We are delighted to welcome back two favourite bestselling authors, Catherine Newman and Rachel Joyce, for a morning talking about their latest novels and the theme of family in their writing. They will be ‘in conversation’ with Alison Barrow, Director of Media Relations at their publisher Transworld.
Wreck – Catherine Newman
Rocky, Nick, Willa and Jamie. A normal loving, anxious, messy, relatable family.
Abounding with wit, crisp insight and compassion, this tender-hearted, laugh-out-loud funny novel follows one family through a rollercoaster year as they share the unpredictable, beautiful messiness of life.
Catherine Newman is the New York Times bestselling author of Sandwich and We All Want Impossible Things, which was also chosen for the Richard & Judy Book Club. She is also the author of the memoirs Catastrophic Happiness and Waiting for Birdy, and the bestselling children’s book How to be a Person. Wreck is published in hardback on 29th January 2026.
The Homemade God – Rachel Joyce
Family is everything, even when it falls apart.
There is a heatwave across Europe. Goose and his three sisters gather at the family’s house by Lake Orta in Piedmont, Italy. Their father, a famous artist, has recently remarried a much younger woman and decamped to Italy to finish his masterpiece. Now he is dead and there is no sign of a painting.
Alhough the siblings have always been close, as they search for answers over that summer, the things they learn – about themselves, their father and their new stepmother – will drive them apart before they can come to any kind of understanding of what their father’s legacy truly is.
Rachel Joyce is the author of the Sunday Times and international bestsellers The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, Perfect, The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy, Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North, The Music Shop, Miss Benson’s Beetle, and a collection of interlinked short stories, A Snow Garden & Other Stories. Published in hardback in April 2005, The Homemade God is out in paperback on 29th January 2026.
We look forward to a morning of brilliant bookish chat over coffee with Catherine, Rachel and Alison.
Reviews for Wreck
‘The kind of book that pulls up a chair, pours the wine, and dives deep… like spending hours with the friend who sees your mess and loves you more for it.’ Alison Espach, New York Times bestselling author of The Wedding People
‘Gorgeously human, tender-hearted, and delightfully funny’ Nussaibah Younis, bestselling author of Fundamentally
‘Infectiously funny and surprisingly moving, Wreck reminds us that we are each, in our way, trying to make sense of the big things with some very small tools’ Rachel Joyce, bestselling author of The Homemade God
Reviews for The Homemade God
The Homemade God is an enthralling, thought-provoking, layered novel, seamed with a delicious dark humour. And, as in all the best redemptive stories, through the rubble of grief glimmers hope, acceptance and love. Truly wonderful. – Sarah Winman, author of Still Life
Lyrical, shrewd and, ultimately, as indecently satisfying as a four course Italian lunch, The Homemade God tells of four siblings surviving an artist father none can admit is a talentless monster and how the fallout of his death obliges each to shatter and rebuild their life. My life is a little emptier now it’s over. – Patrick Gale, author of A Place Called Winter
Tickets: £10 (Admits One, £5 redeemable against a signed copy of Wreck or The Homemade God)