The Portobello Bookshop

Upcoming events at The Portobello Bookshop

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Around £3.00

Polly Barton - What Am I, A Deer

We're delighted that Polly Barton will be joining us in the bookshop to celebrate the Edinburgh launch of her novel, What Am I, A Deer?. With astonishing existential acuity, Polly Barton’s formidable debut novel renders the paradoxes of modern life in all its complexity, in deliriously self-conscious prose that is at once propulsive, titillating and bitingly funny. Barton will be in conversation with fellow author Anahit Behrooz.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About What Am I, A Deer?:What does it mean to lose yourself – and is that something you should be aiming for? A young woman with little interest in games takes up a job in Frankfurt at a famous gaming company, naively set on reinvention. On her morning commute, in the familiar clutches of tedium and self-loathing, she encounters a nice-eyed stranger who returns her forgotten umbrella and finds herself catapulted into a dizzying, year-long whirlwind of obsession – not just with this endlessly attractive spectre, but also with the feverish karaoke trips from which she draws the ultimate solace. Echoing with the sounds of Whitney Houston and The Cure, reaching for the sublime in dark, sweaty boxes, What Am I, A Deer? is an exhilarating exploration of authenticity, fantasy, romance and intoxication.

Tue 14 Apr18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Around £3.00

John Lanchester - Look What You Made Me Do

It's our pleasure to be hosting an event with John Lanchester! He'll be here in the bookshop to discuss his latest novel, Look What You Made Me Do. John will be in conversation with Kim Sherwood.Please note that Look What You Made Me Do will be published on 12th March, therefore books for the Book & Ticket options will be posted out to you or made available to collect from the bookshop between then and the event on Wednesday 15th April. You can choose whether you would prefer collection or postage in the checkout options.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.In-person vouchers can be redeemed on the night of the event against a single copy of Look What You Made Me Do – we will have a list of attendees with vouchers to be redeemed. Please note that only one voucher can be redeemed per book. Livestream vouchers are valid until the day after the event and can be redeemed on our website against a single copy of Look What You Made Me Do.About Look What You Made Me Do:What if the year’s most talked about TV show was all about your marriage?Kate, thirty years into her marriage, has a seemingly idyllic metropolitan, North London life.

Wed 15 Apr18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Around £3.00

Lisa Tuttle & Brigid Lowe - My Death & The Bloody Branch

For this special double-feature event, we're delighted that authors Lisa Tuttle and Brigid Lowe are coming to the bookshop to discuss their respective novels, My Death and The Bloody Branch. They will be in conversation with Rebecca Wojturska, Managing Director of independent publisher Haunt Publishing. Expect the discussion to get spooky, Celtic and rather uncanny...This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About My Death:A writer decides to write her next book about a female author and artist unjustly forgotten by history. But what starts as an exciting research project rapidly unravels towards breakdown and horror. The subject is to be Helen Ralston, an early twentieth-century author who has been systematically written out of history. The narrator sets about investigating her story as an artist, writer and muse to a much more famous man. Amazingly Ralston turns out to be still alive, and although elderly and frail a series of interviews begin.But a tale about the historic erasure of female voices starts to break down into something even more sinister, bizarre and all-consuming as the narrator uncovers unnerving parallels between Ralston's story and her own...About The Bloody Branch:Darkness is falling across the land.

Thu 16 Apr18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £5.00

An Evening with Evelyn Clarke

We are absolutely thrilled to be welcoming Evelyn Clarke – AKA V.E. Schwab and Cat Clarke – to Portobello Town Hall to celebrate the publication of The Ending Writes Itself with an evening of conversation! Schwab and Clarke will be in conversation with legendary Scottish crime writer Val McDermid.Schwab and Clarke have become great friends to us here in the bookshop over the years and we are so excited to be hosting their Edinburgh launch here in Portobello. Don't miss out on your chance to hear all about the buzzy locked room mystery crime thriller that everyone will be talking about this year.Doors due to note that The Ending Writes Itself will be published on 9th April, therefore books for the Book & Ticket options will be posted out to you or made available to collect from the bookshop between then and the event on Sunday 19th April. You can choose whether you would prefer collection or postage in the checkout options.This event will take place at Portobello Town Hall, 147-149 Portobello High Street, Edinburgh. There won't be a public book signing on the night.About The Ending Writes Itself:It’s the perfect plot. All it needs is a killer ending.Six authors.One private island.Seventy-two hours to write the ending.World-famous author Arthur Fletch is dead. His final novel, the most anticipated book in history, remains unfinished.

