Genre...
What's your favourite? Do you even care?
For unknown reasons, as I’m not going to draw any particular conclusions from it, I decided to count up how many events this week’s list has in each genre. Seemed like a relatively straightforward thing to do. But actually, it wasn’t. I assumed every book would easily slot into a particular genre, but a remarkable number don’t. I found myself asking, ‘Is this memoir or politics or feminism? Is this historical, romantic or literary?’ An awful lot of books are cross-genre or multi-genre or simply defy being categorised at all.
Anyway, I wasn’t writing a thesis on the topic, so I made snap decisions, that may or may not be entirely correct. But here are the results:
Historical fiction - 5
Literary fiction - 21
Fantasy & romantasy - 9
Feminism - 3
Non-fiction history - 15
Poetry - 7
Crime & thriller - 11
Horror - 5
Cookery & food writing - 7
Politics - 5
Romance - 4
Nature writing - 5
Memoir/biography - 8
Short stories - 1
Science fiction - 1
Travel - 2
Self-help - 1
Religion - 1
Writers are advised to be very clear about what genre they are writing in, not because readers particularly care - I’m sure you don’t - but because publishers and booksellers care very much. In publishers’ catalogues and bookshops’ shelves, books are sorted by genre and if you don’t know a book’s genre, you don’t know where to put it. Which means people don’t know where to find it. So genre’s essential to help sell books to people who don’t, on the whole, care what genre they’re reading. Go figure…
Anyway, like I said, no conclusions drawn from the list above - except aren’t we lucky here in Edinburgh to have such a choice of events to go to? (Also, does it say something about the character of Edinburgers that self-help and religion barely get a look in? 😂)
As usual, give me your thoughts in the comments, and let me know of any events that I’ve missed. And please, please share this widely with all your Edinburgh friends.
This week’s events
March 23
7pm, Typewronger Books, 4a Haddington Place, Edinburgh, EH7 4AE
Join us at Typewronger Books to celebrate the launch of the very first issue of Hot Butter Press. Expect tunes, snacks, (buttered) toasts, and more!
What is Hot Butter Press? A new quarterly Riso zine, bringing new flavour to the Edinburgh art scene. Filled with new writing, news, horoscopes, and art that melts in your mouth! Created by Miriam Morris and Sarah (from Ghost Bros Photo Co.), printed at Typewronger. To find out more about the zine or how to contribute to a future issue, check out the HBP insta: @hot.butter.press
Free, but ticketed.
March 23
Rosie Hewlett for Sweetbitter Song
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
One fateful night in Sparta, a young slave girl encounters a mysterious, grey-eyed princess. Melantho and Penelope, though from different worlds, are instantly connected. But betrayal soon tears them apart. Years later, on Ithaca’s rocky shores, Melantho is sent to serve Princess Penelope and her new husband, Prince Odysseus. Hardened by slavery, Melantho vows to stay distant from Penelope. Yet, the undeniable pull between them proves stronger than ever.
As war ignites Greece, Odysseus and Ithaca’s men are called away and, in their absence, Melantho finds a new world opening up before her - one where women rule, where family can be found, and where love is finally given the space to bloom. But all wars eventually end and as Troy falls, Penelope and Melantho must face the King’s return and decide how far they will go to protect what matters most to them.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 23
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We're really excited that Isabel Waidner is coming to the bookshop to celebrate the Edinburgh launch of their latest novel, As If. The book follows two characters as they swerve onto the road not taken – a deeply empathetic, tragicomic novel that reckons with the absurdity of modern lives.
As If is an existential farce about the road not taken. Surreal and slyly poignant, suffused with ironic melancholia, it is a parable for the twenty-first century everyman: a character trapped in reality’s hall of mirrors, endlessly searching for something to live for.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 24
Waterstones - An evening of Romantasy!
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
Join us to celebrate all things Romantasy, with the launch of the paperback for Onyx Storm!
We will have drinks and snacks, a romantasy themed quiz (with prizes!) and crafting.
We will be making our own sprayed edges, so feel free to bring your own book (or buy a new one) and we will supply everything else and show you how it’s done.
Additionally, we will be offering 10% off certain romantasy purchases on the night, so you can start a brand new series or add to your collection!
Tickets £5
March 24
Seeking Sexual Freedom: An evening with Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
From the critically acclaimed author of The Sex Lives of African Women comes a magnificent new book - part travelogue, part manifesto, Seeking Sexual Freedom is the bold call to pleasure women of all backgrounds need today.
While working on The Sex Lives of African Women, acclaimed African feminist and activist Nana Darkoa Sekyiamah had access to the wildest dreams and spiciest realities of women from around the world. But so often, she noticed that something was holding these women back from achieving full liberation and unfettered joy. So, she set out to apply sankofa – which means learning from the past to inform the future – to sex and pleasure, reclaiming African traditions in a quest to achieve sexual freedom.
In Seeking Sexual Freedom, Sekyiamah takes readers across the African continent, from Senegal to Tanzania and beyond, where she meets and trains with gurus, “witches”, and aunties whose job it is to guide girls through puberty rites and later through “marital training.” She discusses practices like beading and pulling, while highlighting the spiritual and gender-fluid nature of African traditional religions.
With the ‘interruption’ of colonialism, Sekyiamah explores how western patriarchal norms led to warped ideals of beauty and shame, internalized racism, as well as to state and interpersonal violence. Sankofa, she explains, can help rid us of these obstacles that stand in the way of our sexual liberation.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20
March 24
John Grindrod - Tales of the Suburbs
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We’re looking forward to welcoming John Grindrod back to the bookshop for an event to celebrate the publication of his latest book, Tales of the Suburbs: LGBTQ+ Lives Behind Net Curtains. Grindrod will be in conversation with writer and academic Rosa Campbell.
Throughout LGBTQ+ history, suburbia has been seen as somewhere to escape from: a place where heterosexuality rules; where difference will not be tolerated; where you’ll never find a soulmate. But for many, those streets of twitching curtains and pebble-dashed semis were – or still are – a place to call home.
From Addlestone to Wilmslow, Tales of the Suburbs explores the relatively untold twentieth century tale of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people in suburbia. Through remarkable archive material and original interviews, social historian John Grindrod reveals stories that are messy and moving, dark and funny, uplifting and extraordinary. Together, they reclaim suburbia as a space for all – or those that want it – where counter-cultural expression thrives despite the Neighbourhood Watch, and queer love and friendship bloom against the odds.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99
March 24
Antony Beevor for Rasputin and the Downfall of the Romanovs
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA
One of the great historians of our time returns to Edinburgh to celebrate his latest work, Rasputin, charting the rise and fall of the so-called ‘mad monk’. Toppings is delighted to be hosting Antony, and hope to see you there!
How could a barely literate peasant from Siberia determine the fate of the world? Undoubtedly, the so-called ‘mad monk’ Rasputin bewitched Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra. Yet their strange and scandalous relationship conceals a riddle , one that casts an intriguing light on the controversial ‘great man’ theory of history. Just as Rasputin cast a spell over the Romanovs, his legend has bewitched historians. More than a century later, we still fail to comprehend fully the collapse of the greatest autocracy on Earth. Was there any truth to the wild tales that brought down the empire? Or was his true legacy an unsettling lesson on the potency of myth?
Early bird ticket £12/Ticket plus book £25
March 25
Kiran Millwood Hargrave - Almost Life
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We are so excited that Kiran Millwood Hargrave will be returning to the bookshop to celebrate the Edinburgh launch of her latest novel, Almost Life. It's a story of longing for the paths not taken, and the almost lives we live, and we cannot wait to hear more about it. Millwood Hargrave will be in conversation with art writer, editor and curator Rachel Ashenden.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 25
Susan Tomes for Nocturnes
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Susan Tomes joins us to celebrate Nocturnes, an engrossing history of the music of twilight and sleep, from the nocturnes of Field and Chopin to Max Richter
In an insomniac age, ambient and sleep music have become increasingly popular. But our association between music and sleep is not new: lullabies may be the oldest form of music, and are instantly recognisable across peoples and cultures. Why does the night hold such musical fascination for us, and what forms do its sounds take?
Susan Tomes explores the story of the nocturne, and the music of nighttime in the classical tradition. From John Field’s pioneering, lyrical nocturnes composed in the haunting atmosphere of St Petersburg’s midnight sun, to Chopin’s emotionally complex mastery of the form, composers and musicians have endlessly produced music about the night, in which the piano plays a central part. Tomes offers us a rich cultural history of this expressive, often melancholic, fascinating genre-which has gone on to inspire not just musicians but generations of artists and writers.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £20
March 25
The Othered Woman: Shahed Ezaydi on how white feminism harms Muslim women
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
Growing up, journalist Shahed Ezaydi was often asked how she could call herself a feminist and still practise her faith. It’s a question that reveals a deeper issue that Muslim women often face: being ignored in feminist spaces entirely, or cast as passive victims in need of being saved. This mindset fuels gendered Islamophobia and a narrow white feminism. But Muslim women don’t need rescuing.
The Othered Woman is the book Ezaydi wishes her younger self could have turned to. It challenges the myths of how Muslim women are oppressed and who by, and shows that these myths translate into very real harm both in Britain and around the world, showcasing the voices of intersectional feminists who are fighting for liberation on their own terms.
Accessible and compelling, this is urgent reading for anyone who considers themselves a feminist.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14.99
March 26
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver Event with Rafael Torrubia
6.30pm, Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ
No one remembers the calamity that killed the gods and stole the names of their people. Now Shipwright and Shroudweaver are known only by their professions.
She's a master of magical shipbuilding. He's a maker of the gilded gods that fuel their sails, stitched from the souls of dead sailors. When a chance to save their world calls the veterans back to shore, they decide they'll stop at nothing to vanquish the ultimate evil, embarking on a deadly race against time to beat the grief-wracked sorceress known as Crowkisser to the notorious mountain kingdom in the legend-infested north before she unleashes the ancient power entombed at its heart - the one waiting to finish what it started.
The Shipwright and the Shroudweaver introduces a trail-blazing new voice in Scottish fantasy, fusing the Celtic folklore of J.R.R. Tolkien with the climate geopolitics of N.K. Jemisin in an epic adventure of ancient gods, apocalyptic magic, and love that can survive the end of the world - unmissable for fans of The Will of the Many by James Islington, The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon, and Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £25
March 26
Love is Queer: poetry night with Robbie Macleoid and Catherine Wilson-Garry
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Join poets Catherine Wilson-Garry and Robbie MacLeòid as they celebrate queer love!
These two tremendous poets join forces to launch Robbie’s new bilingual Gaelic poetry pamphlet, Am Measg Luaithrean, Beò, in which queerness and romance are key themes. But really, they are using the launch as an excuse to gab together and perform poems about queer love.
Come for the award-winning poetry, stay for the references to X-Men, the Sims, and Life is Strange.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £6
March 26
Samantha Dooey-Miles: Under the Hammer
7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1YS
Join Samantha Dooey-Miles as she talks about her hilarious, timely and all too relatable new thriller, Under the Hammer. Perfect for fans of Bella Mackie and CJ Skuse.
Jemma would kill to end the housing crisis - one landlord at a time...
Jemma has lost everything... Well, the very little she had. Her toxic boyfriend has run off with her best friend, leaving Jemma alone in their flat, and she can’t afford the extortionate rent on her own. She’s aimless, depressed and, above all, furious. Slowly but surely, her fury finds its focus: landlords. If only something could be done about them...
When Jemma’s landlord has a fatal accident while carrying out a property repair, she stumbles across her life’s mission: to punish as many landlords as possible. She begins targeting landlords who have appeared on her favourite binge-watch, a home-improvement TV show where their greed is laid bare. It’s a messy job, but someone’s got to do it.
Governed by her own rules, Jemma is convinced her actions are just - but how long before this vigilante turns villain?
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11
March 26
Christopher Buehlman for Between Two Fires
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
This March, Toppings is honoured to celebrate the long-awaited UK release of Between Two Fires. A TikTok sensation and an astounding work of fantasy horror, we hope you’re as excited as we are to dive into an apocalyptic landscape cut in the shape of medieval Europe, where all of humanities hopes lie on the shoulders of a disgraced knight, a fallen priest, and a strange little girl.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £22
March 27
Patrick Gale in conversation with Denise Mina - Love Lane
7pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Rd, EH10 4DD
The Edinburgh Bookshop is delighted to welcome beloved, bestselling author Patrick Gale back to Edinburgh, as he joins Denise Mina to discuss his beautiful new novel, Love Lane - a searing portrayal of escape and the power of love, home and a family.
1950s Northern England. Three generations of men, two of women.
When veteran Canadian wheat farmer, Harry Cane is brutally obliged to sell up and sail home to an England transformed by two world wars, his arrival triggers unwelcome self-examination for the family he abandoned, and for whom he has never been more than a distant myth.
Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25
March 27
A Night of Scottish Witch-Lit with Philip Paris, Mairi Kidd, and Anna Caig
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Join Toppings this March for a very special panel event where we welcome three authors who specialise in witchy fiction; Philip Paris, Mairi Kidd, and Anna Caig. We will be exploring Scotland’s dark and fascinating history of witch trials through the lens of historical fiction and gothic storytelling - it is not one to miss! From the royal courts of Edinburgh to rural villages and remote Highland parishes, these stories bring to life the women accused of witchcraft and the communities and courts gripped by paranoia and power struggles.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 28
Centrefolding by Kirsty Dunlop
7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8LN
Join us for the Edinburgh launch of Kirsty Dunlop’s electrifying, sharp and witty debut novella, Centrefolding.
In Centrefolding an unnamed protagonist shifts, sprints, swerves and transmorphs through the “Centre!” (exclamation mark required): a research institute in some northern British city, in our current jittery moment. Glitches in reality abound – expect research into alien life that goes nowhere, an underground hospital, an Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and ‘lingerers’ slithering under glass doors (you know, like a worm).
