Goodness - it’s been a year since I started sending out this newsletter. It doesn’t feel like it, which means I’ve officially reached the age when time rushes by far too quickly. But what a year of brilliant book events.

I did think that for this post, I’d count how many book events I’ve listed over the course of the year, but honestly life’s too short for all that counting. After all, there are 116 events featured in this edition alone, covering from tomorrow until 18th October. Never say the booksellers of Edinburgh don’t spoil us.

And also a huge thank you to everyone who subscribes - I hope you’ve found it useful.

I have a couple of other bookish birthdays coming up as well. September is Bloody Scotland month (though this brilliant Scottish crime writing festival doesn’t get a listing here as it takes place in Stirling), and this year marks 10 years since I won Pitch Perfect, the festival’s book pitching event. A bloody decade ago!

However, I can remember it as clearly as if it was yesterday. Standing up in front of the packed ballroom of the Golden Lion Hotel and pitching my (then unwritten) novel, The Tattoo Thief, I had no expectation of winning, but somehow I did. The whole thing still seems quite surreal to me, but it’s not an understatement to say that that single day changed my life. I won the competition, which lead to signing with an agent, the wonderful Jenny Brown, and securing a book deal with Orion - and what a glorious ride it’s been ever since.

(Yes, like a roller coaster with precipitous ups and downs! 😂)

Incidentally, at Pitch Perfect that day I sat next to fellow competitor Danny Marshall, and we discovered we both had octopuses tattooed on our arms. This week, Danny announced his new book A Murder of Detectives will be published by Zaffre here, has secured a six-figure deal with Harper Collins US, has a TV deal and sold foreign language rights in three countries (so far, more expected). I couldn’t be more thrilled for anyone that I’ve known over my own 10-year writing journey, and hopefully we’ll see him in due course at an Edinburgh event.

My other bookish birthday coming up is the paperback publication this week of my gothic novel Winterbourne, written under the pen name Elisabeth Wolf. I’ve an event on Thursday at Waterstones West End with the brilliant gothic crime writer Suzy Aspley, also celebrating her book The Bone Mother - and it should be fun: yesterday she said she’d be Baldrick to my Blackadder!

Please do come along if you’re at a loose end - I’d love to see some of you there.

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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

September 1

Joe Wicks for Healthy Start
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

From the Number One Bestselling author of Protein in 15, Joe Wicks returns with a new collection of simple healthy recipes for all the family to enjoy.

We all want to make family mealtimes more enjoyable, with food that’s healthy and filling for everyone. But with picky eaters and the need to please different ages and tastes, it’s no secret they can sometimes be a challenge. With over 80 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, Healthy Start has everything you need to take the stress out of mealtimes so you can cook once and feed the whole family.

Packed with recipes that are quick to make, big on flavour and don’t rely on ultra-processed ingredients, Healthy Start is your go-to guide for fuss-free cooking that everyone will enjoy.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £22

September 2

Catherine Simpson for Sandwiched: Caring Up and Caring Down
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Catherine Simpson believed the hardest chapters of her life were behind her. She had raised two children - one of them autistic - and survived both a family suicide and her own cancer treatment. In her fifties, it was time to enjoy restoring her health, reducing work commitments, hanging out with friends and relaxing with her husband in their empty nest.

But when the global pandemic shut the world down, Catherine’s nonagenarian father’s independence began to slip away just as her adult daughter’s mental health spiralled into crisis.

Sandwiched is a candid memoir about being trapped in a high-pressure, intergenerational squeeze. It is a story of letting go of the superwoman myth, confronting the limits of control and responsibility, and trying to hold it all together while providing loving care.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 2

Robert Harris for Agrippa
7pm, Ps and Gs Church, 46 York Place, EH1 3HP

From the bestselling author of Conclave comes a new compelling book exploring friendship and power against the backdrop of Ancient Rome.

Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice.

Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, who he has made his heir.

The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.

To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire - and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.

When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 3

An Evening with Suzy Aspley and Elisabeth Wolf

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are delighted to be joined by Elisabeth Wolf and Suzy Aspley as they chat about their equally haunting, ominous and chilling Gothic mysteries, Winterbourne and The Bone Mother.

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 book lover’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 an unannounced visit from her employer, the enigmatic Lucien Broussard, Ann wonders what happened to the previous librarian when she finds notes hidden in the library’s ancient tomes. As echoes of the past start to reveal the house and Lucien’s dark secrets, suddenly Anne’s dream job becomes a living nightmare.

The Bone Mother

Martha Strangeways has settled into a quiet life in Strathbran, after the horrific events that traumatised the village a year earlier. But all this is turned upside down when her friend at Glasgow CID, DI Derek Summers, calls on her to help with a disturbing case: a human ear, with an unusual Celtic earring, has been found next to a railway line in the Highlands.

When the body of a young woman wearing matching jewellery turns up at a landmark church shortly after, the mystery deepens. Why has she been laid out in a ritualistic fashion? Does her trek along the little known Cailleach Way have anything to do with her death? And who is running the Facebook group where she posted details of her journey to the shrine of the Bone Mother goddess?

As Martha tries to unpick the threads, she finds herself entwined with a ghost from her own past, and in conflict with the owner of a project that threatens to destroy the goddess’s sacred land. With Halloween approaching, and someone determined to protect the goddess at all costs, can Martha and Summers catch the killer before they strike again, and this time much closer to home.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £13

(Full disclaimer, this is my own event as I write gothic novels under the pen name Elisabeth Wolf. But please don’t let that put you off - I’d love to see some of you there! AB)

September 3

James Fox - Craftland

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We’re thrilled to be hosting the publication day event for Craftland in paperback! James Fox’s journey through the British Isles to catalogue and celebrate artisan and heritage crafts has been a huge sensation since it’s release last year, and we’re excited to celebrate it with James in the shop.

James will be in conversation with Niamh MacKenzie, a PhD candidate working across the Highlands and Islands researching the arts, craftsmanship, and traditional practices. This promises to be a fascinating and insightful discussion, we can’t wait to see it!

Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our identities, built our communities and shaped our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life on these shores.

Travelling the length of Britain, from the Scilly Isles to the Scottish Highlands, James Fox seeks out the country’s last remaining master craftspeople. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bell-founders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life — one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could shape our future.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 3

Sabrina Ghayour for Persiana One
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

From the Queen of Middle Eastern cookery, Sabrina Ghayour, every recipe in Persiana One makes irresistible Middle Eastern flavours easier than ever in one pot, one tray or one pan.

From dips and bits that make snacking sublime to spectacular salads, and from easy everyday dinners to something a little bit more special, these are recipes designed with clever shortcuts that don’t compromise on flavour, to be as simple, and as kit free as possible.

With over 100 recipes, each accompanied by a photograph, this is a sumptuous gift for every cookery lover - who hates washing up!

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £28

September 3

Anna Deacon for The Wild Fix Scotland
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In The Wild Fix Scotland, writer and photographer Anna Deacon explores how the powerful connection between nature and wellbeing can help ease modern stress. Blending ancient wisdom with modern research, this beautifully illustrated guide is inspired by the elements of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air.

From wild swimming and forest bathing to mindful photography and seasonal living, Anna shows how aligning with nature can restore balance and calm, revealing why simply listening to birdsong or looking at images of nature can soothe the nervous system.

Featuring evocative photography of Scotland’s raw beauty, The Wild Fix Scotland is an uplifting companion to feeling better, living well and reconnecting with the healing power of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 4

Seren Hawley-Plows for The Ancient Ways
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This September we are joined by Seren Hawley-Plows for her debut book The Ancient Ways! It is a seasonal guide that uses myths, folklore and old rituals to help you reconnect with nature. Seren will even be giving us a demo of one of the rituals from her book.

Step into an ancient world of rituals and folklore in this stunning seasonal guide.

Tales of gods and goddesses told around a crackling fire. The light of the rising sun streaming through an ancient site on a solstice morning. Hot cider poured over the roots of apple trees to wake them for the spring.

Told through the pagan wheel of the year, The Ancient Ways explores how nature changes throughout the seasons, looking at solstices, equinoxes, legends, and festivals and how these stories and traditions can help you deepen your connection with nature. Discover megalithic sacred sites where crowds still gather to see the sun rise and fall through doorways of the past. Meet Eostre, goddess of the spring and dawn or the Cailleach, queen of winter and the Green Man, a personification of the wild. Celebrate festivals like Beltane, a summer celebration of fire and fertility or Samhain, the festival of the dead and precursor to modern Halloween.

Hedgewitch Seren Hawley-Plows weaves these myths and stories together beautifully with tools and inspiration of how to bring the power of ancient tradition into a modern world and help you find magic in the wilds of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 6

Gordon Brown for The Future Starts With Us
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

Gordon Brown joins us in Edinburgh this September for the publication of his much-awaited book, The Future Starts With Us, a practical and hopeful roadmap to bring us back together, renew the global order, and set us on a more equitable and sustainable course.

Every day we see evidence of the fracturing of the rules-based order. War, mass migration, economic disruption and climate collapse fill our screens. At the same time, many feel a different kind of fear. The erosion of civic life has led to an epidemic of loneliness, a loss of community spirit and a growing sense that there is nowhere to turn in times of need, no common cause worth fighting for.

But why is it that the breakup of the world order and the breakdown of civic life are happening at the same time? And why is it that millions across the world are turning to populist nationalist parties in search of solutions?

Drawing on decades of experience at the heart of politics, alongside new research and original polling of nearly 100,000 people across forty-five countries, Gordon Brown reveals how global instability and civic decline are connected.

Ticket plus book £25

Upcoming events

And for those who like to plan ahead…

September 7

Morvern Graham for Seasonal Folktales
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Embrace the changing seasons with local artist and storyteller Morvern Graham for a beautiful evening of illustrated myths and folklore.

In these magical retellings of classic Celtic and Nordic folktales, we journey from snowy mountain peaks to wild forests and stormy coastlines, as we observe the moon phases, find folkloric treasures and meet an array of strange and mysterious creatures. We’ll encounter sprites, trolls, mythic beasts and monsters - from the bramble boggle (a mischievous member of fairy folk who is said to have given blackberries their thorns) to the sea witches and selkies who roam the Northern shores.

Through the power of these stories we can light up our minds with a wild, child-like wonder, and reconnect our hungry souls to the natural rhythms of the shifting seasons.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Daniel Susskind for What Should My Children Do?
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

What should the next generation learn and what should they stop worrying about-in a world transformed by artificial intelligence?

AI is rewriting the rules in the classroom, the job market and the workplace, leaving parents, teachers, students and all types of workers unsure about how best to prepare for what lies ahead. In What Should My Children Do?, globally renowned economist Daniel Susskind cuts through the outdated advice to show us what young people actually need to succeed now.

We should not ban tools or discourage new skills that are in demand, Susskind argues, or cling to inherited ways of working. Instead, he reveals how people can master new technologies without eroding other essential skills. From reorganizing the curriculum to re-imagining white-collar careers, Susskind maps a smarter, more productive path forward.

This requires a fundamental mindset shift: we must embrace the extraordinary opportunities that AI brings-from personal tutors to scientific breakthroughs-rather than retreat from them. Drawing on fifteen years of research, this book is an evidence-based and practical guide to one of the most urgent questions of our time.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 8

Meet Yotam Ottolenghi in Edinburgh!
2:30pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

To celebrate the launch of the new book, Ottolenghi SIMPLE TOO *and* the exciting opening of an Ottolenghi restaurant here in Edinburgh, we are delighted to welcome Yotam Ottolenghi to Waterstones Edinburgh West End for an exclusive meet and greet.

Ticket plus book £30

September 8

Yotam Ottolenghi for Simple Too
7pm, McEwan Hall, The University of Edinburgh, Teviot Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9A

It’s a noisy world out there, so stop, take a minute or two, listen to the soup bubble or the egg crackle... and let simple cooking be your solution.

For the three million home cooks around the world who loved Ottolenghi Simple, Yotam and his co-author, test kitchen colleague Verena Lochmuller, set themselves the task to further pair down processes and ingredient lists, whilst keeping the vibrant, multi- layered, surprising signature flavours loved throughout the world.

Many of the dishes, such as Braised halloumi with tomatoes and beans, or Smoky tomato and feta prawns, are made in one baking tray, with no preparation at all, ready to put on the table in about 30 minutes. They’re for feeding family and friends or just yourselves; classics reimagined the Ottolenghi way using flavour-enhancing ingredients such as za’atar, tahini, harissa and garlic.

Bring Yotam Ottolenghi’s innovation to your everyday with 135 new recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Every dish has simplicity at its core and can be made in under 30 minutes, cooked in one pot, or prepped ahead. Whatever your barriers to cooking, this book brings you into the kitchen with a promise that even the simplest of meals can be full of flavour and joy.

Ticket plus book £30

September 9

Ten Poems about Edinburgh
7pm, Waterstones, West End, Princes Street

Join Michael Pedersen, Janet Ayachi, Majorie Lotfi and Dr Harriet McMillan, as we celebrate the publication of Candlestick Press’s glorious and lively mini-anthology, Ten Poems about Edinburgh, which reflects the many ways in which Scotland’s ancient capital city is loved by visitors and the people who live there.

There are poems celebrating the beauty of Edinburgh’s buildings and parks alongside others capturing moments in its long history and vivid life as a hub of art, music and literature. Throughout are the atmospheres created by its distinctive weathers and the proximity of the North Sea.

The pamphlet is a perfect companion for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the many riches of this special city. Introduced and selected by Michael Perdersen, the collection includes poems from Janette Ayachi, Robert Burns, Jackie Kay, Marjorie Lotfi, Edwin Morgan, Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Hollie McNish, Robert Louis Stevenson and Michael himself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10

September 9

Shorelines x Readers & Writers Against Genocide: a Palestine Solidarity Night

7pm, Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Join us to welcome Shorelines, the prize-winning non-fiction debut by Alycia Pirmohamed, into the world with a night of solidarity with Palestine.

Come on down to Bruntsfield’s gorgeous Pianodrome where we will gather around readings by Alycia, Hannah Lavery and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, as well as music from Miwa Nagato-Apthorp and Curlew (Gill Higgins), with all proceeds from tickets and on-the-night donations going to Writers and Readers Against the Genocide. These will be distributed between two funds: Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children’s Fund.

As a young Muslim woman, Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous. Her affinity to the natural world – the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood – conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents’ homeland – the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees – felt painfully distant.

Across interrelated pieces that travel from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.

Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations – and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Christopher de Hamel for The Migrants
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In the course of a long career at Sotheby’s and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably handled more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive and his delight and enthusiasm in them runs through all he writes.

His many books, translated into numerous languages, include A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize), The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket and The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club.

Christopher joins us for his astounding new book, The Migrants: A Memoir in Manuscripts. This is a coming-of-age saga with extraordinary twists, crossing many hundreds of years and tens of thousands of miles, recounted with passion, humour and a lifetime’s reflection.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 10

Colin Bramwell for Fetch
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

We are delighted to be welcoming an incredible local talent, Colin Bramwell, for the launch of his debut poetry collection, Fetch. Reading alongside him will be poets Michael Grieve and Jacob Polley.

Following his recent success after winning both the 2026 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize and the 2026 Highland Book Prize for his translation of Fernando Pessoa into Scots, Fower Pessoas, Bramwell returns with a debut collection that is sure to delight with its distinctive voice.

On Fetch: In Celtic folklore a fetch is a shadowy doppelganger that appears from the Otherworld, portending the beholder’s fate. Your fetch ‘fetches’ you to the afterlife, willingly or otherwise. Bramwell’s poetry uses the fetch as a model to explore a number of overlapping binaries – between the reader and the poem, most of all. Fetch also meditates on the differences between music and speech, the sacred and the profane, the written and the real, humanity and nature, Scots and English. Incorporating multitudes of modes, forms, registers and subjects, Bramwell converses with the Anglo-Celtic lyric tradition in our own time and in his own distinctively amiable fashion. In other words, this poet takes poetry seriously – but not too seriously.

Fetch is a tour-de-force debut from one of Britain’s most exciting new poets, in which reverence and irreverence, religion and faithlessness, the living and the dead, nearly rhyme.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 10

An Evening with Sebastian Barry

7.30pm, Nicolson Square, The Methodist Church, Nicolson Square, EH8 9BX

We’re excited to welcome Sebastian Barry to the Great Hall at Nicolson Square Edinburgh for a publication day launch of his new novel, The Newer World. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Old God’s Timeand Days Without End comes a lyrical, visceral novel about what it is to survive, and what might be lost along the way.

Barry will be in conversation with Peggy Hughes. He will be signing books following the event.

I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things . . . were gone forever.

The Newer World follows the life of Tennyson Bouguereau – freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man – as he journeys to find meaning and belonging in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

From the relative safety of home in Tennessee with his sister Rosalee, he is offered the possibility of a whole new life in Nashville, until a surprising trip to Victorian England changes everything.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Hollow’s Hauntology Event with Evelyn Hollow

6.30pm, St. Vincent’s Chapel, St Vincent Street, Edinburgh

Discover the hidden world of the supernatural and unexplained in this definitive guide to the world’s darkest wonders.

Hollow’s Hauntology is a richly illustrated compendium that uncovers how 80 legendary beings – from blood-drinking revenants to shape-shifting gods – have shaped storytelling across history. Across eight immersive chapters, the book explores humanity’s oldest fears and fascinations. Through this, paranormal psychologist and TV and radio presenter, Evelyn Hollow, brings a uniquely rigorous perspective, blending psychological methodology with cultural analysis.

She reveals how etymology shapes belief, how folklore reflects collective psychology and how overlooked myths still echo through modern culture. Hollow’s Hauntology invites you to discover what it means to be human beneath a vast and haunted sky.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £2

September 11

Emily Cuddeford in Conversation with Cheryl Cohen

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

What happens when a celebrated baker starts again, from scratch?

Emily Cuddeford, formerly of Twelve Triangles bakery and co-author of Kitchen Table, her debut cookbook celebrating the producers she has worked with over the last decade, is building a new career at 38—publicly, one Substack post at a time. She’s building a bakery school, studio, and stoneground mill at her home in the Scottish Borders. Here, she’ll focus on how food is made and take control of what goes into her bread, who grows the ingredients, and how they treat the land.

Joining her in conversation is Cheryl Cohen—Queen of Markets, according to the Evening Standard—who spent over 20 years running London’s farmers’ markets, working directly with farmers and small producers. She writes weekly on Substack and has written for Good Food.

Together, they’ll explore Emily’s next steps in the baking world, why directly supporting small farms and independent businesses matters, and the difference it makes when we do.

Plus, they’re bringing samples!

Tickets £11.55

September 11

Bookshop Signing with Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy!

5pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with authors Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy. It’s your chance to get your books signed, meet Sierra and Julie and get a photo!

Tickets £2

September 11

Lucy Lapwing - Wildlife Walk

4.45pm, Modern Art Gallery One

Join BBC presenter, naturalist and self-described ‘nature nerd’ Lucy Lapwing for a Wildlife Walk along the Water of Leith to discover the wondrous wildlife that lives there.

The walk will set off from the Modern Art Gallery and down to the Water of Leith at 5pm and last approximately an hour.

The walk will take place before we sit down with Lucy to discuss her fantastic new book ‘Love is a Toad’ at 7.00pm. Please purchase your tickets for the talk separately HERE.

Tickets £15

September 11

Lucy Lapwing ‘Love is a Toad’ - Author Talk

7pm, Wild Fungarium, 13 Randolph Place, Edinburgh EH3 7TA

We’re super excited to have BBC presenter Lucy Lapwing here with us for an evening on the 11th of September. Lucy will be in store to discuss her wonderfully joyous new book, ‘Love is a Toad: Exploring our Relationship with Nature’

Lucy will also be hosting a Wildlife Walk at 5pm along the Water of Leith. If you are interested in attending the walk we recommend early booking as there are limited spaces. Tickets can be purchased HERE.

Nature makes us feel things. It sparks awe, curiosity and a sense of beauty and community. But as wildlife around us declines and disappears, murkier feelings rise up: guilt, detachment and fear for nature’s plight. For many years, Lucy Lapwing wrestled with these tangled emotions. So, in an attempt to make sense of this dance between joy and grief, she decided to go on a journey.

In Love Is a Toad, Lucy traverses meadows, bogs and hedgerows with her fellow nature enthusiasts, where she digs down into our relationship with the natural world. Over the course of a year, she meets bucketfuls of wildlife – Blackbird and Oak, slugs and puffballs, waterlilies, Dung Beetles and toads – as she roams across the UK.

From a river swim to wanders through woodlands, with every journey, Lucy explores how nature makes us feel, from wild grief and anger through to soaring joy and indefatigable hope. At once a celebration and an invitation to reflect, Love Is a Toad prods and pokes at our connection to the natural world, exploring its complexity in all its muddiness, messiness and wonder.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 11

Ed Conway for Trade World
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Ed Conway is a writer and broadcaster. He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and a regular columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. He has won numerous awards for his journalism and his book Material World was a Sunday Times bestseller.

From the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Material World, a story that will take you from ancient civilizations, empire and globalisation through to the most influential geopolitical issue of our times.

The story of trade is the story of humanity. From the copper in Mesopotamian ploughs to the silicon atoms within the chip inside your smartphone, intricate global trading networks have evolved over millennia to fulfil the distinctly human desire to buy and sell.

Today, the volume of trade bestriding the planet is unprecedented. Yet, as fractures in the global order emerge – from an era of globalisation and untrammelled flows of goods and money to a new world of restrictions, intervention and, possibly, war – understanding this fundamental shift to the dominant economic consensus is more important than ever.

Ed Conway tells this extraordinary story through these three commonplace products – bread, cloth and cars. With a compelling blend of economic history and first-hand access to key figures and institutions, he takes us from policy treaties to ground level to show us the people who make, ship and sometimes smuggle the products we buy on a daily basis.

Discover the hidden, shifting trade world behind everything you see around you.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 14

Ben Macintyre for Redwood
7pm, Greyfriars Charteris Centre, 138-140 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9RR

Ben Macintyre joins us to discuss Redwood, the remarkable, unknown Cold War story of how one spy saved the world from nuclear war.

The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.

‘Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets. For Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret, one that if revealed, would turn his life upside-down, and in a desperate situation, he reached out to MI6 – believing it to have the only solution. Soon facing exposure, he then demanded that the British try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan.

This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

September 14

An Evening with Jonn Elledge
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

For over 10,000 years, the human race has been busy altering our environment and embracing ‘progress’, evolving seamlessly from hunter gatherers to the modern urban sophisticates we see ourselves as today.

We are delighted to be joined by the bestselling author of A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge, as he delves into the inventions and innovations that contributed to our modern urbanised world in his latest endlessly fascinating and engagingly written volume, 31 Inventions that Built Our World.

Jonn, will be joined by acclaimed journalist and author, Gabriella Bennett, as they take us on a fascinating and often surprising tour of the ideas and technologies that made modernity possible. From elevators to electric lighting, parks to pedestrian crossings, he guides us through the history of civilisation itself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £28

September 15

The Fairy Spotter’s Guide: Elizabeth Dearnley on where to find banshees, Bigfoot and other creatures from folklore

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Watch your step. Not all fairies are friendly.

We’re so excited to be welcoming author Elizabeth Dearnley and illustrator Sarah Coleman for a double bill that will take you on a journey across continents and cultures as we uncover the origins of extraordinary folk creatures, from mermaids and bigfoot to shapeshifters and spectral hounds.

No matter where you are, you’re never far from a door to the Otherworld ... From the bloodthirsty baobhan sith of the Scottish Highlands to the mischievous trasgu creeping beneath your floorboards, the world is teeming with hidden, magical beings. The Fairy Spotter’s Guide is your essential companion for navigating the world of the uncanny.

Packed with more than 100 original, spellbinding illustrations and written by a leading expert in fairy tales and folklore, this is no ordinary field guide. Whether you’re a seasoned cryptid hunter or a curious newcomer, this beautifully crafted book will enchant, unnerve and utterly captivate.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

Cooks & Books: Claire Thomson for Dear Grace
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Dear Grace is a warm, wise cookbook written by chef and food writer Claire Thomson for her daughter as she leaves home for university. Claire began addressing Instagram posts to Grace, each pairing heartfelt advice and reminiscences with a recipe to nurture and comfort. This struck a chord with parents everywhere experiencing similar emotional highs and lows as they prepared to send their children off into adult life.

Each recipe begins with a note to Grace - advice about surviving deadlines, sharing meals, cooking for one, or navigating heartbreak - followed by an easy dish designed for small kitchens, tight budgets and busy schedules.

Through memories and stories of family and food, Claire perfectly captures the bittersweet moment of watching your child begin their independent life - and the comfort of knowing they can feed themselves and their friends with confidence, creativity and care.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £24

September 15

Pulitzer-Prize Finalist Daniel Mason for Country People
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

This autumn, Daniel Mason - Pulitzer Prize finalist and bookseller favourite - returns to the bookshop to discuss his latest novel, Country People. Funny, adventurous, and elegant, Country People isn’t a book to be missed.

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales - from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes - until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

An Evening with Rebecca F Kuang

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street

The Portobello Bookshop is truly excited to host An Evening with Rebecca F. Kuang for her forthcoming novel Taipei Story. This return to the literary fiction genre is highly anticipated after the massive success of her last fiction novel Yellowface. Rebecca is also known for her beloved fantasy novels including the Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Katabasis.

Taipei Story is a wryly humorous and profoundly moving coming-of-age novel that grapples with grief, language, and culture shock—all set against the backdrop of an unforgettable summer in Taipei.

Kuang will be in conversation with Katie Goh, author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange.

Ticket plus book £25

September 15

Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44

7pm, Blackwell’s, South Bridge

Join Chris Powici and Allan Radliffe as we celebrate the publication of Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44, the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, including new work from 43 authors – some internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

We are delighted to be joined by Rachel Coventry, Tony Frame, Kate Hendry, Donnchadh MacCàba, Fiona Mossman and Shane Strachan, who will be sharing poetry and short stories in English, Gaelic and Scots.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

September 16 - new listing

Queer Scottish Voices: the suspended blue blue air

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Please join host Iain Morrison for an evening with Scottish poets David Kinloch and Colin Herd, and hear them read from their latest books and talk about what queer poetics means to them today in Scotland.

David Kinloch was one of the first in the UK to write about the Aids Crisis and is co-founder the Edwin Morgan Award and Trust, both created in the honour of one of Scotland’s most influential and innovative Scottish gay poets. Kinloch’s first collection Paris-Forfar (Polygon), contains ‘Fifth Quarter’, a tribute to filmmaker and activist Derek Jarman who died of Aids, and his poem ‘Warmer Bruder’, named after a slang expression used for homosexuals in the Nazi Concentrations Camps. Many of these poems can now be found in Kinloch’s fifth Carcanet collection, Greengown: New and Selected Poems, which also includes poems dedicated to and even featuring Edwin Morgan.

Influenced by the American movements The New York School and Language Poetry, Colin Herd has been writing and performing poetry in the poetry scenes of Glasgow and Edinburgh for many years. He was included in Penguin’s 100 Queer Poems anthology, Pilot Press’s Modern Queer Poets Vol. 1 and edited The Edwin Morgan Centenary Collection for Speculative Books. He has also acted as a mentor for Queer Words Project Scotland and HIV Scotland. A firm embracer of the kitsch and the every day surface pleasures of life, Herd playfully explores queer art and desire, pop and consumer culture in books like Click and Collect (Boiler House Press) and You Name It (Dostoyevsky Wannabe). He now has a new book Aquafaba (Spite Press) in which topics including dating apps and the gym feature.

Iain Morrison is a poet, performer, and cultural programmer based in Edinburgh. His first collection I’m a Pretty Circler was shortlisted for the Saltire Poetry Prize. In 2024 he was a guest at Kelly Writers House at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he presented the most recent iteration of Subject Index, a durational performance reading of Emily Dickinson’s complete poems that he has been sharing for over ten years. Other performance work includes a night of drag queen poetry at the Scottish Poetry Library and, with Leiza McLeod, a sung stage show of women’s writing from the Beat Generation. His work has appeared in anthologies such as Makar/Unmakar: Twelve Contemporary Poets in Scotland and group publications such as not just A NY QUINCUNX, alongside Colin Herd, Jane Goldman, Nicky Melville and Maria Sledmere. His extended essay on the poetry of Callie Gardner was published in the Scottish Literary Review’s recentQueer Formspecial issue. In 2026 he curated Fruitmarket’s the poem that could not wait, a poem sculpture exhibition of work by CAConrad and Anna Mendelssohn. Iain studied music at the University of Cambridge. His practice moves between artforms, often ending up in a gallery.

The evening is raising money for the Terrance Higgins Trust in Glasgow.

Free but ticketed

September 16

Women, Walking: A radical anthology of writing on nature and belonging

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Women, Walking is an agenda-setting, contemporary exploration of women setting foot outdoors now, and what that means; Compiling ten specially commissioned essays on walking from prize-winning writers including poets, novelists, essayists and journalists, published here for the very first time,

The groundbreaking collection that brings together many of the most prominent and exciting voices of the last decade across poetry, fiction, essays and journalism, and many a Lighthouse bookshop favourite: Anna Fleming, Anita Sethi, Beatrice Searle, Gail Simmons, Helen Mort, Josie Giles, Kate Davis, Katharine Norbury, Linda Cracknell and Polly Atkin.

Journey from Josie Giles observing the political implications of different features of the landscape to Gail Simmons celebrating the low-key wonders of the incidental walks we take every day, to Kate Davis on why walking matters more when disability prevents you from doing it ‘properly’.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 16

Lorna Elcock in conversation with James Robertson

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join Women’s Prize Discoveries 2021 shortlisted author, Lorna Elcock, as she discusses her raw and emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, The Windhover, with James Robertson.

Perthshire. 1957. The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.

Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.

It’s 1982. Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £15

September 16

Cooks & Books: Ali Stoner for Scran
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Ali Stoner or ‘Roving Haggis’ as she is known on social media, is a Scottish cook and a former Masterchef Australia contestant. Born in Glasgow, she currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband, family and two dogs.

Scran is a new collection of more than 100 nostalgic and traditional Scottish recipes, seen through a modern lens. Ali brings old favourites, classic bakery treats and creative new recipes inspired by Scotland, its landscapes and its traditions.

Some highlights include: Scottish eggs benedict with whisky chive hollandaise, millionaire shortbread, peppermint slice, chicken Balmoral sausage roll, macaroni pie, confit sardines with gin pickled onions, a plethora of morning rolls, tablet, and Scottish martini.

It should make for a particularly delicious evening; we hope to see you there.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £27

September 16

Steven Veerapen for Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Steven Veerapen was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and a Mauritian father and raised in Paisley. He is the author of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, and lives in Glasgow.

Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton.

This ground breaking study of Henry’s life examines and destroys many of the long-repeated myths about this complex monarch: he was not particularly gluttonous, not particularly prudish, and not particularly messy in his religious changes. Nor did he see himself as simply King of England. Drawing on archival sources from across the British Isles, Steven Veerapen reveals how Henry fashioned an image of himself as a law-abiding and benevolent emperor who dreamed of uniting England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and swathes of France under Tudor rule.

Yet the image was false and the dream a nightmare for his queens, his ministers and many of his subjects. This new portrait shows Henry for what he really was: a self-aggrandising actor who, by fair means and foul - murder plots, marriage negotiations and military ventures - did all he could to realise his imperial fantasy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30

September 17 - new listing

An Opinionated Guide to Edinburgh X The Free Company at The Cookbook Shop

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Pippa Perriam celebrates her first book and chats with Charlie Buchanan-Smith of The Free Company--handmade drinks and nibbles included

Pippa Perriam, known to her large and loyal following as It’s Pippa, is an Edinburgh local whose trusted opinions on food and travel have seemingly influenced the entire city to get out and support its independents. Now a published author, her impeccable taste is about to expand its reach even further.

We’re very fortunate to be welcoming Pippa to The Cookbook Shop for a conversation about why Edinburgh is such a world-class foodie destination. Joining her will be Charlie Buchanan-Smith, one of the founders of The Free Company, a regenerative farm and field-to-table restaurant in the Pentland Hills. He’ll be bringing along handcrafted drinks and snacks that distill The Free Company’s ethos and demonstrate why it so deserves its nods in Pippa’s book.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £25/Two-for-one deal available

September 17

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay: an evening with Lex Croucher

7pm, Nicolson Square Venues - 25 Nicolson Square EH8 9BX

What a joy to welcome Lighthouse favourite Lex Croucher back to the shop for the Edinburgh launch of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, the highly anticipated follow-up to the instant New York Times bestselling and YA Book Prize winning Gwen and Art Are Not in Love! Joining Lex on stage we’ll have award-winning author and ancient historian Jean Menzies. Expect an evening of Camelot, queer joy and laughter.

They fell in love. They won a great battle. It should have been happily ever after. But now, Camelot’s famous couples have fallen apart.

Newly crowned King Gabriel is having panic attacks in cupboards in-between council meetings. He can’t tell Arthur just how not okay he is – so he’s set him free, to find love with someone who can get through the day without breaking down.

Bridget has lost her spark for sparring, forfeiting again and again in the lists. When she’s invited to join Gabriel’s round table, she hopes it’ll be the change she needs. But trying to navigate the post-happily-ever-after reality of a relationship with Gwen, when Bridget no longer feels like the dashing knight Gwen fell in love with, feels impossible.

With the kingdom still reeling from an attempted uprising, and rumoured sightings of the Holy Grail, the Questing Beast and the Green Knight happening across the country, the gang depart on a PR tour destined for disaster. Can Gabriel be the king his country deserves? Can Bridget get her jousting groove back? And will they find their way back to the courtly love that once seemed fated?

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 17

Marie Darrieussecq for How to Make a Woman
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

‘Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work.’ - Samantha Harvey, Guardian

Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in 1980s France. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different paths: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, studies psychology and marries her first love, Christian; Solange has numerous affairs, becomes pregnant at fifteen, gives birth to a baby boy, and pursues an acting career. Each tries to find her own happiness, her own sense of meaning, while navigating a world which seeks to establish binary ideas of what a woman can be. How to Make a Woman is a bold, sometimes brutal, coming-of-age novel from the award-winning novelist Marie Darrieussecq.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 17

Jess Elliott Dennison: Vegetable Recipes

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Jess Elliott Dennison will be back in the bookshop this autumn for an evening event celebrating and sampling new recipes from her brand new cookbook, Vegetable Recipes. Jess will talk all things vegetables and do a live food demo, so that you can taste some of her delicious recipes on the night!

In this, the third book in the series, Jess is sharing favourite vegetarian dishes that celebrate the glorious variety of vegetables available throughout the seasons.

Including recipes for Leeks Vinaigrette and Celeriac Remoulade for enjoying with baguette; crispy Fennel and Onion Bhajis; a light summertime lasagne with courgettes and ricotta béchamel and comforting pumpkin-curry pastries for the colder months, this book is filled with easy, reliable dishes for everyone to enjoy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 17

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans!

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

You know the name. You know the carnage.

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans, as he joins us to sign copies of his own not-entirely-true story Moreish: My Mad Autobiography; his hilarious and oddly touching memoir recounted with all his drug-addled charm and charisma.

Now, for the first time ever, Super Hans tells his own story – no filter, no agenda, just 100% pure, distilled Hans. From his early days brewing home-fermented insanity to fronting the greatest band that never was, to performing at actual Glastonbury, this book is the hilarious, trippy and occasionally baffling life story of Super Hans, in his own words, even though he can’t quite remember all the details.

Super Hans – real name Simon, not that he’s ever used it – is a musician, DJ, philosopher, and all-around cultural disruptor. Known as Jez’s best mate and Mark’s worst nightmare in Channel 4’s cult classic Peep Show, he rose to legendary status thanks to his unforgettable lines, unfiltered wisdom, and habit of turning up exactly where you least expect him. His upcoming memoir is the legendary story of a modern folk anti-hero, written in his own gloriously chaotic words.

Matt King is an internationally renowned comedian, screenwriter and actor. Perhaps best known for playing Super Hans in the Bafta award-winning Peep Show, Matt can currently be seen as a recurring character in Time Bandits (Apple) and Spent (BBC). Matt has appeared on the big screen in the likes of Bronson alongside Tom Hardy, Dolittle with Robert Downey Jr, Paddington, RocknRolla and Juliet, Naked. He also played the lead role of Henry Mallet in the award-winning Australian drama series Spirited, for which he won the Best Male Actor in a Drama award. Matt created and wrote the BBC chef sitcom Whites starring Alan Davies, and also created and wrote the Sky drama Starlings starring Brendan Coyle and Lesley Sharp. Moreish is his first novel.

Ticket plus book £20

September 18 - new listing

The Landscapes We Carry: Poems of Place, Family and Belonging

Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join novelist and poet Charlie Roy for an evening of poetry and conversation celebrating her new companion pamphlets, Grit and Flesh (Red Squirrel Press). Moving from girlhood in southern Spain to motherhood in Scotland, the poems explore family, faith, place, inheritance and the landscapes we carry within us. Charlie will read from both collections, talk about the stories behind them, and discuss her journey as a writer and publisher. There will be an opportunity for questions, conversation and signed copies of the books.

Charlie Roy is a Scottish novelist, poet and publisher based in Edinburgh. Her debut novel, The Broken Pane (Leamington Books), explores three generations of women navigating family, motherhood and mental health. Her companion poetry pamphlets, Grit and Flesh (Red Squirrel Press), trace a journey from girlhood in southern Spain to motherhood in Scotland. Charlie has performed at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe and the BBC Slam, and her poem Night Feed was recently selected as The Scotsman’s Poem of the Week. She is Head of Publishing Programme at Stewed Rhubarb, where she commissions and publishes new writing.

Free but ticketed

September 18

An Evening with Fiona Ross

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join author and journalist, Fiona Ross, as she chats to Cat Harvey about her warm, richly evocative and uplifting memoir, of second chances, stubborn cows and the quiet magic of finding home in the most unexpected of places, Wild Knowing.

Fiona was a Glasgow girl through and through, but when she was gifted an old leather-bound family ledger, she discovered a Highland family history that would change her life. The ledger records the story of the family’s 19th-century Highland cattle fold. Little did Fiona know that she would soon be moving with her husband and two beloved dogs to a remote Argyllshire croft where she would start her own herd (or fold, as it is known for Highland cows). On a wave-washed island, in the shadow of the Highland Clearances, Fiona moved in with 48 magnificent cows who would become her family.

This book is an ode to farming and the softer life that can be lived in the Hebrides. It depicts the life-affirming joy of bathing every morning in the icy Atlantic before taking the cows for a paddle. It tells calamitous tales of amorous bulls, escaping heifers, upturned quad bikes, falling off piers and accidentally injecting herself with cow meds. It tells the stories of births - so many beautiful births - followed by the drama of catching each slippery calf, holding it and tagging it, all under the baffled shaggy-fringed gaze of its 500-kilo, massively-horned mum.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18

September 18

Janice Hallet for The Silent Appeal
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

A New Play. Another Murder. Who Will Speak the Truth? It’s a new theatrical season in Lower Lockwood, and the amateur thespians of the Fairway Players are starting rehearsals for their production of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow.

Despite divisive new arrivals, countless petty jealousies and a near-fatal accident with the lighting rig, surely this will be their greatest show to date?

But someone isn’t going to make it to opening night. Could it be producer Sarah-Jane’s mysterious sister, lately arrived home after 20 years abroad? New member Lucas, whose shady business dealings may be his downfall? Or perhaps once-convicted murderer Issy Beck, recently acquitted but still up to her old tricks?

Lawyers Charlotte and Femi must sift through the emails, texts and police reports to identify the victim and find out why the person convicted of the murder refuses to speak out in their own defence...

Will they uncover the truth in time? Will you?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 19

Meet Rachel Gillig at Book Lovers Bookshop!

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, UK EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with author Rachel Gillig!

Rachel Gillig, the queen of gothic romantasy, returns with higher stakes, darker mysteries and deeper longings in this gorgeous sequel to the No. 1 international bestselling sensation The Knight and the Moth. Aisling Cathedral is in ruins.

Rodrick Myndacious, Bartholomew and Maude Bauer are rumored to be dead - and the king has taken Sybil Delling as his bride. To show off their union and solidify his power over Traum, Benji proposes a series of tournaments throughout the hamlets. Captive and drugged, Sybil remains determined to vanquish him as she once did the Omens, even if she destroys the kingdom’s faith - and herself - in the process.

But then a mysterious knave rises to the top of the lists, a man with no name and no memory who may just be Sybil’s ticket to undoing Benji’s power. For in a land where stories repeat themselves, where a king can prove as cruel as a god, the only way to truly destroy the Stonewater Kingdom’s faith is to save it.

Tickets £2/Ticket plus book £25

September 20

Grim Tidings Book Bedazzling

7pm, Library Gallery, Summer Hall Arts, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

Join us for an in-person book bedazzling event to celebrate the release of Grim Tidings by B.K. Borison! Readers who attend in-person will get the chance to attend a live virtual Q&A with B.K. herself and spend the evening bedazzling their books! Book Lovers Book Shop will be providing all crafting materials and books for the evening.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.40

September 21

Rodge Glass with Neil Codling for As One: Remaking Suede
7pm, Greyfriars Charteris Centre, 138-140 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9RR

Award-winning writer Rodge Glass was granted unprecedented access to Suede at home, backstage, in rehearsal and in the studio, to write As One, an intimate biography of the band.

He joins us, along with Neil Codling, Suede’s keyboardist, rhythm guitarist, and co-songwriter to talk about how he gained the trust of this famously private band to produce a fascinating portrait of the platinum-selling, Mercury Prize-winning, giants of British independent music, Suede.

This year will mark 33 years since Suede released their debut eponymous album and sixteen since their glorious and unexpected comeback in 2010. Their two most recent albums - Autofiction in 2022 and Antidepressants in 2025 - both reached number two in the UK charts.

Based on exclusive and extensive interviews with the band, their family and friends, As One is an intimate and candid biography of one of the UK’s biggest band’s during the unlikely second act of a career that spans four decades. It is a book that studies the band from close up and afar, written by award-winning author Rodge Glass, who has been granted unprecedented access to the members at home, on stage, backstage, in the studio, rehearsing and promoting over the past three years.

It is an honest, long-term interrogation of what it is really like to be in Suede. The book asks difficult questions about how great bands survive and thrive over time, many years after their first flush of success. How do you build back up from nothing? How do you reconnect with your audience, while avoiding simply rehashing old ideas? How do relationships in a band change with time? How do you remake Suede?

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £26

September 21

Louise Kennedy with Sam Baker for Stations
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are delighted to be welcoming Louise Kennedy to Edinburgh to celebrate Stations, a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.

Roisin and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982. Brilliant, sharp-tongued and born to slip through the cracks, Red’s reputation for trouble precedes him - but Roisin finds herself swept up in his storm, and soon their connection deepens.

When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town to start a new life in England. As the years pass, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together. When Roisin arrives in London, the promise of freedom, of reinvention, and of finding her dear friend calls.

But searching for Red leads Roisin to a truth darker than she could have imagined: when you go looking for someone you may uncover parts of yourself along the way that you’d rather stayed buried. And Red - bright, beautiful Red - might not want to be found at all.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 21

An Evening with Marlon James

7.30pm, Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh EH8 9SU

The Portobello Bookshop is absolutely thrilled to be hosting Marlon James for the Edinburgh launch of his latest novel The Disappearers.

Join us at the atmospheric Assembly Roxy for an in-depth look at the novel, which heralds James’s triumphant return to the Jamaica of the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal. James himself has described it as “Be gay. Do crime. Get revenge.” We cannot wait to read it and to find out more on the night!

James will be in conversation with writer and dramaturg Laurence Cook.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £20

September 22

Mathias Enard for Perfecting The Shot
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Mathias Enard, born in 1972, studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. He won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Decembre, and won the Liste Goncourt/Le Choix de l’Orient, the Prix litteraire de la Porte Doree and the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Thieves. He won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, the 2017 Leipziger Book Award for European Understanding, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for Compass. Perfecting the Shot is his seventh novel to appear with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

In a nameless city torn apart by civil war, a teenage sniper has only one goal: to fire the perfect shot. He sublimates himself into his weapon, learns to maintain impassivity, controls his breath, listens to his body and the beat of his heart. Lying in wait on rooftops, he takes aim at people below while his traumatized mother cowers in their flat. But the violence eats away at any sense of morality as he kills civilians and combatants indiscriminately, for the sake of killing itself. His routine is disrupted by the arrival of Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl hired to care for his mother, and his increasingly disturbing obsession with her soon threatens to push them all into the abyss. Now appearing in English more than twenty years after its original publication, Mathias Enard’s debut novel is a timeless study of how extreme violence corrodes the soul, tracking the convulsions of a brutalized mind in spare, unflinching prose.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 22

Paul Johnson for Challenging Inequalities
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities connects these conditions to inequality-inequality not just of income and wealth but of health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed and what can, or should, be done about them.

The book explains the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008-2009 has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in dangerous differences between regions and in political power across groups.

The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot-and how we can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 22

Celebrate Turncloak with LK Steven!

6.30pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Road

Join us for an in-person event with LK Stevens to celebrate the release of Turncloak, the sequel to Silvercloak.

Two decades ago, the Bloodmoons ruthlessly murdered Saffron's parents. Hellbent on revenge, she lied her way into the elite Silvercloak Academy of detectives with a single goal: find a way to bring the Bloodmoons to justice.

But on the eve of her graduation, her deception is exposed, and she's given only one option: go undercover and tear the Bloodmoons down from the inside. Descending into a world where pleasure and pain are the most powerful currencies, Saff must commit some truly heinous deeds to keep her cover - and her life. Not only are there rival gangs and sinister smuggling rings to contend with, there's also her growing feelings for the kingpin's tortured son, and curious prophecy foretelling his death at Saff's hand.

With each day testing her loyalties further, Saff's web of lies becomes harder to spin. And when one false step could destroy everything and everyone she's ever loved...the mage who dedicated her life to vengeance might just have to die for it.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £20/Ticket plus book bundle £29.99

September 22

Three poets at Lighthouse: launching Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Melete and Jay Gao’s The Dead One… with Agata Maslowska

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

There’s nothing we love more than a poetry night here at Lighthouse, and we’re delighted to be bringing you not one, not two, but THREE incredible poets as we welcome Jennifer Lee Tsai and Jay Gao’s new collections in the company of Agata Maslowska.

These poems cover themes of family history, migration, racial and queer desires, womanhood and war. They explore identity, belonging and place through each poet’s own voices - get ready for an evening of beautiful language and fantastic readings!

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14

September 22

Caitlin Moran: How To Be Hopeful

7pm, The Queen’s Hall, 85-89 Clerk St, Edinburgh EH8 9JG

One morning, Caitlin Moran woke up - and realised that she had reached Peak Despair.

And she’s not alone - in a world of worsening news, online fist-fights, and filthy rivers, it’s hard not to feel, well, terrible. Of course, in books, and movies, when the heroine faces such a crisis, she makes a seismic life-change: moving to a remote, ramshackle farmhouse; walking an ancient, 600-mile pathway; or reconnecting with her primal, joyful self by adopting a baby hawk, or hare.

But Caitlin’s new book, How to be Hopeful, is not that kind of book. She tried – but it turns out remote Welsh farmhouses are really expensive. No-one with a job can walk 600 miles. And it’s incredibly hard to get access to baby hawks in North London.

Instead, Caitlin decided to go on … a domestic quest. To see if she could stay in the same house, in the same neighbourhood, and the same awful modern world - but try to make better days. She left 800,000 followers on social media; eschewed 24/7 rolling-news for local newspapers; and sat on buses without headphones, to start listening to what people are really saying. Turns out they’re not, by and large, shouting hate-crimes at each other. They’re just working out whether to have chicken, or sausages for tea, instead.

Picking litter, donating blood, rewilding a garden, trying to understand where modern anxiety really comes from - slowly, all these things allowed for something that had felt impossible a year before: Caitlin learned to fall back in love with the world again.

How to be Hopeful is Caitlin’s story of how, over the course of a year, she realised that “waiting to feel hopeful again” just won’t work: being hopeful is a decision. It’s something - like laundry - you have to do. How To Be Hopeful is the diary of how one person started to do hopeful.

Ticket £34.45/Ticket plus book £46.55

September 23 - new listing

Do You Still Have Time for Chaos? with Lynn Davidson and Jules Bradbury

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

A cover, a collaboration, and a chaos of crows!

We invite you to hear the story of a collaboration between Scottish artist Jules Bradbury and Scotland-based New Zealand writer Lynn Davidson that took flight on Orkney and led to an intriguing creative journey that shaped a book cover.

Jules will talk about the power of drawings that carry rather than capture and why this outlook gave essential energy to the crow drawings for the cover. Lynn will read from her memoir that holds the chaos – both generative and unsettling – of changing your life.

Free, but ticketed

September 23

Folk Puddings of Ireland and Scotland at the Cookbook Shop

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Join Kate Ryan, author of Blood, Guts and Black Pudding, and Scottish Food Historian Peter Gilchrist for conversation and tasters - an evening of bloody good chat as we dive into the folk pudding traditions of Ireland and Scotland!

Scottish food historian Peter Gilchrist, of Tenement Kitchen, will be in conversation with Ireland-based author of Blood, Guts and Black Pudding: Ireland’s Dying Art of Blood as Food, Kate Ryan of Flavour.ie. They’ll discuss her book and the similarities in the blood as food and offal eating traditions of both countries.

Enjoy a tasting platter of Irish and Scottish puddings and debate which is best, all paired with locally made sips. We’ll conclude with a Q&A and author signing.

Tickets £27.80/Ticket plus book £44.04

September 23

An Evening with Alex Howard

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join bestselling author of The Ghost Cat, Alex Howard, as he chats to Lucy Ribchester about his heartwarming epic tale of adventure adventure, belonging and unexpected friendship, The Ship’s Cat.

When street-savvy London stray Archie accidentally stows away on a flight to Turkey, he’s just looking for shelter. But after stumbling onto a fishing boat in a quiet cove, Archie discovers he’s no ordinary feline - for with his polydactyl paws, he brings uncanny good fortune to vessels at sea.

From the sun-drenched harbours of the Mediterranean to the bustling decks of ocean racers, Archie becomes a legend among sailors. Yet beneath the viral fame and whispered tales of ‘the magical ship’s cat’, Archie yearns for something deeper: a forever-human who will love him not as a talisman, but as a companion.

