Juxtabook

York National Book Fair 2024

Not long to wait now! In its 50th year the PBFA book sellers are exhibiting again at York Racecourse  on 13th/14th September.

 

 

One of the largest book fairs in Europe, this two day fair sees over 150 book dealers from the UK and beyond exhibting a huge variety of books, maps, prints and ephema at the Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse. For more details and a complimentary ticket see https://www.pbfa.org/fairs/york-national-book-fair-september-2024 or https://yorkbookfair.com/

 

 

13th September 2024, 12:00 - 19:00

14th September 2024, 10:00 - 17:00

The Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse, York, YO23 1EX

Plenty of parking, free shuttle bus from the train station. Cafe.

 

 

Harrogate Book Fair, Christa Ackroyd and The Brontë Birthplace Campaign

 

The PBFA Harrogate Premier Book Fair Team are thrilled and delighted to confirm that journalist and TV presenter Christa Ackroyd from the newly formed community benefit society, The Bronte Birthplace, has kindly agreed to open the Harrogate Fair, in this the 50th anniversary year of the PBFA.

The birth house of the Brontes is in Thornton, on the outskirts of Bradford so, with the strong local association in terms of being close by and linked to our collective interest in books, the newly created society will also be present as a guest exhibitor throughout the fair to better explain the background intentions that the society is seeking to attain. In effect they will re-open the birth house as an inspirational hub for disadvantaged youngsters.

The birthplace will be open in time for Bradford to celebrate being City of Culture in 2025 and the birthplace is one of the recipients of grants to celebrate the city's past while looking towards the future.

Christa writes, "When I was 10 having been adopted I needed some inspiration as to where I was going in life." Her adoptive father took her to visit the Haworth Parsonage with the message that the Brontes who grew up there and became famous were born under similar humble beginnings on the outskirts of Bradford to Christa, but anything is possible when you work for it.

As a footnote Christa also told our fair manager that Charlotte Bronte had the first recognized female pre-nuptial agreement in Britain whereby she left the royalties from her works in trust for her father, who died 7 years after she did.

The Brontë Birthplace Campaign have raised enough money to have made a successful offer on the house. They are now raising funds to restore and run the property. They need another £355,000 to renovate and open to public for Bradford 2025 City of Culture and are crowdfunding here.

As well as finding our more about the Bronte Birthplace, visitors to the fair will be able to browse the books of over 30 booksellers across the two rooms of the fair. There will be plenty of Bronte books as well books in all subjects, at all prices from modern first editions to antiquarian, fiction to non-fiction, as well prints, maps and ephemera.

Harrogate Book Fair 

15th March 2024, 12:00 - 18:00
16th March 2024, 10:00 - 16:00

VENUE
Derwent & Calder Rooms, Pavilions of Harrogate, Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG2 8NZ. £2 on the door or visit the website for a complementary ticket.

 

 

The books pictured are all from my stock and will be with me at CL Hawley's stand on the 15th and 16th March at Harrogate Book Fair.

 

Happy New Year and Our 50% off Book Sale

Hello all and we wish you a very Happy New Year. Here's to 2024!

Our main news is that our 50% off Books £10 and Under Sale is running for January again -  more details below.

Also, you may also be interested in the PBFA's online bookfairs which have now moved to quarterly. the first of these quartley fairs is today and you can browse the books here and if you're interested you can contact the dealer and buy direct.

Our 50% off Books £10 and Under Sale

To make room for more stock we're having our annual clear-out of cheaper items. Though inexpensive, there are some really interesting volumes in all subject areas. You can browse hundreds of these books on our website and grab yourself a real bargain. (Does not include new books including the British Library Crime Reprints). You can read more here including the T&C. A quick link to all our books £10 and under is here (please note the exclusions).

To receive your 50% discount please use the code 50Jan24 at the checkout. Thank you. Valid on books on our £10 and under shelves only.

This code is valid for the whole of January and may be used more than once. Please feel free to pass the code onto your students, friends and family. A sample of some of the books on sale:

 

The Last of the Templars Harvill Press, 1992 (fiction)

 

An Episode of Sparrows by Rumer Godden - Classic Pan paperback.  Film tie in with colour illustrated cover by Peff (Sam Peffer) showing Flora Robson and other cast members as in the film version Innocent Sinners.

