Our story
January 2025
We opened our doors for the first time in July 2020 and with the tremendous support of our local community spent the next two years celebrating not failing!
From June 2022 we shifted into another gear, hosting author events, starting our monthly Book Blether, welcoming a school reading club visit, supporting the marvellous annual BOOKMARK book festival in October and a enjoying a spooktacular evening of ghost stories.
Since then we have also been delighted to host award-winning children’s authors David Macphail and Pauline Tait, with Pauline also entertaining an adult audience with her new suspense romance series set in Skye (Abigail Return and Anna’s Promise – I’ve been told the third one is well on its way!). We’ve also hosted real-crime and mystery author Mark Bridgeman with his intriguing Trial by Jury evening (he’ll be back this Spring with a whole new case for us to solve).
We’ve enjoyed forays into the non-fiction worlds of Merryn Glover, with her book of Cairngorm discovery Hidden Fires, Iain Maloney, on his quest in search of The Japan Lights, L.Bruce Keith’s entertaining stories of milestones, drawn from his brilliantly titled book Are We Nearly There Yet?, and nature writer Keith Broomfield, with tales from his Scottish Wildlife Odyssey and Wild Quest Britain.
In 2024, we also branched out of the bookshop to host the 2024 Scots Writer o the Year, Jim Mackintosh, with his new collection, We Are Migrant: a hugely thought provoking and inspiring evening.
Our Book Blether has continued apace, with a couple of theme evenings to round out an eclectic mix of fiction and non-fiction books. We meet at the bookshop on the first Wednesday of each month at 7pm, it’s informal, open to all and the coffee is good (Ralph makes it). You can find a list of the books we’ve read and are planning to read on our Good Reads page.
We once again cloned ourselves in October 2024 to support the marvellous BOOKMARK festival. Unlike in 2023, rain didn’t stop play, and we were treated to a fabulous array of adventurers, illustrators, biographers, novelists and crime writers. I can’t wait to see who will be with us this year on 4-5th October.
We rounded out 2024 with a mini ‘book-flood’, when we were joined by a trio of wonderful musicians, including fiddler Mike Lean and harpist Patsy Seddon. The music and words flowed, as did the sloe and damson gin.
None of this would have been possible without our enthusiastic and loyal customers and bookshop friends. THANK YOU!
Here’s to continuing the fun in 2025!
Kate and Ralph