Our kids author event this summer on FRIDAY 20th AUGUST at 11 am in our lovely bookshop garden will be lots of ROARING good fun! We are thrilled to welcome illustrator / author VICKY WOODGATE back for a dino-tastic event celebrating her new book ‘A World of Dinosaurs’. Expect lots of Cool Facts, LIVE Drawing and a Roaring Quiz with amazing competition giveaway signed prints!
Tickets are just £4 per child – and ticket-bearers get £4 OFF Vicky’s book. Free refreshments for children.
Book in store, call 01903 812062, or online via Ticketsource (incurs a small booking fee)
Celebrate Independent Bookshop Week with Julia Donaldson, in the comfort of your own home!
Saturday 19th June, 10.30am to 11.30am.
Join Julia Donaldson for this special one-off live, online event. Julia will read her latest stories, including ‘The Woolly Bear Caterpillar’, perform songs accompanied by her husband, Malcolm, and answer questions from the audience. The event will stream live via Zoom, in a collaboration with Wee Three Indies, At Home with 4 Indies, and The Steyning Bookshop.
Tickets £5 Or FREE when you order one of the following books from the Steyning Bookshop:
The Woolly Bear Caterpillar by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Yuval Zommer – £12.99** The Hospital Dog by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Sara Ogilvie – £6.99 The Scarecrow’s Wedding by Julia Donaldson, illustrated by Axel Scheffler – £6.99
Please book your event access ticket here or by calling us on 01903 812062. If you would like to purchase one of the 3 books, you will get £5 off the book price if you state that you are an event ticket-holder. You can purchase the books + postage via our website store, in person at the shop, or by telephone. If purchasing via our website we will manually adjust the price so do mention in the ORDER NOTES that you are a ticket-holder.
Meet Julia Donaldson at her first ‘in-person’ book-signing for more than a year, as she celebrates the launch of her new picture book, The Woolly Bear Caterpillar, wonderfully illustrated by Yuval Zommer. This charming ‘Ugly Duckling’ style story is full of facinating nature facts and even includes a mini-book of bug facts by Michael Blencowe, from Sussex Wildlife Trust. The signing will take place under shelter in the garden of the Steyning Bookshop, in timed 30-minute slots from 3.30pm onwards on Thursday 24th June 2021. Tickets are £12.99 which includes 1 copy of The Woolly Bear Caterpillar for signing. 1 ticket booking admits 1 family group of up to 5 (1 adult / 4 kids or 2 adults, up to 3 kids). There will be no more than 25 bookings per 30 minute slot to avoid long queues.
To book online (booking fee applies): 3.30pm slot click here
A fun, fact-filled interactive event for families with children aged 7-11. Neurobiologist turned writer Liam Drew will introduce curious kids and budding scientists to the amazing & mysterious world of the brain. Starting with the weird and wonderful brains of different animals, we’ll look at how information gets into the brain, then how our brains learn, make memories, and think. We’ll look, too, at emotions, sleep, and how we are all unique – with lots of time for questions and conversation!
To take place in the Steyning Bookshop back garden marquee, at 11am on Saturday 26th June.
Family tickets £10 per family. Includes a copy of The Brain Book by Dr Liam Drew.
Exclusive – this is Liz Pichon’s first live ‘real-life’ event for a year!
Meetbest-selling ‘Tom Gates’ author LIZ PICHON for a special book-signing to celebrate the paperback release of ‘Shoe Wars‘, her hilarious new book – chockful of crazy cartoons, bursting with invention and packed with mad gadgets! On Saturday 26th June, from 3pm.
Book-signing will take place under shelter in the beautiful back garden at the Steyning Bookshop, with appropriate social-distancing measures. Signing will be in 30 minute slots with no more than 25 bookings per slot. 1 booking costs £7.99 and includes a paperback copy of ‘Shoe Wars’ for signing. 1 small family group of 1-5 people constitutes 1 booking. The Steyning Bookshop will have copies of all Liz Pichon’s books on sale for signing. Customers may not bring their own books from home for signing.
We are so excited that renowned, award-winning novelist Esther Freud is to join us LIVE for a VIRTUAL EVENT on Zoom, to discuss her new novel I Couldn’t Love You More – an unforgettable novel about love, motherhood, secrets and betrayal.
This will be a kind of ‘Open Book Group’ style event – we invite you to read the book first and then join our 3 book groups online, where after a short interview, Esther will be happy to take questions from audience members. The event price of £15 INCLUDES a hardback copy of I Couldn’t Love You More, so when you pre-order the book with us, do mention that you are a ticket-holder! You can book here or call us on 01903 812062.
Esther Freud’s cult first novel Hideous Kinky was shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys prize and made into a film starring Kate Winslet. After publishing her second novel, Peerless Flats, she was chosen as one of Granta’s Best of Young British novelists along with Kazuo Ishiguro and Jeanette Winterson. Her last novel, Mr Mac and Me, won Best Novel in the East Anglian Book Awards. I Couldn’t Love You More is her ninth novel.
We are thrilled that award-winning novelist Claire Fuller is going to join us for a virtual event on Wednesday April 21st, to discuss her latest amazing novel ‘Unsettled Ground’. This will be a kind of ‘Open Book Group’ style event – we invite you to read the book first and then join our 3 book groups online, where after a short interview, Claire will be happy to take questions and respond to your observations.