Sun 19 Apr18:30The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £3.00

Doug Johnstone - The Ossians

That's right, the reissues of Doug Johnstone's first two novels means that we're hosting two events with the Portobello-based crime writer early on in 2026!Johnstone will return to the bookshop to launch a new edition of his second novel, The Ossians. It sees a last-chance winter road trip for a Scottish band spiral into wild chaos with seagull massacres, bomb tests, and darkly funny rock’n’roll madness on the edge. Johnstone will be in conversation with the Quine of Crime herself, Val McDermid.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.Please note that The Ossians is published on 9th April. If you have signed up for a Book & In-person or a Book & Livestream option and would like to receive your copy ahead of the event on 21st April, please get in touch via our contact form and we'll be happy to help.About The Ossians:Connor is twenty-four, brilliant, broken, and out of control. He’s the swaggering frontman of The Ossians, a Scottish indie band on the brink of signing a major record deal.Desperate to make their mark, they head off on a two-week winter tour across the cities and hinterlands of Scotland – a last-ditch attempt to find fame, purpose, and themselves.But the tour soon spirals into a surreal, chaotic odyssey.

Tue 21 Apr18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £3.00

David Farrier - Nature's Genius

We're so pleased to welcome David Farrier to the bookshop on Earth Day to celebrate the paperback publication of Nature's Genius: Evolution's Lessons for a Changing Planet, in which Farrier takes us on a profound journey into our ever-changing natural world. Farrier will be in conversation with author and environmental journalist Louise Gray.EARTHDAY.ORG’s founders created and organized the very first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. Since then, Earth Day Network has been mobilising over 1 billion people annually on Earth Day, and every other day, to protect the planet.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About Nature's Genius:For nearly four billion years, life on Earth has found new ways to adapt, reproduce and thrive, taking on new forms to meet the environment of the moment. Human impact on the planet, and the potentially devastating threat of climate change, have stressed that adaptability as never before. Yet life still finds a way. Animals, plants and insects rise to the challenge and are still adapting, reproducing and thriving, even in our rapidly transforming environment. In their example we may just find ways that we too can adapt, ways to stop the destruction we’re causing to the planet.In Nature’s Genius David Farrier takes us on a profound journey into this ever-changing natural world. What we discover could transform us.

Wed 22 Apr18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £7.99

Story Time with Morag Hood

We're excited that Edinburgh-based author and illustrator Morag Hood will be joining us for a children's story time – she'll be reading her new picture book Seahorse is Furious (and there is nothing you can do about it)!It's a funny, affectionate and reassuring take on the bad day blues from the bestselling creator of I Am Bat, Brenda is a Sheep and Colin and Lee, Carrot and Pea. Perfect for encouraging conversations about feelings while enjoying the underwater world Hood has created with her bold and graphic illustrations.You can sign up to attend and collect a copy of Seahorse is Furious when you attend the event, and there's a free option available below as well. Morag will be signing and dedicating copies of the book on the day.Please note that this Story Time event is suitable for children aged five and under. Children must be accompanied by a parent/guardian throughout the event.About Seahorse is Furious:Seahorse is having a bad day, in a terrible week, in an awful ocean. He woke up wrong and stubbed his tail and everything is wet!So don't tell him funny stories or give him a hug, and DEFINITELY don't give him his favourite snacks on his special plate…Because Seahorse is furious and there is NOTHING you can do about it. Or is there...?

