On Wednesday 9th August at 11am join children’s author / illustrator Vicky Woodgate on a tree-tastic journey through the world of forests as she celebrates her new book The Magic of Forests. This will be a fun, informative event for kids aged 5-10 years. Vicky will share lots of amazing forest facts, lead children in a fun draw-along, help them create some leaf art AND make a super duper twig flag! Ticket holders can get £3 off a copy of The Magic of Forests or one of Vicky’s other books in DK’s beautifully-designed MAGIC OF .. series. (RRP £9.99) If the weather is warm this event will take place under shelter in the beautiful bookshop back garden. Accompanying adults do not need to purchase a ticket.
Tickets can be booked online here or in person at the bookshop / by phone on 01903 812062. We prefer if you book in advance as Vicky needs to know numbers for the craft activities.
Join us as we welcome local thriller-writing legend Elly Griffiths for a very special event on the publication day of her new mystery novel The Great Deceiver. The Great Deceiver is the seventh book in Elly’s Brighton Mysteries series, which are set in the 50’s and 60’s and inspired partly by her grandfather’s life on the stage. The Brighton Mysteries are an engaging blend of colourful period detail, sharp plotting and lively, likeable characters, and we can’t wait to discover the next enigma for Max Mephisto the magician to solve! About Elly Griffiths Acclaimed crime author Elly Griffiths worked in publishing before becoming a full-time writer. She is best known for her award-winning, chart-topping Dr Ruth Galloway series and The Brighton Mystery series, and has also written 3 standalone novels and a best-selling mystery series for children. Elly Griffiths lives near Brighton with her husband, an archaeologist. She is #18 on the list of most borrowed authors from UK libraries and is a hugely in demand for events, regularly holding audiences spellbound. About The Great Deceiver – published by Quercus Books 24/10/23 Magician Max Mephisto, now divorced and living in London, is on his way to visit daughter Ruby and her newborn baby when he is hailed by a voice from the past, fellow performer Ted English, aka the Great Deceiver. Ted’s assistant, Cherry, has been found dead in her Brighton boarding house and Ted is convinced that he’ll be accused of her murder. The inhabitants of the boarding house, most of whom are performing in an Old Time Music Hall show on Brighton pier, are a motley crew, and a sinister radio personality called Pal is also connected to the boarding house. Max agrees to talk to his friend, Superintendent Edgar Stephens, who is investigating the case. When a second magician’s assistant is killed, Edgar suspects a serial killer. He persuades Max to come out of semi-retirement and take part in a summer show….. But who can pose as his assistant? Edgar shocks the team by recommending someone close .. The venue for this event is the beautiful Church of St Andrew and St Cuthman in Steyning. Disabled access is available.
TICKETS CAN BE PURCHASED ONLINE HERE or from the bookshop, in person or by phone on 01903 812062.
We look forward to welcoming historical novelist FRANCES QUINN to Steyning to discuss her latest novel That Bonesetter Woman, a heart-warming, uplifting story with an unforgettable heroine, set in Georgian London, inspired by the true stories of two infamous celebrities of the time. This event will be ‘bookgroup style ‘ – we invite audience members who’ve chosen the ‘book with ticket‘ option to pick up their copy of That Bonesetter Woman from the shop in advance of the evening, and come armed with questions / observations for the author. Our bookgroups will be in attendance and will have read the book so we cannot guarantee No Spoilers!
The£14 Book with Ticket option gives you a £1 saving compared to buying the book on the night.
Copies of both Frances Quinn’s books will be on sale at the event and Frances will be happy to sign & dedicateyour books.
About That Bonesetter Woman All the gossip and grime of Georgian London are vividly brought to life in this warm-hearted historical novel which tells the uplifting story of clumsy, plain Endurance (Durie) Proudfoot, who has inherited her father’s gift for ‘bone-setting’. But her father thinks it’s no job for a woman and Durie is sent to London to chaperone her beautiful, flighty sister Lucinda. While Lucinda dreams of fame and fortune on the stage, Durie sets up a bone-setting practice, quickly ascending to undreamt-of heights and becoming the toast of fashionable society! But what goes up must come down… Will Durie endure? An addictive, joyful read, filled with quirky characters and fascinating historical detail!
About Frances Quinn Frances Quinn grew up in London and read English at King’s College, Cambridge, realising too late that the course would require more than lying around reading novels for three years. After snatching a degree from the jaws of laziness, she became a journalist, writing for magazines including Prima, Good Housekeeping, She, Woman’s Weekly and Ideal Home, and later branched out into copywriting, producing words for everything from Waitrose pizza packaging to the EasyJet in-flight brochure! After completing the Curtis Brown Creative novel writing course, her first novel, The Smallest Man, was published to great acclaim in 2021. That Bonesetter Woman is her second novel. She lives in Brighton, with her husband and two Tonkinese cats.
