Literary Ladies Bookclub

10/02/2025

Great bookclub catch up discussing the thought provoking book ‘As long as the lemon trees grow’ by Zoulfa Katouh . Location: The Lavant Book Cafe.

25/01/2025

So excited to be organising and hosting an event with the most talented and gifted author Alka Joshi! Event details to be announced soon. Please watch this space!

22/01/2025

January reads:
John Grisham - Camino Ghosts.
Philippa Perry - The book you want everyone you love to read.
Erica James - An Ideal Husband.

Can’t wait to start reading these books! Which ones have you read?

🇬🇧

20/01/2025

The Revenge of Rita Marsh
Nilesha Chauvet

Rita Marsh is a good person.
By day, she runs a care home, looking after the elderly and infirm.
By night, she’s a vigilante, posing online as young girls and snaring the men who prey on them, exposing them for what they are.
Rita has successfully kept her two lives separate for years. But when an old classmate returns from her past, her two worlds start to collide. With both of her selves unravelling, Rita will have to choose between justice and revenge.
Is she a force for good – or will she become someone to fear?

‘Such compulsive reading.’ JENNIE GODFREY
‘I devoured it.’ CHRIS WHITAKER
She’ll get them in the end.
She always does.
‘This book was brilliant! . . . Rita is so complex and intriguing. I binged it!’ NetGalley review
‘Powerful . . . a first class thriller.’ NetGalley review
‘I could not put this down.’ NetGalley review

13/11/2024

Who loves cracking open a brand new read of a cosy evening and candle, bliss!! .shop

I'm sooooo looking forward to this! Heard great stuff about it. Description from

I am a Weyward, and wild inside.

2019: Under cover of darkness, Kate flees London for ramshackle Weyward Cottage, inherited from a great aunt she barely remembers. With its tumbling ivy and overgrown garden, the cottage is worlds away from the abusive partner who tormented Kate. But she begins to suspect that her great aunt had a secret. One that lurks in the bones of the cottage, hidden ever since the witch-hunts of the 17th century.

1619: Altha is awaiting trial for the murder of a local farmer who was stampeded to death by his herd. As a girl, Altha’s mother taught her their magic, a kind not rooted in spell casting but in a deep knowledge of the natural world. But unusual women have always been deemed dangerous, and as the evidence for witchcraft is set out against Altha, she knows it will take all of her powers to maintain her freedom.

1942: As World War II rages, Violet is trapped in her family's grand, crumbling estate. Straitjacketed by societal convention, she longs for the robust education her brother receives––and for her mother, long deceased, who was rumored to have gone mad before her death. The only traces Violet has of her are a locket bearing the initial W and the word weyward scratched into the baseboard of her bedroom.

Weaving together the stories of three extraordinary women across five centuries, Emilia Hart's Weyward is an enthralling novel of female resilience and the transformative power of the natural world.

11/11/2024

Incredibly proud of our book swap afternoon tea at the wonderful . Thank you to everyone who came out and supported us wouldn’t be an event without you! Thank you to our author who was our special guest for the evening.

09/11/2024

Incredible night watching ‘The Devil Wears Prada!’. you were sensational as were the whole cast! Such a talented and highly skilled bunch of great singers, actors and dancers!
songs were just brilliant with great lyrics!

07/11/2024

30/10/2024

We are soooo excited to present our first bookish trip to Santorini! We only have 6 spaces left! DM us for further information! We are soooo excited 🥰🇬🇷

10/10/2024

Kim’s Convenience Store written by: Ins Choi

There’s humour and heart in every aisle…

Now a global smash hit, this hilarious and heartwarming drama about a family-run Korean store that inspired the Netflix phenomenon, is written by and starring Ins Choi, who calls the play his ‘love letter to his parents and to all first-generation immigrants who now call Canada their home.’

Review:
Another day another theatre production to watch!
Throughly enjoyed Kim’s Convenience Store, it was extremely funny however covered strong KOREAN Themes to do with identity crisis, Korean and Japan war, belonging, family and much more! Play was cleverly acted and to watch. Would highly recommend. Showing at the

Mr Kim played by Ins Choi himself was fabulous and his acting and comedy skills were mind blowing!

