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The Books That Made Me I have always been drawn to stories of journeys – The Hobbit, The Chronicles of Narnia, Peter Pan. As an only child growing up on a remote Scottish island, reading was a companion, a doorway to adventure, to faraway places, to the unexpected...
The Books That Made Me I have been a lover of books for as long as I can remember. Books afforded a younger me, quiet and aloof, a world of possibilities with infinite braver versions of myself. The more I read the more I realised it was not just the books themselves...
The Books That Made Me The Heart of The Woods starts and (spoilers) ends just outside Oswestry. It begins in the woodland my father planted just over a decade ago, just a stone’s throw from Booka. I’ve watched with no small amazement as the thousand native broadleaf...
The Books That Made Me It was my father who taught me the value of books. Our home was filled with books on poetry, philosophy, history and politics. In my grown-up years, my father told me that he always thought that if our home had a plentiful bookshelf, one day,...
The Books That Made Me My earliest reading experience involves the charming picture book Not Now Bernard by David McKee. My dad used to read it to me at bedtime. It’s the story of a boy who claims there is an enormous purple monster in the house, and his parents who...
6 months ago, we were one bookshop. Now we are two. It seems incredible to us, even after being booksellers for 14 years, that we now have two bookshops. It felt as though we talked about it for years, then couldn’t find the right location, the right building....
Clare Mackintosh – I Promise it Won’t Always Hurt Like This In December 2006, my five-week-old son died. I was a police officer back then, calm in a crisis and hardened to tragedy. I had delivered bad news to more doorsteps than I could count; watched blood...
The Books That Made Me When I was a little girl, my favourite author was Robin McKinley. She wrote fairy tale retellings; the first book of hers I read was Beauty, a novel-length retelling of beauty and the beast. But she also wrote epic fantasy, two marvellous books...
Writing Crime Fiction as a Local Author Bolt From The Black is my second Oswestry-based murder mystery and my thirteenth book. It follows Each Slow Dusk, the first Inspector Probert novel, in which a body is discovered at the foot of the statue of Wilfred Owen in Cae...
Fiction: The Warm Hands of Ghosts by Katherine Arden Astonishing, haunting and brutal, Katherine Arden’s WW1 historical fantasy, The Warm Hands of Ghosts, is a tale of endurance, duty, family, and stupid dumb hope; of the bonds between siblings, of the ties which bind...
The Books That Made Me I was an avid reader as a child and remember the shelves at home being filled with all sorts of treasures – Helen Nicholl and Jan Pieńkowski’s Meg and Mog books, Janet and Allan Ahlberg, Shirley Hughes. My most prized possession was a copy of...
Fiction: Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge by Lizzie Pook Sensational and gripping, Maude Horton’s Glorious Revenge is a breathless romp, a tale of adventure, hidden identity, sisters, secrets and revenge. Two years ago, Maude Horton’s brilliant, vivacious sister...
The Books That Made Me Books (and the rooms that contained them) were my first babysitters. As soon as I could read, my parents would drop me off at bookshops and libraries, or at neighbourhood homes that rented out rooms full of books. I would spend hours with these...
Fiction: The Storm We Made by Vanessa Chan Heartbreaking and raw, ‘The Storm We Made’ is a vivid portrayal of pre-war British-colonised Malaya (now Malaysia), its’ invasion by Japan and ruthless regime it endured during World War 2. Alternating between 1935, when one...
Carrie’s Books of the Year are… So Late in the Day by Claire Keegan Yoga for Stiff Birds by Marion Deuchars Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes Wild Hope by Donna Ashworth Shot with Crimson by Nicola Upson Sarn Helen by Tom Bullough, illustrated by Jackie Morris...
Fiction Book of the Month: The Christmas Jigsaw Murders by Alexandra Benedict On 19th of December, renowned puzzle setter, loner and Christmas sceptic Edie O’Sullivan finds a hand-delivered present on her doorstep. Unwrapping it, she finds a jigsaw box and, inside,...
The Books That Made Me The first book I ever truly loved was The Swish of the Curtain by Pamela Brown. It was the story that opened my eyes to the obsessive magic of reading, and it’s the only book that I’ve ever begun again as soon as I finished it. It stood out from...
Fiction: Shot With Crimson by Nicola Upson Clever, fascinating and filled with intrigue, Shot With Crimson is one of Nicola Upson’s Josephine Tey Mysteries (a superb crime series which can be read in any order). Their protagonist is real life novelist Josephine Tey, a...
Fiction: The Book of Beginnings by Sally Page From the author of the phenomenal bestseller The Keeper of Stories, comes an utterly beautiful and charming novel full of mystery and secrets waiting to be uncovered… Returning to her Uncle Wilbur’s stationery shop, brings...
To the Future and Beyond The word is out, the dream is becoming a reality. Booka Bridgnorth is being built. Tim of all trades is busy painting the shop-front, local builders GMC have started the shop-fit. We are on our way to being the proud owners of two independent...