“Centrefolding is my dream novelette: gossipy, pacy, and full of gorgeous swerves of language. With enviable wit and inventiveness, it diagnoses the maladies of our contemporary institutions, and reveals the corporate-washed future as the bad joke it is. It’s a book for the sick, the precarious, the loiterers, and the brilliant and glamorous in spite of it all – Kirsty Dunlop has written a future cult classic.”
— Daisy Lafarge, author of Lovebug
Free, but ticketed
March 28
Theatre Book Club: Death on the Nile
1.15pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge
Join us for our Theatre Book Club where we will be chatting about Death on the Nile.
This Book Club will explore Agatha Christie’s murder mystery Death on the Nile. The tranquility of a lovely cruise along the Nile is shattered by the discovery that Linnet Ridgeway has been shot. She was young, stylish and beautiful, a girl who had everything – until she lost her life.
Who is also on board? Christie’s great detective Hercule Poirot is on holiday. He recalls an earlier outburst by a fellow passenger: ‘I’d like to put my dear little pistol against her head and just press the trigger.’ Despite the exotic setting, nothing is ever quite what it seems…
YOU WILL NEED TO BOOK YOUR TICKET ON THE FESTIVAL THEATRE WEBSITE, this is an information page. Book here.
Book club ticket £3
March 29
An evening of recipes and rituals with Samin Nosrat - Good Things
Author of the cookbook-turned-Netflix-hit invites you to a celebration of her eagerly awaited follow-up to Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat.
Sharing stories from her early days serving dishes at her coffee table to her years of learning from culinary and literary legends like Robert Hass and Michael Pollan, she will discuss her inspiration for the cookbook, her development and selection of the recipes, and the transformative power of her culinary rituals, such as her weekly “found family” Monday night dinners.
In an evening about creativity and connection, Samin will remind us how cooking can not only nourish our bodies but also satiate our desire for kinship and community. Simply put, she will share the recipes she most loves to cook for herself and her friends, weaving them into profoundly reflective stories with her trademark blend of warmth, creativity, and precision.
Tickets £33-£49.50
Upcoming events
And for those who like to plan ahead…
March 30
Elinor Cleghorn for A Woman’s Work: Reclaiming the Radical History of Mothering
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Toppings is delighted to welcome Elinor Cleghorn to Edinburgh this March to celebrate A Woman’s Work: the Radical History of Mothering. Elinor’s previous book, Unwell Women, was a favourite amongst our booksellers.
Mothers make history. For centuries, motherhood has sparked social and political change. Yet the acts of growing, birthing and nurturing children - and the power they hold - have been pushed to the margins, overlooked in our narratives of the past.
In A Woman’s Work, Elinor Cleghorn reveals the mothers, othermothers, midwives, activists, and community leaders who have shaped this extraordinary history. They include Hildegard of Bingen, the medieval nun and mystic with pioneering views about the maternal body; Mary Wollstonecraft, who laid the intellectual groundwork to release motherhood from male control; and Sojourner Truth, who drew attention to the abhorrent treatment of mothers under chattel slavery.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £22
March 31
Olive Growing in Palestine: Stories of Everyday Forms of Resistance with Juman Simaan
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Olive Growing in Palestine: Stories of Everyday Forms of Resistance follows the lives of four families and dozens of individuals in the West Bank who grow olives as both livelihood and resistance.
In this new book, Palestinian researcher Juman Simaan provides a counterpoint to eurocentric studies of daily lives and labour, foregrounding Global South perspectives on how people and communities respond to adversity and oppression.
This groundbreaking work sheds light on the indigenous Palestinian concepts of Sutra, ‘Awna and Sumud, and the ways in which these shape how olive farmers resist in everyday ways in concert with each other, with international supporters, and with the more-than-human world, against the forces that seek to divorce them from their land and their trees. These grassroots Palestinian ways of doing, being and becoming give communities, activists, and scholars new tools to counter global forces of discrimination, imperialism, colonialism, white supremacy and the human-made climate crisis.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £24.95
March 31
Aimee MacDonald for The Last Witch on the Knock
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Join us this March to celebrate a fabulous new literary horror debut by Aimée MacDonald, The Last Witch on the Knock. Based on the story of the last woman killed for witchcraft in the Scottish Highlands, Aimée has weaved together a haunting body horror tale that is perfect for fans of Julia Armfield.
‘A lyrical exploration of identity and shared trauma, reminding readers of the power of folk. MacDonald’s writing is unflinchingly visceral’. -- Amy Twigg, author of SPOILT CREATURES
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £20
March 31
Elle McNicoll - Unapologetic Love Story
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We love it when Elle McNicoll comes to town, so it's an absolute pleasure for us to be hosting the Edinburgh launch of her dazzling debut adult romance novel, Unapologetic Love Story. It's an audacious celebration of love, relationships and the women who have been historically shut out of such stores until now...
Enter Raina Lewis, London’s hottest It Girl - effortlessly cool, endlessly intriguing, and beloved for her smash-hit podcast spotlighting autistic women. But not everyone’s convinced by the hype. Investigative journalist and ‘King of Cancel Culture’, Tom Branimir is sure there’s more to Raina than meets the eye. He’s determined to uncover her secret. . . if he can just manage not to fall for her first.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99
April 1
6.30pm, Typewronger Books, 4a Haddington Place, Edinburgh, EH7 4AE
Join us for the launch of Telegraphy by Farah Ali in conversation with Shze-Hui Tjoa
Description: Growing up in Pakistan, Annie experiences the death of her mother, goes to college in Karachi, falls in love with a singer in a band, marries the wrong man, and all her life has visions and illnesses no doctor can explain. She comes to believe that external events can cause disruptions in the body, and episodes from other times and places are interwoven with Annie’s narrative.
Farah Ali is the writer of the novels Telegraphy and The River, The Town, and the short-story collection People Want to Live. Her work has been anthologized in the Pushcart Prize and Best Small Fictions, and has appeared in Shenandoah, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Virginia Quarterly Review and elsewhere. She is the cofounder of Lakeer, and an editor atWasafiri.
Free, but ticketed.
April 1
7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1YS
Join naturalist and award-winning author Stephen Rutt as he discusses his lyrical and insightful new book The Waterlands.
The Waterlands is a new story of water, revealing its natural rhythms and miraculous power. Follow a raindrop as it flows through diverse waterscapes: river sources in the upland moors; saltmarsh-flanked firths and estuaries; serene and spectacular lochs; crystal-clear chalk streams; blanket bogs that are both land and liquid, a thin skin of peat over millennia-old water.
On this epic journey, award-winning writer Stephen Rutt visits these places where life flourishes, revealing how water shapes the land, shapes our lives – and how we shape it in return. Beautifully blending geography, ecology, climate writing and social history, The Waterlands is a captivating retelling of the water cycle, and an urgent call to protect our most essential resource.
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £17
April 1
Hester Musson for The Night Hag
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
Bestselling author of The Beholders, Hester Musson, presents a thrilling new Scottish historical mystery, brimming with science, spiritualism and belief. From standing stones to ancestral secrets, The Night Hag will keep you guessing until the very end.
Scotland, 1886. Lil is an archaeologist who has dedicated herself to a life of rational enquiry. But she is plagued by nightmares which haunt her sleep, and by memories of her mother, a famous medium. As Lil tracks down a mysterious doctor who she believes will cure her of her night terrors, she is caught in a fight between science and superstition, between who she wants to be and the identity she can’t escape.
But who exactly is this doctor that Lil so feverishly reveres? And how could the long-lost hoard unearthed at one of Lil’s digs reveal secrets from her past?
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
April 1
Rare Birds Books Make Friends Mixer
6pm, Rare Birds Book Shop, Raeburn Place, Stockbridge
Are you a book-lover looking to find other like-minded friends? Or maybe you’re new in town and need a way to meet some new people?
Come on your own or with a mate - we’ll have drinks and snacks and are here to help you make some new friends and bond over our shared love of books.
Ticket price is redeemable against purchases on the night.
Tickets £5
April 2
7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh, EH1 1YS
We are delighted to be welcoming Luca Serra, as he chats to Katie Veitch about his profound and deeply fascinating study of home and friendship, in his debut novel, This is Home.
Carlo moves from his Italian hometown to London and begins life anew as a kitchen porter in an underground mice-infested kitchen. His coworker Keto, a 40-year-old Ghanaian, has quit his job many times but always returns, as if magnetised by the potwash.
Carlo searches for answers with his older housemate Marrok, but Marrok is struggling to cope with memories of past tragedy as death is haunting him.
400 miles north Brazilian au-pair Brunilda arrives in Glasgow where everything is wee or grand and she’s a hen. Cultured-shocked by accents, sideways rain and food habits, her heart divided between the comfort of her family in Belo Horizonte and a new life in Scotland, she finds an ally in Kamila, a young Polish illustrator, with whom the line between friendship and love begins to blur. This is Home is a constantly changing exploration of friendship, belonging and what it means to forge your place in the world far away from home.
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11
April 2
Do You Still Have Time for Chaos? Launch Event with Lynn Davidson
6.30pm, Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ
Join us in the bookshop to hear Lynn Davidson in conversation with Robin Marsack about Do You Still Have Time for Chaos?
Do You Still Have Time for Chaos? tells the story of poet and teacher Lynn Davidson’s late-life decision to leave Aotearoa New Zealand, with scant resources, to build a life in Scotland. In 2020, walking the Covid-emptied streets of Edinburgh, she begins her memoir.
Davidson’s look back at what made and fractured her includes an account of single-parenting in the shadow of poverty and stigma, and is interwoven with the ghostly presence of her uncontainable and courageous great aunt, and the long reach of witch hunts.
This is a love letter to the literature of Scotland and Aotearoa New Zealand. It has an ear to the land and its stories. It is a celebration of choice. It is an act of resistance to the persistent idea that women are safer to stay at home.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £12
April 2
Louise Heren for Scottish History in 15 Violent Crimes
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
We are looking forward to welcoming Dr Louise Heren to the bookshop this April to celebrate her latest book, Scottish History in 15 Violence Crimes.
Taking 15 real-life criminal cases prosecuted at the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland between 1700 and 2000, this book explores developments in social attitudes and legal responses to violence. From the last execution for witchcraft to the first prosecution for marital rape, as well as cases of murder, poisoning and infanticide, Scottish History in 15 Violent Crimes examines aspects of masculinity, female agency, emancipation and tolerance.
Using these cases to explore how society has and does perceive different violent crimes, the role of gender, attitudes towards homosexuality, fear of ‘the other’ and attitudes to capital punishment, Heren compares Scottish examples to others in England and Europe to identify similarities and differences, and to contribute to ongoing debates about gender, crime and the law.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £19.99
April 2
Queer in a Wee Place: the launch
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Queer in a Wee Place explores identity, inequality and belonging in animated conversations about how queerness moves through place – and how place, in turn, shapes queer lives.
Building on interdisciplinary sexualities scholarship, activism, creative practices, as well as legislative and cultural critique, this open access book examines the past, present and future imaginings of queerness in Scotland, as a ‘wee place’.
With cases covering law, policies, cultural institutions, education, and everyday life, this collection offers an in-depth analysis of Scottish queer experience, showing how ‘wee places’ reflect and inflect global dynamics – revealing tensions between national pride, visibility and exclusion.
Scotland’s national claims about being world-leading in the advancement of LGBTQ+ rights often re-invoke a global hierarchy of places to be queer. The under-resourcing of and backlash against equality, diversity and inclusion initiatives, and colliding legislation such as hate crime laws and the UK Supreme Court ruling, expose a more complicated truth.
Ticket £4/Ticket plus book £24.99
April 6
Antonia Senior for Stalin’s Apostles
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
Join us this April for an unflinching look at the Cambridge Five; at treachery, arrogance, British exceptionalism, and murder.
The Cambridge Five were the infamous spy ring that betrayed their country and supplied Stalin with top secret information from the 1930s to 1951. Their crimes are often underplayed: they are presented as suave, cunning malcontents in a stuffy establishment. The narrative is very ‘British’, exploring just a fragment of the truth.
In reality, their actions caused enormous suffering across Poland, Albania, and The Baltic states. Stalin’s Apostles reckons with this untold damage using newly declassified documents from the UK and abroad.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25
April 6 & 7
Tartan Noir with Professor David Wilson and Martin Frizell
7.30pm, Pleasance Theatre, 60 Pleasence, Edinburgh, EH8 9TJ
Professor David Wilson and Martin Frizell explore the myths of tartan noir and examine the realities of Scottish crime.
Drawing on decades of experience in journalism and criminology, the evening looks at why certain crimes continue to grip public attention, how “tartan noir” has shaped Scotland’s reputation, and where the reality of crime differs from its portrayal in books, television, and true crime culture.
Tickets from £33.22
April 7 - new listing
An Evening of Poetry with Jane Bonnyman, Annie Brechin & Marianne MacRae
7pm, Blackwells Bookshop, South Bridge, Edinburgh
Join Jane Bonnyman, Marianne MacRae and Annie Brechin as they read from their latest poetry collections
With Date Show, Jane Bonnyman takes a delicious dive into “This Dating Malarkey”, as one poem title puts it. The search for the fairytale romance is arduous, heart-breaking, and hilarious as a candle-lit dinner, where the author writes, “I lean towards you and set fire to my hair.”
Annie Brechin’s How to Make Love is no instruction manual. It’s a double meaning, a rumbustious, poetic odyssey through five cities – London, Prague, Paris, Dubai and Edinburgh – and the amorous encounters found there: the hopes, disappointments, frustrations, and heartbreaks, which ultimately lay the foundations of an unlikely path towards real love.
Marianne MacRae is a poet and researcher based in Edinburgh. Her work has been widely published in journals including Magma, Ambit and Acumen. Her poem ‘Fox’ won first prize in The Rialto Nature and Place Poetry Competition 2024. ‘Recital‘ is her first full collection.
