Books & Chat

Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows your secrets, your fears, your desires, your strange imperfect self?Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes, 'Edi's memory is like the back-up hard drive for mine.'So when Edi is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Ash's world reshapes around the rhythms of Edi's care, from chipped ice and watermelon cubes to music therapy; from snack smuggling to impromptu excursions into the frozen winter night. Because life is about squeezing the joy out of every moment, about building a powerhouse of memories, about learning when to hold on, and when to let go.For fans of Nora Ephron and Sorrow & Bliss, We All Want Impossible Things is a deeply moving, jubilant celebration of life and friendship at its imperfect, radiant, and irreverent best.

When a moment changes everything, how do you live the rest of your life?1940s Colorado: Teenage Victoria Nash is the only woman in a family of troubled men.When she meets Wilson Moon, a young drifter with a mysterious past, on a street corner, their connection is immediate. And dangerous.But then tragedy strikes, and Victoria is forced to leave her home and face a decision that will change her life forever.Loved deeply by readers, this is the epic coming-of-age adventure of Victoria Nash, determined to save her family’s generational peach farm from destruction, as she falls in love, faces devastating tragedy, and finally faces what she must do to survive.

an affair between a young Catholic woman and a married Protestant barrister drives this brilliant novel set in 1975 Belfast.

The Salt Path is a 2024 British biographical drama film directed by Marianne Elliott based on the book of the same name and one read in book club a few years ago. We revisit it here in our podcast. The book was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2018 and won the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize.Just days before Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years is terminally ill, their home is taken away and they lose their livelihood.  With nothing left and little time they make the brave and impulsive decision to walk the 630 miles of the South West Coastal Path.

This episode by host, Christina Young, talks about the top 3 books Gloucester Book Club read together in 2024, as voted for by book club members. Crow Lake by Mary Lawson Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng In Memorian by Alice Winn

Waterstones Novel of the Year 2023 A gripping, heart-shattering love story between two soldiers in the First World War.It's 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle - an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the dreamy, poetic Ellwood - not having a clue that Ellwood is in love with him, always has been. When Gaunt's German mother asks him to enlist as an officer in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, Gaunt signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood.The front is horrific, of course, and though Gaunt tries to dissuade Ellwood from joining him on the battlefield, Ellwood soon rushes to join him, spurred on by his love of Greek heroes and romantic poetry. Before long, their classmates have followed suit. Once in the trenches, Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, but their friends are all dying, right in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century - contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in '60s New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shakers of his times. But as a son, friend, lover and husband, he makes the same mistakes we all do in our search for happiness. Here, then, is the story of a life lived to the full - and a journey deep into a very human heart. 'Astonishing, touching, extremely funny. A brilliant evocation of a past era and an immensely readable story' - Sunday Telegraph

The Morrison siblings have been haunted by tragedy since the sudden death of their parents in an accident when they were young. Kate found an escape from the legacy of their dark past in her passion for the natural world. Now a zoologist far away from the small farming community where she grew up, she thinks she's outgrown her three brothers, who were once her entire world. But Kate can't seem to escape her childhood or lighten the weight of their mutual past.

Our Missing Hearts is the third novel by the American author Celeste Ng. It was published in 2022 by Penguin Press. The novel follows Noah Gardner (known as Bird) on a bus trip from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he lives with his father, to New York City in search for his mother. The novel takes place in a dystopian future under PACT (The Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act)

Rachel Sargeant is the author of The Roommates, The Good Teacher, and The Perfect Neighbours. She also writes the Gloucestershire Crime Series, which includes Her Deadly Friend and Her Charming Man. She won Writing Magazine’s Crime Short Story competition and has been shortlisted in various competitions including the Bristol Short Story Prize. Her stories have appeared in My Weekly and the Saucy Shorts series by Accent Press. She is a graduate of Aberystwyth University and holds a PhD from the University of Birmingham. She provides bespoke critiques for Henshaw Press short story competition entrants and is a judge in the quarterly competitions. After many years in Germany, she now lives in Gloucestershire with her family. Her hobbies are visiting country houses and coffee shops, and going to the theatre.