Sat 25 Apr09:15The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £3.00

In conversation with Dominic Gregory & David Gange

In this special double-feature event we are thrilled to welcome both Dominic Gregory and David Gange for a discussion of their respective forthcoming books The Lifeboat at the End of the World and Afloat.Join us for an insightful conversation on managing small boats in some of the most difficult conditions, the community that emerges, and the worldviews of the people who rely on small boats.Dominic Gregory is an RNLI volunteer on the Dungeness lifeboat, his book The Lifeboat at the End of the World is the first to document the realities of volunteering for the RNLI. Dungeness has been home to a lifeboat service for over 200 years, and now finds itself as the centre of one of the most pressing political stories in modern Britain. His candid, powerful writing takes you into a unique perspective on the issue of small boat migration and explores why the RNLI is so important.David Gange explores ways of life that have been built on small rowed or peddled boats, particularly in the North Atlantic, in his latest book Afloat. Small boats have been essential to many cultures’ ways of living in the land- and seascapes that surround them. Wherever we have statistics, small rowed and paddled boats outnumber decked ships by at least fifty to one, yet nearly all writing is dedicated to the large boats, until this book.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.

Tue 28 Apr18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £1.67

Fiction Book Club – May 2026

About our Fiction Book Club:Join us at our Book Club, led by one of our friendly booksellers! We'll be hosting a monthly discussion in the bookshop on a specially chosen title, complete with a complimentary beverage for all attendees.Our Fiction Book Club aims to highlight some of the most intriguing and compelling reads on our general fiction shelves, whether we're (re)discovering classics or diving into fresh contemporary novels. With such a broad range of subjects and perspectives, we hope there'll be something for everyone to enjoy... perhaps a new favourite book awaits.Please note that book clubs will usually take place on the first Tuesday of the month.About The Memory Police:Hat, ribbon, bird, rose.To the people on the island, a disappeared thing no longer has any meaning. It can be burned in the garden, thrown in the river or handed over to the Memory Police. Soon enough, the island forgets it ever existed.When a young novelist discovers that her editor is in danger of being taken away by the Memory Police, she desperately wants to save him. For some reason, he doesn't forget, and it's becoming increasingly difficult for him to hide his memories. Who knows what will vanish next?

Tue 5 May18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £15.00

An Evening with Patrick Radden Keefe

We are delighted to welcome Patrick Radden Keefe to Edinburgh for a discussion of his new book, London Falling: A Mysterious Death in a Gilded City and a Family’s Search for Truth, at Church Hill Theatre. From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning & Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing – a stunning story of corruption and tragedy in one of the world's great cities: London. Radden Keefe will be in conversation with author and broadcaster Zing Tsjeng.After the event, there will be a signing where Patrick will be happy to sign copies of London Falling. Due to time considerations so everyone has a chance to have their book signed, he will not be able to sign other titles.Please note that London Falling will be published on 7th April, therefore books for the Book & Ticket options will be posted out to you or made available to collect from the bookshop between then and the event on Wednesday 6th May. You can choose whether you would prefer collection or postage in the checkout options.Doors due to event will take place at Church Hill Theatre, Morningside Road, Edinburgh EH10 4DR.About London Falling:In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, mysteriously fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames.

Wed 6 May18:30The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £3.00

Hannah Lavery - Everything Everyday: A Year of Empty Promises

It's a pleasure to be welcoming Hannah Lavery back to the bookshop for the publication day launch of her new poetry collection, Everything Everyday: A Year of Empty Promises. Lavery will be in conversation with fellow poet and former Scottish Makar Jackie Kay. Don't miss out on what will be a beautiful celebration of Lavery's poetry!This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About Everything Everyday:Everything Everyday is a poetic journal of the year that charts winter through to autumn in a richly textured sequence of diary-poems, lyric fragments and a crown of sonnets.Each month’s entry weaves together mythic figures – Tahlequah the mourning orca, Brigid’s mountain dance, Sister Icarus’s fragile flight and Beira’s shore vigils – with the unfolding chronicle of contemporary grief and protest. Readers move from January’s frozen harbour and political flashpoints into spring’s ritual planting of ‘lemon-drop’ seeds, summer’s drum-driven rallies and smoky vigils, and autumn’s oil-slick swans and ash-borne snowdrops. The collection’s formal innovations mirror its thematic urgency: bracketed interjections pulse like heartbeats, dated stanzas resonate like journal entries, and the season-by-season structure creates a mythic ledger of solidarity and hope.

