Join us for our next Thursday book club!

We usually meet on the second Thursday of each month for a relaxed and friendly conversation about the current book.

This month we will meet on the third Thursday (16th July), returning to the second week in August (Thursday 13th).

The bookshop door will be open from 6.50pm for a 7pm start in our atmospheric upstairs space.

Our book club meetings are free to attend, and we offer a 10% discount on each month’s paperback choice.

This Month’s Book

The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson

A sharply-witted and tender portrait of a young girl’s quiet rebellion and her refusal to be broken.

Shortlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2026
Winner of the British Book Award – Discover Prize

Dark, humorous, and passionately captures the unique realities of the northern Black experience — The Observer

Set in 1960s Bradford, The Mercy Step follows Mercy, a precocious young child facing a world far too big for her small body. She lives with her Windrush generation parents in a crowded household where her mother’s attention is stretched between church and family, and her father’s temper is something to be endured or avoided.

Feeling like an outsider within her own home, Mercy retreats into books and the companionship of her beloved doll, Dolly, while learning early how to navigate the flaws and failings of the adults around her. Yet Mercy is nothing if not resilient. Armed with humour, style and fierce imagination, she quietly begins to plot her escape from a traumatic childhood.

Raw and deeply affecting, Mercy’s story is one of Black British culture, childhood, family and survival in 1960s Britain. Critical to understanding these untold stories, Marcia’s debut is not to be missed.