Tickets £3
April 7
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
David Keenan is one of the most original voices in Scottish fiction. He joins us this April to celebrate Boyhood, a boisterous novel of spectacle, tenderness and love.
Boyhood opens in 1979 with the abduction of a young boy outside a Glasgow football ground. Nine years later, the boy’s brother, Aaron Murray, is on the cusp of that moment when adolescence becomes adulthood. His own journey of grief and recovery has been guided by an angel, ‘The Precious Gift’ - perhaps imagined, perhaps real - who has blessed Aaron with redemptive, messianic powers. These have enabled him to see through the past and present, joining the dots between a vast array of characters; ballerinas, soldiers, poets, burlesque dancers, East End gangsters and the Vampire of Derry over five decades, all tied up in each other’s fate.
As Aaron’s visions span cities and decades, from wartime Paris to the Troubles in the 1970s, Mexico City in the 1980s to - of course - Glasgow, Boyhood builds to an extraordinary, intense, climactic moment of redemption.
A book of great joy, of laughter in the face of horror and delight in storytelling by the beloved and critically acclaimed author of This Is Memorial Device, Boyhood is a hymn to the resilience of youth, to the brave dreams of artists and lovers and a love letter to Glasgow - a city where magic happens.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £23
April 8
Amal El-Mohtar for Seasons of Glass & Iron
7pm, Voco, Royal Terrace, 18 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh, EH7 5AQ
Amal El-Mohtar is an author, editor and critic and the best-selling author of This Is How You Lose the Time War. Her short story ‘Seasons of Glass and Iron’ won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards and was a finalist for the World Fantasy, Sturgeon, Aurora, and Eugie Foster awards. She is the author of The Honey Month, a collection of poetry and prose written to the taste of 28 different kinds of honey, and contributes criticism to NPR Books and The New York Times.
Full of glimpses into gleaming worlds and fairy tales with teeth, Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar.
With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
April 8
Radical Abundance: Keir Milburn on how to win a green democratic future
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
Capitalism has created a world of bullshit abundance, where we have too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do. Through this system’s relentless pursuit of profits, we have been put on a collision course with social and ecological limits that can no longer be ignored. We need an alternative. We need radical abundance, a world of human and non-human flourishing made possible by democratically planned production. But radical abundance can’t just be voted into existence through parliamentary means, it must be made by taking control of our collective reproduction in the here and now.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £16.99
April 8
Davina Quinlivan - Possessions
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity
We're looking forward to welcoming Davina Quinlivan to the bookshop for an event to celebrate her latest book, Possessions: A Memoir of Transformation in an Era of Precarity. It's an incendiary, exquisitely written, sharply funny account of one woman’s journey out of the collapsing systems of academia.
After two decades of academic research and undergraduate teaching Davina Quinlivan, and the world of university education, were approaching crisis; teaching online, ticking boxes for other people’s diversity criteria, stuck, like so many others, in a cycle of fixed term contracts. Yet as a child of Anglo-Burmese parents, growing up in West London, academia had promised a way out. Something better.
This is her powerful, compelling story of fragmenting and rebuilding from the inside out, one that is filled with the voices of both Burma and Southall. Haunted by the ghosts of colonialism, Davina Quinlivan beautifully lays bare our blind spots as we grapple with decolonisation and the hypocrisies within our institutions of education.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £14.99
April 9
Polblar Tmolkop: indie poetry night with Andrew Blair
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Featuring Andrew Blair with Marianne MacRae.
Tickets £4
April 9
Kapka Kassabova - Borrowed Land: A Highland Story
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We are really excited that Kapka Kassabova will return to the bookshop to celebrate the publication day launch of Borrowed Land: A Highland Story. She will be reunited with writer and academic Roxani Krystalli for what we're sure will be a fascinating conversation about this intimate story of a Scottish glen and its inhabitants.
This is the intimate story of a Scottish glen and its inhabitants, of whom I am one.
From the powerful rivers that bring life and prosperity; to the Pictish cairns, undisturbed for centuries; to the meadows of bluebells, where deer emerge, God-like, in a flash, Kapka Kassabova reveals a world that has been abused, but remains achingly beautiful and alive.
In the Highlands, centuries-old connections between the land, nature and people have been, and continue to be, shaken by the forces of colonialism, industry, depopulation, and private property speculation. Borrowed Land tells the stories of those who are working against this disconnect: the last true Highlanders fighting to preserve their home.
An extraordinary portrait of the Scottish Highlands, this is an epic and urgent story of destruction and renewal, told through encounters with some of the last true Highlanders.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £22
April 10
Cooks & Books: Tim Anderson for JapanEasy Kitchen
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
Calling all Japanese cooking lovers, or those wanting to delve into the wonderful world of miso and yuzu! Expert cook Tim Anderson takes us through Japanese pantry staples that will transform your daily cooking to the next level.
In JapanEasy Kitchen, Tim Anderson shares delightfully easy recipes, centered on a core selection of go-to Japanese ingredients: miso, soy sauce, sake, mirin & rice vinegar, kombu & katsuobushi, rice & noodles, tofu, yuzu juice, ponzu & yuzu koshō and curry roux, as well as tea and other beverages.
Using these widely available items, you’ll learn to make mains, sides, sweets, and drinks. From Misostrone with Pancetta and Wafū Rarebit to Baked Crabby Udon, Treacle Tamari Ribs, and Katsu Curry Parmo, these recipes, many of which are vegan/vegetarian, demonstrate that Japanese staples have the power to utterly transform your food and add layers of incredible flavour. Whether you are seeking inspiration to use the Japanese ingredients that you already have, or just in need of some new, delicious recipes, JapanEasy Kitchen is the perfect book to turn to.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £26
April 14
Shouting in the Tunnel: protest poetry and discussion with Ruth Aylett and friends
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Shouting in the Tunnel is a collection of explicitly political poems, penned by Ruth Aylett in the hopes of bringing us together, to express our anger at poverty and injustice, and to inspire us to action. It is a vivid commentary on today’s world, but throughout it carries a message of hope.
To mark the launch of the book we’re hosting an evening of readings and discussion inspired by the book and headlined by Ruth herself!
These poems are offered to activists in the trade unions in their everyday struggle for better working conditions; to the anti-racist and anti-fascist movements; to the brave campaigners for action on climate change; to those who have put themselves on the line against the criminalising of Palestine Action; to the hundreds and thousands demonstrating and speaking out against the Gaza genocide; and to everyone struggling for a future free of the cruelty and oppression of capitalism.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £10.00
April 14
Polly Barton - What Am I, A Deer?
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We’re delighted that Polly Barton will be joining us in the bookshop to celebrate the Edinburgh launch of her novel, What Am I, A Deer?. With astonishing existential acuity, Polly Barton’s formidable debut novel renders the paradoxes of modern life in all its complexity, in deliriously self-conscious prose that is at once propulsive, titillating and bitingly funny.
What does it mean to lose yourself – and is that something you should be aiming for? A young woman with little interest in games takes up a job in Frankfurt at a famous gaming company, naively set on reinvention. On her morning commute, in the familiar clutches of tedium and self-loathing, she encounters a nice-eyed stranger who returns her forgotten umbrella and finds herself catapulted into a dizzying, year-long whirlwind of obsession – not just with this endlessly attractive spectre, but also with the feverish karaoke trips from which she draws the ultimate solace. Echoing with the sounds of Whitney Houston and The Cure, reaching for the sublime in dark, sweaty boxes, What Am I, A Deer? is an exhilarating exploration of authenticity, fantasy, romance and intoxication.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £14.99
April 14
Mark Steel for The Leopard In My House
7pm, St Cuthbert’s Church, 5 Lothian Rd, Edinburgh EH1 2EP
I feel like there’s a leopard in my house, locked in a room. I’ve contacted the leopard authorities and they assure me they are used to dealing with leopards like this, and they have a plan for removing the leopard. It will take a while, though, and once in a while I can hear it growl.
And that’s all very reassuring. Even so, several times a day I think to myself: “Hang on, there’s a leopard in my house.”
One morning, while shaving, the comedian Mark Steel noticed that one side of his neck seemed larger than the other. After a whistlestop tour of assorted medical professionals, a consultant delivered the ominous words that would define the next months of his life: ‘I’m afraid it’s not good news, Mr Steel’.
And so began a journey into the heart of the NHS, as he embarked on the long and uncertain road to cancer recovery via a range of mildly torturous and entirely miraculous treatments. What, if anything, might he learn about himself - and our capacity for coping with life when times get tough - as he becomes part of a club that one in two British people will ultimately join?
A frank and funny diary of one man’s rather trying year, this is an unforgettable and uplifting story of getting ill, getting on with it, and getting better.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.99
April 15
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh, EH2 2PA
Waterstones is thrilled to welcome bestselling author of the Lightlark Saga, Alex Aster, back to Edinburgh to celebrate the publication of her unmissable adult romantasy debut, Starside.
Hundreds of years ago, a brutal war split a land in two. Starside is the realm of magic and immortals –the descendants of the gods, living in a power rich paradise. Stormside is where mortals fight for scraps of that magic.
Every 50 years, the gates between them open, and 50 challengers are allowed to journey across Starside on a deadly quest to access a pool of magic that can heal, grant wealth, or extend life. Everyone has their reasons for entering, but Aris has only one: vengeance. As a child, a goddess set fire to her village, killing her family. Aris isn’t after the gods’ magic – she’s going to kill them.
First, she must survive the Culling, the king’s deadly competition to choose his fifty challengers. An orphaned blacksmith’s apprentice, Aris doesn’t have the superior weapons of the heirs from the Great Houses. But the greatest swords – ones that contain power – are not inherited or bought, they are claimed, by both sides. And when Aris claims a great sword, it makes her not just a real competitor – but a target.
Getting past the gates is only the beginning. Starside is deadlier than it seems. If the ancient creatures, magicwielding beasts, and bloodthirsty immortals weren’t dangerous enough, a new peril has even immortals fearing what rises from the ground at night. With a blade most would kill to claim, Aris can’t trust anyone. Especially not Harlan Raker, the merciless and mysterious king’s guard who betrayed her years ago – and who may now be the key to her survival.
But Aris is hiding a secret tied to her family’s death. And when it’s revealed, not even the gods will be able to stop what’s coming…
Tickets £9/Ticket plus book £26
April 15
John Lanchester - Look What You Made Me Do
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
It's our pleasure to be hosting an event with John Lanchester! He'll be here in the bookshop to discuss his latest novel, Look What You Made Me Do.
What if the year’s most talked about TV show was all about your marriage?
Kate, thirty years into her marriage, has a seemingly idyllic metropolitan, North London life. Phoebe, a young screenwriter, is the creator of the year’s hit TV show, Cheating.
When Kate’s world takes a darker turn, she thinks she sees details and intimacies in the show that only she and her husband Jack could possibly have known. But who has betrayed who? Who gets to tell whose story?
A black comedy of resentment and entitlement, Look What You Made Me Do is the story of two very different women from two very different generations, heading toward a battle only one of them can win.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £2o
April 15
Idle Grounds Paperback Launch Event with Krystelle Bamford
6.30pm, Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ
On a bright summer day in 1989 New England, Abi, three years old, vanishes from her aunt’s secluded home. Upstairs, her young cousins are looking out of the window. Something is unfolding in the distance at the edge of the forest – something sinister that is watching them back.
The adults don’t seem to notice that the youngest of the group has disappeared. Too busy bickering over politics and reminiscing about the family’s domineering late matriarch, Beezy, they leave the children with no choice but to get Abi back themselves. As the cousins embark on a quest through their grandmother’s sprawling estate, buried family secrets come to light and long-awaited plans are set in motion.
Will they lose themselves while trying to find her? Idle Grounds is a chilling, evocative and darkly comic debut about childhood, legacy, and the burdens and privileges we carry with us..
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £9.99
April 15
Cooks & Books: Nathan Outlaw for On Fish
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
For anyone wanting to know more about seafood and how to cook it, Michelin-starred Nathan Outlaw has distilled three decades of experience as a foremost fish chef into a very personal go-to cook’s handbook.
Fish Basics covers fishing methods, shopping & storing plus preparation techniques and advice on curing, grilling, smoking, pickling, barbecuing, poaching and frying.
Chapters on flat fish, round fish, oily fish, shellfish and cephalopods provide detailed knowledge about 32 individual species including habitat, fishing and when to eat seasonally,along with cooking & serving suggestions, followed by more than 80 recipes ranging from Brill Cured in White Wine with Grapes, Pumpkin Seeds & Basil Oil and Plaice, Aubergine & Mushroom Curry to Anchovies with Crispy Potato Wedges and Grilled Octopus Skewers.
With recipes to suit all occasions and cooking skills, On Fish is an indispensable resource for anyone wanting to discover and cook with sustainable fish.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30
April 16
Ariana Reines: a fierce feminist poetry night
8pm, Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh, EH10 4NB
The Rose navigates the intersection of power and surrender. Drawing on the history of ‘romance’ as the troubadours knew it, and the titular flower’s ancient allegories for sexuality and mystery, award-winning poet Ariana Reines plunges into feminine archetypes to explore masculine pain:
‘I have always liked helpless / & terrible men because they break my mind.’
In these poems, inherited ideologies of gender performance are replaced with bold vulnerability: paradoxes of power and surrender transmute the speaker’s understanding of suffering, desire, and the soul. The voice in The Rose is wry and bare, approaching the connection between erotic love and spirituality with humour. Investigating war, maternity, violent sensuality, and the role of language in magical acts, Reines is unafraid to uncover the ‘secret / & terrible shovelings / Of love,’ and the result is a bloody and pulsing, sexy and unabashed bloom.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10.99
April 16
Lisa Tuttle and Brigid Lowe - My Death and The Bloody Branch
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
For this special double-feature event, we're delighted that authors Lisa Tuttle and Brigid Lowe are coming to the bookshop to discuss their respective novels, My Death and The Bloody Branch. They will be in conversation with Rebecca Wojturska, Managing Director of independent publisher Haunt Publishing. Expect the discussion to get spooky, Celtic and rather uncanny...