 

Elmet by Fiona Mozley. Novel. Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017. Signed by the author to the title page.

 

Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson

 

Jane Austen in Winchester Pamphlet. 14pp. Includes a 2 page facsimile of a poem by Jane Austen. The silhouette to the front was 'done by herself in 1815'.

 

The sale is on until the end of January.

 

 

Ghosts, Vampires, Witches and All things Gothic for Halloween

A few of our spookier things in stock!

 

 

The Hour of One: Six Gothic Melodramas - in a rather fetching red velvet covered binding. Contains facsimile texts of the scripts of: The Vampire, The Devil's Elixir, The Flying Dutchman, The Castle Spectre, A Tale of Mystery, and Frankenstein. With a substantial introduction by Stephen Wischhusen on London theatres in the early nineteenth century and the production of gothic melodramas. The original contributors are Matthew Lewis, Thomas Holcroft, J. R. Planche, Henry M. Milner, Edward Fitzball.

 

 

This is a charming 1823 edition of the Gothic classic The Old English Baron: A Gothic Story by Clara Reeve.  Measuring just 12mo, 130 by 85mm (5 by 3¼ inches) in a full leather binding in a maroon morocco. Raise bands to spine with gilt titles and gilt decorative device in remaining compartments. Gilt decorations to front and to back boards. All page edges gilt. Period yellow endpapers. Engraving to title page.

 

 

Modern vampires need representing of course, and this is Twilight: Red Edged Special Edition the volume where we first meet Bella and Edward Cullen! From 2007 this is an early special edition. We have a copy of Eclipse from the same red edge series.

 

 

 

Moving onto witches, we can see Pendle Hill as soon as we travel out of Skipton towards the Lakes so here is a very appropriate title on the Lancashire Witches, unusally half-bound in leather by Morell, London. Mist Over Pendle by Robert Neill is the 1951 American edition (3rd impression) of this classic historical novel about the Lancashire Witches has been re-bound into a half calf binding with raised bands to spine, green leather labels and gilt titles. A very unusual copy.

 

 

Another modern publishing phenonemon is of course Harry Potter. Harry Potter, A History of Magic: The Book of the Exhibition was produced to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, this is the official book of the once-in-a-lifetime collaboration between Bloomsbury, J. K. Rowling and the British Library combining weird and wonder items from the British Library collection as well as previously unseen items from J. K. Rowling’s personal collection. Includes essays by Steve Backshall, the Reverend Richard Coles, Owen Davies, Julia Eccleshare, Roger Highfield, Steve Kloves, Lucy Mangan, Anna Pavord and Tim Peake, etc. Illustrations by Olivia Lomenech Gill and Jim Kay who have both illustrated Harry Potter books previously. 

 

 

 

Up nexts are ghosts and things that go bump in the night. London... The Sinister Side covers all these and more in this city guide with a difference.

 

 

 

Mr Corbett's Ghost & Other Stories by Leon Garfield is in a classic Puffin edition. Many of Leon Garfield's books whether explcitly ghostly or not have the swirling-mists-under-the-gaslamps atmosphere about them. You can browse the master of children's Victorian set historical fiction here.

 

 

 

And finally in the fiction highlights the mistress of the Gothic herself, Mrs Radcliffe. This is all the gothic you'll need in a Folio Society box set: The Complete Works of Mrs Ann Radcliffe: The Mysteries of Udolpho, The Italian, A Sicilian Romance, The Romance of the Forest, Gaston De Blondeville, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne .

 

And to finish, some non-fiction:

 

Decadent Daughters and Monstrous Mothers: Angela Carter and European Gothic by Rebecca Munford,

 

In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein by Fiona Sampson and

 

A Dictionary of Superstitions edited by Iona Opie and Moira Tatem.

 

You can browse the keywords

Gothic

Witches

Vampires

Ghosts

 

on our website.

 

All the pictures are of the actual books in stock.

 

Northern Illustrated, Children's & Detective Fiction Book Fair in Harrogate, 11th November

Exciting news for the Northern Illustrated, Children's & Detective Fiction Book Fair in Harrogate on November 11th. Crime writer Martin Edwards will be with us and will be doing a book signing!

