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Join members of book groups from across Essex and two up and coming writers.

Joanna Glen’s The Other Half of Augusta Hope, shortlisted for 2019 Costa First Novel Award, combines sharp humour and heart-breaking sadness.  While Louise Hare will discuss her debut novel This Lovely City, a poignant, conversation-starting story set around Brixton’s Windrush community, exploring themes of race, poverty and community in post-war London society.

The Other Half of Augusta Hope

This is a story for anyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong.

Augusta Hope has never felt like she fits in. And she’s right – she doesn’t. At six, she’s memorising the dictionary. At seven, she’s correcting her teachers. At eight, she spins the globe and picks her favourite country on the sound of its name: Burundi. And now that she’s an adult, Augusta has no interest in the goings-on of the small town where she lives with her parents and her beloved twin sister, Julia. When an unspeakable tragedy upends everything in Augusta’s life, she’s propelled headfirst into the unknown. She’s determined to find where she belongs – but what if her true home, and heart, are half a world away?

This Lovely City

The drinks are flowing. The jazz is swinging. But for the city’s newest arrivals, the party can’t last.

With the Blitz over and London reeling from war, jazz musician Lawrie Matthews has answered England’s call for help. Fresh off the Empire Windrush, he’s taken a tiny room in south London lodgings, and has fallen in love with the girl next door.

Touring Soho’s music halls by night, pacing the streets as a postman by day, Lawrie has poured his heart into his new home – and it’s alive with possibility. Until, one morning, he makes a terrible discovery.
As the local community rallies, fingers of blame are pointed at those who had recently been welcomed with open arms. And, before long, the newest arrivals becomes the prime suspects in a tragedy which threatens to tear the city apart.