About My Death: A writer decides to write her next book about a female author and artist unjustly forgotten by history. But what starts as an exciting research project rapidly unravels towards breakdown and horror.
The subject is to be Helen Ralston, an early twentieth-century author who has been systematically written out of history. The narrator sets about investigating her story as an artist, writer and muse to a much more famous man. Amazingly Ralston turns out to be still alive, and although elderly and frail a series of interviews begin.
But a tale about the historic erasure of female voices starts to break down into something even more sinister, bizarre and all-consuming as the narrator uncovers unnerving parallels between Ralston’s story and her own...
About The Bloody Branch: Darkness is falling across the land. All that stands against it are three determined women: slave queen Goewin, the reclusive sorceress Arianrhod, and Blodeuwedd, a woman conjured from flowers. Can they unite against the deadly force who threatens them all?
The sadistic ambition of the magician Gwydion wreaks havoc across the forests, cliffs and fields of the kingdom. With the earth itself at stake, Goewin, Arianrhod and Blodeuwedd must unleash their most uncanny powers to challenge him.
In this vital and visceral novel, Brigid Lowe casts ancient light on desire, sex and our relationship with nature to bring these Celtic heroines to explosive, sensuous, blossoming new life.
Tickets £5, redeemable against either book at the event.
April 16
Ben Lerner for Transcription
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
For over two-decades, Ben Lerner has been one of the most interesting voices in both poetry and literary fiction. Now, for the first time, the McArthur Genius Grant winning author of The Topeka School, Leaving the Atocha Station, 10:04, and several magnificent collections of poetry, joins us in Edinburgh to celebrate his latest novel, Transcription.
A writer returns to his college town, where he is to conduct what will be the final published interview with Thomas, his ninety-year-old mentor. But after he drops his smartphone in the hotel sink, he arrives at Thomas’s house with no recording device - a fact he is mysteriously unable to confess. What unfolds from this dreamlike circumstance is both a brilliant meditation on those technologies that enrich and impoverish our connections to each other, that store and obliterate our memories, and a moving exploration of the relationships that make us who we are.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £14.99
April 16
6.30pm, Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ
Identify the rocks you discover and uncover the stories they hold. What is that rock you’ve just picked up? Which minerals is it made of, what’s unique about it and what can it reveal about Earth’s deeper story?
Rocks gives you the tools to answer these questions. Geologist and science illustrator Vojta Hybl guides you through more than 100 rock types, explaining how they form, what they look like and the geological processes they represent. This authoritative yet accessible guide includes: Clear explanations of igneous, volcaniclastic, sedimentary, metamorphic and anthropic rocks. Practical tips for spotting and identifying rocks, including detailed specimen illustrations that highlight key features for easy recognition. Insight into minerals, the rock cycle and Earth’s dynamic history. Alongside practical identification advice, Rocks invites you to see the ground beneath your feet in a new way, connecting everyday stones to billions of years of planetary change.
Whether you’re a curious walker, an outdoor enthusiast or simply fascinated by the natural world, this book will transform how you experience landscapes and help you read the stories written in stone.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £15.99
April 19
7.30pm, Portobello Town Hall, 147-149 Portobello High St
We are absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Evelyn Clarke – AKA V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke – to Portobello Town Hall to celebrate the publication of The Ending Writes Itself with an evening of conversation!
Schwab and Clarke have become great friends to us here in the bookshop over the years and we are so excited to be hosting their Edinburgh launch here in Portobello. Don’t miss out on your chance to hear all about the buzzy locked room mystery crime thriller that everyone will be talking about this year.
It’s the perfect plot. All it needs is a killer ending.
Six authors. One private island. Seventy-two hours to write the ending.
World-famous author Arthur Fletch is dead. His final novel, the most anticipated book in history, remains unfinished. But the ending won’t write itself.
When six struggling authors are invited to Fletch’s private Scottish island and presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, the plot thickens: whoever writes a worthy ending will receive a game-changing book deal and two million dollars. Why have they been chosen to attend? Who is behind the invitation? And just how far would they go to secure a place on the bestseller list?
They have just seventy-two hours, a typewriter and a blank page. All they have to do is write…
Starting is often the hardest part. But getting to the end could be murder.
Tickets £12.50/Ticket plus book £16.99
April 20
Tim Parks for: Across Sicily with the Thousand
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
We’re delighted welcome Tim Parks for Across Sicily with the Thousand.Tim is a friend of the bookshop and an icon of travel writing.
The 1860 Expedition of the Thousand, in which a group of volunteers led by Giuseppe Garibaldi sailed from Quarto, near Genoa, landing on the west coast of Sicily and advancing to its capital Palermo in a bid to liberate the island from Bourbon rule, is perhaps the defining moment of the unification of Italy, and a testament to the bravery, resilience and vision of the country’s last condottiere.
Drawing on a wealth of contemporary diaries and other first-hand accounts by the protagonists of the events, and interspersing them with his own penetrating remarks, best-selling author Tim Parks retraces the journey of the “Mille” through the ragged landscape of Sicily under the blazing summer heat, bringing back to life an entire world in all its intricate complexity. Along the way he revisits old controversies and provides answers to many unresolved questions – as well as offering a vivid commentary on the Italy of today.
Early bird ticket £8/Book plus ticket £20
April 21 - new listing
An Evening of Slow Burn Fantasy
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
From the epic to the cosy, three debut authors discuss their love of slow burn romance within fantasy, from well-known tropes and small moments of care to love that spans epic trilogies. To celebrate the launch of Princeweaver, Elian J Morgan, Kalie Reid and Annabel Campbell discuss their debut novels and the romance threads within Princeweaver, The Sacred Space Between and The Outcast Mage.
Tickets £5
April 21 - new listing
An evening with Charleen Hurtubise and Louise Nealon
7pm, Rare Birds Bookshop, Raeburn Place, Stockbridge
We’re so excited to welcome Charleen Hurtubise and Louise Nealon to talk about their new novels - Saoirse and Everything That Is Beautiful.
Exploring the fine line between dishonesty and reinvention, Saoirse is an evocative and compelling story of a woman perpetually in flight. A book for fans of Trespasses by Louise Kennedy and Barbara’s Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead.
Told through the perspectives of three very different women, Everything That Is Beautiful unfolds the story of one complicated family in startlingly honest prose. By turns funny and deeply moving, and with unmatched emotional intelligence, this is an unforgettable story of love and family, heartbreak and hope - and who we might become after we pick up the pieces.
Tickets £5
April 21
Catherine Ostler for The Renoir Girls
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
Catherine Ostler joins us to celebrate The Renoir Girls - an astonishing true story of splendour, scandal and tragedy in Golden Age Paris. Hot off the heels of The Duchess Countess, Ostler’s latest has been selected by The Times as a one to look out for in 2026. It should make for a fascinating evening.
In 1881, Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted two young sisters from a Jewish banking dynasty at their home in Paris’s grand 8th arrondissement. Pink and Blue, a portrait of Elisabeth and Alice Cahen d’Anvers, captures a fleeting moment of innocence and beauty, and today it is one of Renoir’s most celebrated works. His portrait evokes the glamour of the Belle Epoque: days at the races, nights at the opera, sun-soaked chateaux, brilliant salons filled with art, music and conversation. Paris at its most dazzling.
Yet beneath the glittering surface was a surging current of resentment. Renoir’s Impressionist masterpiece, radiant with light and colour, hides both a family secret and the tensions of an era poised for rupture. The same society that was illuminated by progress and culture was cast into shadow by division, prejudice and rising antisemitism. The Cahen d’Anvers, prominent patrons of this Golden Age, would come to embody both its glory and its tragedy.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30
April 21
Balsam Karam for Event Horizon
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
“If you ever wonder why fiction matters, read this radiant and defiant book.” — Samantha Harvey, Booker Prize-winning author of Orbital
Seventeen-year-old Milde is from the Outskirts, a place beyond the mountains where the dirt is corpse-rich, where mothers and daughters, banished from society, make their living – without rights, access to care, or legal status. But Milde refuses to accept the order of things and, together with some friends, she revolts against the government’s injustice. Arrested, imprisoned, and tortured, Milde is eventually presented with a final choice: to be executed publicly or, as part of an experiment, to be launched into space, into a black hole called the Mass. She chooses the Mass, opting to face its fathomless depth and loneliness rather than hurt the morale of her weary allies back home.
Collapsing and expanding myth and reality, Event Horizon is an exquisite existential novel, dark as deep space, woven with reflections on oppression, solidarity, trauma and loss.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99
April 21
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
That’s right, the reissues of Doug Johnstone’s first two novels means that we’re hosting two events with the Portobello-based crime writer early on in 2026!
Johnstone will return to the bookshop to launch a new edition of his second novel, The Ossians. It sees a last-chance winter road trip for a Scottish band spiral into wild chaos with seagull massacres, bomb tests, and darkly funny rock’n’roll madness on the edge. Johnstone will be in conversation with the Quine of Crime herself, Val McDermid.
Connor is twenty-four, brilliant, broken, and out of control. He’s the swaggering frontman of The Ossians, a Scottish indie band on the brink of signing a major record deal.
Desperate to make their mark, they head off on a two-week winter tour across the cities and hinterlands of Scotland – a last-ditch attempt to find fame, purpose, and themselves.
But the tour soon spirals into a surreal, chaotic odyssey. From seedy bars and snowbound towns to a final, defining Glasgow gig, the band hurtles through a whirlwind of seagull massacres, botched drug deals, a mysterious stalker, radioactive beaches, bomb-testing ranges, epileptic fits, riotous Russian submariners, deadly storms, epiphanies, regular beatings and random shootings.
Raw, darkly funny and wild with energy, The Ossians is a gloriously anarchic story of rock’n’roll obsession, national identity and self-destruction, and what it means to belong – in a band, in a country, in a life unravelling at speed.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £9.99
April 22
Helena Attlee for The Fire in the Mountain
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
For centuries, Mount Etna has sent lava to engulf the towns and villages, terraced fields, orchards, vineyards, and citrus groves that nestle across its slopes. But still it remains home to a quarter of Sicily’s population. Why? Because Etna has always rewarded her people after every eruption with a landscape of unparalleled fertility, richness and drama.
In this extraordinary new book, Helena Attlee combines travel writing with history, mythology, geology, gastronomy and horticulture to tell a unique story of life in the shadow of Sicily’s most dangerous and alluring landmark. Venturing through lava-strewn fields and pistachio groves patrolled by armed guards; past dusky, basalt-built farmyards, and caves once used to store snow, Attlee gathers tales of the artists, writers, farmers, and scientists who have for centuries been drawn to this unpredictable landscape: from the early Roman, Arabic and Norman settlers, Romantic poets and Victorian geologists, to the local families who live and work there today.
It is at once a compelling account of Sicily’s rich and varied past, and a powerful meditation on humanity’s ever-changing relationship with landscape.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £25
April 22
David Farrier - Nature’s Genius
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We’re so pleased to welcome David Farrier to the bookshop on World Earth Day to celebrate the paperback publication of Nature’s Genius: Evolution’s Lessons for a Changing Planet, in which Farrier takes us on a profound journey into our ever-changing natural world.
EARTHDAY.ORG’s founders created and organized the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Since then, Earth Day Network has been mobilising over 1 billion people annually on Earth Day, and every other day, to protect the planet.
In Nature’s Genius David Farrier takes us on a profound journey into this ever-changing natural world. What we discover could transform us. The ways animals adjust to the urban landscape can help us design sustainable cities. Examining other intelligences can help us remake our economies. Learning from bacterial evolution may help solve our waste problem. Synthetic biology could rescue animals from the brink of extinction. Thinking in timescales of the natural world could help us choose a better future.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10.99
April 23
An Evening with Anthony Horowitz
7pm, The Parish Church of St Cuthbert , 5 Lothian Road, Edinburgh, EH1 2EP
Waterstones West End is thrilled to announce that they will be welcoming internationally bestselling author Anthony Horowitz to Edinburgh to celebrate the publication of the next delicious instalment his metafictional mystery series, A Deadly Episode.
The actors have been cast, the script written, and filming has already started in Hastings.
But when Hawthorne and Anthony visit the set, they find a far from happy family. The director’s pretentious, the screenwriter’s an eco-warrior, the two stars hate each other, and the producer has run out of money. And things are about to get much, much worse.
In the middle of shooting, the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed – which leaves the real Hawthorne with no choice. He has to step in and investigate his own murder. Because the killer may not have got the right man. Was it Hawthorne himself who was meant to be the target?
A Deadly Episode is a wild ride through a world that the author knows only too well, and the most personal case Hawthorne has had to deal with so far.
Tickets £9/Ticket plus book £27
April 23
Eleanor Tucker: Turn Back Time
6pm, Edinburgh Printmakers, Edinburgh, EH3 9FP
Join the Edinburgh Bookshop to celebrate the launch of Eleanor Tucker’s hilarious first novel, Turn Back Time - the story of a middle-aged woman who goes back to find her youth, and discovers it wasn’t where she left it.
If you could look 20 years younger. Would you do it?
47-year-old beauty journalist Erica Pells is over the ‘pro-ageing’ articles she is exclusively asked to write. Frankly, she’s over most things; getting older, heavy contouring and boring old Wiltshire. So when her former editor, Merlyn, gives her the opportunity to try a revolutionary hi-tech beauty treatment called WULT (Woke Up Like This), that promises to make you look 20 years younger, she jumps at the chance. What has she got to lose, anyway?
But how does a Gen X woman who grew up with Bridget Jones survive when she looks like fresh-faced Gen Z?
