Category: bookshops

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Waterstones Trafalgar Square

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I was wandering slightly closer to the river this week and so have been into one of my lesser frequented Waterstones branches in Central London – Trafalgar Square,

Lets start with the main window – we’ve got some of the same suspects as last week’s post here but the prominene is different. The Heated Rivalry and Half His Age are right up the top, with the new George Sanders and the literary fiction selection below. Then at eye level we’ve got a new paperback release form last week and Waterstone’s Thriller of the Month for February (and book that’s definitely too scary for Verity) Wasp Trap and slightly below that we’ve got a good mix of popular fiction, crime and romantasy. I think it’s a bit too much something for everyone and I’d prefer something a bit more focussed/themed, but what do I know.

More new releases here – the one I picked up was Greedy (can you tell from the messy pile?) which is another too scary for me, because it’s a psychological thriller about a chef who’s in trouble with the Yakuza and takes a job as private chef for a reclusive billionaire. Slightly more in my wheelhouse is Wreck, which is comped by Marian Keyes, and is about a year in the life of a normal family. One of the reviews calls it “Ephron-esque” which is very much my thing.

I’m always looking at the paperback crime table – mostly to see how much of it I’ve read! And on this occasion, not a huge amount. The Sally Smith you know I love, I’ve also done the Marlow Murder Club, The Richard Osman, Death and Croissants and the Anthony Horowitz. I have Tim Sullivan on my list of things I should try, The Bells of Westminster and the Tom Hindle are on the pile waiting for me to get to them.

And finally, on the new hardback crime shelves. The trend for older main characters seems to be continuing -along with the new HM the Queen book, there’s also Too Old For This, which is about an elderly woman who is startled when a journalist turns up to ask questions about her connection to a number of unsolved murders. It’s nice to see Miss Winter in the Library With the Knife still getting some shelf space after Christmas. And I keep seeing A Taste for Murder, which is an Italian-set mystery where a British police detective gets caught up in a murder investigation while on holiday with his teenage daughter.

And that’s the lot today – I’m off to watch the Olympics!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: New Releases in stores!

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Happy Saturday, I hope you’ve got something nice planned to mark the end of January, which often feels like the longest month of the year. To cheer myself up on a bleak cold afternoon this week, I dodged the rainshowersd to take a look at what’s in the bookshops at the moment now we’ve had the first 2026 releases start to drop.

This is Foyles Charing Cross Road, and the first thing to note her is that Heated Rivalry is right there. The series based on the books has had loads of buzz and now the novels are available here in paperback. They were also in the window at Waterstones just up the street on Tottenham Court Road, but Foyles is clearly ready for the demand because they had them on the shelves and piles of them in the over flow section at the back of the romance section.

Meet the Newmans is also all over the place. It was in both windows, it’s on this the front fiction table at Waterstones and it was on one of the front pillar displays at Foyles. I also spotted it in the Waterstones in Sheffield a couple of weeks ago, so it’s cearly got a big old release. The thing that interested me in Waterstones though was how many books on this table came out this week. These include Chosen Family, which is the next novel from the author of the very buzzy Green Dot, Wants and Needs and The Old Fire. The Ten Year Affair came out on the same day as Meet the Newmans, all of which is to just hammer home how busy January has been for new books after the desert that was December for physical releases.

Apart from Meet the Newmans, the other book whch is all over the place is Jennette McCurdy’s debut novel. You may remember her memoir, I’m Glad My Mom Died, which was massive a couple of years ago. I read that back in 2024 and it needed all the content warnings and a resilient frame of mind to read, but it was really really powerful. Half His Age is her next project after that, and is about a seventeen year old high school student and her obssession with her creative writing teacher. From all the reviews that I have read it sounds just as unsettling as her memoir was, and I’m not sure I’m in the right headspace (am I ever?) for somethign that’s being described variously as shocking, uncomfortable and eerie, but I’m expecting it to do well.

Here are the Mysteries from Foyle’s front entrance: The Osman is obviously a pre-Christmas release as is the Adam Kay, but the new Marlow Murder Club book is here, as is the latest Tom Hindle. The Don Winslow is also a new release this week – it’s a collection of six short novels, all of which sound very Not For Verity which is also the case for the Darkrooms (another January release), Our Last Resort and What We Left Unsaid, just in different ways!