It may be luck that drives Archie on this great Odyssey around the world, but love will be what calls him home - not to some place, perhaps, but to someone.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20

September 23

Derek Owusu for The Recovery House
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

From the Granta Best British Young novelist comes a new stunning mediation on faith, identity, music and the ties of friendship that bind us together.

Jamal, a gifted and introspective young poet, wakes in a quiet, claustrophobic recovery house after a devastating mental breakdown, unsure how the bright edges of his life became so fractured. In this stark yet strangely tender sanctuary, with its watchful nurses, restless corridors and overlooked garden, he encounters several wounded, but radiant souls who are each wrestling with their own invisible storms. As Jamal navigates this suspended world, at once suffocating and strangely sacred, he begins to observe rather than retreat, finding in the rhythms of shared cigarettes, half-finished conversations and midnight confessions a hesitant, flickering sense of belonging.

Within these intimate, volatile walls, music drifts like prayer. A song sung into the dark becomes a fragile lifeline. Psalms are read aloud with trembling conviction. Laughter erupts, unexpected and defiant. Jamal’s searching, philosophical mind moves restlessly between memory and imagination, literature and scripture, doubt and devotion, interrogating the porous boundaries between illness and inspiration. What does it mean to hear a voice and call it God, or art, or madness? What is salvation in a place built to contain collapse? In the charged silence of the garden, under watchful skies, he begins to sense that joy can exist even here, braided through grief, carried on melody, sustained by human touch.

Tender, intelligent and spiritually inquisitive, The Recovery House is a novel about the music that survives inside us when language falters, about the redemptive possibilities of friendship, and about the delicate courage required to rebuild a self. As Jamal reckons with love, faith, shame and the perilous seduction of turning life into art, he is forced to confront the most difficult question of all: how to live honestly in the world without sacrificing the soul that makes him want to write it.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 23

Up the Youth Club: Emma Warren illuminates a hidden history

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

A searching look and empassioned love letter to the youth club by renowned documentarian Emma Warren, highlighting the seismic impact they have had on UK culture and why we need to ensure their existence for future generations.

In Up the Youth Club, Warren maps the shifting story of youth clubs in the UK and Northern Ireland, from factory workers in Victorian Boys’ and Girls’ clubs to renegade self-emancipatory spaces in the 1970s and the music-generating youth clubs of more recent decades. With a mixed lineage in church evangelism, the patronage of the upper classes, grassroots’ DIY, and erratic state funding, the youth club has had a huge, yet almost invisible, effect on music, sport, culture and society.

Arguing that we cannot advocate for what we do not understand, Warren positions youth clubs as a kind of engine room - from the famous success stories to come out of their doors, such as The Specials or Stormzy, to the untold stories of young people finding shelter, sustenance and stimulation for over a century - and why their dwindling numbers, largely due to austerity and funding cuts, is of serious concern for us all.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £10.99

September 24 - new listing

Fledgling: Josh Holton and Rhiannon Grist, in conversation

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join Josh Holton in conversation with Rhiannon Grist in conversation for the Scottish launch of his debut novel Fledgling.

Stuart is raised on a nature reserve in Cumbria; his family is poor. Stuart is sensitive - endlessly bullied in school, he believes in magic and feels more comfortable taking dance class than playing football. Stuart grows up straddling two worlds, becoming the first in his family to go to university.

His father, an ex-con, is quick to throw a punch, and won’t eat anything in public ‘more flamboyant than a ploughman’s’ in case someone would take him for a ‘nancy-boy’. An avid birdwatcher, he has found peace in his new life as a caretaker for a nature reserve.

When his father is diagnosed with terminal cancer, Stuart grapples with grief as he tries to become the man he thinks his father would want him to be.

Interwoven in the narrative are snippets of British wildlife, particularly the birds that captivate Stuart and his father, and reflect the bond they share. The writing is surprising, hilarious, and devastating.

Josh Holton is an ex-MMA fighter who took too many blows to the head and now writes and draws the unexpected. He placed in Streetcake’s Experimental Writing Prize 2021, and was runner up in the Writers’ and Artists’ Working Class Writers’ Prize 2020. Fledgling is his first novel.

Free but ticketed

September 24

Queerphoria: a queer voices extravaganza

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

The inaugural collection in the new VERVE Voices series, Queerphoria is a joyful and defiant queer-authored anthology proudly supporting Switchboard, the national LGBTQIA+ support line.

We are so delighted to be welcoming VERVE editor Jenna Gordon in conversation with Elle Nash, Carrie Marshall and Seth Insua to the shop for a queer voices extravaganza celebrating Queerphoria!

Four housemates welcome the reader into their home for a birthday party. An elderly widow visits her first queer bar, beneath the flat she shared with her husband. A couple invite a shipwrecked sailor into their isolated lighthouse on the stormy night of their thirtieth anniversary. A single woman embarks on a romantic relationship with a sex robot. A married couple secretly prepare for their baby’s arrival in a world where procreation is controlled by the Establishment.

Through prose, poetry, essays, illustrations and more, thirty-one writers bring their visions of euphoria to life. These pages celebrate, subvert, expand and reimagine what joy can look like, even in uncertain times.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 24

Maryam Aslany, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge

Join Maryam Aslany as she discusses her extraordinary, out-and-out masterpiece of a book, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World. Maryam debunks the myth that peasants are backward and archaic, and her rigorously researched volume charts the history of this forgotten class and shows how reliant the world economy still is on their labour.

Peasants never disappeared – we simply stopped seeing them

For centuries, they fed empires, led revolutions and built modern states. Yet industrial modernity forced them into the shadows. Today, political and economic elites speak as if peasants are relics of the past, even though this two-billion-strong workforce grows a third of our food and sustains our landscapes, producing everything from supermarket staples to the most exclusive luxuries. Like Atlas, they hold up the modern world, yet the true story of how they shaped it has long been obscured.

Their story uncovers the hidden architecture of our global systems

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £25

September 24

C L Hellisen: The Shape of Monsters

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge

Join debut author, C L Hellisen as they chat to Annabel Campbell, about their gripping, haunting tale of dark magic, demonic possession and family secrets, The Shape of Monsters.

When a magical fire destroyed their family as children, Aleks and Vaira Kercheval escaped. Born to a world where power was everything, they’ve hidden from it all their lives. Then a letter arrives stating that Vaira has inherited Aubrey House, a decaying Gothic mansion full of dark, wild magic.

The estranged siblings haven’t spoken for years. But together, they return to their ancestral home, where crossing the threshold plunges them into a realm of shadows and ancient feuds. As the pair are drawn into a war between rival mages, the powerless Aleks accidentally summons and binds a monstrous prince from the Void – a creature of immense power. His gifted sister must learn to unleash her inner fire as the lines between human and monster blur. But can they survive the darkness that is to come?

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £20

September 24

Roshni Gallagher & Clementine Ewokolo Burnley

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

Join us for a special double-feature poetry launch event with Edinburgh-based poets Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley!

They will both be here to celebrate the publication of their brand new collections, Gallagher’s Even the Trees and Burnley’s Belling the Leopard, with poetry readings and conversation.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book bundle £24

September 24

Shiver Event with Brigid Lowe

6.30pm, St. Vincent's Chapel, St Vincent Street

After Brigid Lowe’s world is upended, Scotland becomes her home. Its icy, wild waters a place of visceral relief. Baptising herself into this new life, Brigid sets herself a challenge: to swim in 1,000 of these spectacular lochs.

And so Brigid’s adventures begin: stepping into ice and caves and sacred springs, she swims with birds, conger eels and seals, across forest and mountain and moor, alone and with her children in tow. And as she comes to know these secret pools, with their vaulting depths and softer shallows, she walks the line between recklessness and safety, discovering new depths of pain and pleasure, of strength and endurance.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 24

Victoria Aveyard for Tempest
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are thrilled to be welcoming YA superstar Victoria Aveyard, author of the Red Queen series, to Edinburgh for her first foray into adult fantasy in her new book Tempest.

MAY THE SEA ALWAYS SING FOR YOU

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all. But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor. A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 24

Andrew Pettegree for The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Join Andrew Pettegree to celebrate his wonderfully appropriate - and excellently written - book, The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling.

Bookshops are a comforting sight on our high streets, warm and welcoming spaces in which to browse, meet friends and occasionally buy books. They may feel timeless, yet their history is a restless and turbulent one, filled with as many entrepreneurial street hawkers and illicit trades as with beloved institutions. The Bookshop, from the celebrated author of The Library and The Book at War, explores the evolution of bookselling from the cramped collectors’ shops frequented by Samuel Pepys to the radical feminist bookshops of the 70s, the rise of monolithic chains and the new world of online selling. Connecting stories and lives that span centuries, countries and continents, The Bookshop brings us into beloved bookshops of today and looks forward to the possible experience of booksellers of tomorrow.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 25

Palate Palette guided tasting at the Cookbook Shop

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Join Lish Steiling and Abby Cook (The Taste Curators) for an immersive tasting exploring the intersection of flavour, colour, and fashion.

The Taste Curators are a Brooklyn-based wife duo who inspire joy through the connections between food, fashion, and colour. Lish is an Emmy and James Beard award-winning culinary producer whose career began in restaurants before she became a food stylist and recipe developer for Food Network, The New York Times, and Gourmet magazine. Abbey is a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 companies, celebrated for her sharp visual eye and cultural storytelling. She serves as the US trend editor for Trend Bible and a design contributor for TABLE Magazine.

Inspired by their cookbook series, Palate Palette, which merges the flavour palates of food with the colour palettes of design, guests at this event will indulge in bites and cocktails developed to taste precisely like certain colours.

Note: All food and drink will be vegetarian, but unfortunately, we cannot accommodate any other dietary requirements at this particular event.

Tickets £33.22/Ticket plus book £54.88

September 25

Meet Victoria Aveyard!

12pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join the bestselling author of the Red Queen and Realm Breaker series, Victoria Aveyard, to celebrate the publication of the first instalment of her spellbinding romantasy, Tempest, which finds a woman living across two worlds face a devastating choice between home and heart.

From Sunday Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard comes an epic adventure of love and betrayal amid a brutal war for the high seas.

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all.

But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor.

A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Book plus ticket £25

September 25

Come What May, We’re Here to Stay: Taj Ali shares the story of South Asian resistance in Britain

6.30pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

British South Asians have a long tradition of radical political activism. For the first time, Taj Ali tells the inspirational story of how British South Asians organised against racism in the past and how they continue to fight in the present. Join us for the Edinburgh launch of Come what may, we’re here to stay.

‘A consequential recounting of a long and illustrious history of South Asian resistance and organising in Britain. It reminds us yet again of the vital importance of solidarity and alliances across race, religion and class in changing the world we share.’ -Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire

In Come what may, we’re here to stay, Taj Ali reveals how successive generations fought for rights, dignity and a sense of belonging while actively shaping the country they now call home. He shows that British South Asian political life has often been defined less by religious difference than by shared commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-racism. In pursuit of these goals, alliances have been forged with other movements, from Irish republicanism to Black Power.

As racism rears its ugly head again, Come what may, we’re here to stay asks: are we doomed to repeat the past or will we learn from our mistakes and build a better world together?

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 25

The New Ramsay Head Press Presents … Breathing New Life

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for an evening of poetry with Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt!

Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt are breathing new life into The Ramsay Head Press, the Edinburgh publishing house founded in 1970 by Norman Wilson responsible for producing volumes by leading poets such as Tessa Ransford, Alice Stuart and Charles Graves.

Mark used to be an accountant but, after 38 years, decided it wasn’t for him and started writing & performing what he describes as kitchen sink poetry. He’ll be reading from his recently published A Change of Direction.

Alice is a writer and artist and has been writing weird, warm, wobbly poems for five years now. She will be previewing The Warm Universe, a collection of her poems and drawings due out in October.

Breathing New Life is both a poetry event and a celebration of an Edinburgh publishing institution now reborn.

Free, but ticketed

September 25

Robert Barrington for Corrupted Kingdom
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Robert Barrington is Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at the University of Sussex. A leading authority on corruption, he was pivotal in the introduction of the Bribery Act and Unexplained Wealth Orders. He has advised the Ministry of Justice and the Cabinet Office, among many others.

Britain is complacent about corruption. We are used to thinking of ourselves as firm defenders of fairness and the rule of law. But our institutions have never been more corrupt, from scandals in parliament and local government to crises in housing and the NHS. The evidence is impossible to ignore. Political leaders face a clear choice: tackle corruption or continue on the road to decline. Robert Barrington is one of the world’s leading researchers on corruption. Corrupted Kingdom is his comprehensive examination of how corruption manifests in Britain, from politicians to prisons, the Monarchy and the Met. He assesses the origins of corruption, from Londongrad to the end of Empire, and shows how we can best reverse the decline and restore trust in politics and the democratic process. Vital and authoritative, Corrupted Kingdom provides an essential insight into why the abuse of power harms us all - and how we can banish corruption for good.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 25

Chris Broad for Journey Across Japan
7pm, Main Hall, Edinburgh Academy, 42 Henderson Row, Edinburgh EH3 5BL

Join us this autumn for an exciting new release from Chris Broad, the author of the number one bestselling Abroad in Japan!

Journey Across Japan takes us through the 47 unique prefectures of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Japan is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, with millions flocking there every month to follow the same cookie-cutter itinerary.

But beyond the well-trodden tourist trail lies a country made up of forty-seven unique prefectures. Each one has its own story to tell, shaped by centuries of squabbling lords, impenetrable topography and a fierce local pride.

On his quest to show the world that there’s so much more to Japan than Tokyo and Kyoto, Chris Broad has visited all of forty-seven prefectures himself. Now, in Journey Across Japan, he takes us with him on an epic adventure that spans every corner of the country.

A collection of embarrassing stories, practical recommendations and hard-learned lessons, this book show us just how much each region has to offer, whether it’s a signature dish, a festival or a mildly terrifying mascot.

From flying a plane over Japan’s most active volcano to exploring perfectly preserved Samurai districts, this guide will encourage readers, whether you’re a Japan neophyte or a seasoned veteran, to carve out your own story in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 28

Sharon Blackie for Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

Dr Sharon Blackie is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of If Women Rose Rooted, and a psychologist with a background in mythology and folklore. Her work is focused on reimagining women’s stories, and on the relevance of myths and fairy tales to the personal, cultural and environmental issues we face today.

Ripening is a life-changing new book on the power and relevance of fairy tales, and their heroines, to help us thrive in these challenging times

‘Fairy tales matter because at the heart of every one of them is transformation.’

In a world in which all the old certainties seem to be crumbling, it’s hard not to feel we have lost our way. In Ripening, Sharon Blackie insists that fairy tales are precisely the stories we need for such times.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 29

Broadchurch-creator Chris Chibnall for The Parkwood Murders
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Detective Nicola Bridge returns in the thrilling new novel from Chris Chibnall, creator of Broadchurch and showrunner of Seven Dials, and Sunday Times bestselling author of Death at the White Hart.

For its many repeat customers, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven - an idyllic woodland, a tranquil lake, customer service around the clock. Until, just before dawn the day after midsummer, a body is found in the resort’s swimming pool .

Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted from late nights worrying about her increasingly errant teenage son, faces an endless stream of potential witnesses. But as she speaks to the guests and staff, she soon uncovers an interconnected web of secrets and lies.

Was the killer the guest who lied to his wife about where he was that night?

Was it the arrogant high ropes instructor who’s unable to explain his recent scars?

Or might it be the new resort manager, an impeccably put-together woman with a very big secret

With hundreds of restless guests and staff on site, Nicola knows the clock is ticking to find the killer before they disappear for good.

Or before they strike again...

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 29

An Evening with Mairi Kidd

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are greatly looking forward to welcoming bestselling author of Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month The Specimens, Mairi Kidd, as she chats to Lucy Ribchester about her gripping tale of suspicion and sacrifice in 17th-century Scotland, Newes of Witches.

Rural Scotland, 1629. Amidst the bogs and oat fields, children are going missing, and others seem to have fallen under a malevolent spell. When a young serving girl is imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft, it falls on healer and midwife Mòrag to uncover the truth behind the matter.

However, investigation only raises more questions, and soon a violent truth comes to light which threatens to upend local life. As tensions in the community reach a fever pitch, allegiances shift, lives unravel, and Mòrag struggles to save the life of an innocent girl. But in a village gripped by fear and paranoia, this may demand the greatest sacrifice of all.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20

September 29

Alice Strang for The Scottish Colourists: Art & Life
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Samuel John Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell - a set of radical artists who enlivened the Scottish art scene with the fresh vibrancy of French Fauvist colours.

This new book by former Senior Curator of the National Galleries of Scotland, Alice Strang, brings a fresh look at the fascinating and international lives of the four artists by bringing together both popular and rarely seen imagery along with new research.

Despite only exhibiting together on three occasions in their lifetimes, and the term ‘The Scottish Colourists’ being coined retrospectively, the four shared much common ground. They were all born in Scotland in the 1870s, and at various different times each visited France to experience the burgeoning avant-garde scene, returning to Scotland brimming with new ideas. The influence of French painting - from Manet to the Impressionists, Matisse to Cezanne - stayed with them all.

Each of the Scottish Colourists achieved recognition during their lifetimes but fell out of favour by the Second World War, before being rediscovered in the 1950s. By the 1980s, they were widely recognised for their contribution to Scottish art, breathing new life into the scene, and leading the way for the next generation of artists.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £24.99

September 30

Queer Showcase: a night of Northern talent

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Featuring Alessandra Thom, M K Hardy and Chloe De Lullington.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 30

An Evening with Marina Hyde

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh

We’re excited to welcome Marina Hyde to celebrate the publication of her latest essay collection, What a Time to Be Alive!: Scenes from a Strange Age. It’s a wildly funny collection from Britain’s favourite columnist, Sunday Times bestselling author and co-host of The Rest is Entertainment.

Hyde will be in conversation with comedian and writer Frankie Boyle.

So lettuce remember Liz Truss, relive the last days of the Tories, meet the guy they called No-Drama Starmer, and succumb to hyper-resistant superbug Nigel Farage. Travel stateside to meet our supranational Silicon Valley overlords, Donald Trump and his cavalcade of henchmen – then head for infinity and beyond with Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos. Experience testing times for misunderstood men in television, create wonder in every moment with Meghan, and relive the horror of the Gwyneth Paltrow ski massacre trial. Truly, these are times that make you want to put your hands over your eyes, even when your hands are already over your eyes. The only thing to do is read Marina Hyde and howl with laughter.

Tickets £18/Ticket plus book £22

October 1

Humza Yousaf with William Dalrymple for Under Fire
7pm, Tollcross Central Hall, 2 W Tollcross, Edinburgh EH3 9BP

When Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, got a call from Gaza on the morning of 7 October 2023, he feared the worst. His wife’s parents, Elizabeth and Maged, had been visiting the Palestinian territory to see Maged’s sick Palestinian mother. Now, after the Hamas terrorist attack, they were caught in Israel’s furious onslaught.

Under Fire tells the story of Yousaf’s month-long nightmare as he tried desperately to get his in-laws out of Gaza and back home to Dundee. With the British government ignoring his pleas for help, he had to coordinate with other countries to get Elizabeth and Maged across the Rafah border into Egypt. While supporting his wife and children as they waited for daily updates from Elizabeth on her battle for survival, Yousaf also had to lead the whole of Scotland - as well as reassure the nation’s traumatised Jewish community. All while responding to online attacks.

As well as documenting his in-laws’ escape from Gaza, Under Fire also tells the story of how a son of immigrants grew up to become the first Muslim leader of a Western European country. Yousaf also tells of his fears on the rise of far-right populism and how to combat the forces that seek to divide us. The book draws back the curtain to give an honest account of how true leadership means reconciling personal loyalties with public duty, and how, in a world riven with conflict, it is more important than ever that leaders under pressure maintain their humanity and empathy for all.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

October 1

Jordan Prosser: Blue Giant

7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, South Bridge

We are delighted to be welcoming author and screenwriter Jordan Prosser, as we celebrate the publication of his vibrant, whip-smart, new novel about one woman’s quest to make her mark on the world, Blue Giant.

Planet Earth is cooked. Abby Horne wants off.

Abby always believed she was destined for great things. But her dream career as an industry-disrupting fashion designer went up in smoke, and her aspirations to become a world-renowned yogi and/or save the endangered tigers proved equally fruitless. She’s in her early thirties, suffering the unbearable burdens of adulthood and anonymity, when she wakes up after a drunken bender with an all-new, all-consuming purpose in life: to be the first person on Mars.

Perfect timing – Danish tech entrepreneur Tor Skovgaard is currently recruiting for a one-way mission to colonise the red planet. Abby knows this is it: her last-ditch bid for fame and glory. And if she can’t be humanity’s saviour… she’ll settle for being its martyr.

Blue Giant is a deranged love letter to a generation torn between helplessness and selfishness – an anthem for anyone who’s ever paused their doom-scrolling to ponder their place in the vast universe.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

October 1

The Medicine Tree: Nick Hayes on repairing our rotten roots

7pm, The Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Early one September, Nick Hayes brought his houseboat up the Thames into rural Oxfordshire, mooring opposite a strange tree that towered over the surrounding meadowland. The tree, he would discover, was a hybrid of the eastern cottonwood, brought back from colonial Canada. The land was the Hardwick estate, whose apparently timeless tranquillity – like so much of the English countryside – masks a darker history. Yet Hardwick also tells another, quite different story.

Over the following months, Hayes learns that its rolling hills and fertile valleys are on the front lines of a battle between ownership and belonging. Through a golden autumn, and the frosts and floods of winter and early spring, Hayes explores an estate that, acknowledging the colonial origins of its wealth, has become a haven for those who are both unable and unwilling to be part of a countryside geared towards profit at any cost. Living and working among this extraordinary community of farmers and craftspeople, Hayes contemplates what we have lost in England, as our sense of kinship with the land, and the deep knowledge that arose from it, was destroyed.

Yet, Hayes suggests, if we can learn from the cultures we have exploited, and from the tentative roots being put down in this radical Oxfordshire estate, perhaps we can start to unpick – and even re-enchant – our relationship with the land. The Medicine Tree is a singular act of storytelling and recovery: of giants, gods, witches, trees, horror and hope, of entanglement, reparation and solidarity.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £25

October 2

Patricia Nilsson for Guilty Pleasure: The Pornification of the Internet, the Economy, and Everything Else
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This is the story of one of the most influential - and least examined - industries on earth. Worth billions of dollars, and commanding a tenth of global internet traffic at peak times, it has quietly reshaped our world: it has transformed technology, work, culture, love and relationships, and even our sense of self. Most industries of this scale make daily headlines. This one rarely does.

In Guilty Pleasure, investigative journalist and FT reporter Patricia Nilsson turns her attention to an industry few have dared to confront, and tells the story of pornography in the online age. Drawing on more than five years of reporting, Nilsson reveals how the internet turned the business of erotic art into something else entirely: a vast, secretive industry dominated by obscure owners, platform logic and profit at almost any cost. She traces how porn helped to shape the online world, and then spilled far beyond it - restructuring everyday life and saturating society with its logic of stimulation, self-soothing and craving.

Whether we consume it or not, Nilsson argues, we are living in the world pornography made: one in which our desires and anxieties are relentlessly monitored and manipulated by unaccountable forces. And because this industry has escaped meaningful scrutiny for so long, the power to regulate it has increasingly fallen to political extremists and payment companies. The result is a system that has quietly revolutionized everything, while remaining - until now - hidden from view.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £25

October 2-4

Portobello Book Festival

Programme coming soon…

October 3

Celebrate The Sweetest Fiend with Raven Kennedy!

6.30pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Road, Edinburgh

It’s time to pay the Piper. Our world cracked open like an egg. Power burst out, and with it, nine monstrous Banes ready to destroy everything. The powerful Core fae finally slayed them all, but each Bane left a Plague to punish us. But that’s not the only thing they left behind. I’m half Bane, half fae, and wholly hated.

Survival means enduring every vicious glare and cursed outbreak. Until one day, a Plague descends upon my city that means certain death. Then he comes. The Pied Piper. He rids my city of the Plague, but it comes at a cost. One hundred and thirty people are taken as payment.

Including me. I don’t know what he’s going to do to us, but I know I have to get home. My family’s lives depend on it. But the Piper won’t let me go, and something wicked stirs between us. The sweet scent in my veins beckons him, while the seductive lure of his magic sinks under my skin. I have to escape before it’s too late.

Because if I don’t, it’s not just my heart at risk. . .

But the entire world.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £22

October 5

Sean Hewitt for Open, Heaven
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

When James meets Luke, everything changes - an exhilarating tale of hidden desire and sudden freedom in the wild countryside.

James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Almost an adult, his newfound desires threaten to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to stay with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm.

With the passing seasons, a bond emerges between them that transforms their lives. Yet James is never sure of Luke’s true feelings and as the end of summer nears, he has a choice to make: will he risk everything for the possibility of love?

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £9.99

October 5

Owen Jones for The Fall of the West
7pm, Tollcross Central Hall, 2 W Tollcross, Edinburgh EH3 9BP

Born in Sheffield and raised in Stockport, Owen Jones is one of the UK’s most prominent political thinkers and writers. He is the author of the critically acclaimed No. 1 bestsellers The Establishment: How They Get Away With It and Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class; his books have been translated into 10 languages. He writes regularly for the Guardian, and has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show and The Owen Jones Podcast.

Almost everywhere we turn these days, there’s talk of a West in decline. Our jobs, our values, our past are all under attack, in the face of which we have become immersed in self-loathing, gone weak at the knees: the West needs to be Made Great Again. We know where this toxic narrative comes from: the nationalist, nativist Right. And now it’s gone mainstream.

The thing is, the West is in decline, self-evidently so. But the truth is that it’s not migrants or Muslims or a woke mob which has brought the West to the edge of catastrophe. It’s good, old-fashioned hubris.

In this blistering new book, Owen Jones explores how, amid the triumphalist sugar rush that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West came to believe that its rule, its economic order, its moral values, would endure for ever - and how, over a quarter-century, this brittle self-mythologising narrative collapsed in on itself. From Afghanistan and Iraq, to the economic crash of 2008 and Gaza today, he takes us on a journey to show how the West went from scoring what it believed was its final victory, to being engulfed in an existential crisis of its own making. And how, along the way, it fashioned an ugly new story: that this was the fault of the most vulnerable groups in society, rather than a power-hungry, venal ruling class.

Today, as the Atlantic alliance struggles to hold itself together, The Fall of the West exposes how a generation of Western elites bent on power and self-enrichment at any cost fatally overreached itself, and argues that, if we are to find the solutions to our age of crisis, we must first understand the real reasons for how the West lost it.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

October 6

Charlie Higson for King Zero: A James Bond Novel
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

This October Charlie Higson joins us to discuss his return to the world of Bond, King Zero. Charlie understands what people want from Bond — from ingenious gadgets to a mysterious and terrible villain to a world threatening conspiracy — and has imagined every element in the modern day. The result is a blockbusting, cinematic, jet-setting read with the theme of power at its heart: who has it, what it looks like in the age of self-driving cars and AI, and what it would look like if the balance of power was threatened on a fundamental level...

Le Chiffre. Dr No. Goldfinger. James Bond has faced them all. But now the world is changing, and even 007 has no idea what’s coming for him...

It starts with a murdered agent in the Saudi desert. Only a traitor could have known enough to bring him down. But even James Bond can’t guess at the secret that was worth killing him to keep.

As Bond follows the trail across the globe, he doesn’t realise the countdown has already begun. And hiding in the shadows is a man with more power than he could ever have imagined. Prepare for a villain unlike any before.

Prepare for KING ZERO.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

October 6

Aonghus MacKechnie for Edinburgh: City of Romanticism

7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Professor Aonghus MacKechnie joins us this October to discuss Edinburgh: City of Romanticism.

Romanticism made Scotland famous. It critically shaped the course of Scottish culture, while impacting on cultures elsewhere and inaugurating the country’s still-flourishing and lucrative tourist industry. This book is about Edinburgh’s most emblematic architecture over the long 19th century: the castellated and stone built cityscape of national revivalist architecture. It reveals why Scotland had by the 1820s become one of Europe’s great centres of Romanticism, due both to the majestic Highlands, and to Edinburgh itself as city of Romanticism. Additionally, Edinburgh developed as the main centre and hub for travellers drawn to Romantic Scotland through the work of James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson and Sir Walter Scott: visitors including Schinkel, Mozart, Verne, Turner, Haydn, amongst innumerable others.

The book also provides a long-overdue counterbalance to the contrastingly much-examined and much-published topic of Enlightenment Edinburgh, showing how this and Romantic Edinburgh have comfortably co-existed. It examines how Edinburgh’s Romanticism was similarly driven by intellectuals, amongst whom were Enlightenment figures and artistically talented individuals, and it discusses the legacy of those who contributed to the Romantic cityscape of today; an architecture that provides much of the character of the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site and of the city that countless tourists come daily to see.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £35

October 6

Waiting on a Friend with Natalie Adler

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Natalie Adler’s debut novel depicts the haunting transition of New York’s East Village during the AIDS crisis, from queer avant-garde to gentrified graveyard - join us for an Edinburgh launch of her stunning, genre-bending queer novel Waiting On A Friend.

Both heartbreaking and healing, tragic and triumphant, Waiting on a Friend is a magical retelling of queer history and a celebration of youth and camaraderie. With pathos and humour, empathy and an edge, Natalie Adler freshly reimagines the past for a new generation, reclaiming the spirit of resistance and determination that would become one of the era’s defining legacies.

East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who has the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS.

So, when her best friend Mark dies, she assumes she’ll see him again. There’s no way Mark wouldn’t give her a chance to say goodbye, would he? But to her disappointment – and increasingly, her concern – Mark doesn’t appear.

Renata has other problems, too. A mysterious, police-like force has begun ridding their East Village neighbourhood of anything abnormal or inexplicable. At first, she’s sure they’re scam artists, but it becomes clear they’re actually trapping ghosts. With her band of lovably eccentric pals and lovers, Renata is determined to fight back against the erasure of her friends’ memories and the sanitizing of her beloved New York.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £16.99

October 7

Rachel Harrison for Kiss Slay Replay
7pm, Voco Royal Terrace, 18 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh EH7 5AQ

The month of horror is upon us, and to celebrate, we welcome one of the most interesting voices working in the genre. Rachel Harrison has established herself with her scathing feminist novels of werewolves, witchcraft, and now most frightening of all: weddings!

Will this nightmare ever end?

It’s the picture-perfect wedding weekend-the venue is dreamy, the weather is beautiful, love is in the air, and Willa Sullivan is having a bad time. She’s excited to celebrate her best friends finally having the big wedding they always wanted, but this is the first time she’s seeing her ex-fiance in months, and he brought a date. Everything feels off, like she stumbled into an alternate universe. But things start to look up when Willa meets Danny, the groom’s charming and single childhood best friend. When they sneak off together, their rendezvous is interrupted by a masked killer terrorizing the reception. Willa and Danny fight to save the ones they love and survive the night, but the killer is unrelenting. A final girl Willa is not.

Or is she? She wakes up and it’s the morning of the wedding. She just had the most intense nightmare of her life. Only as the day unfolds, there are some uncanny coincidences that make her question if it was really a dream, deja vu, or something more sinister. After a horrifying turn of events, Willa comes to understand that she’s stuck in a loop of carnage and terror that she must learn how to escape or suffer a fate worse than death-being an eternal wedding guest.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £9.99

October 7

Celebrate Burn of the Everflame with Penn Cole!

7pm, Christchurch Morningside, 6a Morningside Road, EH10

The highly anticipated and never-before-published final book in Penn Cole's BookTok sensation slow-burn, epic romantasy series following one woman who must risk everything to save her family - and all of mortalkind!

War has overtaken Emarion.

In the north, Ophiucae and his army of bloodthirsty mortals seek to eradicate all Descended from the continent. In the south, the Guardians of the Everflame lie in wait, plotting a rebellion generations overdue. In Lumnos, Realm of Light and Shadow, the Crowns are gathering.

Caught between two deadly foes, they must form an unlikely alliance to save their people. But the Crowns have a secret-and a heart without its mate will burn the world down to fulfill its fate. Hatred reigns.

Hope seems lost. With the future in darkness, can a flame emerge to bring the light?

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £12.99/Ticket plus book bundle £45.96

October 7

Ibtisam Azem - The Sleep Thief

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We are overjoyed to be hosting Ibtisam Azem for the Edinburgh launch of her highly anticipated forthcoming book, The Sleep Thief. Our booksellers loved her wildly successful The Book of Disappearance last year, and we can’t wait to share this one with you all!

‘Sleep thief is what the interrogator called me. I’ll never forget that. I would steal a few seconds of sleep so I could remain steadfast before them. The name stuck; I even dreamt about it, the same dream, night after night. I woke up not knowing what to do and drenched in sweat.’

The experimental first novel from International Booker-Prize longlisted Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem, The Sleep Thief follows the life of Gharib (“the Stranger”) Haifawi as he comes of age, is drawn into resistance, makes friends, meets lovers, pushes back against traditional values, longs to be free of the labels and expectations that burden him, rails against the commodification of suffering, and dreams of a Palestinian identity that will transcend sorrow. Translated by Sinan Antoon.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £14.99

October 7

David McCloskey for London Station
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

What if the CIA and British intelligence began spying on each other? This is the question at the heart of David McCloskey’s thrilling fifth novel. A new US Administration has taken office, installing a brash and unconventional CIA Director determined to disrupt the Agency and sceptical of its close relationship with their cousins across the Atlantic. Case officers, including newly installed London Chief of Station, Artemis Procter, must now navigate a tense environment as old friends become adversaries and no one knows who to trust. When agents run by both services begin dying, Procter and her team at London Station must decide whether loyalty to the Mission and their friends means disobeying the Agency they serve.

Immersing readers in the technological revolution upending intelligence tradecraft, David McCloskey’s brilliant new thriller depicts the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of how CIA and MI6 collaborate and explores what happens when politics threaten to destroy the ‘Special Relationship’ between America and Britain.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

October 8 - new listing

Egypt cookbook launch and mezze spread at the Cookbook Shop

7.30pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Suzanne Zeidy and Rawah Badrawi discuss their new book, Egypt: Recipes and Stories from an Ancient Land, with local author Caroline Eden

Zeidy and Badrawi have travelled to the far corners of Egypt – from the Nile Valley to the Mediterranean Coast, across deserts and mountain ranges – to discover the diversity of its food, culture and people, including communities that speak a language other than Egypt’s native Arabic, like the Siwans in the Sahara or the Nubians in Upper Egypt. “Since recipes are handed down through generations by mouth, many are disappearing forever,” says Zeidy. “We set out with a mission to explore and preserve these precious traditions.”

“Conventional travel in this country generally focuses on the Ancient Egyptian civilisation,” Badrawi adds. “But the most profound way of getting to know people is by seeing how they cook and what they eat, so there is something for everyone in this book.”
--Nada El Sawy for Conde Nast Traveller

We’re thrilled to announce that the authors of this remarkable new book, which fills a longstanding gap among English-language cookbooks, will be sharing their experiences travelling through Egypt, learning about its historic and contemporary foodways, and presenting them in this stunningly comprehensive tome.

Joining them in conversation will be Edinburgh local Caroline Eden, a multi-award-winning writer, literary critic, and author of much-loved food/travel writing gems Cold Kitchen and Red Sands.

The talk will be followed by a book signing and Q&A, as well as a dazzling mezze spread prepared by Suzanne and Rawah.

Tickets £25/Ticket plus book £55/Two for one deal available

October 8

Pulitzer-Prize Winning author Benjamin Moser for Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

A sweeping and revelatory history of the hidden tradition of Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism from Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser.

In Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser uncovers a suppressed tradition that has shaped Jewish thought for generations. Through a cast of artists, rabbis, poets, lawyers, activists, journalists and politicians - from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America - Moser traces a lineage of Jewish dissenters who confronted Zionism’s moral and political stakes - often at devastating personal cost, including censorship, exile and death.

Their lives form a sweeping, global narrative that dismantles a powerful myth: that anti-Zionism is synonymous with antisemitism. Spanning continents and centuries, these voices - people from the right and the left, Reform and Orthodox, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, men and women, gay and straight - differ sharply in belief and background, yet converge on a shared warning about the consequences of a nationalist project built on exclusion. What emerges is not only a rediscovered tradition of Jewish moral thought, but a startling reappraisal of Zionism itself.

Moser’s work restores the full scale and depth of Jewish ethical imagination, affirming that Judaism is older and larger than any single political project. Lucid, unsparing and deeply humane, Anti-Zionism cements Moser’s place as one of our foremost Jewish writers and presents a framework through which this history - and its meanings - will be understood for years to come.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

October 8

An Evening with David Shrigley

7.30pm, Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge St, Edinburgh EH1 2ED

We are thrilled to welcome cultural icon David Shrigley to Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre for this very special evening event to celebrate the publication of his brand new book, Creative Writing. Shrigley will be in conversation with Edinburgh Makar, Michael Pedersen.

The cultural icon is back: but this time, with no illustrations. Creative Writing is a thoughtfully designed, black and white book of David’s comic writing - pure words, pure joy, pure Shrigley.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £25

October 8

Snakes, Spies, and Subterfuge: In Conversation with V.L. Bovalino & Hannah Kaner
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

It is the year of secrets, spys, and scheming in Fantasy, and we’re over the moon to be celebrating the very pick of the bunch. Join us as we welcome V.L. Bovalino (Second Death of Locke, Not Good For Maidens) and Hannah Kaner (Godkiller) to answer questions around all things vengeance and espionage, with some very complicated romantic relationships along the way!

The Thief and the Traitor Bride:

A ruthless spy. A deadly mission. A thief who could ruin it all.

Nore Gordon is a woman of many talents: she can speak a variety of languages, disguise herself in plain sight, and has made a name for herself as a successful wine merchant. But unbeknownst to those closest to her, it is all a front for Nore’s true role as the favoured spy of the Lindle crown.

Tasked with infiltrating enemy lands in search of a powerful relic, Nore is forced to engage the services of a great thief. Unfortunately, the only person for the job is her estranged husband Caspian. Both Nore and Caspian bear the scars of the disastrous end of their marriage, but if they are to survive their deadly new assignment, they must pose as a happily married couple to avoid detection.

As danger closes in, Nore finds herself tangled in a web of lies and deceit-and though Caspian is at the centre of it all, she may not hate him as much as she once did. But Caspian has betrayed her before, and trust can be far more deadly than deception.

A Snake Among Swans

For the queen to rise, the swans must fall.

Tilde has always heard the whispers of the kithwood, the voices of her ancestors speaking through the mysterious forest of her homeland.

But now both the kithwood and her kingdom are in danger.

For Tilde is the only surviving heir of a conquered land. To unite the people and finally stop the bloodshed, she marries the ageing warlord, King Liran. Her duty is to bind their nations and bear him a son.

But the swan king’s court is dangerous. Tilde is a threat to the claim of Liran’s older sons, who will do whatever it takes to remove her, to the princess Elise who has only ever known loyalty to her family, and to the priests who own them all.

Yet none of them know that Tilde is a snake in their midst, with allies on her side and dark, forbidden power of her own. She wants her kingdom back, and she will sacrifice everything to claim it.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

October 8

Poetry: Tom Branfoot launches Volatile with Nat Raha & Anthony Vahni Capildeo

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Tom Branfoot’s debut poetry collection explores nature during a time of political crisis, drawing its title from the Middle English use of ‘volatile’ to name birds and other winged creatures. Pulling apart what it means to dwell, habitat loss appears synonymous with eviction, and birds become fellow travellers in our precarious present. Produced as a part of a residency at Manchester Cathedral, the long poem “Muminent” is threaded throughout the book engaging with the earliest recorded history of Manchester to consider the body as an archive at risk of disappearance.

Featuring the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem shortlisted “A Parliament of Jets”, these complex, formally daring poems are concerned with the entanglements between personhood, global catastrophes, and ecosystems. These poems swoop between the unpredictable relationship between a son and their alcoholic parent, fighter jets soaring over the Lake District, and the mercurial rustle between memory and truth when childhood is stored in waterlogged pastures.

Volatile reaches out in solidarity to the dispossessed everywhere who still sing in the wreckage of the now.

Tickets £4

October 9

Jojo Barr for No Place Like Home
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

With over two decades of experience, interior designer Jojo Barr (Founder and Creative Director of House Nine) is passionate about crafting authentic and timeless interiors that people can actually live in. Drawing on House Nine projects, and complete with stunning full-colour photography, Jojo shares her human-focused approach to design, so you can create a home that is unmistakably yours.

Rather than prescribing a single style or aesthetic, Jojo breaks down the design process into clear, approachable ideas, exploring:

Flow and connection between rooms, and how this shapes the experience of moving through a home.

Designing with purpose, ensuring every space supports how you live.

The use of colour, tone and texture to build harmony while allowing each room its own personality.

How to balance cohesion and individuality so a home feels connected without becoming uniform.

Layering materials and finishes to add depth.

Creating lived-in interiors that embrace imperfection and evolve over time.

Structured to mirror the natural journey of creating a home - from early inspiration and planning to curating, living and sharing - this book pairs Jojo’s House Nine philosophy with real projects and photography designed both to inspire and enjoy.

Whether you’re redesigning a single room, rethinking your entire house or simply spending time with interiors you love, this book explores how to create a home that looks beautiful and works for the life lived inside it. A timeless coffee table book for real living.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £30

October 9

Adalyn Grace for The Wretched Divine
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

Adalyn Grace returns to Edinburgh to talk about her first dive into adult fantasy, The Wretched Divine! It begins a sweeping medieval high fantasy series about an ancient war between angels and demons, and the mortal knight who is determined to end it at any cost.

Aurelie Chantelune was born to serve. Raised as a knight in a kingdom ravaged by demons, she’s spent her life honing her blade, driven by the memory of the monsters who tore her family apart and by the knowledge that she’s one of the few who can stop them.

If Aurelie can claim her first kill, she’ll inherit a legacy passed down through the Chantelune bloodline: a soulbond with Yuriel, an angel whose power is vital to her kingdom’s survival. But when those she loves begin turning into the very monsters she’s sworn to destroy, Aurelie is forced to seek help from the last place she ever imagined. Desperate, she forges a second and far more dangerous bond with Severin, a demon she can hardly trust, but who claims to know how to end the war for good.

With their lives and fates entwined, Aurelie, Yuriel, and Severin must team up to hunt down a cure capable of turning demons back into humans. But the more they learn about one another and the deeper their relationships grow, the more Aurelie begins to question the war and her place in it. With both of her bonded on opposing sides, she’ll have to make a choice: continue to stand with the angels, or risk everything by trusting a demon.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

October 10 - new listing

Chaired Conversation and Signing with Charlotte B. Plumb and Elliot Fletcher

7pm, Summerhall Arts, Library Gallery, 1 Summerhall, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

Join us for an in-person event with Charlotte B. Plumb and Elliot Fletcher to celebrate the release of Reap and Sow.

For fans of Rachel Gillig and Hannah Whitten, prepare to bargain everything for the gothic romantasy of the year . . .

The penniless in Blackbridge only have two choices: sell your body, or sell your soul. And thanks to Eda Shaw, business is booming.

Indentured to a capricious demon, Mr Night, Eda and her brothers arrange illicit Pacts on his behalf, luring the city’s most desperate into trading years of their lives for their deepest desires.

When a Pact goes awry, her brothers are arrested and Eda quickly realises she’ll need an infernal ally of her own: Kit’rath, a demon with a curious penchant for humanity, and the only being in Blackbridge Mr Night seems to fear.

But Kit’s help doesn’t come cheap. Eda’s already given him her soul; she can’t afford to give him her heart.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.99

October 10

Joanne Harris in conversation with Kirsty Logan

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are delighted to be joined by the extraordinarily talented, bestselling author of Chocolat, Joanne Harris, as she chats to Kirsty Logan about the publication of her chilling winter ghost story, Sleepers in the Snow which tells the astonishing and powerful tail of the new occupant of an old house on the moor, which harbours a terrible secret.

Out on the moor, in the snow, a house stands beneath a pylon. It is a house full of memories, and full of old things. And, in the dark, when the pylon sings in the wind, it is a house full of ghosts and fading memories… The house, Kirkhill, has a new occupant - just moved in, fresh from a bitter divorce and looking for a fresh start. The moor is the perfect place for it: isolated, beautiful in the changing seasons, peaceful, and with just enough of the previous owners belongings that it’s a perfectly self-contained and cosy home. Only as the nights start to draw in, and the weather takes a turn, so does the house. The cosy isolation becomes menacing, animals begin acting strangely, and it seems someone could be watching the house…and the diaries of the previous owners begin to reveal a terrible tragedy which befell Kirkhill - one which its new occupant may be unable to escape…

Ticket plus book £25

October 11

Strange Is The Light by Sarah Maria Griffin

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8LN

Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Sarah Marie Griffin, author of Eat The Ones You Love, to chat about her newest book, Strange Is The Light.

For Daphne McSharry, Valentia Island was a place of joyful childhood holidays: independence, adventure and playing with her beloved friends, Ronan, Leonie and Finn. They returned to one game of their own making year after year, and let their imaginations roam free.

But when the game is stolen from them by an outsider, it becomes something dark and strange, forcing Daphne to make a choice with a terrible cost. When tragedy brings her back to the island years later, she and her friends finally have to face the consequences of what she did. Daphne never took her final turn...

And there is a debt that must be paid.

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £9.99

October 12 - new listing

Dr Jean Menzies for Aphrodisia: Women, Sex and Pleasure in the Classical World
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

Was Ovid a surprising champion of women’s sexual pleasure? Or did he just want them to fake it? Where did the British Museum curators hide the most pornographic of frescoes? And what exactly was the phallic wooden object excavated in 90s Northumberland?

In Aphrodisia, Dr Jean Menzies dives into the hidden history of women’s sexuality in Ancient Greece and Rome. The classical world stretched across the Mediterranean for more than a millennium, its people and cultures wide and varied and its sexual proclivities equally so. Yet so often when we read about sex in antiquity it is about the men folk first and foremost: which brothels they were visiting, how they balanced wives and lovers, and what they got up to in the gymnasium. Delving into the literature, art and artefacts of the ancient world, from sex toys to seduction tips to kink, Dr Jean Menzies instead centres women and their desire. In doing so, she uncovers the many faces of women’s sexuality over the course of thousands of years, and asks intriguing, and sometimes provocative questions about women, sex and desire today.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

October 13 - new listing

Cooks & Books: Jess Elliott Dennison for Vegetable Recipes
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

Jess Elliott Dennison is a food writer, cook and founder of Elliott’s, her studio in Marchmont, Edinburgh. Here she hosts chefs, runs cookery workshops and tests all her recipes, celebrating simple cooking and life in the kitchen. Jess’s work is inspired by the produce, colours, textures and rituals that each season brings.

Her cookbook Midweek Recipes was a runaway success, becoming our bestselling cookbook ever, and was one of the Spectator’s best books of the year. Weekend Recipes followed in 2025, with matched success. Vegetable Recipes is the much anticipated newest addition to the series.

Jess’s cooking has been featured in VOGUE, Stylist, The World of Interiors, Monocle, The Guardian, The Scotsman, TOAST and The Independent, along with many other publications.

‘In this, the third book in the series, I’m sharing my favourite vegetarian dishes that celebrate the glorious variety of vegetables available throughout the seasons. Including recipes for Leeks Vinaigrette and Celeriac Remoulade for enjoying with baguette; crispy Fennel and Onion Bhajis; a light summertime lasagne with courgettes and ricotta béchamel and comforting pumpkin-curry pastries for the colder months, this book is filled with easy, reliable dishes for everyone to enjoy.

Written, tested and published from my Studio in Edinburgh, with photography taken at The Hugo Burge Foundation glasshouses in the Scottish Borders.’ - Jess

Join us for a cookery demo and delicious tasters this October!

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £23.50

October 13 - new listing

A New History of 1066: Erin Goeres for Nineteen Days in Autumn
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

For the first time in 1000 years, the Bayeux Tapestry is returning to the UK. When better to welcome the magnficent Erin Goeres for her new book, Nineteen Days in Autumn. Erin is Associate Professor in Scandinavian Studies at UCL, and an expert on medieval history. It’s sure to make a fascinating evening.

On 5 January 1066, Edward the Confessor’s death plunged England into a succession crisis that would change the kingdom forever. Mere hours after Edward’s remains had been laid to rest, his brother-in-law Harold II seized power, inciting the wrath of two formidable challengers: King Haraldr Sigurdarson of Norway and Edward’s ambitious cousin, William, Duke of Normandy.

In this startling new history, Dr Erin Goeres unveils the intense drama that unfolded, culminating in the tumultuous nineteen days between the battles of Stamford Bridge and Hastings in the autumn of 1066 - the decisive event that ended Anglo-Scandinavian rule, secured the Norman Conquest and transformed medieval England.

Drawing together sources from the three regions at the heart of the fray - England, Normandy and Scandinavia - Goeres uncovers the complex histories, characters and motivations that shaped one of the most defining moments in British and European history. We discover the stories of Tostig Godwinson, Harold II’s estranged brother; of William the Conqueror’s enigmatic wife, Matilda of Flanders, alleged lover of Harold of England; and we meet the regular people swept up in events beyond their control, such as an English farmer beheaded for his unwillingness to give up his fur-lined coat to a Norwegian invader.

Rich in new research and vivid storytelling, Nineteen Days in Autumn reveals the gripping tale of three nations entwined and the enthralling yet devastating consequences of their unravelling.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £25

October 14 - new listing

The Nuance Drought: an evening with Natasha Devon

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

The nuance drought is having a devastating impact on every area of our lives. It dictates the way our politics is done and how the media reports, it affects our physical and mental health, and it impacts our relationships with friends and family.

The world is increasingly polarised and the ability to consider shades of grey is being obliterated as we’re encouraged to see the world in black and white. To shout louder. To double down and abandon critical thinking. It’s time to stop. But how do we stop relying on clickbait narratives? How do we stop looking for simple answers to complex questions?

In this fascinating book, campaigner and broadcaster Natasha Devon addresses questions like this and explores the lack of nuance in today’s world, identifying it as one of the major issues facing modern society. Talking to a range of experts and celebrating the power of meaningful discourse, this book is a call to arms. It’s time to elevate our conversations. It’s time to end the nuance drought.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £16.99

October 14 - new listing

Pippa Perriam’s (@itspippa) Opinionated Guide to Edinburgh
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Join Edinburgh expert Pippa Perriam, perhaps best known as @itspippa on Instagram (formerly @eatinburgh), for her beautifully curated Hoxton Mini Press Guide to our glorious city!

