“Dead lions,” Molly said.
“What about them ?”
“It’s a kids’ party game. You have to pretend to be dead. Lie still. Do nothing.”
“What happens when the game’s over ?” Lamb asked.
“Oh,” she said. “I expect all hell breaks loose.”
This week's book is Dead Lions by Mick Herron and we'll not be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury but will be meeting online — contact us for details.
Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a ‘T’. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks ― not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J's small fox-terrier Montmorency.
A flu pandemic wipes out 99% of humanity.
The final curtain is closing on the Second World War and in an abandoned Italian village. Hana, a nurse, tends to her sole remaining patient. Rescued from a burning plane, the anonymous Englishman is damaged beyond recognition and haunted by painful memories.
Yefgenii Yeremin is a flyer and he is a phantom. In the Korean War, he is the legendary ace dubbed ‘Ivan the Terrible’, shooting down more American jets than any other pilot in history. But the Soviet Union's involvement in Korea must be kept secret, so Yefgenii is exiled to a remote Arctic base, his name unknown, his victories uncelebrated. But in 1964, a man arrives from Moscow, from the Space Committee, in search of a volunteer prepared to sacrifice everything for his country.
This meeting is cancelled due to Didsbury's Dreadful Visitation and the Shutting-up of the Fletcher Moss.
In the Spring of 1857, with India on the brink of a violent and bloody mutiny, Krishnapur is a remote town on the vast North Indian plain. For the British there, life is orderly and genteel. Then the sepoys at the nearest military cantonment rise in revolt and the British community retreats with shock into the Residency. They prepare to fight for their lives with what weapons they can muster. As food and ammunition grow short, the Residency, its defences battered by shot and shell and eroded by the rains, becomes ever more vulnerable.
This week's book is J G Farrell's The Siege of Krishnapur and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper — despite the displeasure of Achilles's mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.
This week's book is Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
For the 70s child, summer holidays didn't mean the joy of CentreParcs or the sophistication of a Tuscan villa. They meant being crammed into a car with Grandma and heading to the coast. With just a tent for a home and a bucket for the necessities, we would set off on new adventures each year stoically resolving to enjoy ourselves.
September 1938. Hitler is determined to start a war. Chamberlain is desperate to preserve the peace.
The issue is to be decided in a city that will forever afterwards be notorious for what takes place there.
Munich.
This week's book is Robert Harris's Munich and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
Beneath the smooth surface of an Episcopal palace lurks the salacious breath of scandal. Charles Ashworth is sent to untangle the web of self-delusion and corruption only to become embroiled in a strange ménage à trois that threatens to expose the secrets of his own past ...
This week's book is Susan Howatch's Glittering Images and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
The novel that became Die Hard !
Retired New York Police detective Joe Leland is visiting the 40-story office headquarters of the Klaxon Oil Corporation in Los Angeles on Christmas Eve, where his daughter Stephanie Leland Gennaro works. While he is waiting for his daughter's Christmas party to end, a group of German Autumn–era terrorists take over the skyscraper.
This week's book is Roderick Thorpe's Nothing Lasts Forever and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
A teenager — whose only means of escape is literature — is slowly ground down by the unwanted attentions and creeping psychopathy of a paramilitary many years her senior. This is the secret state, a place where gossip and hearsay are weaponised methods of control, contained in a novel written with both a sad humour and a certain kind of fury.
This week's book is Anna Burns's Milkman and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
Will and Lyra, whose fates are bound together by powers beyond their own worlds, have been violently separated. But they must find each other, for ahead of them lies the greatest war that has ever been — and a journey to a dark place from which no one has ever returned ...
Angela Carter's fairy tales: ‘The Bloody Chamber’, ‘The Courtship of Mr Lyon’, ‘The Tiger's Bride’, ‘Puss-in-Boots’, ‘The Erl-King’, ‘The Snow Child’, ‘The Lady of the House of Love’, ‘The Werewolf’, ‘The Company of Wolves’, and ‘Wolf-Alice’.
This week's book is Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
In Soviet Moscow, God is dead, but the devil — to say nothing of his retinue of demons, from a loudmouthed, gun-toting tomcat, to the fanged fallen angel Koroviev — is very much alive. As death and destruction spread through the city like wildfire, condemning Moscow's cultural elite to prison cells and body bags, only a madman, the Master, and Margarita, his beautiful, courageous lover, can hope to end the chaos.
Written in secret during the darkest days of Stalin's reign and circulated in samizdat form for decades, when The Master and the Margarita was finally published it became an overnight literary phenomenon, signalling artistic freedom for Russians everywhere.
This week's book is Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.
The last person Alice Shipley expected to see since arriving in Tangier with her new husband was Lucy Mason. After the horrific accident at Bennington, the two friends — once inseparable roommates — haven't spoken in over a year. But Lucy is standing there, trying to make things right.
Perhaps Alice should be happy. She has not adjusted to life in Morocco, too afraid to venture out into the bustling medinas and oppressive heat. Lucy, always fearless and independent, helps Alice emerge from her flat and explore the country.
But soon a familiar feeling starts to overtake Alice — she feels controlled and stifled by Lucy at every turn. Then Alice's husband, John, goes missing, and Alice starts to question everything around her: her relationship with her enigmatic friend, her decision to ever come to Tangier, and her very own state of mind.
This week's book is Christine Mangan's Tangerine and we'll be meeting at The Fletcher Moss on William Street in Didsbury.