Books & Chat: Short Book Reviews & Literary Discussions

Beth and her gentle, kind husband Frank are happily married, but their relationship relies on the past staying buried . But when Beth's brother-in-law shoots a dog going after their sheep, Beth doesn't realise that the gunshot will alter the course of their lives.

Imagine you could hold a baby hare and bottle feed it. Imagine that it lived under your roof and lolloped around your bedroom at night, drumming on the duvet cover when it wanted your attention. Imagine that, over two years later, it still ran in from the fields when you called it and snoozed in your house for hours on end and gave birth to leverets in your study. This happened to me.' When lo...

Christina and her guest Angela discuss Andrew Miller's The Land in Winter, shortlisted for the Booker Prize - a spare, wintry novel about endurance, loyalty, and the quiet moral choices people make when the world narrows. A calm, thoughtful conversation about a book that lingers.

A concise Books and Chat Bitesize episode exploring the Gloucester Book Club’s Top Three Books of 2025. A reflective look at the stories, themes, and authors that shaped our reading year. About the : Books & Chat is a cosy Gloucester Book Club podcast with short reviews and thoughtful conversations for readers who love good stories.

Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet has stayed with me ever since I first read it — a story so tender, so exquisitely imagined, it felt like it settled into my bones. With the new film adaptation about to arrive, it felt like the right moment to bring back this episode I recorded five years ago, when the book had just swept through my life and my book club. In this short revisit, we talk about the beauty of...

A reflective exploration of Intermezzo and Kairos - the pause that gives the meaning and the moment that matters. In this solo episode, Christina shares insights on how timing and intervals shape our experiences.

Christina sit downs with Ang for a candid conversation about what it means to live on the margins - socially, physically, and politically. From the realities of housing insecurity to the quiet resilience of those navigating systems not build for them, this dialogue blands lived experience with sharp insight and gentle wit.

The non~negotiable superpower! This book, the first of its kind written by a scientific expert, Professor Matthew Walker explores twenty years of cutting-edge research to solve the mystery of why sleep matters. Looking at creatures from across the animal kingdom as well as major human studies,  Why We Sleep  delves in to everything from what really happens during REM sleep to how caffeine and alco...

Winner of the  Women's Prize for Fiction  2025 Waterstones  Fiction Book of the Month  for July 2025 An exhilarating tale of twisted desire, histories and homes, and the unexpected shape of revenge - for readers of Patricia Highsmith, Sarah Waters and Ian McEwan's  Atonement . It is fifteen years after the Second World War, and Isabel has built herself a solitary life of discipline and strict rout...

Can you trust the woman next door? The book club was her idea, of course - Alice's. It was her way into our group. A chance to get close. I knew from the day she arrived that she couldn't be trusted. And I was right. Because Alice didn't come to the village for peace and quiet. She came for revenge. Absolutely love addictive psychological thrillers like THOSE PEOPLE, THE COUPLE NEXT DOOR and THE N...

Bored of 1970s suburban life, Maurice and Maralyn plan their escape: sell the house, build a boat, set sail for New Zealand. Then, halfway around the world, their beloved boat is struck by a whale and the pair are cast adrift in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Alone on a tiny raft, their love is put to the test. This is a book about human connection and the human condition; about how we survive –...

Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month  for June 2021 Shortlisted for the  Portico Prize 2022 Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, James and Tully ignite a friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over, they rush towards a magical weekend of youthful excess in Manchester played out against the greatest soundtrack ever recor...

Who knows you better than your best friend? Who knows your secrets, your fears, your desires, your strange imperfect self? Edi and Ash have been best friends for over forty years. Since childhood they have seen each other through life's milestones: stealing vodka from their parents, the Madonna phase, REM concerts, unexpected wakes, marriages, infertility, children. As Ash notes,  'Edi's memory is...

When a moment changes everything, how do you live the rest of your life? 1940s Colorado: Teenage Victoria Nash is the only woman in a family of troubled men. When she meets Wilson Moon, a young drifter with a mysterious past, on a street corner, their connection is immediate. And dangerous. But then tragedy strikes, and Victoria is forced to leave her home and face a decision that will change her...

an affair between a young Catholic woman and a married Protestant barrister drives this brilliant novel set in 1975 Belfast.

The Salt Path is a 2024 British biographical drama film directed by Marianne Elliott based on the book of the same name and one read in book club a few years ago. We revisit it here in our podcast. The book was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award 2018 and won the Royal Society of Literature Christopher Bland Prize. Just days before Raynor learns that Moth, her husband of 32 years is terminal...

This episode by host, Christina Young, talks about the top 3 books Gloucester Book Club read together in 2024, as voted for by book club members. Crow Lake by Mary Lawson Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng In Memorian by Alice Winn

Waterstones Novel of the Year 2023  A gripping, heart-shattering love story between two soldiers in the First World War. It's 1914, and talk of war feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. At seventeen, they're too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battl...

Every life is both ordinary and extraordinary, but Logan Mountstuart's - lived from the beginning to the end of the twentieth century - contains more than its fair share of both. As a writer who finds inspiration with Hemingway in Paris and Virginia Woolf in London, as a spy recruited by Ian Fleming and betrayed in the war and as an art-dealer in '60s New York, Logan mixes with the movers and shak...

The Morrison siblings have been haunted by tragedy since the sudden death of their parents in an accident when they were young. Kate found an escape from the legacy of their dark past in her passion for the natural world. Now a zoologist far away from the small farming community where she grew up, she thinks she's outgrown her three brothers, who were once her entire world. But Kate can't seem to...

Our Missing Hearts  is the third novel by the American author  Celeste Ng . It was published in 2022 by  Penguin Press . The novel follows Noah Gardner (known as Bird) on a bus trip from  Cambridge, Massachusetts , where he lives with his father, to New York City in search for his mother. The novel takes place in a dystopian future under PACT (The Preserving American Culture and Traditions Act)

Rachel Sargeant is the author of  The Roommates ,  The Good Teacher , and The Perfect Neighbours . She also writes the Gloucestershire Crime Series, which includes Her Deadly Friend and Her Charming Man . She won Writing Magazine’s Crime Short Story competition and has been shortlisted in various competitions including the Bristol Short Story Prize. Her stories have appeared in My Weekly and the S...

Shortlisted for the Wilbur & Niso Smith Adventure Prize for Fiction - could this be the winner? An extraordinary tale of family, scarifice and our never-ceasing battle with the past, Vardiashvili's mesmerising and unique novel about a boy looking for his father who's returned to his native Georgia for the first time since the war blends gripping mystery with questions about how we remember and...

Athena Liu is a literary darling. June Hayward is literally nobody. But when June just happens to witness Athena die in a freak accident, she realises now is her chance to find fame. So what if that means stealing her friend’s work? So what if that means creating a new, racially ambiguous identity? So what if a social media scandal is about to blow her cover? As her lies mount up and threaten her...

Is your ability to focus and pay attention in free fall? You are not alone. The average office worker now focuses on any one task for just three minutes. But it’s not your fault. Your attention didn’t collapse. It has been stolen. Internationally bestselling author Johann Hari shows twelve deep factors harming our focus. Once we understand them, together, we can take back our minds.