What Makes A Good Bookgroup Book? IBW event with Kate Clanchy and Louise Millar

What makes a good bookclub book? Is it a chance to read an author you wouldn’t have otherwise discovered? To provoke or to entertain? To divide opinion – or help to unite it?

On Wednesday 25 June at 7.30pm – as part of celebrations for Independent Booksellers Week – we’ve invited two dynamic, and very different, authors to Mostly Books to help us find out.

Louise Millar writes psychological thrillers, and Kate Clanchy is a poet and Costa-shortlisted author. Together they are going to debate the qualities that make a book that gets book-groups talking.

Louise Millar has published three novels and is making a name for herself as a writer who puts her characters in almost unbelievable situations – but also ones we can all imagine happening to us.

She began her journalism career in mainly music and film magazines, working as a sub-editor for Kerrang!, Smash Hits, the NME and Empire. She later moved into features, working as a commissioning editor at Marie Claire. Her books ‘The Playdate’ and ‘Accidents Happen’ have won huge critical acclaim for her combination of family drama and slow-building psychological suspense.

Her latest novel 'The Hidden Girl' is another taut, psychological thriller in which wife Hannah Riley and her musician husband move to Suffolk, and an idyllic life threatens to unravel - but are the increasingly sinister events Hannah is witnessing simply in her head?

Kate Clanchy was born and grew up in Scotland and now lives in Oxford. Her poetry collections have brought her many literary awards, she is the author of the much acclaimed Antigona and Me, and was the 2009 winner of the BBC Short Story Award. She has also written extensively for Radio 4. In 2011 she was appointed as the first Oxford City Poet to encourage the reading and writing of poetry in Oxford and the region.


Her Costa-shortlisted debut novel ‘Meeting the English’ is about a group of characters living in that quintessentially English borough of Hampstead, but whose backgrounds could not be more different. It’s a richly conceived, original and very entertaining social comedy about the lies we tell to fit in.

The two authors will be debating what makes a good bookgroup book – as well as talking about their own writing.

Even if you are not a member of a bookgroup, we promise an evening of lively discussion – and a celebration of a good read in the company of two writing talents. The event takes place at Mostly Books at 7.30pm, on Wednesday 25 June. Tickets are £3, to include a glass of wine.

Places will be limited – so please email to reserve your tickets, or call in at the shop.