The Bridge Street Books Club:
Held: On the last Tuesday of each month (except December)
Where: The Brass Fox (please note for the months of June, July and August 2025, bookclub will take a summer break)
At: 8pm
Membership is free, but we do ask members to purchase the monthly book through us – we give a 10% discount on the book to participants. Membership is relaxed and you can attend or not as you wish, or as our busy lives take over!
Next Meeting: 29th September 2026
Last Meeting: March 2026: ‘Good People’ by Patmeena Sabit
The Sharaf family is the picture of success. They arrived in America as refugees with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.
And now, after years of hard work, they live in the most exclusive neighbourhood, their growing family attending the most prestigious schools. Zorah, the eldest daughter, is the apple of her father’s eye. But when Zorah dies in an unthinkable tragedy, the family is thrust into the court of public opinion.
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April Meeting: 28th April 2026:Â ‘A Far-Flung Life’ by ML Stedman
Outback Western Australia, 1958. For generations, the MacBrides have lived on a remote sheep station, Meredith Downs. A million arid acres, it’s an ocean of land, where the weather is a capricious god, and time still roams untamed. One ordinary day, on a lonely road, under the unending blue sky, patriarch Phil MacBride swerves to avoid a kangaroo. In seconds the lives of the entire MacBride family are shattered. Instead of leaving wounds to heal, Fate comes for them yet again, in a twist of consequences that will cause one of them to lose their life, and another to sacrifice theirs for the sake of an innocent child.
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Last Meeting: 24th February 2026: ‘The Finest Hotel in Kabul – A People’s History of Afghanistan’ by Lyse Doucet
In 1969, the luxury Hotel Inter-Continental Kabul opened its doors: a glistening white box, high on a hill, that reflected Afghanistan’s hopes of becoming a modern country, connected to the world. Lyse Doucet first checked into the Inter-Continental on Christmas Eve 1988.
In the decades since, she has witnessed a Soviet evacuation, a devastating civil war, the US invasion, and the rise, fall and rise of the Taliban, all from within its increasingly battered walls. The Inter-Con has never closed its doors. Now, she weaves together the experiences of the Afghans who have kept the hotel running to craft a richly immersive history of their country.
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January 2026 ‘Cursed Daughters’ by Orinyinkan Braithwaite
No man will call your house his home. and if they try, they will not have peace… So goes the family curse, handed down from generation to generation, ruining families and breaking hearts as it goes. And now it’s calm, rational Eniiyi’s turn – who, due to her uncanny resemblance to her dead aunt, Monife, and her family’s insistence that she must be a reincarnation, has long been used to some strange familial beliefs.
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November 2025 ‘Buckeye’ by Patrick Ryan – One town. Two families. A secret that changes everything. May, 1945. As news of the Allied victory in Europe reaches the small town of Bonhomie, Ohio, a woman named Margaret Salt walks into a hardware store and asks the man behind the counter, Cal Jenkins, for a radio. What happens next will change both of their lives forever.
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October 2025 ‘Endling’ by Maria Reva – Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country’s forests and valleys, trying and failing to breed rare snails while her relatives urge her to settle down and start a family of her own. What they don’t know: Yeva already dates plenty of men-not for love, but to fund her work-entertaining Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile brides untainted by feminism.
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September 2025Â ‘Flesh’ by David Szalay – Fifteen-year-old Istv n lives with his mother in a quiet apartment complex in Hungary. New to the town and shy, he is unfamiliar with the social rituals at school and soon becomes isolated, with his neighbour a married woman close to his mother s age as his only companion.
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May 2025: ‘Butter’ by Asako Yuzuki – The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story, and translated by Polly Barton
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April 2025: ‘Rembrandt’s Promise’ by Barbara Leahy – 1642.The Dutch Golden Age is underway, with Amsterdam at the height of its powers. Geertje, an impoverished widow from Edam, enters a melting pot of wealth and culture when she becomes nursemaid in the house of renowned painter Rembrandt. After Rembrandts wife dies, Geertje is drawn deeper into his world and despite her friends warnings, she begins a passionate affair with the master of light and shadow, with devastating results
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March 2025: ‘The Boy from the Sea’ by Garrett Carr – 1973. In a close-knit community on Ireland’s west coast, a baby is found abandoned on the beach.
Named Brendan by Ambrose Bonnar, the fisherman who adopts him, the boy will become a source of fascination and hope for a town caught in the storm of a rapidly changing world. Ambrose, a man more comfortable at sea than on land, brings Brendan into his home out of love. But it is a decision that will fracture his family and force this man – more comfortable at sea than on land – to try to understand himself and those he cares for.
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February 2025: ‘The Persians‘ by Sanam Mahloudji – A novel following five women from three generations of a once illustrious Iranian family as their lives are turned upside down Meet the women of the Valiat family. In Iran, they were somebodies. In America, they’re nobodies. First there is Elizabeth, the regal matriarch with the famously large nose, who remained in Tehran despite the revolution. She is kept company by Niaz, her young, Islamic-law-breaking granddaughter. In America, Elizabeth’s two daughters have built new lives for themselves.
