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Happy Holidays, booklovers! Thank you for all your support this year. Please note the shop will be closed from 6pm 23rd December until 9am, 3rd January. Rachel and I will be catching up on our reading. Merci pour tout votre soutien cette année. Veuillez noter que la boutique sera fermée du 23 décembre à 18h au 3 janvier à 9h. Rachel et moi allons rattraper nos lectures....

Happy birthday Books Books Books! The bookshop turned 15 recently and, like all teenagers, it’s is hard to deal with sometimes, and a sublime pleasure at others. To mark the occasion, we’ve had some spiffy new bags printed and would like to invite you to tea on Saturday, 2nd December anytime for 2pm until close at 6pm. As well as serving the most delicious cake known to humanity we are also organising a treasure hunt. You will have to...

Anybody who has read the DSM entry on Autism Spectrum Disorder will know it lists deficits in areas of communication and interaction. But what it is really like to view life from behind the autistic lens? This was the question psychologist and psychotherapist Marie-Laure Del Vecchio asked when she, and co-writer and photographer Joe James, starting collecting stories from people on the autistic spectrum. The result is The Autistic Experience: Si...

Rebelling against the idea that ‘If you’re not online, you don’t exist,’ Jonathan created a pocket-sized review which collects together poetry, essays, fiction, illustration and fine art for those “wishing to maintain contemplative life in the digital age.’” Editions are only available in print and exclusively in bookshops. All correspondence with the publisher is conducted by post rather, and their single webpage simply l...

For this newsletter, I’m recommending books by two of my favourite authors, who I’ve most definitely mentioned and recommended before, however these particular book recommendations are a more hopeful, cheerful sort of book The Monk & Robot Duology by Becky Chambers I know I’ve recommended A Psalm for the Wild-Built before, but this duology (the second book is A Prayer for the Crown-Shy) is one of the best things I’ve read in a while. ...

Thank you for all your support this year. Please note the shop will be closed from noon, 24th December until 9am, 3rd January. Rachel and I will be catching up on our reading. Merci pour tout votre soutien cette année. Veuillez noter que la boutique sera fermée du 24 décembre à midi au 3 janvier à 9 heures. Rachel et moi allons rattraper nos lectures....

Genre: Sci-fi This book is a soft sci-fi story about multiverse travel – but you can only travel to universes where you’re dead. It’s also a dystopian novel, and explores themes of class and privilege – because only the poor, from outside the walled city of the wealthy, are likely to be dead in other realities and therefore able to travel to them.  My mother used to say I was born reaching, which is true. She also used to say...

Genre: Solarpunk / Sci-fi   This little novella packs a punch for its size, and it was a refreshing and hopeful read. Tor Books commissioned Becky Chambers to write a two book novella series in the solarpunk genre, which looks forward to a sustainable future, where humanity has managed to solve the major contemporary challenges, particularly climate change. It won a Hugo award this year.   It’s been centuries since the robots of Panga gai...

Zoe Perrenoud will be in the bookshop on Saturday, July 30th from 2-4pm to sign copies of her new book, Bloodlender! Zoe came into the bookshop ten years ago, when we were back on Rue de la Mercerie. She was just finishing up a writing course, and said that she would write a book and hold an event in the bookshop. We are thrilled that the event is finally coming to fruition with BLOODLENDER! An ancient magic. A secret gar...

Rachel Recommends: YA

Genres: Fantasy/alt history, Sci-fi   I haven’t been reading very much Young Adult lately, but two of the titles that I have read recently have really been standouts. The first, Dread Nation by Justina Ireland, just sounded cool.   Trained at Miss Preston’s School of Combat for Negro Girls in both weaponry and etiquette, Jane McKeene is poised for a successful career protecting the wealthy from the encroaching plague o...

What Rachel’s Reading: Sci-Fi Trilogies

Genres: science-fantasy, science fiction    Well booklovers, it’s been quite some time since I posted some recommendations, and I’ve read a number of very good books in the past few months! It had been awhile since I read much new science fiction, so I set about ticking a few of the books off of that list – although most of them were more science-fantasy than strictly science fiction.   One of the books that had bee...

Le Livre sur les Quais
Blog , Event /

Save a space in your diary this weekend for Le Livre sur les quais, the annual literary festival in Morges. This year the English programme consists of – ahem – actually just me talking to Jonathan Coe on Sunday at 16.30. We’ll be discussing his new novel, Mr Wilder and Me, which follows a naive young woman called Calista who sets out from Athens into the wider world and finds herself working for the famed Hollywood di...

Home Deliveries / Ordering

The bookshop is now open, from 10am-6pm, Monday through Saturday, however you can still order books for delivery through us.  24-Hour Book Service Two of our local suppliers can deliver books to the bookshop in 24 hours if you order before midday. Otherwise, we can normally order books and receive them in about a week. If you have books to order, then please contact us with the titles and we will reply with a quote. The fastest way to ...

Children’s Picture Book Picks

Well booklovers, in the past few years I (Rachel) have become an aunt several times over, which means I get to buy picture books! Here are some of my top picks from the past year or two:   I am Bat by Morag Hood   Bat does not like mornings, but he loves cherries – and his cherries start going missing! This book is aimed at the preschool/toddler age, and is one of my favourite new children’s books. have I also read it ...

What Rachel Read

Genres: Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Alternate History    It’s been awhile since I’ve recommended multiple books, and it’s mainly because I’ve been stuck into series for the past few months (Kim Harrison’s Hollows series, Neal Asher’s Agent Cormac series, and others), which are less interesting to hear about! For the Christmas break, I decided to pick some of the books that have been on my TBR list for a very long time, and are su...

Poetry and Scones at the Bookshop!
Event /

Come to the bookshop on Saturday, 7th December at 4pm for the launch of Carla Drysdale’s new poetry collection – All Born Perfect. The poems are written with Carla’s trademark candour and craft, combining a poet’s lyricism and the matter-of-fact tone of a survivor. The works depict a working mother bringing up two sons and reveal that the mother’s acts of love and labour provoke her own childhood trauma. Carla ...

Rachel Recommends: The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline

Genre: Dystopia, YA Just when you think you have nothing left to lose, they come for your dreams. Humanity has nearly destroyed the world through global warming and now an even greater evil lurks. The Indigenous people of North America are being hunted and harvested for their bone marrow, which carries the key to recovering something the rest of the population has lost: the ability to dream. In this dark world, Frenchie and his companio...

Book Event: The Naked Irish
Event /

We’re delighted to announce that Clare O’Dea will be at the bookshop on Saturday, 9th November talking about her new book The Naked Irish: Portrait of a Nation Beyond the Clichés. Like her bestselling title, The Naked Swiss, her latest book is an insightful and revealing examination of the reality of modern Ireland behind the national myths. Are the Irish a nation of emigrants if we have the second highest foreign-born popu...