 

 

Described by Richard Osman as 'a true master of British crime writing' Martin has recently won the CWA Diamond Dagger, the highest honour in British crime writing as well as two Edgar awards from the Mystery Writers of America. He has been Chair of the Crime Writers' Association and President of the Detection Club. He also captained the series champions in 2022 Christmas University Challenge.

Martin's highly successful books include the Rachel Savernake series, the latest installment of which is Sepulchre Street. He has also written contemporary crime series set in Liverpool and the Lake District. His strong background in crime fiction scholarship which has seen him win awards for The Life of Crime and The Golden Age of Murder led to him becoming the series advisor for the very collectable British Library Crime Classics series. You can read more about Martin Edwards on his website and his blog 

 

 

The fair opens at 10am on 11th November and as well as Martin signing his books there will be 26 exhibiting book dealers with a wide range of books from the readable to the highly collectable. There really will be something for everyone, from classic Penguin green and cream paperbacks, to signed first edition crime; from the nostaglia of the high quality Puffin children's literature series, to beautiful editions of the best known works of the most popular children's authors such as Blyton and Ransome.

Northern Illustrated, Children's & Detective Fiction (Harrogate) Book Fair

11th November 2023, 10:00 - 16:00

Pavilions of Harrogate, Yorkshire Event Centre, Harrogate, North Yorkshire, HG2 8NZ

 

 

40% off Book Sale - today only

For Monday 22nd April only we're having a 40% off sale. Scroll down for your discount code and further details and then browse our site.

 

 

 

The Brothers Powys by Richard Perceval Graves - signed

Oxford University Press, 1983. Hardback. 370pp. Inscribed by the author, “With best wishes, Richard Perceval Graves, March 1983”. First edition. Biography of three of the Powys brothers, John Cowper Powys, Theodore Francis Powys (rural novelist often compared with Mary Webb), and Llewellyn Powys (author of Earth Memories, Dorset Essays etc). A insight into this fascinating literary family. Includes a note on further reading. Indexed.

 

40% off books in stock* - today only

Use the code 40April19 at the checkout for a 40% discount on our book prices on Monday 22nd April only. There is no minimum purchase and no limit to how often you can use the code on the day so browse our site and enjoy!

There are a small number of exceptions - please read the 'small print' below.

Please feel free to pass the discount code onto friends or to your students.

 

 

No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock by Marina Warner - signed

Chatt & Windus, 1998. Hardback. 435pp. First edition. Signed by the author to the title page. Two selections of colour plates. Some integral black and white illustrations.

 

For more book highlights please see our sale newsletter here.

 

The Small Print :

Valid until midnight on Monday 22nd April 2019

The offer does not apply to the small number of new books that we stock including Bay of Ghosts and An Almshouse for Linton.

Postage is extra. Because of the sizeable discount we cannot subsidise postage so large orders from outside the UK might require increased shipping costs. We will contact you to explain if there are any additional costs once your order has gone through, or you can email us before placing an order. You will be able to cancel the order if you're unhappy with the extra shipping.

Where is Arkholme?

For the first time I will exhibiting at Arkholme Book Fair on 23rd June. It is a very pretty spot, easier to get to than one might think, especially if you're anywhere near the M6 in the north of England as it is about 15 minutes from junction 35 of the M6. Or, about an hour from Skipton if you're coming from this part of Yorkshire: A65 to Kirby Lonsdale and turn left on the B6254.

In the light of its relatively little known merits I thought I'd ask Mr J, with his heritage and landscape writer's hat on, to give you a taste...

Book lovers considering visiting Arkholme Book Fair might ask themselves (if they have never been before) just where this little known village is, and what are the nearby highlights. After all, after a few hours perusing hundreds of wonderful books, what better than to explore the locale?

