dorset, who suddenly on an impulse emigrates to America. Opposed to the slavery that defines and divides the country, she finds her principles tested to the limit when a runaway slave appears at the farm of her new family. In this tough, unsentimental place, where whisky bottles sit alongside quilts, Honor befriends two spirited women who will teach her how to turn ideas into actions.
NOVEMBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 4th November at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 6th November at 7pm and Friday 8th October at 10.30am in the Bookshop.
This new novel from Costa-Novel-Award-winning novelist Maggie O’Farrell is a portrait of an Irish family in crisis in the legendary heatwave of 1976. It’s July 1976. In London, it hasn’t rained for months, gardens are filled with aphids, water comes from a standpipe, and Robert Riordan tells his wife Gretta that he’s going round the corner to buy a newspaper. He doesn’t come back. The search for Robert brings Gretta’s children – two estranged sisters and a brother on the brink of divorce – back home, each with different ideas as to where their father might have gone. None of them suspects that their mother might have an explanation that even now she cannot share.
OCTOBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 30th September at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 2nd October at 7pm and Friday 4th October at 10.30am in the Bookshop.
The Gardens of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng was shortlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize and described by the Daily Telegraph as ‘a beautiful, dark and wistful exploration of loss and remembrance, that will stay with you long after reading’. The novel is set in the highlands of Malaya where a woman begins a journey into her past, inextricably linked with the secrets of her troubled country’s history during the 1950s Emergency.
SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB - Monday 2nd September at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 4th September at 7pm and Friday 6th September at 10.30am in the Bookshop.
This month’s read is The Universe versus Alex Woods: ’A tale of an unexpected friendship, an unlikely hero and an improbable journey, Alex’s story treads the fine line between light and dark, laughter and tears. And it might just strike you as one of the funniest, most heart-breaking novels you’ve ever read.’ What more can we say!!
AUGUST BOOK CLUB – Monday 5th August at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 7th August at 7pm and Friday 9th August at 10.30am in the Bookshop.
The book for August is Kate Morton’s 4th novel The Secret Keeper. 1961: On a sweltering summer’s day, while her family picnics by the stream on their Suffolk farm, sixteen-year-old Laurel hides out in her childhood tree house dreaming of a boy called Billy and the bright future she can’t wait to seize. But before the idyllic afternoon is over, Laurel will have witnessed a shocking crime that changes everything. 2011: Haunted by memories, Laurel finds herself overwhelmed by shades of the past and the mystery of what she saw that day. She returns to her family home and begins to piece together a secret history. The Secret Keeper is a spellbinding story of mysteries and secrets, murder and enduring love.
JULY DAYTIME BOOK CLUB - Monday 1st July and Friday 5th July at 10.30am in the bookshop. In the hope that some of you may wish to join us at McGrigor Hall on 29th June for the National Reading Group Day event, we will be reading Francesca Brill’s The Harbour. For further details of the book and event, please see our events page.
JULY EVENING BOOK CLUB - Monday 1st July and Wednesday 3rd July at 7pm in the bookshop. Once again, to support the authors who will be appearing at McGrigor Hall on 29th June for the National Reading Group Day event, we will be reading Melissa Harrison’s Clay. For further details of the book and event, please see our events page.
JUNE BOOK CLUB – Monday 3rd June at 10.30am and 7pm, Wednesday 5th June at 7pm and Friday 7th June at 10.30am in the Bookshop.
The book for June is Jeanette Winterson’s Why be happy when you could be normal?
In 1985 Jeanette Winterson’s first novel, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, was published. It was Jeanette’s version of the story of a terraced house in Accrington, an adopted child, and the thwarted giantess Mrs Winterson. It was a cover story, a painful past written over and repainted. It was a story of survival. This book is that story’s silent twin. It is full of hurt and humour and a fierce love of life. It is about the pursuit of happiness, about lessons in love, the search for a mother and a journey into madness and out again. It is generous, honest and true.