Free but ticketed/ticket plus book £9.99
April 23
7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge
In the skies above war-torn Europe, Stanley Wake and his fellow aircrew at Bomber Command risk their lives on missions that are incredibly dangerous and highly pressured. As the strains of their work press on him, Stan is beginning to suspect that either their plane is haunted or Stan himself may be haunted by his part in bringing about death and destruction to so many.
On the ground in Lincoln, Abby Sallow is desperately trying to keep her own ghosts at bay. Working in a factory dismantling wrecked aircraft, Abby struggles to escape the nightly visions of her only son, who was killed at the very outset of war. While Stan longs to live, Abby seems intent on bringing about her own death.
And for intensely superstitious, Harry Culpepper, one of Stan’s crewmates, it is only the Fates can keep him alive. He has crafted a talisman – a bird skull – that he is convinced will guarantee his safety.
But as the bombing intensifies and the crew count down towards 30 flights completed – the point at which they will be given a reprieve from their deadly work – all three characters will discover whether they can find a chance of peace amongst the devastation of war, and whether the ghosts that haunt them can ever truly be laid to rest.
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £17
April 23
James Bailey for Like a Cat Loves a Bird: The Nine Lives of Muriel Spark
7pm, Topping & Company , 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
There are few names in the history of Scottish literature more influential than Muriel Spark, and there are few writers better positioned to document her life than James Bailey. This astounding biography is witty, mischevious, comprehensive, and incredibly readable. We are so delighted to welcome James to the bookshop this April.
Muriel Spark was one of literature’s great shapeshifters. That mercurial quality is found in her strange, brilliant, cruel novels - with their plots featuring pensioners receiving telephone calls from Death, the devil going clubbing in Peckham and a fascist schoolmistress leading her coterie of girls astray - but it is also true of her as a person.
As sly, nimble and elegant as Spark’s own work, Like a Cat Loves a Bird is a thrilling new perspective on a remarkable life and career that spanned much of the twentieth century. From her childhood in Edinburgh to her final years in Tuscany - via South Africa, London, New York and Rome - it traces a light-footed journey around the world and through her strange and magnificent bibliography. It tells an irresistible story of transformation, wit and fierce determination and makes a passionate case for this vital modern artist.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20
April 23
An evening with Caro Claire Burke
7pm, Rare Birds Book Shop, Raeburn Place, Stockbridge
Natalie lives a traditional lifestyle – and has the Instagram account to prove it. Her charming farmhouse on her working ranch is artfully cluttered, her husband is a handsome cowboy, her homemade sourdough boules are each more beautiful than
the last.
So what if there are nannies and producers and industrial-grade ovens behind the scenes? What Natalie’s followers don’t know won’t hurt them.
Then, one morning, Natalie wakes up in a strange, horrible version of reality. The year appears to be 1805. Is this a hoax? A reality show? A test from God? One thing Natalie does know is that it’ll make one hell of an Instagram post…
Tickets £5
April 23
John Kampfner for Braver New World
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
We are delighted to be welcoming broadcaster, journalist and award-winning author John Kampfner to Edinburgh to discuss his new book Braver New World: The Countries Daring to Do Things Others Won’t
A groundbreaking exploration of the countries solving the world’s most pressing problems and what we can learn from them.
At a time when democracies seem paralyzed by fear and populations are turning inward, award-winning journalist John Kampfner travels to ten countries confronting our shared challenges with bravery and imagination.
In Japan, he discovers inter-generational care homes ensuring dignity in later life while Britain ducks the social care question. He visits Vienna’s century old housing projects where 60% of residents live in subsidised accommodation without stigma and communities thrive. Taiwan’s health system achieves 90% patient satisfaction at a fraction of the cost of the NHS. From Moroccan solar panels in the Sahara producing enough clean energy to power two million homes to Finnish classrooms preparing children for an uncertain world that Britain’s teaching-to-the-test system cannot match, Kampfner introduces us to the people making radical change happen.
These aren’t utopias. But what unites them is a refusal to accept that difficult problems are unsolvable. The countries showing true innovation are often those with their backs against the wall not wealthy nations assuming they have all the answers. ‘Braver New World’ is an urgent reminder that solutions exist. The question is whether we have the courage to learn.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22
April 24
Ann Cleeves: An Evening at Edinburgh Castle
7pm, The Great Hall, Edinburgh Castle, Castlehill, EH1 2NG
The Edinburgh Bookshop is delighted to be welcoming number one Sunday Times bestselling crime author Ann Cleeves and broadcaster Nicola Meighan to Edinburgh Castle for a very special evening celebrating the paperback launch of Ann's latest Jimmy Perez novel, The Killing Stones.
When a violent storm descends upon Orkney, the body of Archie Stout is left in its wake. An unusual murder weapon, a Neolithic stone bearing ancient inscriptions, is found discarded nearby. Archie was a popular, larger-than-life character, and his death is a shocking blow to the community.
Detective Jimmy Perez, no stranger to the complexity of human nature and the darkness it can harbour, is soon on the scene. He counted Archie as a childhood friend, so this case is more personal than most. Now living in Orkney with his partner, Willow, and their son, Perez is soon drawn into the lives of the islanders, many of whom harbour secrets. Dark secrets, which could have led to the man’s murder.
Here, in these ancient lands where history runs deep, Perez must discern the truth from legend before a desperate killer strikes again . . .
Ticket £20/Ticket plus book £30
April 24
An Evening with Gillian McAllister
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
We are delighted to be joined by bestselling author Gillian McAllister, as she discusses her latest atmospheric, taut and incredibly twisty thriller Caller Unknown.
They Took Her Daughter. Now She’ll Break Every Rule to Get Her Back.
Simone’s holiday to Texas was meant to be some much needed bonding time with her teenage daughter, Lucy.
On their first night in the desert, Simone wakes to find Lucy missing and a mobile phone in her place. The phone rings: Lucy has been taken and, in order to get her back, Simone must commit a crime. As Simone prepares to follow the kidnapper’s instructions, she feels certain that there is nothing she wouldn’t do to save Lucy. But becoming a wanted woman is just the start...
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20
April 24
Dan Richards With Special Guest, Shipping Forecast announcer Ron Brown, for Overnight
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
We’re delighted to welcome Dan Richards to Edinburgh to celebrate the paperback release of Overnight, an exploration of the night and the people found in it. Richards’ prose is witty, tender, and deeply humane.
On the night, Dan will be joined by BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Ron Brown to discuss and, with luck, read a little of the iconic Shipping Forecast.
There is something special about the night.
For many, dusk and evening conjure thoughts of starlit skies, romance, bedtime stories and rest. For others, the small hours mean fear, vulnerability and sleeplessness. At night things go bump, the familiar world becomes mysterious and uncanny; owls and bats take wing, foxes prowl.
With new material delving deeper into all things nocturnal, Overnight is a hymn to nighttime wildlife, travel, dreams and art. Along the way, Dan Richards meets a fascinating array of people who labour while the rest of us sleep, and brings their work into the light.
From night terror chills to the warmth of dawn on the summer solstice, Overnight will change the way you think about the hours after dark.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £10.99
April 24 - 8 May
First Date Festival from Lighthouse Bookshop and Book Lovers Bookshop
Save the Date dear reader: from 24 April to 8 May YOU are once again invited to join us for another edition of our First Date romance festival! As great lovers of romance and feel good fiction - and following a fortuitous conversation with Jenny Colgan in 2022 - we thought it was high time we created a platform for a much beloved genre that deserves its own stage, and so we launched FIRST DATE! For the fourth year of FIRST DATE, Lighthouse Bookshop and Book Lovers Bookshop have teamed up again to bring you TWO WEEKS of events, including writing workshops, panel discussions, late night shopping and lots more!
Featured authors include Beth O’Leary, Rebecca J. Caffery, Adiba Jaigirdar, Meg Jones, Lola Keeley, Zoe Terakes, Lily X, Kai Spellmeier, Gayathiri Kamalakanthan, Andrés N. Ordorica, Elle McNicoll, Lizzie Huxley Jones, Leigh Rivers, Olivia Belle.
Tickets and programme details: Lighthouse Bookshop and Book Lovers Bookshop
April 25
Theatre Book Club: The Spy Who Came in from the Cold
1.15pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge
Join us for our Theatre Book Club where we will be chatting about The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
Do you love reading and going to the theatre? Then head on over to the Festival Theatre website to book your tickets to the book group here.
Do you want to dig in deep to the original story before seeing its adaptation? This collaborative book club from Blackwell’s and Capital Theatres is just the thing to take you from page to stage and ignite some fascinating conversations.
This Book Club will explore John le Carré’s third novel, and the first to earn him international acclaim, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.
With unsurpassed knowledge culled from his years in British Intelligence, le Carre brings to light the shadowy dealings of international espionage in the tale of a British agent who longs to end his career but undertakes one final, bone-chilling assignment.
When the last agent under his command is killed and Alec Leamas is called back to London, he hopes to come in from the cold for good. His spymaster, Control, however, has other plans. Determined to bring down the head of East German Intelligence and topple his organization, Control once more sends Leamas into the fray — this time to play the part of the dishonored spy and lure the enemy to his ultimate defeat.
YOU WILL NEED TO BOOK YOUR TICKET ON THE FESTIVAL THEATRE WEBSITE, this is an information page. Book here.
Book club tickets £3
April 27
Liz Earle for How To Age
7pm, St Cuthbert’s Church, 5 Lothian Rd, Edinburgh EH1 2EP
Join Liz as she shares all the latest scientific research which informs her unique approach to age well; never anti-ageing, always in the best way possible. So much of what we have been told about ageing is wrong. We’re not here to spend our later years in silent decline. We have just never been shown the full picture of what is possible - or how we can take control of it. Liz offers the very best evidence-based biohacks and practical, easy-to-implement, daily plans to improve and boost your energy as you age. She has used these same protocols to turn back her biological age by decades and she now feels stronger, happier and more purposeful in her 60s than in any other decade of her life.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £22
April 27
Cooks & Books: Helen Graham for Centrepiece
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
“Helen carries the torch for all the ingredients I love most. Vegetables behaving exactly as they should. A cook after my own heart.” - YOTAM OTTOLENGHI
We are delighted to be welcoming Helen Graham to the bookshop for Centrepiece: a celebration of bold, vibrant vegetarian dishes designed to inspire, delight and put vegetables exactly where they belong: centre stage.
Drawing inspiration from the rich flavours of the Middle East and North Africa, as well as Helen Graham’s Ashkenazi Jewish heritage, this cookbook features 100 inventive, vegetable-based recipes that will transform your table. With accessible ingredients and simple methods, Helen’s flavour-packed combinations of spices, herbs and sauces elevate vegetables into something truly showstopping.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £28
April 28
Joanna Cherry: Keeping the Dream Alive
7.30pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, South Bridge, Edinburgh
We are looking forward to being joined by Joanna Cherry as she shares her astonishing insider’s account of a tumultuous decade in Scottish politics, in her new book Keeping the Dream Alive.
In 2015, the landscape of British politics was changed forever - Westminster was suddenly the new workplace for dozens of freshly elected SNP members. What followed was one of the most remarkable decades in British political history.
Joanna Cherry was part of this cohort, and in this explosive and revealing memoir she tells her own story of Scottish and British politics during this turbulent period .Covering everything from the party’s rejection of its popular leader, Alex Salmond, to the scandals that engulfed his successor Nicola Sturgeon, Cherry also reflects on the opportunities that followed the 2015 landslide and offers remarkable insight into why the party failed to further the cause of independence despite a series of electoral victories.
As well as offering an astonishing insider’s view of the culture of the SNP, Keeping the Dream Alive also looks to the future and offers a clear-eyed view of how political reform in Scotland and the revival of the independence cause could take place.
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £20
April 28
Sara Wheeler for Jan Morris: A Life
7pm, Topping & Company Booksellers, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
There are few literary figures more significant in the last seventy-years than Jan Morris. From her magnum-opus, Trieste, to her outspoken support of transgender people, and her gender reassignment surgery, Morris is a figure whose life demands documentation. Sara Wheeler’s authorised biography, Jan Morris: a Life, is deeply readable, unflinchingly honest, and remarkably timely.
She was the twentieth century. Who wouldn’t want to write her biography?
When Jan Morris joined the 1953 Everest expedition and was first to get news of the ascent back to London, she became the most famous journalist in the world. So began a glittering career covering the Eichmann trial, interviewing Che Guevara and scooping the story of Suez collusion. Morris transitioned in the early seventies and documented the experience in Conundrum. She was a pioneer and her books, including Venice and the Pax Britannica trilogy, have inspired readers across the globe.
Here, renowned travel writer and biographer Sara Wheeler uncovers the complexity of this twentieth-century icon to reveal a mosaic of contradictions. Morris’s work conjured the spirit of place, yet her late masterpiece Trieste celebrates ‘the meaning of nowhere’; she was a Welsh nationalist who wasn’t Welsh; a preacher of kindness with a cruel side. This is a portrait of an astonishing life, and a scintillating story of longing, travel and never reaching home.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25
April 28
In Conversation with Dominic Gregory & David Gange
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
In this special double-feature event we are thrilled to welcome both Dominic Gregory and David Gange for a discussion of their respective forthcoming books The Lifeboat at the End of the World and Afloat.
Dominic Gregory is an RNLI volunteer on the Dungeness lifeboat, his book The Lifeboat at the End of the Worldis the first to document the realities of volunteering for the RNLI. Dungeness has been home to a lifeboat service for over 200 years, and now finds itself as the centre of one of the most pressing political stories in modern Britain. His candid, powerful writing takes you into a unique perspective on the issue of small boat migration and explores why the RNLI is so important.
David Gange explores ways of life that have been built on small rowed or peddled boats, particularly in the North Atlantic, in his latest book Afloat. Small boats have been essential to many cultures’ ways of living in the land- and seascapes that surround them. Wherever we have statistics, small rowed and paddled boats outnumber decked ships by at least fifty to one, yet nearly all writing is dedicated to the large boats, until this book.
