Judgment on Deltchev — Eric Ambler

I did not even blunder into the danger; I strayed into it as if it were an interesting-looking tangle of streets in an old town. Certainly I had been warned that they were dangerous; but only to those who warned, I thought, not to me. When I found out that I was mistaken and tried to get out, I found also that I was lost.

Foster’s dramatic skill is well-known in London’s West End theaters. So perhaps it wasn’t so surprising when he was hired by an American newspaper publisher to cover the trial of Yordan Delchev for treason. Accused of membership in the sinister Officer Corps Brotherhood and of masterminding a plot to assassinate his country’s leader, Delchev may in fact be a pawn and his trial all show. But when Foster meets Madame Delchev, the accused’s powerful wife, he suddenly become enmeshed in more life-threatening intrigue than he could have imagined.

This week's book is Judgment on Deltchev by Eric Ambler and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Please note change of book.

The New York Trilogy — Paul Auster

In the end, each life is no more than the sum of contingent facts, a chronicle of chance intersections, of flukes, of random events that divulge nothing but their own lack of purpose.

Moving at the breathless pace of a thriller, this uniquely stylized triology of detective novels begins with City of Glass, in which Quinn, a mystery writer, receives an ominous phone call in the middle of the night. He’s drawn into the streets of New York, onto an elusive case that’s more puzzling and more deeply-layered than anything he might have written himself. In Ghosts, Blue, a mentee of Brown, is hired by White to spy on Black from a window on Orange Street. Once Blue starts stalking Black, he finds his subject on a similar mission, as well. In The Locked Room, Fanshawe has disappeared, leaving behind his wife and baby and nothing but a cache of novels, plays, and poems.

This week's book is The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Dracula — Bram Stoker

I am all in a sea of wonders. I doubt; I fear; I think strange things, which I dare not confess to my own soul.

When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to help Count Dracula with the purchase of a London house, he makes a series of horrific discoveries about his client. Soon afterwards, various bizarre incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked off the coast of Whitby; a young woman discovers strange puncture marks on her neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the Master and his imminent arrival.

This week's book is Dracula by Bram Stoker and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

As we're coming to the end of our reading list, we'll be pitching books at the meeting. You may like to consider the unread books list and the unreadable books list.

This meeting falls on All Hallows' E'en where the appropriate rituals will be undertaken, and correct dress is to be observed.

The Glutton — A K Blakemore

Because of time and all it has torn down and robbed from him. The gilt rubbed from the surface of the world. Because of time and all it has borne away, beyond his reach.

Sister Perpetue is not to move. She is not to fall asleep. She is to sit, keeping guard over the patient's room.

She has heard the stories of his hunger, which defy belief: that he has eaten all manner of creatures and objects. A child even, if the rumours are to be believed.

But it is hard to believe that this slender, frail man is the one they once called The Great Tarare, The Glutton of Lyon. Before, he was just Tarare. Well-meaning and hopelessly curious, born into a world of brawling and sweet cider, to a bereaved mother and a life of slender means.

The 18th Century is drawing to a close, unrest grips the heart of France and life in the village is soon shaken. When a sudden act of violence sees Tarare cast out and left for dead, his ferocious appetite is ignited, and it's not long before his extraordinary abilities to eat make him a marvel throughout the land.

This week's book is The Glutton by A K Blakemore and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Empire of the Sun — J G Ballard

It's at the beginning and end of war that we have to watch out. In between, it's like a country club.

Shanghai, 1941 — a city aflame from the fateful torch of Pearl Harbor. In streets full of chaos and corpses, a young British boy searches in vain for his parents. Imprisoned in a Japanese concentration camp, he is witness to the fierce white flash of Nagasaki, as the bomb bellows the end of the war ... and the dawn of a blighted world.

This week's book is Empire of the Sun by J G Ballard and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

See Saw — Timothy Ogene

Until the lion learns to speak, the tale will always be the hunter's.

A ‘recovering writer’ — his first novel having been littered with typos and selling only fifty copies — Frank Jasper is plucked from obscurity in Port Jumbo in Nigeria by Mrs Kirkpatrick, the wife of an American professor, to attend the prestigious William Blake Program for Emerging Writers in Boston.

This week's book is See Saw by Timothy Ogene and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

In Memoriam — Alice Winn

It was the Hell you’d feared in childhood, come to devour the children. It was treading over the corpses of your friends so that you might be killed yourself. It was the congealed evil of a century.

In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood. They're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle — an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood — not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been.

When Gaunt's mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings. But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches. Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.

This week's book is In Memoriam by Alice Winn and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Home Fire — Kamila Shamsie

For girls, becoming women was inevitability; for boys, becoming men was ambition.

After years spent raising her twin siblings in the wake of their mother's death, she is finally studying in America, resuming a dream long deferred. But she can't stop worrying about Aneeka, her beautiful, headstrong sister back in London — or their brother, Parvaiz, who's disappeared in pursuit of his own dream: to prove himself to the dark legacy of the jihadist father he never knew.

This week's book is Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Please note change of book.  You may wish to also read Sophocles' Antigone on which Home Fire is based.

Tender Is The Night — F Scott Fitzgerald

Strange children should smile at each other and say, “Let's play”.

Rosemary Hoyt is a young actress in the south of France in the late 1920s, with a complicated relationship with the alluring American couple Dick and Nicole Diver. A brilliant psychiatrist at the time of his marriage, Dick is both husband and doctor to Nicole, whose wealth pushed him into a glamorous lifestyle, and whose growing strength highlights Dick's decline.

This week's book is Tender Is The Night by F Scott Fitzgerald and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Butter — Asako Yuzuko

There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

This week's book is Butter by Asako Yuzuko and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Remains of the Day — Kazuo Ishiguro

Indeed — why should I not admit it? — in that moment, my heart was breaking.

In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the English countryside and into his past.

This week's book is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.