Serenity Booksellers are delighted to be welcoming international bestselling author John Ironmonger to Stockport for the launch of The Wager and the Bear – a heart-stopping tale of anger, tragedy and enduring love, cast against the long unfolding backdrop of climate catastrophe. John will be in conversation with prolific short story writer, David Hartley.

Tickets are £5.00 each or £11.99 including a copy of The Wager and the Bear. Light refreshments are included in the ticket price.

Event starts at 6:30pm (doors at 6pm)

About the book:

When young idealist Tom publicly humiliates politician Monty in a Cornish pub, it sparks a simmering feud that cascades through their intertwined lives. The consequences of their argument, and the deadly wager they strike, will cascade down the decades. Years later, they find themselves a long way from St Piran on a colossal iceberg drifting south away from Greenland, their only companion a starving polar bear. This is a heart-stopping tale of anger, tragedy, and enduring love, cast against the long unfolding backdrop of an irreversible global crisis.

‘That rarest of literary creatures – a novel about a serious subject, climate change – treated with a sure-footed lightness of touch. The premise is original, the characters engaging, the prose nimble and the story is told with dexterity. The Wager and the Bear is a book as vivid and fresh as a Cornish beach in Summer. I loved it.’ – Stephen May, award-winning novelist of ‘Life! Death! Prizes!’

About the author:

John Ironmonger was born in East Africa and is now based in Cheshire. He has a doctorate in zoology, and was once an expert on freshwater leeches. He is the author of The Good Zoo Guide and the novels The Notable Brain of Maximilian Ponder (shortlisted for the 2012 Costa First Novel Prize and the Guardian‘s Not the Booker Prize), The Coincidence Authority and The Whale at the End of the World (an international bestseller). He has also been part of a world record team for speed reading Shakespeare, has driven across the Sahara in a £100 banger, and once met Jared Diamond in a forest in the middle of Sumatra.