Just read...
That's the message.
I have no words of wisdom for you this week, so instead of reading drivel from me, take some time out with whatever book you’re currently reading!
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
February 9
David Larbi - Frequently Happy
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
We are delighted to be joined by beloved TikTok poet, David Larbi, as we celebrate the publication of his uplifting volume of verse for finding moments of joy amidst stress and heartache, Frequently Happy.
In the middle of stress and turmoil, it can be easy to miss the daily opportunities we have for delight. But every day holds the potential for more meaning, connection and lasting fulfilment. Cheerful poet David Larbi reminds us that in every season of life, it is possible to find happiness.
Through bright poems, moving meditations and inspiring journal prompts, this book offers you a chance to reflect on the joyful moments all around you and build a deeper habit of noticing and appreciating life’s simple and profound pleasures.
General admission £5/Book plus ticket £15
February 9
Louise Welsh for The Cut Up
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
Louise Welsh joins us for the latest in her Cutting Room series: The Cut Up. There are few Scottish crime writers more talented and more exciting than Louise - we can’t wait to see you there!
It’s hard to be good when living is expensive. And times are tough on the streets these days. Luckily for Rilke at Bowery Auctions the demand for no-questions-asked cash is at an all-time high, and business is booming.
When Rilke hears his old acquaintance Les is fresh out of prison, his inclination is to stay well out of his way. Letting sleeping dogs lie is one thing - but when one of Bowery’s customers winds up dead on their tarmac, Rilke needs a bit of help from his friends to tidy things up. If only his friends didn’t have such a habit of making things worse.
Early bird ticket £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
February 10
Gavin Francis with Ian Rankin for The Unfragile Mind
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
Join Toppings to welcome the always-brilliant and ever-insightful Gavin Francis to celebrate his latest book: The Unfragile Mind. The event will be chaired by the incredible Ian Rankin.
Between a quarter and a fifth of young people in the UK now suffer a mental disorder. One in four adults are prescribed psychiatric medication. These numbers represent a huge and recent expansion in mental health labelling, but reveal nothing of the experience of those seeking help. In The Unfragile Mind, Gavin draws on conversations with patients, colleagues, and his 30 years of practice to explore the chequered history of psychiatry, the nature of mental health and ill-health, and the problems - including mood disorders, trauma, anxiety and addiction - that he addresses daily. The mind, he argues, is dynamic and adaptive - better addressed not with rigid labels and protocols, but with curiosity, kindness, humility and hope.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £18.99
February 11 - change of venue
John Yorke for Trip to the Moon
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh, EH3 6QE
Since the release of Into the Woods in 2013, John Yorke has been an ever-present on every creative writing syllabus in the country. For writers just starting out to experts honing their craft, Trip to the Moon offers incisive insight into the power and mechanics of story. It is a privilege to welcome him to Edinburgh this February.
To command narrative is to control a sometimes frightening power. What is it that turbocharges some tales, and how is it possible to harness that potency?
John Yorke has revolutionised our understanding of story structure. In this new book he delves deeper - into how to put that structure to work in the world. Trip to the Moon takes us on a journey not just through drama and fiction but through politics, religion and non-western narrative, to seek out the role of story in all our lives, examining how to utilise its lessons to create life-changing tales - and, in a world aflame with conspiracy theories, to guard ourselves against their darker purpose too.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £25
February 11
An Evening with Val McDermid, in conversation with Nicola Sturgeon
7.30pm, Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh, EH8 9SU
The Portobello Bookshop is absolutely delighted to be hosting Val McDermid’s Edinburgh launch of the latest Karen Pirie thriller, Silent Bones. Join us in welcoming the Quine of Crime to the Assembly Roxy for an evening event that’s set to be as thrillingly entertaining as McDermid’s novels, as she will be in conversation with Nicola Sturgeon. Both Val and Nicola have always been hugely supportive of our shop, and indeed indie bookshops generally, and we’re really looking forward to a special evening to celebrate Val’s latest book.
Early bird ticket plus book £20/Ticket plus Book £22/Ticket only £18
February 12
A History of Dundas Street by Barclay Price
6.30pm, Golden Hare Books, 68 St Stephen Street, EH3 5AQ
Join us in the bookshop to hear Barclay Price in conversation with Jerry Ozaniec about A History of Dundas Street.
We’re delighted to welcome local historian Barclay Price back to the bookshop to introduce his latest book, A History of Dundas Street. Barclay will be in conversation with Jerry Ozaniec of the Old Edinburgh Club.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.00
February 12
Historian Marc Mierowsky for A Spy Amongst Us
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Join Toppings to learn the true story of Daniel Defoe and the dirty tricks which helped bring Scotland into union with England.
In 1706, Edinburgh was on the brink of a popular uprising. Men and women took to the streets to protest the planned union with England, fearing the end of Scottish sovereignty. But unbeknownst to the mob, a spy was in their midst-the English writer Daniel Defoe, now bankrupt and thrice pilloried, had turned a government agent.
Marc Mierowsky tells the dramatic story of Defoe and his fellow spies as they sabotaged the Scottish independence movement from the inside. Together they disseminated propaganda and built a network of operatives from London to the upper Highlands, providing the English government with up-to-the-minute intelligence and monitoring its adversaries’ every move.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £25
February 13
Galantine’s Late Night Shopping Event
6.30pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, EH9 1ND
Join Book Lovers for a late night shopping event in our bookshop on Feb. 13th. Readers will get 20% off all purchases between the hours of 6:30-9:30 and author Annabelle Slator will be our guest of honor, signing copies of her new book Risky Business!
Free, but ticketed
February 14
Theatre Book Club: Christmas Carol Goes Wrong
1.15pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge
Join us for our Theatre Book Club where we will be chatting about A Christmas Carol. 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.
Our first book club of the Spring season is Charles Dickens’ classic A Christmas Carolwhich has been humorously re-staged by Mischief in their production Christmas Carol Goes Wrong.
To bitter, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, Christmas is just another day. But all that changes when the ghost of his long-dead business partner appears, warning Scrooge to change his ways before it’s too late.
YOU WILL NEED TO BOOK YOUR TICKET ON THE FESTIVAL THEATRE WEBSITE, this is an information page. Book here.
Book club ticket £3
Upcoming events
And for those who like to plan ahead…
February 16
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
It is a true joy to welcome Saleem Haddad to the bookshop for the launch of his latest novel, Floodlines. Spanning continents and decades, Floodlines grapples with grief and memory, and charts the emotional and political aftershocks of a century of war and revolution in Iraq and beyond. Inspired by the artistic legacy of Haddad’s great uncle, the Iraqi modernist painter Jewad Selim, Floodlines explores family, queerness, and the wounds of (neo)colonialism in haunting, visceral prose.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £14.99
February 16
Madeline Cash for Lost Lambs
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh, EH7 5JH
‘From magical realism to magical nihilism, Madeline Cash is a voice like no other. Her novel of normal people breaking down under the most abnormal circumstances will shift the way you see the family and community into something operatic, strange and profound.’ ~~ LENA DUNHAM
Word of Madeline Cash’s debut has been spreading through the literary world like wildfire. This exceptional novel is likely to be one of the hottest literary fiction titles of 2026, so we are delighted to welcome Madeline to the bookshop this February.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
February 17
7pm, Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
For more than fifteen years, Gutter magazine has published and promoted the very best writing from Scotland and beyond. Each issue contains a wealth of fabulous work, from new poets to prize-winning novelists.
