Easter holidays are here and we have a great range of activities for children and young people in the Birmingham area. We have author talks, art classes with illustrators, craft activities, learning days and even an Easter Egg Hunt!
Find out more details at here: APRIL EVENTS
And if you are looking for Spring reads to keep yourselves sane during the Easter holidays, we have a great list of books for you to choose from:
CLARE KEEGAN
Small Things Like These
(Faber and Faber)
1957, the suburbs of South East London. Jean Swinney is a journalist on a local paper, trapped in a life of duty and disappointment from which there is no likelihood of escape. This is the second month I have highlighted this book I love so much.
When a young woman, Gretchen Tilbury, contacts the paper to claim that her daughter is the result of a virgin birth, it is down to Jean to discover whether she is a miracle or a fraud.
As the investigation turns her quiet life inside out, Jean is suddenly given an unexpected chance at friendship, love and - possibly - happiness.
But there will, inevitably, be a price to pay.
Order from Bear Books at Bookshop online here⇒
JACQUELINE CROOKS
Fire Rush
(Vintage Press)
Yamaye lives for the weekend, when she can go raving with her friends at The Crypt, an underground club in the industrial town on the outskirts of London where she was born and raised. A young woman unsure of her future, the sound is her guide - a chance to discover who she really is in the rhythms of those smoke-filled nights. In the dance-hall darkness, dub is the music of her soul, her friendships, her ancestry.
But everything changes when she meets Moose, the man she falls deeply in love with, and who offers her the chance of freedom and escape.
When their relationship is brutally cut short, Yamaye goes on a dramatic journey of transformation that takes her first to Bristol - where she is caught up in a criminal gang and the police riots sweeping the country - and then to Jamaica, where past and present collide with explosive consequences.
Order from Bear Books at Bookshop online here⇒
DOIREANN NI GHRIOFA
A Ghost in the Throat
(Tramp Press)
A true original. In this stunningly unusual prose debut, Doireann Ni Ghriofa sculpts essay and autofiction to explore inner life and the deep connection felt between two writers centuries apart. In the 1700s, an Irish noblewoman, on discovering her husband has been murdered, drinks handfuls of his blood and composes an extraordinary poem. In the present day, a young mother narrowly avoids tragedy. On encountering the poem, she becomes obsessed with its parallels with her own life, and sets out to track down the rest of the story. A devastating and timeless tale about one woman freeing her voice by reaching into the past and finding another's.
Order from Bear Books at Bookshop online here⇒
SEBASTIAN BARRY
Old God’s Time
(Faber and Raber)
Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children.
But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.
A beautiful, haunting novel, in which nothing is quite as it seems, Old God's Time is about what we live through, what we live with, and what may survive of us.
Order from Bear Books at Bookshop online here⇒
ISABELLE SCHULER
Macbethad
(Bloomsbury)
Power. History. Love. Hate. Vengeance. She will be Queen. Whatever it takes...
Daughter of an ousted king. Descendant of powerful druids. Destined to take her place in history.
As a child, Gruoch’s grandmother prophecies that she will one day be Queen of Alba and reclaim the lands of her Pictish kin. When, many years later, she is betrothed to Duncan, the heir-elect, the prophecy appears to come true. Determined to never to be as powerless as her parents, Gruoch leaves behind her home, her family and her friend MacBethad, and travels to the royal seat at Scone to seal her fate.
But when a deadly turn of events forces Gruoch to flee Duncan and the capital, Gruoch finds herself at the mercy of an old enemy.
Her hope of becoming Queen all but lost, Gruoch does what she must to survive, until she is given a choice: live a long, peaceful life but fall into obscurity, or seize her chance for vengeance and a path back to the throne.
An unputdownable, sweeping historical epic, Lady MacBethad reimagines the life of Gruoch – the real life Scottish Queen who inspired one of Shakespeare's most famous characters.
Order from Bear Books at Bookshop online here⇒
Essential Information
The Bear Bookshop is at 588 Bearwood Road.
The Bear Bookshop website is here
