Resources
The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe's Refugee Crisis by Patrick Kingsley - discussion questions
We have some discussion questions for your reading group about The New Odyssey. Europe is facing a wave of migration unmatched since the end of World War II. The author, Guardian’s migration correspondent, has reported on this crisis in depth. Throughout 2015, he has travelled to 17 countries along the migrant trail. In this book, he gives an account of who these voyagers are, and why they keep coming, and how they do it. “Patrick Kingsley writes from right inside the greatest movement of...
The New Odyssey: The Story of Europe's Refugee Crisis by Patrick Kingsley - an extract
This extremely topical, non-fiction book is a fascinating read. Europe is facing a wave of migration unmatched since the end of World War II – and no one has reported on this crisis in more depth or breadth than the Guardian’s migration correspondent, Patrick Kingsley. Throughout 2015, Kingsley travelled to 17 countries along the migrant trail, meeting hundreds of refugees making epic odysseys across deserts, seas and mountains to reach the holy grail of Europe. This is Kingsley’s...
Himself by Jess Kidd - discussion questions
Himself is a genre-bending crime story set in County Mayo in the 1970s. Abandoned on the steps of an orphanage, Mahony, a lovable car thief and Dublin charmer, returns to the town of his birth after an anonymous message suggests that his mother was taken from him. With the suggestion of foul play involved Mahony turns up to case the village but his familiar looks and outsider ways cause a stir amongst the locals, who receive him with a mixture of awe (the women) and suspicion (the...
Himself by Jess Kidd - read an extract
When Mahony returns to Mulderrig, a speck of a place on Ireland’s west coast, he brings only a photograph of his long-lost mother and a determination to do battle with the lies of his past. No one – living or dead – will tell Mahony what happened to the teenage mother who abandoned him as a baby, despite his certainty that more than one of the villagers knows the sinister truth. Between Mulderrig’s sly priest, its pitiless nurse and the caustic elderly actress throwing herself into her final...
Wild Kingdom: Bringing Back Britain's Wildlife by Stephen Moss - discussion questions
We have some great discussion questions for your reading group about Wild Kingdom, the non-fiction book by Stephen Moss. Stephen Moss has travelled the length and breadth of the UK, from the remote archipelago of St Kilda to our inner cities, to witness at first hand how our wild creatures are faring, and offers us this complex, heartfelt and often unexpected response. “An absorbing quest into the state of British wildlife today.” The Bookseller “Rich with examples of what can be done to help...
Wild Kingdom: Bringing Back Britain's Wildlife by Stephen Moss - read an extract
The newspaper headlines tell us that Britain’s wildlife is in trouble. Wild creatures that have lived here for thousands of years are disappearing, because of pollution and persecution, competition with alien species, changing farming and forestry practices, and climate change. It’s not just rare creatures such as the Scottish wildcat or the red squirrel that are vanishing. Hares and hedgehogs, skylarks and water voles, even the humble house sparrow, are in freefall. But there is also good...
SHTUM by Jem Lester - discussion questions
We have some great discussion questions for your reading group about Shtum by Jem Lester. As you can see below, other groups have enjoyed reading and discussing this book: “I cannot stress highly enough how much I loved this book. Simply charming, beautiful and gut-wrenching. This would appeal to anyone who is a parent or has a parent! Told from the point of view of Ben a 30-something father of a severely autistic boy, this book grabs your heart strings, pulls them sideways and then snaps...
SHTUM by Jem Lester - read an extract
Ben Jewell has hit breaking point. His ten-year-old son, Jonah, has never spoken. So when Ben and Jonah are forced to move in with Ben’s elderly father, three generations of men – one who can’t talk; two who won’t – are thrown together. As Ben battles single fatherhood, a string of well-meaning social workers and his own demons, he learns some difficult home truths. Jonah, blissful in his innocence, becomes the prism through which all the complicated strands of personal identity, family...
False Hearts by Laura Lam - read an extract
One night Tila stumbles home, terrified and covered in blood. She’s then arrested for murder, the first by a civilian in decades. The San Francisco police suspect involvement with Verve, a powerful drug, and offer her twin sister Taema a chilling deal. Taema must assume Tila’s identity and gather information to bring down the drug syndicate. The police may then let her sister live. However, Taema’s investigation raises ghosts from the twins’ past. The sisters were raised by a cult, which...