Tickets £5/Ticket + Lifeboat at the End of the World £18.99/Ticket + Afloat £22/Ticket + both books £35
April 29
An Evening with Anthony Horowitz
7pm, The Parish Church of St Cuthbert, 5 Lothian Road, Edinburgh, EH1 2EP
Waterstones is thrilled to announce that we will be welcoming internationally bestselling author, Anthony Horowitz, to Edinburgh to celebrate the publication of the next delicious instalment his metafictional mystery series, A Deadly Episode.
The actors have been cast, the script written, and filming has already started in Hastings.
But when Hawthorne and Anthony visit the set, they find a far from happy family. The director’s pretentious, the screenwriter’s an eco-warrior, the two stars hate each other, and the producer has run out of money. And things are about to get much, much worse.
In the middle of shooting, the actor playing Hawthorne is stabbed – which leaves the real Hawthorne with no choice. He has to step in and investigate his own murder. Because the killer may not have got the right man. Was it Hawthorne himself who was meant to be the target?
A Deadly Episode is a wild ride through a world that the author knows only too well, and themost personal case Hawthorne has had to deal with so far.
Tickets £9/Ticket plus book £27
April 29
Jane Harper with Val McDermid for Last One Out
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
This April we’ll be joined by the tremendous Jane Harper to discuss her latest book, Last One Out - an unforgettable small-town mystery with huge emotional resonance. Jane will be joined by the Queen of Crime herself, Val McDermid.
He had been here, that was clear from the marks in the dust. And he had been alone.
In a dying town, Ro Crowley waits for her son on the evening of his twenty-first birthday. Sam never comes home. His footprints in the dust of three abandoned houses offer the only clue to his final movements. One set in. One set out.
Five long years later, Ro returns to Carralon Ridge for the annual memorial of Sam’s disappearance. The skeletal community is now an echo of itself, having fractured under the pressure of the coal mine operating on its outskirts. But Ro still wants answers. Only a few people remain. If the truth is to be found in that town, does it lie among them?
Early bird tickets £18/Ticket plus book £20
April 29
Michael Pedersen: Muckle Flugga
7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge
Join the brilliant and very much acclaimed poet and author of Boy Friends, Michael Pedersen as we celebrate the publication of his wonderfully vibrant and haunting island-set psychodrama, Muckle Flugga.
Life on a remote island is turned upside down by a stranger’s arrival, testing bonds of family and tradition and leaving a young dreamer’s future hanging in the balance.
It’s no ordinary existence on the rugged isle of Muckle Flugga. The elements run riot and the very rocks that shape the place begin to shift under their influence. The only human inhabitants are the lighthouse keeper, known as The Father, and his otherworldly son, Ouse. Them, and the occasional lodger to keep the wolf from the door.
When one of those lodgers - Firth, a chaotic writer - arrives from Edinburgh, the limits of the world the keeper and his son cling to begin to crumble. A tug of war ensues between Firth and the lighthouse keeper for Ouse’s affections - and his future. As old and new ways collide, and life-changing decisions loom, what will the tides leave standing in their wake?
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £10
April 30
Happiness by Yuri Felsen Event with Bryan Karetnyk in conversation with Sarah Gear
6.30pm, Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ
Join us in the bookshop to hear Bryan Karetnyk in conversation with Sarah Gear about Happiness by Yuri Felsen.
Happiness is the second part of Yuri Felsen’s The Recurrence of Things Past trilogy, following the critically acclaimed Deceit. Both subtle and profound in its exploration of love, art, literature, and human frailty, Felsen’s trilogy traces the tormented romance of its protagonist alongside his artistic evolution, standing at the forefront of aesthetic and philosophical currents in European modernism.
Yuri Felsen was the pseudonym of Nikolai Freudenstein. Born in St Petersburg in 1894, he emigrated in the wake of the Russian Revolution, first to Riga and then to Berlin, before finally settling in Paris in 1923. In France, he became one of the leading writers of his generation, alongside the likes of Vladimir Nabokov; influenced by the great modernists such as Marcel Proust, James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, his writing stood at the forefront of aesthetic and philosophical currents in European literature. Following the German occupation of France at the height of his career, Felsen tried to escape to Switzerland; however, he was caught, arrested and interned in Drancy concentration camp. He was deported in 1943 and killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £12.99
April 30
Andrey Kurkov for The Lost Soldiers
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Literary legend Andrey Kurkov joins us in Edinburgh for the first time to celebrate the latest in his Kyiv mysteries, Lost Soldiers.
Fresh from case of the stolen heart, one that shattered his belief in the regime he works for, Samson Kolechko is confronted with a mystery that borders on the impossible. How could a squad of Red Army soldiers have disappeared from the Galician bathhouse, leaving only their boots and their uniforms as evidence they ever existed?
Faced with such a fantastical conundrum, Samson resorts to fantastical investigation method: stitching his operative severed ear into a bathhouse worker’s jacket, he is able to eavesdrop on his every move. But he discovers far more than he bargained for, uncovering human remains in the stoves and the presence of a sinister religious cult in the city.
With his quick-witted new wife Nadezhda at his side, Samson must not only solve the case but navigate the political turmoil that still grips Kyiv as civil war looms and trust between neighbours and comrades is eroded day by day.
In this third volume, Andrey Kurkov, Ukraine’s greatest living novelist, and a true master of absurd storytelling, vividly depicts a city filled with political turbulence and eccentric characters - and draws playful parallels with the present day.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20
30 April
Paige Toon in conversation with Niamh Hargan
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
We are thrilled to be joined byinternationally bestselling author, Paige Toon, as she chats to her friend, Niamh Hargan, about their latest sweepingly upliftingly and deeply emotional love stories, Don’t Fall in Love With Me and Nothing Good Happens After 2am.
What if the person you love the most is the one you can’t have?
Grace has loved Jackson since she was fifteen – when they spent every childhood summer exploring France’s breathtaking Ardèche region together. They were best friends, until life took its course and Jackson married someone else.
Years later, Jackson re-enters Grace’s life with an irresistible offer: her dream job in the very town where their story began. And he’s newly single. As memories from those idyllic summers flood back, Grace encounters an old friend Étienne, who proposes a plan to help make Jackson jealous. But as their scheme unfolds, Grace finds herself questioning if the sparks between them might not be so pretend after all…
Unbeknownst to Grace, Étienne is harbouring a secret that could shatter her world. Will learning the truth finally set her heart free? Or is this the beginning of a love story bigger than she ever imagined?
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £13
May 1
Cooks & Books: FoodieHolly aka Holly Dingwall for Dinner, Solved
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Join us for a culinary evening with Scotland’s top foodie influencer, FoodieHolly aka Holly Dingwall!
Stuck in a dinner rut? Bored of the same old pasta? Short on time, but still want a meal that delivers on taste? Dinner, Solved redefines what ‘quick dinners’ can look like and offers endless inspiration for year-round cooking.
From viral food creator Holly Dingwall (@foodieholly), Dinner, Solved proves that fast meals can still feel fresh, creative and seriously satisfying. With over 100 delicious recipes that can be made in 10, 20, 30 or 40 minutes, you can plan your meals around your schedule - not the other way around. As well as speedy recipes, you’ll get an ultimate toolkit for remixing your cooking repertoire.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22
May 4
James Holland for The Visionaries
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh, EH3 6QE
Acclaimed historian and bookshop favourite, James Holland, returns this May to celebrate his latest work, The Visionaries. Holland’s writing is, as always, gripping, thorough, and deeply readable. It should make for a brilliant evening.
Although the Second World War was still a long way from being won, even by early 1941, US President Franklin Delaney Roosevelt was already planning for peace. America’s entry of the war may still have been almost a year away, but he could already see the new world order that needed to emerge from the smouldering ashes of Europe. The business of war was very quickly going to have to become the business of peace.
Three years later, under the guidance of his successor, President Harry S. Truman, the Marshall Plan would emerge, a forward-thinking combination of global philanthropy and canny self-interest, rooted in a profound sense of Christian and moral duty, and which kickstarted unprecedented European growth and a chance for the world as a whole to rebuild after the ruinous catastrophe of war. From the world on the eve of war in 1914 through to the Versailles Treaty and the global financial catastrophe of the late 1920s and early thirties, and the political earthquakes that followed, The Visionaries takes a broad sweep of history with important lessons for today. It’s a reminder that while history does not repeat itself, patterns of human behaviour certainly do.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20
May 5
An Evening with Antonia Hodgson
7pm, Waterstones, Edinburgh - West End, Princes Street
We are thrilled to be joined by Antonia Hodgson as we celebrate the paperback publication of her immersive and enthralling epic fantasy, The Raven Scholar.
She might win the throne. She might destroy an empire. Either way, it begins with murder.
After twenty-four years on the throne, it is time for Bersun the Brusque, emperor of Orrun, to bring his reign to an end. In the dizzying heat of mid-summer, seven contenders will compete to replace him.
Trained at rival monasteries, each contender is inspired by a sacred animal – Fox, Raven, Tiger, Ox, Bear, Monkey, and Hound. An eighth – the Dragon proxy – will be revealed only once the trials have begun. Eight exceptional warriors, thinkers, strategists – the best of the best.
Then one of them is murdered.
It falls to the brilliant but idiosyncratic Neema Kraa to investigate. But as she hunts for a killer, darker forces are gathering. If Neema succeeds, she could win the throne – whether she wants it or not. But if she fails, she will sentence herself to death – and set in motion a sequence of events that could doom the empire . . .
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £13
May 5
An Evening of Poetry with Bloomsbury and Nine Arches Press
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
We are delighted to be hosting a joint reading between four poets across Bloomsbury and Nine Arches Press: Karen McCarthy Woolf, Troy Cabida, Safa Khatib and Jennifer Wong.
Ranging from the aftermath of colonialism across London and LA, to the way language inhabits the ever-changing self, to the vibrant neon landscape of the queer body, to the workings of time as it entangles with memory, these four poets capture the plurality of the human experience throughout their work.
It is such a pleasure to be welcoming all of them to Edinburgh for a special collaborative event. We hope to see you there!
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book voucher £10
May 6
An Evening with Patrick Radden Keefe
7.30pm, Church Hill Theatre, 33 Morningside Rd, Edinburgh, EH10 4DR
We are delighted to welcome Patrick Radden Keefe to Edinburgh for a discussion of his new book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth. From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning & Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing – a stunning story of corruption and tragedy in one of the world's great cities: London. Radden Keefe will be in conversation with author and broadcaster Zing Tsjeng.
In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, mysteriously fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. When his grieving parents began their desperate quest to understand how their son had died, they made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.
In his inimitably gripping and forensic prose, Baillie Gifford Prize winner and New Yorker writer Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac’s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought Zac to the balcony that night – and how a teenager’s world of make-believe drew him into the city’s terrifying underworld.
London Falling is at once a devastating family tragedy, a riveting story of greed, power and deception, and an indictment of the culture that has transformed London into a haven for the malignant forces that have come to influence us all.
Tickets £18/Ticket plus book £22
May 6
Roderick Beaton for Europe: A New History
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
One for the history buffs! Award-winning historian Roderick Beaton joins us to discuss his latest, Europe: A New History. Beaton questions what we talk about when we talk about Europe? Is it defined by geography? Or is it politics, or shared culture? Perhaps it’s all of the above. In Europe, Beaton tells the story of Europe as never before - as the history of an idea, and a collective identity.
Since its dramatic birth in ancient Greece, ‘Europe’ has been defined, and redefined, by its people. Through this powerful lens, and with the narrative drive and scope of a novelist, Beaton deftly surveys Europe’s major historical developments: the rise and fall of Rome; the explosion of Christianity; the intellectual ferment of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment; the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; the violent upheavals of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and the uncertainties of the present. Throughout, original sources allow the voices of the past, from Tacitus to Thatcher, to speak for themselves.
Grappling with the multilayered identities that have always come with being European, Europe places the Europe of today in a long arc of history stretching back more than 2,500 years.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30
May 7
Hannah Lavery - Everything Everyday: A Year of Empty Promises
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
It's a pleasure to be welcoming Hannah Lavery back to the bookshop for the publication day launch of her new poetry collection, Everything Everyday: A Year of Empty Promises. Lavery will be in conversation with fellow poet and former Scottish Makar Jackie Kay. Don't miss out on what will be a beautiful celebration of Lavery's poetry!
Everything Everyday is a poetic journal of the year that charts winter through to autumn in a richly textured sequence of diary-poems, lyric fragments and a crown of sonnets. Each month’s entry weaves together mythic figures – Tahlequah the mourning orca, Brigid’s mountain dance, Sister Icarus’s fragile flight and Beira’s shore vigils – with the unfolding chronicle of contemporary grief and protest. Readers move from January’s frozen harbour and political flashpoints into spring’s ritual planting of ‘lemon-drop’ seeds, summer’s drum-driven rallies and smoky vigils, and autumn’s oil-slick swans and ash-borne snowdrops.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10.99
May 7
Ocean Event with Polly Clark, in conversation with Jenny Brown
6.30pm, Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ
A powerful yacht, a warring family, the unforgiving deep...
Caught in a terrorist explosion on the London Underground, inner-city schoolteacher Helen is pregnant and lost until a stranger leads her to safety then vanishes. Obsessed with finding him, she begins to lose her grip on reality – and her family.
As their marriage fractures, her husband Frank proposes a daring plan: sell up and sail the Atlantic with their son Nicholas and troubled foster daughter Sindi on the Innisfree, the very boat where the couple first fell in love. What begins as a daring bid for salvation turns into an epic journey. The ocean proves as wild and unpredictable as the heartbreak Helen is trying to outrun.