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January 2025: ‘All the Colours of the Dark’ by Chris Whittaker – Late one summer, the town of Monta Clare is shattered by the abduction of teenager Joseph ‘Patch’ Macauley.
Nobody more so than Saint Brown, who will risk everything to find her best friend. But when she does: it will break her heart. Patch lies alone in a pitch-black room – until he feels a hand in his.
Her name is Grace and, though they cannot see each other, she lights their world with her words. But when he escapes: there is no sign she ever even existed. Left with only her voice and her name, he paints her from broken memories – and charts an epic search to find her.
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November 2024: ‘Hello Beautiful by Ann Napolitano – Best friends and sisters, the four Padavano girls bring loving chaos to their close-knit Italian American neighbourhood. William Waters grew up in a house silenced by tragedy, where his parents could hardly bear to look at him, much less love him. So, when he meets the spirited and ambitious Julia Padavano, it’s as if the world has lit up around him.
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October 2024: ‘Blue Sisters‘ by Coco Mellors – The Blue sisters have always been exceptional – and exceptionally different. Avery, a strait-laced lawyer living in London, is the typical eldest daughter, though she’s hiding a secret that could undo her perfect life forever. Bonnie was a boxer but, following a devastating defeat, she’s been working as a bouncer in LA – until a reckless act one night threatens to drive her out of the city. And Lucky, the rebellious youngest, is a model in Paris whose hard-partying ways are finally catching up with her. Then there was Nicky, the beloved fourth sister, whose unexpected death left Avery, Bonnie and Lucky reeling. When, a year later, the three of them must reunite in New York to stop the sale of their childhood home, they find that it’s only by returning to each other that they can navigate their grief, addiction and heartbreak and learn to fall in love with life again
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August 2024: Exile by Aimee Walsh – Leaving home was hard. Returning is impossible. Fiadh’s life is turned completely upside down on a night out in Belfast.
Pretty soon everyone has heard about what happened; it is impossible to keep the rumours from spreading, the gossip from spiralling out of control. And just as she was beginning to finally figure everything out: she was feeling positive about her move to Liverpool, she was starting to get on top of her uni work and had made some new friends. Now her life is in freefall and Fiadh is helpless to do anything about it.
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July 2024: The Polite Act of Drowning by Charlene Hurbutise – Michigan, 1985. The drowning of a teenage girl causes ripples in the small town of Kettle Lake, though for most the waters settle quickly.
For sixteen year old Joanne Kennedy, however, the tragedy dredges up untold secrets and causes her mother to drift farther from reality and her family. When troubled newcomer Lucinda arrives in town, she offers Joanne a chance of real friendship, and together the teenagers push against the boundaries of family, self-image, and their sexuality during the tension of a long, stifling summer.
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June 2024: From Tip to Top: the journey of a lifetime from Chile to Argentina’ by Peter Murtagh -= Aged 69, Peter Murtagh decided it was time to embark on ‘the great retirement project’ – riding a motorbike from Tierra del Fuego, at the very southern tip of South America, to the most northerly point in Alaska, alone and without the pressure of any deadline: just a tent, a bike and a sleeping bag. En route, Peter explored magical, wonderful and extraordinarily out-of-the-way parts of our bruised world, met incredible people from all walks of life and observed a great swathe of the planet. Travelling alone on the 45,000 km journey allowed him a rare opportunity to disconnect from hectic daily life and to embrace the solitude, challenge and peace-of-mind of the road less travelled.
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May 2024: James by Percival Everett – An enthralling and ferociously funny reimagining of Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, told from the perspective of the enslaved Jim. 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 decides to hide on 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. Thus begins a dangerous and transcendent journey by raft along the Mississippi River, towards the elusive promise of the free states and beyond. From the shadows of Huck Finn’s mischievous spirit, Jim emerges to reclaim his voice, defying the conventions that have consigned him to the margins.
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April 2024: A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata – The year is 1903, and tenacious and spirited Aoi Ichi is sold to the most exclusive brothel in Kumamoto, Japan, becoming the protégée of Shinonome, the oiran, or the highest-ranking courtesan. Through Shinonome’s teachings, fifteen-year-old Ichi begins to understand the intertwined power of sex and money. Education for a courtesan extends beyond the art of seduction, and as Ichi is taught to read and write she develops a voice that refuses to be dampened by the brothel’s rigid hierarchy.
Outside the cloistered world of the red-light district, rumours of local worker strikes grow, and as the seasons change in Kumamoto, Ichi, Shinonome and their fellow courtesans begin to wonder how they might redistribute the power and wealth of the brothels among themselves.
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Junior
Held: On the last Thursday of the month (except December)
Where: Bridge Street Books
At: 4pm
Please note, our Junior Book club is taking a break at the moment and will return soon
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