Shortlisted for the Wilbur & Niso Smith Adventure Prize for Fiction - could this be the winner? An extraordinary tale of family, scarifice and our never-ceasing battle with the past, Vardiashvili's mesmerising and unique novel about a boy looking for his father who's returned to his native Georgia for the first time since the war blends gripping mystery with questions about how we remember and why we forget.

Athena Liu is a literary darling.June Hayward is literally nobody. But when June just happens to witness Athena die in a freak accident, she realises now is her chance to find fame.So what if that means stealing her friend’s work?So what if that means creating a new, racially ambiguous identity?So what if a social media scandal is about to blow her cover? As her lies mount up and threaten her stolen success, how far will June go to keep what she thinks she deserves… This is one hell of a story. It’s just not hers to tell.

Is your ability to focus and pay attention in free fall? You are not alone. The average office worker now focuses on any one task for just three minutes. But it’s not your fault. Your attention didn’t collapse. It has been stolen. Internationally bestselling author Johann Hari shows twelve deep factors harming our focus. Once we understand them, together, we can take back our minds.

In the brief golden years of King Edward VII's reign, Rosie McCosh and her three very different sisters are growing up in an eccentric household in Kent, with their neighbours the Pitt boys on one side and the Pendennis boys on the other. Can she, and her sisters, build new lives out of the opportunities and devastations that follow the Great War?

Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End is a 2014 non-fiction book by American surgeon Atul Gawande. The book addresses end-of-life care, hospice care, and also contains Gawande's reflections and personal stories. He suggests that medical care should focus on well-being rather than survival.

Ella Rubinstein has a husband, three teenage children, and a pleasant home. Everything that should make her confident and fulfilled. Yet there is an emptiness at the heart of Ella's life - an emptiness once filled by love. So when Ella reads a manuscript about the thirteenth-century Sufi poet Rumi and Shams of Tabriz, and his forty rules of life and love, her world is turned upside down. She embarks on a journey to meet the mysterious author of this work.

Set over the course of five decades, The Dutch House is a dark fairy tale about two smart people who cannot overcome their past. Despite every outward sign of success, Danny and Maeve are only truly comfortable when they’re together. Throughout their lives, they return to the well-worn story of what they’ve lost with humor and rage. But when at last they’re forced to confront the people who left them behind, the relationship between an indulged brother and his ever-protective sister is finally tested.

Shortlisted for The British Book Awards 2023 Fiction Book of the Year. ‘O'Farrell paints as evocative a picture of Renaissance Italy as she did Shakespearean England in the former Waterstones Book of the Year Hamnet, as Cosimo de' Medici's third daughter learns to navigate an opaque Florentine court and an enigmatic new husband’ ~ Waterstones

The thrilling follow-up to the award-winning Bluebird, Bluebird: Texas Ranger Darren Matthews is on the hunt for a boy who's gone missing - but it's the boy's family of white supremacists who are his real target 9-year-old Levi King knew he should have left for home sooner; now he's alone in the darkness of vast Caddo Lake, in a boat whose motor just died. A sudden noise distracts him - and all goes dark. Darren Matthews is trying to emerge from another kind of darkness; after the events of his previous investigation, his marriage is in a precarious state of re-building, and his career and reputation lie in the hands of his mother, who's never exactly had his best interests at heart. Now she holds the key to his freedom, and she's not above a little maternal blackmail to press her advantage.

It is the tale, simply told, of one ordinary middle-aged man - Bill Furlong - who in December 1985, in a small Irish town, slowly grasps the enormity of the local convent's heartless treatment of unmarried mothers and their babies (one instance of what will soon be exposed as the scandal of the Magdalene laundries).

Gloucester Book Club’s top 3 books read and discussed in 2023 and voted for by members of book club

From Stories For Christmas and the festive season - British Library

Taken from Stories for Christmas and the festive season - British Library Women Writers

The Pulitzer Prize-winning, Booker Prize-shortlisted author of Redhead by the Side of the Road returns with a luminous new novel that paints a joyous and painfully truthful portrait of family life ~ Waterstones

The second episode of our Halloween series of short stories from Spooky Ambiguous, ghost stories and poetry fangs and fairy tales, published by Crumps Barn Studios. Suitable for children.