TICKETS: Click the Ticket link or call us on 01903 812062
*STEYNING BOOKSHOP BOOK GROUP MEMBERS MUST PURCHASE THEIR TICKETS IN STORE OR BY PHONE*
Come and meet Julia Donaldson at our fun book-signing event, as she celebrates her new book JULIA DONALDSON’S BOOK OF NAMES. For many years, at every book-signing, Julia Donaldson has scribbled down any unusual names she encounters – she has been squirrelling them away for years, working on including them all in a book – and finally, here it is! Set in a magical transforming bookshop, The Book of Names is a love-letter to bookshops and young bookworms, with cute, charming illustrations by Nila Aye, an award-winning new illustrator. Julia has seamlessly woven the names together thematically, from months of the year, colours and flowers to food, history, and gemstones… “I’ve signed for boys called Romeo, and girls called Juliet . I’ve signed for Roman, Saxon, Dane – though not for Norman yet…” Young readers will enjoy trying to find their own name, and even if your name isn’t included, there is a special dedicated space to add it, or even better, for Julia to sign! How it Works It is essential to buy a ticket for the book-signing. Each ‘ticket’ entitles entry for the purchaser AND THEIR FAMILY GROUP (up to 5 persons, please specify how many adults / children) and includes 1 copy of Julia Donaldson’s Book of Names, in hardback, which you’ll be able to get signed & named by Julia. The book-signing will be split into 40-minute time-slots to reduce queue times, with 20 family groups in each time slot, starting from 2pm. As each time slot fills up, we will open the next time-slot. If you want to purchase multiple book copies – don’t buy multiple tickets please! You’ll have plenty of chance to buy more books on the day of the signing, and Julia will sign AND name-dedicate ALL books either pre-ordered or purchased at The Steyning Bookshop that day! The book-signing will hopefully take place under cover in the beautiful back garden of the Steyning Bookshop, weather permitting! We will provide fun games and craft activities and free biscuits / juice for children while you wait to meet Julia.
You can book your space via Ticketsource by following the link below. Do give us a ring if you have any questions or if the time-slot is full – we can open up the next one!
We are very excited about our first fiction author event of 2023 with novelist Sophie Haydock. Sophie’s debut novel The Flames, about the four muses who posed for the artist Egon Schiele in Vienna in the early 1900’s, won the Impress Prize for New Writers and has received widespread critical acclaim. This will be an ‘open book group’ style event – the ticket price includes a paperback copy of ‘The Flames’ and we encourage members of the public to pop into the shop to claim their free book PRIOR to the event, and come primed with questions / observations for the author! There will be lots to talk about as Sophie opens up about her research into the elusive, provocative figure of Schiele, his real-life muses, how they relate to her fictionalised creations, not to mention all the bohemian glamour of Secessionist Vienna!
About The Flames Vienna, 1912. Behind every painting, there is a story… Vienna is at its zenith, an opulent, extravagant city teeming with art, music and radical ideas. It is a place where anything seems possible… Edith and Adele are sisters, the daughters of a wealthy bourgeois family. They are expected to follow the rules, to marry well, and produce children. Gertrude is in thrall to her flamboyant older brother. Marked by a traumatic childhood, she envies the freedom he so readily commands. Vally was born into poverty but is making her way in the world as a model for the eminent artist Gustav Klimt. Fierce, passionate and determined, none of these women is quite what they seem. But their lives are set on a collision course when they become entangled with the controversial young artist Egon Schiele whose work – and private life – are sending shockwaves through Viennese society. All it will take is a single act of betrayal to set their world on fire…
Event Details
Doors Open at 7:00PM Starts at 7:30PM
Steyning Bookshop Book Group Members £10 (Must be purchased via the shop) (includes your copy of The Flames)
Public tickets £13 includes a copy of The Flames in paperback, please let the bookshop know whether you’d like to collect the book to read before the event or will be picking it up it on the night. Call 01903 812062 or email info:steyningbookshop.co.uk . Ticket price includes a glass of something upon arrival.
