Cardiff’s longest running book club
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12th Dec 2023 – Christmas Is Murder by Val McDermid
A collection of atmospheric short stories from the international bestseller Val McDermid. She is a master of the dark and sinister story, and these powers are in full force in Christmas is Murder, a festive collection of chilling tales. From an irresponsible baron whose body is discovered beneath a silver birch tree, to a classic detective…
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14th Nov 2023 – My Phantoms by Gwendoline Riley
**Shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize 2022** A Book of the Year in the Observer, the Daily Telegraph, the Irish Times, the Guardian, the White Review, the Evening Standard, the Big Issue, the TLS, the Week and the New Statesman. Helen Grant has always been a mystery to her daughter. Twice-divorced, with few friends, her…
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10th October 2023 – Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
WINNER OF THE COSTA FIRST NOVEL AWARD 2021WINNER OF DEBUT NOVEL OF THE YEAR AT THE BRITISH BOOK AWARDS 2022 SHORTLISTED FOR WATERSTONES BOOK OF THE YEARLONGLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE ‘A beautiful and powerful novel about the true and sometimes painful depths of love’ Candice Carty-Williams, bestselling author of QUEENIE Two young people meet…
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12th September 2023 – Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit OR/AND Why Be Happy When You Could be Normal? by Jeanette Winterson
Read one or both! ORANGES… ‘At that time I could not imagine what would become of me, and I didn’t care. It was not judgement day, but another morning’ This is the story of Jeanette, adopted and brought up by working-class evangelists in the North of England to be one of God’s elect. Passionate, headstrong…
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8th August 2023 – The Black Flamingo by Dean Atta
‘I loved every word’ – Malorie Blackman ‘Atta’s bold verse novel calls to its readers to find their own blazing, performative inner truth’ – Guardian WINNER OF THE STONEWALL BOOK AWARD A boy comes to terms with his identity as a mixed-race gay teen – then at university he finds his wings as a drag…
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11th July 2023 – This is Memorial Device by David Keenan
‘Beautifully believable and appallingly sad … One of the most acute, affecting and aphoristic novels of recent years … A hallucinatory and haunting vision.’ (The Guardian) This Is Memorial Device, the debut novel by David Keenan, is a love letter to the small towns of Lanarkshire in the west of Scotland in the late 1970s…
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13th June 2023 – Under The Udala Trees by Chinelo Okparanta
Ijeoma comes of age as her nation does. Born before independence, she is eleven when civil war breaks out in the young republic of Nigeria. Sent away to safety, she meets another displaced child and they, star-crossed, fall in love. They are from different ethnic communities. They are also both girls. But when their love…
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9th May 2023 – I Bought A Mountain by Thomas Firbank
First published in 1940, this is a much-loved book of North Wales by a young man who buys 5,000 acres in Snowdonia. Written on the eve of the Second World War, this memoir tells the remarkable story of how 21-year-old Thomas Firbank decided on impulse to purchase a 2,400-acre hill farm in the rugged, inhospitable…
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11th April 2023 – That Green Eyed Girl by Julie Owen Moylan *AUTHOR IN ATTENDANCE*
Sometimes, when the world around us behaves as weirdly as it does, we worry the prescience of some of the books we schedule may be somewhat unerring. Never moreso than this one!
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14th March 2023 – Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith
Mammals and birds are widely seen as the smartest creatures on earth. But one other branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. New research shows that these marvellous creatures display remarkable gifts, with each of their tentacles even…
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14th February 2023 – Mrs Bridge and/or Mr Bridge by Evan S Connell
Two companion short novels each telling their side of the story about a marriage. Published as Penguin Modern Classics, we are inviting you to read one of the books, or both. These are thought-provoking and poignant novels that offer a compelling look at the lives of an ordinary couple living in an extraordinary time. Mrs.…
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10th January 2023 – Slow Horses by Mick Herron
‘The most exciting development in spy fiction since the Cold War’ The Times Slough House is the outpost where disgraced spies are banished to see out the rest of their derailed careers. Known as the ‘slow horses’ these misfits have committed crimes of drugs and drunkenness, lechery and failure, politics and betrayal while on duty.…
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