Farrells Book Club is being extended by popular demand! After a very successful first half of 2024, we are thrilled to announce more in store Book Club sessions in September, October & November 2024.

Our Book Clubs will focus on new release fiction, with a few different session times available each month.

Participation in a session is $45 per month, with each month needing to be booked separately.  Each session includes:

  • copy of the new release book
  • moderated discussion
  • drink on arrival, light refreshments (evening sessions) or takeaway coffee / tea, biscuits (daytime sessions)
    (Please note: as drink orders for the day sessions will be taken at the start of each session to be prepared at a local café, late-arriving participants will not be included.  BYO reusable cups encouraged!)

Places in each session are limited. A participant may only attend one session per month.

Books will be made available well in advance of session dates to ensure plenty of reading time. Once booked, we will make contact with participants with full information and timing.

We have selected three very different books for a varied experience across the three months for those who wish to attend across the year.

Bookings for all sessions are open and fill on a first come, first served basis.  A waitlist function will activate on the booking link if all sessions sell out.

We can’t wait to welcome everyone for some great discussions and extension of our reading experience.

SEPTEMBER: Highway 13 (Fiona McFarlane) (release date 30 July)
Joy Moody is Out of Time by Kerryn Mayne ISBN:9781761343285

From the acclaimed author of The Sun Walks Down and The Night Guest comes a captivating account of loss and fear, and their extended echoes in individual lives.

In 1998, an apparently ordinary Australian man is arrested and charged with a series of brutal murders of backpackers along a highway. The news shocks the nation, bringing both horror and resolution to the victims’ families, but its impact travels even further – into the past, as the murders rewrite personal histories, and into the future, as true crime podcasts and biopics tell the story of the crimes.

Highway 13 takes murder as its starting point, but it unfolds to encompass much more: through the investigation of the aftermath of this violence across time and place, from the killer’s home town in country Australia to the tropical Far North, and to Texas and Rome, McFarlane presents an unforgettable, entrancing exploration of the way stories are told and spread, and at what cost.

Book Club Session Times:
  • Tuesday 17 September 6pm – 7pm
  • Friday 20 September 10:30am – 11:30am 

 

OCTOBER: Mina’s Matchbox (Yoko Ogawa) (release date 13 August)
Joy Moody is Out of Time by Kerryn Mayne ISBN:9781761343285

A story of friendship and family secrets in 1970s Japan, from the prizewinning author of The Memory Police.

“On sleepless nights, I open the matchbox and reread the story of the girl who gathered shooting stars.”

After the death of her father, twelve-year-old Tomoko is sent to live for a year with her uncle in the coastal town of Ashiya. It is a year which will change her life.

The 1970s are bringing changes to Japan and her uncle’s magnificent colonial mansion opens up a new and unfamiliar world for Tomoko; its sprawling gardens are even home to a pygmy hippo the family keeps as a pet. Tomoko finds her relatives equally exotic and beguiling and her growing friendship with her cousin Mina draws her into an intoxicating world full of secret crushes and elaborate storytelling.

Rich with the magic and mystery of youth, Mina’s Matchbox is an evocative snapshot of a moment frozen in time, and a striking depiction of a family on the edge of collapse.

Book Club Session Times:
  • Saturday 19 October 3pm – 4pm
  • Tuesday 22 October 6pm – 7pm
  • Friday 25 October 10:30am – 11:30am

 

NOVEMBER: The Life Impossible (Matt Haig) (release date 3 September)
Joy Moody is Out of Time by Kerryn Mayne ISBN:9781761343285

The remarkable new novel from the author of the multimillion-selling international sensation The Midnight Library.

‘What looks like magic is simply a part of life we don’t understand yet . . .’

When retired Maths teacher Grace Winters is left a run-down house on a Mediterranean island by a long-lost friend, curiosity gets the better of her. She arrives in Ibiza with a one-way ticket, no guidebook and no plan.

Among the rugged hills and golden beaches of the Balearics Grace searches for answers about her friend’s life, and how it ended. What she uncovers is stranger than she could have dreamed. But to dive into this impossible truth, Grace must first come to terms with her past.

Filled with wonder and wild adventure, this is a story of hope and the life-changing power of a new beginning.

Book Club Session Times:
  • Tuesday 12 November 6pm – 7pm
  • Friday 15 November 10.30 am -11.30am