Taken from Spooky Ambiguous - an intriguing collection of short stories and poetry where nothing and no-one is as they seem. With permission from Crumps Barn Studio in The Cotswolds

When the Nazis march into Paris, Odile stands to lose everything she holds dear, including her beloved Library. Together with her fellow librarians, Odile joins the Resistance with the best weapons she has: books. But when the war finally ends, instead of freedom, Odile tastes the bitter sting of unspeakable betrayal.

“A passionate condemnation of the misogyny Jack the Ripper's victims have been held in for over a century, The Five tells an engrossing group biography of Victorian womanhood, blighted by poverty and powerless against casual and constant abuse” ~ Waterstones

“Tackling the issue of long-term mental illness with wit and candour, Mason’s remarkable novel takes a rounded, empathetic look at the condition through the experiences of a middle-aged woman who has struggled to find contentment in her adult life” ~ Waterstones

But there she was Sadie Green, in the flesh. And to see her almost made him want to cry. It was as if she were a mathematical proof that had eluded him for many years, but all at once, with fresh, well-rested eyes, the proof had a completely obvious solution. There’s Sadie, he thought. Yes. ‘A brilliant story about life’s most challenging puzzles: friendship, family, love, loss’ ~ Nathan Hill, author of The Nix

Waterstones book of 2022, British Book Awards author of 2023, debut novelist Bonnie Garmus brings us Lessons in Chemistry. “smart,funny, joyous and powerful featuring an unconventional female scientist with a quiet game plan to change the world”. Listen in to our discussion!

John Williams’s luminous and deeply moving novel is a work of quiet perfection. William Stoner emerges from it not only as an archetypal American, but as an unlikely existential hero, standing, like a figure in a painting by Edward Hopper, in stark relief against an unforgiving world. In this episode you’ll hear Christina, Tony and James sharing their thoughts about the book.

A dazzling new novel of friendship, identity and the unknowability of other people – from the international bestselling author of Home Fire, winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction. This year, 1988, anything seems possible for the girls; and for Pakistan, emerging from the darkness of dictatorship into a bright future under another young woman, Benazir Bhutto. But a snap decision at a party celebrating the return of democracy brings the girls’ childhoods abruptly to an end. Its consequences will shape their futures in ways they cannot imagine. Three decades later, in London, Zahra and Maryam are still best friends despite living very different lives. But when unwelcome ghosts from their shared past re-enter their world, both women find themselves driven to act in ways that will stretch and twist their bond beyond all recognition. Best of Friends is a novel about Britain today, about power and how we use it, and about what we owe to those who’ve loved us the longest.

A brilliantly moving story of the cost of secrets and the power of hope, Flamingo revolves around two families, an unforgettable summer they spend together and a re-encounter decades later that changes everything. Waterstones

A Terrible Kindness by Jo Browning Wroe, Still Life by Sarah Winman, A Town Solace called Solace by Mary Lawson

“In October 1962, at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, an English schoolboy arrives unannounced at his piano teacher’s house. He stands on her doorstep in his drainpipe trousers and sharp-toed winklepickers, twitchy with eroticised terror. The boy, Roland Baines, is 14; his teacher, Miss Cornell, is 25. Roland fears that the world is about to end, and he will die a virgin. Miss Cornell does not turn him away. What happens between them in that quiet cottage will score a line across Roland’s life. It is “the moment from which all else fanned out and upwards with the extravagance of a peacock’s tail”. Guardian

A festive tale from ‘Festive Spirits’ written by Kate Atkinson 2019. Read by Christina Young

A short story taken from a chilling collection of short stories ‘Christmas is Murder’ published by Sphere in 2020

Nineteen-year-old William’s decision to volunteer at the tragic scene of the 1966 Aberfan landslide transforms his life forever in this moving story about sacrifice and compassion.

A moving and intensely felt examination of the lengths to which we will go to seek protection and security in others. Returning to haunted Cornish landscapes familiar from other Gale novels, it is the story of individuals in search of a family.

A spooky short story taken from a wonderful collection of gothic fairy tales and poetry, where nothing and no one is as they seem…..