We’re delighted to be hosting the launch of Issue 33 of the magazine here in the bookshop, with readings from contributors Ali Millar, Billy Letford, Lindsay Johnstone and Dawn Wood. We’ll also have Gutter’s managing editor Malachy Tallack and prose reviews editor Rebecca Smith on hosting duties.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus magazine £10
February 17
Floodlines: Celebrating new fiction from Saleem Haddad
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
We could not be more delighted to welcome bookshop favourite Saleem Hadded - acclaimed for his debut Guapa, with brilliant contributions to Palestine +100 andThis Arab is Queer! Haddad joins us to celebrate and discuss a stunning new novel: Floodlines.
In the summer of 2014, three estranged sisters are drawn back into each other’s orbits through the discovery of their late father’s lost paintings.
As Mediha, Zainab, and Ishtar lay claim to his legacy—an inheritance laced with exile, betrayal, and an Iraq they no longer recognise—Zainab’s son Nizar, a war correspondent haunted by his time on the front lines, returns to the family fold. As summer bleeds into autumn and the truth about the paintings unfurls, the family is forced to confront the personal and political betrayals that tore them apart.
Spanning continents and decades, Floodlines grapples with grief and memory, and charts the emotional and political aftershocks of a century of war. Inspired by the artistic legacy of Haddad’s great uncle, the Iraqi modernist painter Jewad Selim, Floodlines explores family, queerness, and the wounds of (neo)colonialism in haunting, visceral prose.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14.99
February 18
Lauren J Joseph for Lean Cat, Savage Cat
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
We cannot wait to welcome Lauren J Joseph to the bookshop this February to celebrate her latest acclaimed novel, Lean Cat, Savage Cat. The book is witty, sinister, and silly in equal measure.
A story of obsession and excess, doppelgangers and disassociation, fame and the terrible things we do to feel loved, Lean Cat, Savage Cat is an unforgettable novel from one of the most exciting writers at work today.
Lauren J. Joseph was born in Liverpool and lives in London. Her film and performance work has been shown internationally. Joseph’s debut novel At Certain Points We Touch was selected as a book of the year by Stylist, Sheerluxe and Foyles, and she was named one of the Observer’s debut novelists of the year.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
February 18
Nation of Strangers: On rebuilding home with Ice Temelkuran and Nicola Sturgeon
7pm, Nicolson Square Venues - 25 Nicolson Square, EH8 9BX
In a culture so often devoid of nuance and stripped of hope, Ece Temelkuran’s work is a reliable antidote - her writing shrewd, prescient and beautifully crafted.
In a highlight event of spring, we’re thrilled to welcome back the internationally acclaimed author and political thinker for a launch of her latest book! A powerful and consoling reappraisal of the concept of exile, migration and home, Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21 st Century is one of our most anticipated books of 2026.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.99
February 19 - new listing
Gavin Francis & Sarah Moss: Making Sense of Mental Health
7.00pm, the Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF
Bestselling authors Gavin Francis and Sarah Moss join us for an evening to discuss their encounters and experiences with mental health, along with their latest non-fiction books, The Unfragile Mind and My Good Bright Wolf.
The Unfragile Mind by Gavin Francis
Between a quarter and a fifth of young people in the UK now suffer a mental disorder. One in four adults are prescribed psychiatric medication. These numbers represent a huge and recent expansion in mental health labelling, but reveal nothing of the experience of those seeking help.
In The Unfragile Mind, Gavin draws on conversations with patients, colleagues, and his thirty years of practice to explore the chequered history of psychiatry, the nature of mental health and ill-health, and the problems - including mood disorders, trauma, anxiety and addiction - that he addresses daily. The mind, he argues, is dynamic and adaptive - better addressed not with rigid labels and protocols, but with curiosity, kindness, humility and hope.
My Good Bright Wolf by Sarah Moss
In the household of Sarah Moss’s childhood she learnt that the female body and mind were battlegrounds. 1970s austerity and second-wave feminism came together: she must keep herself slim but never be vain, she must be intelligent but never strident or angry, she must be able to cook and sew and make do and mend, but know those skills were frivolous. Clever girlsshould be ambitious butwomen must restrain themselves. Women had to stay small.
Years later, her self-control had become dangerous, and Sarah found herself in A&E, forced to reckon with all that she had denied her hard-working body and furiously turning mind.
My Good Bright Wolf navigates contested memories of girlhood, the chorus of relentless and controlling voices that dogged Sarah’s every thought, and the writing and booksin which she could run free. Beautiful, audacious, moving and funny, this memoir is a remarkable exercise in theway a brain turns on itself, and then finds away out.
Tickets £5/Ticket + Gavin’s Book £18.99/Ticket + Sarah’s Book £10.99
February 19
The Tarot Reader of Versailles: A Tarot Reading & Book Talk With Anya Bergman
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
Join us for a book event with a difference - Tarot readings and book talk from author Anya Bergman! Anya will introduce her beautiful new book The Tarot Reader of Versailles, before giving a series of live Tarot readings.
Anya has been reading Tarot Cards professionally for over thirty years, and she also used the Tarot to write this novel! This event is followed by a book signing.
Inspired by the astonishing true story of Marie-Anne Adelaide Lenormand, The Tarot Reader of Versailles is a sweeping, powerful novel where allegiances, betrayals and even fate itself can be forged or broken by the turn of a card .
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £9.99
February 19
Zain Rishi for Noon
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Topping is thrilled to be hosting one of their own booksellers for his very first poetry pamphlet, Zain Rishi!
For anyone who has had the pleasure of reading Zain’s poetry before, you will know that each poem is filled with beautiful language and imagery that transports the reader. We cannot wait to celebrate - see you all there!
Two brothers wrestle, a bird lies in a young boy’s hand, an entire field lives within the eye of a needle.
Noon is a sparkling debut from Birmingham-born poet Zain Rishi, exploring home, family and faith. From the heat of the school relay and his grandmother’s Kashmiri chai to the images of a young man kissing a city goodbye, these poems chart a coming-of-age journey across place, sexuality and family ties.
Rich in its interrogation of language and inheritance across generations, Noon announces Zain Rishi as one of the UK’s most exciting new voices.
Ticket including book £7.99
February 19
An Evening with George Saunders
7pm, Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre, 32 George Square, Edinburgh, EH8 9LH
The Portobello Bookshop is delighted to be welcoming George Saunders to Edinburgh for the Scottish launch of his latest novel, Vigil. This highly-anticipated return from the Booker Prize-winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo is a playful, wise, electric novel taking place at the bedside of an oil company CEO, in the twilight hours of his life, as he is ferried from this world into the next.
What a lovely home I found myself plummeting toward. . .
Not for the first time – in fact, for the 343rd time – Jill ‘Doll’ Blaine finds herself crashing down to earth, head-first, rear-up, to accompany her latest charge into the afterlife. She soon realises however that this man is not quite like the others.
For powerful oil tycoon K.J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold life, and the world is better for it… isn’t it? As death approaches, a cast of worldly and otherworldly visitors arrive. Crowds of people and animals – alive and dead – materialise, birds swarm the dying man’s room, and associates from decades past show up, all clamouring for a reckoning.
In this electric novel brimming with explosive imagination, George Saunders confronts the biggest issues of our time with his trademark humour and warmth, spinning a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the inevitable question: who else could we be but exactly who we are?
Ticket including book £18.99
February 20
Ryan Cahill with Hannah Kaner for Of Blood and Fire
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
It is with great excitement that we welcome indie-publishing sensation Ryan Cahill to Edinburgh to celebrate the launch of The Broken Binding Press Edition of Of Blood and Fire, the first of his critically acclaimed ‘The Bound and The Broken’ series!
