A bumper update!
Event highlights, May best sellers, cultural recommendations & the bookshop expansion diaries
Hello, Happy Wednesday!
Well, we’ve broken the first promise in our last newsletter- to bring you an update at the tail end of each week- but here we are, on Wednesday, with a bumper newsletter, filled with fantastic events, book recommendations, cultural highlights and an instalment of the bookshop expansion diaries.
Moving to a larger premises and expanding our small business is no mean feat, so please, please, please support us if you can. Come along to our events, buy books from us, leave us a review online, share our content with your friends & family….Whatever can you do to support The West Kirby Bookshop, we’d be incredibly grateful!
Upcoming events
June is shaping up to be a cracking month for author visits. We’re so pleased to have some incredible writers visiting West Kirby…
One of Mexico’s most acclaimed contemporary authors, Guadalupe Nettel, visits us on Thursday 5th June, to celebrate the publication of her latest book, The Accidentals.
Guadalupe’s writing has been supported by a whole host of writers including Valeria Luiselli, Paul Theroux, Daisy Johnson, Mariana Enríquez, Megan Nolan & Annie Ernaux, to name but a few, and her novel Still Born was recently chosen as a book club pick for Dua Lipa’s Service95 (*insert Dua Lipa dancing meme here*) and shortlisted for the International Booker Prize in 2023.
The Accidentals has been praised as ‘delightful and disturbing’ in the Financial Times and ‘precise, formalised with a wildness held back’ in Publishers Weekly, and we’re incredibly excited to take a deep diver into Guadalupe’s writing.
Tickets are £6 standard admission or £15 including a copy of The Accidentals. Complimentary drinks will be provided and you can book your place here, or send us a message to reserve your spot, to avoid a small booking fee. Join us!
Named as one of the Best Debut Novelists of 2025 in the Observer, Rowe Irvin will be with us on Tuesday 10th June to celebrate her first novel, Life Cycle of a Moth.
With an expert grasp of language we’ve seen from writers like Eimear Macbride, Rowe Irvin has crafted one of our most treasured debut novels of the year so far. Life Cycle of a Moth is exquisite and strange in equal measure. It’ll linger with you long after reading and is perfect for fans of Andrew Michael Hurley, Jacqueline Harpman and Missouri Williams, but very much its own, beautiful beast!
Tickets are £6 standard admission or £20 including a copy of the book and complimentary drinks will be provided. You can book your place here, or send us a message to reserve your place. It’s going to be a great night, so we hope you can join us.
Debut Non-fiction author, Charlie Colenutt will be with us on Friday 13th June, to take a deep dive into his fascinating book, Is This Working?
Sitting in the sweet spot between culture, politics & reportage, Is This Working? is a fascinating exploration of the workplace in contemporary Britain. Spending nearly 2 years travelling across the country, Charlie spoke to hundreds of individuals, from all walks of life, asking the question ‘what does it mean to work in Britain today?’
Informative and told with a compelling narrative flow, we’re thrilled to be welcoming Charlie to the bookshop soon. Featured and praised in the Guardian, The Telegraph, The Times, Financial Times- and it many other places- this event is for you if you like your non-fiction intelligent, engaging and incredibly readable.
Tickets are £6 standard admission or £20 including a copy of the book, and complimentary drinks will be provided. Tickets available here or send us a message to reserve your place.
Later in the month, in brief…
Friday 20th June- Rochelle Dowden- Lord (Lush)
Debut novel, literary fiction.Tuesday 24th June- Leor Zmigrod- (The Ideological Brain)
Non-fiction, psychology, neuroscience.
May Best Sellers
Best seller lists can seem a little arbitrary, but they are a great way to get a flavour for what’s hot and hopefully inspire your next book purchase. In alphabetical order, here’s our May list…
All Fours by Miranda July
Broken Threads by Mishal Husain
The Coin by Yasmin Zaher
Dwell by Simon Armitage
Intermezzo by Sally Rooney
Is A River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
On the Calculation of Volume (I) by Solvej Balle (translated by Barbara J. Haveland)
Red Pockets by Alice Mah
This is Not a Game by Kelly Mullen
Vanishing World by Sayaka Murata (translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori)
You can browse & purchase our May list in full, here!