Thu 7 May18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Around £3.00

Polly Atkin - Swimming the Seasons

It's always a pleasure when Polly Atkin visits and we're looking forward to her return for the launch of Swimming the Seasons: A Freshwater Almanac right here by the Porty seaside! This is a book about resilience, mindfulness and the transformative embrace of wild water.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About Swimming the Seasons:To swim is an act of attention: to the self, and to everything beyond it.Follow poet and nature writer Polly Atkin as she swims through the turning year in the rivers, lakes and tarns of the English Lake District, in this lyrical ode to the uplifting power of water. This is a love story between a person and a place. It is a story of acceptance, persistence and finding joy in the everyday, as eight years of outdoor swimming through every season deepen Atkin’s knowledge and understanding of both the landscape she calls home and her disabled body.Each month in the water reveals how a life lived with pain can be as rich, rewarding and full of delight as any other. Atkin swims for the sheer pleasure of it, showing how that pleasure may be found in every season, even by those who find the cold neither thrilling nor soothing. She reminds us of the quiet power of noticing the lives alongside ours — birds, plants and people.

Tue 12 May18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Around £3.00

Will Maclean - Solace House

We are so excited for Will Maclean to join us for the Edinburgh launch of his latest novel, Solace House. He will be joined by Kirsty Logan for what is sure to be an outstanding discussion of this spectacular, mysterious story.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About Solace House:Summer, 1993, and Alex Lane finds himself at the end of the University summer term, broke and without any concrete plans. So, when he’s offered the chance to join a group of students tasked with clearing out Solace House, a large Victorian residence left to the University by a reclusive hoarder called Flayne, he other students are a mixed bunch, but Alex quickly falls into a close friendship with the mercurial, red-headed Ella.At first the house seems to be an ordinary, if grandiose, property. But as the team begin sorting through piles of junk, they stumble upon Flayne’s journals in which he details his obsession with his missing mother, his discovery of a strange place called Bewise, and – most mysteriously – his belief in another realm lying parallel to ours, along with coded instructions on how it might be reached.As the students continue to sort through the detritus, one of Alex’s companions becomes increasingly obsessed with the hidden secrets of Solace House, Flayne’s missing mother, and the possibility that, if only they can decipher Flayne’s...

Thu 14 May18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £12.50

An Evening with Douglas Stuart

We're absolutely thrilled to announce that this coming May, we'll be hosting the launch of Douglas Stuart's new novel, John of John. We've been looking forward to this novel so much, as Douglas is a shop favourite. Our event is a full five days before the book is published, so grab your ticket now for early access to John of John!One of the most enjoyable events we've ever hosted was for his previous novel, Young Mungo, and we've been eagerly anticipating his next book. He'll be in conversation with Nicola Sturgeon, and we can't think of a better way to enjoy a summer Saturday evening than by listening to them discuss this wonderful new novel.Our team already loves John of John, the story of a young man's return home to the Isle of Harris after studying in Glasgow, exploring the complex emotions and dynamics that such a return can entail. This is a truly special novel, and it's a privilege to host the launch with one of our favourite writers. Join us on May 16th for what promises to be a really special evening.About John of John:Everything he owned fit into a backpack and one doubled bin bag. It had taken him less than ten minutes to pack up four years of his life. It had taken a little longer to fold himself away, to hide all the bits of himself that had slowly been unfurling since he had arrived on the mainland.