Arkholme is in Lunesdale, the Lune Valley, between the cobbled yards of Kirkby Lonsdale (a few miles upstream) and the historic port of Lancaster (downstream). Arkholme itself is a little gem. Its main street lies away from the busy traffic on the B6254 Carnforth to Kirkby Lonsdale road, and so the village is an oasis of calm and serenity. Barns, farm houses and cottages sit cheek by jowl with Victorian mansions and modern homes in as pleasing a mixture of styles as you could want, and the whole ensemble culminates in Arkholme's neat little parish church with a Norman motte – a large earthwork designed to repel invaders – standing in the church yard. The main street then spills out onto the fields of the Lune flood plain to a spot where, in former years, the river was forded and the road continued on to Melling and beyond. It's a charming place, and no mistake.

 

 

Hornby, a mile or two away, has another ancient earthwork – Castle Stede. This is an example of a Norman motte and bailey castle, with a great mound piled up to guard what once would have been a wooden palisade with a tower to guard the river crossing at Loyn Bridge. Nowadays the site is crowned with a rather incongruous World War II pill-box, but in the Middle Ages it formed part of a system of such forts across Lancashire and beyond. The village of Hornby possesses Hornby Castle which saw action in the English Civil War, but it was extensively remodelled in the Victorian period to give it the romantic aspect it enjoys today.

 

 

Upstream at Kirkby Lonsdale visitors gaze from the parapet of Devil's Bridge to the triangular cut-waters below where the Lune babbles beneath three mighty arches. This is the last gasp of the Westmorland Lune; only a few yards downstream, past the rocks where summer visitors bask, the river enters Lancashire and becomes a broad and majestic presence in the landscape as it meanders through a scene of pastoral beauty, a typically English patchwork of fields with hawthorn hedges separating pastures, lanes and copses.

A mile or two away are the little hamlets of Over Burrow and Nether Burrow. Here, two millennia ago, stood the Roman settlement of Calacum, now no more than tell-tale marks on the ground. For centuries historians and antiquarians had no knowledge of this busy Roman station. Indeed, all that remained was the lore of the local people which insisted that on this spot stood “a city”. No doubt many a sophisticated urban intellectual laughed at the fairy stories of these backward Lancastrian farming folk. Until someone tested the theory with spade and trowel that is!

So Arkholme is set in a fascinating area, full of beauty and history. As you drive to the Book Fair, don't ignore its lovely setting. Lunesdale is a charming spot, well worth a visit. Perhaps make a weekend of it!

 

 

Arkholme Book Fair is on 23rd June, 10am-4pm and you may download a complimentary ticket here. The full address is Arkholme Village Hall, Arkholme, Carnforth, Lancashire LA6 1AT.

Photo credits (copyright for the photos remains with the photographers): the first two, showing Arkholme church and then Hornby Castle, are by Matthew Emmott. Matthew blogs on castles, towers and fortified houses in Westmorland and Cumberland and you can visit here.

The last photograph is by my fellow bookseller and PBFA member Brigid Irwin of The Book House. Brigid organises the Arkholme Book Fair on behalf of us all and you can browse previous years' photos on her website here.

40% off all books in stock - today only

 

Use the code 2017apr40 at the checkout for a 40% discount on our book prices on Monday 17th April only. There is no minimum purchase and no limit to how often you can use the code on the day so browse our site and enjoy!

Please feel free to pass the discount code onto friends or to your students.

 

 

 
Pictured is Man and Literature by Norman Nicholson - a first edition

Book catalogues you might enjoy:

Authors A-Z
Fiction
English local history by county
Children's Literature
Poetry and Criticism
Novels and Criticism
Classics
Language Studies
History
Philosophy
Movements and Themes in Literature
French Literature

 

 

 

 

Pictured is The Golden Fleece by Robert Graves

The small print: valid until midnight on Monday 17th April. Postage is extra. Because of the sizeable discount we cannot subsidise postage so large orders from outside the UK might require increased shipping costs. We will contact you to explain if there are any additional costs once your order has gone through, or you can email us before placing an order. You will be able to cancel the order if you're unhappy with the extra shipping.

Tiding the philosophy shelves

 

I spent the day tiding the Philosophy Shelves; there is a selection above, with lots more on Ethics and other subjects on the website. Tidying a bookcase can be an enjoyable thing but for booksellers it is a frequent necessity. For secondhand booksellers in particular you can suddenly have an influx of new stock in what was previously a category of just a dozen or so items. Space has to be made. Equally you can suddenly sell a lot of books leaving gaps - the gaps are never where you need them!