An immersive evening of mesmerising melodies, pagan poetry and spoken word in the beautiful ambience of St Andrew’s Church, Steyning. Featuring SWIFT WINGS, a spoken-word and live-music performance by Justin Hopper and Sharron Kraus, based on their album of the same name, and THE CULT OF WATER, a captivating monologue by David Bramwell accompanied by music, animation, the voice of Alan Moore and archive film. ABOUT SWIFT WINGS SWIFT WINGS is a haunting performance piece featuring Justin Hopper reading Victor Neuberg’s Sussex landscape poems, set to Kraus’s original music performed live on recorders, flutes, synths & vocals, with hypnotic visuals by Wendy Pye.
The poet Victor Neuburg is best known for his early, tragic relationship with the infamous Aleister Crowley and, later, for ‘discovering’ Dylan Thomas. But he was also a prolific writer and poet, and ran a small publishing press from his home in Vine Cottage in Steyning during the 1920’s, publishing writers from the Bohemian subculture.
Writer Justin Hopper has long been fascinated by Neuberg, and in 2022 published the book ‘Obsolete Spells‘, which collects Neuberg’s Sussex poems and Vine Press oddities along with essays. Justin is also the author of Old Weird Albion, a psycho-geographical meander along the South Downs Way.
Sharron Kraus is a weaver of musical spells best described as “‘Pagan radiophonica meets medieval balladry”…
ABOUT THE CULT OF WATER David Bramwell will take you on a magical odyssey, in search of the occult secrets of our rivers, and a drowned village which has long haunted his memories. From his roots in Doncaster, Bramwell travels up the river Don and back in time, through the ladybird plague and drought of 1976 to the heavily polluted Don of Sheffield’s steel industry, up into the Pennines and back into a pre-Christian era when rivers and springs were worshipped as living deities. Along the journey Bramwell battles with his own thalassophobia (the fear of ‘what lurks beneath’); learns about hydromancy from magician Alan Moore, and encounters Jarvis Cocker on his own adventures, sailing down the Don on an inflatable inner tube…. His journey finally brings him face to face with the goddess of primordial waters, Danu, who gave her name to the Don.
David Bramwell is a writer, musician, broadcaster and performer who also organises the popular Catalyst Club events in Brighton & elsewhere. Hisother books include The Haunted Moustache, No9 Bus to Utopia, The Odysseum and The Mysterium, and his podcast, Adventures in Nutopia, is well worth a listen! THE EVENING WILL ALSO FEATURE A short talk by Victor Neuberg’s daughter Caroline Neuberg on her father’s life, work & legacy. EVENT INFO: Doors open 7pm. Performance starts 7.30pm. There will be a bar serving local ales, cheap plonk & soft drinks. There is a large car park at Fletcher’s Croft, opposite the church. There is a bus service running hourly buses from Shoreham-by-Seato Steyning.
We are SO EXCITED to have bagged author, broadcaster and zoologist Lucy Cooke for what will be a FASCINATING evening as she discusses her brilliant book BITCH.
BITCH will change how you think about sex, sexual identity and sexuality in animals and also the very forces that shape evolution. What does it mean to be female? Mother, carer, the weaker sex? Think again. In the last few decades a revolution has been brewing in zoology and evolutionary biology… Lucy Cooke will introduce us to a riotous cast of animals, and the scientists studying them, that are redefining the female of the species…. From the female lemurs of Madagascar, our ancient primate cousins that dominate the males of their species physically and politically, to female albatross couples, hooking up together to raise their chicks in Hawaii. How about the meerkat mothers of the Kalahari Desert – the most murderous mammals on the planet? The bitches in BITCH overturn outdated binary expectations of bodies, brains, biology and behaviour. TICKET PRICE of £12 includes a paperback copy of Bitch, a glass of something upon entry, and all the revolutionary de-bunking of gender stereotypes you need!
ABOUT LUCY COOKE
Lucy studied zoology under Richard Dawkins at New College, Oxford where she specialised in evolution and animal behaviour. She left academia to become an award-winning writer, producer and presenter of documentaries for both TV and radio. Lucy is also the author of four books, which have been translated into over 20 languages, and a columnist for BBC Wildlife magazine. She is, at heart, a story-teller with a reputation for mixing rigorous cutting-edge science, in-depth investigation and a wry sense of humour to reveal surprising truths about the natural world.
Tickets available from the bookshop, by phone on 01903 812062 or online via Ticketsource, click below.
