October Book Club: Mother Naked by Glen James Brown

For October, our booksellers were set the task of choosing a book with the theme of thriller. This was a tricky task and we debated many amazing fiction and non-fiction titles but have decided on the newly released Mother Naked by Glen James Brown.

These book clubs will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.

About the book-

The City of Durham, 1434. Out of a storm, an aging minstrel arrives at the cathedral to entertain the city’s most powerful men. Mother Naked is his name, and the story he’s come to tell is the Legend of the Fell Wraith: the gruesome ‘walking ghost’ some say slaughtered the nearby village of Segerston forty years earlier.
But is this monster only a myth, born from the dim minds of toiling peasants? Or does the Wraith – and do the murders – have roots in real events suffered by those fated to a lifetime of labour? As Mother Naked weaves the strands of the mystery – of class, religion, art, and ale – it starts to seem as though the chilling truth might be closer to his privileged audience than they could ever imagine. Taking its inspiration from a single payment entered into Durham’s Cathedral rolls, ‘Modyr Nakett’ was lowest-paid performer in over 200 years of records. Set against the traumatic shadow of the Black Death and the Peasant’s Revolt, Mother Naked speaks back from the margins in a fury of imaginative recuperation.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

1 Holywell Hill, 1 Holywell Hill, St Albans, United Kingdom