Both things, buying and selling in quantity are a tremendous pleasure. Buying books? Well unpacking a few hundred books feels like Christmas every time, even though I know I'm only their temporary owner. And selling? It is the Christmas pleasure in reverse - how great to pass books on, however much I'll miss them, to someone who appreciates them.

 

40% off Books - Flash Sale

For Saturday 29th October only we're having a 40% off sale. See below for your discount code and further details and then browse our site.

Use the code 2016oct40 at the checkout for a 40% discount on all our book prices on 29th October only. There is no minimum purchase and no limit to how often you can use the code on the day so browse our site and enjoy!

Pictured is The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World by Hilary Putnam

Please feel free to pass the discount code onto friends or to your students.


Book catalogues you might enjoy:

Authors A-Z
Fiction
English local history by county
Children's Literature
Drama
Poetry and Criticism
Novels and Criticism
Classics
Language Studies
History
Philosophy
Movements and Themes in Literature
French Literature


The small print: valid until midnight on Saturday 29th October. Postage is extra. Because of the sizeable discount we cannot subsidise postage so large orders from outside the UK might require increased shipping costs. We will contact you to explain if there are any additional costs once your order has gone through, or you can email us before placing an order. You will be able to cancel the order if you're unhappy with the extra shipping.

York Book Fair

 

 

York Book Fair is huge! Hundreds of dealers on three floors with thousands and thousands of books for sale. Are you going? Browse some of the books I'm taking here and you can down load complimentary tickets here. Convenient from almost anywhere in the UK there is even a regular free bus service running from near the railway station to get you to beautiful York Race Course where it is staged - Knavesmire Suite, York Racecourse, YO23 1EX

There are both beautiful and collectable books as well as just plain readable books, ranging from a few pounds to thousands of pounds in price. The cheapest book I'm taking is £2 so please don't think it is just for those with deep wallets - there are plenty of good books at good prices.

If there is anything you would like me to bring from our stock please let me know. There will be someone back in the office most of the time who can arrange for books to come in even once the fair has started.

40% off all our books

For Thursday 30th June only we're having a sale offering 40% off all our books. See below for your discount code and further details and then browse our site.

Use the code 40June16 at the checkout for a 40% discount on our book prices on Thursday 30th June only. There is no minimum purchase and no limit to how often you can use the code on the day so browse our site and enjoy!

Please feel free to pass the discount code onto friends or to your students.

 

 
Pictured is The Tusk That Did the Damage by Tania James from our Fiction shelves.

Book catalogues you might enjoy:

Authors A-Z
Fiction
English local history by county
Children's Literature
Poetry and Criticism
Novels and Criticism
Classics
Language Studies
History
Philosophy
Movements and Themes in Literature
French Literature

The small print: valid until midnight on Thursday 30th June. Postage is extra. Because of the sizeable discount we cannot subsidise postage so large orders from outside the UK might require increased shipping costs. We will contact you to explain if there are any additional costs once your order has gone through, or you can email us before placing an order. You will be able to cancel the order if you're unhappy with the extra shipping.

40% off Books - Flash Sale

I didn't intend to hold such a large sale so soon after the last one but having bought rather too many books this week (increasing our stock by 25% in less than seven days!) we need to make some room!

So ...

For Tuesday 30th June only we're having a 40% sale. See below for your discount code and further details and then browse our site.

Use the code june40 at the checkout for a 40% discount on our book prices on Tuesday 30th June only. 

Book catalogues you might enjoy:

Authors A-Z
Fiction
English local history by county
Children's Literature
Poetry and Criticism
Novels and Criticism
Classics
Music
History
Philosophy
Indian Literature
Scottish Literature

Adventures at the York Bookfair

Rob and I have just returned from the PBFA York Book Fair. This January fair is the smaller of the two fairs that the PBFA run in York. This one had a mere 120 or so dealers offering around 400,000 books. We've been to this fair before but only as customers, this time we were exhibiting our own stock at stall number 61.

It was hard work, as we knew it would be, but we benefited from lots of advice before hand from the lovely Heather and Jeff at Peakirk Books as well as from the fair organisers. It was lovely to meet lots of new customers as well as the other dealers. It was also lovely to meet one other book blogger, the writer Martin Edwards from Do You Write Under Your own Name.

