Five Leaves events are suspended from Wednesday 18th March until further notice due to the coronavirus / Covid-19 outbreak. Join our mailing list for updates.

“In the autumn of 1929, a child was kidnapped from a Lincolnshire beach. Five days went by before she was found in a nearby village. The child remembered nothing of these events and nobody ever spoke of them at home. It was another fifty years before she even learned of the kidnap.

The child became an artist and had a daughter, art writer Laura Cumming. Cumming grew up enthralled by her mother’s strange tales of life in a seaside hamlet of the 1930s. So many puzzles remained to be solved. Cumming began with a few criss-crossing lives in this fraction of English coast – the postman, the grocer, the elusive baker – but her search spread right out across the globe as she discovered just how many lives were affected by what happened that day on the beach – including her own.”

On Chapel Sands is in hardback but is published in paperback at the start of April

Five Leaves Book Group is open, so come as often as you like – once, sometimes, every time. There’s a short introduction to the book, followed by a discussion. You can source the book wherever you like, but in the lead up to the meeting we offer 15% discount on the title in question. All we ask is that you read the book in advance and be prepared to discuss it.

Our book groups are always free and refreshments are provided. Do let us know you are coming on events@fiveleaves.co.uk