MAY BOOK CLUB – Monday 29th April and Wednesday 1st May at 7pm in the Bookshop.
Please note that due to the May Bank Holiday, we will be running the Monday book club in April! “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is Mohsin Hamid’s thrillingly provocative international bestseller. It was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize in 2007 and is now a major film directed by Mira Nair and starring Kate Hudson and Kiefer Sutherland. Challenging, mysterious and thrillingly tense, “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” is a vital read teeming with questions and ideas about some of the most pressing issues of today’s globalised, fractured world.
APRIL BOOK CLUB – Monday 8th and Wednesday 10th April at 7pm in the Bookshop.
Please note that due to the Easter Weekend, we will be running the book club a week late in April. This month we are reading the latest novel by best-selling author William Boyd, whose novel Restless was dramatized and shown on BBC1 in December 2012. Waiting for Sunrise is set in Vienna, 1913. Lysander Rief, a young English actor, sits in the waiting room of the city’s preeminent psychiatrist as he anxiously ponders the particularly intimate nature of his neurosis. When the enigmatic, intensely beautiful Hettie Bull walks in, Lysander is immediately drawn to her, unaware of how destructive the consequences of their subsequent affair will be. One year later, home in London, Lysander finds himself entangled in the dangerous web of wartime intelligence – a world of sex, scandal and spies that is slowly, steadily, permeating every corner of his life…
MARCH BOOK CLUB – Monday 4th and Wednesday 6th March at 7pm in the Bookshop.
Deeply psychological and full of suspense, The Guilty One is already an international phenomenon and one of the most talked-about books of the year. Daniel Hunter has spent years defending lost causes as a solicitor in London. But his life changes when he is introduced to Sebastian, an eleven-year-old accused of murdering an innocent young boy. As he plunges into the muddy depths of Sebastian’s troubled home life, Daniel remembers his own difficult childhood and makes him question everything he ever believed in.
FEBRUARY BOOK CLUB – Monday 4th and Wednesday 6th February at 7pm in the Bookshop.
This month we will be reading a first novel by Rachel Joyce who has written over 20 original plays for Radio 4. The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is described by The Spectator as ‘a brilliant and charming novel: full of comic panache yet acute and poignant’. When Harold Fry leaves home one morning to post a letter, with his wife hoovering upstairs, he has no idea that he is about to walk from one end of the country to the other. He has no hiking boots or map, let alone a compass, waterproof or mobile phone. All he knows is that he must keep walking. To save someone else’s life. See the author’s interview with Richard and Judy here:
whatshalliread.info/index.php/richardandjudyspring2013/ … #haroldfry
JANUARY BOOK CLUB – Monday 7th and Wednesday 9th January at 7pm in the Bookshop.
We will be heading to Swaziland during December for our January read: When Hoopoes go to Heaven by Gaile Parkin, author of Baking Cakes in Kigali. Described as ‘warm, funny and brimming with life’ this is a tale of life in Africa told through the innocent eyes of a ten-year old boy which will capture your imagination and restore your faith in humanity.
DECEMBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 3rd and Wednesday 5th December at 7pm in the Bookshop.
On a hot summer s afternoon, Ursula Salter runs sobbing from the loch on her parents Scottish estate and confesses, distraught, that she has killed Michael, her 19-year old-nephew. But what really happened? No body can be found, and Ursula s story is full of contradictions. In order to protect her, the Salters come up with another version of events, a decision that some of them will come to regret. Narrating from beyond the grave, Michael takes us to key moments in the past, looping back and back until – finally – we see what he sees.
NOVEMBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 5th and Wednesday 7th November at 7pm in the Bookshop.
This month we will be talking about Obedience by Jacqueline Yallop. Sister Bernard has lived in a grey-stone convent in rural France for more than seventy years. Now, the three remaining women must pack away their few possessions into wooden boxes, preparing to leave the building that has been their home for decades. For Sister Bernard the quiet monotony of the religious life has protected her from memories of the past – the disgrace of when she was a young woman in wartime France; when her devotion to God faded in the face of her need for a young Nazi soldier; and when she experienced the full horror and violence of war.
OCTOBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 1st and Wednesday 3rd October at 7pm in the Bookshop.
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared
It all starts on the one-hundredth birthday of Allan Karlsson. Sitting quietly in his room in an old people’s home, he is waiting for the party he-never-wanted-anyway to begin and decides instead to climb out of his bedroom and make his getaway. So begins his picaresque and unlikely journey involving criminals, several murders, a suitcase full of cash, and incompetent police. As his escapades unfold, we learn something of Allan’s earlier remarkable life in which he helped to make the atom bomb, became friends with American presidents, Russian tyrants, and Chinese leaders and was involved in many key events of the twentieth century. Already a huge bestseller across Europe, this is a fun, feel-good book for all ages.
SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 3rd and Wednesday 5th Septeber at 7pm in the Bookshop. Weirdo by Cathi Unsworth is a disturbing thriller described by the Sunday Telegraph as a ‘gripping tale of adolescent angst and genuine evil’. Something to get your teeth into as the nights draw in!
AUGUST BOOK CLUB – Monday 6th and Wednesday 1st August at 7pm in the Bookshop. A book to make you laugh and cry in equal measure…’Moyes does a majestic job of conjuring a cast of characters who are charismatic, credible and utterly compelling; Lou and Will are a couple who readers will take to their hearts as they did One Day‘s Emma and Dex’ (The Independent )
SUPPER BOOK CLUB – Tuesday 17th July at The Cookery Workshop – 7pm. The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. Chicago, 1920: Hadley Richardson is a shy twenty-eight-year-old who has all but given up on love and happiness when she meets Ernest Hemingway and is captivated by his energy, intensity and burning ambition to write. After a whirlwind courtship and wedding, the pair set sail for France. But glamorous Jazz Age Paris, full of artists and writers, fuelled by alcohol and gossip, is no place for family life and fidelity.
Choose from either starter and main or main and dessert
Two courses for £18 and three courses for £21
Starters
Radicchio, walnut and parmesan salad
Melon with Parma Ham
Main Course
Fillet of ‘White Fish’ in herb crumbs with a fresh tomato sauce
Escalope of Pork with fresh pesto
Mediterranean Feast of a Tart (V)
Served with Fondant Potatoes & Summer Salad
Dessert
Eton Mess with Summer Berries
Strawberry Shortbread with Crème Chantilly
Choice of freshly ground Italian coffee or speciality tea
JULY BOOK CLUB – Monday 2nd and Wednesday 4th July at 7pm in the Bookshop. SHORTLISTED FOR THE ORANGE PRIZE FOR FICTION 2012 Iasi, Romania, the early 1950s. A nameless man is found on the steps of a hospital. Deaf and mute, he is unable to communicate until a young nurse called Safta brings paper and pencils with which he can draw. Slowly, painstakingly, memories appear on the page.
JUNE BOOK CLUB – Please note that due to the Bank Holidays, the Monday group will meet on Monday 11th June and the Wednesday as normal on 6th June at 7pm in the Bookshop. Set in a Welsh mining town, this is the story of a number of the men of the town, both past and present, and the women who mothered them, married them and mourned them, who are bound together by the echoes of the Kindly Light tragedy and by the mysterious figure of Ianto Passchendaele Jenkins, whose stories of loyalty and betrayal, loss and love, form an unforgettable, spellbinding tapestry.
MAY BOOK CLUB – Please note that due to the Bank Holiday, the Monday group will meet on TUESDAY 1st May and then Wednesday as normal on 2nd May at 7pm in the Bookshop.
The 2011 Costa Book of the Year, Pure by Andrew Miller is a rich historical novel, filled with the sights, sounds and more significantly smells of Paris in 1785!
APRIL BOOK CLUB – Monday 2nd and Wednesday 4th April at 7pm in the Bookshop.