Sat 16 May18:30The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £20.83

Nature Writing Workshop with Rebecca Ferrier and Elspeth Wilson

Join debut writers Rebecca Ferrier, author of The Salt Bind, and Elspeth Wilson, author of These Mortal Bodies, for this relaxed, inclusive workshop on nature writing in fiction. In this two-hour workshop, participants will explore different exercises to consider nature as character and its role in scene setting, plot and world-building. We recommend this workshop for participants with a project in development, or who are keen to build towards a larger fiction project in the future. There will be an opportunity for questions towards the workshop's end, with the chance to ask about securing a literary agent or general industry advice. Space is limited to ensure everyone can fully participate. We look forward to welcoming you in-person to the bookshop for this chance to learn, develop, and discuss writing with two brilliant authors!

Mon 18 May17:30The Portobello Bookshop

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Around £3.00

Lauren Elkin - Vocal Break

We are so excited that Lauren Elkin is coming to Portobello for an event to celebrate the publication of her new book, Vocal Break: On Women, Music & Power. It's a dazzlingly original reassessment of the power and plurality of women's singing voices by the critically acclaimed author of Art Monsters and Scaffolding. Elkin will be in conversation with art writer, editor and curator Rachel Ashenden.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About Vocal Break:For millennia, women’s raised voices have been heard as unruly, uncivilized, dangerous. Women singing were cast as sirens: mythical creatures who lured sailors to their death.In Vocal Break, Lauren Elkin seamlessly blends memoir, feminist manifesto and cultural history to explore a plurality of female singing voices – and how women have used them to defy convention, genre, capitalism, racism and sexism.Drawing on her own experiences training as a young soprano in the 1990s, Elkin reflects on the way power and identity shape our voices, focusing on the women who most excited her when she was learning to sing. A vocal break refers to the place where the voice shifts from lower to higher registers and this is a book about what kind of meanings, and sounds, can be made there.

Tue 19 May18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Around £3.00

Ruth Ozeki - The Typing Lady and Other Fictions

We are so pleased to be welcoming Ruth Ozeki to the bookshop to discuss her brilliant new book, The Typing Lady and Other Fictions. The first story collection from the Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction is cause for celebration and we couldn't be happier that she will be here and in conversation with Sam Baker, host of The Shift podcast.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About The Typing Lady and Other Fictions:The first story collection from the Booker Prize finalist and winner of the Women’s Prize for Fiction about the lives we almost lived, the people we can’t quite forget and the stories that shape us long after the last page is turned.Exploring childhood ambition, youthful desire, midlife reinvention, and the unsparing clarity of old age, Ozeki brings us 12 richly imagined stories of characters standing at life’s thresholds. A college student falls for her professor and learns to transmute longing into language. A disquieted husband watches as the ghost of his wife’s ambition roams the woods outside their home. A long-deceased Beat poet hijacks the mind of a young publishing assistant and rails against the state of modern literature.

Tue 26 May18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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Community

Around £3.00

Jem Calder - I Want You to Be Happy

We're excited to welcome Jem Calder for an evening event to discuss his debut novel, I Want You to Be Happy. Calder's debut short story collection, Reward System, was published to much fanfare and praised by the likes of Sally Rooney in 2022.Funny, excruciating, and true, I Want You to Be Happy is a sharp-eyed tale of two people searching for meaning and connection in modern times, missing the mark maybe, but trying.This event will take place in the bookshop with an in-person audience, as well as a livestream for attendees watching from home. There will be a signing after the event.About I Want You to Be Happy:Chuck and Joey meet in a bar. He's in his mid-thirties; she's twelve years younger. He's long abandoned his ambition of becoming a novelist and now works as a copyeditor at a big ad agency. "Lead copywriter," he corrects himself.Joey lives paycheck to paycheck on her barista wages and privately dreams of making it as a poet. They go back to Chuck's luxury flat - a world away from Joey's cramped house-share, the crumbs in her bed.Soon, Joey's imagining a future between them, and Chuck's moving on from a major change in his recent past. Amazing, how meeting a new person can make you feel so new.

Thu 28 May18:00The Portobello Bookshop

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