Whether you’re a local, new arrival, or perhaps settling in as a student, Pippa will have a recommendation for you. She knows these hallowed, cobbled streets inside out. From new restaurant openings, beautiful walks, and historical highlights, her knowledge and enthusiasm for Edinburgh and all it has to offer is infectious. Join us for all the insider knowledge, a behind the scenes of creating a travel guide, and a glass of wine in celebration of this beautiful city!

Edinburgh rewards the curious. Whether you’re here for world-class culture, windswept crags or the glorious chaos of the Fringe, this is your opinionated guide to the very best of Scotland’s storied capital.

Pippa is an Edinburgh-based content creator and internet personality covering travel, lifestyle, and food. What started as a passion project, her love of food and exploration, now has an audience of over 200,000 across Instagram, TikTok, and Substack. Now a published author, Pippa has also hosted live events and appeared on billboards in major cities. For each medium and from any pinpoint on the map, her authentic style of candid storytelling has held audience’s attention for over a decade.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.95

October 14 - new listing

Lindsey Fitzharris for Sleuth-Hound: The Case of the Real Sherlock Holmes
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

This October Lindsey Fitzharris joins us to celebrate Sleuth-Hound: The Case of The Real Sherlock Holmes.

The book tells the untold story of the Edinburgh doctor who became Arthur Conan Doyle’s model for Sherlock Holmes, and his adventures in the criminal underworld of Victorian Britain. Throughout nineteenth-century Edinburgh, the surgeon Joseph Bell was known for his extraordinary talent for detection and diagnosis. To the amazement of onlookers at the Royal Infirmary, he could read a patient’s ailments, occupation, and personal habits from a single glance. Though such deductive powers were all quite “elementary” to Bell, they had a profound influence on the medical student and budding writer Arthur Conan Doyle. Soon enough, Bell’s methods helped spark the creation of fiction’s most iconic detective. Since Sherlock Holmes first appeared in 1887, he has become a global phenomenon. Yet the man Conan Doyle credited as Sherlock’s prototype has slipped into the shadows.

In Sleuth-Hound, Fitzharris brings Bell centre stage, recounting how his work took him from ward to witness box as a medical detective. He worked closely with the police surgeon Henry Duncan Littlejohn and a pioneering ballistics expert named Dr. Watson and even collaborated with Conan Doyle to overturn a homicide conviction. Bell’s forensic investigations took him from gaslit alleyways to Gilded Age drawing rooms, put him on the trail of poisoners and child killers, and even drew him into the hunt for Jack the Ripper. By scrutinizing a scratch on a desk, a trace of cigar ash, or the slightest peculiarity of a man’s gait, Bell could turn the smallest clues into revelations. His sharp mind forever changed the way we read bodies, detect crimes, and serve justice.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

October 14 - new listing

Ian Rankin: The Heights

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh EH2 2LR

We are thrilled to be celebrating the Edinburgh launch of Number One bestseller and local celebrity Sir Ian Rankin’s new novel The Heights at Assembly Rooms; the first Rankin novel since Midnight & Blue in 2024 and the first standalone in nearly two decades. Ian will be in conversation with arts writer and broadcaster Nicola Meighan.

This special evening event will take place in the beautiful Assembly Rooms, located on George Street in central Edinburgh. You will be able to collect your copy of the book (if you pre-order one with your ticket) from the venue on the night.

Murder comes to London’s most luxurious high-rise; and every resident is a suspect.

The Heights: a gleaming, high-end high-rise looming over Hyde Park. Newly built from steel and smoked glass, a billionaire’s playground offering sumptuous suites for the global elite. But when a night concierge is found murdered in the lobby, the building’s rarefied atmosphere is shattered, and the gilded lives within come under intense police scrutiny. In a world designed to keep prying eyes out, where the residents are not used to being held to account, born-and-bred Londoner Detective Gillian Gish must find a way past their power, wealth and unimaginable influence. The rules may be different at the top - but is anyone truly above the law? Or could it be that the higher you rise, the further you fall...?

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £25

October 14 - new listing

Welsh Writers Showcase with Gutter and Folding Rock

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

For this event, a collaboration between Scottish and Welsh literary magazines, Gutter and Folding Rock, we are delighted to welcome three outstanding authors from Wales to the bookshop.

Rhian Elizabeth, Brigid Lowe, and Anthony Shapland will be reading from recent work, discussing the current state of Welsh writing, and considering kinship with the literary scene here in Scotland.

The event will be introduced by Kathryn Tann, Non-Fiction and Managing Editor of Folding Rock. Kathryn Tann is a writer, editor and creative producer from the south coast of Wales. Her debut essay collection, Seaglass, was published by Calon Books in 2024. She is the creator of ’This Place’ podcast, and writes a monthly Substack called ‘Dwell’.

Join us in the shop or online to hear from these wonderful authors, check out Gutter and Folding Rock, and chat to people from both literary magazines!

Tickets free/Ticket plus voucher £5

October 15 - new listing

An Evening with A.T. Emerald
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are thrilled to be joined by A. T. Emerald as we celebrate the publication of the first instalment in her brand new new darkly seductive and all-consuming fantasy series, Under the Iron Sky.

Vordell was beautiful once. Its people lived in harmony, and their civilization flourished as they learned to harness and control the power of Light.

Then the darkness came.

The Iron Sky unfolded dark clouds across the land, thick enough to choke out the light of the suns. The ground cracked, releasing vicious creatures that looked like humanity’s oldest fears. The Dar’rak - an enemy long believed to be buried and forgotten - returned to claim the world above.

Soraya Tollmere has spent most of her life on the front lines of the brutal war that followed. Now a high-ranking commander, she knows loss better than anyone. By day, she leads troops across ruined landscapes and guides covert teams through enemy territory. By night, she meets with a Dar’rak defector who has kept humanity alive with his steady stream of secrets.

On a mission to investigate his latest lead - one that could turn the tide of the war - Soraya is captured by The Demon, the Dar’rak’s most feared soldier. His orders are simple: break the human commander, uncover where the humans are keeping a weapon that could win them the war, and bring it to the Dar’rak. But as he gets to know the fierce warrior, the lines between interrogator and enemy, prisoner and ally, begin to blur.

As devastating truths surface and loyalties shatter, Soraya must decide who to trust in a world where light is dying - and where her greatest enemy may be her only salvation.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £25

October 15 - new listing

Terry Deary for A History of the World in 10 Wars
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

War: what is it good for? Absolutely something, surely, or we wouldn’t keep doing it.

Throughout the ages, each generation has faced the same questions: Am I willing to fight for my way of life? How can I come up with something the enemy hasn’t thought of? And the important one that people often forget to ask: is there a way of solving this amicably?

In A History of the World in Ten Wars, bestselling author Terry Deary shows us what can we learn from battles through the ages.

Written with Deary’s trademark humour, A History of the World in Ten Warsis a page-turning history of the world that will have you laughing as you find out what they didn’t teach you in school.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

October 15 - new listing

Martina Calvi: Snail Mail Workshop

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Join bestselling author and artist Martina Calvi for a special Pride & Prejudice-inspired workshop celebrating the publication of her beautiful new book, The Art of Snail Mail.

Inspired by the iconic letters at the heart of Jane Austen’s beloved novel, Martina will explore the art of handwritten correspondence before guiding you through creating your own thoughtful piece of snail mail. Expect creative prompts, beautiful paper and plenty of inspiration as you craft a letter to someone special.

Martina is the author of The Art of Memory Collecting and A Year of Junk Journaling, and has built a global community of followers through her celebration of analogue creativity and meaningful connection.

Ticket plus book £22

October 16 - new listing

An Evening with Annabel Campbell

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are thrilled to welcome Annabel Campbell back to the shop as she discusses her epic fantasy tale that began with The Outcast Mage, following a young woman, Naila, whose strange powers may just destroy the world, packed with intrigue, adventure and a little bit of dragonfire, The Void Dragon.

Naila has escaped the chaos that engulfed her home city of Amoria, but at a terrible cost. Her allies have splintered and there’s a power growing inside of her that she doesn’t understand. It feels dangerous. It feels hungry.

Hunted by dragonriders, Naila must seek sanctuary at the great library of Awasef. Perhaps here she will find some answers - if they don’t kill her first.

But the land of Dahran is on a knife edge. The Queen’s advisor, the Wazira, is abducting mages and forcing them to join her cause. Worse still, Haelius Akana - Naila’s friend and the greatest wizard of his age - is among them.

As political conspiracies slide towards civil war, Naila’s power threatens to consume her and everyone she holds dear. Haelius may be the only person who can help her.

But only if he betrays his new master to stand at Naila’s side.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £25

But that’s not all

Coming up fast…

October

Rachel King, Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival, Hernan Diaz, Sarah Clegg, Brigid Lowe & Gilly McArthur, Julia Harding, Susie Dent, James Ellroy, Oz Clarke, Dorian Ravenscroft, VE Schwab, Simon Armitage, Pete Irvine, Bobuq Sayed, Alice Oswald, Min Jin Lee, Yiyun Li, Jasper Fforde, Tim Downie, Dan Keeling, Laurie Gilmore, Simon Garfield, Susan Stryker, Pierce Brown, Becky Chambers, Travis Baldree, Taylor J LaRue, Rhian Elizabeth, Brigid Lowe and Anthony Shapland, Julian Sayarer, Sarah Maria Griffin, Iain MacGregor, Chiara Bullen, AC Glass & Jack Jewers, Caroline Hirons, Nicko McBrain, Miranda Malins, Alexander McCall Smith, Garth Nix, EL James

November

Radical Book Fair, Tim Hayward, Coinneach MacLeod, Irvine Welsh, Patrick DeWitt, Alexandra Shulman, Ragnar Jonasson, Jamie Gianoutsos, Mary Lawson, Louisa Young, Nick Harkaway, Jonathan Coe, Emily Wilson, Sabaa Tahir, Graeme Johncock (Waterstones), Rick Stein, Elif Shafak, Bonnie Garmus, Cody Dahler, Danielle L Jensen, Jodi Picoult, Elena Armas, Graeme Johncock (Golden Hare), Jeremy Lee, Caleb Nichols, Alice Loxton, Adam Ramsay, Benoit Loiseau, Luke Kennard, Cathryn Kemp & Mairi Kidd

January

Sue Brunning

As Autumn is virtually upon us, the list of Edinburgh book events grows ever longer - there’s so much to look forward to in September and October. Publishing is gearing up for the Christmas bonanza (yes, I know - I shouldn’t mention the C-word in August!), and there’s a roll call of big names heading our way with their wonderful new books. Not to mention some exciting debuts - you might not know their names now, but you’ll hear all about them over the coming weeks.

So what am I looking forward to in this literary cornucopia? Here are a few of the events I’m hoping to get to:

Robert Harris for Agrippa on September 2nd - having thoroughly enjoyed a two-part performance of I, Claudius at the Fringe, this is the story of Octavius told from a different angle, through the eyes of Agrippa. I thought Conclave was a great read, and Harris has long-since proved himself to be a compulsive storyteller.

Yotam Ottolenghi is in town for two appearances on September 8th, celebrating the release of a new cookbook, and - I’m afraid, even more excitingly - the opening of his new Edinburgh restaurant. As a long time fan of his food, I’ll probably be first in the queue.

On September 9th, Ten Poems about Edinburgh is launching, with poems by Janette Ayachi, Robert Burns, Jackie Kay, Marjorie Lotfi, Edwin Morgan, Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Hollie McNish, Robert Louis Stevenson and Michael Pederson. I’m not usually a poetry reader, but this one sounds too good to miss.

Marlon James is in town on September 21st for The Disappearers. I went to his event last time he came here, and it was brilliant and fascinating, so this is one I definitely want to go to.

I’m intrigued by the Cookbook Shop’s new listing - Folk Puddings of Ireland and Scotland on September 23th, an event devoted to blood puddings! It probably won’t be to everyone’s taste, but it you’re a black pudding fan, there’s going to be a tasting platter accompanied by local sips - and it sounds like a lot of fun.

Then there’s Chris Broad coming to talk about his Journey Across Japan on September 25th. Having visited Japan for the first time earlier this year, I’m desperate to get back there, and this book digs deeper than the well-worn tourist trails. Count me in.

These are just a few of September’s delights, but if you scroll further down the list, you’ll see that October is equally rich in treasures.

What are you looking forward to most of all? Let me know in the comments.

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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

August 14-26

Book Fringe

What is Book Fringe?

The Book Fringe is our free, bookshop run, alternative August literary festival! Bringing in bookshops across the city to deliver a programme of events that highlight each bookshop’s personality.

Entirely run and curated by indie bookshops, Book Fringe offers readers the opportunity to meet world-class writers in the intimate and lively settings of local bookshops.

Led by Lighthouse, Book Fringe has been running for over a decade, each year reinventing itself just a wee bit while continuing to celebrate accessibility, community and creativity as only indie bookshops can!

Book Fringe at Lighthouse features events with Layla McCay, Lamble, Molly Tie, Scott Richardson-Read, Jean Menzies, Sofie Hagan, Frances Cannon, Mai-Anh Vũ Peterson, Gabriella Bennett, Amy Abdelnoor, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Meghan Kobza, Kojo Koram, Fatima Bhutto and Alfredo Carpineti.

Entry to ALL events is free: no tickets, no ticket booking (unless you want event reminders), just show up to discover some great authors.

Events are first come first seated, so try to come a bit early to guarantee a spot (and have a browse!)

August 15-30

Angela Jackson: When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr

5.30pm, Le Monde, George Street

Tickets £12.50

Award-winning novelist (The Emergence of Judy Taylor, The Darlings) Angela Jackson will be performing her fourth one-woman show at Le Monde on George Street as part of this year’s Fringe. In ‘When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr’ Angela explores the highs and lows of romantic love, through the songs of Julie London, the wisdom of history’s greatest thinkers, and the wit of iconic screenwriting legend Nora Ephron. If you want to know how a six-second kiss and a dance around the kitchen can change your life, and if you like your psychology and philosophy mixed up with a generous helping of sultry jazz standards, this is the show for you.

(I went to see this, and it’s absolutely brilliant - Angela has a wonderful voice and the whole show is a pleasure! AB)

Tickets £12.50

August 15-30

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Pl, EH3

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is a charity which has been bringing outstanding writers and thinkers from around the world together with curious audiences for over forty years. We celebrate the power of words, examine pressing issues, shift perspectives, and create joyful experiences for those of all ages. Our programme sparks essential conversations about the world around us, our place in it, and how we can improve it, together. Making these discussions accessible to anyone is at the heart of everything we do, in August and beyond.

Here, a book is a beginning – of a conversation, of a better understanding, of a debate, of a memory. What happens next is up to you.

August 24

Luke Healy - Dogs on Dates

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

The Portobello Bookshop is excited to announce a very special August event for Luke Healy’s graphic novel Dogs on Dates! Luke is a comedian, cartoonist, and screenwriter from Dublin. We’re lucky that he’ll be in town doing his Fringe Festival show, and will be coming to the bookshop for a celebration of his latest release.

Dogs on Dates is the charming, whimsical, touching tale of Bernie and Brad, two dogs who... go on dates, and run into a few obstacles along the way. It’s the gay rom-com we’ve all been waiting for!

Healy will be in conversation with fellow award-winning graphic novelist Steven Ingram, author of Holly, Burn With Me and the ongoing series MurMur. It’ll be a real joy to have two artists together on stage!

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 25

Anne Pia: A Month O Muins

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Celebrate the end of Edinbrugh festival season with a night of Scots poetry with Anne Pia reading from her new collection, A Month O Muins.

From un mariage á trois, breast feeding kittens, rumpus at the Baptismal font and otherworldly lovemaking; with a whiff of Mozart’s Queen of the Night; faint aromas of Baudelaire; a hint of Dante’s selva oscura and Orpheus who tragically did look back, A Month O Muins Anne Pia’s new poetry collection in Scots is an often humorous, wry, subversive and consistently tender versioning of the poems and songs of the iconic, widely celebrated singer-songwriter, Georges Brassens: the “Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen of France”.

In this her third poetry collection, she takes inspiration and “courage” from Brassens in order to express her own deeply held views on society, her questioning of its norms and expectations; and the quiet dignity and beauty of originality and challenge to accepted norms; the natural world; the unsung, unoticed and little celebrated, in a world dominated by icons of capitalism, privilege and power.

Free but ticketed

August 29

Author Talk With Rebecca Tamas - The Book Of Mysteries : Wild Time And The Ritual Year

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 8LN

Join us for an evening in the bookshop with Rebecca Tamas to celebrate her newest release The Book of Mysteries : Wild Time and the Ritual Year.

At festive gatherings celebrating summer’s peak, in reflective moments as winter gave way, Rebecca Tamás began to hear another rhythm. A faint hint that, underneath the rush of clocks and calendars, another, richer kind of time might exist.

As she suffered from grief and burnout, Tamás sought a deeper connection to the movement of the seasons through an immersion in old folkways. She set out on a journey across the UK guided by the Pagan wheel of the year, marking each solstice, equinox and the midpoints between them with a ritual drawn from ancient traditions.

From a confrontation with the sharp pains of winter at Samhain in Edinburgh to a giddy experience of collective joy at Padstow’s May Day, she found in these traditional practices electric potential for transforming our relationship to the natural world.

Intellectually penetrating and richly lyrical, The Book of Mysteries follows the drumbeat of seasonal ritual towards an immersion in the wild time of the earth. Ecstatic, radical and irreverent, this book is a rallying cry to wrest time away from the structures of work and capital, so as to encounter the life-giving mystery of the natural world.

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 29

Bookshop Signing with Simone Soltani

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with sports romance author Simone Soltani!

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £9.99

Upcoming events

And for those who like to plan ahead…

September 1

Joe Wicks for Healthy Start
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

From the Number One Bestselling author of Protein in 15, Joe Wicks returns with a new collection of simple healthy recipes for all the family to enjoy.

We all want to make family mealtimes more enjoyable, with food that’s healthy and filling for everyone. But with picky eaters and the need to please different ages and tastes, it’s no secret they can sometimes be a challenge. With over 80 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, Healthy Start has everything you need to take the stress out of mealtimes so you can cook once and feed the whole family.

Packed with recipes that are quick to make, big on flavour and don’t rely on ultra-processed ingredients, Healthy Start is your go-to guide for fuss-free cooking that everyone will enjoy.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £22

September 2

Catherine Simpson for Sandwiched: Caring Up and Caring Down
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Catherine Simpson believed the hardest chapters of her life were behind her. She had raised two children - one of them autistic - and survived both a family suicide and her own cancer treatment. In her fifties, it was time to enjoy restoring her health, reducing work commitments, hanging out with friends and relaxing with her husband in their empty nest.

But when the global pandemic shut the world down, Catherine’s nonagenarian father’s independence began to slip away just as her adult daughter’s mental health spiralled into crisis.

Sandwiched is a candid memoir about being trapped in a high-pressure, intergenerational squeeze. It is a story of letting go of the superwoman myth, confronting the limits of control and responsibility, and trying to hold it all together while providing loving care.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 2

Robert Harris for Agrippa
7pm, Ps and Gs Church, 46 York Place, EH1 3HP

From the bestselling author of Conclave comes a new compelling book exploring friendship and power against the backdrop of Ancient Rome.

Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice.

Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, who he has made his heir.

The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.

To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire - and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.

When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 3

An Evening with Suzy Aspley and Elisabeth Wolf

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are delighted to be joined by Elisabeth Wolf and Suzy Aspley as they chat about their equally haunting, ominous and chilling Gothic mysteries, Winterbourne and The Bone Mother.

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 book lover’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 an unannounced visit from her employer, the enigmatic Lucien Broussard, Ann wonders what happened to the previous librarian when she finds notes hidden in the library’s ancient tomes. As echoes of the past start to reveal the house and Lucien’s dark secrets, suddenly Anne’s dream job becomes a living nightmare.

The Bone Mother

Martha Strangeways has settled into a quiet life in Strathbran, after the horrific events that traumatised the village a year earlier. But all this is turned upside down when her friend at Glasgow CID, DI Derek Summers, calls on her to help with a disturbing case: a human ear, with an unusual Celtic earring, has been found next to a railway line in the Highlands.

When the body of a young woman wearing matching jewellery turns up at a landmark church shortly after, the mystery deepens. Why has she been laid out in a ritualistic fashion? Does her trek along the little known Cailleach Way have anything to do with her death? And who is running the Facebook group where she posted details of her journey to the shrine of the Bone Mother goddess?

As Martha tries to unpick the threads, she finds herself entwined with a ghost from her own past, and in conflict with the owner of a project that threatens to destroy the goddess’s sacred land. With Halloween approaching, and someone determined to protect the goddess at all costs, can Martha and Summers catch the killer before they strike again, and this time much closer to home.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £13

(Full disclaimer, this is my own event as I write gothic novels under the pen name Elisabeth Wolf. But please don’t let that put you off - I’d love to see some of you there! AB)

September 3

James Fox - Craftland

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We’re thrilled to be hosting the publication day event for Craftland in paperback! James Fox’s journey through the British Isles to catalogue and celebrate artisan and heritage crafts has been a huge sensation since it’s release last year, and we’re excited to celebrate it with James in the shop.

James will be in conversation with Niamh MacKenzie, a PhD candidate working across the Highlands and Islands researching the arts, craftsmanship, and traditional practices. This promises to be a fascinating and insightful discussion, we can’t wait to see it!

Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our identities, built our communities and shaped our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life on these shores.

Travelling the length of Britain, from the Scilly Isles to the Scottish Highlands, James Fox seeks out the country’s last remaining master craftspeople. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bell-founders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life — one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could shape our future.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 3

Sabrina Ghayour for Persiana One
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

From the Queen of Middle Eastern cookery, Sabrina Ghayour, every recipe in Persiana One makes irresistible Middle Eastern flavours easier than ever in one pot, one tray or one pan.

From dips and bits that make snacking sublime to spectacular salads, and from easy everyday dinners to something a little bit more special, these are recipes designed with clever shortcuts that don’t compromise on flavour, to be as simple, and as kit free as possible.

With over 100 recipes, each accompanied by a photograph, this is a sumptuous gift for every cookery lover - who hates washing up!

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £28

September 3

Anna Deacon for The Wild Fix Scotland
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In The Wild Fix Scotland, writer and photographer Anna Deacon explores how the powerful connection between nature and wellbeing can help ease modern stress. Blending ancient wisdom with modern research, this beautifully illustrated guide is inspired by the elements of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air.

From wild swimming and forest bathing to mindful photography and seasonal living, Anna shows how aligning with nature can restore balance and calm, revealing why simply listening to birdsong or looking at images of nature can soothe the nervous system.

Featuring evocative photography of Scotland’s raw beauty, The Wild Fix Scotland is an uplifting companion to feeling better, living well and reconnecting with the healing power of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 4

Seren Hawley-Plows for The Ancient Ways
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This September we are joined by Seren Hawley-Plows for her debut book The Ancient Ways! It is a seasonal guide that uses myths, folklore and old rituals to help you reconnect with nature. Seren will even be giving us a demo of one of the rituals from her book.

Step into an ancient world of rituals and folklore in this stunning seasonal guide.

Tales of gods and goddesses told around a crackling fire. The light of the rising sun streaming through an ancient site on a solstice morning. Hot cider poured over the roots of apple trees to wake them for the spring.

Told through the pagan wheel of the year, The Ancient Ways explores how nature changes throughout the seasons, looking at solstices, equinoxes, legends, and festivals and how these stories and traditions can help you deepen your connection with nature. Discover megalithic sacred sites where crowds still gather to see the sun rise and fall through doorways of the past. Meet Eostre, goddess of the spring and dawn or the Cailleach, queen of winter and the Green Man, a personification of the wild. Celebrate festivals like Beltane, a summer celebration of fire and fertility or Samhain, the festival of the dead and precursor to modern Halloween.

Hedgewitch Seren Hawley-Plows weaves these myths and stories together beautifully with tools and inspiration of how to bring the power of ancient tradition into a modern world and help you find magic in the wilds of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 6 - new listing

Gordon Brown for The Future Starts With Us
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

Gordon Brown joins us in Edinburgh this September for the publication of his much-awaited book, The Future Starts With Us, a practical and hopeful roadmap to bring us back together, renew the global order, and set us on a more equitable and sustainable course.

Every day we see evidence of the fracturing of the rules-based order. War, mass migration, economic disruption and climate collapse fill our screens. At the same time, many feel a different kind of fear. The erosion of civic life has led to an epidemic of loneliness, a loss of community spirit and a growing sense that there is nowhere to turn in times of need, no common cause worth fighting for.

But why is it that the breakup of the world order and the breakdown of civic life are happening at the same time? And why is it that millions across the world are turning to populist nationalist parties in search of solutions?

Drawing on decades of experience at the heart of politics, alongside new research and original polling of nearly 100,000 people across forty-five countries, Gordon Brown reveals how global instability and civic decline are connected.

Ticket plus book £25

September 7

Morvern Graham for Seasonal Folktales
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Embrace the changing seasons with local artist and storyteller Morvern Graham for a beautiful evening of illustrated myths and folklore.

In these magical retellings of classic Celtic and Nordic folktales, we journey from snowy mountain peaks to wild forests and stormy coastlines, as we observe the moon phases, find folkloric treasures and meet an array of strange and mysterious creatures. We’ll encounter sprites, trolls, mythic beasts and monsters - from the bramble boggle (a mischievous member of fairy folk who is said to have given blackberries their thorns) to the sea witches and selkies who roam the Northern shores.

Through the power of these stories we can light up our minds with a wild, child-like wonder, and reconnect our hungry souls to the natural rhythms of the shifting seasons.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Daniel Susskind for What Should My Children Do?
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

What should the next generation learn and what should they stop worrying about-in a world transformed by artificial intelligence?

AI is rewriting the rules in the classroom, the job market and the workplace, leaving parents, teachers, students and all types of workers unsure about how best to prepare for what lies ahead. In What Should My Children Do?, globally renowned economist Daniel Susskind cuts through the outdated advice to show us what young people actually need to succeed now.

We should not ban tools or discourage new skills that are in demand, Susskind argues, or cling to inherited ways of working. Instead, he reveals how people can master new technologies without eroding other essential skills. From reorganizing the curriculum to re-imagining white-collar careers, Susskind maps a smarter, more productive path forward.

This requires a fundamental mindset shift: we must embrace the extraordinary opportunities that AI brings-from personal tutors to scientific breakthroughs-rather than retreat from them. Drawing on fifteen years of research, this book is an evidence-based and practical guide to one of the most urgent questions of our time.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 8 - new listing

Meet Yotam Ottolenghi in Edinburgh!
2:30pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

To celebrate the launch of the new book, Ottolenghi SIMPLE TOO *and* the exciting opening of an Ottolenghi restaurant here in Edinburgh, we are delighted to welcome Yotam Ottolenghi to Waterstones Edinburgh West End for an exclusive meet and greet.

Ticket plus book £30

September 8

Yotam Ottolenghi for Simple Too
7pm, McEwan Hall, The University of Edinburgh, Teviot Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9A

It’s a noisy world out there, so stop, take a minute or two, listen to the soup bubble or the egg crackle... and let simple cooking be your solution.

For the three million home cooks around the world who loved Ottolenghi Simple, Yotam and his co-author, test kitchen colleague Verena Lochmuller, set themselves the task to further pair down processes and ingredient lists, whilst keeping the vibrant, multi- layered, surprising signature flavours loved throughout the world.

Many of the dishes, such as Braised halloumi with tomatoes and beans, or Smoky tomato and feta prawns, are made in one baking tray, with no preparation at all, ready to put on the table in about 30 minutes. They’re for feeding family and friends or just yourselves; classics reimagined the Ottolenghi way using flavour-enhancing ingredients such as za’atar, tahini, harissa and garlic.

Bring Yotam Ottolenghi’s innovation to your everyday with 135 new recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Every dish has simplicity at its core and can be made in under 30 minutes, cooked in one pot, or prepped ahead. Whatever your barriers to cooking, this book brings you into the kitchen with a promise that even the simplest of meals can be full of flavour and joy.

Ticket plus book £30

September 9

Ten Poems about Edinburgh
7pm, Waterstones, West End, Princes Street

Join Michael Pedersen, Janet Ayachi, Majorie Lotfi and Dr Harriet McMillan, as we celebrate the publication of Candlestick Press’s glorious and lively mini-anthology, Ten Poems about Edinburgh, which reflects the many ways in which Scotland’s ancient capital city is loved by visitors and the people who live there.

There are poems celebrating the beauty of Edinburgh’s buildings and parks alongside others capturing moments in its long history and vivid life as a hub of art, music and literature. Throughout are the atmospheres created by its distinctive weathers and the proximity of the North Sea.

The pamphlet is a perfect companion for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the many riches of this special city. Introduced and selected by Michael Perdersen, the collection includes poems from Janette Ayachi, Robert Burns, Jackie Kay, Marjorie Lotfi, Edwin Morgan, Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Hollie McNish, Robert Louis Stevenson and Michael himself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10

September 9

Shorelines x Readers & Writers Against Genocide: a Palestine Solidarity Night

7pm, Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Join us to welcome Shorelines, the prize-winning non-fiction debut by Alycia Pirmohamed, into the world with a night of solidarity with Palestine.

Come on down to Bruntsfield’s gorgeous Pianodrome where we will gather around readings by Alycia, Hannah Lavery and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, as well as music from Miwa Nagato-Apthorp and Curlew (Gill Higgins), with all proceeds from tickets and on-the-night donations going to Writers and Readers Against the Genocide. These will be distributed between two funds: Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children’s Fund.

As a young Muslim woman, Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous. Her affinity to the natural world – the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood – conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents’ homeland – the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees – felt painfully distant.

Across interrelated pieces that travel from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.

Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations – and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Christopher de Hamel for The Migrants
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In the course of a long career at Sotheby’s and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably handled more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive and his delight and enthusiasm in them runs through all he writes.

His many books, translated into numerous languages, include A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize), The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket and The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club.

Christopher joins us for his astounding new book, The Migrants: A Memoir in Manuscripts. This is a coming-of-age saga with extraordinary twists, crossing many hundreds of years and tens of thousands of miles, recounted with passion, humour and a lifetime’s reflection.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 10

Colin Bramwell for Fetch
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

We are delighted to be welcoming an incredible local talent, Colin Bramwell, for the launch of his debut poetry collection, Fetch. Reading alongside him will be poets Michael Grieve and Jacob Polley.

Following his recent success after winning both the 2026 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize and the 2026 Highland Book Prize for his translation of Fernando Pessoa into Scots, Fower Pessoas, Bramwell returns with a debut collection that is sure to delight with its distinctive voice.

On Fetch: In Celtic folklore a fetch is a shadowy doppelganger that appears from the Otherworld, portending the beholder’s fate. Your fetch ‘fetches’ you to the afterlife, willingly or otherwise. Bramwell’s poetry uses the fetch as a model to explore a number of overlapping binaries – between the reader and the poem, most of all. Fetch also meditates on the differences between music and speech, the sacred and the profane, the written and the real, humanity and nature, Scots and English. Incorporating multitudes of modes, forms, registers and subjects, Bramwell converses with the Anglo-Celtic lyric tradition in our own time and in his own distinctively amiable fashion. In other words, this poet takes poetry seriously – but not too seriously.

Fetch is a tour-de-force debut from one of Britain’s most exciting new poets, in which reverence and irreverence, religion and faithlessness, the living and the dead, nearly rhyme.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 10

An Evening with Sebastian Barry

7.30pm, Nicolson Square, The Methodist Church, Nicolson Square, EH8 9BX

We’re excited to welcome Sebastian Barry to the Great Hall at Nicolson Square Edinburgh for a publication day launch of his new novel, The Newer World. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Old God’s Timeand Days Without End comes a lyrical, visceral novel about what it is to survive, and what might be lost along the way.

Barry will be in conversation with Peggy Hughes. He will be signing books following the event.

I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things . . . were gone forever.

The Newer World follows the life of Tennyson Bouguereau – freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man – as he journeys to find meaning and belonging in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

From the relative safety of home in Tennessee with his sister Rosalee, he is offered the possibility of a whole new life in Nashville, until a surprising trip to Victorian England changes everything.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Hollow’s Hauntology Event with Evelyn Hollow

6.30pm, St. Vincent’s Chapel, St Vincent Street, Edinburgh

Discover the hidden world of the supernatural and unexplained in this definitive guide to the world’s darkest wonders.

Hollow’s Hauntology is a richly illustrated compendium that uncovers how 80 legendary beings – from blood-drinking revenants to shape-shifting gods – have shaped storytelling across history. Across eight immersive chapters, the book explores humanity’s oldest fears and fascinations. Through this, paranormal psychologist and TV and radio presenter, Evelyn Hollow, brings a uniquely rigorous perspective, blending psychological methodology with cultural analysis.

She reveals how etymology shapes belief, how folklore reflects collective psychology and how overlooked myths still echo through modern culture. Hollow’s Hauntology invites you to discover what it means to be human beneath a vast and haunted sky.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £2

September 11

Emily Cuddeford in Conversation with Cheryl Cohen

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

What happens when a celebrated baker starts again, from scratch?

Emily Cuddeford, formerly of Twelve Triangles bakery and co-author of Kitchen Table, her debut cookbook celebrating the producers she has worked with over the last decade, is building a new career at 38—publicly, one Substack post at a time. She’s building a bakery school, studio, and stoneground mill at her home in the Scottish Borders. Here, she’ll focus on how food is made and take control of what goes into her bread, who grows the ingredients, and how they treat the land.

Joining her in conversation is Cheryl Cohen—Queen of Markets, according to the Evening Standard—who spent over 20 years running London’s farmers’ markets, working directly with farmers and small producers. She writes weekly on Substack and has written for Good Food.

Together, they’ll explore Emily’s next steps in the baking world, why directly supporting small farms and independent businesses matters, and the difference it makes when we do.

Plus, they’re bringing samples!

Tickets £11.55

September 11

Bookshop Signing with Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy!

5pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with authors Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy. It’s your chance to get your books signed, meet Sierra and Julie and get a photo!

Tickets £2

September 11

Lucy Lapwing - Wildlife Walk

4.45pm, Modern Art Gallery One

Join BBC presenter, naturalist and self-described ‘nature nerd’ Lucy Lapwing for a Wildlife Walk along the Water of Leith to discover the wondrous wildlife that lives there.

The walk will set off from the Modern Art Gallery and down to the Water of Leith at 5pm and last approximately an hour.

The walk will take place before we sit down with Lucy to discuss her fantastic new book ‘Love is a Toad’ at 7.00pm. Please purchase your tickets for the talk separately HERE.

Tickets £15

September 11

Lucy Lapwing ‘Love is a Toad’ - Author Talk

7pm, Wild Fungarium, 13 Randolph Place, Edinburgh EH3 7TA

We’re super excited to have BBC presenter Lucy Lapwing here with us for an evening on the 11th of September. Lucy will be in store to discuss her wonderfully joyous new book, ‘Love is a Toad: Exploring our Relationship with Nature’

Lucy will also be hosting a Wildlife Walk at 5pm along the Water of Leith. If you are interested in attending the walk we recommend early booking as there are limited spaces. Tickets can be purchased HERE.

Nature makes us feel things. It sparks awe, curiosity and a sense of beauty and community. But as wildlife around us declines and disappears, murkier feelings rise up: guilt, detachment and fear for nature’s plight. For many years, Lucy Lapwing wrestled with these tangled emotions. So, in an attempt to make sense of this dance between joy and grief, she decided to go on a journey.

In Love Is a Toad, Lucy traverses meadows, bogs and hedgerows with her fellow nature enthusiasts, where she digs down into our relationship with the natural world. Over the course of a year, she meets bucketfuls of wildlife – Blackbird and Oak, slugs and puffballs, waterlilies, Dung Beetles and toads – as she roams across the UK.

From a river swim to wanders through woodlands, with every journey, Lucy explores how nature makes us feel, from wild grief and anger through to soaring joy and indefatigable hope. At once a celebration and an invitation to reflect, Love Is a Toad prods and pokes at our connection to the natural world, exploring its complexity in all its muddiness, messiness and wonder.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 11

Ed Conway for Trade World
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Ed Conway is a writer and broadcaster. He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and a regular columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. He has won numerous awards for his journalism and his book Material World was a Sunday Times bestseller.

From the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Material World, a story that will take you from ancient civilizations, empire and globalisation through to the most influential geopolitical issue of our times.

The story of trade is the story of humanity. From the copper in Mesopotamian ploughs to the silicon atoms within the chip inside your smartphone, intricate global trading networks have evolved over millennia to fulfil the distinctly human desire to buy and sell.

Today, the volume of trade bestriding the planet is unprecedented. Yet, as fractures in the global order emerge – from an era of globalisation and untrammelled flows of goods and money to a new world of restrictions, intervention and, possibly, war – understanding this fundamental shift to the dominant economic consensus is more important than ever.

Ed Conway tells this extraordinary story through these three commonplace products – bread, cloth and cars. With a compelling blend of economic history and first-hand access to key figures and institutions, he takes us from policy treaties to ground level to show us the people who make, ship and sometimes smuggle the products we buy on a daily basis.

Discover the hidden, shifting trade world behind everything you see around you.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 14

Ben Macintyre for Redwood
7pm, Greyfriars Charteris Centre, 138-140 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9RR

Ben Macintyre joins us to discuss Redwood, the remarkable, unknown Cold War story of how one spy saved the world from nuclear war.

The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.

‘Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets. For Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret, one that if revealed, would turn his life upside-down, and in a desperate situation, he reached out to MI6 – believing it to have the only solution. Soon facing exposure, he then demanded that the British try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan.

This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

September 14

An Evening with Jonn Elledge
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

For over 10,000 years, the human race has been busy altering our environment and embracing ‘progress’, evolving seamlessly from hunter gatherers to the modern urban sophisticates we see ourselves as today.

We are delighted to be joined by the bestselling author of A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge, as he delves into the inventions and innovations that contributed to our modern urbanised world in his latest endlessly fascinating and engagingly written volume, 31 Inventions that Built Our World.

Jonn, will be joined by acclaimed journalist and author, Gabriella Bennett, as they take us on a fascinating and often surprising tour of the ideas and technologies that made modernity possible. From elevators to electric lighting, parks to pedestrian crossings, he guides us through the history of civilisation itself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £28

September 15

The Fairy Spotter’s Guide: Elizabeth Dearnley on where to find banshees, Bigfoot and other creatures from folklore

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Watch your step. Not all fairies are friendly.

We’re so excited to be welcoming author Elizabeth Dearnley and illustrator Sarah Coleman for a double bill that will take you on a journey across continents and cultures as we uncover the origins of extraordinary folk creatures, from mermaids and bigfoot to shapeshifters and spectral hounds.

No matter where you are, you’re never far from a door to the Otherworld ... From the bloodthirsty baobhan sith of the Scottish Highlands to the mischievous trasgu creeping beneath your floorboards, the world is teeming with hidden, magical beings. The Fairy Spotter’s Guide is your essential companion for navigating the world of the uncanny.

Packed with more than 100 original, spellbinding illustrations and written by a leading expert in fairy tales and folklore, this is no ordinary field guide. Whether you’re a seasoned cryptid hunter or a curious newcomer, this beautifully crafted book will enchant, unnerve and utterly captivate.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

Cooks & Books: Claire Thomson for Dear Grace
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Dear Grace is a warm, wise cookbook written by chef and food writer Claire Thomson for her daughter as she leaves home for university. Claire began addressing Instagram posts to Grace, each pairing heartfelt advice and reminiscences with a recipe to nurture and comfort. This struck a chord with parents everywhere experiencing similar emotional highs and lows as they prepared to send their children off into adult life.

Each recipe begins with a note to Grace - advice about surviving deadlines, sharing meals, cooking for one, or navigating heartbreak - followed by an easy dish designed for small kitchens, tight budgets and busy schedules.

Through memories and stories of family and food, Claire perfectly captures the bittersweet moment of watching your child begin their independent life - and the comfort of knowing they can feed themselves and their friends with confidence, creativity and care.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £24

September 15

Pulitzer-Prize Finalist Daniel Mason for Country People
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

This autumn, Daniel Mason - Pulitzer Prize finalist and bookseller favourite - returns to the bookshop to discuss his latest novel, Country People. Funny, adventurous, and elegant, Country People isn’t a book to be missed.

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales - from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes - until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

An Evening with Rebecca F Kuang

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street

The Portobello Bookshop is truly excited to host An Evening with Rebecca F. Kuang for her forthcoming novel Taipei Story. This return to the literary fiction genre is highly anticipated after the massive success of her last fiction novel Yellowface. Rebecca is also known for her beloved fantasy novels including the Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Katabasis.

Taipei Story is a wryly humorous and profoundly moving coming-of-age novel that grapples with grief, language, and culture shock—all set against the backdrop of an unforgettable summer in Taipei.

Kuang will be in conversation with Katie Goh, author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange.

Ticket plus book £25

September 15

Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44

7pm, Blackwell’s, South Bridge

Join Chris Powici and Allan Radliffe as we celebrate the publication of Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44, the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, including new work from 43 authors – some internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

We are delighted to be joined by Rachel Coventry, Tony Frame, Kate Hendry, Donnchadh MacCàba, Fiona Mossman and Shane Strachan, who will be sharing poetry and short stories in English, Gaelic and Scots.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

September 16

Women, Walking: A radical anthology of writing on nature and belonging

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Women, Walking is an agenda-setting, contemporary exploration of women setting foot outdoors now, and what that means; Compiling ten specially commissioned essays on walking from prize-winning writers including poets, novelists, essayists and journalists, published here for the very first time,

The groundbreaking collection that brings together many of the most prominent and exciting voices of the last decade across poetry, fiction, essays and journalism, and many a Lighthouse bookshop favourite: Anna Fleming, Anita Sethi, Beatrice Searle, Gail Simmons, Helen Mort, Josie Giles, Kate Davis, Katharine Norbury, Linda Cracknell and Polly Atkin.

Journey from Josie Giles observing the political implications of different features of the landscape to Gail Simmons celebrating the low-key wonders of the incidental walks we take every day, to Kate Davis on why walking matters more when disability prevents you from doing it ‘properly’.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 16

Lorna Elcock in conversation with James Robertson

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join Women’s Prize Discoveries 2021 shortlisted author, Lorna Elcock, as she discusses her raw and emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, The Windhover, with James Robertson.

Perthshire. 1957. The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.

Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.

It’s 1982. Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £15

September 16

Cooks & Books: Ali Stoner for Scran
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Ali Stoner or ‘Roving Haggis’ as she is known on social media, is a Scottish cook and a former Masterchef Australia contestant. Born in Glasgow, she currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband, family and two dogs.

Scran is a new collection of more than 100 nostalgic and traditional Scottish recipes, seen through a modern lens. Ali brings old favourites, classic bakery treats and creative new recipes inspired by Scotland, its landscapes and its traditions.

Some highlights include: Scottish eggs benedict with whisky chive hollandaise, millionaire shortbread, peppermint slice, chicken Balmoral sausage roll, macaroni pie, confit sardines with gin pickled onions, a plethora of morning rolls, tablet, and Scottish martini.

It should make for a particularly delicious evening; we hope to see you there.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £27

September 16

Steven Veerapen for Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Steven Veerapen was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and a Mauritian father and raised in Paisley. He is the author of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, and lives in Glasgow.

Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton.

This ground breaking study of Henry’s life examines and destroys many of the long-repeated myths about this complex monarch: he was not particularly gluttonous, not particularly prudish, and not particularly messy in his religious changes. Nor did he see himself as simply King of England. Drawing on archival sources from across the British Isles, Steven Veerapen reveals how Henry fashioned an image of himself as a law-abiding and benevolent emperor who dreamed of uniting England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and swathes of France under Tudor rule.

Yet the image was false and the dream a nightmare for his queens, his ministers and many of his subjects. This new portrait shows Henry for what he really was: a self-aggrandising actor who, by fair means and foul - murder plots, marriage negotiations and military ventures - did all he could to realise his imperial fantasy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30

September 17

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay: an evening with Lex Croucher

7pm, Nicolson Square Venues - 25 Nicolson Square EH8 9BX

What a joy to welcome Lighthouse favourite Lex Croucher back to the shop for the Edinburgh launch of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, the highly anticipated follow-up to the instant New York Times bestselling and YA Book Prize winning Gwen and Art Are Not in Love! Joining Lex on stage we’ll have award-winning author and ancient historian Jean Menzies. Expect an evening of Camelot, queer joy and laughter.

They fell in love. They won a great battle. It should have been happily ever after. But now, Camelot’s famous couples have fallen apart.

Newly crowned King Gabriel is having panic attacks in cupboards in-between council meetings. He can’t tell Arthur just how not okay he is – so he’s set him free, to find love with someone who can get through the day without breaking down.

Bridget has lost her spark for sparring, forfeiting again and again in the lists. When she’s invited to join Gabriel’s round table, she hopes it’ll be the change she needs. But trying to navigate the post-happily-ever-after reality of a relationship with Gwen, when Bridget no longer feels like the dashing knight Gwen fell in love with, feels impossible.

With the kingdom still reeling from an attempted uprising, and rumoured sightings of the Holy Grail, the Questing Beast and the Green Knight happening across the country, the gang depart on a PR tour destined for disaster. Can Gabriel be the king his country deserves? Can Bridget get her jousting groove back? And will they find their way back to the courtly love that once seemed fated?

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 17

Marie Darrieussecq for How to Make a Woman
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

‘Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work.’ - Samantha Harvey, Guardian

Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in 1980s France. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different paths: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, studies psychology and marries her first love, Christian; Solange has numerous affairs, becomes pregnant at fifteen, gives birth to a baby boy, and pursues an acting career. Each tries to find her own happiness, her own sense of meaning, while navigating a world which seeks to establish binary ideas of what a woman can be. How to Make a Woman is a bold, sometimes brutal, coming-of-age novel from the award-winning novelist Marie Darrieussecq.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 17

Jess Elliott Dennison: Vegetable Recipes

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Jess Elliott Dennison will be back in the bookshop this autumn for an evening event celebrating and sampling new recipes from her brand new cookbook, Vegetable Recipes. Jess will talk all things vegetables and do a live food demo, so that you can taste some of her delicious recipes on the night!

In this, the third book in the series, Jess is sharing favourite vegetarian dishes that celebrate the glorious variety of vegetables available throughout the seasons.

Including recipes for Leeks Vinaigrette and Celeriac Remoulade for enjoying with baguette; crispy Fennel and Onion Bhajis; a light summertime lasagne with courgettes and ricotta béchamel and comforting pumpkin-curry pastries for the colder months, this book is filled with easy, reliable dishes for everyone to enjoy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 17

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans!

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

You know the name. You know the carnage.

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans, as he joins us to sign copies of his own not-entirely-true story Moreish: My Mad Autobiography; his hilarious and oddly touching memoir recounted with all his drug-addled charm and charisma.

Now, for the first time ever, Super Hans tells his own story – no filter, no agenda, just 100% pure, distilled Hans. From his early days brewing home-fermented insanity to fronting the greatest band that never was, to performing at actual Glastonbury, this book is the hilarious, trippy and occasionally baffling life story of Super Hans, in his own words, even though he can’t quite remember all the details.

Super Hans – real name Simon, not that he’s ever used it – is a musician, DJ, philosopher, and all-around cultural disruptor. Known as Jez’s best mate and Mark’s worst nightmare in Channel 4’s cult classic Peep Show, he rose to legendary status thanks to his unforgettable lines, unfiltered wisdom, and habit of turning up exactly where you least expect him. His upcoming memoir is the legendary story of a modern folk anti-hero, written in his own gloriously chaotic words.

Matt King is an internationally renowned comedian, screenwriter and actor. Perhaps best known for playing Super Hans in the Bafta award-winning Peep Show, Matt can currently be seen as a recurring character in Time Bandits (Apple) and Spent (BBC). Matt has appeared on the big screen in the likes of Bronson alongside Tom Hardy, Dolittle with Robert Downey Jr, Paddington, RocknRolla and Juliet, Naked. He also played the lead role of Henry Mallet in the award-winning Australian drama series Spirited, for which he won the Best Male Actor in a Drama award. Matt created and wrote the BBC chef sitcom Whites starring Alan Davies, and also created and wrote the Sky drama Starlings starring Brendan Coyle and Lesley Sharp. Moreish is his first novel.

Ticket plus book £20

September 18

An Evening with Fiona Ross

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join author and journalist, Fiona Ross, as she chats to Cat Harvey about her warm, richly evocative and uplifting memoir, of second chances, stubborn cows and the quiet magic of finding home in the most unexpected of places, Wild Knowing.

Fiona was a Glasgow girl through and through, but when she was gifted an old leather-bound family ledger, she discovered a Highland family history that would change her life. The ledger records the story of the family’s 19th-century Highland cattle fold. Little did Fiona know that she would soon be moving with her husband and two beloved dogs to a remote Argyllshire croft where she would start her own herd (or fold, as it is known for Highland cows). On a wave-washed island, in the shadow of the Highland Clearances, Fiona moved in with 48 magnificent cows who would become her family.

This book is an ode to farming and the softer life that can be lived in the Hebrides. It depicts the life-affirming joy of bathing every morning in the icy Atlantic before taking the cows for a paddle. It tells calamitous tales of amorous bulls, escaping heifers, upturned quad bikes, falling off piers and accidentally injecting herself with cow meds. It tells the stories of births - so many beautiful births - followed by the drama of catching each slippery calf, holding it and tagging it, all under the baffled shaggy-fringed gaze of its 500-kilo, massively-horned mum.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18

September 18

Janice Hallet for The Silent Appeal
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

A New Play. Another Murder. Who Will Speak the Truth? It’s a new theatrical season in Lower Lockwood, and the amateur thespians of the Fairway Players are starting rehearsals for their production of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow.

Despite divisive new arrivals, countless petty jealousies and a near-fatal accident with the lighting rig, surely this will be their greatest show to date?

But someone isn’t going to make it to opening night. Could it be producer Sarah-Jane’s mysterious sister, lately arrived home after 20 years abroad? New member Lucas, whose shady business dealings may be his downfall? Or perhaps once-convicted murderer Issy Beck, recently acquitted but still up to her old tricks?