Claire Fuller is a firm favourite of all our staff and book group members here at the Steyning Bookshop. She came to Steyning to discuss her gripping, unsettling debut novel ‘Our Endless Numbered Days’ with our book group, and then returned to tell us about ‘Swimming Lessons’, her beautifully written second novel. We sadly missed a visit for ‘Bitter Orange’ her darkly simmering third novel (which I adored!) so we are really looking forward to welcoming Claire back, albeit virtually, to talk about her new novel ‘Unsettled Ground’, published on March 25th.
‘Unsettled Ground’ is a beautifully-observed portrait of lives lived at the fringe of society, and what happens when those edges fray. The central characters, 51 year-old twins, Julius and Jeanie, have lived a sheltered rural existence with their mother, Dot, surviving hand-to-mouth on what they can earn from their garden produce and odd farming jobs. When Dot dies suddenly, the twins are forced to confront the outside world, and long-kept secrets begin to surface, casting doubt on family truths and shattering their precarious existence.
Claire Fuller was born in Oxfordshire, England, in 1967. She gained a degree in sculpture from Winchester School of Art, but went on to have a long career in marketing and didn’t start writing until she was forty. She has written three previous novels: Our Endless Numbered Days, which won the Desmond Elliott Prize, Swimming Lessons, which was shortlisted for the RSL Encore Award, and Bitter Orange. She has an MA in Creative and Critical Writing from the University of Winchester and lives in Hampshire with her librarian husband. You can visit Claire’s website here!
Call us on 01903 812062 to purchase your copy of ‘Unsettled Ground’ and register to join the event, OR buy online via our website here!
A moving and exciting story of brotherhood, friendship & the power of dreams!
Imagine having the ability to step inside your dreams, to consciously control the action and the setting, and even meet your friends there! When 11-year-old Malky accidentally steals a strange device, the ‘Dreaminator’, he and his younger brother Seb begin sharing wild dream adventures…. But the device is unstable, and soon things take a nightmarish turn, with Seb lying in a coma, trapped in his dream, and Malky awake and unable to reach him. With the help of his friend Tenzin, her mystical Tibetan grandma, and a dying old man, Malky must face his darkest unconscious fears and take a leap into the void.
This is an absolutely BRILLIANT rollercoaster adventure, fast-paced, funny, inventive and heartfelt. Ross Welford’s cast of quirky and lovable characters and warm humour manage to make an unbelievable story completely plausible. I have adored ALL Ross Welford’s books, but I think this one just may be my favourite!
On March 25th we will welcome novelist & biographer Lucy Jago, who’ll be discussing her wonderful new historical novel ‘A Net for Small Fishes’ live online via Zoom. All 3 of our bookgroups are reading ‘A Net for Small Fishes’ but we are keen for this to be an open event for interested readers far and wide! Entry to this event is FREE with purchase of ‘A Net for Small Fishes’ from the Steyning Bookshop. This will be a book-group style discussion, whereby most participants will have read the book already, so we suggest buying and reading the book prior to the event, to avoid spoilers! You can buy the book via our online store here (be sure to include your email address for the Zoom link!) or ring us on 01903 812062 to pay & collect from our porch collection box.
‘A Net for Small Fishes’ is a richly-imagined historical novel set at the Jacobean court, loosely based on a true scandal that rocked the court of James the First. It is already attracting rave reviews such as this, in the Guardian, which calls the novel ‘gloriously immersive’.
Lucy Jago
Lucy Jago is an award-winning writer of fiction and non-fiction, and a former documentary producer for Channel 4 and the BBC. Her first book, The Northern Lights, won the National Biography prize and has been translated into eight languages; her YA novel, Montacute House, met with critical acclaim in the US and the UK.
Lucy was awarded a Double First Class Honours Degree from King’s College, University of Cambridge, and a master’s degree from the Courtauld Institute, London. Lucy is a Fellow of the Royal Literary Society and lives in Somerset.
Elly will chat to fellow crime-writer William Shaw about her thrilling new novel ‘Night Hawks’ in a live online Zoom event. Elly Griffiths is a firm local favourite with readers here in Steyning, as she is based in Brighton, although ‘Night Hawks’ is set amongst the windswept landscapes of North Norfolk. It is Elly’s 13th novel featuring lovable forensic archaeologist Dr Ruth Galloway. We can’t wait to hear more about Elly’s inspiration for this story, which is rich in twisty intrigue, and layered with folk-myths and ancient superstitions. A group of metal detectorists called The Night Hawks stumble upon a body while searching for buried treasures on a Norfolk beach….A double murder-suicide on an isolated farm… The body of a giant dog excavated in the farm grounds… Strange rumours of a spectral hound…What is the connection, and why do Ruth and DCI Nelson find all their avenues of enquiry lead them back to Black Dog Farm?
Tickets are £5, your booking entitles you to £5 off your copy of ‘Night Hawks’ (RRP £20, our price £17, price with event ticket £12!) Call us to reserve and pay for your copy, mention you are a ticket holder to get your discount! Or order the book via our website here (mention you are a ticket holder in the ORDER NOTES to claim your £5 off) Lockdown permitting, we hope we will have signed copies!
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