Pre-orders of note
Pre-ordering books is a sure way to support authors and your favourite bookshop (hint hint), so here’s 2 of Jordan’s fiction highlights publishing over the next couple of months.
Bone Horn by Prue Bussey- Chamberlain (19 June)
The latest offering from one of the UK’s most vital independent publishers, Cipher Press, Bone Horn is the queer love child of Percival Everett’s Dr No and Miranda July’s All Fours. A smart, sexy, madcap adventure, Bone Horn follows a newly registered private investigator, tasked with tracking down the horn of famous modernist, Alice B Toklas. A playful satire of the traditional detective novel, that’s as racy as it is contemplative, we highly recommend adding this to your summer reading TBR pile!
Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater (10 July)
Alice Slater’s Sunday Times best selling, prize-winning debut novel, Death of a Bookseller, took West Kirby by storm; a sell out launch event for the hardback publication, followed by consistent best seller status for the paperback edition last year. We’re thrilled to have another offering from one of our most beloved contemporary novelists- Let the Bad Times Roll is just as pacy & gripping as its predecessor and we can’t wait to be pressing it into the hands of every West Kirby resident this summer. Keep your eyes peeled for a special event later this year, too!
Cultural highlights
What’s hot, what’s on our radar, what we’ve been enjoying recently
Strength in community…
Our good friends, Feminist Fiction Liverpool are hosting a fundraiser for Liverpool based charity, GYRO, who do essential work in the city region with young LGBTQ+ people. Stop by the Cornhill Coffee Van on Saturday 5th July between 10am-2pm for some stellar socialising, games, chatter & solidarity and raise some money for a great cause! We’ll be donating a bundle of books as a raffle prize, so you really don’t want to miss out!
For more information, or to find out ways you can support, get in touch with Feminist Fiction Liverpool, here.
Necessary interludes…
If you’re in the market for some new tunes then look no further than Herbert Music. We’re well and truly obsessed and you should be too! Celebrating a wide range of fresh, new approaches to classical music, her profile is packed full of short, educational videos and links to beautifully curated playlists that will inspire, calm and perfectly soundtrack your lunchtime iced coffee stroll.
Retail inspiration…
Whoever said ‘the high street is dead’ hasn’t visited our favourite destination in Manchester, Deadstock General Store. With a nod to traditional retail, a keen eye on independent brands and carefully curated shelves, we never leave empty handed! Stocking a wide range of homeware, accessories, stationery, ceramics & cosmetics, it’s the perfect boutique store to enjoy some retail therapy. We’re particularly enamoured with their range of niche fragrances from across the globe, that you’re unlikely to find in other shops on the high street. With very relaxed, friendly service, it’s always inspiring to stop by for a chat (their online store is very good too!)
The Bookshop Expansion Diaries #1
A confessional without too many tears, we thought it’d be informative/ cathartic to provide weekly updates on the progress of The West Kirby Bookshop 2.0…
It’s safe to say that we’re well and truly in the thick of it now. Countless Whatsapp group chats, workies coming-and-going, new stock lists scribbled in notebooks, on phone apps and the back of till receipts, and lots of paint-splattered clothing in and out the washing machine.
We knew the expansion was going to be a big, ambitious move and we had grand plans of videoing the progress along the way, but truth be told, we’re really tired and working incredibly long days, so for now, this little confessional will have to suffice!
All that being said, it has been a productive week. We’ve booked in the floor fitting for mid-July, the electrics have been signed off, joinery work has been agreed, we’ve confirmed some new suppliers for our expanded product ranges, work has started on our rebrand, our autumn events programme is taking shape thick and fast, and some gorgeous coffee tables have arrived.
This week, the floor is being levelled, lighting work continues, and we’ll be signing off our display tables and shelving.
The to-do list is never ending, but we’re optimistic!