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Join our Summer Read-Along from 8th July – 8th August 2025!

We will read In Ascension by Martin MacInnes and discuss the book using a free app – Bookclubs. This allows anyone to take part on their own time, and also means you can connect with other readers wherever you’re based.

If you order a copy of the book by 26th June you can have it signed and dedicated by the author! Simply reply to your order confirmation email and let us know what you would like the dedication to say.

If you already have a copy of the book, you can purchase an access link ticket for 3.

Upon fulfilling your order, we will send you all the information you need to take part in the Read-Along via email. The link to join the online platform will be sent out to all participants on Monday, 7th July.

Any questions you have for the author will be passed along, and the answers shared with everyone at the end of the read-along.

About the book:

Leigh grew up in Rotterdam, drawn to the waterfront as an escape from her unhappy home life and volatile father. Enchanted by the undersea world of her childhood, she excels in marine biology, travelling the globe to study ancient organisms. When a trench is discovered in the Atlantic ocean, Leigh joins the exploration team, hoping to find evidence of the earth’s first life forms – what she instead finds calls into question everything we know about our own beginnings.

Her discovery leads Leigh to the Mojave desert and an ambitious new space agency. Drawn deeper into the agency’s work, she learns that the Atlantic trench is only one of several related phenomena from across the world, each piece linking up to suggest a pattern beyond human understanding. Leigh knows that to continue working with the agency will mean leaving behind her declining mother and her younger sister, and faces an impossible choice: to remain with her family, or to embark on a journey across the breadth of the cosmos.