Ryan will be joined on stage by Sunday Times Bestseller and friend of the bookshop, Hannah Kaner to discuss all things magic swords, dragons, and epic fantasy.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £20
February 21
Typewronger All Night Bookshop Fundraiser
9pm-11am, Typewronger Books, 4a Haddington Place, Edinburgh, EH7 4AE
Typewronger is staying OPEN ALL NIGHT to raise funds to pay our bills - come buy books!
We’re running the bookshop all through the night to raise funds to pay our bills! At 9pm on the 21st we’ll swap out our red ink pad for purple, and we’ve got a time stamp so you can PROOVE you were here buying books at 3am if you so wish! More deets TBA, but whether or not you make it do please support the shop by buying BOOKS!
Free admission
February 23 - new listing
Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward
7pm, venue in Leith to be announced
The Nowhere Children are expecting you... High in the mountains sits Nowhere, a verdant valley surrounded by walls of rock. People have lived at Nowhere for centuries, though never for long, and rarely happily.
Its last owner was its most famous: movie star Leaf Winham, who built Nowhere House as a refuge to hide from his fame... and to hide his crimes. Only when Nowhere House went up in flames were the graves discovered, the last resting places of lost young men who would never go home.
Years later, Nowhere valley has become a sanctuary for runaway children, a place where adults cannot enter. Drawn by this promise, fourteen-year-old Riley pulls her brother Oliver from his bed in the middle of the night, hoping to find a new family. But the Nowhere Children are fierce in defending their valley and their secrets.
For something dark lives in the ruins of Nowhere House, something that asks a terrible price for sanctuary...
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
February 23
Sarah Wynn-Williams in conversation with Nicola Sturgeon
7pm, venue to be announced
Sarah Wynn-William’s Careless People was one of the non-fiction sensations of 2025. A hugely praised - and award winning - bestselling account of Sarah’s time as Global Policy Director at Facebook, Meta secured a ruling against Sarah on publication day preventing her from promoting the book, or indeed saying anything critical or ‘otherwise detrimental’ about Meta. Due to these ongoing legal restrictions, Sarah is barred from speaking about her book or from saying anything negative about her former employer. Instead, Sarah will join us to share her thoughts and invite engagement on a wider, more urgent conversation: how did we lose control of the Internet, and is it possible to reclaim it? How can we protect children’s online safety in the age of AI? From the decay of the online world to the new geopolitics of AI, as power shifts from governments to platforms, this is a rare chance to hear from a woman who has stood at the nexus of global diplomacy and big-tech power—and lived to share the tale at great personal cost.
Tickets £9/Ticket plus book £16
February 23
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
Internationally bestselling Canadian thriller writer of The Couple Next Door Shari Lapena is with us to discuss her work.
2025's She Didn't See it Coming saw Lapena at her absolute best, giving readers a well crafted and fast-paced page turner with short chapters told from different characters' perspectives. Now Shari is on the road and in the UK to meet her fans and take us in to the world of her writing.
General admission £5/Ticket plus book £23
February 23
7pm, Rare Birds Books, Raeburn Place, Stockbridge
We’re delighted to welcome author Tanya Sweeney to Rare Birds to discuss her debut novel Esther is Now Following You.
At its heart, Esther is Now Following You is a fresh, funny and deeply affecting novel about what happens when life gets too much and what we do to cope. It combines the humour of Fleabag and Green Dot’s unattainable obsession, told with the propulsion of Baby Reindeer.
Tickets £5
February 24
The Guardian’s Keza MacDonald for Super Nintendo
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Keza MacDonald is the video games editor at The Guardian, for whom she also writes the ‘Pushing Buttons’ newsletter; she previously worked pretty much everywhere in the games media, including as editor-in-chief of Kotaku UK. She has spoken about games extensively on radio and television and has presented a Radio 4 documentary on the history of games.
Super Nintendo finds lifelong gamer Keza MacDonald exploring Nintendo’s legendary roster of games - as well as consoles such as the SNES, Gameboy, Wii and Switch, and a host of other quirky inventions from the Power Glove to Nintendo Labo - drawing from decades’ worth of exclusive interviews with their creators and the people whose lives have been changed by them. Along the way, she tells the story of how this unassuming playing card company, founded in Kyoto in 1889, became one of the dominant cultural forces of the twenty-first century.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £20
February 25
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, goesto college in Karachi, falls in love with a singer in a band, marries the wrongman, and all her life has visions and illnesses no doctor can explain. Shecomes to believe that external events can cause disruptions in the body, and episodes from other times and placesare interwoven with Annie’s narrative.
Farah Ali is the writer of the novelsTelegraphyandThe River, The Town, and the short-story collectionPeople Want to Live. Her work has been anthologized in thePushcart PrizeandBest Small Fictions, and has appeared inShenandoah, Kenyon Review, Ecotone, Virginia Quarterly Reviewand elsewhere. She is the cofounder ofLakeer, and an editor atWasafiri.
Free, but ticketed.
February 25
No to Nuclear: Linda Pentz Gunter on the dangers of nuclear power
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
There is no silver bullet for the climate crisis—but that hasn’t stopped people searching. Seizing its chance, the nuclear power industry wants us to believe that theirs is the only technical fix for our deliverance. The public, politicians and the media have been easily swayed.
No To Nuclear calls the industry’s bluff. Blasting aside its claims to be safe and green, Linda Pentz Gunter makes the irresistible case that nuclear power is too slow, too expensive, too dangerous and too integrally connected to the nuclear weapons complex, to serve as a rational energy choice.
Join us for a discussion between Linda and Lynn Jamieson, chair of Scottish CND, to celebrate the book’s publication!
The book also delves into the lives of Indigenous peoples and communities of colour, who have been harmed the most by the nuclear sector, and questions whether the way we devalue nature and the environment is costing us the chance of a genuinely just energy transition - this promises to be a fascinating, challenging evening!
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14.99
February 25
Doug Johnstone for Tombstoning, in conversation with Chris Brookmyre
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
t’s always a pleasure to host an event with Doug Johnstone and he’ll be back in the bookshop to launch the 20th anniversary edition of his very first novel, Tombstoning. Johnstone will be in conversation with fellow writer (and Fun Lovin’ Crime Writer) Chris Brookmyre.
Your best mate just fell off a cliff in mysterious circumstances. You were the last person to see him alive. What do you do?
If you’re David Lindsay from Arbroath, you leg it – and don’t go back. Not for 15 years.
Then Nicola Cruickshank – yes, that Nicola, the girl you always fancied but never had the guts to speak to – gets in touch. She wants you back for a school reunion. At the very place it happened. Of course you say yes. Not to lay ghosts to rest, but because you still fancy Nicola.
The thing is, if you are David Lindsay, then returning to Arbroath isn’t going to bring closure. Because when someone else tumbles off the cliffs – an act the locals now call tombstoning – David has a choice: run away again, or finally find out why people around him keep dying...
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £9.99
February 26
An evening with Elspeth Wilson and Hester Musson
7pm, Rare Birds Books, Raeburn Place, Stockbridge
We’re so excited to welcome Elspeth Wilson and Hester Musson to Rare Birds Book Shop to talk about their new novels - These Mortal Bodies and The Night Hag.
Elspeth’s novel is a richly atmospheric campus novel, perfect for fans of The Secret History and dark academia. These Mortal Bodies is an intoxicating story of obsession, infatuation and toxic friendship in the world of the elites, where rules are made to be broken.