A short story for Halloween from Spooky Ambiguous - a collection of ghost stories and poetry, fangs and fairy tales published by Crumps Barn Studio in the Cotswolds and read by Christina Young

Ten years ago, Sophie Shaw vanished. Kat, a technician who works in a DNA testing lab, is still haunted by the unsolved disappearance, and when she notices a suspicious tweet about the case online, she calls in a tip. A few weeks later she learns that a man is being questioned, and drunkenly sends out a tweet of her own, boasting about her role in this breakthrough by the police. But the man is released and Kat quickly finds herself back on Twitter, navigating through the abusive messages she’s received and initiating an angry exchange with the anonymous man she’s convinced has escaped justice. Unfortunately, though, she failed to hide her real identity—and soon she starts feeling paranoid about every man she encounters. As her drinking escalates and her life begins to fall apart, it’s unclear whether someone is really out to destroy her—or if she is destroying herself . . .

A spooky story for Halloween set in the English countryside taken from a collection of short stories and poetry with a witchy feel ‘Spooky Ambiguous’. Published by Crumps Barn Studios. Read by Christina Young

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * This sweeping novel from the author of A Long Petal of the Sea tells the epic story of Violeta Del Valle, a woman whose life spans one hundred years and bears witness to the greatest upheavals of the twentieth century. "An immersive saga about a passion-filled life."--People Violeta comes into the world on a stormy day in 1920, the first girl in a family with five boisterous sons. From the start, her life is marked by extraordinary events, for the ripples of the Great War are still being felt, even as the Spanish flu arrives on the shores of her South American homeland almost at the moment of her birth. Through her father's prescience, the family will come through that crisis unscathed, only to face a new one as the Great Depression transforms the genteel city life she has known. Her family loses everything and is forced to retreat to a wild and beautiful but remote part of the country. There, she will come of age, and her first suitor will come calling. She tells her story in the form of a letter to someone she loves above all others, recounting times of devastating heartbreak and passionate affairs, poverty and wealth, terrible loss and immense joy. Her life is shaped by some of the most important events of history: the fight for women's rights, the rise and fall of tyrants, and ultimately not one, but two pandemics. Through the eyes of a woman whose unforgettable passion, determination, and sense of humor carry her through a lifetime of upheaval, Isabel Allende once more brings us an epic that is both fiercely inspiring and deeply emotional.

Award-winning novelist Jon McGregor returns with a stunning novel that tenderly unpicks the notion of heroism and explores the indomitable human impulse to tell our stories - even when words fail us.  The line between sacrifice and selfishness, this is a story of the undervalued, unrecognised courage it can take just to get through the day.

THE SUNDAY TIMES NUMBER ONE BESTSELLER* 'HELL YES. This is one of those books that has the potential to change things - a monumental piece of research' Caitlin Moran Imagine a world where... · Your phone is too big for your hand · Your doctor prescribes a drug that is wrong for your body · In a car accident you are 47% more likely to be injured. If any of that sounds familiar, chances are you're a woman.

Abandoned as a girl, Kya raised herself in the dangerous marshlands of North Carolina. For years, rumors of the marsh girl haunted Barkley Cove, isolating the sharp and resilient Kya from her community. Drawn to two young men from town, she opens herself to a new and startling world.

'Riveting, twisty, page-turning stuff' Guardian A 'best books of 2020' pick for BBC Radio 4 Open Book, the Guardian, the Telegraph and Good Housekeeping 'The page turner you've been looking for. Sly, witty and gripping . . . I devoured it' Naomi Alderman 'An utter joy . . . wonderfully skilled' Sarah Perry 'Beguiling, brilliantly creepy, and an utterly compelling read' Claire Fuller 'Tender, creepy and gripping' Sunday Times 'Spellbinding and spooky . . . a dazzling high wire act, superbly absorbing' Sunday Mirror

Longlisted for Booker Prize 2021. Waterstones Says The acclaimed Canadian author of Crow Lake intertwines the lives of three characters brought together by loss in a quietly moving novel – touched with flashes of humour – about the tenderness and tragedy of everyday lives in a small backwater town.