All this week we are celebrating the joy that independent bookshops bring to book fans everywhere. We do hope to see you in the shop this week, in the meantime, here are a few of our best-selling books this year so far.
The BBC Proms is the world’s biggest and longest-running classical music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC.
Held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London and across the UK, it is one of the strongest brand names in the music world and attracts a glittering array of artists and orchestras from the UK and around the world.
Whether you’re a first-time visitor or an experienced Prommer, watching at home or listening on radio or online, the BBC Proms Guide is an excellent companion to the festival, which you can treasure and return to in years to come.
Filled with concert listings and articles by leading writers, the BBC Proms Guide offers an insight into the performers and repertoire, as well as thought-provoking opinion pieces about music, musicians and music-making.
Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow
This is the story of Sam and Sadie. It’s not a romance, but it is about love.
When Sam catches sight of Sadie at a crowded train station one morning he is catapulted straight back to childhood, and the hours they spent immersed in playing games.
Their spark is instantly reignited and sets off a creative collaboration that will make them superstars.
It is the 90s, and anything is possible.
What comes next is a decades-long tale of friendship and rivalry, fame and art, betrayal and tragedy, perfect worlds and imperfect ones.
And, above all, our need to connect: to be loved and to love.
The world’s most beloved beagle shares his philosophy on life in this beautifully produced gift book for all generations.
In his inimitable style, Snoopy spends his days extolling the virtues of dancing.
Hanging out with his best bird friend Woodstock.
Pursuing a full supper dish and giving his owner – our favourite lovable loser, Charlie Brown – the run-around.
For the millions of faithful Charles Schulz fans, and those who fondly remember the joyful dog with the wild imagination, this is the first in a new series to cherish that will see the beguiling Peanuts gang share their sentiments on everything from food to friendship.
For Geeta, life as a widow is more peaceful than life as a wife…
Until the other women in her village decide they want to be widows, too.
Geeta is believed to have killed her vanished husband – a rumour she hasn’t bothered trying to correct, because a reputation like that can keep a single woman safe in rural India.
But when she’s approached for help in ridding another wife of her abusive drunk of a husband, her reluctant agreement sets in motion a chain of events that will change the lives of all the women in the village….
In 1914, war feels far away to Henry Gaunt and Sidney Ellwood.
They’re too young to enlist, and anyway, Gaunt is fighting his own private battle – an all-consuming infatuation with the dreamy, poetic Ellwood – not having a clue that his best friend is in love with him, always has been.
When Gaunt’s mother asks him to enlist in the British army to protect the family from anti-German attacks, he signs up immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings.
But Ellwood and their classmates soon follow him into the horrors of trenches.
Though Ellwood and Gaunt find fleeting moments of solace in one another, their friends are dying in front of them, and at any moment they could be next.
An epic tale of the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.
Cloudstreet is Tim Winton’s great family drama, a twenty-year story of life and love, full of boisterous energy, joy and heartbreak.
His visceral evocation of the Australian landscape is nowhere more extraordinary than in this classic.
No.1 Cloudstreet: a broken-down house on the wrong side of the tracks, a place teeming with memories, with shudders and shadows and spirits.
From separate catastrophes, two families, the Pickles and Lambs, flee to the city and find themselves thrown together, forced to start their lives afresh.
As they roister and rankle, the place that began as a roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts.
It is 1921 and at Cassowary House in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Robert Hamlyn is a well-to-do lawyer and his steely wife Lesley a society hostess. Their lives are invigorated when Willie, an old friend of Robert’s, comes to stay.
Willie Somerset Maugham is one of the greatest writers of his day. But he is beleaguered by an unhappy marriage, ill-health and business interests that have gone badly awry. He is also struggling to write.
The more Lesley’s friendship with Willie grows, the more clearly she see him as he is – a man who has no choice but to mask his true self.
As Willie prepares to leave and face his demons, Lesley confides secrets of her own, including how she came to know the charismatic Dr Sun Yat Sen, a revolutionary fighting to overthrow the imperial dynasty of China. And more scandalous still, she reveals her connection to the case of an Englishwoman charged with murder in the Kuala Lumpur courts – a tragedy drawn from fact, and worthy of fiction.
Bunny vs Monkey: Bunny Bonanza
Monkey and the gang are on a hunt to find Bunny, after he mysteriously disappeared . . .
On their search they’ll be bamboozled by Old Bunny, Neanderbunny, the mysterious Shadow Bunny and the always-confusing Not Bunny.
Will they ever find their faithful friend? It’s a rollicking race to the rightful rabbit in this cornucopia of chuckles!