Hester is the best selling author of The Beholders. Her new novel, The Night Hag, is a gripping gothic mystery set in Scotland where Lil is an archaeologist plagued by nightmares when she discovers that a hoard unearthed at one of her digs may hold secrets to her past.
Tickets £5
February 26
7pm, Waterstones, Edinburgh - West End, Princes Street
We are thrilled to be welcoming Katalina Watt along to the shop as we celebrate the publication of her deeply lyrical and vibrant debut novel Saltswept.
Saltswept is the first instalment in Kat’s epic fantasy duology based on Southeast Asian mythology.
A pirate faces the gallows drop. A farmer is given a terrible ultimatum to save her daughter. An acolyte ascends to priestesshood, only to find that a blessing really can be a curse. These unlikely bedfellows band together with an inscrutable pickpocket and a talking ottercat in pursuit of the most hopeless of causes: to sail into the Maelstrom, a raging whirlpool from which no one has ever escaped, and find the mysterious treasure hidden within it.
The quest will test their fragile allegiance to its limits, but there is more at stake here than getting rich: the magic of the world is in peril, and the barrier between life and death has never been so thin. And in the Bastion, the seat of power in Paranish, the queen has an unquenchable thirst that threatens the world and everyone in it.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £23
February 26
The Bed Trick: Sex and deception on trial with Izabella Scott
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
We’ve been great admirers of Izabella Scott’s work for years - co-author Pleasure Gardens, and formerly co-editor of The White Review - so we’re thrilled to be launching her nonfiction solo debut, a captivating piece of feminist scholarship and cultural reflection: The Bed Trick.
She said she wore a blindfold at all times. She said she didn’t know who she was really having sex with. Two former best friends face each other in court at a sex offence trial.
Miss X, making the accusation, claims she was tricked into queer sex, many times, by a best friend pretending to be her boyfriend. But that friend, Gayle Newland, tells a different story. They were secret lesbians, she says, lovers in the closet.
The boyfriend was imaginary, and part of a role play that had been going on for years. This astonishing case reached UK courtrooms twice in 2015 and 2017, capturing national attention. At both trials, Newland was convicted of a rare and controversial crime known as ‘rape by deception’.
In literature, the plot has been named ‘the bed trick’. Shakespeare made it famous in plays with lovers switching places in the dark, but in real life, a consummated bed trick is rare. As The Bed Trick unfolds the riveting story of Newland’s trials - a case where reality was stranger than fiction - it also reveals the malleability of courtroom narratives, and the many myths, archetypes and stories embedded in the law.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14.99
February 26
Frances Crawford - A Bad, Bad Place
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We’re thrilled to welcome Frances Crawford to the bookshop to celebrate the Edinburgh launch of her debut novel A Bad, Bad Place. It’s a sweeping crime novel about the far-reaching effects of a murder on a community in Glasgow, and an epic story of resilience, redemption and love. Crawford will be in conversation with Scottish crime legend Val McDermid for an evening you don’t want to miss!
Glasgow, 1979. While walking her dog, twelve-year-old Janey finds a murdered woman on an abandoned railway - and her innocent childhood ends in a shocking moment of trauma. When the victim is named as daughter of a local hardman, Janey’s nana, Maggie, is distraught and deeply afraid. Janey claims she can’t remember what she saw that day, but the police think she’s hiding something, and they’re not the only ones interested.
Maggie tries desperately to keep Janey safe but is battling long-buried secrets of her own. As fear and rumour stalk the streets of Possilpark, Maggie becomes convinced she will lose her beloved granddaughter forever - especially when Janey starts to remember exactly what happened in that bad, bad place...
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
February 26
Tom Hindle for A Killer in Paradise
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Tom Holland is the author of A Fatal Crossing, The Murder Game, Murder on Lake Garda and Death in the Arctic - which were all inspired by masters of the crime genre such as Agatha Christie and Anthony Horowitz. Join us this February to celebrate his latest effort, A Killer in Paradise.
When five old friends are invited to join Abigail Blythe at the launch of her luxury hotel in the Costa Rican rainforest, they jump at the chance to spend a week in paradise. None of them have heard from Abigail since the summer they went backpacking in Central America as students - a trip that ended in disaster for one member of the group. . .
Ten years may have passed, but old rivalries are never far from the surface. So when a body is discovered during the hotel’s launch event, it soon becomes clear that one among them must be responsible. Someone is desperate to keep an old secret hidden - whatever the cost . . .
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £18.99
March 3 - new listing
Tom Newlands & Elspeth Wilson: Neurodivergent Writers Showcase
7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF
Scottish authors Tom Newlands and Elspeth Wilson join us for an evening to discuss their experiences and journeys as neurodivergent writers, as well as their latest novels, Only Here, Only Now and These Mortal Bodies.
Only Here, Only Now by Tom Newlands
Fife, in the blazing hot summer of 1994. Cora Mowat’s mates don’t understand her, but then Cora Mowat doesn’t understand herself. She’s stuck on a seaside council estate full of dafties, old folk and seagulls, with a thousand dreams and a restless brain that won’t behave. She’s dying to escape but unsure of what the future holds - if it holds anything at all for a girl like her. When her Mam’s new boyfriend moves in, tensions rise in their tiny house.
Gunner means well, but he’s dodgy - a shaven-headed shoplifter with more than a few secrets stashed under the bed. As their attempts to forge a makeshift family unravel, Cora rails against her small-town existence in search of love, acceptance and a path to something good. But sometimes you can’t move forward until you find your way back.
Vibrant, lyrical and fiercely funny, Only Here, Only Now is a story about poverty, identity and family that shines with hope and resilience. ‘
These Mortal Bodies by Elspeth Wilson
Ivy wasn’t born into their world. But she’ll do anything to belong. Leaving behind her childhood in coastal Scotland, Ivy Graveson arrives at an all-girls college at a prestigious university and throws herself into the deep end of life on campus. Though her fellow students all seem to come from money and to have known each other their whole lives, outsider Ivy is determined to belong.
She embraces the world of secret societies, and as she discovers the legacy of her college, the parallels between its past and her present become striking. Because however hard she tries to ignore it, Ivy has always felt drawn to – and terrified of – the bodies of water that surround her. In just one life-changing year in these hallowed halls, Ivy will have to decide how much sisterhood means to her and how far she’ll go to become the person she was destined to be.
A richly atmospheric campus novel, perfect for fans of The Secret History and dark academia, These Mortal Bodies is an intoxicating story of obsession, infatuation and toxic friendship in the world of the elites, where rules are made to be broken.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus Tom’s Book £9.99/Ticket plus Elspeth’s Book £9.99
March 3
Justine Picardie on Fashioning the Crown
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE
Justine Picardie is the author of six books, including Miss Dior: A Story of Courage and Couture, and the international bestseller, Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life. She is a contributing editor to Harper’s Bazaar and was formerly an investigative journalist for the Sunday Times and columnist for the Telegraph. She was also editor of the Observer Magazine and features director of Vogue.
Published ahead of the centenary of Queen Elizabeth II’s birth and sumptuously illustrated with over 100 images, this is an exquisite hidden history of the Crown and how it survived a tumultuous era and two world wars.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £25
March 4 - new listing
Sons of Great Men - Book Launch with Live Music!
7pm, Typewronger Books, 4a Haddington Place, Edinburgh, EH7 4AE
Adrian Ross is launching his new novel!