Lawyers Charlotte and Femi must sift through the emails, texts and police reports to identify the victim and find out why the person convicted of the murder refuses to speak out in their own defence...

Will they uncover the truth in time? Will you?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 19

Meet Rachel Gillig at Book Lovers Bookshop!

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, UK EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with author Rachel Gillig!

Rachel Gillig, the queen of gothic romantasy, returns with higher stakes, darker mysteries and deeper longings in this gorgeous sequel to the No. 1 international bestselling sensation The Knight and the Moth. Aisling Cathedral is in ruins.

Rodrick Myndacious, Bartholomew and Maude Bauer are rumored to be dead - and the king has taken Sybil Delling as his bride. To show off their union and solidify his power over Traum, Benji proposes a series of tournaments throughout the hamlets. Captive and drugged, Sybil remains determined to vanquish him as she once did the Omens, even if she destroys the kingdom’s faith - and herself - in the process.

But then a mysterious knave rises to the top of the lists, a man with no name and no memory who may just be Sybil’s ticket to undoing Benji’s power. For in a land where stories repeat themselves, where a king can prove as cruel as a god, the only way to truly destroy the Stonewater Kingdom’s faith is to save it.

Tickets £2/Ticket plus book £25

September 20

Grim Tidings Book Bedazzling

7pm, Library Gallery, Summer Hall Arts, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

Join us for an in-person book bedazzling event to celebrate the release of Grim Tidings by B.K. Borison! Readers who attend in-person will get the chance to attend a live virtual Q&A with B.K. herself and spend the evening bedazzling their books! Book Lovers Book Shop will be providing all crafting materials and books for the evening.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.40

September 21 - new listing

Rodge Glass with Neil Codling for As One: Remaking Suede
7pm, Greyfriars Charteris Centre, 138-140 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9RR

Award-winning writer Rodge Glass was granted unprecedented access to Suede at home, backstage, in rehearsal and in the studio, to write As One, an intimate biography of the band.

He joins us, along with Neil Codling, Suede’s keyboardist, rhythm guitarist, and co-songwriter to talk about how he gained the trust of this famously private band to produce a fascinating portrait of the platinum-selling, Mercury Prize-winning, giants of British independent music, Suede.

This year will mark 33 years since Suede released their debut eponymous album and sixteen since their glorious and unexpected comeback in 2010. Their two most recent albums - Autofiction in 2022 and Antidepressants in 2025 - both reached number two in the UK charts.

Based on exclusive and extensive interviews with the band, their family and friends, As One is an intimate and candid biography of one of the UK’s biggest band’s during the unlikely second act of a career that spans four decades. It is a book that studies the band from close up and afar, written by award-winning author Rodge Glass, who has been granted unprecedented access to the members at home, on stage, backstage, in the studio, rehearsing and promoting over the past three years.

It is an honest, long-term interrogation of what it is really like to be in Suede. The book asks difficult questions about how great bands survive and thrive over time, many years after their first flush of success. How do you build back up from nothing? How do you reconnect with your audience, while avoiding simply rehashing old ideas? How do relationships in a band change with time? How do you remake Suede?

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £26

September 21

Louise Kennedy with Sam Baker for Stations
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are delighted to be welcoming Louise Kennedy to Edinburgh to celebrate Stations, a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.

Roisin and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982. Brilliant, sharp-tongued and born to slip through the cracks, Red’s reputation for trouble precedes him - but Roisin finds herself swept up in his storm, and soon their connection deepens.

When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town to start a new life in England. As the years pass, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together. When Roisin arrives in London, the promise of freedom, of reinvention, and of finding her dear friend calls.

But searching for Red leads Roisin to a truth darker than she could have imagined: when you go looking for someone you may uncover parts of yourself along the way that you’d rather stayed buried. And Red - bright, beautiful Red - might not want to be found at all.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 21

An Evening with Marlon James

7.30pm, Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh EH8 9SU

The Portobello Bookshop is absolutely thrilled to be hosting Marlon James for the Edinburgh launch of his latest novel The Disappearers.

Join us at the atmospheric Assembly Roxy for an in-depth look at the novel, which heralds James’s triumphant return to the Jamaica of the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal. James himself has described it as “Be gay. Do crime. Get revenge.” We cannot wait to read it and to find out more on the night!

James will be in conversation with writer and dramaturg Laurence Cook.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £20

September 22

Mathias Enard for Perfecting The Shot
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Mathias Enard, born in 1972, studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. He won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Decembre, and won the Liste Goncourt/Le Choix de l’Orient, the Prix litteraire de la Porte Doree and the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Thieves. He won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, the 2017 Leipziger Book Award for European Understanding, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for Compass. Perfecting the Shot is his seventh novel to appear with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

In a nameless city torn apart by civil war, a teenage sniper has only one goal: to fire the perfect shot. He sublimates himself into his weapon, learns to maintain impassivity, controls his breath, listens to his body and the beat of his heart. Lying in wait on rooftops, he takes aim at people below while his traumatized mother cowers in their flat. But the violence eats away at any sense of morality as he kills civilians and combatants indiscriminately, for the sake of killing itself. His routine is disrupted by the arrival of Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl hired to care for his mother, and his increasingly disturbing obsession with her soon threatens to push them all into the abyss. Now appearing in English more than twenty years after its original publication, Mathias Enard’s debut novel is a timeless study of how extreme violence corrodes the soul, tracking the convulsions of a brutalized mind in spare, unflinching prose.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 22

Paul Johnson for Challenging Inequalities
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities connects these conditions to inequality-inequality not just of income and wealth but of health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed and what can, or should, be done about them.

The book explains the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008-2009 has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in dangerous differences between regions and in political power across groups.

The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot-and how we can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 22

Celebrate Turncloak with LK Steven!

6.30pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Road

Join us for an in-person event with LK Stevens to celebrate the release of Turncloak, the sequel to Silvercloak.

Two decades ago, the Bloodmoons ruthlessly murdered Saffron's parents. Hellbent on revenge, she lied her way into the elite Silvercloak Academy of detectives with a single goal: find a way to bring the Bloodmoons to justice.

But on the eve of her graduation, her deception is exposed, and she's given only one option: go undercover and tear the Bloodmoons down from the inside. Descending into a world where pleasure and pain are the most powerful currencies, Saff must commit some truly heinous deeds to keep her cover - and her life. Not only are there rival gangs and sinister smuggling rings to contend with, there's also her growing feelings for the kingpin's tortured son, and curious prophecy foretelling his death at Saff's hand.

With each day testing her loyalties further, Saff's web of lies becomes harder to spin. And when one false step could destroy everything and everyone she's ever loved...the mage who dedicated her life to vengeance might just have to die for it.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £20/Ticket plus book bundle £29.99

September 22

Three poets at Lighthouse: launching Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Melete and Jay Gao’s The Dead One… with Agata Maslowska

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

There’s nothing we love more than a poetry night here at Lighthouse, and we’re delighted to be bringing you not one, not two, but THREE incredible poets as we welcome Jennifer Lee Tsai and Jay Gao’s new collections in the company of Agata Maslowska.

These poems cover themes of family history, migration, racial and queer desires, womanhood and war. They explore identity, belonging and place through each poet’s own voices - get ready for an evening of beautiful language and fantastic readings!

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14

September 22

Caitlin Moran: How To Be Hopeful

7pm, The Queen’s Hall, 85-89 Clerk St, Edinburgh EH8 9JG

One morning, Caitlin Moran woke up - and realised that she had reached Peak Despair.

And she’s not alone - in a world of worsening news, online fist-fights, and filthy rivers, it’s hard not to feel, well, terrible. Of course, in books, and movies, when the heroine faces such a crisis, she makes a seismic life-change: moving to a remote, ramshackle farmhouse; walking an ancient, 600-mile pathway; or reconnecting with her primal, joyful self by adopting a baby hawk, or hare.

But Caitlin’s new book, How to be Hopeful, is not that kind of book. She tried – but it turns out remote Welsh farmhouses are really expensive. No-one with a job can walk 600 miles. And it’s incredibly hard to get access to baby hawks in North London.

Instead, Caitlin decided to go on … a domestic quest. To see if she could stay in the same house, in the same neighbourhood, and the same awful modern world - but try to make better days. She left 800,000 followers on social media; eschewed 24/7 rolling-news for local newspapers; and sat on buses without headphones, to start listening to what people are really saying. Turns out they’re not, by and large, shouting hate-crimes at each other. They’re just working out whether to have chicken, or sausages for tea, instead.

Picking litter, donating blood, rewilding a garden, trying to understand where modern anxiety really comes from - slowly, all these things allowed for something that had felt impossible a year before: Caitlin learned to fall back in love with the world again.

How to be Hopeful is Caitlin’s story of how, over the course of a year, she realised that “waiting to feel hopeful again” just won’t work: being hopeful is a decision. It’s something - like laundry - you have to do. How To Be Hopeful is the diary of how one person started to do hopeful.

Ticket £34.45/Ticket plus book £46.55

September 23 - new listing

Folk Puddings of Ireland and Scotland at the Cookbook Shop

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Join Kate Ryan, author of Blood, Guts and Black Pudding, and Scottish Food Historian Peter Gilchrist for conversation and tasters - an evening of bloody good chat as we dive into the folk pudding traditions of Ireland and Scotland!

Scottish food historian Peter Gilchrist, of Tenement Kitchen, will be in conversation with Ireland-based author of Blood, Guts and Black Pudding: Ireland’s Dying Art of Blood as Food, Kate Ryan of Flavour.ie. They’ll discuss her book and the similarities in the blood as food and offal eating traditions of both countries.

Enjoy a tasting platter of Irish and Scottish puddings and debate which is best, all paired with locally made sips. We’ll conclude with a Q&A and author signing.

Tickets £27.80/Ticket plus book £44.04

September 23

An Evening with Alex Howard

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join bestselling author of The Ghost Cat, Alex Howard, as he chats to Lucy Ribchester about his heartwarming epic tale of adventure adventure, belonging and unexpected friendship, The Ship’s Cat.

When street-savvy London stray Archie accidentally stows away on a flight to Turkey, he’s just looking for shelter. But after stumbling onto a fishing boat in a quiet cove, Archie discovers he’s no ordinary feline - for with his polydactyl paws, he brings uncanny good fortune to vessels at sea.

From the sun-drenched harbours of the Mediterranean to the bustling decks of ocean racers, Archie becomes a legend among sailors. Yet beneath the viral fame and whispered tales of ‘the magical ship’s cat’, Archie yearns for something deeper: a forever-human who will love him not as a talisman, but as a companion.

It may be luck that drives Archie on this great Odyssey around the world, but love will be what calls him home - not to some place, perhaps, but to someone.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20

September 23

Derek Owusu for The Recovery House
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

From the Granta Best British Young novelist comes a new stunning mediation on faith, identity, music and the ties of friendship that bind us together.

Jamal, a gifted and introspective young poet, wakes in a quiet, claustrophobic recovery house after a devastating mental breakdown, unsure how the bright edges of his life became so fractured. In this stark yet strangely tender sanctuary, with its watchful nurses, restless corridors and overlooked garden, he encounters several wounded, but radiant souls who are each wrestling with their own invisible storms. As Jamal navigates this suspended world, at once suffocating and strangely sacred, he begins to observe rather than retreat, finding in the rhythms of shared cigarettes, half-finished conversations and midnight confessions a hesitant, flickering sense of belonging.

Within these intimate, volatile walls, music drifts like prayer. A song sung into the dark becomes a fragile lifeline. Psalms are read aloud with trembling conviction. Laughter erupts, unexpected and defiant. Jamal’s searching, philosophical mind moves restlessly between memory and imagination, literature and scripture, doubt and devotion, interrogating the porous boundaries between illness and inspiration. What does it mean to hear a voice and call it God, or art, or madness? What is salvation in a place built to contain collapse? In the charged silence of the garden, under watchful skies, he begins to sense that joy can exist even here, braided through grief, carried on melody, sustained by human touch.

Tender, intelligent and spiritually inquisitive, The Recovery House is a novel about the music that survives inside us when language falters, about the redemptive possibilities of friendship, and about the delicate courage required to rebuild a self. As Jamal reckons with love, faith, shame and the perilous seduction of turning life into art, he is forced to confront the most difficult question of all: how to live honestly in the world without sacrificing the soul that makes him want to write it.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 23

Up the Youth Club: Emma Warren illuminates a hidden history

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

A searching look and empassioned love letter to the youth club by renowned documentarian Emma Warren, highlighting the seismic impact they have had on UK culture and why we need to ensure their existence for future generations.

In Up the Youth Club, Warren maps the shifting story of youth clubs in the UK and Northern Ireland, from factory workers in Victorian Boys’ and Girls’ clubs to renegade self-emancipatory spaces in the 1970s and the music-generating youth clubs of more recent decades. With a mixed lineage in church evangelism, the patronage of the upper classes, grassroots’ DIY, and erratic state funding, the youth club has had a huge, yet almost invisible, effect on music, sport, culture and society.

Arguing that we cannot advocate for what we do not understand, Warren positions youth clubs as a kind of engine room - from the famous success stories to come out of their doors, such as The Specials or Stormzy, to the untold stories of young people finding shelter, sustenance and stimulation for over a century - and why their dwindling numbers, largely due to austerity and funding cuts, is of serious concern for us all.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £10.99

September 24

Queerphoria: a queer voices extravaganza

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

The inaugural collection in the new VERVE Voices series, Queerphoria is a joyful and defiant queer-authored anthology proudly supporting Switchboard, the national LGBTQIA+ support line.

We are so delighted to be welcoming VERVE editor Jenna Gordon in conversation with Elle Nash, Carrie Marshall and Seth Insua to the shop for a queer voices extravaganza celebrating Queerphoria!

Four housemates welcome the reader into their home for a birthday party. An elderly widow visits her first queer bar, beneath the flat she shared with her husband. A couple invite a shipwrecked sailor into their isolated lighthouse on the stormy night of their thirtieth anniversary. A single woman embarks on a romantic relationship with a sex robot. A married couple secretly prepare for their baby’s arrival in a world where procreation is controlled by the Establishment.

Through prose, poetry, essays, illustrations and more, thirty-one writers bring their visions of euphoria to life. These pages celebrate, subvert, expand and reimagine what joy can look like, even in uncertain times.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 24

Maryam Aslany, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge

Join Maryam Aslany as she discusses her extraordinary, out-and-out masterpiece of a book, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World. Maryam debunks the myth that peasants are backward and archaic, and her rigorously researched volume charts the history of this forgotten class and shows how reliant the world economy still is on their labour.

Peasants never disappeared – we simply stopped seeing them

For centuries, they fed empires, led revolutions and built modern states. Yet industrial modernity forced them into the shadows. Today, political and economic elites speak as if peasants are relics of the past, even though this two-billion-strong workforce grows a third of our food and sustains our landscapes, producing everything from supermarket staples to the most exclusive luxuries. Like Atlas, they hold up the modern world, yet the true story of how they shaped it has long been obscured.

Their story uncovers the hidden architecture of our global systems

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £25

September 24

C L Hellisen: The Shape of Monsters

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge

Join debut author, C L Hellisen as they chat to Annabel Campbell, about their gripping, haunting tale of dark magic, demonic possession and family secrets, The Shape of Monsters.

When a magical fire destroyed their family as children, Aleks and Vaira Kercheval escaped. Born to a world where power was everything, they’ve hidden from it all their lives. Then a letter arrives stating that Vaira has inherited Aubrey House, a decaying Gothic mansion full of dark, wild magic.

The estranged siblings haven’t spoken for years. But together, they return to their ancestral home, where crossing the threshold plunges them into a realm of shadows and ancient feuds. As the pair are drawn into a war between rival mages, the powerless Aleks accidentally summons and binds a monstrous prince from the Void – a creature of immense power. His gifted sister must learn to unleash her inner fire as the lines between human and monster blur. But can they survive the darkness that is to come?

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £20

September 24

Roshni Gallagher & Clementine Ewokolo Burnley

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

Join us for a special double-feature poetry launch event with Edinburgh-based poets Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley!

They will both be here to celebrate the publication of their brand new collections, Gallagher’s Even the Trees and Burnley’s Belling the Leopard, with poetry readings and conversation.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book bundle £24

September 24

Shiver Event with Brigid Lowe

6.30pm, St. Vincent's Chapel, St Vincent Street

After Brigid Lowe’s world is upended, Scotland becomes her home. Its icy, wild waters a place of visceral relief. Baptising herself into this new life, Brigid sets herself a challenge: to swim in 1,000 of these spectacular lochs.

And so Brigid’s adventures begin: stepping into ice and caves and sacred springs, she swims with birds, conger eels and seals, across forest and mountain and moor, alone and with her children in tow. And as she comes to know these secret pools, with their vaulting depths and softer shallows, she walks the line between recklessness and safety, discovering new depths of pain and pleasure, of strength and endurance.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 24

Victoria Aveyard for Tempest
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are thrilled to be welcoming YA superstar Victoria Aveyard, author of the Red Queen series, to Edinburgh for her first foray into adult fantasy in her new book Tempest.

MAY THE SEA ALWAYS SING FOR YOU

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all. But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor. A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 24

Andrew Pettegree for The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Join Andrew Pettegree to celebrate his wonderfully appropriate - and excellently written - book, The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling.

Bookshops are a comforting sight on our high streets, warm and welcoming spaces in which to browse, meet friends and occasionally buy books. They may feel timeless, yet their history is a restless and turbulent one, filled with as many entrepreneurial street hawkers and illicit trades as with beloved institutions. The Bookshop, from the celebrated author of The Library and The Book at War, explores the evolution of bookselling from the cramped collectors’ shops frequented by Samuel Pepys to the radical feminist bookshops of the 70s, the rise of monolithic chains and the new world of online selling. Connecting stories and lives that span centuries, countries and continents, The Bookshop brings us into beloved bookshops of today and looks forward to the possible experience of booksellers of tomorrow.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 25 - new listing

Palate Palette guided tasting at the Cookbook Shop

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Join Lish Steiling and Abby Cook (The Taste Curators) for an immersive tasting exploring the intersection of flavour, colour, and fashion.

The Taste Curators are a Brooklyn-based wife duo who inspire joy through the connections between food, fashion, and colour. Lish is an Emmy and James Beard award-winning culinary producer whose career began in restaurants before she became a food stylist and recipe developer for Food Network, The New York Times, and Gourmet magazine. Abbey is a trusted advisor to Fortune 500 companies, celebrated for her sharp visual eye and cultural storytelling. She serves as the US trend editor for Trend Bible and a design contributor for TABLE Magazine.

Inspired by their cookbook series, Palate Palette, which merges the flavour palates of food with the colour palettes of design, guests at this event will indulge in bites and cocktails developed to taste precisely like certain colours.

Note: All food and drink will be vegetarian, but unfortunately, we cannot accommodate any other dietary requirements at this particular event.

Tickets £33.22/Ticket plus book £54.88

September 25

Meet Victoria Aveyard!

12pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join the bestselling author of the Red Queen and Realm Breaker series, Victoria Aveyard, to celebrate the publication of the first instalment of her spellbinding romantasy, Tempest, which finds a woman living across two worlds face a devastating choice between home and heart.

From Sunday Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard comes an epic adventure of love and betrayal amid a brutal war for the high seas.

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all.

But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor.

A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Book plus ticket £25

September 25

Come What May, We’re Here to Stay: Taj Ali shares the story of South Asian resistance in Britain

6.30pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

British South Asians have a long tradition of radical political activism. For the first time, Taj Ali tells the inspirational story of how British South Asians organised against racism in the past and how they continue to fight in the present. Join us for the Edinburgh launch of Come what may, we’re here to stay.

‘A consequential recounting of a long and illustrious history of South Asian resistance and organising in Britain. It reminds us yet again of the vital importance of solidarity and alliances across race, religion and class in changing the world we share.’ -Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire

In Come what may, we’re here to stay, Taj Ali reveals how successive generations fought for rights, dignity and a sense of belonging while actively shaping the country they now call home. He shows that British South Asian political life has often been defined less by religious difference than by shared commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-racism. In pursuit of these goals, alliances have been forged with other movements, from Irish republicanism to Black Power.

As racism rears its ugly head again, Come what may, we’re here to stay asks: are we doomed to repeat the past or will we learn from our mistakes and build a better world together?

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 25

The New Ramsay Head Press Presents … Breathing New Life

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for an evening of poetry with Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt!

Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt are breathing new life into The Ramsay Head Press, the Edinburgh publishing house founded in 1970 by Norman Wilson responsible for producing volumes by leading poets such as Tessa Ransford, Alice Stuart and Charles Graves.

Mark used to be an accountant but, after 38 years, decided it wasn’t for him and started writing & performing what he describes as kitchen sink poetry. He’ll be reading from his recently published A Change of Direction.

Alice is a writer and artist and has been writing weird, warm, wobbly poems for five years now. She will be previewing The Warm Universe, a collection of her poems and drawings due out in October.

Breathing New Life is both a poetry event and a celebration of an Edinburgh publishing institution now reborn.

Free, but ticketed

September 25

Robert Barrington for Corrupted Kingdom
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Robert Barrington is Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at the University of Sussex. A leading authority on corruption, he was pivotal in the introduction of the Bribery Act and Unexplained Wealth Orders. He has advised the Ministry of Justice and the Cabinet Office, among many others.

Britain is complacent about corruption. We are used to thinking of ourselves as firm defenders of fairness and the rule of law. But our institutions have never been more corrupt, from scandals in parliament and local government to crises in housing and the NHS. The evidence is impossible to ignore. Political leaders face a clear choice: tackle corruption or continue on the road to decline. Robert Barrington is one of the world’s leading researchers on corruption. Corrupted Kingdom is his comprehensive examination of how corruption manifests in Britain, from politicians to prisons, the Monarchy and the Met. He assesses the origins of corruption, from Londongrad to the end of Empire, and shows how we can best reverse the decline and restore trust in politics and the democratic process. Vital and authoritative, Corrupted Kingdom provides an essential insight into why the abuse of power harms us all - and how we can banish corruption for good.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 25

Chris Broad for Journey Across Japan
7pm, Main Hall, Edinburgh Academy, 42 Henderson Row, Edinburgh EH3 5BL

Join us this autumn for an exciting new release from Chris Broad, the author of the number one bestselling Abroad in Japan!

Journey Across Japan takes us through the 47 unique prefectures of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Japan is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, with millions flocking there every month to follow the same cookie-cutter itinerary.

But beyond the well-trodden tourist trail lies a country made up of forty-seven unique prefectures. Each one has its own story to tell, shaped by centuries of squabbling lords, impenetrable topography and a fierce local pride.

On his quest to show the world that there’s so much more to Japan than Tokyo and Kyoto, Chris Broad has visited all of forty-seven prefectures himself. Now, in Journey Across Japan, he takes us with him on an epic adventure that spans every corner of the country.

A collection of embarrassing stories, practical recommendations and hard-learned lessons, this book show us just how much each region has to offer, whether it’s a signature dish, a festival or a mildly terrifying mascot.

From flying a plane over Japan’s most active volcano to exploring perfectly preserved Samurai districts, this guide will encourage readers, whether you’re a Japan neophyte or a seasoned veteran, to carve out your own story in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 28

Sharon Blackie for Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

Dr Sharon Blackie is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of If Women Rose Rooted, and a psychologist with a background in mythology and folklore. Her work is focused on reimagining women’s stories, and on the relevance of myths and fairy tales to the personal, cultural and environmental issues we face today.

Ripening is a life-changing new book on the power and relevance of fairy tales, and their heroines, to help us thrive in these challenging times

‘Fairy tales matter because at the heart of every one of them is transformation.’

In a world in which all the old certainties seem to be crumbling, it’s hard not to feel we have lost our way. In Ripening, Sharon Blackie insists that fairy tales are precisely the stories we need for such times.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 29

Broadchurch-creator Chris Chibnall for The Parkwood Murders
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Detective Nicola Bridge returns in the thrilling new novel from Chris Chibnall, creator of Broadchurch and showrunner of Seven Dials, and Sunday Times bestselling author of Death at the White Hart.

For its many repeat customers, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven - an idyllic woodland, a tranquil lake, customer service around the clock. Until, just before dawn the day after midsummer, a body is found in the resort’s swimming pool .

Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted from late nights worrying about her increasingly errant teenage son, faces an endless stream of potential witnesses. But as she speaks to the guests and staff, she soon uncovers an interconnected web of secrets and lies.

Was the killer the guest who lied to his wife about where he was that night?

Was it the arrogant high ropes instructor who’s unable to explain his recent scars?

Or might it be the new resort manager, an impeccably put-together woman with a very big secret

With hundreds of restless guests and staff on site, Nicola knows the clock is ticking to find the killer before they disappear for good.

Or before they strike again...

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 29

An Evening with Mairi Kidd

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are greatly looking forward to welcoming bestselling author of Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month The Specimens, Mairi Kidd, as she chats to Lucy Ribchester about her gripping tale of suspicion and sacrifice in 17th-century Scotland, Newes of Witches.

Rural Scotland, 1629. Amidst the bogs and oat fields, children are going missing, and others seem to have fallen under a malevolent spell. When a young serving girl is imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft, it falls on healer and midwife Mòrag to uncover the truth behind the matter.

However, investigation only raises more questions, and soon a violent truth comes to light which threatens to upend local life. As tensions in the community reach a fever pitch, allegiances shift, lives unravel, and Mòrag struggles to save the life of an innocent girl. But in a village gripped by fear and paranoia, this may demand the greatest sacrifice of all.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20

September 29

Alice Strang for The Scottish Colourists: Art & Life
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Samuel John Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell - a set of radical artists who enlivened the Scottish art scene with the fresh vibrancy of French Fauvist colours.

This new book by former Senior Curator of the National Galleries of Scotland, Alice Strang, brings a fresh look at the fascinating and international lives of the four artists by bringing together both popular and rarely seen imagery along with new research.

Despite only exhibiting together on three occasions in their lifetimes, and the term ‘The Scottish Colourists’ being coined retrospectively, the four shared much common ground. They were all born in Scotland in the 1870s, and at various different times each visited France to experience the burgeoning avant-garde scene, returning to Scotland brimming with new ideas. The influence of French painting - from Manet to the Impressionists, Matisse to Cezanne - stayed with them all.

Each of the Scottish Colourists achieved recognition during their lifetimes but fell out of favour by the Second World War, before being rediscovered in the 1950s. By the 1980s, they were widely recognised for their contribution to Scottish art, breathing new life into the scene, and leading the way for the next generation of artists.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £24.99

September 30

Queer Showcase: a night of Northern talent

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Featuring Alessandra Thom, M K Hardy and Chloe De Lullington.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 30

An Evening with Marina Hyde

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh

We’re excited to welcome Marina Hyde to celebrate the publication of her latest essay collection, What a Time to Be Alive!: Scenes from a Strange Age. It’s a wildly funny collection from Britain’s favourite columnist, Sunday Times bestselling author and co-host of The Rest is Entertainment.

Hyde will be in conversation with comedian and writer Frankie Boyle.

So lettuce remember Liz Truss, relive the last days of the Tories, meet the guy they called No-Drama Starmer, and succumb to hyper-resistant superbug Nigel Farage. Travel stateside to meet our supranational Silicon Valley overlords, Donald Trump and his cavalcade of henchmen – then head for infinity and beyond with Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos. Experience testing times for misunderstood men in television, create wonder in every moment with Meghan, and relive the horror of the Gwyneth Paltrow ski massacre trial. Truly, these are times that make you want to put your hands over your eyes, even when your hands are already over your eyes. The only thing to do is read Marina Hyde and howl with laughter.

Tickets £18/Ticket plus book £22

October 1

Humza Yousaf with William Dalrymple for Under Fire
7pm, Tollcross Central Hall, 2 W Tollcross, Edinburgh EH3 9BP

When Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, got a call from Gaza on the morning of 7 October 2023, he feared the worst. His wife’s parents, Elizabeth and Maged, had been visiting the Palestinian territory to see Maged’s sick Palestinian mother. Now, after the Hamas terrorist attack, they were caught in Israel’s furious onslaught.

Under Fire tells the story of Yousaf’s month-long nightmare as he tried desperately to get his in-laws out of Gaza and back home to Dundee. With the British government ignoring his pleas for help, he had to coordinate with other countries to get Elizabeth and Maged across the Rafah border into Egypt. While supporting his wife and children as they waited for daily updates from Elizabeth on her battle for survival, Yousaf also had to lead the whole of Scotland - as well as reassure the nation’s traumatised Jewish community. All while responding to online attacks.

As well as documenting his in-laws’ escape from Gaza, Under Fire also tells the story of how a son of immigrants grew up to become the first Muslim leader of a Western European country. Yousaf also tells of his fears on the rise of far-right populism and how to combat the forces that seek to divide us. The book draws back the curtain to give an honest account of how true leadership means reconciling personal loyalties with public duty, and how, in a world riven with conflict, it is more important than ever that leaders under pressure maintain their humanity and empathy for all.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

October 1

Jordan Prosser: Blue Giant

7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, South Bridge

We are delighted to be welcoming author and screenwriter Jordan Prosser, as we celebrate the publication of his vibrant, whip-smart, new novel about one woman’s quest to make her mark on the world, Blue Giant.

Planet Earth is cooked. Abby Horne wants off.

Abby always believed she was destined for great things. But her dream career as an industry-disrupting fashion designer went up in smoke, and her aspirations to become a world-renowned yogi and/or save the endangered tigers proved equally fruitless. She’s in her early thirties, suffering the unbearable burdens of adulthood and anonymity, when she wakes up after a drunken bender with an all-new, all-consuming purpose in life: to be the first person on Mars.

Perfect timing – Danish tech entrepreneur Tor Skovgaard is currently recruiting for a one-way mission to colonise the red planet. Abby knows this is it: her last-ditch bid for fame and glory. And if she can’t be humanity’s saviour… she’ll settle for being its martyr.

Blue Giant is a deranged love letter to a generation torn between helplessness and selfishness – an anthem for anyone who’s ever paused their doom-scrolling to ponder their place in the vast universe.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

October 1

The Medicine Tree: Nick Hayes on repairing our rotten roots

7pm, The Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Early one September, Nick Hayes brought his houseboat up the Thames into rural Oxfordshire, mooring opposite a strange tree that towered over the surrounding meadowland. The tree, he would discover, was a hybrid of the eastern cottonwood, brought back from colonial Canada. The land was the Hardwick estate, whose apparently timeless tranquillity – like so much of the English countryside – masks a darker history. Yet Hardwick also tells another, quite different story.

Over the following months, Hayes learns that its rolling hills and fertile valleys are on the front lines of a battle between ownership and belonging. Through a golden autumn, and the frosts and floods of winter and early spring, Hayes explores an estate that, acknowledging the colonial origins of its wealth, has become a haven for those who are both unable and unwilling to be part of a countryside geared towards profit at any cost. Living and working among this extraordinary community of farmers and craftspeople, Hayes contemplates what we have lost in England, as our sense of kinship with the land, and the deep knowledge that arose from it, was destroyed.

Yet, Hayes suggests, if we can learn from the cultures we have exploited, and from the tentative roots being put down in this radical Oxfordshire estate, perhaps we can start to unpick – and even re-enchant – our relationship with the land. The Medicine Tree is a singular act of storytelling and recovery: of giants, gods, witches, trees, horror and hope, of entanglement, reparation and solidarity.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £25

October 2

Patricia Nilsson for Guilty Pleasure: The Pornification of the Internet, the Economy, and Everything Else
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This is the story of one of the most influential - and least examined - industries on earth. Worth billions of dollars, and commanding a tenth of global internet traffic at peak times, it has quietly reshaped our world: it has transformed technology, work, culture, love and relationships, and even our sense of self. Most industries of this scale make daily headlines. This one rarely does.

In Guilty Pleasure, investigative journalist and FT reporter Patricia Nilsson turns her attention to an industry few have dared to confront, and tells the story of pornography in the online age. Drawing on more than five years of reporting, Nilsson reveals how the internet turned the business of erotic art into something else entirely: a vast, secretive industry dominated by obscure owners, platform logic and profit at almost any cost. She traces how porn helped to shape the online world, and then spilled far beyond it - restructuring everyday life and saturating society with its logic of stimulation, self-soothing and craving.

Whether we consume it or not, Nilsson argues, we are living in the world pornography made: one in which our desires and anxieties are relentlessly monitored and manipulated by unaccountable forces. And because this industry has escaped meaningful scrutiny for so long, the power to regulate it has increasingly fallen to political extremists and payment companies. The result is a system that has quietly revolutionized everything, while remaining - until now - hidden from view.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £25

October 2-4 - new listing

Portobello Book Festival

Programme coming soon…

October 3

Celebrate The Sweetest Fiend with Raven Kennedy!

6.30pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Road, Edinburgh

It’s time to pay the Piper. Our world cracked open like an egg. Power burst out, and with it, nine monstrous Banes ready to destroy everything. The powerful Core fae finally slayed them all, but each Bane left a Plague to punish us. But that’s not the only thing they left behind. I’m half Bane, half fae, and wholly hated.

Survival means enduring every vicious glare and cursed outbreak. Until one day, a Plague descends upon my city that means certain death. Then he comes. The Pied Piper. He rids my city of the Plague, but it comes at a cost. One hundred and thirty people are taken as payment.

Including me. I don’t know what he’s going to do to us, but I know I have to get home. My family’s lives depend on it. But the Piper won’t let me go, and something wicked stirs between us. The sweet scent in my veins beckons him, while the seductive lure of his magic sinks under my skin. I have to escape before it’s too late.

Because if I don’t, it’s not just my heart at risk. . .

But the entire world.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £22

October 5 - new listing

Sean Hewitt for Open, Heaven
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

When James meets Luke, everything changes - an exhilarating tale of hidden desire and sudden freedom in the wild countryside.

James dreams of another life far away from his small village. Almost an adult, his newfound desires threaten to unravel his shy exterior. Then he meets Luke. Unkempt and handsome, charismatic and impulsive, he has been sent to stay with his aunt and uncle on a nearby farm.

With the passing seasons, a bond emerges between them that transforms their lives. Yet James is never sure of Luke’s true feelings and as the end of summer nears, he has a choice to make: will he risk everything for the possibility of love?

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £9.99

October 5 - new listing

Owen Jones for The Fall of the West
7pm, Tollcross Central Hall, 2 W Tollcross, Edinburgh EH3 9BP

Born in Sheffield and raised in Stockport, Owen Jones is one of the UK’s most prominent political thinkers and writers. He is the author of the critically acclaimed No. 1 bestsellers The Establishment: How They Get Away With It and Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class; his books have been translated into 10 languages. He writes regularly for the Guardian, and has two weekly web series, The Owen Jones Show and The Owen Jones Podcast.

Almost everywhere we turn these days, there’s talk of a West in decline. Our jobs, our values, our past are all under attack, in the face of which we have become immersed in self-loathing, gone weak at the knees: the West needs to be Made Great Again. We know where this toxic narrative comes from: the nationalist, nativist Right. And now it’s gone mainstream.

The thing is, the West is in decline, self-evidently so. But the truth is that it’s not migrants or Muslims or a woke mob which has brought the West to the edge of catastrophe. It’s good, old-fashioned hubris.

In this blistering new book, Owen Jones explores how, amid the triumphalist sugar rush that came with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West came to believe that its rule, its economic order, its moral values, would endure for ever - and how, over a quarter-century, this brittle self-mythologising narrative collapsed in on itself. From Afghanistan and Iraq, to the economic crash of 2008 and Gaza today, he takes us on a journey to show how the West went from scoring what it believed was its final victory, to being engulfed in an existential crisis of its own making. And how, along the way, it fashioned an ugly new story: that this was the fault of the most vulnerable groups in society, rather than a power-hungry, venal ruling class.

Today, as the Atlantic alliance struggles to hold itself together, The Fall of the West exposes how a generation of Western elites bent on power and self-enrichment at any cost fatally overreached itself, and argues that, if we are to find the solutions to our age of crisis, we must first understand the real reasons for how the West lost it.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

October 6 - new listing

Charlie Higson for King Zero: A James Bond Novel
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

This October Charlie Higson joins us to discuss his return to the world of Bond, King Zero. Charlie understands what people want from Bond — from ingenious gadgets to a mysterious and terrible villain to a world threatening conspiracy — and has imagined every element in the modern day. The result is a blockbusting, cinematic, jet-setting read with the theme of power at its heart: who has it, what it looks like in the age of self-driving cars and AI, and what it would look like if the balance of power was threatened on a fundamental level...

Le Chiffre. Dr No. Goldfinger. James Bond has faced them all. But now the world is changing, and even 007 has no idea what’s coming for him...

It starts with a murdered agent in the Saudi desert. Only a traitor could have known enough to bring him down. But even James Bond can’t guess at the secret that was worth killing him to keep.

As Bond follows the trail across the globe, he doesn’t realise the countdown has already begun. And hiding in the shadows is a man with more power than he could ever have imagined. Prepare for a villain unlike any before.

Prepare for KING ZERO.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

October 6 - new listing

Aonghus MacKechnie for Edinburgh: City of Romanticism

7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Professor Aonghus MacKechnie joins us this October to discuss Edinburgh: City of Romanticism.

Romanticism made Scotland famous. It critically shaped the course of Scottish culture, while impacting on cultures elsewhere and inaugurating the country’s still-flourishing and lucrative tourist industry. This book is about Edinburgh’s most emblematic architecture over the long 19th century: the castellated and stone built cityscape of national revivalist architecture. It reveals why Scotland had by the 1820s become one of Europe’s great centres of Romanticism, due both to the majestic Highlands, and to Edinburgh itself as city of Romanticism. Additionally, Edinburgh developed as the main centre and hub for travellers drawn to Romantic Scotland through the work of James ‘Ossian’ Macpherson and Sir Walter Scott: visitors including Schinkel, Mozart, Verne, Turner, Haydn, amongst innumerable others.

The book also provides a long-overdue counterbalance to the contrastingly much-examined and much-published topic of Enlightenment Edinburgh, showing how this and Romantic Edinburgh have comfortably co-existed. It examines how Edinburgh’s Romanticism was similarly driven by intellectuals, amongst whom were Enlightenment figures and artistically talented individuals, and it discusses the legacy of those who contributed to the Romantic cityscape of today; an architecture that provides much of the character of the UNESCO-designated World Heritage Site and of the city that countless tourists come daily to see.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £35

October 6 - new listing

Waiting on a Friend with Natalie Adler

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Natalie Adler’s debut novel depicts the haunting transition of New York’s East Village during the AIDS crisis, from queer avant-garde to gentrified graveyard - join us for an Edinburgh launch of her stunning, genre-bending queer novel Waiting On A Friend.

Both heartbreaking and healing, tragic and triumphant, Waiting on a Friend is a magical retelling of queer history and a celebration of youth and camaraderie. With pathos and humour, empathy and an edge, Natalie Adler freshly reimagines the past for a new generation, reclaiming the spirit of resistance and determination that would become one of the era’s defining legacies.

East Village, summer of 1984. Renata is a young dyke-about-town who has the ability to see ghosts, which has been happening more and more frequently as her friends have started dying of what has recently been named AIDS.

So, when her best friend Mark dies, she assumes she’ll see him again. There’s no way Mark wouldn’t give her a chance to say goodbye, would he? But to her disappointment – and increasingly, her concern – Mark doesn’t appear.

Renata has other problems, too. A mysterious, police-like force has begun ridding their East Village neighbourhood of anything abnormal or inexplicable. At first, she’s sure they’re scam artists, but it becomes clear they’re actually trapping ghosts. With her band of lovably eccentric pals and lovers, Renata is determined to fight back against the erasure of her friends’ memories and the sanitizing of her beloved New York.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £16.99

October 7 - new listing

Rachel Harrison for Kiss Slay Replay
7pm, Voco Royal Terrace, 18 Royal Terrace, Edinburgh EH7 5AQ

The month of horror is upon us, and to celebrate, we welcome one of the most interesting voices working in the genre. Rachel Harrison has established herself with her scathing feminist novels of werewolves, witchcraft, and now most frightening of all: weddings!

Will this nightmare ever end?

It’s the picture-perfect wedding weekend-the venue is dreamy, the weather is beautiful, love is in the air, and Willa Sullivan is having a bad time. She’s excited to celebrate her best friends finally having the big wedding they always wanted, but this is the first time she’s seeing her ex-fiance in months, and he brought a date. Everything feels off, like she stumbled into an alternate universe. But things start to look up when Willa meets Danny, the groom’s charming and single childhood best friend. When they sneak off together, their rendezvous is interrupted by a masked killer terrorizing the reception. Willa and Danny fight to save the ones they love and survive the night, but the killer is unrelenting. A final girl Willa is not.

Or is she? She wakes up and it’s the morning of the wedding. She just had the most intense nightmare of her life. Only as the day unfolds, there are some uncanny coincidences that make her question if it was really a dream, deja vu, or something more sinister. After a horrifying turn of events, Willa comes to understand that she’s stuck in a loop of carnage and terror that she must learn how to escape or suffer a fate worse than death-being an eternal wedding guest.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £9.99

October 7 - new listing

Celebrate Burn of the Everflame with Penn Cole!

7pm, Christchurch Morningside, 6a Morningside Road, EH10

The highly anticipated and never-before-published final book in Penn Cole's BookTok sensation slow-burn, epic romantasy series following one woman who must risk everything to save her family - and all of mortalkind!

War has overtaken Emarion.

In the north, Ophiucae and his army of bloodthirsty mortals seek to eradicate all Descended from the continent. In the south, the Guardians of the Everflame lie in wait, plotting a rebellion generations overdue. In Lumnos, Realm of Light and Shadow, the Crowns are gathering.

Caught between two deadly foes, they must form an unlikely alliance to save their people. But the Crowns have a secret-and a heart without its mate will burn the world down to fulfill its fate. Hatred reigns.

Hope seems lost. With the future in darkness, can a flame emerge to bring the light?

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £12.99/Ticket plus book bundle £45.96

October 7 - new listing

Ibtisam Azem - The Sleep Thief

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We are overjoyed to be hosting Ibtisam Azem for the Edinburgh launch of her highly anticipated forthcoming book, The Sleep Thief. Our booksellers loved her wildly successful The Book of Disappearance last year, and we can’t wait to share this one with you all!

‘Sleep thief is what the interrogator called me. I’ll never forget that. I would steal a few seconds of sleep so I could remain steadfast before them. The name stuck; I even dreamt about it, the same dream, night after night. I woke up not knowing what to do and drenched in sweat.’

The experimental first novel from International Booker-Prize longlisted Palestinian author Ibtisam Azem, The Sleep Thief follows the life of Gharib (“the Stranger”) Haifawi as he comes of age, is drawn into resistance, makes friends, meets lovers, pushes back against traditional values, longs to be free of the labels and expectations that burden him, rails against the commodification of suffering, and dreams of a Palestinian identity that will transcend sorrow. Translated by Sinan Antoon.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £14.99

October 7 - new listing

David McCloskey for London Station
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

What if the CIA and British intelligence began spying on each other? This is the question at the heart of David McCloskey’s thrilling fifth novel. A new US Administration has taken office, installing a brash and unconventional CIA Director determined to disrupt the Agency and sceptical of its close relationship with their cousins across the Atlantic. Case officers, including newly installed London Chief of Station, Artemis Procter, must now navigate a tense environment as old friends become adversaries and no one knows who to trust. When agents run by both services begin dying, Procter and her team at London Station must decide whether loyalty to the Mission and their friends means disobeying the Agency they serve.

Immersing readers in the technological revolution upending intelligence tradecraft, David McCloskey’s brilliant new thriller depicts the nuts-and-bolts mechanics of how CIA and MI6 collaborate and explores what happens when politics threaten to destroy the ‘Special Relationship’ between America and Britain.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

October 8 - new listing

Pulitzer-Prize Winning author Benjamin Moser for Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

A sweeping and revelatory history of the hidden tradition of Jewish thinkers who opposed Zionism from Pulitzer Prize winner Benjamin Moser.

In Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History, Benjamin Moser uncovers a suppressed tradition that has shaped Jewish thought for generations. Through a cast of artists, rabbis, poets, lawyers, activists, journalists and politicians - from Europe and Africa and Asia and Latin America - Moser traces a lineage of Jewish dissenters who confronted Zionism’s moral and political stakes - often at devastating personal cost, including censorship, exile and death.

Their lives form a sweeping, global narrative that dismantles a powerful myth: that anti-Zionism is synonymous with antisemitism. Spanning continents and centuries, these voices - people from the right and the left, Reform and Orthodox, Ashkenazic and Sephardic, men and women, gay and straight - differ sharply in belief and background, yet converge on a shared warning about the consequences of a nationalist project built on exclusion. What emerges is not only a rediscovered tradition of Jewish moral thought, but a startling reappraisal of Zionism itself.

Moser’s work restores the full scale and depth of Jewish ethical imagination, affirming that Judaism is older and larger than any single political project. Lucid, unsparing and deeply humane, Anti-Zionism cements Moser’s place as one of our foremost Jewish writers and presents a framework through which this history - and its meanings - will be understood for years to come.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

October 8 - new listing

An Evening with David Shrigley

7.30pm, Traverse Theatre, 10 Cambridge St, Edinburgh EH1 2ED

We are thrilled to welcome cultural icon David Shrigley to Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre for this very special evening event to celebrate the publication of his brand new book, Creative Writing. Shrigley will be in conversation with Edinburgh Makar, Michael Pedersen.

The cultural icon is back: but this time, with no illustrations. Creative Writing is a thoughtfully designed, black and white book of David’s comic writing - pure words, pure joy, pure Shrigley.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £25

October 8 - new listing

Snakes, Spies, and Subterfuge: In Conversation with V.L. Bovalino & Hannah Kaner
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

It is the year of secrets, spys, and scheming in Fantasy, and we’re over the moon to be celebrating the very pick of the bunch. Join us as we welcome V.L. Bovalino (Second Death of Locke, Not Good For Maidens) and Hannah Kaner (Godkiller) to answer questions around all things vengeance and espionage, with some very complicated romantic relationships along the way!

The Thief and the Traitor Bride:

A ruthless spy. A deadly mission. A thief who could ruin it all.

Nore Gordon is a woman of many talents: she can speak a variety of languages, disguise herself in plain sight, and has made a name for herself as a successful wine merchant. But unbeknownst to those closest to her, it is all a front for Nore’s true role as the favoured spy of the Lindle crown.

Tasked with infiltrating enemy lands in search of a powerful relic, Nore is forced to engage the services of a great thief. Unfortunately, the only person for the job is her estranged husband Caspian. Both Nore and Caspian bear the scars of the disastrous end of their marriage, but if they are to survive their deadly new assignment, they must pose as a happily married couple to avoid detection.

As danger closes in, Nore finds herself tangled in a web of lies and deceit-and though Caspian is at the centre of it all, she may not hate him as much as she once did. But Caspian has betrayed her before, and trust can be far more deadly than deception.

A Snake Among Swans

For the queen to rise, the swans must fall.

Tilde has always heard the whispers of the kithwood, the voices of her ancestors speaking through the mysterious forest of her homeland.

But now both the kithwood and her kingdom are in danger.

For Tilde is the only surviving heir of a conquered land. To unite the people and finally stop the bloodshed, she marries the ageing warlord, King Liran. Her duty is to bind their nations and bear him a son.

But the swan king’s court is dangerous. Tilde is a threat to the claim of Liran’s older sons, who will do whatever it takes to remove her, to the princess Elise who has only ever known loyalty to her family, and to the priests who own them all.

Yet none of them know that Tilde is a snake in their midst, with allies on her side and dark, forbidden power of her own. She wants her kingdom back, and she will sacrifice everything to claim it.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

October 8 - new listing

Poetry: Tom Branfoot launches Volatile with Nat Raha & Anthony Vahni Capildeo

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Tom Branfoot’s debut poetry collection explores nature during a time of political crisis, drawing its title from the Middle English use of ‘volatile’ to name birds and other winged creatures. Pulling apart what it means to dwell, habitat loss appears synonymous with eviction, and birds become fellow travellers in our precarious present. Produced as a part of a residency at Manchester Cathedral, the long poem “Muminent” is threaded throughout the book engaging with the earliest recorded history of Manchester to consider the body as an archive at risk of disappearance.

Featuring the Forward Prize for Best Single Poem shortlisted “A Parliament of Jets”, these complex, formally daring poems are concerned with the entanglements between personhood, global catastrophes, and ecosystems. These poems swoop between the unpredictable relationship between a son and their alcoholic parent, fighter jets soaring over the Lake District, and the mercurial rustle between memory and truth when childhood is stored in waterlogged pastures.

Volatile reaches out in solidarity to the dispossessed everywhere who still sing in the wreckage of the now.

Tickets £4

October 9 - new listing

Jojo Barr for No Place Like Home
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

With over two decades of experience, interior designer Jojo Barr (Founder and Creative Director of House Nine) is passionate about crafting authentic and timeless interiors that people can actually live in. Drawing on House Nine projects, and complete with stunning full-colour photography, Jojo shares her human-focused approach to design, so you can create a home that is unmistakably yours.

Rather than prescribing a single style or aesthetic, Jojo breaks down the design process into clear, approachable ideas, exploring:

Flow and connection between rooms, and how this shapes the experience of moving through a home.

Designing with purpose, ensuring every space supports how you live.

The use of colour, tone and texture to build harmony while allowing each room its own personality.

How to balance cohesion and individuality so a home feels connected without becoming uniform.

Layering materials and finishes to add depth.

Creating lived-in interiors that embrace imperfection and evolve over time.

Structured to mirror the natural journey of creating a home - from early inspiration and planning to curating, living and sharing - this book pairs Jojo’s House Nine philosophy with real projects and photography designed both to inspire and enjoy.

Whether you’re redesigning a single room, rethinking your entire house or simply spending time with interiors you love, this book explores how to create a home that looks beautiful and works for the life lived inside it. A timeless coffee table book for real living.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £30

October 9 - new listing

Adalyn Grace for The Wretched Divine
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

Adalyn Grace returns to Edinburgh to talk about her first dive into adult fantasy, The Wretched Divine! It begins a sweeping medieval high fantasy series about an ancient war between angels and demons, and the mortal knight who is determined to end it at any cost.

Aurelie Chantelune was born to serve. Raised as a knight in a kingdom ravaged by demons, she’s spent her life honing her blade, driven by the memory of the monsters who tore her family apart and by the knowledge that she’s one of the few who can stop them.