09/10/2024

A Tupperware of Ashes by Tanika Gupta starring .syal.

Saw this marvellous well written play last night! .syal you blew us away with your fabulous acting! The play made us cry however Meera you also had us in fits of laughter throughout the night with your funny comedy moments! Loved it and will highly recommend everyone to watch this.

08/10/2024

The Woman on the ledge by Ruth Mancini.

* The instant Sunday Times bestseller! * Get ready for one of the most gripping psychological thrillers of the year, perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Gillian McAllister and Paula Hawkins.

‘I’ve been yearning for something to give me Girl on the Train vibes. . . this is that book.’ Lisa Jewell
‘Totally unpredictable. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough’ Claire Douglas
‘A deliciously clever book. Jaw-dropping. Absolutely outstanding’ Andrea Mara
‘Utterly gripping from first to last ... I guarantee you’ll be absolutely hooked.’ The Guardian
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28/09/2024

Can’t get over how so many of you turned up to support our first ever book event! Thank you once again and please follow our charity page to find out about our next charity event.

04/09/2024

Got this book from a charity shop in Surbiton, and this book is based on Surbiton station! (My sisters nails not mine)🤣

Funfact: Harry Potter lived in Surbiton, and this station is featured in the movie!

DESCRIPTION FROM

Nobody ever talks to strangers on the train. It's a rule. But what would happen if they did?

Every day at 8:05, Iona Iverson boards the train to go to work. Every day, she sees the same people and makes assumptions about them, even giving them nicknames. But they never speak. Obviously.

Then, one morning, Smart-but-Sexist Surbiton chokes on a grape right in front of Iona. Probably-a-Psychopath-New-Malden steps up to help and saves his life, and this one event sparks a chain reaction.

With nothing in common but their commute, an eclectic group of people learn that their assumptions about each other don't match reality. But when Iona's life begins to fall apart, will her new friends be there when she needs them most?

02/09/2024

Our September's book! 📸 taken by our wonderful booklub member, Siama ♥️

Description from

In the early 1900s, teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a crippled fisherman, falls for a wealthy stranger at the seashore near her home in Korea. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant—and that her lover is married—she refuses to be bought. Instead, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle, sickly minister passing through on his way to Japan. But her decision to abandon her home, and to reject her son's powerful father, sets off a dramatic saga that will echo down through the generations.

Richly told and profoundly moving, Pachinko is a story of love, sacrifice, ambition, and loyalty. From bustling street markets to the halls of Japan's finest universities to the pachinko parlors of the criminal underworld, Lee's complex and passionate characters—strong, stubborn women, devoted sisters and sons, fathers shaken by moral crisis—survive and thrive against the indifferent arc of history.

20/08/2024

Another one for the tbr highly recommended!

Taken from Goodreads:

''You said that you would come back. You looked me in the eye and said that. Well, if you had, this is what you would have seen: soft wood, black cracks, fridges in the road. The broken spines of old rides at Dreamland.'

In the coastal resort of Margate, hotels lie empty and sun-faded ‘For Sale’ signs line the streets. The sea is higher – it’s higher everywhere – and those who can are moving inland. A young girl called Chance, however, is just arriving.

 Chance’s family is one of many offered a cash grant to move out of London - and so she, her mother Jas and brother JD relocate to the seaside, just as the country edges towards vertiginous change. 

In their new home, they find space and wide skies, a world away from the cramped bedsits they’ve lived in up until now. But challenges swiftly mount. JD’s business partner, Kole, has a violent, charismatic energy that whirlpools around him and threatens to draw in the whole family. And when Chance comes across Franky, a girl her age she has never seen before – well-spoken and wearing sunscreen – something catches in the air between them. Their fates are bound: a connection that is immediate, unshakeable, and, in a time when social divides have never cut sharper, dangerous. Set in a future unsettlingly close to home, against a backdrop of soaring inequality and creeping political extremism, Rankin-Gee demonstrates, with cinematic pace and deep humanity, the enduring power of love and hope in a world spinning out of control.

18/08/2024

We are delighted to read August's bookclub pick,

17/08/2024

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

Dr. Seuss (American children’s author, political cartoonist, illustrator, poet, animator, and filmmaker)