False Hearts by Laura Lam - discussion questions
We have some great discussion questions for your reading group about False Hearts by Laura Lam. As you can see below, other groups have enjoyed reading and discussing this book: “It was engaging right from the off, brought a wonderful vision of a fairly-dystopian future with its description of advanced technologies…” Library panel “The book prompted lively discussion on the plot and side-discussions on medical dilemmas, cults, dystopian universes, drugs and much more.” Macclesfield Library...
The Appointment by Graham Easton - discussion questions
We have some discussion questions for your reading group about The Appointment: What Your Doctor Really Thinks During Your Ten-Minute Consultation by Graham Easton. The Appointment is a book which explores the idea that despite the modern trend towards empowering patients and giving them more choice, the nuts and bolts of medical practice largely remain a mystery – a closed box. In fact, the more health information is available on the internet, the more patients can feel swamped and confused....
The Appointment by Graham Easton - read an extract
Despite the modern trend towards empowering patients and giving them more choice, the nuts and bolts of medical practice largely remain a mystery – a closed box. In fact, the more health information is available on the internet, the more patients can feel swamped and confused. The Appointment offers an intimate and honest account of how a typical GP tries to make sense of a patient’s health problems and manage them within the constraints of their health system and the short ten minute...
The Graces by Laure Eve - read an extract
Read an exclusive extract from The Graces by Laure Eve. Everyone said the Graces were witches. They moved through the corridors like sleek fish, ripples in their wake. Stares followed their backs and their hair. They had friends, but they were just distractions. They were waiting for someone different. All I had to do was show them that person was me. Like everyone else in her town, River is obsessed with the Graces, attracted by their glamour and apparent ability to weave magic. Desperate to...
Thin Air by Michelle Paver - read an extract
Read an exclusive extract of the chilling and dark Thin Air by Michelle Paver. It is 1935, and young medic Stephen Pearce travels to India to join an expedition with his brother, Kits. The elite team of five will climb Kangchenjunga, the world’s third highest mountain and one of mountaineering’s biggest killers. No one has scaled it before, and they are, quite literally, following in the footsteps of one of the most famous mountain disasters of all time – the 1906 Lyell Expedition. Five men...
Holding by Graham Norton - read an extract
Read an exclusive extract from Graham Norton’s debut novel, Holding. Duneen is a quiet place, far enough from the big towns to have kept its own rhythms. Its residents include cast down policeman PJ who lives a lonely, uneventful life punctuated only by the next meal – until now; the beautiful and mysterious family of three spinster sisters each with their own secrets and sorrows; and of course, the town’s gossip who think she knows the answers. When a grim discovery is made on a building...
You Will Not Have My Hate - read an extract
Read an extract from the powerful and moving You Will Not Have My Hate by Antoine Leiris. On 13th November 2015, Antoine Leiris’s wife, Hélène, was killed, along with 88 other people at the Bataclan Theatre in Paris, when three men armed with guns and suicide bombs opened fire on the unsuspecting crowd at a rock concert. Three days later, Antoine wrote an open letter addressed to his wife’s killers, which he published on Facebook. The whole world was in mourning for the victims, but Leiris...
Peaks and Troughs by Nick Perry - read an extract
We have an exclusive extract for you to read from Peaks and Troughs by Nick Perry. Peaks and Troughs is the story of a naïve young man who is initiated into adulthood through the harsh reality of having to survive in the material world. Despite the hardships, he never loses his belief that there is an alternative way to farm that is sympathetic to the earth and the animals in his care. His neighbours never take him seriously and try to undermine his efforts as he struggles against the...
Peaks and Troughs by Nick Perry - discussion questions
We have some discussion questions for your reading group about Peaks and Troughs by Nick Perry. Peaks and Troughs is the story of a naïve young man who is initiated into adulthood through the harsh reality of having to survive in the material world. Despite the hardships, he never loses his belief that there is an alternative way to farm that is sympathetic to the earth and the animals in his care. His neighbours never take him seriously and try to undermine his efforts as he struggles...