A gripping psychological thriller exploring the terrifying life of a woman who has developed a form of amnesia, which leaves her waking up every day wondering who she is and how whe ended up living in this strage house with this strange man who tells her he is her husband.
MARCH BOOK CLUB – Monday 5th and Wednesday 7th March at 7pm in the Bookshop.
Set in Addis Ababa in the 1960s ’70s and ’80s this is an epic tale of birth, love, death and loyalty, described by The Times as ‘a huge, rich ambitious tapestry of a novel…tremendous’
SUPPER BOOK CLUB WITH ALISON PICK - Monday 27th February, 7pm at The Cookery Workshop.
Join Man Booker longlisted author Alison Pick for a literary supper at The Cookery Workshop as part of her five day UK tour. Alison will be talking about her most recent novel Far To Go, a powerful and profoundly moving story about one family’s epic journey to flee the Nazi occupation of their homeland in 1939. The novel is inspired by the lives of Alison’[s own grandparents who fled their native Czechoslovakia for Canada during the Second World War.
Tickets: £25 to include a 2 course buffet supper, wine & coffee with 10% off the book.
FEBRUARY BOOK CLUB – We will not be having a meeting this month.
JANUARY BOOK CLUB - Monday 9th and Wednesday 11th January at 7 p.m. in the Book shop
A magical depiction of a secret world. The customs and enduring female friendships are wonderfully portrayed in this beautifully written novel.
DEC
EMBER BOOK CLUB -Monday 5th and Wednesday 7th December at 7pm in the Book Shop.
Describe d by The Times as ‘totally gripping’ this is a thriller set in Russia, where snowdrops are the bodies that float up into the light in the thaw.
SUPPE
R BOOK CLUB - Wednesday 23rd November at Frinton Golf Club. 7pm for 7.30pm. This month we are delighted to welcome back the author Natasha Solo mons who will be telling us more about her latest book The Novel in the Viola. Tickets are £25 for a 2 course supper with coffee.
NOVEMBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 7th and Wednesday 9th November in the shop at 7pm. A lex Clark in The Guardian describes this novel as ‘a captivating yarn of high seas and even higher drama’. The story begins and ends in the squalor of 19th-century Wapping, but at its heart is a mission to the South Pacific and the story of the hazy line between camaraderie and rivalry and of the bonds both forged and broken in extreme adversity.
OCTOBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 3rd and Wednesday 5th October in the shop at 7pm. Hand Me Down World by Lloyd Jones
SUPPER BOOK CLUB - Wednesday 29th September at Coastalfoods. 7pm. This month we will be discussing the wonderful debut by Sarah Winman When God Was a Rabbit. £18 for 2 courses and £21 for 3 courses.
SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB – Monday 5th and Wednesday 7th September in the shop at 7pm. Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell. A classic tale which richly describes the social divide of the Dark Satanic Mills during the Industrial Revolution.
AUGUST BOOK CLUB – Monday 1st August and
Wednesday 3rd August in the shop at 7pm. It Had to Be You by David Nobbs. Something a little lighter for the summer, this was described by Michael Palin as ‘One of the most noisily funny books I have ever read’.
JULY SUPPER BOOK CLUB – Wednesday 20th July and Thursday 21t July at Coastalfoods. The Life of an Unknown Man by Andrei Makine. Two men meet in St Petersburg and one reveals an incredible tale of extreme suffering, courage and extraordinary love. Described by John Humphrys as ‘utterly compelling’.
MENU FOR JULY 2010
2 courses – £15 or 3 courses £18
Prawn and fennel cocktail
Summer bean, olive and mozzarella salad
****
Fillet of “white fish” Cafe de Paris ( herb butter) delicious & Bryan’s secret recipe!
Slow roasted chicken with vermouth
Grilled goats cheese with salad and pepper coulis
***
Poppy seed cheesecake
Mini drop scones with chocolate and caramelized pears
All served with new potatoes and salad
JULY BOOK CLUB – Monday 4th July & Wednesday 6th July. The Leopard’s Wife by Paul Pickering is described by The Times as ‘Brilliant’ and tells the tale of forbidden love in an impossible land.
