Blog

Children’s Book of the Month: November 2019

06 Nov 2019

Phoebe, sad and lonely in Griselda Bone’s Home for Strays, is afraid her Miracle Day will never come. Her friends have been adopted one by one until one snowy Christmas eve Phoebe the wordsmith, and her little dancing dog Herb are the only two remaining inmates of the rancid orphanage where ‘daydreaming is banned, skipping is forbidden and hide-and-seek is … Read more

Agatha Christie’s Devon

03 Nov 2019

As Autumn draws in, the staff here at the bookshop start looking forward to curling up with a good book, and reading an Agatha Christie whodunnit from cover to cover can be a great way to stay warm while the temperatures drop outside. Part of the joy of her novels for us, as a bookshop based in Devon, is spotting … Read more

Children’s Book of the Month: October 2019

17 Oct 2019

Somerset 1616, a place of suspicion, witches and tooth-pullers, where brave heroine Fortune Sharpe loves the sea almost as much as she loves her family. So she is the first to notice that the sea looks strange… Almost as if it is disappearing into the sky. Fortune is forced to leave her home and find work disguised as a boy, … Read more

National Poetry Day with Matt Harvey

22 Sep 2019

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of National Poetry Day on 3rd October the Booksellers Association and Forward Arts Foundation have announced Poetry Booksellers Love, 25 favourite poetry books from the last 25 years which were nominated and voted for by booksellers in the UK and Ireland. The list includes anthologies and single-author collections which cater for all palates and … Read more

Children’s Book of the Month: September 2019

12 Sep 2019

Who thinks it’s exciting that rats have come to live in the ground floor flat? The young bunnies do, but the other residents of Pickle Rye aren’t so sure that they want dirty, smelly rats as neighbours: rats are messy, rats steal food, rats are thieves and chew through walls. But once the occupants of flats 2-7 have hopped and … Read more

Crediton Big Read 2019

28 Aug 2019

Before the next equinox is upon us we thought we should look back to those long June days and celebrate Crediton’s first Big Read. Our aim was to inspire as many people as possible in the Crediton area to read and talk about the same books, and to promote reading as a shared pleasure. The idea of a Big Read … Read more

Quay Words

18 Aug 2019

Exeter’s Custom House was home to the Quay Words literary festival and its first writer-in-residence for six weeks from 29th June-3rd August. The festival was part of an initiative to explore the potential for the beautiful Custom House, built in 1680 at the height of Exeter’s woollen cloth industry, to become a hub for literature. The programme was put together … Read more

Children’s Book of the Month: July 2019

15 Jul 2019

Set in WWII, our BOTM for July is Helen Peters’ moving and captivating novel Anna at War. Anna at War begins on Kristallnacht and in the aftermath, as life for German Jews becomes increasingly perilous, Anna’s parents put her on the Kindertransport leaving for England. But the war follows her to Kent, and soon Anna finds herself caught up in … Read more

Reading for Pleasure: Professional Development for Teachers

02 Jul 2019

For the past three years we’ve held a CPD event at the bookshop in conjunction with the University of Exeter to discuss the UKLA Book Awards – the only awards where teachers select books they want to share with pupils to inspire a love of books, reading for pleasure and a focus for discussion and extended study. Following the same … Read more