We hope you have enjoyed our wee foray into books to read with your coffee. This is the last for the moment, but it’s a bumper edition, so we hope you find something that grabs your attention, makes you think, helps you relax or whatever you need with your coffee this September.

The Bass Rock, by Evie Wyld

The Bass Rock has for centuries watched over the lives that pass under its shadow on the Scottish mainland. And across the centuries the fates of three women are linked: to this place, and to each other. In the early 1700s, Sarah, accused of being a witch, flees for her life. In the aftermath of the Second World War, Ruth navigates a new house, a new husband and the strange waters of the local community. Six decades later, the house stands empty. Viv, mourning the death of her father, catalogues Ruth’s belongings and discovers her place in the past – and perhaps a way forward. Each woman’s choices are circumscribed by the men in their lives. But in sisterhood there is the hope of survival and new life…

I want to read this book

The perfect Coffee Companion for “The Bass Rock” is Chef’s Roast

The Reading List, by Sara Nisha Adams

Widower Mukesh lives a quiet life. He shops every Wednesday, goes to Temple, and worries about his disinterested granddaughter, Priya, who tucks herself away reading whilst he watches David Attenborough. Aleisha is working at the local library for the summer when she discovers a crumpled-up piece of paper in the back of To Kill A Mockingbird. This mysterious paper has a list of books that she’s never heard of before – let alone read. In turn, each story on the reading list gives up its magic, transporting Aleisha away from the painful realities she’s facing at home. And when Mukesh arrives at the library, desperate to forge a connection with his bookworm of a granddaughter, Aleisha discovers that the reading list will be a lifeline for him too. And so begins a new chapter between two lonely souls, who’ll learn that fiction can teach them a whole lot about real life…

I want to read this book!

To accompany “The Reading List” we’d recommend the Sumatra

The Noise, by James Patterson

Young sisters, Sophie and Tennant Riggin, are the only two people to withstand a massive explosion that destroys their community, located in the shadow of Oregon’s Mt. Hood. A team of elite government investigators are sent to research the fallout and the girls – why did only they survive? – but with conflicting objectives. For Dr Martha Chan, a psychologist who analyses large-scale medical emergencies: study them. For Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Fraser, a career military leader with an inherent mistrust of civilians: contain them. But as the disturbance replicates across the Pacific Northwest, it threatens to topple the chain of command. Dr Chan and Lieutenant Colonel Fraser are caught between the perpetrators of the threat – and those who have the power to resist.

I want to read this book

The perfect coffee companion for “The Noise” is the India Monsoon Malabar

The Overstory, by Richard Powers

The Overstory unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. An Air Force loadmaster in the Vietnam War is shot out of the sky, then saved by falling into a banyan. An artist inherits a hundred years of photographic portraits, all of the same doomed American chestnut. A hard-partying undergraduate in the late 1980s electrocutes herself, dies and is sent back into life by creatures of air and light. A hearing- and speech-impaired scientist discovers that trees are communicating with one another. These four, and five other strangers – each summoned in different ways by trees – are brought together in a last and violent stand to save the continent’s few remaining acres of virgin forest. There is a world alongside ours – vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

I want to read this book!

The perfect coffee companion for “The Overstory”: we’d go for the unmistable Ethiopian Yirgacheffe

Born to Be Mild, by Rob Temple

By the time Rob Temple hit his thirties, he had become so afraid of the world that he couldn’t leave the house. Depressed and anxious, he found himself drifting deeper into solitude. So Rob decided to make a plan – to embark on fifty ‘mild’ adventures, to be a little less Pooh Bear and a little more Bear Grylls. On a gentle journey that takes him beekeeping, bowling, and to a service station just off the M25, Rob starts to settle on a better balance – and soon discovers the joys of a life well lived. In this raw and honest memoir, Rob shares his year of gentle adventure and the lessons learnt along the way. Quiet and comforting, with a generous helping of British humour, Born to be Mild is a guide to living life unencumbered by mental illness, and a reminder to slow down and embrace your mild side.

I want to read this book

The perfect coffee companion for “Born to be Mild”: has to be the lighter roasted Brazil Yellow Bourbon

Epic Expeditions, by Ed Stafford

Explorer and survival expert, Ed Stafford captures the spirit of adventure in 25 of the greatest expeditions of all time. From 1864-2018, intrepid explorers blazed a trail with round-the-world records, the ascent of Everest, crossing the Australian desert by camel and kayaking the North Atlantic Ocean. They conquered mountains, deserts, jungles and seas venturing into the most remote and inhospitable climes on the planet. Peeking inside each kit bag (including his own), Ed Stafford reveals how the great explorers achieved their awe-inspiring missions to find out more about our world, and how the equipment they carried with them determined the success or failure of their expedition. Ed Stafford is a British explorer and the face of survival on the Discovery Channel. He holds the Guinness World Record for being the first person ever to walk the length of the Amazon River.

I want to read this book!

E£pic Coffee for “Epic Expeditions” the mighty Highland Roast

We hope you found some reads which piqued your literary taste buds over the past few months.