In Sons of Great Men, Adrian Ross asks if it’s possible to bond with someone who’s on borrowed time. Adrian will be reading from the book, answering questions and signing copies in this special launch event, with gorgeous live music from singer songwriter Vernon Equinox.
Free, but ticketed
March 4
Dame Prue Leith on Being Old... And Learning to Love It!
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA
Dame Prue Leith is first and foremost a businesswoman, who made her name at Michelin starred restaurant Leith’s, and Prue Leith’s school of Food and Wine, as well as judge on The Great British Bake Off. She has written more than a dozen cookery books, seven novels, and Relish, her original memoire in 2013, and has worked as a columnist for Daily Mail, The Guardian and the Daily Mirror.
She joins us for Being Old... And Learning to Love It!
In this candid, uplifting, and funny book, Dame Prue Leith explores the trials and taboos of growing older - along with its unexpected joys. Part memoir and part reflection, Prue’s new book is packed with her trademark wit, wisdom, and no-nonsense charm as she takes a spirited canter through the triumphs, challenges and surprises of ageing well.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £20
March 4
Common Ground: a novel launch with Elissa Soave
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
Common Ground is a rousing story of community activism, and a love letter to community spaces. It follows the unlikely friendships that form between plot-holders at Kenmar Allotments, in Uddingston.
When the local council announce their plans to turn the allotments into luxury housing, the plot holders and local community rally together to save the place that has become a sanctuary for fractured souls.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20
March 4
Shona MacLean - The Cromarty Library Circle
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We are thrilled that Shona MacLean will be joining us to celebrate the Edinburgh launch of her latest novel, The Cromarty Library Circle. From the bestselling author of The Bookseller of Inverness comes the unforgettable story of a Scottish town on the cusp of change and the group of townspeople whose lives will be irrevocably altered over the course of one tumultuous year. MacLean will be in conversation with fellow author Elaine Thomson.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20
March 5 - new listing
7pm, Christ Church Morningside, EH10 4DD
We’re excited to welcome Sunday Times bestselling author, Hariet Tyce back to Edinburgh to discuss her page-turning extra-ordinary new novel, Witch Trial.
Two teenage girls. One murdered classmate.
And a modern-day witch trial that will divide the nation.
When 18-year-old Christian Shaw is found dead in an Edinburgh park, the city reels - and the shock only deepens when police charge her best friends, Eliza Lawson and Isobel Smyth, with her murder.
As social media explodes and headlines scream for justice, rumours of bullying spiral into something darker: whispers of rituals, obsession, and a teenage pact gone wrong.
Matthew Phillips, a respected heart surgeon, is reluctantly called for jury duty on the case. But as the trial unfolds - and the girls reveal a chilling defence no one saw coming - he begins to question everything: the motives, the evidence, even his own judgement.
Who’s telling the truth? Who can be trusted? And what really happened to Christian Shaw?
Let the Witch Trial begin . . .
Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £23.99
March 5 - new listing
Tapsalteerie Poetry Extravaganza: A World Book Day Trio!
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
A pop of poetry to celebrate World Book Day!
Celebrating three new books from one of our favourite independent poetry presses - the fabulous Tapsalteerie - we welcome a trio of award-winning poets to the bookshop!
Join us for a relaxed evening of poetry and discussion as we hear readings from Sarah Stewart, Taylor Strickland, and Stewart Sanderson about their new publications.
Tickets £4 - redeemable against featured books
March 5 - new listing
7pm, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8LN
We are delighted to be hosting an evening with So Mayer to discuss their latest book Bad Language. This event will be chaired by Alycia Pirmohamed, author of Another Way To Split Water and the upcoming Shorelines.
There is no such thing as a safe word.
In Bad Language, So Mayer blends memoir and manifesto as they explore the politics of speech, while looking at how language has been used – and abused – in their own life. What is the relationship between language and sexual violence? And how can we ‘make ourselves up’ in language when words themselves are encoded by a dominant culture that insists we see ourselves as powerless listeners rather than active speakers?
Examining the semantic traps of their multi-lingual childhood – and taking in texts from the Torah to Grimms’ Fairytales, from protest bust cards to the works of Ursula K. Le Guin – Mayer asks who gets to speak, and who is forced into silence. Bad Language calls out the harm that words can do, while searching for crafty ways through which we can collectively reclaim language for protest and pleasure.
Tickets free/Ticket plus book £12.99
March 5
An Evening with Elisabeth Wolf
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
Join Elisabeth Wolf as she chats to Amanda Block about her haunting, ominous and astonishingly compelling new book, Winterbourne.
Librarian Anne Adams has found the perfect escape: a job cataloguing the library of Winterbourne, an architectural masterpiece on a remote island off the west coast of Scotland. Surrounded by an awe-inspiring landscape, the library is magnificent, with priceless first editions, a librarian’s dream.
However, Anne’s early weeks in her new job are beset by obstacles - no internet, a house plunged into darkness every night and unexplained mysteries on the island. After weeks of isolation, upon meeting the mysterious owner Lucien Broussard, Anne is puzzled. Eloquent and well-travelled, his reclusive nature seems uncharacteristic. But after finding a cryptic clue within the pages of a book, Anne discovers that Broussard’s collection includes everything from the mundane to the books no one should ever open . . .
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20
March 5
Nancy Birtwhistle on Clean Magic
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA
Nancy Birtwhistle is a Sunday Times bestselling author, lifelong gardener and Hull-born baker who won the fifth series of The Great British Bake Off in 2014.
Motivated by protecting the planet for her ten grandchildren, Nancy decided to change how she used plastic, single use products and chemicals in her home. Sharing her tips online, she amassed an engaged international following of devoted fans interested not only in her delicious recipes, but also her innovative ideas and time-saving swaps that rethink everyday house and garden tasks to make as little an impact on the environment as possible.
She is the author of an array of bestselling books including Clean & Green, Green Living Made Easy, The Green Gardening Handbook, The Green Budget Guide, Sizzle & Drizzle and Nancy’s Green and Easy Kitchen.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £15.99
March 5
Francis Spufford for Nonesuch
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Francis Spufford, the Booker-longlisted author of Light Perpetual and friend of the bookshop returns to celebrate his latest fantastical masterpiece, Nonesuch. Francis is a wholly singular writer and we are delighted to welcome him back to Edinburgh this March.
It’s the summer of 1939. London is on the brink of catastrophic war. Iris Hawkins, an ambitious young woman in the stuffy world of City finance, has a chance encounter with Geoff, a technical whizz at the BBC’s nascent television unit. What was supposed to be one night of abandon draws her instead into an adventure of otherworldly pursuit - into a reality where time bends, spirits can be summoned, and history hangs by a thread. Soon there are Nazi planes overhead. But Iris has more to contend with than the terrors of the Blitz. Over the rooftops of burning London, in the twisted passages between past and present, a fascist fanatic is travelling with a gun in her hand. And only Iris can stop her from altering the course of history forever.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £20
March 6 - new listing
Little Griefs by Andrew Neilson
7pm, Typewronger Books, 4a Haddington Place, Edinburgh, EH7 4AE
“This collection has got everything – philosophy, myth, elegy, hilarity, grace, tenderness, pain and wisdom, all in brilliant proportion.” —Rachael Boast
Andrew Neilson was born in Edinburgh and lives in London. He works in prison reform and co-edits the digital poetry journal, Bad Lilies, with Kathryn Gray. A pamphlet, Summers Are Other, was published by Rack Press in 2025. His debut collection, Little Griefs, is out now from Blue Diode Press.
Kathryn Gray, Don Paterson and Annie Brechin will be joining Andrew.
