Books in the Wild: The New Bookshop

I’ve got another northern bookshop visit today – this time I’ve been to Cockermouth and The New Bookshop, which as you may be able to tell I dropped into before Halloween! It’s actually much bigger than you think from the front, which is great and it’s got a coffee shop in there too. Because it’s so big, I’ve just picked out a couple of bits to highlight today…

As you know I’m always interested to see what new boks are being highlighted in stores, so that’s where I’m starting because there are a few here I hadn’t come across at all and a few that I hadn’t seen in the wild. On the non-fiction side, there’s Terry Deary’s Revolting about notable rebellions and uprisings but alos the new Charlie Higson book about Britain’s kings and queens that’s illustrated by Jim Moir (aka Vic Reeves). They also have Julia Ioffe’s Motherland. Ioffe’s family fled the Soviet Union in 1990 and this is her look at rhe history of modern Russia through the eyes of the country’s women, and the changes in the roles of women from the Soviet era when feminism was seen as a positive and women were doctors and scientists, to today when conservative Christian values have taken over. There’s also This Way Up by the YouTubers The Map Men and Earth Shapers about geography which I think may well be in a lot of Christmas stockings (so to speak) this year.

On the fiction side I was really interested by It’s Not A Cult, which is about a band who have a cult following until they go violence after an act of violence at one of their gigs – and then suddenly they have their own cult and things start to spiral. I can’t work out if this is going to be too scary or grim for me – it’s got blurbs by Oskar Jensen who wrote Helle and Death which I liked and Natasha Pulley who I haven’t read so I’m finding it quite hard to work out where it might sit. Definitely too scary for me is Richard Armitage’s The Cut, but I can see that being in a lot of Christmas stockings too because yes it is Richard Armitage the actor who he has a lot of fans out there. This is is second book so the first clearly did well enough to get another! There’s also the fiction Terry Deary – a murder mystery and is the new Hercule Poirot continuation, as mentioned the other week.

I also love a staff recommendation section – particularly when it’s one that’s got things I haven’t spotted before on it. I’ve got a remarkably low hit rate on having read any of these – the only one I’ve read is Yellowface, but I do have The Bells of Westminster on the pile and I think mum has read Small Pleasures. We Were Girls Once looks really interesting – about three women who’s families have been friends since their grandmothers met on a bus in Lagos in the 1940s and there’s also the new reissue of Wars of the Roses (to coincide with the remake of the movie) which I was tempted by.

And finally here’s the crime section, the other place where I spend all my reading time. It’s quite hard to tell from this picture, but I thought there was a good mix of popular series and big authors and slightly lesser spotted stuff. I hadn’t seen Murder in Moonlit Square, Death on Ice, The Betrayal of Thomas True or Dead Tired before and all of them looked interesting.

That’s your lot – have a great weekend everyone