If Aurelie can claim her first kill, she’ll inherit a legacy passed down through the Chantelune bloodline: a soulbond with Yuriel, an angel whose power is vital to her kingdom’s survival. But when those she loves begin turning into the very monsters she’s sworn to destroy, Aurelie is forced to seek help from the last place she ever imagined. Desperate, she forges a second and far more dangerous bond with Severin, a demon she can hardly trust, but who claims to know how to end the war for good.

With their lives and fates entwined, Aurelie, Yuriel, and Severin must team up to hunt down a cure capable of turning demons back into humans. But the more they learn about one another and the deeper their relationships grow, the more Aurelie begins to question the war and her place in it. With both of her bonded on opposing sides, she’ll have to make a choice: continue to stand with the angels, or risk everything by trusting a demon.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

October 10 - new listing

Joanne Harris in conversation with Kirsty Logan

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are delighted to be joined by the extraordinarily talented, bestselling author of Chocolat, Joanne Harris, as she chats to Kirsty Logan about the publication of her chilling winter ghost story, Sleepers in the Snow which tells the astonishing and powerful tail of the new occupant of an old house on the moor, which harbours a terrible secret.

Out on the moor, in the snow, a house stands beneath a pylon. It is a house full of memories, and full of old things. And, in the dark, when the pylon sings in the wind, it is a house full of ghosts and fading memories… The house, Kirkhill, has a new occupant - just moved in, fresh from a bitter divorce and looking for a fresh start. The moor is the perfect place for it: isolated, beautiful in the changing seasons, peaceful, and with just enough of the previous owners belongings that it’s a perfectly self-contained and cosy home. Only as the nights start to draw in, and the weather takes a turn, so does the house. The cosy isolation becomes menacing, animals begin acting strangely, and it seems someone could be watching the house…and the diaries of the previous owners begin to reveal a terrible tragedy which befell Kirkhill - one which its new occupant may be unable to escape…

Ticket plus book £25

October 11 - new listing

Strange Is The Light by Sarah Maria Griffin

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8LN

Join us in the bookshop for an evening with Sarah Marie Griffin, author of Eat The Ones You Love, to chat about her newest book, Strange Is The Light.

For Daphne McSharry, Valentia Island was a place of joyful childhood holidays: independence, adventure and playing with her beloved friends, Ronan, Leonie and Finn. They returned to one game of their own making year after year, and let their imaginations roam free.

But when the game is stolen from them by an outsider, it becomes something dark and strange, forcing Daphne to make a choice with a terrible cost. When tragedy brings her back to the island years later, she and her friends finally have to face the consequences of what she did. Daphne never took her final turn...

And there is a debt that must be paid.

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £9.99

But that’s not all

Coming up fast…

October

Rachel King, Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival, Terry Deary, Hernan Diaz, Ian Rankin, Aonghus MacKechnie, Sarah Clegg, Brigid Lowe & Gilly McArthur, Dr Jean Menzies, Julia Harding, Susie Dent, James Ellroy, Oz Clarke, Dorian Ravenscroft, Jess Elliott Dennison, VE Schwab, Simon Armitage, Pete Irvine, Bobuq Sayed, Alice Oswald, AT Emerald, Min Jin Lee, Yiyun Li, Jasper Fforde, Tim Downie, Dan Keeling, Annabel Campbell, Laurie Gilmore, Simon Garfield, Susan Stryker, Pierce Brown, Becky Chambers, Jordan Prosser, Erin Goeres, Travis Baldree, Taylor J LaRue, Rhian Elizabeth, Brigid Lowe and Anthony Shapland, Julian Sayarer, Sarah Maria Griffin, Martina Calvi, Iain MacGregor, Natasha Devon, Julian Sayarer, Chiara Bullen, AC Glass & Jack Jewers, Caroline Hirons, Pippa Perriam, Nicko McBrain

November

Radical Book Fair, Tim Hayward, Coinneach MacLeod, Irvine Welsh, Patrick DeWitt, Alexandra Shulman, Ragnar Jonasson, Jamie Gianoutsos, Mary Lawson, Louisa Young, Nick Harkaway, Jonathan Coe, Emily Wilson, Sabaa Tahir, Graeme Johncock (Waterstones), Rick Stein, Elif Shafak, Bonnie Garmus, Cody Dahler, Danielle L Jensen, Jodi Picoult, Elena Armas, Graeme Johncock (Golden Hare), Jeremy Lee, Caleb Nichols, Alice Loxton

January

Sue Brunning

I have nothing for you this week. The Book Festival has kicked off, along with all the other festivals - so just get out there and enjoy yourselves.

But there’s lots more coming in September and October - an absolute feast of book events. Hopefully, there’s plenty to tempt you. When you have a spare moment, scroll down the list and find something to look forward to as the evenings start drawing in.

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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

August 14-26

Book Fringe

What is Book Fringe?

The Book Fringe is our free, bookshop run, alternative August literary festival! Bringing in bookshops across the city to deliver a programme of events that highlight each bookshop’s personality.

Entirely run and curated by indie bookshops, Book Fringe offers readers the opportunity to meet world-class writers in the intimate and lively settings of local bookshops.

Led by Lighthouse, Book Fringe has been running for over a decade, each year reinventing itself just a wee bit while continuing to celebrate accessibility, community and creativity as only indie bookshops can!

Book Fringe at Lighthouse features events with Layla McCay, Lamble, Molly Tie, Scott Richardson-Read, Jean Menzies, Sofie Hagan, Frances Cannon, Mai-Anh Vũ Peterson, Gabriella Bennett, Amy Abdelnoor, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Meghan Kobza, Kojo Koram, Fatima Bhutto and Alfredo Carpineti.

Entry to ALL events is free: no tickets, no ticket booking (unless you want event reminders), just show up to discover some great authors.

Events are first come first seated, so try to come a bit early to guarantee a spot (and have a browse!)

August 15-30

Angela Jackson: When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr

5.30pm, Le Monde, George Street

Tickets £12.50

Award-winning novelist (The Emergence of Judy Taylor, The Darlings) Angela Jackson will be performing her fourth one-woman show at Le Monde on George Street as part of this year’s Fringe. In ‘When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr’ Angela explores the highs and lows of romantic love, through the songs of Julie London, the wisdom of history’s greatest thinkers, and the wit of iconic screenwriting legend Nora Ephron. If you want to know how a six-second kiss and a dance around the kitchen can change your life, and if you like your psychology and philosophy mixed up with a generous helping of sultry jazz standards, this is the show for you.

Tickets £12.50

August 15-30

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Pl, EH3

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is a charity which has been bringing outstanding writers and thinkers from around the world together with curious audiences for over forty years. We celebrate the power of words, examine pressing issues, shift perspectives, and create joyful experiences for those of all ages. Our programme sparks essential conversations about the world around us, our place in it, and how we can improve it, together. Making these discussions accessible to anyone is at the heart of everything we do, in August and beyond.

Here, a book is a beginning – of a conversation, of a better understanding, of a debate, of a memory. What happens next is up to you.

August 19

Stories & Songs with Bridge Too Far

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for a calm & cozy evening at Typewronger Books where you can browse, read, and relax as folk music duo Bridge Too Far serenade you!

Bring whatever you’re reading at the moment or see what strikes your fancy on the Typewronger shelves. Bridge Too Far (@bridgetoofarband on IG) is a folk music duo consisting of Jordan Goodwin and Sarah Conniff. There will be guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and lots of vocal harmonies!

Free but ticketed

Upcoming events

And for those who like to plan ahead…

August 24

Luke Healy - Dogs on Dates

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

The Portobello Bookshop is excited to announce a very special August event for Luke Healy’s graphic novel Dogs on Dates! Luke is a comedian, cartoonist, and screenwriter from Dublin. We’re lucky that he’ll be in town doing his Fringe Festival show, and will be coming to the bookshop for a celebration of his latest release.

Dogs on Dates is the charming, whimsical, touching tale of Bernie and Brad, two dogs who... go on dates, and run into a few obstacles along the way. It’s the gay rom-com we’ve all been waiting for!

Healy will be in conversation with fellow award-winning graphic novelist Steven Ingram, author of Holly, Burn With Me and the ongoing series MurMur. It’ll be a real joy to have two artists together on stage!

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 25

Anne Pia: A Month O Muins

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Celebrate the end of Edinbrugh festival season with a night of Scots poetry with Anne Pia reading from her new collection, A Month O Muins.

From un mariage á trois, breast feeding kittens, rumpus at the Baptismal font and otherworldly lovemaking; with a whiff of Mozart’s Queen of the Night; faint aromas of Baudelaire; a hint of Dante’s selva oscura and Orpheus who tragically did look back, A Month O Muins Anne Pia’s new poetry collection in Scots is an often humorous, wry, subversive and consistently tender versioning of the poems and songs of the iconic, widely celebrated singer-songwriter, Georges Brassens: the “Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen of France”.

In this her third poetry collection, she takes inspiration and “courage” from Brassens in order to express her own deeply held views on society, her questioning of its norms and expectations; and the quiet dignity and beauty of originality and challenge to accepted norms; the natural world; the unsung, unoticed and little celebrated, in a world dominated by icons of capitalism, privilege and power.

Free but ticketed

August 29

Author Talk With Rebecca Tamas - The Book Of Mysteries : Wild Time And The Ritual Year

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 8LN

Join us for an evening in the bookshop with Rebecca Tamas to celebrate her newest release The Book of Mysteries : Wild Time and the Ritual Year.

At festive gatherings celebrating summer’s peak, in reflective moments as winter gave way, Rebecca Tamás began to hear another rhythm. A faint hint that, underneath the rush of clocks and calendars, another, richer kind of time might exist.

As she suffered from grief and burnout, Tamás sought a deeper connection to the movement of the seasons through an immersion in old folkways. She set out on a journey across the UK guided by the Pagan wheel of the year, marking each solstice, equinox and the midpoints between them with a ritual drawn from ancient traditions.

From a confrontation with the sharp pains of winter at Samhain in Edinburgh to a giddy experience of collective joy at Padstow’s May Day, she found in these traditional practices electric potential for transforming our relationship to the natural world.

Intellectually penetrating and richly lyrical, The Book of Mysteries follows the drumbeat of seasonal ritual towards an immersion in the wild time of the earth. Ecstatic, radical and irreverent, this book is a rallying cry to wrest time away from the structures of work and capital, so as to encounter the life-giving mystery of the natural world.

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 29

Bookshop Signing with Simone Soltani

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with sports romance author Simone Soltani!

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £9.99

September 1

Joe Wicks for Healthy Start
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

From the Number One Bestselling author of Protein in 15, Joe Wicks returns with a new collection of simple healthy recipes for all the family to enjoy.

We all want to make family mealtimes more enjoyable, with food that’s healthy and filling for everyone. But with picky eaters and the need to please different ages and tastes, it’s no secret they can sometimes be a challenge. With over 80 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, Healthy Start has everything you need to take the stress out of mealtimes so you can cook once and feed the whole family.

Packed with recipes that are quick to make, big on flavour and don’t rely on ultra-processed ingredients, Healthy Start is your go-to guide for fuss-free cooking that everyone will enjoy.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £22

September 2

Catherine Simpson for Sandwiched: Caring Up and Caring Down
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Catherine Simpson believed the hardest chapters of her life were behind her. She had raised two children - one of them autistic - and survived both a family suicide and her own cancer treatment. In her fifties, it was time to enjoy restoring her health, reducing work commitments, hanging out with friends and relaxing with her husband in their empty nest.

But when the global pandemic shut the world down, Catherine’s nonagenarian father’s independence began to slip away just as her adult daughter’s mental health spiralled into crisis.

Sandwiched is a candid memoir about being trapped in a high-pressure, intergenerational squeeze. It is a story of letting go of the superwoman myth, confronting the limits of control and responsibility, and trying to hold it all together while providing loving care.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 2

Robert Harris for Agrippa
7pm, Ps and Gs Church, 46 York Place, EH1 3HP

From the bestselling author of Conclave comes a new compelling book exploring friendship and power against the backdrop of Ancient Rome.

Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice.

Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, who he has made his heir.

The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.

To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire - and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.

When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 3

An Evening with Suzy Aspley and Elisabeth Wolf

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are delighted to be joined by Elisabeth Wolf and Suzy Aspley as they chat about their equally haunting, ominous and chilling Gothic mysteries, Winterbourne and The Bone Mother.

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 book lover’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 an unannounced visit from her employer, the enigmatic Lucien Broussard, Ann wonders what happened to the previous librarian when she finds notes hidden in the library’s ancient tomes. As echoes of the past start to reveal the house and Lucien’s dark secrets, suddenly Anne’s dream job becomes a living nightmare.

The Bone Mother

Martha Strangeways has settled into a quiet life in Strathbran, after the horrific events that traumatised the village a year earlier. But all this is turned upside down when her friend at Glasgow CID, DI Derek Summers, calls on her to help with a disturbing case: a human ear, with an unusual Celtic earring, has been found next to a railway line in the Highlands.

When the body of a young woman wearing matching jewellery turns up at a landmark church shortly after, the mystery deepens. Why has she been laid out in a ritualistic fashion? Does her trek along the little known Cailleach Way have anything to do with her death? And who is running the Facebook group where she posted details of her journey to the shrine of the Bone Mother goddess?

As Martha tries to unpick the threads, she finds herself entwined with a ghost from her own past, and in conflict with the owner of a project that threatens to destroy the goddess’s sacred land. With Halloween approaching, and someone determined to protect the goddess at all costs, can Martha and Summers catch the killer before they strike again, and this time much closer to home.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £13

(Full disclaimer, this is my own event as I write gothic novels under the pen name Elisabeth Wolf. But please don’t let that put you off - I’d love to see some of you there! AB)

September 3

James Fox - Craftland

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We’re thrilled to be hosting the publication day event for Craftland in paperback! James Fox’s journey through the British Isles to catalogue and celebrate artisan and heritage crafts has been a huge sensation since it’s release last year, and we’re excited to celebrate it with James in the shop.

James will be in conversation with Niamh MacKenzie, a PhD candidate working across the Highlands and Islands researching the arts, craftsmanship, and traditional practices. This promises to be a fascinating and insightful discussion, we can’t wait to see it!

Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our identities, built our communities and shaped our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life on these shores.

Travelling the length of Britain, from the Scilly Isles to the Scottish Highlands, James Fox seeks out the country’s last remaining master craftspeople. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bell-founders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life — one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could shape our future.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 3

Sabrina Ghayour for Persiana One
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

From the Queen of Middle Eastern cookery, Sabrina Ghayour, every recipe in Persiana One makes irresistible Middle Eastern flavours easier than ever in one pot, one tray or one pan.

From dips and bits that make snacking sublime to spectacular salads, and from easy everyday dinners to something a little bit more special, these are recipes designed with clever shortcuts that don’t compromise on flavour, to be as simple, and as kit free as possible.

With over 100 recipes, each accompanied by a photograph, this is a sumptuous gift for every cookery lover - who hates washing up!

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £28

September 3

Anna Deacon for The Wild Fix Scotland
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In The Wild Fix Scotland, writer and photographer Anna Deacon explores how the powerful connection between nature and wellbeing can help ease modern stress. Blending ancient wisdom with modern research, this beautifully illustrated guide is inspired by the elements of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air.

From wild swimming and forest bathing to mindful photography and seasonal living, Anna shows how aligning with nature can restore balance and calm, revealing why simply listening to birdsong or looking at images of nature can soothe the nervous system.

Featuring evocative photography of Scotland’s raw beauty, The Wild Fix Scotland is an uplifting companion to feeling better, living well and reconnecting with the healing power of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 4

Seren Hawley-Plows for The Ancient Ways
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This September we are joined by Seren Hawley-Plows for her debut book The Ancient Ways! It is a seasonal guide that uses myths, folklore and old rituals to help you reconnect with nature. Seren will even be giving us a demo of one of the rituals from her book.

Step into an ancient world of rituals and folklore in this stunning seasonal guide.

Tales of gods and goddesses told around a crackling fire. The light of the rising sun streaming through an ancient site on a solstice morning. Hot cider poured over the roots of apple trees to wake them for the spring.

Told through the pagan wheel of the year, The Ancient Ways explores how nature changes throughout the seasons, looking at solstices, equinoxes, legends, and festivals and how these stories and traditions can help you deepen your connection with nature. Discover megalithic sacred sites where crowds still gather to see the sun rise and fall through doorways of the past. Meet Eostre, goddess of the spring and dawn or the Cailleach, queen of winter and the Green Man, a personification of the wild. Celebrate festivals like Beltane, a summer celebration of fire and fertility or Samhain, the festival of the dead and precursor to modern Halloween.

Hedgewitch Seren Hawley-Plows weaves these myths and stories together beautifully with tools and inspiration of how to bring the power of ancient tradition into a modern world and help you find magic in the wilds of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Morvern Graham for Seasonal Folktales
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Embrace the changing seasons with local artist and storyteller Morvern Graham for a beautiful evening of illustrated myths and folklore.

In these magical retellings of classic Celtic and Nordic folktales, we journey from snowy mountain peaks to wild forests and stormy coastlines, as we observe the moon phases, find folkloric treasures and meet an array of strange and mysterious creatures. We’ll encounter sprites, trolls, mythic beasts and monsters - from the bramble boggle (a mischievous member of fairy folk who is said to have given blackberries their thorns) to the sea witches and selkies who roam the Northern shores.

Through the power of these stories we can light up our minds with a wild, child-like wonder, and reconnect our hungry souls to the natural rhythms of the shifting seasons.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Daniel Susskind for What Should My Children Do?
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

What should the next generation learn and what should they stop worrying about-in a world transformed by artificial intelligence?

AI is rewriting the rules in the classroom, the job market and the workplace, leaving parents, teachers, students and all types of workers unsure about how best to prepare for what lies ahead. In What Should My Children Do?, globally renowned economist Daniel Susskind cuts through the outdated advice to show us what young people actually need to succeed now.

We should not ban tools or discourage new skills that are in demand, Susskind argues, or cling to inherited ways of working. Instead, he reveals how people can master new technologies without eroding other essential skills. From reorganizing the curriculum to re-imagining white-collar careers, Susskind maps a smarter, more productive path forward.

This requires a fundamental mindset shift: we must embrace the extraordinary opportunities that AI brings-from personal tutors to scientific breakthroughs-rather than retreat from them. Drawing on fifteen years of research, this book is an evidence-based and practical guide to one of the most urgent questions of our time.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 8

Yotam Ottolenghi for Simple Too
7pm, McEwan Hall, The University of Edinburgh, Teviot Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9A

It’s a noisy world out there, so stop, take a minute or two, listen to the soup bubble or the egg crackle... and let simple cooking be your solution.

For the three million home cooks around the world who loved Ottolenghi Simple, Yotam and his co-author, test kitchen colleague Verena Lochmuller, set themselves the task to further pair down processes and ingredient lists, whilst keeping the vibrant, multi- layered, surprising signature flavours loved throughout the world.

Many of the dishes, such as Braised halloumi with tomatoes and beans, or Smoky tomato and feta prawns, are made in one baking tray, with no preparation at all, ready to put on the table in about 30 minutes. They’re for feeding family and friends or just yourselves; classics reimagined the Ottolenghi way using flavour-enhancing ingredients such as za’atar, tahini, harissa and garlic.

Bring Yotam Ottolenghi’s innovation to your everyday with 135 new recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Every dish has simplicity at its core and can be made in under 30 minutes, cooked in one pot, or prepped ahead. Whatever your barriers to cooking, this book brings you into the kitchen with a promise that even the simplest of meals can be full of flavour and joy.

Ticket plus book £30

September 9

Ten Poems about Edinburgh
7pm, Waterstones, West End, Princes Street

Join Michael Pedersen, Janet Ayachi, Majorie Lotfi and Dr Harriet McMillan, as we celebrate the publication of Candlestick Press’s glorious and lively mini-anthology, Ten Poems about Edinburgh, which reflects the many ways in which Scotland’s ancient capital city is loved by visitors and the people who live there.

There are poems celebrating the beauty of Edinburgh’s buildings and parks alongside others capturing moments in its long history and vivid life as a hub of art, music and literature. Throughout are the atmospheres created by its distinctive weathers and the proximity of the North Sea.

The pamphlet is a perfect companion for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the many riches of this special city. Introduced and selected by Michael Perdersen, the collection includes poems from Janette Ayachi, Robert Burns, Jackie Kay, Marjorie Lotfi, Edwin Morgan, Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Hollie McNish, Robert Louis Stevenson and Michael himself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10

September 9

Shorelines x Readers & Writers Against Genocide: a Palestine Solidarity Night

7pm, Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Join us to welcome Shorelines, the prize-winning non-fiction debut by Alycia Pirmohamed, into the world with a night of solidarity with Palestine.

Come on down to Bruntsfield’s gorgeous Pianodrome where we will gather around readings by Alycia, Hannah Lavery and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, as well as music from Miwa Nagato-Apthorp and Curlew (Gill Higgins), with all proceeds from tickets and on-the-night donations going to Writers and Readers Against the Genocide. These will be distributed between two funds: Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children’s Fund.

As a young Muslim woman, Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous. Her affinity to the natural world – the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood – conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents’ homeland – the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees – felt painfully distant.

Across interrelated pieces that travel from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.

Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations – and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Christopher de Hamel for The Migrants
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In the course of a long career at Sotheby’s and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably handled more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive and his delight and enthusiasm in them runs through all he writes.

His many books, translated into numerous languages, include A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize), The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket and The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club.

Christopher joins us for his astounding new book, The Migrants: A Memoir in Manuscripts. This is a coming-of-age saga with extraordinary twists, crossing many hundreds of years and tens of thousands of miles, recounted with passion, humour and a lifetime’s reflection.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 10

Colin Bramwell for Fetch
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

We are delighted to be welcoming an incredible local talent, Colin Bramwell, for the launch of his debut poetry collection, Fetch. Reading alongside him will be poets Michael Grieve and Jacob Polley.

Following his recent success after winning both the 2026 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize and the 2026 Highland Book Prize for his translation of Fernando Pessoa into Scots, Fower Pessoas, Bramwell returns with a debut collection that is sure to delight with its distinctive voice.

On Fetch: In Celtic folklore a fetch is a shadowy doppelganger that appears from the Otherworld, portending the beholder’s fate. Your fetch ‘fetches’ you to the afterlife, willingly or otherwise. Bramwell’s poetry uses the fetch as a model to explore a number of overlapping binaries – between the reader and the poem, most of all. Fetch also meditates on the differences between music and speech, the sacred and the profane, the written and the real, humanity and nature, Scots and English. Incorporating multitudes of modes, forms, registers and subjects, Bramwell converses with the Anglo-Celtic lyric tradition in our own time and in his own distinctively amiable fashion. In other words, this poet takes poetry seriously – but not too seriously.

Fetch is a tour-de-force debut from one of Britain’s most exciting new poets, in which reverence and irreverence, religion and faithlessness, the living and the dead, nearly rhyme.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 10

An Evening with Sebastian Barry

7.30pm, Nicolson Square, The Methodist Church, Nicolson Square, EH8 9BX

We’re excited to welcome Sebastian Barry to the Great Hall at Nicolson Square Edinburgh for a publication day launch of his new novel, The Newer World. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Old God’s Timeand Days Without End comes a lyrical, visceral novel about what it is to survive, and what might be lost along the way.

Barry will be in conversation with Peggy Hughes. He will be signing books following the event.

I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things . . . were gone forever.

The Newer World follows the life of Tennyson Bouguereau – freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man – as he journeys to find meaning and belonging in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

From the relative safety of home in Tennessee with his sister Rosalee, he is offered the possibility of a whole new life in Nashville, until a surprising trip to Victorian England changes everything.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Hollow’s Hauntology Event with Evelyn Hollow

6.30pm, St. Vincent’s Chapel, St Vincent Street, Edinburgh

Discover the hidden world of the supernatural and unexplained in this definitive guide to the world’s darkest wonders.

Hollow’s Hauntology is a richly illustrated compendium that uncovers how 80 legendary beings – from blood-drinking revenants to shape-shifting gods – have shaped storytelling across history. Across eight immersive chapters, the book explores humanity’s oldest fears and fascinations. Through this, paranormal psychologist and TV and radio presenter, Evelyn Hollow, brings a uniquely rigorous perspective, blending psychological methodology with cultural analysis.

She reveals how etymology shapes belief, how folklore reflects collective psychology and how overlooked myths still echo through modern culture. Hollow’s Hauntology invites you to discover what it means to be human beneath a vast and haunted sky.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £20

September 11 - new listing

Emily Cuddeford in Conversation with Cheryl Cohen

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

What happens when a celebrated baker starts again, from scratch?

Emily Cuddeford, formerly of Twelve Triangles bakery and co-author of Kitchen Table, her debut cookbook celebrating the producers she has worked with over the last decade, is building a new career at 38—publicly, one Substack post at a time. She’s building a bakery school, studio, and stoneground mill at her home in the Scottish Borders. Here, she’ll focus on how food is made and take control of what goes into her bread, who grows the ingredients, and how they treat the land.

Joining her in conversation is Cheryl Cohen—Queen of Markets, according to the Evening Standard—who spent over 20 years running London’s farmers’ markets, working directly with farmers and small producers. She writes weekly on Substack and has written for Good Food.

Together, they’ll explore Emily’s next steps in the baking world, why directly supporting small farms and independent businesses matters, and the difference it makes when we do.

Plus, they’re bringing samples!

Tickets £11.55

September 11

Bookshop Signing with Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy!

5pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with authors Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy. It’s your chance to get your books signed, meet Sierra and Julie and get a photo!

Tickets £2

September 11

Lucy Lapwing - Wildlife Walk

4.45pm, Modern Art Gallery One

Join BBC presenter, naturalist and self-described ‘nature nerd’ Lucy Lapwing for a Wildlife Walk along the Water of Leith to discover the wondrous wildlife that lives there.

The walk will set off from the Modern Art Gallery and down to the Water of Leith at 5pm and last approximately an hour.

The walk will take place before we sit down with Lucy to discuss her fantastic new book ‘Love is a Toad’ at 7.00pm. Please purchase your tickets for the talk separately HERE.

Tickets £15

September 11

Lucy Lapwing ‘Love is a Toad’ - Author Talk

7pm, Wild Fungarium, 13 Randolph Place, Edinburgh EH3 7TA

We’re super excited to have BBC presenter Lucy Lapwing here with us for an evening on the 11th of September. Lucy will be in store to discuss her wonderfully joyous new book, ‘Love is a Toad: Exploring our Relationship with Nature’

Lucy will also be hosting a Wildlife Walk at 5pm along the Water of Leith. If you are interested in attending the walk we recommend early booking as there are limited spaces. Tickets can be purchased HERE.

Nature makes us feel things. It sparks awe, curiosity and a sense of beauty and community. But as wildlife around us declines and disappears, murkier feelings rise up: guilt, detachment and fear for nature’s plight. For many years, Lucy Lapwing wrestled with these tangled emotions. So, in an attempt to make sense of this dance between joy and grief, she decided to go on a journey.

In Love Is a Toad, Lucy traverses meadows, bogs and hedgerows with her fellow nature enthusiasts, where she digs down into our relationship with the natural world. Over the course of a year, she meets bucketfuls of wildlife – Blackbird and Oak, slugs and puffballs, waterlilies, Dung Beetles and toads – as she roams across the UK.

From a river swim to wanders through woodlands, with every journey, Lucy explores how nature makes us feel, from wild grief and anger through to soaring joy and indefatigable hope. At once a celebration and an invitation to reflect, Love Is a Toad prods and pokes at our connection to the natural world, exploring its complexity in all its muddiness, messiness and wonder.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 11

Ed Conway for Trade World
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Ed Conway is a writer and broadcaster. He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and a regular columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. He has won numerous awards for his journalism and his book Material World was a Sunday Times bestseller.

From the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Material World, a story that will take you from ancient civilizations, empire and globalisation through to the most influential geopolitical issue of our times.

The story of trade is the story of humanity. From the copper in Mesopotamian ploughs to the silicon atoms within the chip inside your smartphone, intricate global trading networks have evolved over millennia to fulfil the distinctly human desire to buy and sell.

Today, the volume of trade bestriding the planet is unprecedented. Yet, as fractures in the global order emerge – from an era of globalisation and untrammelled flows of goods and money to a new world of restrictions, intervention and, possibly, war – understanding this fundamental shift to the dominant economic consensus is more important than ever.

Ed Conway tells this extraordinary story through these three commonplace products – bread, cloth and cars. With a compelling blend of economic history and first-hand access to key figures and institutions, he takes us from policy treaties to ground level to show us the people who make, ship and sometimes smuggle the products we buy on a daily basis.

Discover the hidden, shifting trade world behind everything you see around you.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 14

Ben Macintyre for Redwood
7pm, Greyfriars Charteris Centre, 138-140 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9RR

Ben Macintyre joins us to discuss Redwood, the remarkable, unknown Cold War story of how one spy saved the world from nuclear war.

The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.

‘Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets. For Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret, one that if revealed, would turn his life upside-down, and in a desperate situation, he reached out to MI6 – believing it to have the only solution. Soon facing exposure, he then demanded that the British try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan.

This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

September 14

An Evening with Jonn Elledge
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

For over 10,000 years, the human race has been busy altering our environment and embracing ‘progress’, evolving seamlessly from hunter gatherers to the modern urban sophisticates we see ourselves as today.

We are delighted to be joined by the bestselling author of A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge, as he delves into the inventions and innovations that contributed to our modern urbanised world in his latest endlessly fascinating and engagingly written volume, 31 Inventions that Built Our World.

Jonn, will be joined by acclaimed journalist and author, Gabriella Bennett, as they take us on a fascinating and often surprising tour of the ideas and technologies that made modernity possible. From elevators to electric lighting, parks to pedestrian crossings, he guides us through the history of civilisation itself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £28

September 15

The Fairy Spotter’s Guide: Elizabeth Dearnley on where to find banshees, Bigfoot and other creatures from folklore

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Watch your step. Not all fairies are friendly.

We’re so excited to be welcoming author Elizabeth Dearnley and illustrator Sarah Coleman for a double bill that will take you on a journey across continents and cultures as we uncover the origins of extraordinary folk creatures, from mermaids and bigfoot to shapeshifters and spectral hounds.

No matter where you are, you’re never far from a door to the Otherworld ... From the bloodthirsty baobhan sith of the Scottish Highlands to the mischievous trasgu creeping beneath your floorboards, the world is teeming with hidden, magical beings. The Fairy Spotter’s Guide is your essential companion for navigating the world of the uncanny.

Packed with more than 100 original, spellbinding illustrations and written by a leading expert in fairy tales and folklore, this is no ordinary field guide. Whether you’re a seasoned cryptid hunter or a curious newcomer, this beautifully crafted book will enchant, unnerve and utterly captivate.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

Cooks & Books: Claire Thomson for Dear Grace
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Dear Grace is a warm, wise cookbook written by chef and food writer Claire Thomson for her daughter as she leaves home for university. Claire began addressing Instagram posts to Grace, each pairing heartfelt advice and reminiscences with a recipe to nurture and comfort. This struck a chord with parents everywhere experiencing similar emotional highs and lows as they prepared to send their children off into adult life.

Each recipe begins with a note to Grace - advice about surviving deadlines, sharing meals, cooking for one, or navigating heartbreak - followed by an easy dish designed for small kitchens, tight budgets and busy schedules.

Through memories and stories of family and food, Claire perfectly captures the bittersweet moment of watching your child begin their independent life - and the comfort of knowing they can feed themselves and their friends with confidence, creativity and care.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £24

September 15

Pulitzer-Prize Finalist Daniel Mason for Country People
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

This autumn, Daniel Mason - Pulitzer Prize finalist and bookseller favourite - returns to the bookshop to discuss his latest novel, Country People. Funny, adventurous, and elegant, Country People isn’t a book to be missed.

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales - from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes - until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

An Evening with Rebecca F Kuang

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street

The Portobello Bookshop is truly excited to host An Evening with Rebecca F. Kuang for her forthcoming novel Taipei Story. This return to the literary fiction genre is highly anticipated after the massive success of her last fiction novel Yellowface. Rebecca is also known for her beloved fantasy novels including the Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Katabasis.

Taipei Story is a wryly humorous and profoundly moving coming-of-age novel that grapples with grief, language, and culture shock—all set against the backdrop of an unforgettable summer in Taipei.

Kuang will be in conversation with Katie Goh, author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange.

Ticket plus book £25

September 15

Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44

7pm, Blackwell’s, South Bridge

Join Chris Powici and Allan Radliffe as we celebrate the publication of Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44, the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, including new work from 43 authors – some internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

We are delighted to be joined by Rachel Coventry, Tony Frame, Kate Hendry, Donnchadh MacCàba, Fiona Mossman and Shane Strachan, who will be sharing poetry and short stories in English, Gaelic and Scots.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

September 16

Women, Walking: A radical anthology of writing on nature and belonging

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Women, Walking is an agenda-setting, contemporary exploration of women setting foot outdoors now, and what that means; Compiling ten specially commissioned essays on walking from prize-winning writers including poets, novelists, essayists and journalists, published here for the very first time,

The groundbreaking collection that brings together many of the most prominent and exciting voices of the last decade across poetry, fiction, essays and journalism, and many a Lighthouse bookshop favourite: Anna Fleming, Anita Sethi, Beatrice Searle, Gail Simmons, Helen Mort, Josie Giles, Kate Davis, Katharine Norbury, Linda Cracknell and Polly Atkin.

Journey from Josie Giles observing the political implications of different features of the landscape to Gail Simmons celebrating the low-key wonders of the incidental walks we take every day, to Kate Davis on why walking matters more when disability prevents you from doing it ‘properly’.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 16

Lorna Elcock in conversation with James Robertson

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join Women’s Prize Discoveries 2021 shortlisted author, Lorna Elcock, as she discusses her raw and emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, The Windhover, with James Robertson.

Perthshire. 1957. The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.

Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.

It’s 1982. Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £15

September 16

Cooks & Books: Ali Stoner for Scran
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Ali Stoner or ‘Roving Haggis’ as she is known on social media, is a Scottish cook and a former Masterchef Australia contestant. Born in Glasgow, she currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband, family and two dogs.

Scran is a new collection of more than 100 nostalgic and traditional Scottish recipes, seen through a modern lens. Ali brings old favourites, classic bakery treats and creative new recipes inspired by Scotland, its landscapes and its traditions.

Some highlights include: Scottish eggs benedict with whisky chive hollandaise, millionaire shortbread, peppermint slice, chicken Balmoral sausage roll, macaroni pie, confit sardines with gin pickled onions, a plethora of morning rolls, tablet, and Scottish martini.

It should make for a particularly delicious evening; we hope to see you there.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £27

September 16

Steven Veerapen for Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Steven Veerapen was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and a Mauritian father and raised in Paisley. He is the author of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, and lives in Glasgow.

Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton.

This ground breaking study of Henry’s life examines and destroys many of the long-repeated myths about this complex monarch: he was not particularly gluttonous, not particularly prudish, and not particularly messy in his religious changes. Nor did he see himself as simply King of England. Drawing on archival sources from across the British Isles, Steven Veerapen reveals how Henry fashioned an image of himself as a law-abiding and benevolent emperor who dreamed of uniting England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and swathes of France under Tudor rule.

Yet the image was false and the dream a nightmare for his queens, his ministers and many of his subjects. This new portrait shows Henry for what he really was: a self-aggrandising actor who, by fair means and foul - murder plots, marriage negotiations and military ventures - did all he could to realise his imperial fantasy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30

September 17

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay: an evening with Lex Croucher

7pm, Nicolson Square Venues - 25 Nicolson Square EH8 9BX

What a joy to welcome Lighthouse favourite Lex Croucher back to the shop for the Edinburgh launch of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, the highly anticipated follow-up to the instant New York Times bestselling and YA Book Prize winning Gwen and Art Are Not in Love! Joining Lex on stage we’ll have award-winning author and ancient historian Jean Menzies. Expect an evening of Camelot, queer joy and laughter.

They fell in love. They won a great battle. It should have been happily ever after. But now, Camelot’s famous couples have fallen apart.

Newly crowned King Gabriel is having panic attacks in cupboards in-between council meetings. He can’t tell Arthur just how not okay he is – so he’s set him free, to find love with someone who can get through the day without breaking down.

Bridget has lost her spark for sparring, forfeiting again and again in the lists. When she’s invited to join Gabriel’s round table, she hopes it’ll be the change she needs. But trying to navigate the post-happily-ever-after reality of a relationship with Gwen, when Bridget no longer feels like the dashing knight Gwen fell in love with, feels impossible.

With the kingdom still reeling from an attempted uprising, and rumoured sightings of the Holy Grail, the Questing Beast and the Green Knight happening across the country, the gang depart on a PR tour destined for disaster. Can Gabriel be the king his country deserves? Can Bridget get her jousting groove back? And will they find their way back to the courtly love that once seemed fated?

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 17

Marie Darrieussecq for How to Make a Woman
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

‘Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work.’ - Samantha Harvey, Guardian

Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in 1980s France. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different paths: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, studies psychology and marries her first love, Christian; Solange has numerous affairs, becomes pregnant at fifteen, gives birth to a baby boy, and pursues an acting career. Each tries to find her own happiness, her own sense of meaning, while navigating a world which seeks to establish binary ideas of what a woman can be. How to Make a Woman is a bold, sometimes brutal, coming-of-age novel from the award-winning novelist Marie Darrieussecq.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 17

Jess Elliott Dennison: Vegetable Recipes

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Jess Elliott Dennison will be back in the bookshop this autumn for an evening event celebrating and sampling new recipes from her brand new cookbook, Vegetable Recipes. Jess will talk all things vegetables and do a live food demo, so that you can taste some of her delicious recipes on the night!

In this, the third book in the series, Jess is sharing favourite vegetarian dishes that celebrate the glorious variety of vegetables available throughout the seasons.

Including recipes for Leeks Vinaigrette and Celeriac Remoulade for enjoying with baguette; crispy Fennel and Onion Bhajis; a light summertime lasagne with courgettes and ricotta béchamel and comforting pumpkin-curry pastries for the colder months, this book is filled with easy, reliable dishes for everyone to enjoy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 17

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans!

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

You know the name. You know the carnage.

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans, as he joins us to sign copies of his own not-entirely-true story Moreish: My Mad Autobiography; his hilarious and oddly touching memoir recounted with all his drug-addled charm and charisma.

Now, for the first time ever, Super Hans tells his own story – no filter, no agenda, just 100% pure, distilled Hans. From his early days brewing home-fermented insanity to fronting the greatest band that never was, to performing at actual Glastonbury, this book is the hilarious, trippy and occasionally baffling life story of Super Hans, in his own words, even though he can’t quite remember all the details.

Super Hans – real name Simon, not that he’s ever used it – is a musician, DJ, philosopher, and all-around cultural disruptor. Known as Jez’s best mate and Mark’s worst nightmare in Channel 4’s cult classic Peep Show, he rose to legendary status thanks to his unforgettable lines, unfiltered wisdom, and habit of turning up exactly where you least expect him. His upcoming memoir is the legendary story of a modern folk anti-hero, written in his own gloriously chaotic words.

Matt King is an internationally renowned comedian, screenwriter and actor. Perhaps best known for playing Super Hans in the Bafta award-winning Peep Show, Matt can currently be seen as a recurring character in Time Bandits (Apple) and Spent (BBC). Matt has appeared on the big screen in the likes of Bronson alongside Tom Hardy, Dolittle with Robert Downey Jr, Paddington, RocknRolla and Juliet, Naked. He also played the lead role of Henry Mallet in the award-winning Australian drama series Spirited, for which he won the Best Male Actor in a Drama award. Matt created and wrote the BBC chef sitcom Whites starring Alan Davies, and also created and wrote the Sky drama Starlings starring Brendan Coyle and Lesley Sharp. Moreish is his first novel.

Ticket plus book £20

September 18

An Evening with Fiona Ross

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join author and journalist, Fiona Ross, as she chats to Cat Harvey about her warm, richly evocative and uplifting memoir, of second chances, stubborn cows and the quiet magic of finding home in the most unexpected of places, Wild Knowing.

Fiona was a Glasgow girl through and through, but when she was gifted an old leather-bound family ledger, she discovered a Highland family history that would change her life. The ledger records the story of the family’s 19th-century Highland cattle fold. Little did Fiona know that she would soon be moving with her husband and two beloved dogs to a remote Argyllshire croft where she would start her own herd (or fold, as it is known for Highland cows). On a wave-washed island, in the shadow of the Highland Clearances, Fiona moved in with 48 magnificent cows who would become her family.

This book is an ode to farming and the softer life that can be lived in the Hebrides. It depicts the life-affirming joy of bathing every morning in the icy Atlantic before taking the cows for a paddle. It tells calamitous tales of amorous bulls, escaping heifers, upturned quad bikes, falling off piers and accidentally injecting herself with cow meds. It tells the stories of births - so many beautiful births - followed by the drama of catching each slippery calf, holding it and tagging it, all under the baffled shaggy-fringed gaze of its 500-kilo, massively-horned mum.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18

September 18

Janice Hallet for The Silent Appeal
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

A New Play. Another Murder. Who Will Speak the Truth? It’s a new theatrical season in Lower Lockwood, and the amateur thespians of the Fairway Players are starting rehearsals for their production of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow.

Despite divisive new arrivals, countless petty jealousies and a near-fatal accident with the lighting rig, surely this will be their greatest show to date?

But someone isn’t going to make it to opening night. Could it be producer Sarah-Jane’s mysterious sister, lately arrived home after 20 years abroad? New member Lucas, whose shady business dealings may be his downfall? Or perhaps once-convicted murderer Issy Beck, recently acquitted but still up to her old tricks?

Lawyers Charlotte and Femi must sift through the emails, texts and police reports to identify the victim and find out why the person convicted of the murder refuses to speak out in their own defence...

Will they uncover the truth in time? Will you?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 19

Meet Rachel Gillig at Book Lovers Bookshop!

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, UK EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with author Rachel Gillig!

Rachel Gillig, the queen of gothic romantasy, returns with higher stakes, darker mysteries and deeper longings in this gorgeous sequel to the No. 1 international bestselling sensation The Knight and the Moth. Aisling Cathedral is in ruins.

Rodrick Myndacious, Bartholomew and Maude Bauer are rumored to be dead - and the king has taken Sybil Delling as his bride. To show off their union and solidify his power over Traum, Benji proposes a series of tournaments throughout the hamlets. Captive and drugged, Sybil remains determined to vanquish him as she once did the Omens, even if she destroys the kingdom’s faith - and herself - in the process.

But then a mysterious knave rises to the top of the lists, a man with no name and no memory who may just be Sybil’s ticket to undoing Benji’s power. For in a land where stories repeat themselves, where a king can prove as cruel as a god, the only way to truly destroy the Stonewater Kingdom’s faith is to save it.

Tickets £2/Ticket plus book £25

September 20

Grim Tidings Book Bedazzling

7pm, Library Gallery, Summer Hall Arts, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

Join us for an in-person book bedazzling event to celebrate the release of Grim Tidings by B.K. Borison! Readers who attend in-person will get the chance to attend a live virtual Q&A with B.K. herself and spend the evening bedazzling their books! Book Lovers Book Shop will be providing all crafting materials and books for the evening.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.40

September 21

Louise Kennedy with Sam Baker for Stations
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are delighted to be welcoming Louise Kennedy to Edinburgh to celebrate Stations, a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.

Roisin and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982. Brilliant, sharp-tongued and born to slip through the cracks, Red’s reputation for trouble precedes him - but Roisin finds herself swept up in his storm, and soon their connection deepens.

When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town to start a new life in England. As the years pass, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together. When Roisin arrives in London, the promise of freedom, of reinvention, and of finding her dear friend calls.

But searching for Red leads Roisin to a truth darker than she could have imagined: when you go looking for someone you may uncover parts of yourself along the way that you’d rather stayed buried. And Red - bright, beautiful Red - might not want to be found at all.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 21

An Evening with Marlon James

7.30pm, Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh EH8 9SU

The Portobello Bookshop is absolutely thrilled to be hosting Marlon James for the Edinburgh launch of his latest novel The Disappearers.

Join us at the atmospheric Assembly Roxy for an in-depth look at the novel, which heralds James’s triumphant return to the Jamaica of the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal. James himself has described it as “Be gay. Do crime. Get revenge.” We cannot wait to read it and to find out more on the night!

James will be in conversation with writer and dramaturg Laurence Cook.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £20

September 22

Mathias Enard for Perfecting The Shot
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Mathias Enard, born in 1972, studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. He won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Decembre, and won the Liste Goncourt/Le Choix de l’Orient, the Prix litteraire de la Porte Doree and the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Thieves. He won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, the 2017 Leipziger Book Award for European Understanding, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for Compass. Perfecting the Shot is his seventh novel to appear with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

In a nameless city torn apart by civil war, a teenage sniper has only one goal: to fire the perfect shot. He sublimates himself into his weapon, learns to maintain impassivity, controls his breath, listens to his body and the beat of his heart. Lying in wait on rooftops, he takes aim at people below while his traumatized mother cowers in their flat. But the violence eats away at any sense of morality as he kills civilians and combatants indiscriminately, for the sake of killing itself. His routine is disrupted by the arrival of Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl hired to care for his mother, and his increasingly disturbing obsession with her soon threatens to push them all into the abyss. Now appearing in English more than twenty years after its original publication, Mathias Enard’s debut novel is a timeless study of how extreme violence corrodes the soul, tracking the convulsions of a brutalized mind in spare, unflinching prose.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 22

Paul Johnson for Challenging Inequalities
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities connects these conditions to inequality-inequality not just of income and wealth but of health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed and what can, or should, be done about them.

The book explains the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008-2009 has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in dangerous differences between regions and in political power across groups.

The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot-and how we can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 22

Celebrate Turncloak with LK Steven!

6.30pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Road

Join us for an in-person event with LK Stevens to celebrate the release of Turncloak, the sequel to Silvercloak.

Two decades ago, the Bloodmoons ruthlessly murdered Saffron's parents. Hellbent on revenge, she lied her way into the elite Silvercloak Academy of detectives with a single goal: find a way to bring the Bloodmoons to justice.

But on the eve of her graduation, her deception is exposed, and she's given only one option: go undercover and tear the Bloodmoons down from the inside. Descending into a world where pleasure and pain are the most powerful currencies, Saff must commit some truly heinous deeds to keep her cover - and her life. Not only are there rival gangs and sinister smuggling rings to contend with, there's also her growing feelings for the kingpin's tortured son, and curious prophecy foretelling his death at Saff's hand.

With each day testing her loyalties further, Saff's web of lies becomes harder to spin. And when one false step could destroy everything and everyone she's ever loved...the mage who dedicated her life to vengeance might just have to die for it.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £20/Ticket plus book bundle £29.99

September 22

Three poets at Lighthouse: launching Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Melete and Jay Gao’s The Dead One… with Agata Maslowska

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

There’s nothing we love more than a poetry night here at Lighthouse, and we’re delighted to be bringing you not one, not two, but THREE incredible poets as we welcome Jennifer Lee Tsai and Jay Gao’s new collections in the company of Agata Maslowska.

These poems cover themes of family history, migration, racial and queer desires, womanhood and war. They explore identity, belonging and place through each poet’s own voices - get ready for an evening of beautiful language and fantastic readings!

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14

September 22 - new listing

Caitlin Moran: How To Be Hopeful

7pm, The Queen’s Hall, 85-89 Clerk St, Edinburgh EH8 9JG

One morning, Caitlin Moran woke up - and realised that she had reached Peak Despair.

And she’s not alone - in a world of worsening news, online fist-fights, and filthy rivers, it’s hard not to feel, well, terrible. Of course, in books, and movies, when the heroine faces such a crisis, she makes a seismic life-change: moving to a remote, ramshackle farmhouse; walking an ancient, 600-mile pathway; or reconnecting with her primal, joyful self by adopting a baby hawk, or hare.

But Caitlin’s new book, How to be Hopeful, is not that kind of book. She tried – but it turns out remote Welsh farmhouses are really expensive. No-one with a job can walk 600 miles. And it’s incredibly hard to get access to baby hawks in North London.

Instead, Caitlin decided to go on … a domestic quest. To see if she could stay in the same house, in the same neighbourhood, and the same awful modern world - but try to make better days. She left 800,000 followers on social media; eschewed 24/7 rolling-news for local newspapers; and sat on buses without headphones, to start listening to what people are really saying. Turns out they’re not, by and large, shouting hate-crimes at each other. They’re just working out whether to have chicken, or sausages for tea, instead.

Picking litter, donating blood, rewilding a garden, trying to understand where modern anxiety really comes from - slowly, all these things allowed for something that had felt impossible a year before: Caitlin learned to fall back in love with the world again.

How to be Hopeful is Caitlin’s story of how, over the course of a year, she realised that “waiting to feel hopeful again” just won’t work: being hopeful is a decision. It’s something - like laundry - you have to do. How To Be Hopeful is the diary of how one person started to do hopeful.

Ticket £34.45/Ticket plus book £46.55

September 23

An Evening with Alex Howard

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join bestselling author of The Ghost Cat, Alex Howard, as he chats to Lucy Ribchester about his heartwarming epic tale of adventure adventure, belonging and unexpected friendship, The Ship’s Cat.

When street-savvy London stray Archie accidentally stows away on a flight to Turkey, he’s just looking for shelter. But after stumbling onto a fishing boat in a quiet cove, Archie discovers he’s no ordinary feline - for with his polydactyl paws, he brings uncanny good fortune to vessels at sea.

From the sun-drenched harbours of the Mediterranean to the bustling decks of ocean racers, Archie becomes a legend among sailors. Yet beneath the viral fame and whispered tales of ‘the magical ship’s cat’, Archie yearns for something deeper: a forever-human who will love him not as a talisman, but as a companion.

It may be luck that drives Archie on this great Odyssey around the world, but love will be what calls him home - not to some place, perhaps, but to someone.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20

September 23

Derek Owusu for The Recovery House
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

From the Granta Best British Young novelist comes a new stunning mediation on faith, identity, music and the ties of friendship that bind us together.