So lets end on an up note, back where we started with the piles of Heated Rivalry books, waiting for the fans to descend after watching the adaptation! Have a great weekend.

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Juno Books

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Happy Saturday everyone. As you know, I was in Sheffield last week watching about 35 hours of figure skating. But in the mornings before the action got started I had a lovely time wandering around the town and of course I visited some bookshops. So here we are today with one of them.

Tucked away down a side street off one of the man shopping streets is Juno Books. It’s an independent, feminist and queer bookshop, where the majority of books are by women and queer people and have a really strong focus on showcasing books and voices that are under-represented and/or marginalised. You can read their manifesto here.

It’s a really cute store and a really interesting and clearly very carefully curated selection. I saw a lot of things that I hadn’t seen elsewhere – I would definitely have bought In Love with Love if it hadn’t been in hardback and I wasn’t going to have to lug it around with me all day at the skating (don’t worry, I did buy something, more details to follow) as I had about about two miles still to walk and I already had sandwiches and drinks in my size-restricted bag (which was a shoulder back because rucksacks were banned…). Anyhow, rant over. I also hadn’t see the Crystal Jeans either – I read The Inverts a couple of years ago – and The Girls Who Grew Big looks interesting too.

I also hadn’t seen anything about the Gish Jen, which looks really interesting, as does Read Yourself Happy and Vulture. Obviously there’s more than just the tables, but it’s a small shop and it was quite busy and I do try not to be a pain when Im in a shop. But I had a lovely wander, could havebought a lot of books, resisted because of my poor shoulders. If you want to support Juno books, their bookshop.com page is here. You’ve already seen my actual purchase in last week’s Books Incoming – it is Just As You Are, which as I said in that post is a Pride and Prejudice retelling, but is set in and around a queer magazine in New York that has just been saved from closure by two wealthy lesbians.

Have a great weekend!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The Riverside Bookshop

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Happy Saturday everyone, I’ve been bookshop wandering again this week and I’m back with another new spot. I tried to visit The Riverside Bookshop last time that I went to see a show at the Menier Chocolate Factory, but they were closed early for an event. But this time I managed it, and I’m glad that I did!

As you know, my main reading interests are almost always Crime and Romance and here they’re right next to each other so that’s pretty perfect. It’s a bijou selection for both, but I think you’d manage to find something for most reading tastes. I’ve read a lot and I still managed to find a couple of books I hadn’t seen before that were in my sort of reading wheelhouse.

As you can see, here is A Murder for Miss Hortense looking all pepermint-y in the wild but also Nicola Upson‘s new standalone book – which is a Christmas mystery that’s probably slightly longer than a novella but not hugely so. You can also see a pretrty good sense of the range: a couple of Maigrets, some Japanese crime, a bit of Irvine Welsh, Stuart Turton, Louise Penny and Kristin Perrin.

I love a table of new non-fiction, especially where there are things that I haven’t seen before, like Ghosts of the British Museum, How to win the Premier League and Supremacy along with things that I’ve read reviews for like If Russia Wins and The View from Down Here.

And finally I had to put the new fiction shelves too – because right at the top there is one of my recent reads The Murder at World’s End along with the new ones from Salman Rushdie, Bob Mortimer, Ken Follett and Richard Osman. A truly eclectic selection.

Happy Saturday – go out and support your local bookshop by buying some books for Christmas!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The New Bookshop

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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

bookshops, Christmas books

Books in the Wild: Daunt Marylebone

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Yes I’ve been wandering again, and today’s post is mostly about their windows, because I’m always interested to see what they have picked – there’s always at least one that I haven’t seen before.

The Boroughs of London is – as the name suggests – a book of maps of London’s boroughs complete with commentary and trivia about them. There’s almost always a local or at least London related book in the Marylebone window. It looks like it would make a great coffee table book either for yourself or as a Christmas gift.

This is even more local than the previous book – you can practically see Regent’s Park from the shop front. This is a children’s book about a fox. All the details I can find about this suggests that it’s a small press release, very new and that this is possibly the most publicity and prominence it’s had so far!

From a Christmas children’s book to a Christmas book for adults. Advent is apparently an Icelandic Christmas classic about a man rescuing sheep in the run up to Christmas time and this is the first time in 90 years that it’s been translated into English.

