Book Club Day UK (11 September 2026) will be a day that celebrates the joy, connection and impact of shared reading, while supporting more people to start or join book clubs in their communities.
For 2026, we are inviting people to be a reading rebel and join a book club, make their book clubs more visible or invite someone new to join their club in September.
We’re also encouraging book clubs to show their books to the world and share what they are reading. But, what makes a great book club read? To spark some ideas, we asked the team at Graffeg Books to share their picks for book clubs.
About Graffeg Books
Graffeg Books is a Wales-based independent publisher creating illustrated non-fiction and children’s books in English and Welsh. Every title is carefully edited, beautifully designed and produced in-house by their experienced team. Graffeg books have won awards for their book content and design, receiving critical acclaim in press and media, including the British Books Award 2026.
Graffeg’s Book Club Picks
Graffeg has chosen Sentinel of the Sun by Eira Morgan-Jones, An Unlikely Photographer by David Wilson and Academy of Barmy Composers: Romantic by Mark Llewelyn Evans, illustrated by Karl Davies.
Sentinel of the Sun
ISBN 9781917467506
Age range: 14+
Content warning: This book contains some violent scenes and scenes of a sexual nature
Author biography:
Curently working as Digital Content and Marketing Manager for NHS Hampshire and Isle of Wight, Eira Morgan-Jones has previously published three children’s books: Tales from Cardinham Woods, A Christmas Tale from Cardinham Woods and Ella and the Beast. She has also worked as the ghost-writer of a regular doctor’s column for the Basingstoke Gazette. Eira has a Bachelors Degree in English Literature from the University of Glamorgan and a Masters Degree in Professional Writing from Falmouth University. Eira is based in Southampton.
Synopsis:
The tidal wave that destroys Alexis’s home sends her into hiding in the wilderness – the latest in a long series of natural disasters shaking her world. Unsettling events are occurring in the distant capital and a mysterious stranger has arrived in Alexis’s shattered valley. Beings older than civilisation and as powerful as the forces of nature are gathering, trying to set right the disruption to the balance of the Earth. If Alexis is to survive the wild she must uncover the truth of her own place in it, even if it costs her her life… and maybe not for the first time.
Further links/ resources:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2HYkeU7ut8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwpq-Th-SJA
An Unlikely Photographer
ISBN 9781913134815
Age range: 16+
Content warning: Contains themes of depression and mental health as well as scenes involving a serious traffic accident.
Author biography:
David Wilson is among Wales’s most established photographers, well known for his black and white images that uniquely evoke the character and atmosphere of the nation’s landscapes. His work with Graffeg includes the photographic studies Pembrokeshire and Wales: A Photographer’s Journey, Hinterland: Ceredigion Landscapes, The Village and A Year in Pembrokeshire, with broadcaster Jamie Owen.
Synopsis:
An Unlikely Photographer is an autobiographical account of David Wilson’s journey from near death and a life-changing injury to a vision which has uniquely captured the character of Wales’s landscapes through his lens. Acclaimed for his striking black and white images of the nation’s wildness and natural beauty, David Wilson’s remarkable body of photographic work was almost never realised.
His passion for the medium began in and was shaped by his native Pembrokeshire, with many adventures undertaken in his youth with a 35mm Canon and an Ordnance Survey map.
At the age of eighteen, though, a motorbike accident came close to costing him his life, and left him changed for ever. Emotively told and with searing honesty, An Unlikely Photographer recounts David’s journey from that defining incident, to his eventual coming to terms with an incomplete recovery, finding love and becoming one of Wales’s finest photographers.
Further links/ resources:
https://www.itv.com/walesprogrammes/articles/face-to-face-david-wilson
Academy of Barmy Composers: Romantic
ISBN 9781917467841
Age range: 7-12
Author biography:
Mark Llewelyn Evans is the founder and creative director of ABC of Opera Productions, which tours UK-wide introducing children to the stories and glories of the opera through music and storytelling. Mark is a professional opera singer who has sung the principal baritone roles for many of the opera houses and lives in Llantrisant, Wales.
Mark was the winner of the Amati Guildhall Creative Entrepreneurs’ Award 2019. Find out more and watch his showreel at www.markllewelynevans.co.uk.
Illustrator biography:
Karl Davies is an exciting new children’s book illustrator whose work brings the cast and characters of the ABC of Opera vividly to life. Karl is a landscape artist and lives in Pontypridd, Wales.
Synopsis:
Jack and Megan meet a new neighbour in town who offers them some gingerbread, but this meeting turns sinister when the neighbour turns out to be a witch who is trying to send them both to Valhalla!
But, Jack and Megan soon realise the witch is sending them on a great quest to save the legendary Romantic composer, Wagner, from the Ring of Fire in Valhalla. Will Jack and Megan get to Valhalla and save Wagner? And if they make it there, will they be able to make it back home? On the way they are helped by many of the eras famous composers including Humperdinck, Verdi, Bizet, Tchaikovsky and Puccini.
Find out more
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