Will the voyage meant to save them destroy them instead? With a fiercely funny and maverick heroine at its helm, Ocean is a powerful exploration of the uncharted waters of the human heart. The award-winning author of Larchfield takes us on a gripping, beautifully written voyage into the depths of what it means to heal – and to live.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £9.99
May 7
Alex Howard for The Ship’s Cat
7pm, St Cuthbert’s Church, 5 Lothian Rd, Edinburgh EH1 2EP
First there was The Ghost Cat, then there was The Library Cat, now Alex Howard joins us to celebrate the wonderfully heart-warming, The Ship’s Cat. It is an epic of Homeric proportions that will leave the reader with a smile on their face.
When street-savvy London stray Archie accidentally stows away on a flight to Turkey, he’s just looking for shelter. But after stumbling onto a fishing boat in a quiet cove, Archie discovers he’s no ordinary feline - for with his polydactyl paws, he brings uncanny good fortune to vessels at sea.
From the sun-drenched harbours of the Mediterranean to the bustling decks of ocean racers, Archie becomes a legend among sailors. Yet beneath the viral fame and whispered tales of ‘the magical ship’s cat’, Archie yearns for something deeper: a forever-human who will love him not as a talisman, but as a companion.
It may be luck that drives Archie on this great Odyssey around the world, but love will be what calls him home - not to some place, perhaps, but to someone. Heartwarming, adventurous and quietly profound, The Ship’s Cat is a tale of resilience, belonging, unexpected friendship and the mysterious ways love finds us.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
May 7
Jack Parlabane returns! Chris Brookmyre for Quite Ugly One Evening
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Christopher Brookmyre, two-time McIlvanney Prize winner, returns to Edinburgh this May to celebrate Quite Ugly One Evening.
This zeitgesty locked-room mystery sees the return of rogue journalist Jack Parlabane thirty years after his first appearance in Quite Ugly One Morning.
An Atlantic voyage. A family at war. A secret worth killing over...
Reporter Jack Parlabane thrives on chasing stories in unlikely places, and where could be less likely than a fan convention on a cruise liner celebrating a contentious Sixties TV series? But unlike the media family exploiting their show’s renewed relevance, he’s not there to stoke controversy: he’s there to solve a murder.
Already in deep water with his employer, Jack desperately needs a win, and solving this decades-old mystery could be it. Problem is, he’s in the middle of the Atlantic, and someone onboard has already killed once to keep their secret.
And that’s not even the tricky part. No, the tricky part is definitely the dead body locked in a stateroom with him, covered in his blood. Now Jack has to solve two murders, otherwise the only way he’s getting off this ship is in handcuffs - or in a body bag.
Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22
May 8 - new listing
Annie Knows Everything launch party
Join us for an extra special night at Rare Birds for the launch of Annie Knows Everything!
We couldn’t be more excited to celebrate this book with our treasured community, as it’s written by one of our own: the author is also our store owner, Rachel Wood.
Included in the ticket price is a copy of the ANNIE KNOWS EVERYTHING special edition, which you can have signed and personalised on the night, plus our brand new store tote, not yet available for purchase!
The drinks will be flowing, the tunes will be playing, and our friends from Joelato will be in the building serving up scoops of gelato inspired by the book. We can’t wait to see you there!
Tickets £16.99
May 8
Jess Venner for The Lost Voices of Pompeii
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
Acclaimed historian Jess Venner joins Toppings this May to relive the dramatic last day in Pompeii in this immersive book, based on seven of the city’s real residents.
We all know how the people of Pompeii died. But what about how they lived?
Drawing on the latest archaeological discoveries, Dr Jess Venner brings the ancient streets to life through the eyes of those who lived, worked, loved and ultimately met their fate in Pompeii.
Along the way, Venner reveals a community more complex, diverse and human than we ever imagined. We meet Julia Felix, a successful female entrepreneur defying Roman convention; Petronus, a slave grappling with his future after gaining his freedom; politician Gaius Cuspius Pansa, who cements his power and prestige by hosting the Plebian Games at the amphitheatre; and many others.
Pompeii is remembered for its destruction, but here we discover the vibrant lives that came before. Richly evocative and immersive, The Lost Voices of Pompeii vividly recreates the final twenty-four hours before the eruption, reminding us exactly what - and who - was lost in 79 AD.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22
May 9
John Robb memoirs and spoken word tour
7pm, The Voodoo Rooms - The Ballroom, Edinburgh EH22AA
In May 2026 John Robb will be releasing his memoirs, Punk Rock Ruined My Life, and to accompany this will be a spoken word tour. Each event will be a one hour talk from John Robb then after a break there will be a different special guest every night in conversation with John Robb. The Edinburgh guest will be Stuart Braithwaite of Mogwai.
Tickets £15.89
May 11
Cooks & Books: Henry Harris for The Racine Effect
7pm, Topping & Company Booksellers, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Those who have had the pleasure to eat Henry Harris’ food certainly haven’t forgotten it. He is an authority on French Cooking, loved by the public and his fellow chefs alike.
Throughout a lifetime in the kitchen, Henry Harris has cooked classic French dishes defined by their generosity and flavour. From his beloved London restaurant Racine in the early 2000s to the renowned Bouchon Racine twenty years later, Henry’s food has always captivated and comforted hungry diners - and, in turn, Racine has shaped his life and career.
In The Racine Effect, Henry shares a collection of his most loved dishes, interweaving family favourites and restaurant classics. From the simple joy of endive au gratin or confit de canard, to his takes on good ingredients, such as a roast chicken salad, posh croque or rabbit with mustard sauce and smoked bacon, and the sheer indulgence of his famous creme caramel, Henry’s dishes encapsulate the deep enjoyment that cooking can bring, as well as the feelings and connections that a plate of food can prompt.
Early bird ticket £12/Ticket plus book £40
May 12
Brian Dillon for Ambivalence
7pm, Topping & Company Booksellers, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Brian Dillon is the author of Affinities, Suppose a Sentence, Essayism, The Great Explosion (shortlisted for the Ondaatje Prize), Objects in This Mirror, Tormented Hope: Nine Hypochondriac Lives (shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize) and In the Dark Room, which won the Irish Book Award for non-fiction.
When Brian Dillon was 16 his mother died and he simply gave up all schoolwork. While he courted exam failure, his real education was going on elsewhere: with books, music, films and television.
When at last he made it to university, his head was already full of avant-garde writing, art and ideas. Could academia live up to the hopes and dreams he had invested in it?
Halfway through college his father died, and the stakes of reading and writing seemed even higher.
Ambivalence explores what learning meant to its author, what it enabled and denied, between the ages of seventeen and twenty-six, when he left his native Dublin. It’s at once a memoir of that city in the 1980s and 1990s, an uncynical portrait of the adolescent and early-adult mind, and an intimate defence of radical thinking about literature and life.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99
May 12
Frances White in conversation with Hannah Kaner
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
What lies beyond the Bone Door?
Join bestselling author of Voyage of the Damned, Frances White, as she chats to Hannah Kaner about her thrillingly unique, twisty new book in which she masterfully blends humour, horror, magic and murder, The Bone Door.
When Hop awakens in an ancient labyrinth, he has no memory of his life before, or how he got here. He does not recognise the mysterious girl trapped with him. And he certainly cannot identify the shadowy figure stalking him, whispering terrible things.
But there is one thing he is certain of. He must escape.
The only way out of the labyrinth is through the Bone Door. But it lies behind a series of other locked doors hidden across an array of strange realms. To open the way, Hop must complete impossible tasks before his time runs out. As Hop travels deeper, he discovers that he and his companions may be more connected to the place and its horrors than he could ever imagine. Unless Hop is able to unravel the true mystery of the labyrinth, including his own role within it, the Bone Door and any hope of escape will be lost forever.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £23
May 13
Celebrating The Shadow Prince by Helen Scheurer
6.30pm, Lady and the Bear Cafe, 1 Hope Park Terrace, Edinburgh EH8 9LZ
From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Iron & Embers, Helen Scheurer, Shadow Prince is an epic fantasy romance with enemies to lovers, scorching spice and a richly woven world of magic. Drue Emmerson wants one thing: vengeance. With her family slain by vicious shadow wraiths, she’s determined to defend her fallen kingdom.
And that means carving out the hearts of every dark creature she can find. Talemir Starling, celebrated warrior of the realms, has a dangerous secret: he’s a half-wraith, kin to the creatures wreaking devastation on the world. He’ll do anything to keep his true nature under control, especially around the woman who’s vowed to destroy him.
When someone close to Drue disappears, all signs point to Talemir’s kind. But he is determined to prove he’s no monster, and to seek answers of his own. Begrudgingly, the pair must join forces to uncover the deadly truth.
In a world of chaos and carnage, their attraction to one another is the one thing that might just spell the end of them both . . .
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £22
May 13
Rose Campbell on Shere Hite and The Hite Report
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Come and meet Shere Hite—the feminist hero whose notorious work revolutionised how we think about sex, marriage, and the female orgasm.
We are thrilled to welcome Rosa Campbell, historian of global feminism, to the bookshop for a deep dive into the life and work of one of the little known but leading thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, Shere Hite.
Her groundbreaking book, The Hite Report, was the first feminist exploration of the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies when first published in 1976 and revolutionized the way people thought about marriage and the female orgasm. How, then, did it, and Hite, disappear from public consciousness? Using original research material and sharp cultural analysis, Rosa Campbell explores Hite’s complicated life and literary legacy. Campbell expands on Hite’s ideas about sex — namely, that sex is sexist — and tracks Hite through her fraught childhood, her struggles working in the porn industry, and her eventual cancellation by the far-right Evangelical movement. All the while, Campbell holds Hite and The Hite Report to account for their own failings and absence of intersectionality. In a post-Dobbs, post-MeToo world, this book’s examination of shifting ideological movements is essential to understanding both the current feminist movement, as well as how conservative, reactionary, counter-mobilization efforts can silence even the most successful of women.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £25
May 14
An Evening of Wine Tasting with Rose Murray Brown
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street,
We are delighted to be joined by award-winning wine critic and Master of Wine, Rose Murray Brown to celebrate the publication of her latest book, A Taste for Wine.
Join us for an enjoyably educational evening of sampling complimentary wine, familiarising ourselves with the depths of flavour and significance of grape variety.
‘How do you distil a lifetime of knowledge and learning into 224 pages?...Rather than a dry encylopaedic catalogue of wine grapes and styles, this is a series of masterclasses for the layperson. So you cover all the ground at your own pace - with a glass in hand.’
Tony Turnbull, The Times, ‘Books of the Year 2025’.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £27
May 14
Nicholas Binge for Abyss
7pm, Topping & Company Booksellers , 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Office work can feel like hell - maybe a little more than we think in this chilling new novel by Nicholas Binge. His work was described by master of horror, Stephen King, as “Old School Creepy”, and we hope you’ll join us to celebrate this frightful novel of cosmic-office-horror hosted by Sunday Times Bestselling author Gareth Brown.
This job will eat you alive.
Joe Rice is lost - lonely, disconnected and terminally online. His new job as an administrative assistant at the Ponos corporation seems like just another unfulfilling stop-gap. But from his first day, something is deeply wrong. The vast Canary Wharf office is empty, his line manager is a bundle of paranoid energy, and his work is monitored by WellBot, an AI wellness chatbot that demands total honesty while tracking his every move.
As Joe’s tasks descend into a surreal nightmare, he’ll eventually learn that handing in his notice could have deadly consequences . . .
From the bestselling author of Ascension, Nicholas Binge, Abyss is a creeping, Lovecraftian horror about work, technology and existential dread.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
May 14
Sara Sheridan for The Jewel Keepers
7pm, St Cuthbert’s Church, 5 Lothian Rd, Edinburgh EH1 2EP
We are so delighted to welcome bookseller-favourite Sara Sheridan for the launch of The Jewel Keepers. Featuring real historical events and places amid its fiction, The Jewel Keepers is an immersive, evocative story tinged with romance and brimming with intrigue.
Men would kill for this treasure.
The McKenzie women will guard it with their lives.
London, 1837. When 25-year-old Araminta McKenzie-Moore is summoned from Richmond to her great aunt’s deathbed in Edinburgh, it’s the first time she’s met her extended family. The McKenzie women, however, have been keeping a close eye on her. For they have a long, secret and dangerous history as Jewel Keepers to the Scottish Crown and they need Araminta to play her part to solve a puzzle which stretches back generations.
But the McKenzies are not alone in this high-stakes treasure hunt though history. They’re being pursued. The last of her line, if Araminta succeeds, she will uncover something more valuable than mere jewels - a secret that will change the lives of all women living on this, the cusp of the Queen Victoria’s rule.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £22
May 14
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We are so excited for Will Maclean to join us for the Edinburgh launch of his latest novel, Solace House. He will be joined by Kirsty Logan for what is sure to be an outstanding discussion of this spectacular, mysterious story.
Summer, 1993, and Alex Lane finds himself at the end of the University summer term, broke and without any concrete plans. So, when he’s offered the chance to join a group of students tasked with clearing out Solace House, a large Victorian residence left to the University by a reclusive hoarder called Flayne, he jumps at it. The other students are a mixed bunch, but Alex quickly falls into a close friendship with the mercurial, red-headed Ella.
At first the house seems to be an ordinary, if grandiose, property. But as the team begin sorting through piles of junk, they stumble upon Flayne’s journals in which he details his obsession with his missing mother, his discovery of a strange place called Bewise, and – most mysteriously – his belief in another realm lying parallel to ours, along with coded instructions on how it might be reached.
As the students continue to sort through the detritus, one of Alex’s companions becomes increasingly obsessed with the hidden secrets of Solace House, Flayne’s missing mother, and the possibility that, if only they can decipher Flayne’s increasingly unintelligible writings, they might gain knowledge beyond their wildest dreams. That is, assuming, they are willing to sacrifice everything.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20
May 15
Sable Sorensen for Fury Bound
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Join us for an exciting event with the bestselling authors of Dire Bound, who will be in Edinburgh to celebrate the publication of Fury Bound – the dark, romantic and hotly-anticipated sequel in the Wolves of Ruin series.