Free, but ticketed.
March 7 - new listing
Virginia Evans - The Correspondent
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
The Portobello Bookshop is thrilled to welcome Virginia Evans for a discussion of her bestselling, word-of-mouth sensation, The Correspondent. This book was a favourite for so many in 2025, and has only continued to grow as more people fall in love with this beautiful novel. This book is perfect for fans of Elizabeth Strout, Ann Patchett, and Catherine Newman.
There are plenty of accolades for The Correspondent; over half a million copies sold, #1 New York TimesBestseller, a Times book of the year, a BBC Radio 2 Book Club Pick, and so many more. Discover what all the buzz is about, meet the author behind the smash-hit, and get your own copy signed at the event!
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 7 - new listing
The Last Starborn Seer Craft Event
7pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, EH9 1ND
Join us for a craft night celebrating The Last Starborn Seer by Venetia Constantine where readers will join the Book Lovers Bookshop staff in bedazzling their copies of The Last Starborn Seer and get the chance to meet the author and get their books signed!
Copies of The Last Starborn Seer will be available for purchase and all bedazzling materials will be provided.
Leilani Stellarion is cursed. The last of a ruined bloodline, she’s shunned for her volatile Starborn magic, which grants her prophetic visions but is slowly corrupting her mind. Branded a pariah, Leilani is blamed for the Sickening, a wasting curse that fractured the realms of Arcelia and plunged them into war. When her dying mother’s health deteriorates and a forced marriage threatens her future, Leilani seizes the chance to reclaim her fate. A prophecy speaks of an ancient relic that could end the Sickening – and she’s determined to find it.
Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.99
March 7
Theatre Book Club: Inspector Morse
1.15pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge
Join us for our Theatre Book Club where we will be chatting about Inspector Morse
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.
In our Spring season we’ll dive into Colin Dexter’s Inspector Morse: Morse’s greatest mystery and other stories before watching a brand new Morse story on stage.
Morse had solved so many mysteries in his life. Was he now, he wondered, beginning to glimpse the solution to the greatest mystery of them all . . . ? Morse’s Greatest Mystery and Other Stories is a dazzling collection of short stories from Inspector Morse’s creator, Colin Dexter. It includes six ingenious cases for the world’s most popular fictional detective – plus five other tantalizingly original tales to delight all lovers of classic crime fiction.
YOU WILL NEED TO BOOK YOUR TICKET ON THE FESTIVAL THEATRE WEBSITE, this is an information page. Book here.
Bookclub tickets £3
March 8
10:30am, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Me mother other is a writing project for new mums that carves out a space to explore the contrasting emotions of motherhood.
Taking inspiration from memoirs, novels and poems written by mothers we discuss, write and share. Becoming a parent is tender and intense, complex in the light and shade of it, the shifting identity, the joy and rage. Naming it, being witness to it with each other building powerful solidarity in isolating times.
This event celebrates some of the writing that has come out of these sessions, written by mothers in the first year of their child’s life.
Tickets £4
March 9
Sophie Jane Lee: Beyond Palatable
7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge
Join Sophie Jane Lee on Monday 9th March at 7pm as she discusses her new book Beyond Palatable: A manifesto for unapologetic women.
Sophie’s compelling voice guides readers to confront the pressures of conformity that stifle individuality. Each chapter is rich with actionable insights, somatic practices and practical tasks, all designed to deepen self-understanding and spark meaningful change.
With tools for self-reflection, Beyond Palatable fosters a sense of empowerment that encourages readers to stand firm in their truth, even amidst external resistance. This heartfelt invitation to reclaim authenticity serves as a reminder that the essence of who we are is rooted in our hearts.
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £15
March 10
Cooks & Books: Edd Kimber for Chocolate Baking
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
Join us with master baker and first ever winner of The Great British Bake Off, Edd Kimber, as he chats and cooks from his love letter to chocolate Chocolate Baking: The Ultimate Guide to Cakes, Cookies, Desserts & Pastries.
Edd shares creative takes on favourites such as Miso and White Chocolate Cookies or S’mores Brownies, and guides you through baking breads and pastries with chocolate, including Bistro Profiteroles and Sour Cherry Custard Buns with Cocoa Streusel.
Edd Kimber is a bestselling food writer and baker from London. He is the author of multiple bestselling baking books and writes for Olive Magazineand Bake From Scratch.
Early bird tickets £8/Ticket plus book £28
March 10
Pim Wangtechawat - I Dreamed of You
7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh, EH15 1DA
We are so excited to welcome Pim Wangetchawat to the bookshop for an evening celebrating her latest novel, I Dreamed of You! This sparkling book bursts with the magic of friendship and first love, as two unforgettable characters find out what it means to dream.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £9.99
March 10
An evening with Neil Lancaster
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
We are thrilled to be joined by Neil Lancaster to chat about his topical, timely and suspenseful new thriller in his bestselling DS Max Craigie series, The Dark Heart.
A DEADLY BOMBING
When renowned author Dr. Daniel Solomon is killed in a devastating explosion in York, authorities quickly attribute the attack to Islamic extremists. But as the investigation unfolds, it becomes clear that all is not as it seems.
A DARK CONSPIRACY
DS Max Craigie uncovers a chilling connection between a series of brutal murders, each victim linked by a secret that someone is determined to protect.
A DANGEROUS GAME
With the number of victims growing and an elusive figure known as The Cashier operating in the shadows, Max must navigate a web of corruption and hatred. Can he unravel the truth before more lives are lost?
General admission £5/Ticket plus book £20
March 12 - new listing
Lior Torenberg: Just Watch Me
7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF
Join us for an evening with Lior Torenberg, as we discuss her visceral, darkly hilarious, and surprisingly moving debut novel, Just Watch Me - Described as Fleabag meets Big Swiss.
Dell Danvers is barely keeping it together. She’s behind on rent for her bathroom-less studio apartment (formerly a walk-in closet), she’s being plagued by perpetual, spiking stomach pain, and her younger sister, Daisy, is in a coma at a hospital that wants to pull the plug. Freshly unemployed and subsisting on selling plant propagations to trust fund kids, Dell impulsively starts a 24-hour livestream under the username mademoiselle_dell to fundraise $14,000 for a week of private life support for Daisy.
In the dungeon of her stream, Dell is in control, banishing those who don’t abide by her terms of engagement and steadily rising up the platform’s ranks with her sympathetic story and angry-funny screen presence. On a dare, she discovers that she has a talent for eating spicy food, and her streaming fame explodes as her pepper consumption graduates from jalapeño to habanero to ghost. Finally, Dell is good at something—but as her behavior becomes riskier and riskier and a troll-turned-incel threatens to expose her dark past, Dell must reckon with what her digital life ignores, and what real redemption means.
Narrated in seven taut chapters, one for each day of Dell’s livestream, Just Watch Me careens us through a nonstop week in the life of this charismatic misfit with a heart of gold. Voyeuristic and visceral, audacious and outrageous, Lior Torenberg’s debut is both an incisive, zippy tragicomedy about the internet economy as well as a moving meditation on love, loss, and forgiveness.
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 12
An evening with Rosie Kelly Smith
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
Everyone has advice to offer on motherhood. Becoming a new parent is daunting enough without having to contend with comments and advice from seemingly every corner. ‘They didn’t do it like that in my day’, ‘You’ll make a rod for your own back’, ‘Don’t spoil the baby’. It’s so easy to become overwhelmed, and too easy to feel like you’re failing.
