Happy Saturday everyone and I’ve been wandering London’s bookshops again. I don’t think I’ve been to Word on the Water since before the pandemic so it was lovely to go back there.
Word on the Water is a barge on Regent’s Canal, just behind Kings Cross and you can really feel it moving with the water. It’s just lovely.
It has a stove. And lots of comfy spots to sit and peruse the books, or just think about the gentle rocking as the ducks float by outside the window.
I would describe the selection as carefully curated and eclectic. I go to a lot of bookshops and found a lot things in there that I hadn’t seen before to look and and chose from.
There’s a lovely children’s and YA section too and don’t panic there is a section at the front with some of the new release hardbacks as well and some boxes of books on the roof outside too.
It’s a little bit of a trek out of my usual stomping grounds but it was definitely worth the trip.
If you weren’t expecting this today, you should have been. When have I ever been able to go through an airport without a) buying books and b) taking photos of the options. And it’s been six whole months since the last time I was in an airport so the choices have changed somewhat!
I’m starting with the non-fiction because when I was thinking about what I might buy at the airport ahead of the holiday, it was the non-fiction selection I was most excited to look at – and then the most disappointed in when I got there. Most times I go to the airport there is either a non-ficiton hardback I’m looking for or I stumble across something I hadn’t heard about that turns out to be good. But this time I already have the Liza, and I read Entitled last holiday. There are a couple of books that I’m sort of interested in, but I already have other books by the same author on the shelf waiting to be read and I’m trying to be better about that.
On the airport (hardback) fiction front it was also a bit of a disappointment. The Impossible Fortune wasn’t out last holiday so that was on the list although as the (normal) paperback is out this week coming I wasn’t averse to waiting for that if there were better choices. But I’ve already read Meet the Newmans, I have at least two Tom Hindles in the backlog, the Dan Brown is insanely long and this format of paperback is unwieldy enough without that! I was tempted by The Ending Writes Itself and Yesteryear but that was about it.
This isn’t the best photo, but it illustrates my problem – the things that I’m interested in like Atmosphere, Heated Rivalry I already own and the rest is Not For Verity. And to be honest, that’s about it. I have other photos, but there is a lot of duplication in them and not a lot of books that I’m interested in. There was more stuff that I have read already – like Happy Place and Before the Coffee Gets Cold – but I was hoping for better from the new book selection. Hey ho, better luck next holiday.
Happy Saturday everyone! It’s independent bookshop day in the US today – in the UK ours is in October – but really any excuse to go and visit a bookstore is a good one. As you know I’m always wandering around book shops and then writing about them on here. I’ve currently got a list going of ones that I want to visit when I get a chance and because I’ve been to some of the buzzy ones it meant that when I read this article about the new TikTok bestseller list this morning I recognised the top image (and the second bottom one) as being taken in Saucy Books in Notting Hill!
If you’re in the US lots of them are throwing special events and have promotions or competitions on: click here for a searchable map of participating stores and also a list of bookstore crawls you can do and click here for a list of events at bookstores across the US (remember control/command + f will bring up the find box so you can search the list without having to scroll).
If you’re not in the US – just go and visit your local book store anyway – or go to bookshop.org, choose a bookshop (top right) to benefit and buy something on there!
Happy Saturday everyone, and this is the third instalment from my bookish wander around Leicestershire the other Saturday. I’ve already covered the bargain book selection at The Works, and the beautifully curated selection at Kibworth. This week it’s a revisit to Quinns, where I was mostly looking at what they had picked out to put on the displays because I love seeing what booksellers have picked to highlight.
This is the mystery and thriller table in the window and I haven’t read a single one of them. Which is fascinating given how many mysteries I read! I know that the Asako Yuzuki and the Uketsu are too scary for me – as is so much of the stuff that’s got dark and moody covers. I have a Janice Hallet waiting to be read on the pile though and I’ve read Sophie Hannah’s Poirot continuations but not her own stuff, and I used to read Lisa Jewell when she was writing women’s fiction.
It’s a similar sort of story here. I have read all of Joanne Harris’s other Chocolate books so I have Vianne on the kindle waiting to be read and the same with the Gill Hornby, which is the latest of her books related to the Austen family. I saw The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry the other week as you know, so I was tempted by the Rachel Joyce which is about the daughters of a famous artist who has died in Italy and the masterpiece he went there to finish is missing. This is Jennie Godfrey’s second book – the first has been everywhere and it’s definitely on my list to try, if I can just get the pile down a little bit!