JUNE BOOK CLUB – Wednesday 1st and Monday 6th June. The Hare with the Amber Eyes won the 2010 COSTA Biography Award and was described as ‘Wise, strange and gripping’ by A S Byatt, GUARDIAN Books of the Year.
MAY BOOK CLUB – Wednesday 4th May and Monday 9th May, 7pm in the shop. Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker prize and is also shortlisted for the Orange Prize. It is a truly original, though slightly disturbing tale told through the eyes of an innocent 5 year old boy.
APRIL BOOK CLUB – Monday 4th and Wednesday 6th April, 7pm in the shop ‘Enthralling…A dark, frightening, instructive tale’ Literary Review, set in the ancient port of Salonika in 1940.
MARCH SUPPER BOOK CLUB – PLEASE NOTE THIS HAS NOW CHANGED TO APRIL!
Wednesday 27th and Thursday 28th April 2011
Join us for lively conversation and Jo & Bryan’s delicious food
at The Cookery Workshop in Ashlyn’s Road. This month we will be discussing Rose Tremain’s latest novel ‘Trespass’. ‘Thrilling…a terrific book’ The Times, yet rather an uncomfortable tale of lonliness and regret. An isolated stone farmhouse in southern France becomes the nucleus of a bizarre sequence of events: a terrified child, a missing brother, a sister desperate for revenge…you have to read it to find out what happens to them all!
March Menu 2011
Starter
Smoked salmon and basil tart with a cucumber salad
OR
Pork rillettes with fennel, walnut, parsley and lemon dressing
Main course
Pork Weiner schnitzel (Can be gluten free)
OR
Grilled white market fish with a pepper coulis
Vegetarian option
Potato leek and ricotta cheese frittata
All served with potato and green salad
Dessert
Ginger mousse
OR
Cranachan rhubarb sundae
Freshly ground coffee or speciality teas
MARCH BOOK CLUB
Wednesday 2nd and Monday 7th March 2011
And now for something completely different – ‘A beautiful little love story’ Alexander McCall Smith – ‘Words cannot convey the slow-burning pleasure of this novel’ The Times. We would like to indroduce you to ‘Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand’ by Helen Simonson. If you enjoyed ‘Mr Rosenblum’s List’ you will love this! Fingers crossed!!
FEBRUARY BOOK CLUB
Wednesday 2nd and Monday 7th February 2011
This month we will be reading ‘Sister’ by Rosamund Lupton. Both Judith and I found this a compelling read – a thriller, but written in the form of a letter from one sister to another. Jeffery Deaver describes it as ‘truly marvellous!…’Sister’ exists in that rare place where crime fiction and literature coincide.’ We hope you enjoy it too!
JANUARY BOOK CLUB
Wednesday 5th and Monday 10th January 2011
Introducing our first ‘Book Swap’. Bring along a book that you love and would love to share with another bookclubber and take home someone else’s beloved book…it’s as simple as that! As we are all local and know each other well, if you would like your book back, then we are happy to do a ‘Book Loan’ instead!
DECEMBER SUPPER BOOK CLUB
Tuesday 7 December and Wednesday 8December
To continue our frosty theme, we have chosen Kate Mosse’s ‘Winter Ghosts’ for our December Supper Book Club. Described as ‘a wonderfully haunting winter’s tale’, it is the story of a man grieving for his brother who was lost in the Great War. He takes a trip to the French Pyrenees, where he uncovers an appalling secret that has lain dormant for 700 years…
Supper Book Club Menu
Coastal Foods – £15 for two courses or £18 for three
DECEMBER BOOK CLUB READ
Monday 29th November and Wednesday 1st December in the shop at 7pm
Getting into the Christmas mood with a modern fairy tale ‘..a magical fable of fate and resignation’ GUARDIAN. Ida MacLaird is slowly turning into glass, so returns to the strange, enchanted island where she believes the transformation began.
