A Book and a Bite

The theme of this book group a simple - incontrovertibly fine books accompanied by slightly more controversial, interpretive food pairings for each selection.

For our fifth book of 2026 we will read Anthony Shapland's A Room Above a Shop, a powerful debut novel set in Wales that has been garnering a great deal of praise from browsers and booksellers alike.

You're very welcome to join us in the first Book Book and a Bite of the New Year. We will meet monthly, and there is no commitment beyond whichever meeting you decide to attend.

When two quiet men form a tentative connection neither knows where it might lead. M has inherited his family’s ironmongery business and B is younger by eleven years and can see no future in the place where he has grown up, but when M offers him a job and lodgings, he accepts. As the two men work side by side in the shop, they also begin a life together in their one shared room above - the kind of life they never imagined possible and that risks everything if their public performance were to slip. Unfolding in South Wales against the backdrop of Section 28, the age of consent debate and the HIV and AIDS crisis, this is a tender and resonant love story, and a powerful debut.