And finally here’s the mixed books window – featuring Small Bomb at Dimperley in paperback, The Wedding People, Voyage around the Queen and the Glass Maker which I have waiting to be read and a mix of books I e seen around and others that I haven’t.

And that’s your lot. Have a great Saturday!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The Works October 2025 edition

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Happy Saturday everyone, and I’ve been back into my local branch of The Works again to see what you can pick up in there for a bargain…

These are the new release titles (as opposed to the multi-buy deals) and you can see that they’ve got the new Richard Osman, R F Kuang, Stephanie Garber and Bob Mortimer here, along with The Favourites (just in time for the start of the Grand Prix figure skating season this weekend) and a stack of Cecelia Aherns, a tonne of romantasy and sports romance (mostly hockey) and a stack of the latest wave of paranormal romances should you be in the market for some Halloween reading.

On the next one we have more Romantasy, more romance, more Richard Osman, but also the majority of the crime selection that they’ve got at the moment – which again shows the shift in publishing trends as a couple of years ago, in fact maybe only a year ago, there would have been at least one of these carcases full of crime and mystery novels – all my early Tasha Alexander, Royal Spynesses, Carola Dunns, Dandy Gilvers, Max Tudors and Kate Shackletons came from The Works back in the day so I’m a big miffed about that although obviously my wallet (and Him Indoors) thanks me.

And here we have the deals shelves – there are plenty of Christmas reads if you want them too. I haven’t read these particular Sarah Morgans, but her Christmas novels that I have read have been good. I have read Jingle Bell Mingle which is part of the Christmas Notch series by Sierra Simone and Julie Murphy. But apart from that I’ve read embarrassingly little of this shelf – I’ve read a lot of the authors, just not these books in particular.

I’m a little better on this shelf. There’s The Christmas Jigsaw Murders which I read back in 2023, The Rom-Commers and Any Trope But You that I’ve read, and then Match Point and Murder at Holly House that I have on the to-read pile. But that’s it. And actually the thing that has surprised me everytime I’ve been into The Works recently is how few of the romance novels I recognise. Yes there are the Elsie Silvers and Elle Kennedys and the like, but there’s also loads of other illustrated pastel covers that I haven’t come across. ANd I don’t know if that’s just because they’re aimed at the BookTok viewer tastes – which are younger heroines and lots of sports and that’s not what I’m after – or if there are just a different set of books that are making it to The Works now, because I swear I haven’t seen them in Foyles or Gower Street’s Romance selections. But maybe I just haven’t been paying attention…

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Spanish Supermarket edition

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Happy weekend everyone, and when we were on holiday I did my traditional wander around the supermarket to see what that book selection was like in Gran Canaria, because I always like to see what has made it into translation, and what covers they’ve been given.

So i hose the romance section for the first picture because a) I like romance and b) I think it’s a good summation of the whole thing – some books in translation, mixed in with Spanish authors and no real pattern to which of the translated authors get new covers and which don’t!

I picked this one out because as you can see, the sports romance trend has made it to Spain. There’s Elle Kennedy, Stephanie Archer and Elsie Silver in that first photo above, but this is a home grown one. There isn’t an English version, but it’s a tennis romance where the hero is an up-and-coming player who comes to the heroine’s father for coaching help because he’s in a slump. And just like so many authors at the moment, it sounds like Anna Farres started out on Wattpad.

You all know how much I loved Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, so here it is in Spanish, with the same cover design as the UK hardback had – but in paperback. and I think it works really well in Spanish. I do like this design better than the paperback adaptation it got in the UK – the retro computer font hints at the game design element of the book. Yes the wave is from the computer game, but you don’t know that – so I think the paperback with just the wave and then a more boring/standard font and layout is a bit of a miss.

This is A Lady’s Guide to Scandal, the sequel to A Lady’s Guide to Fortune Hunting, I picked this one out because it’s actually got the American cover translated, as opposed to having the UK cover (and a quote on the cover from The Bookseller, which is British!). And it just goes to show what a mix it is on the cover front – it doesn’t even really seem to decided by genre- the Jojo Moyes in the first picture has the UK cover, this has the US cover, Nora Roberts has the US cover for The Mirror, the Elsie Silver has the same illustration in slightly different versions on the UK, US and Spanish versions.