NOVEMBER BOOK CLUB READ
Monday 1st and Wednesday 3rd November 7pm in the Book Shop.
A fascinating insight into New York life in the 1970s told through the eyes of 11 different characters, all of whom are affected in some way by the amazing feat of Phillippe Petit, who walked a tightrope wire between the Twin Towers on August 7th, 1974.
OCTOBER BOOK CLUB READ
This month we are reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett. Set in Jackson Mississippi 1962, ‘where black maids raise white children, but aren’t trusted not to steal the silver….’
‘Stockett is brilliant on people, on food, on relationships, on the weather. Draws you completely into a world of okra and fried chicken and peach cobbler’ Daily Telegraph
Next meeting Monday 4th October and Wednesday 6th October at 7.00 p.m.
SEPTEMBER BOOK CLUB READ
The Devil’s Music – Jane Rusbridge
A deeply moving tale which evokes memories of the 1950s and childhood seaside holidays, together with the unravelling of family ties.
SEPTEMBER SUPPER BOOKCLUB.
We are meeting at Coastal Foods on Wednesday 1st and Thursday 2nd September at 7.00 p.m. to discuss Aphrodite’s Workshop for Reluctant Lovers by Marika Cobbold. Described by The Times as ‘Wise, witty and wonderfully accurate about the state of modern love.’ We are taking bookings now so do join us. There will be an opportunity to meet the author at the Frinton Literary Festival on the Book Group session on Saturday evening. Look out for full details on the Literary Festival beach hut tab.
AUGUST BOOK CLUB READ
This month we are reading Carol by Patricia Highsmith. It was written in the 50′s and is about a love developing between two women in 1950′s New York
‘Has the drive of a thriller but the imagery of a romance … This is a book that is hard to set aside; it demands to be read late into the night with eyes burning and heart racing’ Val McDermid
JUNE BOOK CLUB
This month’s book is The Elephant Keeper by Christopher Nicholson which was shortlisted for the Costa Novel Award 2009.
It tells the story of the elephant, Jenny and Tom the stable boy who cares for her.
It is the story of an extraordinary friendship and understanding between a young man and a beautiful intelligent beast.
‘Like the elephant at its centre, Nicholson’s book is gentle, profound and sweet-natured’ Observer
MAY BOOK CLUB
For May we have chosen ‘We are all made of Glue’ by Marina Lewycka and the dates are Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th May.
Described by the Literary Review as ‘Hilarious. A big-hearted confection of the comic and the poignant’, we hope this will provide a light-hearted departure from our last few books, yet still give plenty to talk about at the meeting.
NEWS UPDATE
April’s book was ‘A Children’s Book’ by A S Byatt, which elicited very different reactions from our bookclubbers. It was definitely a case of ‘you either love it or you hate it’! However, this did generate some fascinating discussion, which is always good.
A GOLD STAR definitely goes to Mair Boothby who was the ONLY person in the Monday night group to have finished the book. Well done Mair!
Caxton’s Supper Book Club is delighted to present author Georgina Harding
Thursday, 13th May 2010 Piatto’s Restaurant 7.00 for 7.30pm
Georgina Harding, author of May’s supper book club read ‘The Spy Game’ will be joining us at Piatto’s to talk about the book and her experience as a writer.
Described by The Times as ‘Superb – beatifully written, utterly gripping’, ‘The Spy Game’ is a tale about loss, history, memory and the imagination. According to The Independent on Sunday Georgina Harding’s writing is ‘Elegant …Lucid, seamless’ and The Daily Telegraph consider her to be ‘a writer of great precision and melancholy’.
We are thrilled that Georgina has agreed to come and talk to us and very much look forward to seeing you there.
Tickets are available from Sally or Judith at Caxton’s at a cost of £18.00 which includes 2 courses from a set menu and coffee. As Piatto’s is a licensed restaurant, guests are invited to purchase their own drinks.
Please note last date for bookings is Thursday 6th May.
