Book description
Within the severe and depressed slums of Drumsagart, rife with unemployment and discontent, the members of Thistle cling to their game as an escape. And when they actually start winning, a momentum grows up in the community around them, as they come to represent ambition and hope. The Holy Grail…
- Coming soon!
Why read it?
1 author picked The Thistle and the Grail as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
This novel gets to the heart of football’s importance to communities, in this case a small Scottish industrial town beset by poverty and unemployment in the 1950s.
In this comic novel Jenkins writes simply but evocatively about football, about its emotion, and its beauty.
But perhaps more importantly, his writing focuses on the town’s people and their relationships, with each other and with the town’s Junior football team as they dream of winning the Scottish Junior Cup.
While it would be unwise to overly romanticize how football was in the past, at the same time looking back does make you…
From Stephen's list on football as a game, as business, and as community.
If you love The Thistle and the Grail...
Aggressor
It is April 1st, 2038. Day 60 of China's blockade of the rebel island of Taiwan.
The US government has agreed to provide Taiwan with a weapons system so advanced that it can disrupt the balance of power in the region. But what pilot would be crazy enough to run…
Want books like The Thistle and the Grail?
Our community of 13,000+ authors has personally recommended 86 books like The Thistle and the Grail.
Share your top 3 reads of 2025!
And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.
1,397
readers submitted
so far, will you?
📚 If you like The Thistle and the Grail, you might also like...
The Tao of Poison
A poisonous maiden, a Daoist sex cult, and a violent insurgency.
The polyandrous Yan family in China's rural Shaanxi Province takes in two carpenter brothers. When one brother is convicted of murder after killing their neighbor in a dispute, a constable threatens to expose the family's rumored polyandry and extorts…
Draakensky
A wind sorcerer. A dark spirit. An unsolved murder.
On the haunted Draakensky Windmill Estate, sketch artist Charlotte Knight arrives to live on the property, hired to illustrate the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke—a bright and lucrative opportunity to boost her struggling art career.
She meets the reclusive spinster Jaa…