Join Rosie Kelly Smith as she explores what we can learn about parenting from our own mums, as well as what we will find for ourselves, in her gloriously comforting and extremely honest debut book on motherhood Mother to Mother.
General admission £5/Ticket plus book £25
March 12
Jennie Godfrey for The Barbecue at No.9
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
Following on from the incredible success of The List of Suspicious Things, we are delighted to welcome Jennie Godfrey to celebrate the release of her latest novel, The Barbecue at No. 9.
House-proud Lydia Gordon, whose idols are Princess Di and Delia Smith, is determined to put on a show that will impress everyone - with her posh garden and state-of-the-art television, and her sweet husband and two children, Hanna and David. But as the guests flood into number nine, so do all of the secrets that have been kept in the close.
As the hours count down to the last performance of the night, it’s Lydia who faces the heart-breaking truth that her immaculate home and flawless family might not be so perfect after all. And if each of their neighbours is guilty of hiding something, so are the Gordons at number nine...
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 13
Stories About Autism’s James Hunt for Love Needs No Words
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh, EH2 2PA
We are pleased to be welcoming James Hunt to Edinburgh this March. James is the founder of Stories About Autism, where hundreds of thousands of people follow his life as a father raising two autistic, non-speaking sons. In Love Needs No Words, he shares what it’s really like to navigate the meltdowns, the sleepless nights, and the unexpected challenges, as well as the breakthroughs, the joy and the moments of connection.
This is an honest memoir about autism parenting from a dad’s perspective, offering comfort, solidarity and hope. Written with warmth and understanding, it will help caregivers see that, while life might look different from how they imagined, it can still be filled with growth and love.
Early bird tickets £10/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 13
Saara El-Arifi with Jean Menzies for Cleopatra
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
It is our great pleasure to welcome Sunday Times Bestseller, Saara El-Arifi, back to Edinburgh for Cleopatra. Saara joins us to talk about her epic and groundbreaking novel, which shows Cleopatra on her own terms. Saara will be joined by the highly acclaimed Jean Menzies.
Saara El-Arifi is a No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling author of fantasy and historical fiction. El-Arifi knew she was a storyteller from the moment she told her first lie. Over the years, she has perfected her tall tales into epic ones. She has lived in many countries, had many jobs, and owned many more cats. After a decade of working in marketing and communications, she returned to academia to complete a master’s degree in African studies specialising in Cleopatra’s myth and her impact on Black women.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £18.99
March 16
Jenni Fagan for The Delusions
7pm, Ps and Gs Church, 46 York Place, EH1 3HP
Toppings is beyond excited to welcome Jenni Fagan back to the bookshop for the launch of her latest novel, The Delusions. Jenni is a firm favourite amongst our booksellers, who have been pressing her work into the hands of browsers since we first opened.
Edi is facing a disciplinary since her ‘incident’ at work. Forty-seven years in Admin processing the newly dead is not how she foresaw eternity. In Arrivals, the newly dead must take the stages in order: first, extract delusion; second, answer HR’s questionnaire truthfully. Yet who among them can truly face who they are? Who may never pass at all? As leaderboard numbers begin to rise at unprecedented rates, rumours begin to fly. Humans are about to become a banned race. The earth is going to be repossessed
As chaos descends, Edi hopes this might finally be the moment she has waited for, so she might see her son again who she was forced to leave on Earth when she died. Edi wants to be the one waiting for him, even if HR protocols forbid it. Looking out at the millions of newly dead arriving, Edi has one question - what might any of us truly be willing to do for those we love at the doors of eternity?
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £18.99
March 16
How to Read Minds Aimee Cliff on the art and science of empathy
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
What is true empathy? The classic stereotype of autistic people is that they can’t empathise; that they’re highly intellectual but find it difficult to connect. As an autistic psychotherapist, who empathises for a living, Aimee Cliff knew that this wasn’t right. Empathy is something you do, not something you are—meaning it’s something we can all get better at, if we choose to practise.
Drawing on the latest scientific research, her clinical experience, and interviews with a wide range of neurodivergent people, Cliff examines how empathy works in the brain and body, and lays out five pillars that allow anyone to practise empathy. She finds that empathy is humble; empathy is embodied; empathy is amoral; empathy is radical; and empathy is work. How to Read Minds offers a new idea of empathy with a more radical and expansive definition.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £18.99
March 17 - new listing
Hester Musson: The Night Hag
7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF
Join us for an evening with Times bestselling author Hester Musson, as we discuss her thrilling new historical mystery, The Night Hag.
Scotland, 1886. Lil, a keen archaeologist, has arrived at Pitcarden to lead a dig on a Bronze Age burial mound. Having escaped the clutches of her mother, a famous medium, and committed herself to a life of rational enquiry, she is determined to unearth the treasures buried deep, despite growing protests from the nearby villagers.
But Lil is also privately plagued by nightmares which haunt her sleep and by memories of her former life. Caught in a fight between science and superstition, Lil confides in a mysterious doctor who she hopes might cure her night terrors once and for all. But who exactly is this doctor that Lil has trusted with her most intimate fears? And what secrets from her past might she be digging up, along with a long-lost hoard?
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 18 - new listing
An Evening of Poetry with Sarah Stewart
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street
Join Scottish author and poet Sarah Stewart as we celebrate the publication of her sumptuous and lyrical new collection, Devour Everything.
Devour Everything is a love letter to heroic failure, to creation in the face of destruction, to the mundane made sacred. Ranging from New York to small-town Aberdeenshire, from pop culture to Norse Valkyries, and wrestling with issues of motherhood, memory and loss, Sarah Stewart’s deftly illuminating debut collection reminds us that as humans “we are animals / and our bodies remember things.”
Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £15
March 18
An Afternoon with Mary Berry
2pm, Ps and Gs Church, 46 York Place, EH1 3HP
Toppings is thrilled to announce our event with Mary Berry in celebration of her new book, My Gardening Life.
Well-known and loved as a cookery writer and presenter, this is Mary Berry’s deeply personal account of the second great love of her life, gardening. She shares her love of growing plants, visiting gardens, and getting hands-on in her own plot.
A passion that was sparked in her childhood, Mary first started gardening with her father and she has been fortunate to meet many inspirational and knowledgeable horticulturalists throughout her life. Full of anecdotes, pearls of wisdom, Q&As with her gardening heroes, and beautiful photos of Mary’s own garden, My Gardening Life is a unique memoir told through the gardens Mary has loved.
Early bird ticket £15/Ticket plus book £25
March 18
Emily Lee Luan and Megan Pinto
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH
We are thrilled to be hosting a joint poetry reading with the87press’s Emily Lee Luan and Megan Pinto. The reading will be followed by a Q&A, chaired by the wonderful Edinburgh-based Alycia Pirmohamed.
Each “Includes Book” voucher is fully redeemable against either of the following event books: 回 / Return by Emily Lee Luan and Saints of Little Faith by Megan Pinto.
About 回 / Return: Rooted in the classical tradition of the Chinese “reversible” poem, 回 / Return is engaged in the act of looking back-toward an imagined homeland and a childhood of suburban longing, through migratory passages, departures, and etymologies, and into the various holes and voids that appear in the telling and retelling of history. The poems ask: What is feeling? What is melancholy? Can language translate either?
