Category: bookshops

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Old Hall Bookshop

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I made a little trip to one of the relatively local independent bookstores that I hadn’t been to before for this week’s post. The Old Hall Bookshop is in Brackley – home of AMG Mercedes F1 team (formerly Brawn GP, formerly BAR) and which is somewhere that I go past quite a lot but rarely drive through, hence why I’ve never stopped there before.

This one has new books, secondhand books and antiquarian books all in a beautiful old house with friendly staff. This is the central hallway – you’ve already come through one room of books to get here, and I don’t know if you can tell, but the till is tucked away under the stairs in this picture.

This is the main new book room (for adults anyway) and I thought it made really neat use of the space it had to display a really good selection of books- some of which I knew, but others that I didn’t which I think is the sign of a carefully curated collection,

I was tempted by LA Women, which sounds like it might tap into some of the things I liked about Daisy Jones and the Six, but also The Travelling Cat Chronicles. Good Girl, which is about the daughter of Afghan refugees in Berlin sounds really interesting, but I am trying to be realistic about what I will actually read and what will stick on the pile for ages. The same goes for the Book of Heartbreak – because I have romantasy novels that I bought nearly a decade ago that are still sitting on the kindle waiting for me to get around to them and I’m not proud of that at all!

I bought two books – one for me and one for mum, who asked me if I had a copy of Small Bomb at Dimplerley that she could borrow and as the only one I have is on the Kindle when they happened to have a copy in stock I was happy to buy it. You’ll have to wait until the next Books Incoming to see what I bought for myself!

Have a great Saturday!

bookshops

Books in the Wild: Waterstone’s Birmingham

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We were in Birmingham last weekend, so of course I took a trip to the Big Waterstones to see what they had that was new or out of the ordinary.

But I’m going to start with the Buy One Get One Half Price table – because as you can see Murder on Line One is now in paperback but also because I wanted to ask if any of you have read Murder at the Black Cat Cafe because I keep seeing it in shops, picking up and reading the back and thinking it might be too scary for me because Japanese murder mysteries tend to be too scary for me even if in this case the author is being compared to Agatha Christie – because they also do that for the author of Murder at Mt. Fuji! Anyone able to help?

And now on to the stuff I hadn’t see elsewhere (but that is also too scary for me) a new thriller translated from Korean about a K-Pop idol who is kidnapped by a small group of his biggest. I think this for having a cover that clearly indicates that it is too scary for me, but I wish I wasn’t as terrible with scary books because this sounds like a really clever concept. And K-pop is huge at the moment so hopefully it will do well and I continue to be thrilled to see more books in translation making it to the front of bookshops, rather than just in a special section of the big university bookshops.

Lets move on to something I might actually read, and another new release: Zofia Nowak’s Book of Superior Dectecting by Piotr Cieplak. This came out at the end of January and is about a Polish woman who comes to London after her son disappears to try and find out what has happened to him. Zofia thinks it’s something to do with a writer called Steve and takes on jobs as a cleaner to try and fund her DIY investigation. This sounds really interesting – and the blurb promises laughter as well as a puzzle to solve so if I can just get the to-read pile down, I will try and get to it.

And finally we have the table of Heated Rivalry books – including the first one Game Changer which was on offer at half price and which I bought and had a lovely conversation with the cashier about them and the TV series. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see a romance book doing well.

Have a great weekend everyone!

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!