Speaking to Martin, it occurred to me that though I often read posts by bloggers about a wonderful bookshop they've been to, or a great library, or even what they've bought from a charity shop, I rarely see posts about book fairs. In fact Martin is one the few people I've seen write about bookfairs (and again today, you can read his review of York). In an age when the economics of selling mean that so many sellers, like myself, can only trade from behind a keyboard, a book fair is great opportunity for buyers to chat to dealers and browse the physical books.

Why do bloggers not go to bookfairs then is the burning question? Have you ever been to one, PBFA or otherwise? Did you enjoy it? Do you know how to find out about book fairs? I'd be interested to know!

On that last question at least I can help:

For PBFA Fairs you can browse the PBFA's fairs calendar. There are fairs coming up at Stratford, Poole, Cambridge, Durham and Edgbaston in the next few weeks and many more throughout the year. They're all over the country including Scotland and Ireland.

For other fairs you can try the monster The Book Fair Calendar from the The Book Guide which lists PBFA fairs along side many other major book fairs plus many smaller independent fairs. There are fairs listed for Lewes, Sherborne, Winchester, Preston, Kinver, Tenterden and Long Melford for this month alone.

As to our own recent experience we nearly sold out of Tony Harrison and Leonard Woolf, and sold lots of Bronte and Ted Hughes items as you'd imagine in Yorkshire, plus lots of William Morris, and best of all we had a great time. We've just got to unpack the book boxes now!

 

40% off books until midnight

 

Flash Sale: a quick reminder that you've just a few hours to take advantage of our offering 40% off book orders totalling more than £10 and UK-based customers can get free postage too! Scroll down for details.

Your discount codes

Spend £10 or more on books before midnight Friday 28th November and receive 40% off!

UK-based customers use the code nov40uk and get free 2nd class P+P too.Europe, and the rest of the world, please use code nov40.

 

Browse our site

 

We're able to offer UK-based customers free standard postage on purchases of more than £10 - this matches Amazon's current offer. Use the code freepost14 at the checkout. Valid until 24th December.

Pictured is Thomas Mann Diaries 1918-1939. You can browse more Thomas Mann volumes here and German literature here. We also have quite a lot of German history in stock here.

Books with free UK postage until Christmas

Reminder: Free UK Postage Until Christmas

We're able to offer UK-based customers free standard postage on purchases of more than £10 - this matches Amazon's current offer.

Browse our site and then use the code freepost14 at the checkout. Valid until 24th December. You may use the code as often as you like.

Our books are arranged on virtual shelves so here are a few categories to get you started:

1900-1960 Novelists

Art and Photography

Blyton, Enid

Dickens, Monica

Decadence, 1890s, Fin de Siècle

Ecocriticism, Ecology, Green Politics

Eliot, T. S.

Fiction

Hardy, Thomas

Harrison, Tony

Hughes, Ted 

Indian Literature

Nineteenth Century Novelists

School Stories

War Poetry, Fiction, Criticism

Women in the Past

Introducing our new online bookshop with lots of book competitions and offers

With enormous thanks to William, Clive and especially the brilliant Andrew at Crystal Thought we're delighted to say that our new website is up and running. We're really pleased with it and we hope you will be. Thanks too to Kathryn Widdowson whose wonderful photographs of our books which appear at on the homepage slider, make (we think!) the site look so stylish.

 

 

 

Read on for lots of news and offers including two competitions, a 30% off code, and a small free gift for orders during our official opening week...

There are:

• 100s of books with new lower prices
• Over 2000 books with re-written descriptions, new keywords, or new photos
• Nearly 1000 books newly added online

The big change is with keywords. Keywords now appear at the side of a book and are clickable meaning you can do cross-curricular searches very easily for concepts such as identity, democracy, stream of consciousness, mysticism, sexuality, Romanticism, taboo, etc.

The checkout should be much easier, and you can now checkout as a guest without having to mess about with passwords.

For bargain hunters we still have a £1 and under shelf, which has been joined by a £5 and under shelf.