Jamal, a gifted and introspective young poet, wakes in a quiet, claustrophobic recovery house after a devastating mental breakdown, unsure how the bright edges of his life became so fractured. In this stark yet strangely tender sanctuary, with its watchful nurses, restless corridors and overlooked garden, he encounters several wounded, but radiant souls who are each wrestling with their own invisible storms. As Jamal navigates this suspended world, at once suffocating and strangely sacred, he begins to observe rather than retreat, finding in the rhythms of shared cigarettes, half-finished conversations and midnight confessions a hesitant, flickering sense of belonging.

Within these intimate, volatile walls, music drifts like prayer. A song sung into the dark becomes a fragile lifeline. Psalms are read aloud with trembling conviction. Laughter erupts, unexpected and defiant. Jamal’s searching, philosophical mind moves restlessly between memory and imagination, literature and scripture, doubt and devotion, interrogating the porous boundaries between illness and inspiration. What does it mean to hear a voice and call it God, or art, or madness? What is salvation in a place built to contain collapse? In the charged silence of the garden, under watchful skies, he begins to sense that joy can exist even here, braided through grief, carried on melody, sustained by human touch.

Tender, intelligent and spiritually inquisitive, The Recovery House is a novel about the music that survives inside us when language falters, about the redemptive possibilities of friendship, and about the delicate courage required to rebuild a self. As Jamal reckons with love, faith, shame and the perilous seduction of turning life into art, he is forced to confront the most difficult question of all: how to live honestly in the world without sacrificing the soul that makes him want to write it.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 23

Up the Youth Club: Emma Warren illuminates a hidden history

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

A searching look and empassioned love letter to the youth club by renowned documentarian Emma Warren, highlighting the seismic impact they have had on UK culture and why we need to ensure their existence for future generations.

In Up the Youth Club, Warren maps the shifting story of youth clubs in the UK and Northern Ireland, from factory workers in Victorian Boys’ and Girls’ clubs to renegade self-emancipatory spaces in the 1970s and the music-generating youth clubs of more recent decades. With a mixed lineage in church evangelism, the patronage of the upper classes, grassroots’ DIY, and erratic state funding, the youth club has had a huge, yet almost invisible, effect on music, sport, culture and society.

Arguing that we cannot advocate for what we do not understand, Warren positions youth clubs as a kind of engine room - from the famous success stories to come out of their doors, such as The Specials or Stormzy, to the untold stories of young people finding shelter, sustenance and stimulation for over a century - and why their dwindling numbers, largely due to austerity and funding cuts, is of serious concern for us all.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £10.99

September 24

Queerphoria: a queer voices extravaganza

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

The inaugural collection in the new VERVE Voices series, Queerphoria is a joyful and defiant queer-authored anthology proudly supporting Switchboard, the national LGBTQIA+ support line.

We are so delighted to be welcoming VERVE editor Jenna Gordon in conversation with Elle Nash, Carrie Marshall and Seth Insua to the shop for a queer voices extravaganza celebrating Queerphoria!

Four housemates welcome the reader into their home for a birthday party. An elderly widow visits her first queer bar, beneath the flat she shared with her husband. A couple invite a shipwrecked sailor into their isolated lighthouse on the stormy night of their thirtieth anniversary. A single woman embarks on a romantic relationship with a sex robot. A married couple secretly prepare for their baby’s arrival in a world where procreation is controlled by the Establishment.

Through prose, poetry, essays, illustrations and more, thirty-one writers bring their visions of euphoria to life. These pages celebrate, subvert, expand and reimagine what joy can look like, even in uncertain times.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 24

Maryam Aslany, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge

Join Maryam Aslany as she discusses her extraordinary, out-and-out masterpiece of a book, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World. Maryam debunks the myth that peasants are backward and archaic, and her rigorously researched volume charts the history of this forgotten class and shows how reliant the world economy still is on their labour.

Peasants never disappeared – we simply stopped seeing them

For centuries, they fed empires, led revolutions and built modern states. Yet industrial modernity forced them into the shadows. Today, political and economic elites speak as if peasants are relics of the past, even though this two-billion-strong workforce grows a third of our food and sustains our landscapes, producing everything from supermarket staples to the most exclusive luxuries. Like Atlas, they hold up the modern world, yet the true story of how they shaped it has long been obscured.

Their story uncovers the hidden architecture of our global systems

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £25

September 24

C L Hellisen: The Shape of Monsters

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge

Join debut author, C L Hellisen as they chat to Annabel Campbell, about their gripping, haunting tale of dark magic, demonic possession and family secrets, The Shape of Monsters.

When a magical fire destroyed their family as children, Aleks and Vaira Kercheval escaped. Born to a world where power was everything, they’ve hidden from it all their lives. Then a letter arrives stating that Vaira has inherited Aubrey House, a decaying Gothic mansion full of dark, wild magic.

The estranged siblings haven’t spoken for years. But together, they return to their ancestral home, where crossing the threshold plunges them into a realm of shadows and ancient feuds. As the pair are drawn into a war between rival mages, the powerless Aleks accidentally summons and binds a monstrous prince from the Void – a creature of immense power. His gifted sister must learn to unleash her inner fire as the lines between human and monster blur. But can they survive the darkness that is to come?

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £20

September 24

Roshni Gallagher & Clementine Ewokolo Burnley

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

Join us for a special double-feature poetry launch event with Edinburgh-based poets Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley!

They will both be here to celebrate the publication of their brand new collections, Gallagher’s Even the Trees and Burnley’s Belling the Leopard, with poetry readings and conversation.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book bundle £24

September 24

Shiver Event with Brigid Lowe

6.30pm, St. Vincent's Chapel, St Vincent Street

After Brigid Lowe’s world is upended, Scotland becomes her home. Its icy, wild waters a place of visceral relief. Baptising herself into this new life, Brigid sets herself a challenge: to swim in 1,000 of these spectacular lochs.

And so Brigid’s adventures begin: stepping into ice and caves and sacred springs, she swims with birds, conger eels and seals, across forest and mountain and moor, alone and with her children in tow. And as she comes to know these secret pools, with their vaulting depths and softer shallows, she walks the line between recklessness and safety, discovering new depths of pain and pleasure, of strength and endurance.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 24

Victoria Aveyard for Tempest
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are thrilled to be welcoming YA superstar Victoria Aveyard, author of the Red Queen series, to Edinburgh for her first foray into adult fantasy in her new book Tempest.

MAY THE SEA ALWAYS SING FOR YOU

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all. But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor. A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 24

Andrew Pettegree for The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Join Andrew Pettegree to celebrate his wonderfully appropriate - and excellently written - book, The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling.

Bookshops are a comforting sight on our high streets, warm and welcoming spaces in which to browse, meet friends and occasionally buy books. They may feel timeless, yet their history is a restless and turbulent one, filled with as many entrepreneurial street hawkers and illicit trades as with beloved institutions. The Bookshop, from the celebrated author of The Library and The Book at War, explores the evolution of bookselling from the cramped collectors’ shops frequented by Samuel Pepys to the radical feminist bookshops of the 70s, the rise of monolithic chains and the new world of online selling. Connecting stories and lives that span centuries, countries and continents, The Bookshop brings us into beloved bookshops of today and looks forward to the possible experience of booksellers of tomorrow.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 25

Meet Victoria Aveyard!

12pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join the bestselling author of the Red Queen and Realm Breaker series, Victoria Aveyard, to celebrate the publication of the first instalment of her spellbinding romantasy, Tempest, which finds a woman living across two worlds face a devastating choice between home and heart.

From Sunday Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard comes an epic adventure of love and betrayal amid a brutal war for the high seas.

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all.

But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor.

A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Book plus ticket £25

September 25

Come What May, We’re Here to Stay: Taj Ali shares the story of South Asian resistance in Britain

6.30pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

British South Asians have a long tradition of radical political activism. For the first time, Taj Ali tells the inspirational story of how British South Asians organised against racism in the past and how they continue to fight in the present. Join us for the Edinburgh launch of Come what may, we’re here to stay.

‘A consequential recounting of a long and illustrious history of South Asian resistance and organising in Britain. It reminds us yet again of the vital importance of solidarity and alliances across race, religion and class in changing the world we share.’ -Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire

In Come what may, we’re here to stay, Taj Ali reveals how successive generations fought for rights, dignity and a sense of belonging while actively shaping the country they now call home. He shows that British South Asian political life has often been defined less by religious difference than by shared commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-racism. In pursuit of these goals, alliances have been forged with other movements, from Irish republicanism to Black Power.

As racism rears its ugly head again, Come what may, we’re here to stay asks: are we doomed to repeat the past or will we learn from our mistakes and build a better world together?

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 25

The New Ramsay Head Press Presents … Breathing New Life

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for an evening of poetry with Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt!

Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt are breathing new life into The Ramsay Head Press, the Edinburgh publishing house founded in 1970 by Norman Wilson responsible for producing volumes by leading poets such as Tessa Ransford, Alice Stuart and Charles Graves.

Mark used to be an accountant but, after 38 years, decided it wasn’t for him and started writing & performing what he describes as kitchen sink poetry. He’ll be reading from his recently published A Change of Direction.

Alice is a writer and artist and has been writing weird, warm, wobbly poems for five years now. She will be previewing The Warm Universe, a collection of her poems and drawings due out in October.

Breathing New Life is both a poetry event and a celebration of an Edinburgh publishing institution now reborn.

Free, but ticketed

September 25

Robert Barrington for Corrupted Kingdom
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Robert Barrington is Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at the University of Sussex. A leading authority on corruption, he was pivotal in the introduction of the Bribery Act and Unexplained Wealth Orders. He has advised the Ministry of Justice and the Cabinet Office, among many others.

Britain is complacent about corruption. We are used to thinking of ourselves as firm defenders of fairness and the rule of law. But our institutions have never been more corrupt, from scandals in parliament and local government to crises in housing and the NHS. The evidence is impossible to ignore. Political leaders face a clear choice: tackle corruption or continue on the road to decline. Robert Barrington is one of the world’s leading researchers on corruption. Corrupted Kingdom is his comprehensive examination of how corruption manifests in Britain, from politicians to prisons, the Monarchy and the Met. He assesses the origins of corruption, from Londongrad to the end of Empire, and shows how we can best reverse the decline and restore trust in politics and the democratic process. Vital and authoritative, Corrupted Kingdom provides an essential insight into why the abuse of power harms us all - and how we can banish corruption for good.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 25

Chris Broad for Journey Across Japan
7pm, Main Hall, Edinburgh Academy, 42 Henderson Row, Edinburgh EH3 5BL

Join us this autumn for an exciting new release from Chris Broad, the author of the number one bestselling Abroad in Japan!

Journey Across Japan takes us through the 47 unique prefectures of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Japan is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, with millions flocking there every month to follow the same cookie-cutter itinerary.

But beyond the well-trodden tourist trail lies a country made up of forty-seven unique prefectures. Each one has its own story to tell, shaped by centuries of squabbling lords, impenetrable topography and a fierce local pride.

On his quest to show the world that there’s so much more to Japan than Tokyo and Kyoto, Chris Broad has visited all of forty-seven prefectures himself. Now, in Journey Across Japan, he takes us with him on an epic adventure that spans every corner of the country.

A collection of embarrassing stories, practical recommendations and hard-learned lessons, this book show us just how much each region has to offer, whether it’s a signature dish, a festival or a mildly terrifying mascot.

From flying a plane over Japan’s most active volcano to exploring perfectly preserved Samurai districts, this guide will encourage readers, whether you’re a Japan neophyte or a seasoned veteran, to carve out your own story in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 28 - new listing

Sharon Blackie for Ripening: Why Women Need Fairy Tales Now
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

Dr Sharon Blackie is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of If Women Rose Rooted, and a psychologist with a background in mythology and folklore. Her work is focused on reimagining women’s stories, and on the relevance of myths and fairy tales to the personal, cultural and environmental issues we face today.

Ripening is a life-changing new book on the power and relevance of fairy tales, and their heroines, to help us thrive in these challenging times

‘Fairy tales matter because at the heart of every one of them is transformation.’

In a world in which all the old certainties seem to be crumbling, it’s hard not to feel we have lost our way. In Ripening, Sharon Blackie insists that fairy tales are precisely the stories we need for such times.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 29 - new listing

Broadchurch-creator Chris Chibnall for The Parkwood Murders
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Detective Nicola Bridge returns in the thrilling new novel from Chris Chibnall, creator of Broadchurch and showrunner of Seven Dials, and Sunday Times bestselling author of Death at the White Hart.

For its many repeat customers, Parkwood Holiday Village in west Dorset is a haven - an idyllic woodland, a tranquil lake, customer service around the clock. Until, just before dawn the day after midsummer, a body is found in the resort’s swimming pool .

Detective Nicola Bridge, exhausted from late nights worrying about her increasingly errant teenage son, faces an endless stream of potential witnesses. But as she speaks to the guests and staff, she soon uncovers an interconnected web of secrets and lies.

Was the killer the guest who lied to his wife about where he was that night?

Was it the arrogant high ropes instructor who’s unable to explain his recent scars?

Or might it be the new resort manager, an impeccably put-together woman with a very big secret

With hundreds of restless guests and staff on site, Nicola knows the clock is ticking to find the killer before they disappear for good.

Or before they strike again...

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 29 - new listing

An Evening with Mairi Kidd

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are greatly looking forward to welcoming bestselling author of Waterstones Scottish Book of the Month The Specimens, Mairi Kidd, as she chats to Lucy Ribchester about her gripping tale of suspicion and sacrifice in 17th-century Scotland, Newes of Witches.

Rural Scotland, 1629. Amidst the bogs and oat fields, children are going missing, and others seem to have fallen under a malevolent spell. When a young serving girl is imprisoned on suspicion of witchcraft, it falls on healer and midwife Mòrag to uncover the truth behind the matter.

However, investigation only raises more questions, and soon a violent truth comes to light which threatens to upend local life. As tensions in the community reach a fever pitch, allegiances shift, lives unravel, and Mòrag struggles to save the life of an innocent girl. But in a village gripped by fear and paranoia, this may demand the greatest sacrifice of all.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20

September 29 - new listing

Alice Strang for The Scottish Colourists: Art & Life
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Samuel John Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, George Leslie Hunter and Francis Campbell Boileau Cadell - a set of radical artists who enlivened the Scottish art scene with the fresh vibrancy of French Fauvist colours.

This new book by former Senior Curator of the National Galleries of Scotland, Alice Strang, brings a fresh look at the fascinating and international lives of the four artists by bringing together both popular and rarely seen imagery along with new research.

Despite only exhibiting together on three occasions in their lifetimes, and the term ‘The Scottish Colourists’ being coined retrospectively, the four shared much common ground. They were all born in Scotland in the 1870s, and at various different times each visited France to experience the burgeoning avant-garde scene, returning to Scotland brimming with new ideas. The influence of French painting - from Manet to the Impressionists, Matisse to Cezanne - stayed with them all.

Each of the Scottish Colourists achieved recognition during their lifetimes but fell out of favour by the Second World War, before being rediscovered in the 1950s. By the 1980s, they were widely recognised for their contribution to Scottish art, breathing new life into the scene, and leading the way for the next generation of artists.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £24.99

September 30 - new listing

Queer Showcase: a night of Northern talent

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Featuring Alessandra Thom, M K Hardy and Chloe De Lullington.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 30 - new listing

An Evening with Marina Hyde

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street, Edinburgh

We’re excited to welcome Marina Hyde to celebrate the publication of her latest essay collection, What a Time to Be Alive!: Scenes from a Strange Age. It’s a wildly funny collection from Britain’s favourite columnist, Sunday Times bestselling author and co-host of The Rest is Entertainment.

Hyde will be in conversation with comedian and writer Frankie Boyle.

So lettuce remember Liz Truss, relive the last days of the Tories, meet the guy they called No-Drama Starmer, and succumb to hyper-resistant superbug Nigel Farage. Travel stateside to meet our supranational Silicon Valley overlords, Donald Trump and his cavalcade of henchmen – then head for infinity and beyond with Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos. Experience testing times for misunderstood men in television, create wonder in every moment with Meghan, and relive the horror of the Gwyneth Paltrow ski massacre trial. Truly, these are times that make you want to put your hands over your eyes, even when your hands are already over your eyes. The only thing to do is read Marina Hyde and howl with laughter.

Tickets £18/Ticket plus book £22

October 1 - new listing

Humza Yousaf with William Dalrymple for Under Fire
7pm, Tollcross Central Hall, 2 W Tollcross, Edinburgh EH3 9BP

When Scotland’s First Minister, Humza Yousaf, got a call from Gaza on the morning of 7 October 2023, he feared the worst. His wife’s parents, Elizabeth and Maged, had been visiting the Palestinian territory to see Maged’s sick Palestinian mother. Now, after the Hamas terrorist attack, they were caught in Israel’s furious onslaught.

Under Fire tells the story of Yousaf’s month-long nightmare as he tried desperately to get his in-laws out of Gaza and back home to Dundee. With the British government ignoring his pleas for help, he had to coordinate with other countries to get Elizabeth and Maged across the Rafah border into Egypt. While supporting his wife and children as they waited for daily updates from Elizabeth on her battle for survival, Yousaf also had to lead the whole of Scotland - as well as reassure the nation’s traumatised Jewish community. All while responding to online attacks.

As well as documenting his in-laws’ escape from Gaza, Under Fire also tells the story of how a son of immigrants grew up to become the first Muslim leader of a Western European country. Yousaf also tells of his fears on the rise of far-right populism and how to combat the forces that seek to divide us. The book draws back the curtain to give an honest account of how true leadership means reconciling personal loyalties with public duty, and how, in a world riven with conflict, it is more important than ever that leaders under pressure maintain their humanity and empathy for all.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

October 1 - new listing

Jordan Prosser: Blue Giant

7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, South Bridge

We are delighted to be welcoming author and screenwriter Jordan Prosser, as we celebrate the publication of his vibrant, whip-smart, new novel about one woman’s quest to make her mark on the world, Blue Giant.

Planet Earth is cooked. Abby Horne wants off.

Abby always believed she was destined for great things. But her dream career as an industry-disrupting fashion designer went up in smoke, and her aspirations to become a world-renowned yogi and/or save the endangered tigers proved equally fruitless. She’s in her early thirties, suffering the unbearable burdens of adulthood and anonymity, when she wakes up after a drunken bender with an all-new, all-consuming purpose in life: to be the first person on Mars.

Perfect timing – Danish tech entrepreneur Tor Skovgaard is currently recruiting for a one-way mission to colonise the red planet. Abby knows this is it: her last-ditch bid for fame and glory. And if she can’t be humanity’s saviour… she’ll settle for being its martyr.

Blue Giant is a deranged love letter to a generation torn between helplessness and selfishness – an anthem for anyone who’s ever paused their doom-scrolling to ponder their place in the vast universe.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

October 1 - new listing

The Medicine Tree: Nick Hayes on repairing our rotten roots

7pm, The Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Early one September, Nick Hayes brought his houseboat up the Thames into rural Oxfordshire, mooring opposite a strange tree that towered over the surrounding meadowland. The tree, he would discover, was a hybrid of the eastern cottonwood, brought back from colonial Canada. The land was the Hardwick estate, whose apparently timeless tranquillity – like so much of the English countryside – masks a darker history. Yet Hardwick also tells another, quite different story.

Over the following months, Hayes learns that its rolling hills and fertile valleys are on the front lines of a battle between ownership and belonging. Through a golden autumn, and the frosts and floods of winter and early spring, Hayes explores an estate that, acknowledging the colonial origins of its wealth, has become a haven for those who are both unable and unwilling to be part of a countryside geared towards profit at any cost. Living and working among this extraordinary community of farmers and craftspeople, Hayes contemplates what we have lost in England, as our sense of kinship with the land, and the deep knowledge that arose from it, was destroyed.

Yet, Hayes suggests, if we can learn from the cultures we have exploited, and from the tentative roots being put down in this radical Oxfordshire estate, perhaps we can start to unpick – and even re-enchant – our relationship with the land. The Medicine Tree is a singular act of storytelling and recovery: of giants, gods, witches, trees, horror and hope, of entanglement, reparation and solidarity.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £25

October 2 - new listing

Patricia Nilsson for Guilty Pleasure: The Pornification of the Internet, the Economy, and Everything Else
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This is the story of one of the most influential - and least examined - industries on earth. Worth billions of dollars, and commanding a tenth of global internet traffic at peak times, it has quietly reshaped our world: it has transformed technology, work, culture, love and relationships, and even our sense of self. Most industries of this scale make daily headlines. This one rarely does.

In Guilty Pleasure, investigative journalist and FT reporter Patricia Nilsson turns her attention to an industry few have dared to confront, and tells the story of pornography in the online age. Drawing on more than five years of reporting, Nilsson reveals how the internet turned the business of erotic art into something else entirely: a vast, secretive industry dominated by obscure owners, platform logic and profit at almost any cost. She traces how porn helped to shape the online world, and then spilled far beyond it - restructuring everyday life and saturating society with its logic of stimulation, self-soothing and craving.

Whether we consume it or not, Nilsson argues, we are living in the world pornography made: one in which our desires and anxieties are relentlessly monitored and manipulated by unaccountable forces. And because this industry has escaped meaningful scrutiny for so long, the power to regulate it has increasingly fallen to political extremists and payment companies. The result is a system that has quietly revolutionized everything, while remaining - until now - hidden from view.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £25

October 3 - new listing

Celebrate The Sweetest Fiend with Raven Kennedy!

6.30pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Road, Edinburgh

It’s time to pay the Piper. Our world cracked open like an egg. Power burst out, and with it, nine monstrous Banes ready to destroy everything. The powerful Core fae finally slayed them all, but each Bane left a Plague to punish us. But that’s not the only thing they left behind. I’m half Bane, half fae, and wholly hated.

Survival means enduring every vicious glare and cursed outbreak. Until one day, a Plague descends upon my city that means certain death. Then he comes. The Pied Piper. He rids my city of the Plague, but it comes at a cost. One hundred and thirty people are taken as payment.

Including me. I don’t know what he’s going to do to us, but I know I have to get home. My family’s lives depend on it. But the Piper won’t let me go, and something wicked stirs between us. The sweet scent in my veins beckons him, while the seductive lure of his magic sinks under my skin. I have to escape before it’s too late.

Because if I don’t, it’s not just my heart at risk. . .

But the entire world.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £22

But that’s not all

Coming up fast…

October

Rachel King, Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival, Portobello Book Festival, Sean Hewitt, Terry Deary, Hernan Diaz, Ibtisam Azem, Ian Rankin, Aonghus MacKechnie, Rachel Harrison, Benjamin Moser, Jojo Barr, Sarah Clegg, Brigid Lowe & Gilly McArthur, David McCloskey, Dr Jean Menzies, Julia Harding, Susie Dent, James Ellroy, Oz Clarke, Dorian Ravenscroft, Owen Jones, Jess Elliott Dennison, VE Schwab, Simon Armitage, Pete Irvine, Adalyn Grace, Natalie Adler, Bobuq Sayed, Joanne Harris, Alice Oswald, AT Emerald, Min Jin Lee, Yiyun Li, Jasper Fforde, Tim Downie, Dan Keeling, Annabel Campbell, Laurie Gilmore, Penn Cole, Simon Garfield, Susan Stryker, David Shrigley, Pierce Brown, Becky Chambers, Jordan Prosser, VL Bovalino & Hannah Kaner, Erin Goeres, Travis Baldree, Taylor J LaRue, Rhian Elizabeth, Brigid Lowe and Anthony Shapland, Julian Sayarer, Sarah Maria Griffin, Martina Calvi, Ian MacGregor, Charlie Higson, Tom Branfoot, Natasha Devon, Julian Sayarer, Chiara Bullen, AC Glass & Jack Jewers

November

Radical Book Fair, Tim Hayward, Coinneach MacLeod, Irvine Welsh, Patrick DeWitt, Alexandra Shulman, Ragnar Jonasson, Jamie Gianoutsos, Mary Lawson, Louisa Young, Nick Harkaway, Jonathan Coe, Emily Wilson, Sabaa Tahir, Graeme Johncock (Waterstones), Rick Stein, Elif Shafak, Bonnie Garmus, Cody Dahler, Danielle L Jensen, Jodi Picoult, Elena Armas, Graeme Johncock (Golden Hare), Jeremy Lee

January

Sue Brunning

This week’s event list… Hardly anything on it. Shortest ever, I think. Apart from the 600 or so Edinburgh International Book Festival events I was too lazy to add. 🤣

It’s here at last. The one we’ve all been waiting for. This Saturday the Book Festival finally kicks off. Two weeks of glorious events, fascinating discussions, meeting up with friends, buying books, drinking wine and eating ice cream. At bloody last.

Of course I wasn’t going to add all those events to this list - it would have gone on forever. But here’s a link to the programme:

Edinburgh International Book Festival

What have you got tickets for so far? I’m seeing John Yorke (twice), William Dalrymple, Jason Burke, Elizabeth McCracken, Mikhail Fishman and Martin Sixsmith. For starters anyway. I’m sure more events will get added to the roster as the festival progresses.

(Why, as a fiction writer, are all the events I’m going to linked to non-fiction books? I honestly don’t know, but perhaps I just don’t find fiction writers quite as interesting as those grappling with politics, world affairs, history and the strange magnetism that great stories casts over us - and how to achieve that. Who knows?)

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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

August 14-26

Book Fringe

What is Book Fringe?

The Book Fringe is our free, bookshop run, alternative August literary festival! Bringing in bookshops across the city to deliver a programme of events that highlight each bookshop’s personality.

Entirely run and curated by indie bookshops, Book Fringe offers readers the opportunity to meet world-class writers in the intimate and lively settings of local bookshops.

Led by Lighthouse, Book Fringe has been running for over a decade, each year reinventing itself just a wee bit while continuing to celebrate accessibility, community and creativity as only indie bookshops can!

Book Fringe at Lighthouse features events with Layla McCay, Lamble, Molly Tie, Scott Richardson-Read, Jean Menzies, Sofie Hagan, Frances Cannon, Mai-Anh Vũ Peterson, Gabriella Bennett, Amy Abdelnoor, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Meghan Kobza, Kojo Koram, Fatima Bhutto and Alfredo Carpineti.

Entry to ALL events is free: no tickets, no ticket booking (unless you want event reminders), just show up to discover some great authors.

Events are first come first seated, so try to come a bit early to guarantee a spot (and have a browse!)

August 15-30

Angela Jackson: When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr

5.30pm, Le Monde, George Street

Tickets £12.50

Award-winning novelist (The Emergence of Judy Taylor, The Darlings) Angela Jackson will be performing her fourth one-woman show at Le Monde on George Street as part of this year’s Fringe. In ‘When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr’ Angela explores the highs and lows of romantic love, through the songs of Julie London, the wisdom of history’s greatest thinkers, and the wit of iconic screenwriting legend Nora Ephron. If you want to know how a six-second kiss and a dance around the kitchen can change your life, and if you like your psychology and philosophy mixed up with a generous helping of sultry jazz standards, this is the show for you.

Tickets £12.50

August 15-30

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Pl, EH3

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is a charity which has been bringing outstanding writers and thinkers from around the world together with curious audiences for over forty years. We celebrate the power of words, examine pressing issues, shift perspectives, and create joyful experiences for those of all ages. Our programme sparks essential conversations about the world around us, our place in it, and how we can improve it, together. Making these discussions accessible to anyone is at the heart of everything we do, in August and beyond.

Here, a book is a beginning – of a conversation, of a better understanding, of a debate, of a memory. What happens next is up to you.

August 16

Book Lovers Bookshop 2nd Birthday Late Night Shopping

6.30pm-9.30pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, EH9 1ND

Help us celebrate our two-year anniversary with a late night shopping event! Attendees will receive 20% off their purchases, and our 26/27 specialty tote bag will be revealed and available for purchase on the night of the event.

WHAT TO EXPECT?

OUR NEW 2ND BIRTHDAY TOTE BAG REVEAL!

NEW BOOKS... WE MIGHT BE KEEPING FUN SECRETS THAT WILL BE REVEALED SOON!

NEW MERCH LAUNCHING AT THE EVENT!

Free, but ticketed

Upcoming events

And for those who like to plan ahead…

August 19

Stories & Songs with Bridge Too Far

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for a calm & cozy evening at Typewronger Books where you can browse, read, and relax as folk music duo Bridge Too Far serenade you!

Bring whatever you’re reading at the moment or see what strikes your fancy on the Typewronger shelves. Bridge Too Far (@bridgetoofarband on IG) is a folk music duo consisting of Jordan Goodwin and Sarah Conniff. There will be guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and lots of vocal harmonies!

Free but ticketed

August 24

Luke Healy - Dogs on Dates

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

The Portobello Bookshop is excited to announce a very special August event for Luke Healy’s graphic novel Dogs on Dates! Luke is a comedian, cartoonist, and screenwriter from Dublin. We’re lucky that he’ll be in town doing his Fringe Festival show, and will be coming to the bookshop for a celebration of his latest release.

Dogs on Dates is the charming, whimsical, touching tale of Bernie and Brad, two dogs who... go on dates, and run into a few obstacles along the way. It’s the gay rom-com we’ve all been waiting for!

Healy will be in conversation with fellow award-winning graphic novelist Steven Ingram, author of Holly, Burn With Me and the ongoing series MurMur. It’ll be a real joy to have two artists together on stage!

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 25

Anne Pia: A Month O Muins

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Celebrate the end of Edinbrugh festival season with a night of Scots poetry with Anne Pia reading from her new collection, A Month O Muins.

From un mariage á trois, breast feeding kittens, rumpus at the Baptismal font and otherworldly lovemaking; with a whiff of Mozart’s Queen of the Night; faint aromas of Baudelaire; a hint of Dante’s selva oscura and Orpheus who tragically did look back, A Month O Muins Anne Pia’s new poetry collection in Scots is an often humorous, wry, subversive and consistently tender versioning of the poems and songs of the iconic, widely celebrated singer-songwriter, Georges Brassens: the “Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen of France”.

In this her third poetry collection, she takes inspiration and “courage” from Brassens in order to express her own deeply held views on society, her questioning of its norms and expectations; and the quiet dignity and beauty of originality and challenge to accepted norms; the natural world; the unsung, unoticed and little celebrated, in a world dominated by icons of capitalism, privilege and power.

Free but ticketed

August 29

Author Talk With Rebecca Tamas - The Book Of Mysteries : Wild Time And The Ritual Year

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 8LN

Join us for an evening in the bookshop with Rebecca Tamas to celebrate her newest release The Book of Mysteries : Wild Time and the Ritual Year.

At festive gatherings celebrating summer’s peak, in reflective moments as winter gave way, Rebecca Tamás began to hear another rhythm. A faint hint that, underneath the rush of clocks and calendars, another, richer kind of time might exist.

As she suffered from grief and burnout, Tamás sought a deeper connection to the movement of the seasons through an immersion in old folkways. She set out on a journey across the UK guided by the Pagan wheel of the year, marking each solstice, equinox and the midpoints between them with a ritual drawn from ancient traditions.

From a confrontation with the sharp pains of winter at Samhain in Edinburgh to a giddy experience of collective joy at Padstow’s May Day, she found in these traditional practices electric potential for transforming our relationship to the natural world.

Intellectually penetrating and richly lyrical, The Book of Mysteries follows the drumbeat of seasonal ritual towards an immersion in the wild time of the earth. Ecstatic, radical and irreverent, this book is a rallying cry to wrest time away from the structures of work and capital, so as to encounter the life-giving mystery of the natural world.

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 29

Bookshop Signing with Simone Soltani

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with sports romance author Simone Soltani!

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £9.99

September 1

Joe Wicks for Healthy Start
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

From the Number One Bestselling author of Protein in 15, Joe Wicks returns with a new collection of simple healthy recipes for all the family to enjoy.

We all want to make family mealtimes more enjoyable, with food that’s healthy and filling for everyone. But with picky eaters and the need to please different ages and tastes, it’s no secret they can sometimes be a challenge. With over 80 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, Healthy Start has everything you need to take the stress out of mealtimes so you can cook once and feed the whole family.

Packed with recipes that are quick to make, big on flavour and don’t rely on ultra-processed ingredients, Healthy Start is your go-to guide for fuss-free cooking that everyone will enjoy.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £22

September 2

Catherine Simpson for Sandwiched: Caring Up and Caring Down
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Catherine Simpson believed the hardest chapters of her life were behind her. She had raised two children - one of them autistic - and survived both a family suicide and her own cancer treatment. In her fifties, it was time to enjoy restoring her health, reducing work commitments, hanging out with friends and relaxing with her husband in their empty nest.

But when the global pandemic shut the world down, Catherine’s nonagenarian father’s independence began to slip away just as her adult daughter’s mental health spiralled into crisis.

Sandwiched is a candid memoir about being trapped in a high-pressure, intergenerational squeeze. It is a story of letting go of the superwoman myth, confronting the limits of control and responsibility, and trying to hold it all together while providing loving care.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 2

Robert Harris for Agrippa
7pm, Ps and Gs Church, 46 York Place, EH1 3HP

From the bestselling author of Conclave comes a new compelling book exploring friendship and power against the backdrop of Ancient Rome.

Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice.

Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, who he has made his heir.

The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.

To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire - and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.

When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 3

An Evening with Suzy Aspley and Elisabeth Wolf

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are delighted to be joined by Elisabeth Wolf and Suzy Aspley as they chat about their equally haunting, ominous and chilling Gothic mysteries, Winterbourne and The Bone Mother.

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 book lover’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 an unannounced visit from her employer, the enigmatic Lucien Broussard, Ann wonders what happened to the previous librarian when she finds notes hidden in the library’s ancient tomes. As echoes of the past start to reveal the house and Lucien’s dark secrets, suddenly Anne’s dream job becomes a living nightmare.

The Bone Mother

Martha Strangeways has settled into a quiet life in Strathbran, after the horrific events that traumatised the village a year earlier. But all this is turned upside down when her friend at Glasgow CID, DI Derek Summers, calls on her to help with a disturbing case: a human ear, with an unusual Celtic earring, has been found next to a railway line in the Highlands.

When the body of a young woman wearing matching jewellery turns up at a landmark church shortly after, the mystery deepens. Why has she been laid out in a ritualistic fashion? Does her trek along the little known Cailleach Way have anything to do with her death? And who is running the Facebook group where she posted details of her journey to the shrine of the Bone Mother goddess?

As Martha tries to unpick the threads, she finds herself entwined with a ghost from her own past, and in conflict with the owner of a project that threatens to destroy the goddess’s sacred land. With Halloween approaching, and someone determined to protect the goddess at all costs, can Martha and Summers catch the killer before they strike again, and this time much closer to home.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £13

(Full disclaimer, this is my own event as I write gothic novels under the pen name Elisabeth Wolf. But please don’t let that put you off - I’d love to see some of you there! AB)

September 3

James Fox - Craftland

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We’re thrilled to be hosting the publication day event for Craftland in paperback! James Fox’s journey through the British Isles to catalogue and celebrate artisan and heritage crafts has been a huge sensation since it’s release last year, and we’re excited to celebrate it with James in the shop.

James will be in conversation with Niamh MacKenzie, a PhD candidate working across the Highlands and Islands researching the arts, craftsmanship, and traditional practices. This promises to be a fascinating and insightful discussion, we can’t wait to see it!

Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our identities, built our communities and shaped our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life on these shores.

Travelling the length of Britain, from the Scilly Isles to the Scottish Highlands, James Fox seeks out the country’s last remaining master craftspeople. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bell-founders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life — one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could shape our future.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 3

Sabrina Ghayour for Persiana One
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

From the Queen of Middle Eastern cookery, Sabrina Ghayour, every recipe in Persiana One makes irresistible Middle Eastern flavours easier than ever in one pot, one tray or one pan.

From dips and bits that make snacking sublime to spectacular salads, and from easy everyday dinners to something a little bit more special, these are recipes designed with clever shortcuts that don’t compromise on flavour, to be as simple, and as kit free as possible.

With over 100 recipes, each accompanied by a photograph, this is a sumptuous gift for every cookery lover - who hates washing up!

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £28

September 3

Anna Deacon for The Wild Fix Scotland
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In The Wild Fix Scotland, writer and photographer Anna Deacon explores how the powerful connection between nature and wellbeing can help ease modern stress. Blending ancient wisdom with modern research, this beautifully illustrated guide is inspired by the elements of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air.

From wild swimming and forest bathing to mindful photography and seasonal living, Anna shows how aligning with nature can restore balance and calm, revealing why simply listening to birdsong or looking at images of nature can soothe the nervous system.

Featuring evocative photography of Scotland’s raw beauty, The Wild Fix Scotland is an uplifting companion to feeling better, living well and reconnecting with the healing power of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 4

Seren Hawley-Plows for The Ancient Ways
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This September we are joined by Seren Hawley-Plows for her debut book The Ancient Ways! It is a seasonal guide that uses myths, folklore and old rituals to help you reconnect with nature. Seren will even be giving us a demo of one of the rituals from her book.

Step into an ancient world of rituals and folklore in this stunning seasonal guide.

Tales of gods and goddesses told around a crackling fire. The light of the rising sun streaming through an ancient site on a solstice morning. Hot cider poured over the roots of apple trees to wake them for the spring.

Told through the pagan wheel of the year, The Ancient Ways explores how nature changes throughout the seasons, looking at solstices, equinoxes, legends, and festivals and how these stories and traditions can help you deepen your connection with nature. Discover megalithic sacred sites where crowds still gather to see the sun rise and fall through doorways of the past. Meet Eostre, goddess of the spring and dawn or the Cailleach, queen of winter and the Green Man, a personification of the wild. Celebrate festivals like Beltane, a summer celebration of fire and fertility or Samhain, the festival of the dead and precursor to modern Halloween.

Hedgewitch Seren Hawley-Plows weaves these myths and stories together beautifully with tools and inspiration of how to bring the power of ancient tradition into a modern world and help you find magic in the wilds of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Morvern Graham for Seasonal Folktales
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Embrace the changing seasons with local artist and storyteller Morvern Graham for a beautiful evening of illustrated myths and folklore.

In these magical retellings of classic Celtic and Nordic folktales, we journey from snowy mountain peaks to wild forests and stormy coastlines, as we observe the moon phases, find folkloric treasures and meet an array of strange and mysterious creatures. We’ll encounter sprites, trolls, mythic beasts and monsters - from the bramble boggle (a mischievous member of fairy folk who is said to have given blackberries their thorns) to the sea witches and selkies who roam the Northern shores.

Through the power of these stories we can light up our minds with a wild, child-like wonder, and reconnect our hungry souls to the natural rhythms of the shifting seasons.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Daniel Susskind for What Should My Children Do?
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

What should the next generation learn and what should they stop worrying about-in a world transformed by artificial intelligence?

AI is rewriting the rules in the classroom, the job market and the workplace, leaving parents, teachers, students and all types of workers unsure about how best to prepare for what lies ahead. In What Should My Children Do?, globally renowned economist Daniel Susskind cuts through the outdated advice to show us what young people actually need to succeed now.

We should not ban tools or discourage new skills that are in demand, Susskind argues, or cling to inherited ways of working. Instead, he reveals how people can master new technologies without eroding other essential skills. From reorganizing the curriculum to re-imagining white-collar careers, Susskind maps a smarter, more productive path forward.

This requires a fundamental mindset shift: we must embrace the extraordinary opportunities that AI brings-from personal tutors to scientific breakthroughs-rather than retreat from them. Drawing on fifteen years of research, this book is an evidence-based and practical guide to one of the most urgent questions of our time.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 8

Yotam Ottolenghi for Simple Too
7pm, McEwan Hall, The University of Edinburgh, Teviot Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9A

It’s a noisy world out there, so stop, take a minute or two, listen to the soup bubble or the egg crackle... and let simple cooking be your solution.

For the three million home cooks around the world who loved Ottolenghi Simple, Yotam and his co-author, test kitchen colleague Verena Lochmuller, set themselves the task to further pair down processes and ingredient lists, whilst keeping the vibrant, multi- layered, surprising signature flavours loved throughout the world.

Many of the dishes, such as Braised halloumi with tomatoes and beans, or Smoky tomato and feta prawns, are made in one baking tray, with no preparation at all, ready to put on the table in about 30 minutes. They’re for feeding family and friends or just yourselves; classics reimagined the Ottolenghi way using flavour-enhancing ingredients such as za’atar, tahini, harissa and garlic.

Bring Yotam Ottolenghi’s innovation to your everyday with 135 new recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Every dish has simplicity at its core and can be made in under 30 minutes, cooked in one pot, or prepped ahead. Whatever your barriers to cooking, this book brings you into the kitchen with a promise that even the simplest of meals can be full of flavour and joy.

Ticket plus book £30

September 9

Ten Poems about Edinburgh
7pm, Waterstones, West End, Princes Street

Join Michael Pedersen, Janet Ayachi, Majorie Lotfi and Dr Harriet McMillan, as we celebrate the publication of Candlestick Press’s glorious and lively mini-anthology, Ten Poems about Edinburgh, which reflects the many ways in which Scotland’s ancient capital city is loved by visitors and the people who live there.

There are poems celebrating the beauty of Edinburgh’s buildings and parks alongside others capturing moments in its long history and vivid life as a hub of art, music and literature. Throughout are the atmospheres created by its distinctive weathers and the proximity of the North Sea.

The pamphlet is a perfect companion for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the many riches of this special city. Introduced and selected by Michael Perdersen, the collection includes poems from Janette Ayachi, Robert Burns, Jackie Kay, Marjorie Lotfi, Edwin Morgan, Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Hollie McNish, Robert Louis Stevenson and Michael himself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10

September 9

Shorelines x Readers & Writers Against Genocide: a Palestine Solidarity Night

7pm, Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Join us to welcome Shorelines, the prize-winning non-fiction debut by Alycia Pirmohamed, into the world with a night of solidarity with Palestine.

Come on down to Bruntsfield’s gorgeous Pianodrome where we will gather around readings by Alycia, Hannah Lavery and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, as well as music from Miwa Nagato-Apthorp and Curlew (Gill Higgins), with all proceeds from tickets and on-the-night donations going to Writers and Readers Against the Genocide. These will be distributed between two funds: Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children’s Fund.

As a young Muslim woman, Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous. Her affinity to the natural world – the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood – conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents’ homeland – the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees – felt painfully distant.

Across interrelated pieces that travel from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.

Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations – and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Christopher de Hamel for The Migrants
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In the course of a long career at Sotheby’s and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably handled more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive and his delight and enthusiasm in them runs through all he writes.

His many books, translated into numerous languages, include A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize), The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket and The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club.

Christopher joins us for his astounding new book, The Migrants: A Memoir in Manuscripts. This is a coming-of-age saga with extraordinary twists, crossing many hundreds of years and tens of thousands of miles, recounted with passion, humour and a lifetime’s reflection.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 10

Colin Bramwell for Fetch
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

We are delighted to be welcoming an incredible local talent, Colin Bramwell, for the launch of his debut poetry collection, Fetch. Reading alongside him will be poets Michael Grieve and Jacob Polley.

Following his recent success after winning both the 2026 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize and the 2026 Highland Book Prize for his translation of Fernando Pessoa into Scots, Fower Pessoas, Bramwell returns with a debut collection that is sure to delight with its distinctive voice.

On Fetch: In Celtic folklore a fetch is a shadowy doppelganger that appears from the Otherworld, portending the beholder’s fate. Your fetch ‘fetches’ you to the afterlife, willingly or otherwise. Bramwell’s poetry uses the fetch as a model to explore a number of overlapping binaries – between the reader and the poem, most of all. Fetch also meditates on the differences between music and speech, the sacred and the profane, the written and the real, humanity and nature, Scots and English. Incorporating multitudes of modes, forms, registers and subjects, Bramwell converses with the Anglo-Celtic lyric tradition in our own time and in his own distinctively amiable fashion. In other words, this poet takes poetry seriously – but not too seriously.

Fetch is a tour-de-force debut from one of Britain’s most exciting new poets, in which reverence and irreverence, religion and faithlessness, the living and the dead, nearly rhyme.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 10

An Evening with Sebastian Barry

7.30pm, Nicolson Square, The Methodist Church, Nicolson Square, EH8 9BX

We’re excited to welcome Sebastian Barry to the Great Hall at Nicolson Square Edinburgh for a publication day launch of his new novel, The Newer World. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Old God’s Timeand Days Without End comes a lyrical, visceral novel about what it is to survive, and what might be lost along the way.

Barry will be in conversation with Peggy Hughes. He will be signing books following the event.

I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things . . . were gone forever.

The Newer World follows the life of Tennyson Bouguereau – freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man – as he journeys to find meaning and belonging in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

From the relative safety of home in Tennessee with his sister Rosalee, he is offered the possibility of a whole new life in Nashville, until a surprising trip to Victorian England changes everything.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Hollow’s Hauntology Event with Evelyn Hollow

6.30pm, St. Vincent’s Chapel, St Vincent Street, Edinburgh

Discover the hidden world of the supernatural and unexplained in this definitive guide to the world’s darkest wonders.

Hollow’s Hauntology is a richly illustrated compendium that uncovers how 80 legendary beings – from blood-drinking revenants to shape-shifting gods – have shaped storytelling across history. Across eight immersive chapters, the book explores humanity’s oldest fears and fascinations. Through this, paranormal psychologist and TV and radio presenter, Evelyn Hollow, brings a uniquely rigorous perspective, blending psychological methodology with cultural analysis.

She reveals how etymology shapes belief, how folklore reflects collective psychology and how overlooked myths still echo through modern culture. Hollow’s Hauntology invites you to discover what it means to be human beneath a vast and haunted sky.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £20

September 11 - new listing

Bookshop Signing with Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy!

5pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with authors Sierra Simone & Julie Murphy. It’s your chance to get your books signed, meet Sierra and Julie and get a photo!

Tickets £2

September 11

Lucy Lapwing - Wildlife Walk

4.45pm, Modern Art Gallery One

Join BBC presenter, naturalist and self-described ‘nature nerd’ Lucy Lapwing for a Wildlife Walk along the Water of Leith to discover the wondrous wildlife that lives there.

The walk will set off from the Modern Art Gallery and down to the Water of Leith at 5pm and last approximately an hour.

The walk will take place before we sit down with Lucy to discuss her fantastic new book ‘Love is a Toad’ at 7.00pm. Please purchase your tickets for the talk separately HERE.

Tickets £15

September 11

Lucy Lapwing ‘Love is a Toad’ - Author Talk

7pm, Wild Fungarium, 13 Randolph Place, Edinburgh EH3 7TA

We’re super excited to have BBC presenter Lucy Lapwing here with us for an evening on the 11th of September. Lucy will be in store to discuss her wonderfully joyous new book, ‘Love is a Toad: Exploring our Relationship with Nature’

Lucy will also be hosting a Wildlife Walk at 5pm along the Water of Leith. If you are interested in attending the walk we recommend early booking as there are limited spaces. Tickets can be purchased HERE.

Nature makes us feel things. It sparks awe, curiosity and a sense of beauty and community. But as wildlife around us declines and disappears, murkier feelings rise up: guilt, detachment and fear for nature’s plight. For many years, Lucy Lapwing wrestled with these tangled emotions. So, in an attempt to make sense of this dance between joy and grief, she decided to go on a journey.

In Love Is a Toad, Lucy traverses meadows, bogs and hedgerows with her fellow nature enthusiasts, where she digs down into our relationship with the natural world. Over the course of a year, she meets bucketfuls of wildlife – Blackbird and Oak, slugs and puffballs, waterlilies, Dung Beetles and toads – as she roams across the UK.

From a river swim to wanders through woodlands, with every journey, Lucy explores how nature makes us feel, from wild grief and anger through to soaring joy and indefatigable hope. At once a celebration and an invitation to reflect, Love Is a Toad prods and pokes at our connection to the natural world, exploring its complexity in all its muddiness, messiness and wonder.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 11

Ed Conway for Trade World
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Ed Conway is a writer and broadcaster. He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and a regular columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. He has won numerous awards for his journalism and his book Material World was a Sunday Times bestseller.

From the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Material World, a story that will take you from ancient civilizations, empire and globalisation through to the most influential geopolitical issue of our times.

The story of trade is the story of humanity. From the copper in Mesopotamian ploughs to the silicon atoms within the chip inside your smartphone, intricate global trading networks have evolved over millennia to fulfil the distinctly human desire to buy and sell.

Today, the volume of trade bestriding the planet is unprecedented. Yet, as fractures in the global order emerge – from an era of globalisation and untrammelled flows of goods and money to a new world of restrictions, intervention and, possibly, war – understanding this fundamental shift to the dominant economic consensus is more important than ever.

Ed Conway tells this extraordinary story through these three commonplace products – bread, cloth and cars. With a compelling blend of economic history and first-hand access to key figures and institutions, he takes us from policy treaties to ground level to show us the people who make, ship and sometimes smuggle the products we buy on a daily basis.

Discover the hidden, shifting trade world behind everything you see around you.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 14

Ben Macintyre for Redwood
7pm, Greyfriars Charteris Centre, 138-140 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9RR

Ben Macintyre joins us to discuss Redwood, the remarkable, unknown Cold War story of how one spy saved the world from nuclear war.

The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.

‘Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets. For Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret, one that if revealed, would turn his life upside-down, and in a desperate situation, he reached out to MI6 – believing it to have the only solution. Soon facing exposure, he then demanded that the British try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan.

This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

September 14

An Evening with Jonn Elledge
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

For over 10,000 years, the human race has been busy altering our environment and embracing ‘progress’, evolving seamlessly from hunter gatherers to the modern urban sophisticates we see ourselves as today.

We are delighted to be joined by the bestselling author of A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge, as he delves into the inventions and innovations that contributed to our modern urbanised world in his latest endlessly fascinating and engagingly written volume, 31 Inventions that Built Our World.

Jonn, will be joined by acclaimed journalist and author, Gabriella Bennett, as they take us on a fascinating and often surprising tour of the ideas and technologies that made modernity possible. From elevators to electric lighting, parks to pedestrian crossings, he guides us through the history of civilisation itself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £28

September 15

The Fairy Spotter’s Guide: Elizabeth Dearnley on where to find banshees, Bigfoot and other creatures from folklore

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Watch your step. Not all fairies are friendly.

We’re so excited to be welcoming author Elizabeth Dearnley and illustrator Sarah Coleman for a double bill that will take you on a journey across continents and cultures as we uncover the origins of extraordinary folk creatures, from mermaids and bigfoot to shapeshifters and spectral hounds.