Join author and natural navigator Tristan Gooley for an evening exploring the secret life of trees, as he celebrates the release of his new book How to Read a Tree. Tristan Gooley has been instructing people in the art of natural navigation, including reading trees, for two decades. During this fascinating evening, Tristan will share the simple principles that explain the shapes and patterns you can see in trees and what they mean. We will learn rare skills that can be applied every time we pass a tree, and learn why no 2 trees are EVER identical. You’ll never look at a tree the same way again! ‘A mesmerising book … Gooley drops learning as lightly as blossom falls in spring.’ – John Lewis-Stempel ABOUT TRISTAN GOOLEY Tristan set up his natural navigation school in 2008 and is the author of the award-winning The Natural Navigator, The Walker’s Guide to Outdoor Clues & Signs, How to Read Water, and Wild Signs and Star Paths. He has written for the Sunday Times, the New York Times, the BBC, The Financial Times and many other periodicals. Tristan has led expeditions in five continents, climbed mountains in Europe, Africa and Asia, sailed small boats across oceans and piloted small aircraft to Africa and the Arctic. He has walked with and studied the methods of the Tuareg, Bedouin and Dayak in some of the remotest regions on Earth. He is the only living person to have both flown solo and sailed singlehanded across the Atlantic and is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Royal Geographical Society. ABOUT THE EVENT Doors open 7pm. Talk starts 7.30pm. A talk plus Q and A by Tristan Gooley, followed by book-signing. Copies of all Tristan’s books will be on sale. Tickets: £17 book & ticket, includes a hardback copy of How to Read a Tree / £7 Ticket only (option to buy book on the night, ticket gives £7 off book RRP of £20)
with support from local poets’ open-mic, MC’ed by Simon Zec.
Join us for an evening of verse with acclaimed poet Henry Normal reading from his new collection, The Fire Hills.
The poems in Fire Hills reflect the landscapes Henry explored upon moving to Fairlight, in East Sussex, as he wandered the Downs, armed only with a pen and unwarranted optimism. Henry will perform a 30-40 minute reading plus Q and A. Our MC for the evening will be local poet Simon Zec, who’ll also be the ‘selector’ for 30 minutes of so of readings from local poets – please submit poems to Simon if you wish to be included in the open mic. The venue is the beautiful Steyning parish church of St Andrew & St Cuthman. There will be a pay bar serving local beers, cheap plonk and soft drinks.
DOORS OPEN 7pm. Event starts 7.30pm.
About Henry Normal Henry is originally from Nottingham, where he first started writing, performing and touring – even opening for bands including Pulp. (He also became Pulp’s tour bus driver!) He was spotted by Channel 4 and moved into television, co-writing both the award-winning Mrs Merton show and the first series of The Royle Family. In 1990 he set up a production company, producing and script-editing many well-loved films & TV series, including the Oscar nominated film Philomena, Gavin and Stacey, Nighty Night, The Mighty Boosh, Red Dwarf and Alan Partridge. In 2017 he was honoured with a special BAFTA for services to Television. He retired in April 2016, and since then has written and performed several shows combining comedy, poetry, and stories about family life for BBC Radio 4. Henry now lives near Hastings with his wife, the screenwriter Angela Pell, and their son Johnny.
To celebrate their stunning new picture book The Bowerbird, come and meet its author, Julia Donaldson, AND illustrator Catherine Rayner, at the Steyning Bookshop for a special book-signing on Saturday 1st April from 2pm. How it Works The book-signing will be split into 40 minute time-slots to reduce queue times, with 20 family groups in each time slot. Each ‘ticket’ entitles entry for the purchaser AND THEIR FAMILY GROUP (up to 5 persons, please specify how many adults / children) and includes 1 copy of The Bowerbird. If you want to purchase multiple copies – don’t buy multiple tickets please! You’ll have plenty of chance to buy more books on the day of the signing, and Julia will sign AND name-dedicate ALL books either pre-ordered or purchased at The Steyning Bookshop that day! We will provide fun activities and free biscuits / juice for children while you wait to meet Julia.
The first 100 pre-orders for The Bowerbird (whether booked via signing tickets or pre-ordered on our website) will receive a free, limited-edition print by Catherine Rayner. We are sorry, but Julia and Catherine will not sign books purchased elsewhere or brought from home. About the Book The Bowerbird sees Julia Donaldson joins forces with illustrator Catherine Rayner for another exotic avian tale, following their beautiful, best-selling book The Go-Away Bird in 2019. Little Bert, the Bowerbird, is looking for love. Bert has painstakingly constructed the MOST perfect Bower, complete with a pretty purple flower… But Nanette, the lady of his dreams, is FAR from impressed. So Bert flies off finding presents from far and wide… Will it EVER be enough to win Nanette’s heart? Julia Donaldson’s evident delight in the natural world shines through and the illustrations are stunning. A real treat of a picture book for under 6’s.
Click below to buy tickets on our Ticketsource page, alternatively you can reserve your space by phone on 01903 812062.