We’re back to authors who I have books waiting to be read on this table too – I’ve got one of Francis Spufford’s on the actual self and the same with Natasha Pulley. The Gregory Maguire is his new Wizard of z prequel hot on the heels of the success of Wicked – the book of which I didn’t manage to finish. The intruiguing one on this table though is Winterbourne, which I hadn’t seen before. It came out at the end of January and it’s about a librarian who goes to a remote Island off the coast of Scotland to catalogue the library of a grand house. It’s described as a chilling and unpredictable mystery and a reinvention of the Gothic genre, so who knows if I can deal with that – I’ll wait for the paperback!
As I said last weekend in my post about The Works, I’ve been on a bit of a bookshop odyssey and during that I finally made it to Kibworth Books. This is only about 20 miles from home, but as is the way of country roads, actually takes about 45 minutes to get to, hence not having got there before. But it was worth the trip because the selection is great and the staff are incredibly knowledgable and helpful. I can confirm: I bought books. Three of them.
So this is the front of the front table which has a really good selection that tells me that this is a bookshop that might understand what I like and have recommendations for me! I’ve read the Sittenfeld and I have the Hornby on the pile waiting. I’ve also raed a bunch of the crime selections there – and have the Elly Griffiths on the pile too. So I eyed up a few of these, although my actual purchases didn’t come from this table!
And you know me, I always check out the romance section, because I read so much of it and I also think you can tell quite a lot about a shop by what they do with romance. and in this case it’s a small but seemingly carefuly chosen selection. There’s stuff here that I’ve read like Funny Story and One Day and authors that I’ve read (If not those precise books) which suggests that some of the others might be things I’d like too. Also I have Match Point on the pile and I really should get around to that too.
And the other section I always look at is the crime section. And apologies for the wide shot, but it seemed to make more sense to do one big paragraph on crime than three small ones! So there is plenty of series action here including loads that I read (and some I don’t but might get around to some day) – with Elly Griffiths, including Ruth Galloway ( can you believe that that binge was this time last year?!) and her Brighton mysteries; Mick Herron for the people who’ve been watching Slow Horses, Kate Atkinson for the Jackson Brodie fans; Richard Osman, Richard Coles, Anthony Horowitz, and all the rest – along with some less usual stuff. When I was chatting about books at the till, the recommendation was the Holly Stars which I’ve read (and the sequel) but the next one I hadn’t even come across so of course thats one of the ones that I bought. And a quick mention for the Agatha Christie and BLCC selection to cover off the classic crime fans.
And finally, how amazing/adorable is this? I thought this was so cool, although my picture of it isn’t the best so doesn’t really do it justice. Google tells me that it’s a little kit that you make yourself which makes it extra impressive because there is no way that I would have the patience and find motor control to assemble something this tiny and finicky – and that makes it extra impressive. Anyway, I really had a great time visiting Kibworth Books, bought three books even though the pile is huge and will be going back again next time I’m up that end of the woods.
It’s Saturday and I’ve been touring the bookshops recently so I’m back with some posts for my recent visits over the next couple of weeks. I’m starting with The Works, because I use it to analyse the trends of what’s selling in popular fiction.
So the main thing for me here is that a couple of books I thought were really good from the last couple of years have made it here now – namely The Favourites and I’m Glad My Mom Died. Aside from that, the romance selection continues to be dominated by dark romance, sports romance and cowboy romance.
The romantasy and fantasy section continues to expand – and once again it’s the crime section that is contracting to fit it. There is still Frieda McFadden though – so it’s the cozier/traditional end of the crime shelves that are losing ground here. I feel like I’ve gone from having read a lot of authors on the shelves here to very few. But there’s still Not in My Book at least.
There are a couple more that I’ve read here though – Mrs Porter Calling is great as are the other books in that series – Dear Mrs Bird is tucked at the top of the bottom rack stack; down the bottom left is one of Kate Claybourn’s Chance of a Lifetime series and Paper Towns too. I guess it’s good for my bank balance that there’s next to noting in the three for… any more, but it does make me sad that my tastes are diverging from popular fiction, even if I have enough books on the shelf waiting to last me for years at this point!
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!
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.
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!
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.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 