6 of our favourite author cameos in films – did you spot them?

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Features

The Calamity Club

It’s been over a year since Meg’s beloved mother failed to come home one Christmas eve. Since then the eleven-year-old has been one of the unadoptable ‘big’ girls at The Orphan in Oxford Mississippi. There, in the face of the inexplicable disdain of Miss Faye who runs the orphanage, she fights each day to keep her wits sharp and her spirit unbowed. 
 
When she meets Birdie, who has come to Oxford from the Mississippi Delta, on a quest to remind her socialite sister of the struggling family she conveniently left behind, for the first time in a long while it seems someone else might care about Meg’s future. 
 
But Birdie has troubles of her own. As the Depression tightens its grip, it’s clear that her frivolous sister may have built her dreams on unsteady foundations. With her banker husband worryingly absent, she drifts around his once-grand family home as her imperious mother-in-law clings to a fantasy of bygone days. 
 
When Birdie meets Charlie, a woman with nothing left to lose, their fates – and Meg’s – converge with those of a band of disreputable, determined women as they form an audacious plan to take back control of their lives. 
 
But in a place and time where hypocrisy is rife, where women’s freedom is fragile and where making an enemy can have calamitous consequences, will the price they pay for their outrageous risk-taking be too high? 
 
Bold, heartwarming and bracingly funny, The Calamity Club is an unputdownable story about the many ways female agency can be thwarted, and of those determined to take it back, no matter the cost.

Kathryn Stockett

The other side of Gone with the Wind - and just as unputdownable

Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird has changed lives. It's direct descendent The Help has the same potential . . . an astonishing feat of accomplishment

Outstanding, immensely funny, very compelling, brilliant

Daring, vitally important and very courageous, I loved and admired The Help. Fantastic

A laugh-out-loud, vociferously angry must-read

Touching, disgraceful, funny. Highly recommended

Remarkable, shocking, brave, brilliant

A compelling, great first novel, with soaring highs, poignant side stories and laugh-out-loud anecdotes. You'll be sorry to finish it

A winning story of courage and truth

An exciting and atmospheric story

A wise, poignant novel. You'll catch yourself cheering out loud

Lush, original and poignant. A wondrous novel set in the deep south told through the authentic voices of Aibileen, Minnie and Skeeter, three unforgettable women whose lives and points of view intersect vividly against a landscape of hopeful change in America. You will be swept away as they work, play and love during a time when possibilities for women were few but their dreams of the future were limitless. A glorious read.

Enter a vanished and unjust world: Jackson, Mississippi, 1962. Where black maids raise white children, but aren't trusted not to steal the silver... 
 
There's Aibileen, raising her seventeenth white child and nursing the hurt caused by her own son's tragic death; Minny, whose cooking is nearly as sassy as her tongue; and white Miss Skeeter, home from College, who wants to know why her beloved maid has disappeared. 
 
Skeeter, Aibileen and Minny. No one would believe they'd be friends; fewer still would tolerate it. But as each woman finds the courage to cross boundaries, they come to depend and rely upon one another. Each is in a search of a truth. And together they have an extraordinary story to tell...

Kathryn Stockett

Praise for The Help

The other side of Gone with the Wind - and just as unputdownable

A big, warm girlfriend of a book

Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird has changed lives. It's direct descendent The Help has the same potential . . . an astonishing feat of accomplishment

The other side of Gone with the Wind - and just as unputdownable

A big, warm girlfriend of a book

Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird has changed lives. It's direct descendent The Help has the same potential . . . an astonishing feat of accomplishment

The other side of Gone with the Wind - and just as unputdownable

A big, warm girlfriend of a book

Harper Lee's classic novel To Kill a Mockingbird has changed lives. It's direct descendent The Help has the same potential . . . an astonishing feat of accomplishment

Books by Kathryn Stockett

Articles featuring Kathryn Stockett

6 of our favourite author cameos in films – did you spot them?

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