Each week we have a book group on Tuesdays. There are two slots: 10 am and 7 pm (GMT) and you’re very welcome to either, wherever you are in the world and however much you’d like to participate. Don’t forget to sign up here or here
Disclosure: I’ve added Amazon affiliate links to kindle editions for the US and England. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
17th May
Today, we’ll be playing some one-shot RPGs. Don’t worry if you’ve never played before – no experience necessary! All you need is a six-sided dice (and you find those on the internet!)
We’ll be playing the one shot RPG ‘Gay for the Pirate King’ (designed by Oliver Darkshire @deathbybadger) and ‘Trapped in a Cabin with Lord Byron’ (from @sotherans) thereby covering most of this group’s key interests.
24th May
This week, we’ll be reading the novella ‘Weep, Woman, Weep’ by Maria DeBlassie.
The women of Sueño, New Mexico don’t know how to live a life without sorrows. That’s La Llorona’s doing. She roams the waterways looking for the next generation of girls to baptize, filling them with more tears than any woman should have to hold. And there’s not much they can do about the Weeping Woman except to avoid walking along the riverbank at night and to try to keep their sadness in check. That’s what attracts her to them: the pain and heartache that gets passed down from one generation of women to the next.
Mercy knows this, probably better than anyone. She lost her best friend to La Llorona and almost found a watery grave herself. But she survived. Only she didn’t come back quite right and she knows La Llorona won’t be satisfied until she drags the one soul that got away back to the bottom of the river.
In a battle for her life, Mercy fights to break the chains of generational trauma and reclaim her soul free from ancestral hauntings by turning to the only things that she knows can save her: plant medicine, pulp books, and the promise of a love so strong not even La Llorona can stop it from happening. What unfolds is a stunning tale of one woman’s journey into magic, healing, and rebirth.
31st May
We enjoyed the film version of this in our film club (years ago at this point!) A widow moves into a new house by the coast, haunted by an ornery sea captain…
7th June
We’re reading the newest book from Romancing the Gothic favourite Darcie Little Badger.
Nina is a Lipan girl in our world. She’s always felt there was something more out there. She still believes in the old stories.
Oli is a cottonmouth kid, from the land of spirits and monsters. Like all cottonmouths, he’s been cast from home. He’s found a new one on the banks of the bottomless lake.
Nina and Oli have no idea the other exists. But a catastrophic event on Earth, and a strange sickness that befalls Oli’s best friend, will drive their worlds together in ways they haven’t been in centuries.
And there are some who will kill to keep them apart
7th June
Man-eating tigers and lesbians. Sold.
The cleric Chih finds themself and their companions at the mercy of a band of fierce tigers who ache with hunger. To stay alive until the mammoths can save them, Chih must unwind the intricate, layered story of the tiger and her scholar lover—a woman of courage, intelligence, and beauty—and discover how truth can survive becoming history.
14th June
This is the sequel to Cat Sebastian’s Hither Page but can be read on its own (although we do recommend the first as well!) Mystery! Disappearances! Secrets! Betrayals! Crimes! Country Houses! A central queer couple! You’ve got to love it.
Romancing the Gothic 