No matter where you are, you’re never far from a door to the Otherworld ... From the bloodthirsty baobhan sith of the Scottish Highlands to the mischievous trasgu creeping beneath your floorboards, the world is teeming with hidden, magical beings. The Fairy Spotter’s Guide is your essential companion for navigating the world of the uncanny.

Packed with more than 100 original, spellbinding illustrations and written by a leading expert in fairy tales and folklore, this is no ordinary field guide. Whether you’re a seasoned cryptid hunter or a curious newcomer, this beautifully crafted book will enchant, unnerve and utterly captivate.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

Cooks & Books: Claire Thomson for Dear Grace
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Dear Grace is a warm, wise cookbook written by chef and food writer Claire Thomson for her daughter as she leaves home for university. Claire began addressing Instagram posts to Grace, each pairing heartfelt advice and reminiscences with a recipe to nurture and comfort. This struck a chord with parents everywhere experiencing similar emotional highs and lows as they prepared to send their children off into adult life.

Each recipe begins with a note to Grace - advice about surviving deadlines, sharing meals, cooking for one, or navigating heartbreak - followed by an easy dish designed for small kitchens, tight budgets and busy schedules.

Through memories and stories of family and food, Claire perfectly captures the bittersweet moment of watching your child begin their independent life - and the comfort of knowing they can feed themselves and their friends with confidence, creativity and care.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £24

September 15

Pulitzer-Prize Finalist Daniel Mason for Country People
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

This autumn, Daniel Mason - Pulitzer Prize finalist and bookseller favourite - returns to the bookshop to discuss his latest novel, Country People. Funny, adventurous, and elegant, Country People isn’t a book to be missed.

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales - from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes - until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 15

An Evening with Rebecca F Kuang

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street

The Portobello Bookshop is truly excited to host An Evening with Rebecca F. Kuang for her forthcoming novel Taipei Story. This return to the literary fiction genre is highly anticipated after the massive success of her last fiction novel Yellowface. Rebecca is also known for her beloved fantasy novels including the Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Katabasis.

Taipei Story is a wryly humorous and profoundly moving coming-of-age novel that grapples with grief, language, and culture shock—all set against the backdrop of an unforgettable summer in Taipei.

Kuang will be in conversation with Katie Goh, author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange.

Ticket plus book £25

September 15

Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44

7pm, Blackwell’s, South Bridge

Join Chris Powici and Allan Radliffe as we celebrate the publication of Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44, the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, including new work from 43 authors – some internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

We are delighted to be joined by Rachel Coventry, Tony Frame, Kate Hendry, Donnchadh MacCàba, Fiona Mossman and Shane Strachan, who will be sharing poetry and short stories in English, Gaelic and Scots.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

September 16

Lorna Elcock in conversation with James Robertson

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join Women’s Prize Discoveries 2021 shortlisted author, Lorna Elcock, as she discusses her raw and emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, The Windhover, with James Robertson.

Perthshire. 1957. The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.

Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.

It’s 1982. Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £15

September 16

Cooks & Books: Ali Stoner for Scran
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Ali Stoner or ‘Roving Haggis’ as she is known on social media, is a Scottish cook and a former Masterchef Australia contestant. Born in Glasgow, she currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband, family and two dogs.

Scran is a new collection of more than 100 nostalgic and traditional Scottish recipes, seen through a modern lens. Ali brings old favourites, classic bakery treats and creative new recipes inspired by Scotland, its landscapes and its traditions.

Some highlights include: Scottish eggs benedict with whisky chive hollandaise, millionaire shortbread, peppermint slice, chicken Balmoral sausage roll, macaroni pie, confit sardines with gin pickled onions, a plethora of morning rolls, tablet, and Scottish martini.

It should make for a particularly delicious evening; we hope to see you there.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £27

September 16

Steven Veerapen for Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Steven Veerapen was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and a Mauritian father and raised in Paisley. He is the author of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, and lives in Glasgow.

Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton.

This ground breaking study of Henry’s life examines and destroys many of the long-repeated myths about this complex monarch: he was not particularly gluttonous, not particularly prudish, and not particularly messy in his religious changes. Nor did he see himself as simply King of England. Drawing on archival sources from across the British Isles, Steven Veerapen reveals how Henry fashioned an image of himself as a law-abiding and benevolent emperor who dreamed of uniting England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and swathes of France under Tudor rule.

Yet the image was false and the dream a nightmare for his queens, his ministers and many of his subjects. This new portrait shows Henry for what he really was: a self-aggrandising actor who, by fair means and foul - murder plots, marriage negotiations and military ventures - did all he could to realise his imperial fantasy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30

September 17

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay: an evening with Lex Croucher

7pm, Nicolson Square Venues - 25 Nicolson Square EH8 9BX

What a joy to welcome Lighthouse favourite Lex Croucher back to the shop for the Edinburgh launch of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, the highly anticipated follow-up to the instant New York Times bestselling and YA Book Prize winning Gwen and Art Are Not in Love! Joining Lex on stage we’ll have award-winning author and ancient historian Jean Menzies. Expect an evening of Camelot, queer joy and laughter.

They fell in love. They won a great battle. It should have been happily ever after. But now, Camelot’s famous couples have fallen apart.

Newly crowned King Gabriel is having panic attacks in cupboards in-between council meetings. He can’t tell Arthur just how not okay he is – so he’s set him free, to find love with someone who can get through the day without breaking down.

Bridget has lost her spark for sparring, forfeiting again and again in the lists. When she’s invited to join Gabriel’s round table, she hopes it’ll be the change she needs. But trying to navigate the post-happily-ever-after reality of a relationship with Gwen, when Bridget no longer feels like the dashing knight Gwen fell in love with, feels impossible.

With the kingdom still reeling from an attempted uprising, and rumoured sightings of the Holy Grail, the Questing Beast and the Green Knight happening across the country, the gang depart on a PR tour destined for disaster. Can Gabriel be the king his country deserves? Can Bridget get her jousting groove back? And will they find their way back to the courtly love that once seemed fated?

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 17

Marie Darrieussecq for How to Make a Woman
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

‘Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work.’ - Samantha Harvey, Guardian

Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in 1980s France. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different paths: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, studies psychology and marries her first love, Christian; Solange has numerous affairs, becomes pregnant at fifteen, gives birth to a baby boy, and pursues an acting career. Each tries to find her own happiness, her own sense of meaning, while navigating a world which seeks to establish binary ideas of what a woman can be. How to Make a Woman is a bold, sometimes brutal, coming-of-age novel from the award-winning novelist Marie Darrieussecq.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 17

Jess Elliott Dennison: Vegetable Recipes

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Jess Elliott Dennison will be back in the bookshop this autumn for an evening event celebrating and sampling new recipes from her brand new cookbook, Vegetable Recipes. Jess will talk all things vegetables and do a live food demo, so that you can taste some of her delicious recipes on the night!

In this, the third book in the series, Jess is sharing favourite vegetarian dishes that celebrate the glorious variety of vegetables available throughout the seasons.

Including recipes for Leeks Vinaigrette and Celeriac Remoulade for enjoying with baguette; crispy Fennel and Onion Bhajis; a light summertime lasagne with courgettes and ricotta béchamel and comforting pumpkin-curry pastries for the colder months, this book is filled with easy, reliable dishes for everyone to enjoy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 17 - new listing

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans!

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

You know the name. You know the carnage.

Meet Matt King AKA Super Hans, as he joins us to sign copies of his own not-entirely-true story Moreish: My Mad Autobiography; his hilarious and oddly touching memoir recounted with all his drug-addled charm and charisma.

Now, for the first time ever, Super Hans tells his own story – no filter, no agenda, just 100% pure, distilled Hans. From his early days brewing home-fermented insanity to fronting the greatest band that never was, to performing at actual Glastonbury, this book is the hilarious, trippy and occasionally baffling life story of Super Hans, in his own words, even though he can’t quite remember all the details.

Super Hans – real name Simon, not that he’s ever used it – is a musician, DJ, philosopher, and all-around cultural disruptor. Known as Jez’s best mate and Mark’s worst nightmare in Channel 4’s cult classic Peep Show, he rose to legendary status thanks to his unforgettable lines, unfiltered wisdom, and habit of turning up exactly where you least expect him. His upcoming memoir is the legendary story of a modern folk anti-hero, written in his own gloriously chaotic words.

Matt King is an internationally renowned comedian, screenwriter and actor. Perhaps best known for playing Super Hans in the Bafta award-winning Peep Show, Matt can currently be seen as a recurring character in Time Bandits (Apple) and Spent (BBC). Matt has appeared on the big screen in the likes of Bronson alongside Tom Hardy, Dolittle with Robert Downey Jr, Paddington, RocknRolla and Juliet, Naked. He also played the lead role of Henry Mallet in the award-winning Australian drama series Spirited, for which he won the Best Male Actor in a Drama award. Matt created and wrote the BBC chef sitcom Whites starring Alan Davies, and also created and wrote the Sky drama Starlings starring Brendan Coyle and Lesley Sharp. Moreish is his first novel.

Ticket plus book £20

September 18

An Evening with Fiona Ross

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join author and journalist, Fiona Ross, as she chats to Cat Harvey about her warm, richly evocative and uplifting memoir, of second chances, stubborn cows and the quiet magic of finding home in the most unexpected of places, Wild Knowing.

Fiona was a Glasgow girl through and through, but when she was gifted an old leather-bound family ledger, she discovered a Highland family history that would change her life. The ledger records the story of the family’s 19th-century Highland cattle fold. Little did Fiona know that she would soon be moving with her husband and two beloved dogs to a remote Argyllshire croft where she would start her own herd (or fold, as it is known for Highland cows). On a wave-washed island, in the shadow of the Highland Clearances, Fiona moved in with 48 magnificent cows who would become her family.

This book is an ode to farming and the softer life that can be lived in the Hebrides. It depicts the life-affirming joy of bathing every morning in the icy Atlantic before taking the cows for a paddle. It tells calamitous tales of amorous bulls, escaping heifers, upturned quad bikes, falling off piers and accidentally injecting herself with cow meds. It tells the stories of births - so many beautiful births - followed by the drama of catching each slippery calf, holding it and tagging it, all under the baffled shaggy-fringed gaze of its 500-kilo, massively-horned mum.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18

September 18

Janice Hallet for The Silent Appeal
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

A New Play. Another Murder. Who Will Speak the Truth? It’s a new theatrical season in Lower Lockwood, and the amateur thespians of the Fairway Players are starting rehearsals for their production of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow.

Despite divisive new arrivals, countless petty jealousies and a near-fatal accident with the lighting rig, surely this will be their greatest show to date?

But someone isn’t going to make it to opening night. Could it be producer Sarah-Jane’s mysterious sister, lately arrived home after 20 years abroad? New member Lucas, whose shady business dealings may be his downfall? Or perhaps once-convicted murderer Issy Beck, recently acquitted but still up to her old tricks?

Lawyers Charlotte and Femi must sift through the emails, texts and police reports to identify the victim and find out why the person convicted of the murder refuses to speak out in their own defence...

Will they uncover the truth in time? Will you?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 19

Meet Rachel Gillig at Book Lovers Bookshop!

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, UK EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with author Rachel Gillig!

Rachel Gillig, the queen of gothic romantasy, returns with higher stakes, darker mysteries and deeper longings in this gorgeous sequel to the No. 1 international bestselling sensation The Knight and the Moth. Aisling Cathedral is in ruins.

Rodrick Myndacious, Bartholomew and Maude Bauer are rumored to be dead - and the king has taken Sybil Delling as his bride. To show off their union and solidify his power over Traum, Benji proposes a series of tournaments throughout the hamlets. Captive and drugged, Sybil remains determined to vanquish him as she once did the Omens, even if she destroys the kingdom’s faith - and herself - in the process.

But then a mysterious knave rises to the top of the lists, a man with no name and no memory who may just be Sybil’s ticket to undoing Benji’s power. For in a land where stories repeat themselves, where a king can prove as cruel as a god, the only way to truly destroy the Stonewater Kingdom’s faith is to save it.

Tickets £2/Ticket plus book £25

September 20 - new listing

Grim Tidings Book Bedazzling

7pm, Library Gallery, Summer Hall Arts, Edinburgh, EH9 1PL

Join us for an in-person book bedazzling event to celebrate the release of Grim Tidings by B.K. Borison! Readers who attend in-person will get the chance to attend a live virtual Q&A with B.K. herself and spend the evening bedazzling their books! Book Lovers Book Shop will be providing all crafting materials and books for the evening.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.40

September 21 - new listing

Louise Kennedy with Sam Baker for Stations
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are delighted to be welcoming Louise Kennedy to Edinburgh to celebrate Stations, a devastating story of love and friendship, and a tender portrait of the choices we blithely make when we are young, unaware that the consequences will reverberate throughout our lives.

Roisin and Red meet as teenagers in their small Irish hometown in 1982. Brilliant, sharp-tongued and born to slip through the cracks, Red’s reputation for trouble precedes him - but Roisin finds herself swept up in his storm, and soon their connection deepens.

When a brush with the law pushes Red into a corner, he escapes their town to start a new life in England. As the years pass, they remain tethered to one another, a fragile thread holding their once fierce friendship together. When Roisin arrives in London, the promise of freedom, of reinvention, and of finding her dear friend calls.

But searching for Red leads Roisin to a truth darker than she could have imagined: when you go looking for someone you may uncover parts of yourself along the way that you’d rather stayed buried. And Red - bright, beautiful Red - might not want to be found at all.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 21 - new listing

An Evening with Marlon James

7.30pm, Assembly Roxy, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh EH8 9SU

The Portobello Bookshop is absolutely thrilled to be hosting Marlon James for the Edinburgh launch of his latest novel The Disappearers.

Join us at the atmospheric Assembly Roxy for an in-depth look at the novel, which heralds James’s triumphant return to the Jamaica of the Booker Prize-winning A Brief History of Seven Killings – a place of heat and chaos, and of danger for anyone outside the heteronormal. James himself has described it as “Be gay. Do crime. Get revenge.” We cannot wait to read it and to find out more on the night!

James will be in conversation with writer and dramaturg Laurence Cook.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £20

September 22 - new listing

Mathias Enard for Perfecting The Shot
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Mathias Enard, born in 1972, studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. He won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Decembre, and won the Liste Goncourt/Le Choix de l’Orient, the Prix litteraire de la Porte Doree and the Prix du Roman-News for Street of Thieves. He won the 2015 Prix Goncourt, the 2017 Leipziger Book Award for European Understanding, the Premio Gregor von Rezzori and was shortlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize for Compass. Perfecting the Shot is his seventh novel to appear with Fitzcarraldo Editions.

In a nameless city torn apart by civil war, a teenage sniper has only one goal: to fire the perfect shot. He sublimates himself into his weapon, learns to maintain impassivity, controls his breath, listens to his body and the beat of his heart. Lying in wait on rooftops, he takes aim at people below while his traumatized mother cowers in their flat. But the violence eats away at any sense of morality as he kills civilians and combatants indiscriminately, for the sake of killing itself. His routine is disrupted by the arrival of Myrna, a fifteen-year-old girl hired to care for his mother, and his increasingly disturbing obsession with her soon threatens to push them all into the abyss. Now appearing in English more than twenty years after its original publication, Mathias Enard’s debut novel is a timeless study of how extreme violence corrodes the soul, tracking the convulsions of a brutalized mind in spare, unflinching prose.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 22 - new listing

Paul Johnson for Challenging Inequalities
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

There is a widespread sense throughout the developed world that progress towards a better society has stalled. Many countries, including the UK, have experienced persistent economic stagnation accompanied by declining trust in institutions. Governments are struggling to respond not only to traditional economic problems but also to newer challenges posed by climate change, migration and technological change. Challenging Inequalities connects these conditions to inequality-inequality not just of income and wealth but of health, political participation and opportunity. It not only offers a detailed analysis of the different forms of inequalities but also an in-depth consideration of why inequalities matter, how they have changed and what can, or should, be done about them.

The book explains the enduring effects of early life experiences and education and examines the trends in employment and earnings over recent decades. It argues that economic stagnation since the financial crises of 2008-2009 has exposed inequalities originating in the 1980s. Not only have incomes stagnated, but so has progress towards reducing health inequalities and dealing with inequalities across gender, ethnicity, geography, age and educational level. The combination of earnings inequality and economic stagnation has led to the growing importance of wealth, the increasing concentration of economic power in an older generation and a decline in social mobility. Economic inequalities have also resulted directly in dangerous differences between regions and in political power across groups.

The need to address inequality has never been more urgent. Challenging Inequalities offers a road map for how we have arrived at such a perilous spot-and how we can change course to achieve better outcomes for all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 22 - new listing

Celebrate Turncloak with LK Steven!

6.30pm, Christ Church Morningside, 6a Morningside Road

Join us for an in-person event with LK Stevens to celebrate the release of Turncloak, the sequel to Silvercloak.

Two decades ago, the Bloodmoons ruthlessly murdered Saffron's parents. Hellbent on revenge, she lied her way into the elite Silvercloak Academy of detectives with a single goal: find a way to bring the Bloodmoons to justice.

But on the eve of her graduation, her deception is exposed, and she's given only one option: go undercover and tear the Bloodmoons down from the inside. Descending into a world where pleasure and pain are the most powerful currencies, Saff must commit some truly heinous deeds to keep her cover - and her life. Not only are there rival gangs and sinister smuggling rings to contend with, there's also her growing feelings for the kingpin's tortured son, and curious prophecy foretelling his death at Saff's hand.

With each day testing her loyalties further, Saff's web of lies becomes harder to spin. And when one false step could destroy everything and everyone she's ever loved...the mage who dedicated her life to vengeance might just have to die for it.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £20/Ticket plus book bundle £29.99

September 22 - new listing

Three poets at Lighthouse: launching Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Melete and Jay Gao’s The Dead One… with Agata Maslowska

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43-45 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

There’s nothing we love more than a poetry night here at Lighthouse, and we’re delighted to be bringing you not one, not two, but THREE incredible poets as we welcome Jennifer Lee Tsai and Jay Gao’s new collections in the company of Agata Maslowska.

These poems cover themes of family history, migration, racial and queer desires, womanhood and war. They explore identity, belonging and place through each poet’s own voices - get ready for an evening of beautiful language and fantastic readings!

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £14

September 23 - new listing

An Evening with Alex Howard

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join bestselling author of The Ghost Cat, Alex Howard, as he chats to Lucy Ribchester about his heartwarming epic tale of adventure adventure, belonging and unexpected friendship, The Ship’s Cat.

When street-savvy London stray Archie accidentally stows away on a flight to Turkey, he’s just looking for shelter. But after stumbling onto a fishing boat in a quiet cove, Archie discovers he’s no ordinary feline - for with his polydactyl paws, he brings uncanny good fortune to vessels at sea.

From the sun-drenched harbours of the Mediterranean to the bustling decks of ocean racers, Archie becomes a legend among sailors. Yet beneath the viral fame and whispered tales of ‘the magical ship’s cat’, Archie yearns for something deeper: a forever-human who will love him not as a talisman, but as a companion.

It may be luck that drives Archie on this great Odyssey around the world, but love will be what calls him home - not to some place, perhaps, but to someone.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £20

September 23 - new listing

Derek Owusu for The Recovery House
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

From the Granta Best British Young novelist comes a new stunning mediation on faith, identity, music and the ties of friendship that bind us together.

Jamal, a gifted and introspective young poet, wakes in a quiet, claustrophobic recovery house after a devastating mental breakdown, unsure how the bright edges of his life became so fractured. In this stark yet strangely tender sanctuary, with its watchful nurses, restless corridors and overlooked garden, he encounters several wounded, but radiant souls who are each wrestling with their own invisible storms. As Jamal navigates this suspended world, at once suffocating and strangely sacred, he begins to observe rather than retreat, finding in the rhythms of shared cigarettes, half-finished conversations and midnight confessions a hesitant, flickering sense of belonging.

Within these intimate, volatile walls, music drifts like prayer. A song sung into the dark becomes a fragile lifeline. Psalms are read aloud with trembling conviction. Laughter erupts, unexpected and defiant. Jamal’s searching, philosophical mind moves restlessly between memory and imagination, literature and scripture, doubt and devotion, interrogating the porous boundaries between illness and inspiration. What does it mean to hear a voice and call it God, or art, or madness? What is salvation in a place built to contain collapse? In the charged silence of the garden, under watchful skies, he begins to sense that joy can exist even here, braided through grief, carried on melody, sustained by human touch.

Tender, intelligent and spiritually inquisitive, The Recovery House is a novel about the music that survives inside us when language falters, about the redemptive possibilities of friendship, and about the delicate courage required to rebuild a self. As Jamal reckons with love, faith, shame and the perilous seduction of turning life into art, he is forced to confront the most difficult question of all: how to live honestly in the world without sacrificing the soul that makes him want to write it.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 23 - new listing

Up the Youth Club: Emma Warren illuminates a hidden history

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop - 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

A searching look and empassioned love letter to the youth club by renowned documentarian Emma Warren, highlighting the seismic impact they have had on UK culture and why we need to ensure their existence for future generations.

In Up the Youth Club, Warren maps the shifting story of youth clubs in the UK and Northern Ireland, from factory workers in Victorian Boys’ and Girls’ clubs to renegade self-emancipatory spaces in the 1970s and the music-generating youth clubs of more recent decades. With a mixed lineage in church evangelism, the patronage of the upper classes, grassroots’ DIY, and erratic state funding, the youth club has had a huge, yet almost invisible, effect on music, sport, culture and society.

Arguing that we cannot advocate for what we do not understand, Warren positions youth clubs as a kind of engine room - from the famous success stories to come out of their doors, such as The Specials or Stormzy, to the untold stories of young people finding shelter, sustenance and stimulation for over a century - and why their dwindling numbers, largely due to austerity and funding cuts, is of serious concern for us all.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £10.99

September 24 - new listing

Queerphoria: a queer voices extravaganza

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

The inaugural collection in the new VERVE Voices series, Queerphoria is a joyful and defiant queer-authored anthology proudly supporting Switchboard, the national LGBTQIA+ support line.

We are so delighted to be welcoming VERVE editor Jenna Gordon in conversation with Elle Nash, Carrie Marshall and Seth Insua to the shop for a queer voices extravaganza celebrating Queerphoria!

Four housemates welcome the reader into their home for a birthday party. An elderly widow visits her first queer bar, beneath the flat she shared with her husband. A couple invite a shipwrecked sailor into their isolated lighthouse on the stormy night of their thirtieth anniversary. A single woman embarks on a romantic relationship with a sex robot. A married couple secretly prepare for their baby’s arrival in a world where procreation is controlled by the Establishment.

Through prose, poetry, essays, illustrations and more, thirty-one writers bring their visions of euphoria to life. These pages celebrate, subvert, expand and reimagine what joy can look like, even in uncertain times.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 24 - new listing

Maryam Aslany, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge

Join Maryam Aslany as she discusses her extraordinary, out-and-out masterpiece of a book, Peasants: Makers of the Modern World. Maryam debunks the myth that peasants are backward and archaic, and her rigorously researched volume charts the history of this forgotten class and shows how reliant the world economy still is on their labour.

Peasants never disappeared – we simply stopped seeing them

For centuries, they fed empires, led revolutions and built modern states. Yet industrial modernity forced them into the shadows. Today, political and economic elites speak as if peasants are relics of the past, even though this two-billion-strong workforce grows a third of our food and sustains our landscapes, producing everything from supermarket staples to the most exclusive luxuries. Like Atlas, they hold up the modern world, yet the true story of how they shaped it has long been obscured.

Their story uncovers the hidden architecture of our global systems

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £25

September 24 - new listing

C L Hellisen: The Shape of Monsters

7pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh South Bridge

Join debut author, C L Hellisen as they chat to Annabel Campbell, about their gripping, haunting tale of dark magic, demonic possession and family secrets, The Shape of Monsters.

When a magical fire destroyed their family as children, Aleks and Vaira Kercheval escaped. Born to a world where power was everything, they’ve hidden from it all their lives. Then a letter arrives stating that Vaira has inherited Aubrey House, a decaying Gothic mansion full of dark, wild magic.

The estranged siblings haven’t spoken for years. But together, they return to their ancestral home, where crossing the threshold plunges them into a realm of shadows and ancient feuds. As the pair are drawn into a war between rival mages, the powerless Aleks accidentally summons and binds a monstrous prince from the Void – a creature of immense power. His gifted sister must learn to unleash her inner fire as the lines between human and monster blur. But can they survive the darkness that is to come?

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £20

September 24 - new listing

Roshni Gallagher & Clementine Ewokolo Burnley

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

Join us for a special double-feature poetry launch event with Edinburgh-based poets Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley!

They will both be here to celebrate the publication of their brand new collections, Gallagher’s Even the Trees and Burnley’s Belling the Leopard, with poetry readings and conversation.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book bundle £24

September 24 - new listing

Shiver Event with Brigid Lowe

6.30pm, St. Vincent's Chapel, St Vincent Street

After Brigid Lowe’s world is upended, Scotland becomes her home. Its icy, wild waters a place of visceral relief. Baptising herself into this new life, Brigid sets herself a challenge: to swim in 1,000 of these spectacular lochs.

And so Brigid’s adventures begin: stepping into ice and caves and sacred springs, she swims with birds, conger eels and seals, across forest and mountain and moor, alone and with her children in tow. And as she comes to know these secret pools, with their vaulting depths and softer shallows, she walks the line between recklessness and safety, discovering new depths of pain and pleasure, of strength and endurance.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 24 - new listing

Victoria Aveyard for Tempest
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

We are thrilled to be welcoming YA superstar Victoria Aveyard, author of the Red Queen series, to Edinburgh for her first foray into adult fantasy in her new book Tempest.

MAY THE SEA ALWAYS SING FOR YOU

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all. But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor. A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 24 - new listing

Andrew Pettegree for The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Join Andrew Pettegree to celebrate his wonderfully appropriate - and excellently written - book, The Bookshop: A History of Bookselling.

Bookshops are a comforting sight on our high streets, warm and welcoming spaces in which to browse, meet friends and occasionally buy books. They may feel timeless, yet their history is a restless and turbulent one, filled with as many entrepreneurial street hawkers and illicit trades as with beloved institutions. The Bookshop, from the celebrated author of The Library and The Book at War, explores the evolution of bookselling from the cramped collectors’ shops frequented by Samuel Pepys to the radical feminist bookshops of the 70s, the rise of monolithic chains and the new world of online selling. Connecting stories and lives that span centuries, countries and continents, The Bookshop brings us into beloved bookshops of today and looks forward to the possible experience of booksellers of tomorrow.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 25 - new listing

Meet Victoria Aveyard!

12pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join the bestselling author of the Red Queen and Realm Breaker series, Victoria Aveyard, to celebrate the publication of the first instalment of her spellbinding romantasy, Tempest, which finds a woman living across two worlds face a devastating choice between home and heart.

From Sunday Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard comes an epic adventure of love and betrayal amid a brutal war for the high seas.

Cat Rose knows what it is to live in two worlds, in two times. Before - as Lady Catrine Rose of the Meridian Empire, chained to a loathsome lord with a dwindling fortune. And after - as the Widow Rose, queen of a pirate tavern on the Lyrian Sea, determined to be the master of her own fate.

But tides turn and winds change. The Meridian Empire looms on the horizon, the full weight of her navy falling on the Lyrian, bent on reclaiming the wealthy colonies and crushing the pirate republic once and for all. Ship after ship is captured, save for one, captained by a pirate who continually evades both noose and blade: the legendary Valerian Kane.

With his fearsome ship and uncanny connection to the song of the sea, Valerian is the only man who might rally the pirates who remain. The only man who threatens the Empire. And the only man Cat has ever loved, blazing in and out of her life like a star.

Desperate for victory, the Empire offers Cat a devastating choice: bring them Valerian or hang. In truth, no choice at all.

But Cat Rose is nothing if not a survivor.

A storm is rising on the Lyrian Sea - the question is, what will it leave in its wake?

Book plus ticket £25

September 25 - new listing

Come What May, We’re Here to Stay: Taj Ali shares the story of South Asian resistance in Britain

6.30pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

British South Asians have a long tradition of radical political activism. For the first time, Taj Ali tells the inspirational story of how British South Asians organised against racism in the past and how they continue to fight in the present. Join us for the Edinburgh launch of Come what may, we’re here to stay.

‘A consequential recounting of a long and illustrious history of South Asian resistance and organising in Britain. It reminds us yet again of the vital importance of solidarity and alliances across race, religion and class in changing the world we share.’ -Priyamvada Gopal, author of Insurgent Empire

In Come what may, we’re here to stay, Taj Ali reveals how successive generations fought for rights, dignity and a sense of belonging while actively shaping the country they now call home. He shows that British South Asian political life has often been defined less by religious difference than by shared commitments to anti-imperialism and anti-racism. In pursuit of these goals, alliances have been forged with other movements, from Irish republicanism to Black Power.

As racism rears its ugly head again, Come what may, we’re here to stay asks: are we doomed to repeat the past or will we learn from our mistakes and build a better world together?

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 25 - new listing

The New Ramsay Head Press Presents … Breathing New Life

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for an evening of poetry with Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt!

Alice Keeling and Mark Howitt are breathing new life into The Ramsay Head Press, the Edinburgh publishing house founded in 1970 by Norman Wilson responsible for producing volumes by leading poets such as Tessa Ransford, Alice Stuart and Charles Graves.

Mark used to be an accountant but, after 38 years, decided it wasn’t for him and started writing & performing what he describes as kitchen sink poetry. He’ll be reading from his recently published A Change of Direction.

Alice is a writer and artist and has been writing weird, warm, wobbly poems for five years now. She will be previewing The Warm Universe, a collection of her poems and drawings due out in October.

Breathing New Life is both a poetry event and a celebration of an Edinburgh publishing institution now reborn.

Free, but ticketed

September 25 - new listing

Robert Barrington for Corrupted Kingdom
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Robert Barrington is Professor of Anti-Corruption Practice at the University of Sussex. A leading authority on corruption, he was pivotal in the introduction of the Bribery Act and Unexplained Wealth Orders. He has advised the Ministry of Justice and the Cabinet Office, among many others.

Britain is complacent about corruption. We are used to thinking of ourselves as firm defenders of fairness and the rule of law. But our institutions have never been more corrupt, from scandals in parliament and local government to crises in housing and the NHS. The evidence is impossible to ignore. Political leaders face a clear choice: tackle corruption or continue on the road to decline. Robert Barrington is one of the world’s leading researchers on corruption. Corrupted Kingdom is his comprehensive examination of how corruption manifests in Britain, from politicians to prisons, the Monarchy and the Met. He assesses the origins of corruption, from Londongrad to the end of Empire, and shows how we can best reverse the decline and restore trust in politics and the democratic process. Vital and authoritative, Corrupted Kingdom provides an essential insight into why the abuse of power harms us all - and how we can banish corruption for good.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 25 - new listing

Chris Broad for Journey Across Japan
7pm, Main Hall, Edinburgh Academy, 42 Henderson Row, Edinburgh EH3 5BL

Join us this autumn for an exciting new release from Chris Broad, the author of the number one bestselling Abroad in Japan!

Journey Across Japan takes us through the 47 unique prefectures of the Land of the Rising Sun.

Japan is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, with millions flocking there every month to follow the same cookie-cutter itinerary.

But beyond the well-trodden tourist trail lies a country made up of forty-seven unique prefectures. Each one has its own story to tell, shaped by centuries of squabbling lords, impenetrable topography and a fierce local pride.

On his quest to show the world that there’s so much more to Japan than Tokyo and Kyoto, Chris Broad has visited all of forty-seven prefectures himself. Now, in Journey Across Japan, he takes us with him on an epic adventure that spans every corner of the country.

A collection of embarrassing stories, practical recommendations and hard-learned lessons, this book show us just how much each region has to offer, whether it’s a signature dish, a festival or a mildly terrifying mascot.

From flying a plane over Japan’s most active volcano to exploring perfectly preserved Samurai districts, this guide will encourage readers, whether you’re a Japan neophyte or a seasoned veteran, to carve out your own story in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

But that’s not all

Coming up fast…

September

Emma Warren, Sharon Blackie, Marina Hyde, Cass Barron, Alice Strang, Caitlin Moran, Steven Veerapen, Chris Chibnall, Jenna Gordon, Elle Nash, Carrie Marshall And Seth Insua, Keith Broomfield, Robert Barrington, Lorna Elcock, Fiona Ross, Mairi Kidd

October

Rachel King, Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival, Portobello Book Festival, Sean Hewitt, Terry Deary, Hernan Diaz, Ibtisam Azem, Ian Rankin, Aonghus MacKechnie, Rachel Harrison, Benjamin Moser, Jojo Barr, Sarah Clegg, Nick Hayes, Brigid Lowe & Gilly McArthur, David McCloskey, Dr Jean Menzies, Julia Harding, Susie Dent, Patricia Nilsson, James Ellroy, Oz Clarke, Dorian Ravenscroft, Owen Jones, Jess Elliott Dennison, VE Schwab, Simon Armitage, Pete Irvine, Adalyn Grace, Natalie Adler, Bobuq Sayed, Joanne Harris, Alice Oswald, AT Emerald, Min Jin Lee, Yiyun Li, Humza Yousaf, Jasper Fforde, Tim Downie, Dan Keeling, Annabel Campbell, Laurie Gilmore, Penn Cole, Simon Garfield, Susan Stryker, David Shrigley, Pierce Brown, Becky Chambers, Jordan Prosser, VL Bovalino & Hannah Kaner, Erin Goeres, Travis Baldree, Taylor J LaRue, Rhian Elizabeth, Brigid Lowe and Anthony Shapland, Julian Sayarer

November

Radical Book Fair, Tim Hayward, Coinneach MacLeod, Irvine Welsh, Patrick DeWitt, Alexandra Shulman, Ragnar Jonasson, Jamie Gianoutsos, Mary Lawson, Louisa Young, Nick Harkaway, Jonathan Coe, Emily Wilson, Sabaa Tahir, Graeme Johncock, Rick Stein, Elif Shafak, Bonnie Garmus, Cody Dahler, Danielle L Jensen, Jodi Picoult

January

Sue Brunning

It’s August and it’s all happening at once. Edits on the next novel have just arrived, along with two other substantial pieces of work, plus I’m in the middle of doing my accounts and, for reasons unknown, this is the month when I become inexplicably popular with my friends in the south. Visitors incoming and staying. And staying. No end in sight until autumn.

Something’s got to give. And I feel fairly certain it will be my reading time that takes a bashing. No time to sneak off on my own for a quiet read, and too tired by the end of the day to catch more than a few pages before falling asleep. But at least Book Festival events and the festival bookshop will provide me with fuel for renewed reading in September. Something to look forward to, along with the cooler weather.

And talking of September…

On September 3, I have an event at Waterstones West End with crime writer Suzy Aspley. Not only is she the writer of brilliantly twisty gothic crime thrillers, but she’s also one of my closest writing friends. With me wearing my Elisabeth-Wolf-gothic-writer hat, the two of us are in the middle of mini-tour - goth girls on the road! We’re having the most fun, celebrating her new novel The Bone Mother and the paperback release of my novel Winterbourne. We’ve already been to Perth and Montrose, with Edinburgh, Balfron, Stirling and Milngavie still to come.

Please come and say hello if you can make it to one of our events - I’d love to see you.

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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

August 5

Gutter Issue 34 Launch

7pm, Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

Join us for the launch of Gutter Issue 34, right here in the bookshop!

For more than 15 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’ll have readings from a few of the authors featured in this issue, then you can chat with them afterwards and perhaps even get your copy of the magazine signed.

Featured writers:

Gabriella Bennett is an author and journalist. Her new book, How to Build a City, is published by Headline Books in August.

Meghan Flaherty is the author of Tango Lessons. She’s working on a novel about perimenopause and the Elusinian mysteries.

Kate Hendry’s most recent pamphlet, MXSIMP (Mariscat Press) was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Awards.

Sarah Kwong is an English-Chinese writer based in Scotland. She writes essays exploring race, womanhood and identity.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus magazine £10

August 5

Lin Anderson: The High Island

7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1YS

Join bestselling crime author and Scottish national treasure, Lin Anderson, as she chats to Jenny Brown about the publication of her heart-racing, gripping offshoot of the acclaimed Rhona MacLeod series, The High Island.

When everyone knows your name, every case is personal...

On the rugged Isle of Hoy, a w ealthy couple’s dream of building a stunning eco-home becomes a w aking nightmare w hen the peat yields a grisly secret: the remains of a young mother and her baby. For DI Erling Flett, the discovery is a personal haunting. He spent years running from Orkney, only to be pulled back to the islands he once fled. As he fights to identify the nameless dead, the community pushes back – and his own troubled history begins to surface. At the heart of the mystery lies a lethal family feud over blood-soaked soil. Can Flett finally face the ghosts of his past? Or w ill the island claim its next victim before the truth is told?

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £20

August 6

The Book of Beasts - Reclaiming Animal Wisdom by Elizabeth Sulis Kim

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8LN

Join us for an evening in the bookshop with founder editor of ‘Cunning Folk’, Elizabeth Sulis Kim, to celebrate the release of The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom.

A modern bestiary with an ancient heart: meet twelve emblematic animals and restore your relationship with the natural world.

The bear deities, Artio and Artaius, who’ll rise from sleep; the salmon of wisdom who gifts understanding of the universe’s past, present and future; the Lion Man carved 40,000 years ago. Join Elizabeth Sulis Kim as she travels across the globe and through time, from our deep past into
the future, bringing together the animals which have captivated us for millennia.

Steeped in folklore, mythology, magic and religion, The Book of Beasts tells the story of our shapeshifting relationships with animals, from reverence to persecution, friendship to fear, awe to indifference. It asks us what we actually know about the creatures we share this world with – and offers us a different way of living together.

Tickets - free/Ticket plus book £22

August 8

The Gaza Tribunal: Jeremy Corbyn on Britain’s complicity in genocide

6pm, Lighthouse Bookshop Garden, off West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

The Gaza Tribunal uncovers the true scale of Britain’s complicity in one of the greatest crimes of our age.

Entire neighbourhoods flattened. Human beings torn to pieces or buried under the rubble. People shot as they queue for a bag of flour. Words cannot begin to describe the suffering that Palestinians have endured. Israel’s genocide in Gaza could have been prevented, but our political leaders chose to participate instead.

In a pre-Book Fringe special, we are joined in the bookshop garden by Jeremy Corbyn to introduce a groundbreaking inquiry.

The Gaza Tribunal brings together original testimony from Palestinian survivors, journalists, human rights campaigners, international legal experts and whistleblowers, to evidence both the human reality of the genocide, and the ways in which it was enabled by the British government.

The book combines an invaluable historical repository of evidence with the urgent call for its investigation. Crimes against humanity demand truth and accountability, without which there can be no justice.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £14.99

August 9

Food Whisky Life at The Cookbook Shop

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Join us to explore food and whisky pairings with Ghillie Basan and Fiona Richmond

Ghillie Basan is a Scottish writer, broadcaster, and food anthropologist who has written over 50 books spanning an incredible breadth of food cultures, some of which have been nominated for and won international awards. She has been described as ‘one of the finest writers on Middle Eastern food’ and the ‘original spice girl’. You may have heard her on BBC Radio and certainly will have seen many of her cookbooks on our shelves.

Spend a summer evening with Ghillie as she chats about her life and how she got into pairing food and whisky with Fiona Richmond, Head of Regional Food at Scotland Food & Drink.

She’ll also be bringing some of the magic she creates on her Whisky Food Safaris to The Cookbook Shop with very special food and whisky pairings.

At the end of the event, participants will have the opportunity to purchase a signed and dedicated copy of her book, Food Whisky Life.

Tickets £22.38

Upcoming events

And for those who like to plan ahead…

August 14-26

Book Fringe

What is Book Fringe?

The Book Fringe is our free, bookshop run, alternative August literary festival! Bringing in bookshops across the city to deliver a programme of events that highlight each bookshop’s personality.

Entirely run and curated by indie bookshops, Book Fringe offers readers the opportunity to meet world-class writers in the intimate and lively settings of local bookshops.

Led by Lighthouse, Book Fringe has been running for over a decade, each year reinventing itself just a wee bit while continuing to celebrate accessibility, community and creativity as only indie bookshops can!

Book Fringe at Lighthouse features events with Layla McCay, Lamble, Molly Tie, Scott Richardson-Read, Jean Menzies, Sofie Hagan, Frances Cannon, Mai-Anh Vũ Peterson, Gabriella Bennett, Amy Abdelnoor, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Meghan Kobza, Kojo Koram, Fatima Bhutto and Alfredo Carpineti.

Entry to ALL events is free: no tickets, no ticket booking (unless you want event reminders), just show up to discover some great authors.

Events are first come first seated, so try to come a bit early to guarantee a spot (and have a browse!)

August 15-30

Angela Jackson: When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr

5.30pm, Le Monde, George Street

Tickets £12.50

Award-winning novelist (The Emergence of Judy Taylor, The Darlings) Angela Jackson will be performing her fourth one-woman show at Le Monde on George Street as part of this year’s Fringe. In ‘When Harry Met Sally Met Julie Met Jazz Met Kierkegaard Met Jung Met Lovely Johnny Marr’ Angela explores the highs and lows of romantic love, through the songs of Julie London, the wisdom of history’s greatest thinkers, and the wit of iconic screenwriting legend Nora Ephron. If you want to know how a six-second kiss and a dance around the kitchen can change your life, and if you like your psychology and philosophy mixed up with a generous helping of sultry jazz standards, this is the show for you.

Tickets £12.50

August 15-30

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Pl, EH3

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is a charity which has been bringing outstanding writers and thinkers from around the world together with curious audiences for over forty years. We celebrate the power of words, examine pressing issues, shift perspectives, and create joyful experiences for those of all ages. Our programme sparks essential conversations about the world around us, our place in it, and how we can improve it, together. Making these discussions accessible to anyone is at the heart of everything we do, in August and beyond.

Here, a book is a beginning – of a conversation, of a better understanding, of a debate, of a memory. What happens next is up to you.

August 16

Book Lovers Bookshop 2nd Birthday Late Night Shopping

6.30pm-9.30pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, EH9 1ND

Help us celebrate our two-year anniversary with a late night shopping event! Attendees will receive 20% off their purchases, and our 26/27 specialty tote bag will be revealed and available for purchase on the night of the event.

WHAT TO EXPECT?

OUR NEW 2ND BIRTHDAY TOTE BAG REVEAL!

NEW BOOKS... WE MIGHT BE KEEPING FUN SECRETS THAT WILL BE REVEALED SOON!

NEW MERCH LAUNCHING AT THE EVENT!

Free, but ticketed

August 19 - new listing

Stories & Songs with Bridge Too Far

7pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for a calm & cozy evening at Typewronger Books where you can browse, read, and relax as folk music duo Bridge Too Far serenade you!

Bring whatever you’re reading at the moment or see what strikes your fancy on the Typewronger shelves. Bridge Too Far (@bridgetoofarband on IG) is a folk music duo consisting of Jordan Goodwin and Sarah Conniff. There will be guitar, mandolin, fiddle, and lots of vocal harmonies!

Free but ticketed

August 24

Luke Healy - Dogs on Dates

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

The Portobello Bookshop is excited to announce a very special August event for Luke Healy’s graphic novel Dogs on Dates! Luke is a comedian, cartoonist, and screenwriter from Dublin. We’re lucky that he’ll be in town doing his Fringe Festival show, and will be coming to the bookshop for a celebration of his latest release.

Dogs on Dates is the charming, whimsical, touching tale of Bernie and Brad, two dogs who... go on dates, and run into a few obstacles along the way. It’s the gay rom-com we’ve all been waiting for!

Healy will be in conversation with fellow award-winning graphic novelist Steven Ingram, author of Holly, Burn With Me and the ongoing series MurMur. It’ll be a real joy to have two artists together on stage!

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 25

Anne Pia: A Month O Muins

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Celebrate the end of Edinbrugh festival season with a night of Scots poetry with Anne Pia reading from her new collection, A Month O Muins.

From un mariage á trois, breast feeding kittens, rumpus at the Baptismal font and otherworldly lovemaking; with a whiff of Mozart’s Queen of the Night; faint aromas of Baudelaire; a hint of Dante’s selva oscura and Orpheus who tragically did look back, A Month O Muins Anne Pia’s new poetry collection in Scots is an often humorous, wry, subversive and consistently tender versioning of the poems and songs of the iconic, widely celebrated singer-songwriter, Georges Brassens: the “Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen of France”.

In this her third poetry collection, she takes inspiration and “courage” from Brassens in order to express her own deeply held views on society, her questioning of its norms and expectations; and the quiet dignity and beauty of originality and challenge to accepted norms; the natural world; the unsung, unoticed and little celebrated, in a world dominated by icons of capitalism, privilege and power.

Free but ticketed

August 29

Author Talk With Rebecca Tamas - The Book Of Mysteries : Wild Time And The Ritual Year

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 8LN

Join us for an evening in the bookshop with Rebecca Tamas to celebrate her newest release The Book of Mysteries : Wild Time and the Ritual Year.

At festive gatherings celebrating summer’s peak, in reflective moments as winter gave way, Rebecca Tamás began to hear another rhythm. A faint hint that, underneath the rush of clocks and calendars, another, richer kind of time might exist.

As she suffered from grief and burnout, Tamás sought a deeper connection to the movement of the seasons through an immersion in old folkways. She set out on a journey across the UK guided by the Pagan wheel of the year, marking each solstice, equinox and the midpoints between them with a ritual drawn from ancient traditions.

From a confrontation with the sharp pains of winter at Samhain in Edinburgh to a giddy experience of collective joy at Padstow’s May Day, she found in these traditional practices electric potential for transforming our relationship to the natural world.

Intellectually penetrating and richly lyrical, The Book of Mysteries follows the drumbeat of seasonal ritual towards an immersion in the wild time of the earth. Ecstatic, radical and irreverent, this book is a rallying cry to wrest time away from the structures of work and capital, so as to encounter the life-giving mystery of the natural world.

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 29

Bookshop Signing with Simone Soltani

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with sports romance author Simone Soltani!

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £9.99

September 1

Joe Wicks for Healthy Start
7pm, Edinburgh New Town Church, 13 George St, Edinburgh EH2 2PA

From the Number One Bestselling author of Protein in 15, Joe Wicks returns with a new collection of simple healthy recipes for all the family to enjoy.

We all want to make family mealtimes more enjoyable, with food that’s healthy and filling for everyone. But with picky eaters and the need to please different ages and tastes, it’s no secret they can sometimes be a challenge. With over 80 recipes covering breakfast, lunch and dinner, Healthy Start has everything you need to take the stress out of mealtimes so you can cook once and feed the whole family.

Packed with recipes that are quick to make, big on flavour and don’t rely on ultra-processed ingredients, Healthy Start is your go-to guide for fuss-free cooking that everyone will enjoy.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £22

September 2

Catherine Simpson for Sandwiched: Caring Up and Caring Down
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Catherine Simpson believed the hardest chapters of her life were behind her. She had raised two children - one of them autistic - and survived both a family suicide and her own cancer treatment. In her fifties, it was time to enjoy restoring her health, reducing work commitments, hanging out with friends and relaxing with her husband in their empty nest.

But when the global pandemic shut the world down, Catherine’s nonagenarian father’s independence began to slip away just as her adult daughter’s mental health spiralled into crisis.

Sandwiched is a candid memoir about being trapped in a high-pressure, intergenerational squeeze. It is a story of letting go of the superwoman myth, confronting the limits of control and responsibility, and trying to hold it all together while providing loving care.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 2

Robert Harris for Agrippa
7pm, Ps and Gs Church, 46 York Place, EH1 3HP

From the bestselling author of Conclave comes a new compelling book exploring friendship and power against the backdrop of Ancient Rome.

Robert Harris is the author of sixteen bestselling novels: the Cicero Trilogy - Imperium, Lustrum and Dictator - Fatherland, Enigma, Archangel, Pompeii, The Ghost, The Fear Index, An Officer and a Spy, which won four prizes including the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Conclave, Munich, The Second Sleep, V2, Act of Oblivion and Precipice.

Julius Caesar is dead, and the lives of two teenaged boys are about to be changed forever. One is Caesar’s 17-year-old nephew, Octavius, who he has made his heir.

The other is Octavius’s closest friend, Agrippa.

To claim Octavius’s inheritance, they must fight the giant figures of the Roman Empire - and, against all odds, they win. Octavius becomes the Emperor Augustus. For twenty years, they rule the world together.

Now Agrippa is fifty. Ailing and alone, betrayed by his wife’s infidelity, he takes refuge in his house on the Bay of Naples and begins to write his memoirs. Yet to stir up the past can be dangerous. From his earliest meetings with Julius Caesar, through the epic conflict with Mark Antony and Cleopatra, the great naval battle of Actium and the endless wars to expand the empire, he describes how one man has dominated his life: the cunning, ruthless, unknowable Octavius.

When it comes to power, does friendship exist at all?

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £22

September 3

An Evening with Suzy Aspley and Elisabeth Wolf

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

We are delighted to be joined by Elisabeth Wolf and Suzy Aspley as they chat about their equally haunting, ominous and chilling Gothic mysteries, Winterbourne and The Bone Mother.

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 book lover’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 an unannounced visit from her employer, the enigmatic Lucien Broussard, Ann wonders what happened to the previous librarian when she finds notes hidden in the library’s ancient tomes. As echoes of the past start to reveal the house and Lucien’s dark secrets, suddenly Anne’s dream job becomes a living nightmare.

The Bone Mother

Martha Strangeways has settled into a quiet life in Strathbran, after the horrific events that traumatised the village a year earlier. But all this is turned upside down when her friend at Glasgow CID, DI Derek Summers, calls on her to help with a disturbing case: a human ear, with an unusual Celtic earring, has been found next to a railway line in the Highlands.

When the body of a young woman wearing matching jewellery turns up at a landmark church shortly after, the mystery deepens. Why has she been laid out in a ritualistic fashion? Does her trek along the little known Cailleach Way have anything to do with her death? And who is running the Facebook group where she posted details of her journey to the shrine of the Bone Mother goddess?

As Martha tries to unpick the threads, she finds herself entwined with a ghost from her own past, and in conflict with the owner of a project that threatens to destroy the goddess’s sacred land. With Halloween approaching, and someone determined to protect the goddess at all costs, can Martha and Summers catch the killer before they strike again, and this time much closer to home.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £13

(Full disclaimer, this is my own event as I write gothic novels under the pen name Elisabeth Wolf. But please don’t let that put you off - I’d love to see some of you there! AB)

September 3

James Fox - Craftland

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We’re thrilled to be hosting the publication day event for Craftland in paperback! James Fox’s journey through the British Isles to catalogue and celebrate artisan and heritage crafts has been a huge sensation since it’s release last year, and we’re excited to celebrate it with James in the shop.

