Join Our Monthly Book Club!
Our Book Club meet at our shop monthly to get together and disect, discuss and delve deep into the current book of the month while enjoying each others' great company and free coffee!
This book club is for anybody who loves to read anything and everything - each month a book is carefully curated from a wide variety of genres. Enjoy anything from Thriller, Historical Fiction, Memoirs and everything in between.
When you join our monthly book club subcription you will also be added to our exclusive and friendly Facebook group - connecting you with other like minded readers!
Yellowface
by Rebecca Kuang
Authors June Hayward and Athena Liu were supposed to be twin rising stars: same year at Yale, same debut year in publishing. But Athena's a cross-genre literary darling, and June didn't even get a paperback release. Nobody wants stories about basic white girls, June thinks.
So when June witnesses Athena's death in a freak accident, she acts on impulse: she steals Athena's just-finished masterpiece, an experimental novel about the unsung contributions of Chinese laborers to the British and French war efforts during World War I.
So what if June edits Athena's novel and sends it to her agent as her own work? So what if she lets her new publisher rebrand her as Juniper Song--complete with an ambiguously ethnic author photo? Doesn't this piece of history deserve to be told, whoever the teller? That's what June claims, and the New York Times bestseller list seems to agree.
But June can't get away from Athena's shadow, and emerging evidence threatens to bring June's (stolen) success down around her. As June races to protect her secret, she discovers exactly how far she will go to keep what she thinks she deserves.
With its totally immersive first-person voice, Yellowface takes on questions of diversity, racism, and cultural appropriation not only in the publishing industry but the persistent erasure of Asian-American voices and history by Western white society. R. F. Kuang's novel is timely, razor-sharp, and eminently readable.
The Escapades of Tribulation Johnson
Karen Brooks
From the author of The Good Wife of Bath comes this brilliant recreation of the vibrant, optimistic but politically treacherous world of London's Restoration theatre, where we are introduced to the remarkable playwright Aphra Behn, now a feminist icon but then an anomaly, who gravitated to the stage - a place where artifice and disguise are second nature and accommodates those who do not fit in.
'Karen Brooks demonstrates her considerable talent for capturing the historical moment in this richly told, immersive read that will acquaint readers with a woman whose name we should all know. ' Pip Williams, author of The Bookbinder of Jericho It's 1679 and into the tumult, politics and colour of Restoration London and its lively theatre scene comes the fierce and opinionated Tribulation Johnson. Cast out from her family as ungodly and unworthy, Tribulation is determined to forge her own remarkable path.
Arriving in London, Tribulation is astonished to discover that the widowed cousin she's been sent to live with is none other than the most infamous woman in the former spy and traitor's mistress, the playwright and polemical poetess, Aphra Behn. Tribulation cannot believe her good fortune as she is thrust into city life and the heady, mercurial milieu of the theatre. Under Aphra's guidance, Tribulation is encouraged to write, think and speak for herself. But women aren't supposed to have a voice, or ideas, let alone wield a pen and write for a living, and there are harsh consequences for those who don't obey society's rules.
Together, Aphra and Tribulation must not only face vilification and mockery but terrible danger as plots to overturn the monarchy gather pace. When someone from Aphra's complicated past reappears, the women's loyalties - to King, country, and ultimately each other - are bitterly tested. Can their relationship survive the burning fires of religious hatred, suspicion and deceit?
When everyone plays a part, and all the world's a stage, who you trust?
The Daughters of Madurai
Rajasree Variyar
The Daughters of Madurai is both a heartrending family story and a page-turning mystery about the secrets we must keep to protect those we love.
Madurai, 1992. A young mother in a poor family, Janani is told she is useless if she can’t produce a son—or worse, if she bears daughters. They let her keep her first baby girl, but the rest are taken away as soon as they are born and murdered. But Janani can’t forget the daughters she was never allowed to love.
Sydney, 2019. Nila has a secret; one she’s been keeping from her parents for too long. Before she can say anything, her grandfather in India falls ill and she agrees to join her parents on a trip to Madurai. Nila knows very little about where her family came from or who they left behind. What she’s about to learn will change her forever. While The Daughters of Madurai explores the harrowing issue of female infanticide, it’s also a universal story about the bond between mothers and daughters, the strength of women, and the power of love in overcoming all obstacles.
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