We hope you'll like the new site so whilst you're looking about we're offering everyone a 30% code (scroll for details) for the next 7 days, and exclusively to newsletter and Juxtabook blog readers we're offering a mini pack of our CL Hawley Collectable Books Notecard Set with every order.

It is a new site and though it has been tested there may be glitches, so if you have any problems please let me know. Thank you for your patience.

 

30% off all orders until midnight Monday 29th September

Thank you so much for your patience and support during this transitional year for us. As a small thank you we're offering 30% off all orders via our website or direct by phone or email.

To order use the code website30 at the checkout. You can logout as a guest or, create a new account. Your old password won't work as this is a complete new system. Sorry.

The discount is off book prices only, postage is extra. It can be used as many times as you like until Monday 29th at midnight. Browse our categories for ideas on how to spend it!

 

Competitions

We've two competitions for you including one for children.

1. Win a £30 gift voucher to spend in our online shop

Answer the following three questions by email and if you're correct your name goes into our prize draw for the £30 voucher. Closing date - Monday 29th September

• As whom was the writer Mary Ann Evans better known?
• Which literary protagonist must deal with Grendel's mother?
• Which was published first: Parade's End (first pub. of Some Do Not ...), To the Lighthouse or Ulysses?

2. Children age 8-13 win a set of 6 Roald Dahl books for your school and a £10 gift voucher for yourself to spend in our online shop*.

 

Answer the following three questions by email with a parent or guardian and if you're correct your name goes into the draw for the set of group readers for your school and the £10 voucher. You must be aged 8-13 and have your parent's permission to enter. Doing research is allowed! Closing date - Monday 29th September.

 

• What is JK Rowling's first name?
• Where did Roald Dahl do most of his writing famously?
• Which was published first: The Secret Garden, The Wind in the Willows, or The Railway Children

*A parent or guardian will need to spend the voucher on your behalf. You should get the fun of choosing though!

The free gift is exclusively for our newsletter subscribers - but it is not too late to subscribe for book news and offers throughout the year to ensure you receive a pack with your order too.

Collectable Books Notecards - a gift from us

For every order placed by a customer registered to receive our email newsletter we will send a small free gift: a mini pack of three cards and envelopes from our collectable books notecard range, which is exclusive to us.

The cards are useful for all correspondence and can be given as a gift.

We have new cards added to the range so even if you've bought one of our packs before you may get something new to you.

Just place your order and we'll do the rest.

 

A Small Rant about Small Labels, and How to Remove Them

I've been selling books for over 14 years and in that time I've catalogued many thousands of books but never once have I had the urge to stick a label on one. If professional booksellers can manage their pricing and stock taking without sticking these annoying little things everywhere why can't charity shops?

The BBC had a piece on the website this week about M&S switching to lazering labels onto fruit to cut their carbon footprint. Apparently 7 tonnes of waste alone is generated from M&S labelling just their oranges. How much waste must these stickers on books produce? It is not just the enviromental consequences of the label but the manufacture of the paper, label and ink (the better class of charity shop have labels printed with their logo) and the shipping of the same for manufacture and then the shipping of the finished product. And then the removal...

Labels on oranges don't hurt them, they peel off easily and you can throw them away with the skin. Labels on books damage them. Lots of charity shops show no discrimination on whether they put them on modern paperbacks or antiquarian volumes. This copy of Dickens' Dream Children which has a lovely paper paste-down had a blue price label plastered down hard onto it when it found its way to me. It took hours of soaking solvent through the label to ease the thing off without damaging the fragile front of the book. And this adds to the enviromental cost.

 

Today I have been removing labels from paperbacks. Some have more than one label as they had been bought and re-donated to several charity shops. There are costs to the removal: financial, environmental and slightly to my health (book glue solvent if not pleasant to use).

Worst of all is when you ease the label finally clear and discover the charity shop worker had priced the book AFTER putting the label on, imprinting the price and date forever on the book below.

So, you may say, it is a free country, don't go and buy books from charity shops. Well most of the charity shop label removal I do is on books purchased as part of private collections from post-graduate students or academics. They've bought from charity shops and I get the label problem passed on to me. Or they've tried to remove them, failed and left either a sticky mess or the surface torn off the book.

