Penmaenmawr and District u3a

A fictional journey of the Joads, a family of sharecroppers from Sallisaw, Oklahoma, forced to migrate west during the Dust Bowl. The Joads join thousands of other migrants on the trek to the Salinas Valley of California, a place they idealize as rich with opportunity. The main idea is that injustice exists in various forms… Read more

When the Bow Street constables unearth the identity of a dead woman they cease to care entirely. However, Caro has motives of her own for wanting justice done, so sets out to solve the crime herself, enlisting the help of the thief- taker Peregrine Child. Read more

In 1974, two teenagers, from opposite sides of a divided Cyprus, meet at a tavern in the city they both call home. The tavern is the only place that Kostas, who is Greek, and Defne who is Turkish, can meet in secret, hidden beneath the leaves of a fig tree growing through the roof of… Read more

This is the story of an old English manor house by the sea, with crumbling chimneys, draping ivy and a library full of dusty hardbacks. It's the story of the three children who grow up there, and the adventures they create for themselves while the grown-ups entertain endless party guests. Read more

When a newborn baby dies after a routine hospital procedure, there is no doubt about who will be held responsible: the nurse who had been banned from looking after him by his father. What the nurse, her lawyer and the father of the child cannot know is how this death will irrevocably change all of… Read more

Tom Lake is a meditation on youthful love, married love, and the lives parents have led before their children were born. Both hopeful and elegiac, it explores what it means to be happy even when the world is falling apart. Read more

One year after her husband’s death Emma has become a wallflower, hiding among the brighter blooms in the florist where she works.But when a colleague invites her to a talk on the Titanic, she begins a quest to uncover who arranged the flowers on board.As Emma discovers the lost story of the girl and the… Read more

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. The black sign, painted in white letters that hangs upon the gates, reads: Opens at Nightfall, Closes at Dawn. Read more

Based on the historical incident of an unspeakable massacre at the site of Sant'Anna Di Stazzema, a small village in Tuscany, and on the experiences of the famed Buffalo soldiers from the 92nd Division in Italy during World War II, Read more

This story of grief, community, friendship and the restorative power of books, is charming, witty and thoroughly absorbing from first page to last. Gertie is the very best of heroines: feisty and compassionate. I adored following her and Lyons' cast of colourfully drawn characters through the desperate landscape of the Second World War to the… Read more