Berk Worms 2026 - adventure novel

Welcome to our Berk Worms 🐛 book club. Each month we all aim to read the same book from a particular genre and then meet to discuss it. We also then talk about other books we are reading and sometimes exchange books with one another. All are welcome!

Our book for discussion in September is a historical adventure novel entitled Saltblood and written by Francesca De Tores. This novel was first published in 2024, winning the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. The novel runs at approximately 338 pages, depending on the edition you read. It is also available on Kindle and Audiobook.

About the novel for discussion:

In a rented room outside Plymouth in 1685, a daughter is born as her half-brother is dying. Her mother makes a decision: Mary will become Mark, and Ma will continue to collect his inheritance money.

Mary's dual existence as Mark will lead to a role as a footman in a grand house, serving a French mistress; to the navy, learning who to trust and how to navigate by the stars; and to the army and the battlegrounds of Flanders, finding love among the bloodshed and the mud. But none of this will stop Mary yearning for the sea.

Drawn back to the water, Mary must reinvent herself yet again, for a woman aboard a ship is a dangerous thing. This time Mary will become something more dangerous than a woman.

She will become a pirate and set sail with Calico Jack and Anne Bonny, defying all.

Breathing life into the Golden Age of Piracy, Saltblood is a wild adventure, a treasure trove, weaving an intoxicating tale of gender and survival, passion and loss, journeys and transformation, through the story of Mary Read, one of history's most remarkable figures.

Critical views:

‘Saltblood is exquisite. The writing is sumptuous and lyrical, the story fascinating'
LOUISE O'NEILL, author of Asking for It and Idol

'Startling, fresh and brilliant'
ANNA MAZZOLA, author of The Clockwork Girl

'A wonderful tale and so exquisitely told ... Master and Commander meets Thelma & Louise'
JAMES OSWALD, author of the 'Inspector McLean' series

'A thrilling, gender-shaking roar of a tale every reader will enjoy'
NEIL BLACKMORE, author of Radical Love

Reading Ahead:

October: we will be reading a Dystopian novel. The book we have chosen is called When There Are Wolves Again by E J Swift

November: we will be reading a Family Saga novel.
This will be selected in our September meeting.

Happy reading, 🐛Cazza