And finally I’m finishing with Dan Brown, because they seemed to be completely different covers to the UK and US ones – and they didn’t have the new one at all and I couldn’t work out if that was because it was sold out or because it hadn’t arrived yet. And also because it was displayed with kids books!

Have a great weekend everyone!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Autumn 2024 Airport Edition

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Happy Saturday everyone! I’ve been on holiday – and so I’ve been at the airport bookshop again. And please note, these were not taken this week – so they’re pre-Richard Osman release, which I’m expecting to be dominating from this week on.

But let’s start with the “biggest books” of the week which continue to be Coleen Hoover, Frieda McFadden and Sarah J Maas with a spattering of other books in silimar ends of their genres like Elsie Silver and Rebecca Yarros.

Lots of familiar names here too – last year’s Osman now in small paperback, Liane Moriarty, Lisa Jewell, Jojo Moyes, Harlan Coben but I’m really pleased to see how often Bob Mortimer is popping up in these displays now. I don’t think he’s my thing but I will give one a go at some point because I’ve heard good things about them being smart and funny. And we need more smart and funny.

I was a bit disappointed with the non-fiction paperbacks – I was hoping for more stuff I hadn’t seen or at least more stuff that wasn’t self help or podcast tie-in books. I’ve picked up some interesting stuff from this very bookshop before (Going Infinite for example) that was a bit different.

And now on to the airport exclusives aka the stuff that’s only in hardback everywhere else. And we have some more of the same names from the biggest books display but also the latest Emily Henry, the very new R F Kuang, and the new Adam Kay (as in This is Going to Hurt) murder mystery. But surprisingly not Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid

And it should be noted that I clearly missed a display somewhere because one of my airport purchases was Entitled, the new Andrew Lownie about the Duke and Duchess of York and I cannot find it in any of my pictures, but the other was Fast Money – seen on the bottoms row here about the finances of Formula One.

And finally because I can hear you wondering about Dan Brown and yes, they did have the new Robert Langdon but and this is a big bit – only in hardback, not as the large format paperback which I found really interesting – and not many of them which given the big ad they had for it may well mean they had sold a fair few copies!

Have a great weekend!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: The Notting Hill Bookshop

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After I had been to Saucy Books the other week, I may have headed to another bookshop in the area. Because the only thing better than one bookshop, is two bookshops!

This isn’t the full frontage because at various points when I was trying to take a picutre of the whole thing, there where people posing for photos and I try not to include random people full face on here. And why were people posing for photos outside I hear you say. Well this is a bookshop in Notting Hill and you may remember that in the film Notting Hill Hugh Grant’s character runs a bookshop in Notting Hill. Now there is something of a turf war going on about this…

This one is actually the store front that was used in the movie, and the beef goes deep enough that as you can see they have a whole poster about it outlining their story. Anyway, back to the Notting Hill Bookshop, which is a bookshop, in Notting Hill, founded in the early 1980s which says it inspired the bookshop in the movie….

It’s not a huge shop, but it is bigger than the shop front would suggest, and it is stuffed with books and made more crowded by the number of customers (huge when I was there, I was glad I hadn’t come straight from work and had taken the time to ditch my rucksack, even if carrying my purchases home in the shoulder bag wasn’t the best idea for my poor shoulder!). And the huge number of customers and crowded nature of it all are the reasons why the photos aren’t exactly ideal sometimes. Sorry about that.

I thought whoever was doing the book picking was doing a pretty good job too – this table right at the front shows what I mean – it’s got stuff for the Casual Reader (things that you might be able to pick up at the supermarket), it’s got prize winning authors for the Serious Reader, and things that you might not have come across before for people like me who visit a lot of bookshops and want something different!

It’s also got a small romance section, which is always nice to see, even if a lot of the books are either things I’ve already read or not my end of the genre (see my previous comments about New Adult).

They’ve also got a tonne of extra-bits – like Paddington and London related stuff in the kids section as well as loads of collectible hardbacks, notepads, souvenirs to say you were there. I bought myself Hattie Steals the Show (which you’ve already seen in Books Incoming) and a bunch of book related post cards.

Have a great weekend everyone!