Charity shops do a good job of recycling books. I donate books to charity shops too. But this label habit they're wedded to really should be coming to an end. If you're buying in a charity shop why not politely point out the wider costs of these labels? A pencil, wielded lightly on a prelim, is all most professional sellers use. There is no need for anything else.

How to remove labels

Please read to the end before starting, and remember it doesn't always work. Do not attempt it on a book that is important to you. I accept no responsibility for you trying this!

I. For modern paperbacks or for laminated dust jackets you need to warm the glue. A hairdryer used sensibly is your best friend here. Hold the hot air over the label for a couple of minutes (not too close, and don't dangle your hair in the vent as you lean over!) and then try a corner. If it comes away fairly easily keep going. If not reheat and try again. Removes 90% of labels without damaging the surface but might leave some sticky residue.

2. Sticky residue: use a *sticky stuff remover according to the safety instructions. This stuff is a bit nasty and I would avoid if you have lung or skin problems. I always do this by an open window. Stuborn labels can be soaked with this from a cotton bud if the hair dryer hasn't worked.

Don't heat a book that has glued-on decoration, like a paste-down - you don't want that loosened. The soaking method can work here if you're sure the decoration is colour fast, and if you're careful.

Do make sure any surface you use solvent on is colourfast. Laminated surafces should be fine. Be extra careful with matt surfaces or older books. Some solvents can leave an oily mark on matt surfaces too.

Good luck!

 *Lakeland, Viking, Betterware and lots of other places sell different brands of stick stuff remover. Try your chosen one on something unimportant first.

40% off books and more news

We've lots of news about CL Hawley Books in the coming weeks. Behind the scenes we're establishing a new database which should make helping you find books on the most obscure topics so much easier. From your point of view we're also launching a new website in a few weeks time which should be easier to use with a quicker checkout. Whilst we're busy with this we're combining our book of the month offer and our newsletter together in a Bank Holiday sale weekend.

We hope to have news of the new website in time for June's newsletter.

If you haven't signed up for our newsletter yet you're missing 40% off all our books this bank holiday weekend. It is not too late to sign up and you'll be able to use the code until midnight on Monday.

In other news we've a review of amazing and original Borrible trilogy on Gifted by Juxtabook and colleague Nigel Smith has written an interesting piece on publishing an ebook on the Ibooknet blog.

Book news and book newsletters and supporting independent booksellers

Keeping up with news from small, independent family booksellers (new or used books) is a good way to support those businesses.

Newsletters remind you that we exist when you've forgotten which bookseller was so helpful and gave you really good advice though you didn't buy anything, or packed that book for your mum's birthday so well, or made the extra trip to the post when you ordered a book at 4.45pm that you needed the next day for a major deadline, or waded through knee-deep snow to get a inexpensive book that meant a lot to your wife to the post office in time for your wedding anniversary even though there was less than £1 profit in the sale! (I've done all those things!)

Many booksellers have email newsletters - do ask your favourite sellers and sign up!

As lots of you know I have a book newsletter that goes out by email roughly once a month. This is news of new stock that I've bought as well as some wider booknews that may be of interest to my core newsletter readers (who are mainly academics in the arts and humanities). There are also a number of offers the last being a massive 50% off for a day that was exclusive to my newsletters subscribers. I also include offers on newly published books as well as on my secondhand stock.

In addition to my main newsletter there is also a Book of the Month email most months with 20% off an interesting volume.

If you haven't signed up yet to receive News from CL Hawley Books but would like to you can do so here. Although I mainly sell academic books I do stock fiction and literary biographies etc., that many readers of this blog would enjoy.

As the main newsletter focuses mainly on my academic stock I have decided to do occasional newsletters on children's books, twentieth century poetry, and local history. If you've bought a children's book, or a book on Yorkshire or Lancashire from me in the last 12 months then you'll be on the list to receive a copy of the relevant email. If you would like to receive one of these specialist emails then you'll need to sign up for the main newsletter here. If you're already on my mailing list but haven't bought a relevant book in the last 12 months then please drop me an email and let me know if you want to receive the children's, Lancashire, Yorkshire or twentieth century poetry so I can add that to your email account with me.

It goes without saying that your email address is between you and me only and I never, ever share details.

Thank you for signing up!