The Zoo by Isobel Charman - discussion questions
We have some discussion questions for your reading group about non-fiction book The Zoo by Isobel Charman. The creation of a zoo in Dickensian London – the first ‘zoo’ in history – is a story of jaw-dropping audacity. It is the story of trailblazing scientists, rival keepers and aristocratic naturalists collecting amazing animals from all around the world – and sending them to what was dubbed ‘the ark’ by the mocking press. Telling this almost unbelievable true story, Isobel Charman depicts a...
The Zoo by Isobel Charman - read an extract
We have an exclusive extract for you to read from non-fiction book The Zoo by Isobel Charman. The creation of a zoo in Dickensian London – the first ‘zoo’ in history – is a story of jaw-dropping audacity. It is the story of trailblazing scientists, rival keepers and aristocratic naturalists collecting amazing animals from all around the world – and sending them to what was dubbed ‘the ark’ by the mocking press. Telling this almost unbelievable true story, Isobel Charman depicts a highly...
Chatterbooks Newsletter
The latest Chatterbooks Newsletter. This November newsletter celebrates National Non-Fiction November.
Chatterbooks Week Press Release Template
This pack is designed to help you promote your Chatterbooks Week activities locally. It includes a press release template and a social media guide.
Chatterbooks Week Social Media Card
We’ve teamed up with Walker Books to create a social media card for Chatterbooks Week. Print out this card and share the book that made you a “Child of Books” on social media.
How-To: Run a reverse book club
The Crisis Skylight and World Book Night Book Club, run by The Reading Agency, meets once a week in London. The book club runs in a ‘reverse’ format, with no member expected to have read the book before coming to the group. It aims to offer different entry-points into the book for members to begin their journey of literary discovery. The ultimate goal of the book club is that it is welcoming and accessible to all of Crisis’s clients, no matter their reading level. Members are able to drop in...
Banned Books Week 2016
To celebrate Banned Books Week this month, download this list of notable banned books from Islington Libraries. Banned Books Week was launched in 1982 in response to a sudden surge in the number of challenges to books in schools, bookstores and libraries in the US. Since then, according to the American Library Association, more than 11,300 books have been challenged. Islington Library and Heritage Services, along with the British Library and Free Word, are celebrating Banned Books week and...
Miss You extract
Tess is in Florence for a final, idyllic holiday before university. Her life is about to change forever – but not in the way she expects. Gus and his parents are also on holiday in Florence. Their lives have already changed suddenly and dramatically. Gus tries to be a dutiful son, but longs to escape and discover what sort of person he is going to be. For one day, the paths of an eighteen-year-old girl and boy criss-cross before they each return to England. Over the course of the next sixteen...
Miss You reading group questions
Tess is in Florence for a final, idyllic holiday before university. Her life is about to change forever – but not in the way she expects. Gus and his parents are also on holiday in Florence. Their lives have already changed suddenly and dramatically. Gus tries to be a dutiful son, but longs to escape and discover what sort of person he is going to be. For one day, the paths of an eighteen-year-old girl and boy criss-cross before they each return to England. Over the course of the next sixteen...
Les Parisiennes - Chapter 1
What did it feel like to be a woman living in Paris from 1939 to 1949? These were years of fear, power, aggression, courage, deprivation and secrets until – finally – renewal and retribution. But this is not just a book about wartime. In fascinating detail Sebba explores the aftershock of the Second World War and the choices demanded. How did the women who survived to see the Liberation of Paris come to terms with their actions and those of others? Although politics lies at its heart, Les...
The Mare by Mary Gaitskill - First chapter extract
The Mare is Mary Gaitskill’s first novel in over a decade. Exploring themes of parenthood, race and class, there are big ideas and extremely compelling characters for reading groups to get their teeth into. Ginger is in her forties and a recovering alcoholic when she meets and marries Paul. When it becomes clear it’s too late for her to have a baby of her own, she tries to persuade him to consider adoption – but he refuses. As a compromise, they sign up to an organisation that sends poor...
Q&A with Adrian McKinty, author of the Sean Duffy series
Download Serpent’s Tail’s interview with Adrian McKinty, author of the Sean Duffy thriller series, set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The latest in the series, Rain Dogs, was shortlisted for the 2016 Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year Prize. Find out more at www.adrianmckinty.com
