Parable of the Sower — Octavia Butler

We are coming apart. We're a rope, breaking, a single strand at a time.

America is a place of chaos, where violence rules and only the rich and powerful are safe. Lauren Olamina, a young woman with the extraordinary power to feel the pain of others as her own, records everything she sees of this broken world in her journal.

Then, one terrible night, everything alters beyond recognition, and Lauren must make her voice heard for the sake of those she loves.

Soon, her vision becomes reality and her dreams of a better way to live gain the power to change humanity forever.

This week's book is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

My Brilliant Friend — Elena Ferrante

At that moment I knew what the plebs were, much more clearly than when, years earlier, she had asked me. The plebs were us. The plebs were that fight for food and wine, that quarrel over who should be served first and better, that dirty floor on which the waiters clattered back and forth, those increasingly vulgar toasts. The plebs were my mother, who had drunk wine and now was leaning against my father’s shoulder, while he, serious, laughed, his mouth gaping, at the sexual allusions of the metal dealer. They were all laughing, even Lila, with the expression of one who has a role and will play it to the utmost.

This week's book is My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Wasp Factory — Iain Banks

Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.

This week's book is The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Adventures of Huckleberry Finn & James — Mark Twain & Percival Everett

Huckleberry Finn escapes the civilized society of the strict Widow Douglas, who’s aim it is to care and educate the young boy, only to find himself at the hands of his drunken and abusive father.

After giving his Pap the slip in a mischievous and clever hoax, Huck sets out on his adventures down the Mississippi River on a raft, accompanied by his friend Jim, an escaped slave from the town. In their quest for freedom, these two characters form a strong bond whilst they encounter thieves, murderers, family feuds, con-artists, and tricksters along their trip downriver. Eventually, Huck and Jim’s friendship is put to the ultimate test when Jim is re-captured.

The Mississippi River, 1861. When the enslaved Jim overhears that he is about to be sold to a new owner in New Orleans and separated from his wife and daughter forever, he flees to nearby Jackson’s Island until he can formulate a plan. Meanwhile, Huck Finn has faked his own death to escape his violent father who recently returned to town.

So begins a dangerous and transcendent journey along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. As James and Huck navigate the treacherous waters, each bend in the river holds the promise of both salvation and demise. And together, the unlikely pair embark on the most life-changing odyssey of them all ...

This week's books are Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain and James by Percival Everett and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Please note this is the first meeting of the year.

Saturnalia ! — The Lord of Misrule

Great gods above, that horrible and cursed little book !

Surely you sent it to your Catullus, so that he might die, again and again, on that day, during the Saturnalia too, the best of days !

It won't end like this for you, oh no, my clever one.

We head to the fleshpots of the Neues Berlin to celebrate the mid-winter.

Please note this is the last meeting of the year.

The Wood at Midwinter — Susannah Clarke

A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees — and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst — and the path of her life is changed forever.

This week's book is The Wood at Midwinter by Susannah Clarke and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

The Bell Jar — Sylia Plath

Every time I tried to concentrate, my mind glided off, like a skater, into a large empty space, and pirouetted there, absently.

This week's book is The Bell Jar by Sylia Plath and we'll be meeting at Ye Olde Cocke on Wilmslow Road in Didsbury — contact us for details.

Please note change of changed 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.