Get On Board
08
Brand new clubs that offered teenage boys the opportunity to meet celebrities, win prizes and enjoy many activities!
Reading Communities
The towns of Barry and Llanelli organised a whole host of book-based events over the summer and autumn!
Click here for more details of the 2008 Reading Communities.
Give a Book Week
Celebrities and members of the public throughout Wales gave each other books as gifts during this special week in July!
Click here to take a peek at the week's activities
Monthly Theme
April – Read all about it
English Adult
Mud Puppy
Erica Wooff's debut novel brilliantly juxtaposes the normal and the surreal. Witty, unpredictable and contemporary, it embraces science, suicide, art, neurosis and newts! As well as heralding a major talent, it puts Newport on the literary map.
Resistance
A novel set in an imagined 1944 in which Russia fell and the D-day landings were unsuccessful. Half of Britain is occupied. A young farmer's wife, Sarah Lewis wakes to find her husband has disappeared along with all the men in the valley. A mysterious German patrol arrives in the area, and Sarah begins a faltering acquaintance with one of the officers, who reveals their mission.
The Element of Water
A tender love story exploring the essence of racial identity as the cruelty of World War II is resurrected when the hero and heroine come to terms with the reality of the hidden past of their Nazi fathers.
Mr Cassini
Mr Cassini is a remarkable follow-up to Mr Vogel. This Welsh Arabian Nights takes the reader on a journey through the present and past of Wales, on an exploration of the sometimes painful, sometimes humorous, reality and dreams of the main characters. Wales Book of the Year 2007.
Martha, Jack & Shanco
An English version of Martha, Jac a Sianco. A powerful novel by a talented young writer relating the story of two elderly brothers and their sister who are held captive by family circumstances and by a life of hardship on a farm in rural south-west Wales.
Melog
A distinctive Welsh novel, fluently translated, which tells the tale of two characters: Melog says he is an exile from Laxaria, a country colonised by Sacria, which has destroyed all Laxarian books. He is found by Dr Jones. Drawing on themes like non-communication and oppression, a tender story of friendship is developed, alongside a satire on people's intentions and purposes.
Shifts
An edition of a classic post-industrial novel, published with a new afterword by Richard Poole. The novel charts the lives of four closely bound characters, against the background of a declining steelworks.
The Land as Viewed from the Sea
An atmospheric novel portraying the illusory nature of love while relating the story of a complex love affair that did not survive. Short-listed for the 2004 Whitbread First Novel Award.
Fresh Apples
Eleven wry and defiant stories on the power and transience of youth. This is Rachel Trezise's first short fiction collection. Her novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl won the Orange Futures award. Her stories and features on rock bands, writing and the arts have appeared widely in publications and anthologies, including The Big Issue, New Welsh Review and Urban Welsh.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being in Aberystwyth
A black comedy set in a fictional Aberystwyth portraying the further adventures of modern-day private detective Louie Knight as he investigates a murder that took place a century earlier and the disturbing disappearance of his girlfriend. A sequel to Aberystwyth Mon Amour and Last Tango in Aberystwyth.
The Welsh Girl
From the acclaimed writer Peter Ho Davies comes an engrossing wartime love story set in the stunning landscape of north Wales during the final, harrowing months of World War II.
Work, Sex & Rugby
A novel recording four days in the life of a young man in a valley town in south Wales. It is an odyssey through pubs, bedrooms and building sites. It is a bitterly intelligent and gruesomely funny journey.