James will be in conversation with Niamh MacKenzie, a PhD candidate working across the Highlands and Islands researching the arts, craftsmanship, and traditional practices. This promises to be a fascinating and insightful discussion, we can’t wait to see it!

Britain has always been a craft land. For generations what we made with our hands defined our identities, built our communities and shaped our regions. Craftland chronicles the vanishing skills and traditions that once governed every aspect of life on these shores.

Travelling the length of Britain, from the Scilly Isles to the Scottish Highlands, James Fox seeks out the country’s last remaining master craftspeople. Stepping inside the workshops of blacksmiths and wheelwrights, cutlers and coopers, bell-founders and watchmakers, we glimpse not only our past but another way of life — one that is not yet lost and whose wisdom could shape our future.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £12.99

September 3

Sabrina Ghayour for Persiana One
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

From the Queen of Middle Eastern cookery, Sabrina Ghayour, every recipe in Persiana One makes irresistible Middle Eastern flavours easier than ever in one pot, one tray or one pan.

From dips and bits that make snacking sublime to spectacular salads, and from easy everyday dinners to something a little bit more special, these are recipes designed with clever shortcuts that don’t compromise on flavour, to be as simple, and as kit free as possible.

With over 100 recipes, each accompanied by a photograph, this is a sumptuous gift for every cookery lover - who hates washing up!

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £28

September 3

Anna Deacon for The Wild Fix Scotland
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In The Wild Fix Scotland, writer and photographer Anna Deacon explores how the powerful connection between nature and wellbeing can help ease modern stress. Blending ancient wisdom with modern research, this beautifully illustrated guide is inspired by the elements of Water, Fire, Earth, and Air.

From wild swimming and forest bathing to mindful photography and seasonal living, Anna shows how aligning with nature can restore balance and calm, revealing why simply listening to birdsong or looking at images of nature can soothe the nervous system.

Featuring evocative photography of Scotland’s raw beauty, The Wild Fix Scotland is an uplifting companion to feeling better, living well and reconnecting with the healing power of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 4

Seren Hawley-Plows for The Ancient Ways
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

This September we are joined by Seren Hawley-Plows for her debut book The Ancient Ways! It is a seasonal guide that uses myths, folklore and old rituals to help you reconnect with nature. Seren will even be giving us a demo of one of the rituals from her book.

Step into an ancient world of rituals and folklore in this stunning seasonal guide.

Tales of gods and goddesses told around a crackling fire. The light of the rising sun streaming through an ancient site on a solstice morning. Hot cider poured over the roots of apple trees to wake them for the spring.

Told through the pagan wheel of the year, The Ancient Ways explores how nature changes throughout the seasons, looking at solstices, equinoxes, legends, and festivals and how these stories and traditions can help you deepen your connection with nature. Discover megalithic sacred sites where crowds still gather to see the sun rise and fall through doorways of the past. Meet Eostre, goddess of the spring and dawn or the Cailleach, queen of winter and the Green Man, a personification of the wild. Celebrate festivals like Beltane, a summer celebration of fire and fertility or Samhain, the festival of the dead and precursor to modern Halloween.

Hedgewitch Seren Hawley-Plows weaves these myths and stories together beautifully with tools and inspiration of how to bring the power of ancient tradition into a modern world and help you find magic in the wilds of nature.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Morvern Graham for Seasonal Folktales
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Embrace the changing seasons with local artist and storyteller Morvern Graham for a beautiful evening of illustrated myths and folklore.

In these magical retellings of classic Celtic and Nordic folktales, we journey from snowy mountain peaks to wild forests and stormy coastlines, as we observe the moon phases, find folkloric treasures and meet an array of strange and mysterious creatures. We’ll encounter sprites, trolls, mythic beasts and monsters - from the bramble boggle (a mischievous member of fairy folk who is said to have given blackberries their thorns) to the sea witches and selkies who roam the Northern shores.

Through the power of these stories we can light up our minds with a wild, child-like wonder, and reconnect our hungry souls to the natural rhythms of the shifting seasons.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £16.99

September 7

Daniel Susskind for What Should My Children Do?
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

What should the next generation learn and what should they stop worrying about-in a world transformed by artificial intelligence?

AI is rewriting the rules in the classroom, the job market and the workplace, leaving parents, teachers, students and all types of workers unsure about how best to prepare for what lies ahead. In What Should My Children Do?, globally renowned economist Daniel Susskind cuts through the outdated advice to show us what young people actually need to succeed now.

We should not ban tools or discourage new skills that are in demand, Susskind argues, or cling to inherited ways of working. Instead, he reveals how people can master new technologies without eroding other essential skills. From reorganizing the curriculum to re-imagining white-collar careers, Susskind maps a smarter, more productive path forward.

This requires a fundamental mindset shift: we must embrace the extraordinary opportunities that AI brings-from personal tutors to scientific breakthroughs-rather than retreat from them. Drawing on fifteen years of research, this book is an evidence-based and practical guide to one of the most urgent questions of our time.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 8

Yotam Ottolenghi for Simple Too
7pm, McEwan Hall, The University of Edinburgh, Teviot Pl, Edinburgh EH8 9A

It’s a noisy world out there, so stop, take a minute or two, listen to the soup bubble or the egg crackle... and let simple cooking be your solution.

For the three million home cooks around the world who loved Ottolenghi Simple, Yotam and his co-author, test kitchen colleague Verena Lochmuller, set themselves the task to further pair down processes and ingredient lists, whilst keeping the vibrant, multi- layered, surprising signature flavours loved throughout the world.

Many of the dishes, such as Braised halloumi with tomatoes and beans, or Smoky tomato and feta prawns, are made in one baking tray, with no preparation at all, ready to put on the table in about 30 minutes. They’re for feeding family and friends or just yourselves; classics reimagined the Ottolenghi way using flavour-enhancing ingredients such as za’atar, tahini, harissa and garlic.

Bring Yotam Ottolenghi’s innovation to your everyday with 135 new recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. Every dish has simplicity at its core and can be made in under 30 minutes, cooked in one pot, or prepped ahead. Whatever your barriers to cooking, this book brings you into the kitchen with a promise that even the simplest of meals can be full of flavour and joy.

Ticket plus book £30

September 9

Ten Poems about Edinburgh
7pm, Waterstones, West End, Princes Street

Join Michael Pedersen, Janet Ayachi, Majorie Lotfi and Dr Harriet McMillan, as we celebrate the publication of Candlestick Press’s glorious and lively mini-anthology, Ten Poems about Edinburgh, which reflects the many ways in which Scotland’s ancient capital city is loved by visitors and the people who live there.

There are poems celebrating the beauty of Edinburgh’s buildings and parks alongside others capturing moments in its long history and vivid life as a hub of art, music and literature. Throughout are the atmospheres created by its distinctive weathers and the proximity of the North Sea.

The pamphlet is a perfect companion for anyone looking to immerse themselves in the many riches of this special city. Introduced and selected by Michael Perdersen, the collection includes poems from Janette Ayachi, Robert Burns, Jackie Kay, Marjorie Lotfi, Edwin Morgan, Hugh MacDiarmid, Norman MacCaig, Hollie McNish, Robert Louis Stevenson and Michael himself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £10

September 9

Shorelines x Readers & Writers Against Genocide: a Palestine Solidarity Night

7pm, Pianodrome Bruntsfield, 41 Montpelier Park, Edinburgh EH10 4NB

Join us to welcome Shorelines, the prize-winning non-fiction debut by Alycia Pirmohamed, into the world with a night of solidarity with Palestine.

Come on down to Bruntsfield’s gorgeous Pianodrome where we will gather around readings by Alycia, Hannah Lavery and Jessica Gaitán Johannesson, as well as music from Miwa Nagato-Apthorp and Curlew (Gill Higgins), with all proceeds from tickets and on-the-night donations going to Writers and Readers Against the Genocide. These will be distributed between two funds: Medical Aid for Palestinians and the Ghassan Abu-Sittah Children’s Fund.

As a young Muslim woman, Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous. Her affinity to the natural world – the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood – conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents’ homeland – the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees – felt painfully distant.

Across interrelated pieces that travel from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.

Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations – and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Christopher de Hamel for The Migrants
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

In the course of a long career at Sotheby’s and at Cambridge University, Christopher de Hamel has probably handled more medieval manuscripts than anyone alive and his delight and enthusiasm in them runs through all he writes.

His many books, translated into numerous languages, include A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (winner of the Duff Cooper Prize and the Wolfson History Prize), The Book in the Cathedral: The Last Relic of Thomas Becket and The Posthumous Papers of the Manuscripts Club.

Christopher joins us for his astounding new book, The Migrants: A Memoir in Manuscripts. This is a coming-of-age saga with extraordinary twists, crossing many hundreds of years and tens of thousands of miles, recounted with passion, humour and a lifetime’s reflection.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 10

Colin Bramwell for Fetch
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

We are delighted to be welcoming an incredible local talent, Colin Bramwell, for the launch of his debut poetry collection, Fetch. Reading alongside him will be poets Michael Grieve and Jacob Polley.

Following his recent success after winning both the 2026 Oxford Weidenfeld Prize and the 2026 Highland Book Prize for his translation of Fernando Pessoa into Scots, Fower Pessoas, Bramwell returns with a debut collection that is sure to delight with its distinctive voice.

On Fetch: In Celtic folklore a fetch is a shadowy doppelganger that appears from the Otherworld, portending the beholder’s fate. Your fetch ‘fetches’ you to the afterlife, willingly or otherwise. Bramwell’s poetry uses the fetch as a model to explore a number of overlapping binaries – between the reader and the poem, most of all. Fetch also meditates on the differences between music and speech, the sacred and the profane, the written and the real, humanity and nature, Scots and English. Incorporating multitudes of modes, forms, registers and subjects, Bramwell converses with the Anglo-Celtic lyric tradition in our own time and in his own distinctively amiable fashion. In other words, this poet takes poetry seriously – but not too seriously.

Fetch is a tour-de-force debut from one of Britain’s most exciting new poets, in which reverence and irreverence, religion and faithlessness, the living and the dead, nearly rhyme.

Tickets £7/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 10

An Evening with Sebastian Barry

7.30pm, Nicolson Square, The Methodist Church, Nicolson Square, EH8 9BX

We’re excited to welcome Sebastian Barry to the Great Hall at Nicolson Square Edinburgh for a publication day launch of his new novel, The Newer World. From the Sunday Times bestselling author of Old God’s Timeand Days Without End comes a lyrical, visceral novel about what it is to survive, and what might be lost along the way.

Barry will be in conversation with Peggy Hughes. He will be signing books following the event.

I knew as I made my way home that there was no home. All the old things . . . were gone forever.

The Newer World follows the life of Tennyson Bouguereau – freed man, devoted brother, nascent singer, conflicted soldier and wanted man – as he journeys to find meaning and belonging in the aftermath of the American Civil War.

From the relative safety of home in Tennessee with his sister Rosalee, he is offered the possibility of a whole new life in Nashville, until a surprising trip to Victorian England changes everything.

Tickets £15/Ticket plus book £20

September 10

Hollow’s Hauntology Event with Evelyn Hollow

6.30pm, St. Vincent’s Chapel, St Vincent Street, Edinburgh

Discover the hidden world of the supernatural and unexplained in this definitive guide to the world’s darkest wonders.

Hollow’s Hauntology is a richly illustrated compendium that uncovers how 80 legendary beings – from blood-drinking revenants to shape-shifting gods – have shaped storytelling across history. Across eight immersive chapters, the book explores humanity’s oldest fears and fascinations. Through this, paranormal psychologist and TV and radio presenter, Evelyn Hollow, brings a uniquely rigorous perspective, blending psychological methodology with cultural analysis.

She reveals how etymology shapes belief, how folklore reflects collective psychology and how overlooked myths still echo through modern culture. Hollow’s Hauntology invites you to discover what it means to be human beneath a vast and haunted sky.

Tickets £6/Ticket plus book £20

September 11

Lucy Lapwing - Wildlife Walk

4.45pm, Modern Art Gallery One

Join BBC presenter, naturalist and self-described ‘nature nerd’ Lucy Lapwing for a Wildlife Walk along the Water of Leith to discover the wondrous wildlife that lives there.

The walk will set off from the Modern Art Gallery and down to the Water of Leith at 5pm and last approximately an hour.

The walk will take place before we sit down with Lucy to discuss her fantastic new book ‘Love is a Toad’ at 7.00pm. Please purchase your tickets for the talk separately HERE.

Tickets £15

September 11

Lucy Lapwing ‘Love is a Toad’ - Author Talk

7pm, Wild Fungarium, 13 Randolph Place, Edinburgh EH3 7TA

We’re super excited to have BBC presenter Lucy Lapwing here with us for an evening on the 11th of September. Lucy will be in store to discuss her wonderfully joyous new book, ‘Love is a Toad: Exploring our Relationship with Nature’

Lucy will also be hosting a Wildlife Walk at 5pm along the Water of Leith. If you are interested in attending the walk we recommend early booking as there are limited spaces. Tickets can be purchased HERE.

Nature makes us feel things. It sparks awe, curiosity and a sense of beauty and community. But as wildlife around us declines and disappears, murkier feelings rise up: guilt, detachment and fear for nature’s plight. For many years, Lucy Lapwing wrestled with these tangled emotions. So, in an attempt to make sense of this dance between joy and grief, she decided to go on a journey.

In Love Is a Toad, Lucy traverses meadows, bogs and hedgerows with her fellow nature enthusiasts, where she digs down into our relationship with the natural world. Over the course of a year, she meets bucketfuls of wildlife – Blackbird and Oak, slugs and puffballs, waterlilies, Dung Beetles and toads – as she roams across the UK.

From a river swim to wanders through woodlands, with every journey, Lucy explores how nature makes us feel, from wild grief and anger through to soaring joy and indefatigable hope. At once a celebration and an invitation to reflect, Love Is a Toad prods and pokes at our connection to the natural world, exploring its complexity in all its muddiness, messiness and wonder.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99

September 11

Ed Conway for Trade World
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Ed Conway is a writer and broadcaster. He is the Economics and Data Editor of Sky News and a regular columnist for The Times and Sunday Times. He has won numerous awards for his journalism and his book Material World was a Sunday Times bestseller.

From the award-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Material World, a story that will take you from ancient civilizations, empire and globalisation through to the most influential geopolitical issue of our times.

The story of trade is the story of humanity. From the copper in Mesopotamian ploughs to the silicon atoms within the chip inside your smartphone, intricate global trading networks have evolved over millennia to fulfil the distinctly human desire to buy and sell.

Today, the volume of trade bestriding the planet is unprecedented. Yet, as fractures in the global order emerge – from an era of globalisation and untrammelled flows of goods and money to a new world of restrictions, intervention and, possibly, war – understanding this fundamental shift to the dominant economic consensus is more important than ever.

Ed Conway tells this extraordinary story through these three commonplace products – bread, cloth and cars. With a compelling blend of economic history and first-hand access to key figures and institutions, he takes us from policy treaties to ground level to show us the people who make, ship and sometimes smuggle the products we buy on a daily basis.

Discover the hidden, shifting trade world behind everything you see around you.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £22

September 14 - new listing

Ben Macintyre for Redwood
7pm, Greyfriars Charteris Centre, 138-140 Pleasance, Edinburgh EH8 9RR

Ben Macintyre joins us to discuss Redwood, the remarkable, unknown Cold War story of how one spy saved the world from nuclear war.

The year is 1981. Tehran is in violent turmoil in the wake of the Iranian Revolution. The Soviets are planning to overthrow the Ayatollah’s fledgling Islamist regime. If they do so, one response from America – unknown to the public – would be to use nuclear weapons. Redwood is the story of how at the height of the Cold War, one mysterious double agent, whose intelligence reached the highest levels of British and American governments, cracked open the KGB, revealed the Kremlin’s secret plot and prevented Armageddon.

‘Redwood’ was the MI6 codename for this unsung, hitherto unknown hero of the Cold War, a highly-trained six-foot-four Russian intelligence officer who chose to expose the KGB’s deepest secrets. For Kuzichkin had a problem, a sexual secret, one that if revealed, would turn his life upside-down, and in a desperate situation, he reached out to MI6 – believing it to have the only solution. Soon facing exposure, he then demanded that the British try to smuggle him out of Iran in a high-stakes escape plan.

This is the gripping tale of one man’s courage, and its extraordinary unintended consequences that still shape our world today. It’s about a moving friendship between spies on opposite sides of the global conflict; about marriage, loyalty, betrayal and sexual dysfunction; and about how decisions made in secret can have huge, long-term ramifications.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £25

September 14 - new listing

An Evening with Jonn Elledge
7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

For over 10,000 years, the human race has been busy altering our environment and embracing ‘progress’, evolving seamlessly from hunter gatherers to the modern urban sophisticates we see ourselves as today.

We are delighted to be joined by the bestselling author of A History of the World in 47 Borders, Jonn Elledge, as he delves into the inventions and innovations that contributed to our modern urbanised world in his latest endlessly fascinating and engagingly written volume, 31 Inventions that Built Our World.

Jonn, will be joined by acclaimed journalist and author, Gabriella Bennett, as they take us on a fascinating and often surprising tour of the ideas and technologies that made modernity possible. From elevators to electric lighting, parks to pedestrian crossings, he guides us through the history of civilisation itself.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £28

September 15 - new listing

The Fairy Spotter’s Guide: Elizabeth Dearnley on where to find banshees, Bigfoot and other creatures from folklore

7pm, Lighthouse Bookshop, 43 West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

Watch your step. Not all fairies are friendly.

We’re so excited to be welcoming author Elizabeth Dearnley and illustrator Sarah Coleman for a double bill that will take you on a journey across continents and cultures as we uncover the origins of extraordinary folk creatures, from mermaids and bigfoot to shapeshifters and spectral hounds.

No matter where you are, you’re never far from a door to the Otherworld ... From the bloodthirsty baobhan sith of the Scottish Highlands to the mischievous trasgu creeping beneath your floorboards, the world is teeming with hidden, magical beings. The Fairy Spotter’s Guide is your essential companion for navigating the world of the uncanny.

Packed with more than 100 original, spellbinding illustrations and written by a leading expert in fairy tales and folklore, this is no ordinary field guide. Whether you’re a seasoned cryptid hunter or a curious newcomer, this beautifully crafted book will enchant, unnerve and utterly captivate.

Tickets £4/Ticket plus book £20

September 15 - new listing

Cooks & Books: Claire Thomson for Dear Grace
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Dear Grace is a warm, wise cookbook written by chef and food writer Claire Thomson for her daughter as she leaves home for university. Claire began addressing Instagram posts to Grace, each pairing heartfelt advice and reminiscences with a recipe to nurture and comfort. This struck a chord with parents everywhere experiencing similar emotional highs and lows as they prepared to send their children off into adult life.

Each recipe begins with a note to Grace - advice about surviving deadlines, sharing meals, cooking for one, or navigating heartbreak - followed by an easy dish designed for small kitchens, tight budgets and busy schedules.

Through memories and stories of family and food, Claire perfectly captures the bittersweet moment of watching your child begin their independent life - and the comfort of knowing they can feed themselves and their friends with confidence, creativity and care.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £24

September 15 - new listing

Pulitzer-Prize Finalist Daniel Mason for Country People
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

This autumn, Daniel Mason - Pulitzer Prize finalist and bookseller favourite - returns to the bookshop to discuss his latest novel, Country People. Funny, adventurous, and elegant, Country People isn’t a book to be missed.

Miles Krzelewski is a devoted husband, a doting father beloved for his outlandish bedtime stories, and the proud owner of a truffle-hunting dog in a land with no truffles. He is also a bit lost, twelve years late with his PhD on Russian folktales and increasingly haunted by a sense that he’s become a disappointment to his family.

So when his wife Kate accepts a visiting professorship at a prestigious college in the far away forests of Vermont, he decides that this will be the year to finally move forward with his life.

But Miles is a man of many enthusiasms, who possesses, in Kate’s, words, ‘a great capacity to fall in with anyone, anywhere’. Soon he finds himself entangled with a cast of characters as colorful as those of any of his folktales - from a ghostly tree surgeon, to a scythe-mad biochemist, a Shakespearean temptress, and a photographer of snowflakes - until at last he stumbles upon a bizarre local legend, which, he begins to suspect, might not be a legend at all.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 15 - new listing

An Evening with Rebecca F Kuang

7.30pm, Assembly Rooms, George Street

The Portobello Bookshop is truly excited to host An Evening with Rebecca F. Kuang for her forthcoming novel Taipei Story. This return to the literary fiction genre is highly anticipated after the massive success of her last fiction novel Yellowface. Rebecca is also known for her beloved fantasy novels including the Poppy War trilogy, Babel, and Katabasis.

Taipei Story is a wryly humorous and profoundly moving coming-of-age novel that grapples with grief, language, and culture shock—all set against the backdrop of an unforgettable summer in Taipei.

Kuang will be in conversation with Katie Goh, author of Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orange.

Ticket plus book £25

September 15 - new listing

Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44

7pm, Blackwell’s, South Bridge

Join Chris Powici and Allan Radliffe as we celebrate the publication of Naming the Snakes: New Writing Scotland 44, the latest collection of excellent contemporary literature, drawn from a wide cross-section of Scottish culture and society, including new work from 43 authors – some internationally renowned, and some just beginning their careers.

We are delighted to be joined by Rachel Coventry, Tony Frame, Kate Hendry, Donnchadh MacCàba, Fiona Mossman and Shane Strachan, who will be sharing poetry and short stories in English, Gaelic and Scots.

New Writing Scotland is the principal forum for poetry and short fiction in Scotland today. Every year it publishes the very best from both emerging and established writers, and lists many of the leading literary lights of Scotland among its past (and present) contributors.

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £11

September 16 - new listing

Lorna Elcock in conversation with James Robertson

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join Women’s Prize Discoveries 2021 shortlisted author, Lorna Elcock, as she discusses her raw and emotionally devastating story of lost children and misguided adults, The Windhover, with James Robertson.

Perthshire. 1957. The Camerons arrive from a tenement in Glasgow to run a remote Scottish youth hostel, unaware they are setting in motion a terrible chain of events that will reverberate through the decades.

Siblings Alison and Ewan delight in swapping grey city life for the mountains and lochs surrounding Rannoch. Only their elder sister Moira understands their granny’s dark looks and their mother’s increasingly poor health. As the summer progresses and Mr Cameron’s incendiary secrets begin to surface, the family’s attempts to create a new life unravel – and then the adults make an unthinkable decision, one that wrenches the Camerons apart.

It’s 1982. Ewan is long estranged from his family. Now a celebrated artist working in burgeoning London, he is a world away from Rannoch. So why do his paintings return to the rugged landscapes and soaring birds of his youth? Four hundred miles north of him, in grey and rainy Cumbernauld, Moira knows that it is down to her to remedy the effects of their disastrous childhood before it is too late.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £15

September 16 - new listing

Cooks & Books: Ali Stoner for Scran
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Ali Stoner or ‘Roving Haggis’ as she is known on social media, is a Scottish cook and a former Masterchef Australia contestant. Born in Glasgow, she currently lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband, family and two dogs.

Scran is a new collection of more than 100 nostalgic and traditional Scottish recipes, seen through a modern lens. Ali brings old favourites, classic bakery treats and creative new recipes inspired by Scotland, its landscapes and its traditions.

Some highlights include: Scottish eggs benedict with whisky chive hollandaise, millionaire shortbread, peppermint slice, chicken Balmoral sausage roll, macaroni pie, confit sardines with gin pickled onions, a plethora of morning rolls, tablet, and Scottish martini.

It should make for a particularly delicious evening; we hope to see you there.

Tickets £12/Ticket plus book £27

September 16 - new listing

Steven Veerapen for Overlord: The Life and Reign of Henry VIII
7pm, The Royal Scots Club, 29-31 Abercromby Pl, Edinburgh EH3 6QE

Steven Veerapen was born in Glasgow to a Scottish mother and a Mauritian father and raised in Paisley. He is the author of The Wisest Fool: The Lavish Life of James VI and I, and lives in Glasgow.

Henry VIII is England’s most famous king. He is simultaneously the virtuous Renaissance prince gone wrong, the psychopathic, paranoid tyrant, the religious disruptor and the much-married glutton.

This ground breaking study of Henry’s life examines and destroys many of the long-repeated myths about this complex monarch: he was not particularly gluttonous, not particularly prudish, and not particularly messy in his religious changes. Nor did he see himself as simply King of England. Drawing on archival sources from across the British Isles, Steven Veerapen reveals how Henry fashioned an image of himself as a law-abiding and benevolent emperor who dreamed of uniting England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and swathes of France under Tudor rule.

Yet the image was false and the dream a nightmare for his queens, his ministers and many of his subjects. This new portrait shows Henry for what he really was: a self-aggrandising actor who, by fair means and foul - murder plots, marriage negotiations and military ventures - did all he could to realise his imperial fantasy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £30

September 17 - new listing

Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay: an evening with Lex Croucher

7pm, Nicolson Square Venues - 25 Nicolson Square EH8 9BX

What a joy to welcome Lighthouse favourite Lex Croucher back to the shop for the Edinburgh launch of Bridget and Gabe Are Not Okay, the highly anticipated follow-up to the instant New York Times bestselling and YA Book Prize winning Gwen and Art Are Not in Love! Joining Lex on stage we’ll have award-winning author and ancient historian Jean Menzies. Expect an evening of Camelot, queer joy and laughter.

They fell in love. They won a great battle. It should have been happily ever after. But now, Camelot’s famous couples have fallen apart.

Newly crowned King Gabriel is having panic attacks in cupboards in-between council meetings. He can’t tell Arthur just how not okay he is – so he’s set him free, to find love with someone who can get through the day without breaking down.

Bridget has lost her spark for sparring, forfeiting again and again in the lists. When she’s invited to join Gabriel’s round table, she hopes it’ll be the change she needs. But trying to navigate the post-happily-ever-after reality of a relationship with Gwen, when Bridget no longer feels like the dashing knight Gwen fell in love with, feels impossible.

With the kingdom still reeling from an attempted uprising, and rumoured sightings of the Holy Grail, the Questing Beast and the Green Knight happening across the country, the gang depart on a PR tour destined for disaster. Can Gabriel be the king his country deserves? Can Bridget get her jousting groove back? And will they find their way back to the courtly love that once seemed fated?

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £8.99

September 17 - new listing

Marie Darrieussecq for How to Make a Woman
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

‘Darrieussecq is one of the most prolific and distinguished living writers in France with a truly impressive body of work.’ - Samantha Harvey, Guardian

Rose and Solange are lifelong friends, growing up together in 1980s France. Their paths are intertwined, yet they enter adulthood on radically different paths: Rose, who prizes stability above all else, studies psychology and marries her first love, Christian; Solange has numerous affairs, becomes pregnant at fifteen, gives birth to a baby boy, and pursues an acting career. Each tries to find her own happiness, her own sense of meaning, while navigating a world which seeks to establish binary ideas of what a woman can be. How to Make a Woman is a bold, sometimes brutal, coming-of-age novel from the award-winning novelist Marie Darrieussecq.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £14.99

September 17 - new listing

Jess Elliott Dennison: Vegetable Recipes

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Jess Elliott Dennison will be back in the bookshop this autumn for an evening event celebrating and sampling new recipes from her brand new cookbook, Vegetable Recipes. Jess will talk all things vegetables and do a live food demo, so that you can taste some of her delicious recipes on the night!

In this, the third book in the series, Jess is sharing favourite vegetarian dishes that celebrate the glorious variety of vegetables available throughout the seasons.

Including recipes for Leeks Vinaigrette and Celeriac Remoulade for enjoying with baguette; crispy Fennel and Onion Bhajis; a light summertime lasagne with courgettes and ricotta béchamel and comforting pumpkin-curry pastries for the colder months, this book is filled with easy, reliable dishes for everyone to enjoy.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £25

September 18 - new listing

An Evening with Fiona Ross

7pm, Waterstones West End, Princes Street

Join author and journalist, Fiona Ross, as she chats to Cat Harvey about her warm, richly evocative and uplifting memoir, of second chances, stubborn cows and the quiet magic of finding home in the most unexpected of places, Wild Knowing.

Fiona was a Glasgow girl through and through, but when she was gifted an old leather-bound family ledger, she discovered a Highland family history that would change her life. The ledger records the story of the family’s 19th-century Highland cattle fold. Little did Fiona know that she would soon be moving with her husband and two beloved dogs to a remote Argyllshire croft where she would start her own herd (or fold, as it is known for Highland cows). On a wave-washed island, in the shadow of the Highland Clearances, Fiona moved in with 48 magnificent cows who would become her family.

This book is an ode to farming and the softer life that can be lived in the Hebrides. It depicts the life-affirming joy of bathing every morning in the icy Atlantic before taking the cows for a paddle. It tells calamitous tales of amorous bulls, escaping heifers, upturned quad bikes, falling off piers and accidentally injecting herself with cow meds. It tells the stories of births - so many beautiful births - followed by the drama of catching each slippery calf, holding it and tagging it, all under the baffled shaggy-fringed gaze of its 500-kilo, massively-horned mum.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18

September 18 - new listing

Janice Hallet for The Silent Appeal
7pm, Pilrig St. Paul’s / LARCH, Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 5AH

A New Play. Another Murder. Who Will Speak the Truth? It’s a new theatrical season in Lower Lockwood, and the amateur thespians of the Fairway Players are starting rehearsals for their production of Agatha Christie’s The Hollow.

Despite divisive new arrivals, countless petty jealousies and a near-fatal accident with the lighting rig, surely this will be their greatest show to date?

But someone isn’t going to make it to opening night. Could it be producer Sarah-Jane’s mysterious sister, lately arrived home after 20 years abroad? New member Lucas, whose shady business dealings may be his downfall? Or perhaps once-convicted murderer Issy Beck, recently acquitted but still up to her old tricks?

Lawyers Charlotte and Femi must sift through the emails, texts and police reports to identify the victim and find out why the person convicted of the murder refuses to speak out in their own defence...

Will they uncover the truth in time? Will you?

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 18 - new listing

Jason Arday for Great and Unfortunate Things
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

Jason Arday joins us for Great and Unfortunate Things, an unforgettable book about resilience and love - and the transformative power of someone who believes in you when the world does not.

When Jason Arday was 37 years old, everything changed. He made international news by becoming the youngest Black professor in the almost thousand-year history of the University of Cambridge. But that remarkable achievement is only part of his great and unfortunate tale.

He grew up in a council house in south London with his parents and two brothers. Diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay at the age of three, he spent much of his non-verbal childhood navigating a system that struggled to understand him. Doctors and teachers believed there was ‘no one in there’. But Jason’s mother, Giff, refused to accept the limits others placed on her son.

With the faith of his family and the support of a handful of extraordinary friends and mentors, Jason slowly found his voice. He spoke his first word at eleven, learned to read and write at eighteen, and discovered a passion for education and helping others that would transform his life. Along the way there were improbable triumphs and heartbreaking setbacks, tears of joy and moments so painful that laughter was the only option, and more than one occasion when everything seemed poised to fall apart.

Tickets £10/Ticket plus book £20

September 19 - new listing

Meet Rachel Gillig at Book Lovers Bookshop!

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, UK EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with author Rachel Gillig!

Rachel Gillig, the queen of gothic romantasy, returns with higher stakes, darker mysteries and deeper longings in this gorgeous sequel to the No. 1 international bestselling sensation The Knight and the Moth. Aisling Cathedral is in ruins.

Rodrick Myndacious, Bartholomew and Maude Bauer are rumored to be dead - and the king has taken Sybil Delling as his bride. To show off their union and solidify his power over Traum, Benji proposes a series of tournaments throughout the hamlets. Captive and drugged, Sybil remains determined to vanquish him as she once did the Omens, even if she destroys the kingdom’s faith - and herself - in the process.

But then a mysterious knave rises to the top of the lists, a man with no name and no memory who may just be Sybil’s ticket to undoing Benji’s power. For in a land where stories repeat themselves, where a king can prove as cruel as a god, the only way to truly destroy the Stonewater Kingdom’s faith is to save it.

Tickets £2/Ticket plus book £25

But that’s not all

Coming up fast…

September

Emma Warren, Paul Johnson, Andrew Pettegree, Robert Barrington, Sharon Blackie, Marina Hyde, Roshni Gallagher and Clementine Ewokolo Burnley, Mathias Enard, LK Steven, Brigid Lowe, Marlon James, Cass Barron, Alice Strang, Louise Kennedy, Caitlin Moran, Steven Veerapen, Chris Chibnall, CL Hellisen, Victoria Aveyard (Toppings), Jenna Gordon, Elle Nash, Carrie Marshall And Seth Insua, Victoria Aveyard (Waterstones), Keith Broomfield, BK Borison, Derek Owusu, Chris Broad, Robert Barrington, Lorna Elcock, Fiona Ross, Alex Howard, Mairi Kidd, Taj Ali, Alice Keeling & Mark Howitt, Maryam Aslany, Jennifer Lee Tsai, Jay Gao & Agata Maslowska

October

Rachel King, Edinburgh Women’s Fiction Festival, Portobello Book Festival, Sean Hewitt, Terry Deary, Hernan Diaz, Ibtisam Azem, Ian Rankin, Aonghus MacKechnie, Rachel Harrison, Benjamin Moser, Jojo Barr, Sarah Clegg, Nick Hayes, Brigid Lowe & Gilly McArthur, David McCloskey, Dr Jean Menzies, Julia Harding, Susie Dent, Patricia Nilsson, James Ellroy, Oz Clarke, Dorian Ravenscroft, Owen Jones, Jess Elliott Dennison, VE Schwab, Simon Armitage, Pete Irvine, Adalyn Grace, Natalie Adler, Bobuq Sayed, Joanne Harris, Alice Oswald, AT Emerald, Min Jin Lee, Yiyun Li, Humza Yousaf, Jasper Fforde, Tim Downie, Dan Keeling, Annabel Campbell, Laurie Gilmore, Penn Cole, Simon Garfield, Susan Stryker, David Shrigley, Pierce Brown, Becky Chambers, Jordan Prosser, VL Bovalino & Hannah Kaner, Erin Goeres, Travis Baldree

November

Radical Book Fair, Tim Hayward, Coinneach MacLeod, Irvine Welsh, Patrick DeWitt, Alexandra Shulman, Ragnar Jonasson, Jamie Gianoutsos, Mary Lawson, Louisa Young, Nick Harkaway, Jonathan Coe, Emily Wilson, Sabaa Tahir, Graeme Johncock, Rick Stein, Elif Shafak, Bonnie Garmus, Cody Dahler

January

Sue Brunning

What’s going on? There only five book events on the list for this week! It’s certainly Edinburgh’s quietest week since I launched the Shelfie.

But I think we all know the reason why, don’t we? With the Book Festival and Book Fringe kicking off soon, there’s an understandable reluctance to schedule individual book events in August and risk going head to head with the plethora of both bookish and non-bookish festival events.

Of course, if I was to include all of the Book Festival events in this listing it would be more bloated than ever, my time doesn’t stretch to creating a list of some 600 or so events, when you can see them all on the Festival’s own website.

Meanwhile, there’s plenty to look forward to after the festivals have passed. September starts quietly, but soon picks up speed - and the ‘But that’s not all…’ section at the bottom of the list is positively bulging with good things.

Meanwhile, please do support this week’s brave and poetic souls who have events on at a quiet time.

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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

July 29

Alycia Pirmohamed - Shorelines: Memory, migration and the selves we become

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

We are absolutely delighted to welcome Alycia Pirmohamed back to the bookshop for a celebration of her latest book, Shorelines: Memory, migration and the selves we become. Thrumming with poetic vitality and questions about the legacies of migration, Shorelines is Pirmohamed’s Nan Shepherd Prize-winning non-fiction debut.

As a young Muslim woman Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous Her affinity to the natural world - the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood - conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents’ homeland - the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees - felt painfully distant.

Across interrelated pieces that move from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.

Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations - and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18.99

July 28 - new listing

Robert Stastny Poetry Reading

7.30pm, Typewronger Books, 22 Bruntsfield Place, Edinburgh EH10 4HN

Join us for an evening of poetry with Robert Stastny.

Poetry made Robert pick up a pencil and paper. He’d had a snowboarding accident, years of head pain – leaving the suit and tie world, to write, got the pain to go away.Robert lives on the road (Czechoslovakia, the country he was born in, no longer exists). In 2017 he published Portraits, poems about people. He also paints and makes music.

Free, but ticketed

July 30

Sara Stevenson: Hill and Adamson’s The Fisherwomen and Men of the Firth of Forth

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, 176 Bruntsfield Place, EH10 4DF

We are delighted to welcome Dr Sara Stevenson in conversation with artist and publisher Alexander Hamilton, about her new photography study book Hill and Adamson’s The Fisherwomen and Men of the Firth of Forth.

In the course of three years, working at the very beginning of the art of photography, the Scottish pioneers, David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, working with their assistant, Jessie Mann, produced thousands of images, creating an archive that was both artistically daring and historically invaluable.

Nowhere is this clearer than in their series of pictures of the fishing communities of the Firth of Forth, and especially the village of Newhaven. These photographs, described as the world’s first social documentary images, capture not only the men whose labour took them to sea, but also the women whose strength and resilience sustained the community on shore. The fisherwomen of Newhaven, with their distinctive dress, their heavy creels carried into Edinburgh’s streets, and their vital roles in the economy of the village, lead this story.

Free but ticketed

July 30

An Evening of Poetry with Scottish Carcanet
7pm, Topping & Company, 2 Blenheim Place, Edinburgh EH7 5JH

We are over the moon to be hosting a special collaborative event between three Scottish Carcanet poets: Anthony V. Capildeo, Jay Gao and Colin Bramwell.

They join us to celebrate their latest bodies of work, ranging from a book-length sequence told in the language of trees, to a bold reimagining of Fernando Pessoa’s poetry in Scots, to finally a vibrant selection of essays that explore a life in poetry. It is sure to be an evening of brilliant readings and discussion!

Event vouchers are fully redeemable against copies of Masqueraders: Selected Essays by Anthony V. Capildeo, The Dead One, The Unconscious One, Thundering in Your Ear, Thriving Slumber by Jay Gao, and Fower Pessoas by Colin Bramwell.

Tickets £8/Ticket plus book £12.99

August 2

Erika Åberg: Knitting Workshop

3pm, Blackwell’s Edinburgh, South Bridge

Join Erika Åberg as she teaches us how to knit from one of the patterns in her new book Island Knitting

Join best-selling author and knitwear designer Erika Åberg as she takes us on a knitting journey through the captivating landscapes of Shetland, the Hebrides, Gotland and Blidö, in her new book, Island Knitting, which is perfect for knitters seeking one-of-a-kind garments infused with a touch of coastal magic.

Erika will guide us through two of the designs from the book- The textured colourwork of the Peat Vest or the slipped stitches of the Sjöblom Cowl.

The pattern for the Sjöblom cowl is suitable for beginners, and the method for the Peat Vest is slightly more demanding- the knitter needs to know how to follow a chart, cast on, bind off, knit and purl.

Erika will also show the Swedish way of knitting; holding the yarn in the left hand.

We will have a limited amount of wool and needles so it is advised that you try to bring your own if you can- for the beginners pattern, the Sjöblom Cowl, you will need 3-3.5 mm knitting needles with a 4-ply or one-ply tweed-style yarn, such as Soft Donegal (or the closest UK equivalent).

For the more advanced Peat Vest pattern you will need 4-4.5 mm knitting needles with a DK-weight wool (similar to Birlinn Yarn Company yarn).

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £18

Upcoming events

And for those who like to plan ahead…

August 5

Gutter Issue 34 Launch

7pm, Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

Join us for the launch of Gutter Issue 34, right here in the bookshop!

For more than 15 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’ll have readings from a few of the authors featured in this issue, then you can chat with them afterwards and perhaps even get your copy of the magazine signed.

Featured writers:

Gabriella Bennett is an author and journalist. Her new book, How to Build a City, is published by Headline Books in August.

Meghan Flaherty is the author of Tango Lessons. She’s working on a novel about perimenopause and the Elusinian mysteries.

Kate Hendry’s most recent pamphlet, MXSIMP (Mariscat Press) was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Awards.

Sarah Kwong is an English-Chinese writer based in Scotland. She writes essays exploring race, womanhood and identity.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus magazine £10

August 5

Lin Anderson: The High Island

7pm, Blackwell’s Bookshop, 53-62 South Bridge, Edinburgh EH1 1YS

Join bestselling crime author and Scottish national treasure, Lin Anderson, as she chats to Jenny Brown about the publication of her heart-racing, gripping offshoot of the acclaimed Rhona MacLeod series, The High Island.

When everyone knows your name, every case is personal...

On the rugged Isle of Hoy, a w ealthy couple’s dream of building a stunning eco-home becomes a w aking nightmare w hen the peat yields a grisly secret: the remains of a young mother and her baby. For DI Erling Flett, the discovery is a personal haunting. He spent years running from Orkney, only to be pulled back to the islands he once fled. As he fights to identify the nameless dead, the community pushes back – and his own troubled history begins to surface. At the heart of the mystery lies a lethal family feud over blood-soaked soil. Can Flett finally face the ghosts of his past? Or w ill the island claim its next victim before the truth is told?

Tickets £3/Ticket plus book £20

August 6

The Book of Beasts - Reclaiming Animal Wisdom by Elizabeth Sulis Kim

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh, EH6 8LN

Join us for an evening in the bookshop with founder editor of ‘Cunning Folk’, Elizabeth Sulis Kim, to celebrate the release of The Book of Beasts: Reclaiming Animal Wisdom.

A modern bestiary with an ancient heart: meet twelve emblematic animals and restore your relationship with the natural world.

The bear deities, Artio and Artaius, who’ll rise from sleep; the salmon of wisdom who gifts understanding of the universe’s past, present and future; the Lion Man carved 40,000 years ago. Join Elizabeth Sulis Kim as she travels across the globe and through time, from our deep past into
the future, bringing together the animals which have captivated us for millennia.

Steeped in folklore, mythology, magic and religion, The Book of Beasts tells the story of our shapeshifting relationships with animals, from reverence to persecution, friendship to fear, awe to indifference. It asks us what we actually know about the creatures we share this world with – and offers us a different way of living together.

Tickets - free/Ticket plus book £22

August 8

The Gaza Tribunal: Jeremy Corbyn on Britain’s complicity in genocide

6pm, Lighthouse Bookshop Garden, off West Nicolson Street, Edinburgh EH8 9DB

The Gaza Tribunal uncovers the true scale of Britain’s complicity in one of the greatest crimes of our age.

Entire neighbourhoods flattened. Human beings torn to pieces or buried under the rubble. People shot as they queue for a bag of flour. Words cannot begin to describe the suffering that Palestinians have endured. Israel’s genocide in Gaza could have been prevented, but our political leaders chose to participate instead.

In a pre-Book Fringe special, we are joined in the bookshop garden by Jeremy Corbyn to introduce a groundbreaking inquiry.

The Gaza Tribunal brings together original testimony from Palestinian survivors, journalists, human rights campaigners, international legal experts and whistleblowers, to evidence both the human reality of the genocide, and the ways in which it was enabled by the British government.

The book combines an invaluable historical repository of evidence with the urgent call for its investigation. Crimes against humanity demand truth and accountability, without which there can be no justice.

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £14.99

August 9

Food Whisky Life at The Cookbook Shop

7pm, The Cookbook Shop, 19A Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH7 4AF

Join us to explore food and whisky pairings with Ghillie Basan and Fiona Richmond

Ghillie Basan is a Scottish writer, broadcaster, and food anthropologist who has written over 50 books spanning an incredible breadth of food cultures, some of which have been nominated for and won international awards. She has been described as ‘one of the finest writers on Middle Eastern food’ and the ‘original spice girl’. You may have heard her on BBC Radio and certainly will have seen many of her cookbooks on our shelves.

Spend a summer evening with Ghillie as she chats about her life and how she got into pairing food and whisky with Fiona Richmond, Head of Regional Food at Scotland Food & Drink.

She’ll also be bringing some of the magic she creates on her Whisky Food Safaris to The Cookbook Shop with very special food and whisky pairings.

At the end of the event, participants will have the opportunity to purchase a signed and dedicated copy of her book, Food Whisky Life.

Tickets £22.38

August 14-26

Book Fringe

What is Book Fringe?

The Book Fringe is our free, bookshop run, alternative August literary festival! Bringing in bookshops across the city to deliver a programme of events that highlight each bookshop’s personality.

Entirely run and curated by indie bookshops, Book Fringe offers readers the opportunity to meet world-class writers in the intimate and lively settings of local bookshops.

Led by Lighthouse, Book Fringe has been running for over a decade, each year reinventing itself just a wee bit while continuing to celebrate accessibility, community and creativity as only indie bookshops can!

Book Fringe at Lighthouse features events with Layla McCay, Lamble, Molly Tie, Scott Richardson-Read, Jean Menzies, Sofie Hagan, Frances Cannon, Mai-Anh Vũ Peterson, Gabriella Bennett, Amy Abdelnoor, Robin Yassin-Kassab, Meghan Kobza, Kojo Koram, Fatima Bhutto and Alfredo Carpineti.

Entry to ALL events is free: no tickets, no ticket booking (unless you want event reminders), just show up to discover some great authors.

Events are first come first seated, so try to come a bit early to guarantee a spot (and have a browse!)

August 15-30

Edinburgh International Book Festival

Edinburgh Futures Institute, The University of Edinburgh, 1 Lauriston Pl, EH3

The Edinburgh International Book Festival is a charity which has been bringing outstanding writers and thinkers from around the world together with curious audiences for over forty years. We celebrate the power of words, examine pressing issues, shift perspectives, and create joyful experiences for those of all ages. Our programme sparks essential conversations about the world around us, our place in it, and how we can improve it, together. Making these discussions accessible to anyone is at the heart of everything we do, in August and beyond.

Here, a book is a beginning – of a conversation, of a better understanding, of a debate, of a memory. What happens next is up to you.

August 16

Book Lovers Bookshop 2nd Birthday Late Night Shopping

6.30pm-9.30pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh, EH9 1ND

Help us celebrate our two-year anniversary with a late night shopping event! Attendees will receive 20% off their purchases, and our 26/27 specialty tote bag will be revealed and available for purchase on the night of the event.

WHAT TO EXPECT?

OUR NEW 2ND BIRTHDAY TOTE BAG REVEAL!

NEW BOOKS... WE MIGHT BE KEEPING FUN SECRETS THAT WILL BE REVEALED SOON!

NEW MERCH LAUNCHING AT THE EVENT!

Free, but ticketed

August 24

Luke Healy - Dogs on Dates

7pm, The Portobello Bookshop, 46 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh EH15 1DA

The Portobello Bookshop is excited to announce a very special August event for Luke Healy’s graphic novel Dogs on Dates! Luke is a comedian, cartoonist, and screenwriter from Dublin. We’re lucky that he’ll be in town doing his Fringe Festival show, and will be coming to the bookshop for a celebration of his latest release.

Dogs on Dates is the charming, whimsical, touching tale of Bernie and Brad, two dogs who... go on dates, and run into a few obstacles along the way. It’s the gay rom-com we’ve all been waiting for!

Healy will be in conversation with fellow award-winning graphic novelist Steven Ingram, author of Holly, Burn With Me and the ongoing series MurMur. It’ll be a real joy to have two artists together on stage!

Tickets £5/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 25

Anne Pia: A Month O Muins

7pm, The Edinburgh Bookshop, EH10 4DF

Celebrate the end of Edinbrugh festival season with a night of Scots poetry with Anne Pia reading from her new collection, A Month O Muins.

From un mariage á trois, breast feeding kittens, rumpus at the Baptismal font and otherworldly lovemaking; with a whiff of Mozart’s Queen of the Night; faint aromas of Baudelaire; a hint of Dante’s selva oscura and Orpheus who tragically did look back, A Month O Muins Anne Pia’s new poetry collection in Scots is an often humorous, wry, subversive and consistently tender versioning of the poems and songs of the iconic, widely celebrated singer-songwriter, Georges Brassens: the “Bob Dylan or Leonard Cohen of France”.

In this her third poetry collection, she takes inspiration and “courage” from Brassens in order to express her own deeply held views on society, her questioning of its norms and expectations; and the quiet dignity and beauty of originality and challenge to accepted norms; the natural world; the unsung, unoticed and little celebrated, in a world dominated by icons of capitalism, privilege and power.

Free but ticketed

August 29 - new listing

Author Talk With Rebecca Tamas - The Book Of Mysteries : Wild Time And The Ritual Year

7pm, Argonaut Books, 15-17 Leith Walk, Edinburgh EH6 8LN

Join us for an evening in the bookshop with Rebecca Tamas to celebrate her newest release The Book of Mysteries : Wild Time and the Ritual Year.

At festive gatherings celebrating summer’s peak, in reflective moments as winter gave way, Rebecca Tamás began to hear another rhythm. A faint hint that, underneath the rush of clocks and calendars, another, richer kind of time might exist.

As she suffered from grief and burnout, Tamás sought a deeper connection to the movement of the seasons through an immersion in old folkways. She set out on a journey across the UK guided by the Pagan wheel of the year, marking each solstice, equinox and the midpoints between them with a ritual drawn from ancient traditions.

From a confrontation with the sharp pains of winter at Samhain in Edinburgh to a giddy experience of collective joy at Padstow’s May Day, she found in these traditional practices electric potential for transforming our relationship to the natural world.

Intellectually penetrating and richly lyrical, The Book of Mysteries follows the drumbeat of seasonal ritual towards an immersion in the wild time of the earth. Ecstatic, radical and irreverent, this book is a rallying cry to wrest time away from the structures of work and capital, so as to encounter the life-giving mystery of the natural world.

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £16.99

August 29

Bookshop Signing with Simone Soltani

11am-1pm, Book Lovers Bookshop, 6 Melville Terrace, Edinburgh EH9 1ND

Join us for a Bookshop Signing at Book Lovers Bookshop with sports romance author Simone Soltani!

Tickets free/Ticket plus book £9.99

September 1