Against all odds, Meryn Cooper has inherited the crown - and a deadly war. As the Kingdom of Nocturna splinters under the weight of generations of lies, it is up to Meryn, her bonded direwolf Anassa and their allies to bring the country back from the brink.
But the commoners, the Bonded and the nobles are distrustful of their new queen and Meryn is caught in a deadly game of politics. Meanwhile, Meryn’s beloved sister, Saela, is more at risk than ever.
Confusingly, the one person Meryn can trust is Stark Therion - the dark, dangerous Alpha she thought hated her as much as she loathed him. Yet, his loyalty is unshakeable. His presence intoxicating. And with his guidance, Meryn can seize an unthinkable level of power.
With enemies closing in and shadows stirring her dreams, Meryn stands to lose her kingdom - and her heart.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £22
May 15
Greg Doran, former Royal Shakespeare Company director, for Walking Shadow
7pm, St Cuthbert’s Church, 5 Lothian Rd, Edinburgh, EH1 2EP
A compelling blend of memoir, travelogue and investigation, from the former artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Walking Shadow sheds new light on the past while Doran himself emerges from the darkness of loss.
After the death from cancer of his husband, Antony Sher, Greg Doran stepped down from his role as artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company. In the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s First Folio, and inspired by the surprising history of the company’s own copy, he set out to see how many of these important volumes he could find. Walking Shadow relives the months leading up to Sher’s death, told via the two men’s raw and loving diaries, and maps Doran’s quest to track down folios worldwide.
By his journey’s end, Doran had seen more than 200 First Folios - over 90 per cent of all the surviving copies - including one whose existence was previously unknown. He had also gained a greater understanding of Shakespeare and his times, as well as his impact on the world.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £25
May 16
An Evening with Douglas Stuart
7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, 54 George Street, Edinburgh, EH2 2LR
The Portobello Bookshop is absolutely thrilled to announce that this coming May, they''ll be hosting the launch of Douglas Stuart's new novel, John of John. The event is a full five days before the book is published, so grab your ticket now for early access to John of John!
One of the most enjoyable events we’ve ever hosted was for his previous novel, Young Mungo, and we’ve been eagerly anticipating his next book. He’ll be in conversation with Nicola Sturgeon, and we can’t think of a better way to enjoy a summer Saturday evening than by listening to them discuss this wonderful new novel.
Our team already loves John of John, the story of a young man’s return home to the Isle of Harris after studying in Glasgow, exploring the complex emotions and dynamics that such a return can entail. This is a truly special novel, and it’s a privilege to host the launch with one of our favourite writers.
Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £20
May 18 - new listing
Cal Flyn with Dan Richards for The Savage Landscape
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Cal Flyn returns to Edinburgh to celebrate The Savage Landscape - a brilliant investigation of our relationship to the natural world. Cal’s previous book, Islands of Abandonment was a Sunday Times Bestseller, winner of the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, shortlisted for The Baillie Gifford Prize, Shortlisted for The Wainwright Conservation Award, shortlisted for The British Academy Book Prize.
Cal will be joined by the always-brilliant Dan Richards, author of Overnight. It should make for a fantastic and insightful evening.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22
May 19 - new listing
Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: Lamorna Ash on a new generation’s search for religion
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
Why are young people in Britain today turning to faith in our age of uncertainty?
We’ll be springing into summer with a gorgeous paperback launch of Lamorna Ash’s critically acclaimed Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever- a New Generation’s Search for Religion.
In Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever, Ash embarks on a journey across Britain to meet those wrestling with Christianity today. Through interviews and her own deeply personal journey with religion, and from Evangelical youth festivals to Quaker meetings, a silent Jesuit retreat along the Welsh coastline to a monastic community in the Inner Hebrides, she investigates what is driving Gen Z today to embrace Christianity.
Written with lyrical beauty and sensitivity, this is a reminder of our universal need for nourishment of the soul.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £22
May 19 - new listing
Lauren Elkin - Vocal Break - On Women, Music & Power
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We are so excited that Lauren Elkin is coming to Portobello for an event to celebrate the publication of her new book, Vocal Break: On Women, Music & Power. It’s a dazzlingly original reassessment of the power and plurality of women’s singing voices by the critically acclaimed author of Art Monsters and Scaffolding. Elkin will be in conversation with art writer, editor and curator Rachel Ashenden.
For millennia, women’s raised voices have been heard as unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Women singing were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death. In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voices – and how women have used them to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism and sexism.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £22
May 19 - new listing
Kim Sherwood for Hurricane Room
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
James Bond returns and the Double O agents make their last stand in this gripping and explosive spy thriller from bookseller favourite, Kim Sherwood.
The return of 007
Agent 003, Joanna Harwood, has finally found James Bond after years of searching. All she has to do is get him out of Russia alive and convince him to trust her again.
A mission for revenge
But Bond trusts no one. And he wants revenge on Mora, the monstrous figure at the head of Rattenfanger - a terrorist organisation with links to the past.
The final showdown
MI6’s Double O section is in pieces. Moneypenny is captured. Agents have switched sides. And Rattenfanger’s plans for hijacking the cyber-intelligence of the West are finally about to be realised.
Bond and the remaining Double Os must work together to save the world - and figure out which of them are still loyal...
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £18.99
May 19 - new listing
Emma Southon for Servus
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
A ground-breaking account of the role slavery played in the creation and maintenance of the Roman Empire by acclaimed classical historian Emma Southon.
We associate the Romans with majesty and greatness: we marvel at their straight roads and innovative underfloor heating, at the dominance of their army and navy, at the grandeur of their palaces and temples. But the Romans were also enslavers. They built an empire on the backs of millions of people snatched from their homes in the aftermath of war, kidnapped from the streets, sold into slavery as punishment or, simply, born enslaved.
Servus takes us into the invisible spaces of the Roman world, where millions of enslaved lives were unwillingly dedicated to the perpetuation of the empire that owned them. From the fields of wheat required to give every Roman their daily bread, to the actors and gladiators who provided their circuses, and the miners who kept Rome a city of gold and marble, enslaved people were the bedrock of the Roman Empire. These enslaved people were ubiquitous, but silenced. Through the fragments they left behind, historian Emma Southon traces the pain and tragedy of their lives alongside the love stories, lifelong friendships, small victories and hard-won freedoms.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25
May 20 - new listing
Few and Far Between with Jan Carson
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
From the award-winning author of The Raptures and The Fire Starters, a stunning, imaginative novel about a community living on a small group of islands.
Sometimes a utopia is not all that it seems...
In Few and Far Between, Carson, imagines an alternative version of Northern Ireland’s recent past. A prime minister with a mad plan to create a new county. An archipelago of haunted islands. A community seeking refuge from the Troubles. The perfect place to escape to - or so it appears.
It’s summer 2017 and the last few residents of the Lough Neagh Archipelago are facing imminent eviction. The flood planned to combat a devastating algae outbreak will submerge their homes, forcing them back to the Mainland for the first time in fifty years.
How will they cope with modern life? Will the Ark give up its secrets before it sinks? Can they leave the past behind?
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £18.99
May 20 - new listing
McIlvanney Award Winner Tariq Ashkanani for The Hollow Boys
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
This May, we are joined by most recent McIlvanney Award winner, Tariq Ashkanani, author of The Midnight King, to celebrate the release of his latest novel - The Hollow Boys. Small town mysteries abound in this gripping thriller of missing children and dark conspiracy.
Two children lost.
The wrong one found.
It’s a warm evening in September when nine-year-old Danny Yates comes back from the dead. He walks into town half-starved and silent, ten months after he and his best friend Will Keefe were presumed drowned. And when Danny does finally speak, he swears that he’s not Danny. He’s Will.
Danny’s mother is convinced that her boy has come back wrong. More than that, she thinks the town itself is now at risk from whatever dark force returned her son. Chief of Police John Deacon is more interested in how the sinister disappearance of two boys could have been written off as a tragic accident, and who was responsible.
What happened to Danny to make him take on his friend’s name, his personality? And does Danny’s return mean there’s a chance that Will is still alive?
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
May 20 - new listing
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We are so excited to be welcoming Imani Thompson to the Portobello Bookshop to celebrate her debut novel, Honey. Imani will be in conversation with the wonderful Len Pennie!
Funny, sexy, addicting, and unpredictable, you won’t be able to put it down once you get a taste! Honey has been making waves as one of the most talked about novels of 2026, and the buzz is more than warranted. Join us for thrilling conversation about power, love, obsession, and just a little bit of serial killing.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
May 21 - new listing
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
We’re delighted to welcome Isabel Ibañez for an evening of conversation to celebrate her latest book Graceless Heart. A lush, atmospheric, and achingly magical standalone adult fantasy romance set in Renaissance Italy.
In 15th century Volterra, sculptress Ravenna Maffei enters a competition hosted by a secretive, immortal family who offer an invaluable boon to the victor. Desperate to win so she can save her brother, Ravenna reveals a rare magical talent – a dangerous act in a city where magic is forbidden.
Isabel Ibañez is an internationally bestselling author of historical fantasy for teens and adults. She has written many highly acclaimed novels, including Woven in Moonlight, as well as the bestselling Secrets of the Nile duology, Together We Burn, and Written in Starlight.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £24
May 21 - new listing
Sean A Pritchard for Atmosfloric
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
We are delighted to be welcoming Sean Pritchard this May to celebrate his latest book, Atmosfloric. Seans first book, Outside In, is an essential for florists, interior-designers, and gardeners alike. We hope to see you there!
The garden allows us to play with colour. Unlike the colours in our interiors, colour in the garden is fleeting and fickle, and with that comes an exciting opportunity to experiment with a changing performance of colour month after month and to bring those colours indoors for constantly changing displays.
Sean also takes a personal look at colour theory and explores the relationship that gardeners and gardener-artists have had with colour through history.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30
May 21 - new listing
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Cristina Rivera Garza for Autobiography of Cotton
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
“A sumptuous work of autofiction that plumbs the mirage-like landscapes of the border region and the frictions that simmer between neighboring nations. In dense, lyrical prose, Rivera Garza weaves in an array of political and historical allusions, highlighting the human costs and environmental degradation caused by the cash crop that created our modern world.” —Time, “The 36 Most Anticipated Books of 2026”
“A historical novel braided with deep personal narrative and research, creating something unique and almost indefinable.”—Literary Hub, ”Most Anticipated Books of 2026”
“Cristina Rivera Garza—mythmaker, archivist, historiographer, etymologist, and philosopher—reveals the blood-soaked blossom between parallel histories. Rooted in careful research, Autobiography of Cotton is a triumph of the critical and speculative imagination.”—Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
From Pulitzer Prize–winning author, Cristina Rivera Garza, comes theAutobiography of Cotton: A Novel, translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99
May 22 - new listing
RJ Barker for Mortedant’s Peril
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
If you have spent any time in the Science Fiction room of our Edinburgh store, you will have invariably had Andrew throwing copies of RJ Barker’s work in your general direction. He is a master at building fantastical worlds for readers to explore, and characters that hum with humour and humanity. This is why we are delighted to welcome him to Edinburgh this spring for the launch of a brand new series!
Irody can speak to the dead. But the living want him silenced.
Mortedants can speak to the dead, and Irody Hasp is the greatest of them. Not that they’ll admit it. Or that anyone actually likes the Mortedants, in particular Irody. Nonetheless, Elbay is a city of tradition and it calls for Mortedants to attend a death. But when Irody reads a clerk’s corpse, he uncovers a vast conspiracy which sees him framed for the murder of those closest to him.
Soon, his execution is only days away. With the eyes of Elbay’s nobles, guilds, and villains all turned his way, Irody must work with unwanted allies: a street urchin and a hulking, inhuman mercenary. With danger lurking and trust a luxury, Irody must save himself, his friends and Elbay - the terrifying, complicated city he loves. Or the darkness that has fallen on him will come for them all.
Mortedant’s Peril is an epic historical fantasy of murder, mystery and unlikely alliances from RJ Barker, award-winning author of The Bone Ships. Perfect for fans of Six of Crows and City of Last Chances.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22
But that’s not all
Coming up fast…
May
Siri Hustvedt, Claire Fuller, Tari Lang, Sarah Raven, Patrick Williams, Katja Hoyer, Matt Haig, Ruth Ozeki, Jem Calder, Lamorna Ash, Sarah Gilmartin, Rosa Campbell, Jan Carson, Elle Machray, Katie Carr, Frances White, Rose Murray Brown, Georgia Stone, Elle Kelk, Isabel Ibañez, Dave Goulson,
June
Tayari Jones, Jennifer Saint, Graeme Armstrong, Maggie O’Farrell (afternoon), Maggie O’Farrell (evening), W Elliot Bulmer, Minette Batters, Lex Croucher, Olly Smith, Grace Curtis, Lachlan Goudie, Erin Maglaque, Steve Brusatte, Georgina Hayden, Benedict Anning, Sir Roger Deakins, Shannon Chakraborty, Olivia Laing, Fiona Mozley, Colin Morgan, Freya Bromley, Cymera Festival, Richard Dawkins, Y.M. Abdel-Magied, Hazel McBride, Samar Yazbek, Robin Ince, Sohail Jannesari, Kathryn Stockett, David Goodman, Ricky Monahan Brown & Maria Sledmere, Ashley Poston, Kirsty Lockwood, Hannah Murray, Helen McGinn, Michele Masneri, Kate Williams, Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer, Callum McSorley,
July
Veronica Roth, William Dalrymple, Jenny Chamarette,
August
Edinburgh International Book Festival
September
Robert Harris, Yotam Ottolenghi, Emma Warren
October
Rachel King, Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival, Portobello Book Festival, Sean Hewitt