The Second Shelf is the bookshop for rare books modern first editions, mansucripts and rediscovered books by women. In honour of International Women's Day, join them for sweets, treats, and in-store signings with Deepa Anappara, me, & Susanna Stapleton. All book purchases in the shop will be 10% off.
12-2pm: Deepa Anappara signing her debut novel Djinn Patrol
We children are not just stories. We live. Come and see.
Nine-year-old Jai watches too many reality cop shows, thinks he’s smarter than his friend Pari (even though she always gets top marks) and considers himself to be a better boss than Faiz (even though Faiz is the one with a job).
Deepa Anappara grew up in Kerala, southern India, and worked as a journalist in cities including Mumbai and Delhi.
2-3pm: Emma Darwin signing This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin
Everybody knows about Charles Darwin, and many know about others in his family, from Erasmus Darwin and Tom Wedgwood, the first photographer, to composer Ralph Vaughan Williams and poet and radical John Cornford, the first Briton to be killed in the Spanish Civil War. But when Charles and Emma Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter, another Emma Darwin, tried to root her new novel in that history, the conflict between her complex heritage, and her own identity as a writer, became a battle that nearly killed her.
This is Not a Book About Charles Darwin takes the reader on a writer’s journey through the Darwin-Wedgwood-Galton clan, as seen through the lens of Emma’s struggle. Along the way, her wry, witty and honest memoir becomes a brave book about failure – and, above all, a book about writing and how stories are told. Richly illustrated with over 40 black and white images.
3-5pm Susannah Stapleton signing The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective
Maud West ran her detective agency in London for more than thirty years, having started sleuthing on behalf of society’s finest in 1905. Interweaving tales from Maud West’s own ‘casebook’ with social history and extensive original research, Stapleton investigates the stories Maud West told about herself in a quest to uncover the truth.