About Saints of Little Faith: The energies animating Megan Pinto’s electrifying debut are a forceful quiet, a loud stillness, the caesura between a lightning strike and the sound of thunder. Fierce and intimate, this poet’s meditative transformations engage with South Asian experiences of addiction, domestic violence, and mental illness, refusing to ignore narratives treated as unspeakable and overlooked by the English canon. Mapping the collision of abuse, psychosis, and rage, Pinto sees beyond them, buoyed by an inscrutable but abiding faith in the holiness of life itself, in a cold God nevertheless capable of gentleness.
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £16.99
March 19 - new listing
Peter Mackay, Don Paterson, Kathleen Jamie and Brian Holton for Irish Pages: “Scotland”
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH
We are delighted to be hosting four Scottish poets to celebrate the “Scotland” edition of Irish Pages. We will be joined by Peter MacKay, Don Paterson, Kathleen Jamie. The conversation will be chaired by Chris Agee.
Ten years after the Independence Referendum, Irish Pages asks diverse Scottish writers of distinction – established, mid-career and new – to think about their country, and take stock of the current state of its culture and polity, language and literature, ecology and environment, while a specially curated selection of Scotland’s emerging poets will offer a younger perspective. How will Scotland fare in an era of momentous and unpredictable political change? Stands Scotland where it did?
Early bird ticket £8/Ticket plus book £14
March 19
Frontierlands: Hazel Sheffield on an alternative to capitalism in the UK
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9DB
Communities on Britain’s margins, left alone by the centres of power, are boldly rewriting the future, reclaiming and reimagining neglected land and buildings to prepare all of us for the uncertainties ahead. Join us to find out more about these frontierlands and what lessons we might learn to bring into our own communities.
Frontierlands are Britain’s forgotten places. Silt-filled harbours, overgrown forests, sunken railway tracks and empty buildings. All once economic engines, now abandoned by investors and the state. But they are home to local communities, and amongst them, some remarkable pioneers working together to repair, rebuild and prepare for the future.
Hazel Sheffield takes us on a journey that begins at the coastline and travels inward via hoardings and railway arches, factories, streets and neighbourhoods to our homes. Moving from Watchet harbour in the South West to Gateshead in the North East, from Lancashire to London and the South East, she introduces us to the people who are acting to shape their own destinies - people with first-hand knowledge of the problems Britain faces and with clear ideas how to make things better.
Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20
March 20
Michael Pollan with Sally Magnusson for A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness
7pm, St Cuthbert’s Church, 5 Lothian Rd, Edinburgh EH1 2EP
Join Michael Pollan, one of the greatest narrative-non fiction writers in the English language, to celebrate his latest book, A World Appears.
Pollan has already brought us conversation-changing books investigating our relationship with food, plants and psychedelic drugs with his 2018 bestseller How to Change Your Mind. He now pulls the lens back even further to go deeper, with an exploration of consciousness itself.
Michael will be joined by acclaimed Scottish broadcast journalist, television presenter and writer, Sally Magnusson.
Early bird ticket £10/Ticket plus book £25
March 20
7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge
Join Tobi Coventry as he chats to Seth Insua about his debut novel, He’s the Devil.
‘Massimo lived here now. And things had begun to happen. Sounds, smells, dreams. A private horror show. A usurper in my ordered world…’
Simon has always been a good boy. He’s invariably employee of the month at the seasonal small plates restaurant where he works, he neurotically tidies his home, he keeps on top of repairs on behalf of his twenty-something, permanently-abroad landlord and tries to do right by everyone. But when his best and only friend, Josh, moves out of their shared flat, Simon is lonelier than ever – until in moves a new flatmate, the strange (and strangely sexy) Massimo.
But Massimo’s brought something with him. Odd sounds emerge from Massimo’s room, smells of earth and meat drift through the corridor and Simon’s nights fill with disturbing and tantalising dreams. Massimo is awakening something in Simon, something wild and exciting and horrifying that could be the end of him – or maybe a new beginning. But whatever’s in Massimo, whatever’s in the flat, isn’t finished. It wants more …
Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £17
March 21 - new listing
Sapphics, Sports and Spice: Celebrate The Perfect Match with Adiba Jaigirdar & Dilan Dyer
7pm, Lady & the Bear Cafe, 1 Hope Park Terrace, Newington, EH8 9LZ
Join us for an in-person event with Adiba Jaigirdar to celebrate her new sapphic football romance The Perfect Match! The event will be chaired by author of The Brave and the Reckless, Dilan Dyer.
Dina is done. She's burn out after years in corporate London and now is working in her family's struggling Bangladeshi restaurant. The last thing she expects is to be roped into coaching a football team of disadvantaged amateur players - or to say yes. Maya is back. She could have had a brilliant career, but it all went...well wrong. Now she's back home, back in her childhood bedroom. Her only escape is agreeing to coach her old secondary school's team.
It doesn't take long for them to bump into each other again and for as long as anyone can remember, Dina and Maya were rivals. But will the very game that tore them apart bring them back together?An enemies-to-lovers and angsty queer Bend it like Beckham meets Cross the Line jampacked with quirky side characters who cannot help but intervene to push their uptight managers together.
March 21
Radical Justice: Nani Jansen Reventlow on building the world we need
7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB
Our Speaker: Nani Jansen Reventlow is an international human rights lawyer. She is the founder of Systemic Justice, which advocates for marginalised communities through strategic litigation. Politico named her one of society’s great visionary tech leaders for her work on digital human rights. She has also been honoured with awards from Harvard, Oxford and Columbia Universities.
Tickets £5
March 21
Theatre Book Club: The Boy at the Back of the Class
1.15pm, Blackwell’s BookshopEdinburgh, South Bridge, Edinburgh
Join us for our Theatre Book Club where we will be chatting about The Boy at the Back of the Class.
In our Spring season we’ll get reading Onjali Q. Raúf’s moving and timely debut novel The Boy at the Back of the Class. Told with humor and heart, The Boy at the Back of the Class offers a child’s perspective on the refugee crisis, highlighting the importance of friendship and kindness in a world that doesn’t always make sense.
YOU WILL NEED TO BOOK YOUR TICKET ON THE FESTIVAL THEATRE WEBSITE, this is an information page. Book here.
Book club tickets £3
March 23 - new listing
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
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
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
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
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 - new listing
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
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 - new listing
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 - new listing
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
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 - new listing
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 - new listing
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 10 - new listing
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
But that’s not all
Coming up fast…
Brian Dillon, Matt Haig, Andrey Kurkov, Lamorna Ash, Caro Claire Burke, Patrick Radden Keefe, Tim Parks, James Bailey, Dan Richards, Poetry with Bloomsbury & Nine Arches, Patrick Williams, Tayari Jones, Erin Maglaque, David Farrier, Sara Wheeler, Siri Hustvedt, Polly Barton, Evelyn Clarke, Doug Johnstone, Douglas Stuart, Stephen Rutt, Mark Steel, Catherine Ostler, Helen Graham, Jane Harper, James Holland, Roderick Beaton, Sara Sheridan, Cal Flyn, Tariq Ashkanani, Sean A Pritchard, RJ Barker, Sarah Raven, Gillian McAllister, Imani Thompson, Jem Calder, Maggie O’Farrell (afternoon), Maggie O’Farrell (evening), Lachlan Goudie, Nathan Outlaw, Ben Lerner, Jess Venner, Henry Harris, Olly Smith, Grace Curtis, Kier Milburn, Sarah Gilmartin, Richard Dawkins, John Robb, Veronica Roth, First Date Festival, Vojta Hybl, John Kampfner, Alex Howard, Chris Brookmyre, Nicholas Binge, Claire Fuller, Tari Lang, Jennifer Saint, Minette Batters, Steve Brusatte, William Dalrymple