Upcoming Discussions
The books listed below are scheduled to be discussed at the group. We're always keen to see new faces so if any of the titles take your fancy please feel free to come along.
Crossroads of Ravens (Andrzej Sapkowski)
30 September 2026 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Before he was the White Wolf or the Butcher of Blaviken, Geralt of Rivia was simply a fresh graduate of Kaer Morhen, stepping into a world that neither understands nor welcomes his kind.
And when an act of naïve heroism goes gravely wrong, Geralt is only saved from the noose by Preston Holt, a grizzled witcher with a buried past and an agenda of his own.
Under Holt's guiding hand, Geralt begins to learn what it truly means to walk the Path - to protect a world that fears him, and to survive in it on his own terms. But as the line between right and wrong begins to blur, Geralt must decide to become the monster everyone expects, or something else entirely.
This is the story of how legends are made - and what they cost.
Circe (Madeline Miller)
28 October 2026 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. Circe is a strange child - not powerful and terrible, like her father, nor gorgeous and mercenary like her mother. Scorned and rejected, Circe grows up in the shadows, at home in neither the world of gods or mortals. But Circe has a dark power of her own: witchcraft. When her gift threatens the gods, she is banished to the island of Aiaia where she hones her occult craft, casting spells, gathering strange herbs and taming wild beasts. Yet a woman who stands alone will never be left in peace for long - and among her island's guests is an unexpected visitor: the mortal Odysseus, for whom Circe will risk everything.
A Voyage to Arcturus (David Lindsay)
25 November 2026 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
A Voyage to Arcturus is a remarkable work of science fiction that has inspired, mesmerised, and unnerved readers for decades. It is an epic voyage over one of the strangest and most beautifully imagined alien planets ever imagined, a profoundly affecting exploration of the philosophical centre of the cosmos, and a startlingly personal adventure into what makes us human and special.
A guy from Earth named Maskull wakes up alone and burned by the suns of the double star Arcturus on the planet Tormance after an odd intergalactic adventure. As he travels north, led by a drumbeat, he encounters a world and its people unlike any other, where gender is a victory won at great cost, where landscape and emotion are drawn into a cursed dance, where heroes are killed, reborn, and renamed, and where the cosmological lures of Shaping, who may be God, torment Maskull in his incredible journey. A terrible secret and an astonishing surprise are waiting for him at the end of his difficult and more mysterious quest.
Gnomon (Nick Harkaway)
27 January 2027 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Near-future Britain is a state in which citizens are constantly observed and democracy has reached a pinnacle of 'transparency.' Every action is seen, every word is recorded and the System has access to thoughts and memories.
When suspected dissident Diana Hunter dies in custody, it marks the first time a citizen has been killed during an interrogation. Mielikki Neith, a trusted state inspector, is assigned to find out what went wrong. Immersing herself in neural recordings of the interrogation, what she finds isn't Hunter but rather a panorama of characters within Hunter's psyche.
Embedded in the memories of these impossible lives lies a code which Neith must decipher to find out what Hunter is hiding. The staggering consequences of what she finds will reverberate throughout the world.
Snake-Eater (T. Kingfisher)
24 February 2027 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
With only a few dollars to her name and her beloved dog Copper by her side, Selena flees her past in the city to claim her late aunt’s house in the desert town of Quartz Creek.
Selena loves the strange beauty of the desert. But the people of Quartz Creek share their town with others, old gods and spirits whose claim to the land long predates their human neighbors. When Selena’s search for answers leads her to her late aunt’s journal, she discovers a sinister truth about her new home: it’s the ground of an ancient god known simply as “Snake-Eater”, to whom it seems Aunt Amelia owed a debt.
Snake-Eater has taken a sinister liking to Selena. And now that she’s the owner of his home, he’s hell-bent on collecting everything he was promised.
Blindsight (Peter Watts)
31 March 2027 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Two months since the stars fell...
Two months of silence, while a world held its breath.
Now some half-derelict space probe, sparking fitfully past Neptune's orbit, hears a whisper from the edge of the solar system: a faint signal sweeping the cosmos like a lighthouse beam. Whatever's out there isn't talking to us. It's talking to some distant star, perhaps. Or perhaps to something closer, something en route.
So who do you send to force introductions with unknown and unknowable alien intellect that doesn't wish to be met?
You send a linguist with multiple personalities, her brain surgically partitioned into separate, sentient processing cores. You send a biologist so radically interfaced with machinery that he sees x-rays and tastes ultrasound. You send a pacifist warrior in the faint hope she won't be needed. You send a monster to command them all, an extinct hominid predator once called vampire, recalled from the grave with the voodoo of recombinant genetics and the blood of sociopaths. And you send a synthesist—an informational topologist with half his mind gone—as an interface between here and there.
Pray they can be trusted with the fate of a world. They may be more alien than the thing they've been sent to find.
The Women Could Fly (Megan Giddings)
28 April 2027 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Josephine Thomas has heard every conceivable theory about her mother's disappearance. That she was kidnapped. Murdered. That she took on a new identity to start a new family. That she was a witch. This is the most worrying charge because in a world where witches are real, peculiar behaviour raises suspicions and a woman - especially a Black woman - can find herself on trial for witchcraft.
Finally ready to let go of the past, Jo’s future is in doubt. The State mandates that all women marry by the age of 30 - or forfeit their autonomy by registering to be monitored. At 28, Jo is ambivalent about marriage, feeling she has never understood her mother more. When offered the opportunity to honour one last request from her mother's will, Jo leaves her regular life to feel connected to her one last time.
Circular Motion (Alex Foster)
26 May 2027 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
The acceleration of Earth's spin begins gradually. At first, days are just a few seconds shorter than normal. Awareness of the mysterious phenomenon hasn't reached Tanner, a young man who flees his Alaskan hometown to work at CWC, a corporation which runs a network of massive aircraft that orbit the Earth, allowing people to visit Paris for an evening or order sushi from Japan. But a wave of social unrest presents challenges for CWC.
That unrest sweeps up Winnie. A high school outcast, she falls in with a group of teen activists who blame the company for the planet's acceleration. As days on Earth quicken to twenty-three hours, then twenty, the sun rising and setting ever faster, causing violent storms and political meltdowns, Tanner and Winnie's stories spiral closer together.
Three-hour days. Two-hour days . . .
The Heart of the Nhaga (Lee Young-do)
30 June 2027 19:00
iCafe (72 Ingram Street, Glasgow, G1 1EX)
Three handles one.
The world is divided by the Line of Limit. To the north are the Tokkebifire people able to manipulate flames as both weapons and illusions; Rekon – giant birdmen with immense strength and warrior acumen; and the humans – as divided as the other races are unified. To the south are the Nhaga – a reptilian people who relinquish their hearts for immortality. For centuries, the races didn’t cross that line, but change is in the air. A Nhaga is being sent North…and a trio is being dispatched to make sure this agent from the South makes it out alive – one from each race.
But the illusion of a simple journey is quickly dispelled by the fact that the Tokkebi is merely a scholar, not an adventurer; the Rekon is deathly afraid of water; and the human hunts and eats Nhaga. And when the Nhaga they’re supposed to be escorting out of the Kiboren forest is murdered, the one sent in his place turns out to very much have a heart – meaning he’s quite vulnerable to the dangerous exodus.
The four must quickly forge an alliance and shed the distrust and prejudice that plagues them if they are to survive. And just as crucial, they must figure out what this mission is actually about, because unbeknownst to them, the very fate of the world might rest on this one Nhaga making it to the North intact.