NEWSLETTERS OF 2008

Cheers! Hostelries in the Upper Valley (and two games for Christmas)

Just in the nick of time for Christmas we have stock of Issy Shannon's colourful booklet Cheers! A History of Hostelries in the Upper Calder Valley, £6.95. The Book Case will be open till 4pm today, and we re-open Saturday 27th December.
 
And two online games to keep you entertained over Christmas - you can find out which fictional character you are most like on the Oxford World's Classics site at http://www.morethanwordsuk.com/flash/

or rather less sedately, you can chuck virtual shoes at George W Bush at http://www.sockandawe.com/ - it seems to be a popular pastime worldwide ...
 
Happy Christmas from your local bookshop!

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DECEMBER 2008
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
 
Christmas is hurtling towards us, and where better to get all your presents than your friendly local bookshop? We have a wide range of books for all the family - help yourself to our free Christmas catalogue - and still have a good selection of quality calendars and diaries, ranging from Monet & Japanese art via Eckhart Tolle and the Dalai Lama to views of Halifax and Hebden Bridge - and of course the Wemoon Diary. We still have some Moleskine diaries but they're going fast and can't be reordered.
 
Customers who remember our intellectual stocking fillers from last year will be pleased to know we've got them again! Cuddly Darwin, Einstein, Freud, Che Guevara, Frida Kahlo and Marx dolls, magnetic finger puppets of Mozart, Woolf, Ganesh, Nietzche, Buddha and many more and mugs with vanishing coastlines and Cheshire cats, and Shakespearean love quotations, insults and "upmarket filth". All from the Unemployed Philosophers' Club. We were hoping to bring you Barack Obama too, but he won't reach us till well into the New Year. We do have his books which are selling well.
 
Peter's put up a new display rack for talking books and DVDs between the adult and children's sections - but Shakespeare, Ted Hughes and classics remain where they were adjacent to drama and poetry. New in is the latest compilation from the British Library of historic readings of British writers talking about their lives and their art (3 CDs, £19.95) - from Arthur Conan Doyle to Joe Orton. And we also have the DVD of Mamma Mia!
 
This month people have reported enjoying P D James's "The Lighthouse", Candice Bushnell's "Lipstick Jungle", Arthur Ransome's "Racundra's First Cruise", Philippa Gregory's "Earthly Joys" and Manda Scott's Boudica Trilogy. No one reports not enjoying anything, which is nice.
 
This month's Literary Quiz is seasonally on Snow and could sadly be our last. See below.

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THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and a CD.

Adult fiction: The Oxford Book of Ghost Stories, ed. Michael Cox & R. A. Gilbert, £9.99. Forty classic ghost stories from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to keep your spine properly tingled through the long winter evenings.

Adult non-fiction: A Book of Silence - Sara Maitland (£15.99 at The Book Case). A memoir of Sara Maitland's experiences of periods of silence in the Sinai desert, the Australian bush, and a remote cottage on the Isle of Skye. She has built a hermitage on an isolated moor in Galloway, and the book culminates powerfully with her experiences of silence in this new home.

Children: Tales of Beedle the Bard -  J. K. Rowling (£6.99). The first new book from J. K. Rowling since the final Harry Potter book. "The Tales of Beedle the Bard" played a crucial role in assisting Harry, aided by his friends Ron and Hermione, to finally defeat Lord Voldemort.
 
CD: Amahl and the Night Visitors: Naxos,  £5.89. Menotti’s "Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera written for television, enjoys more than five hundred performances annually around the world and is immensely popular with amateur groups. Sung in English, brimming with tuneful melodies for both soloists and chorus, the opera is a humorous and poignant Christmas classic beloved by people of all ages. A crippled boy, Amahl, and his mother are visited by the three Kings who seek the newborn Jesus. Deciding to give his crutch to the Christ child, he is miraculously healed, and joyfully accompanies the Kings to give thanks.
 

NEWS

Local-ish Interest

The History of Ingleton - John Bentley (£21.00 hardback, £15 paperback)

The story of a unique Yorkshire village. Detailed illustrated history of Ingleton from the Brigantes on, with in-depth chapters on aspects such as law and order, schools, inns, agriculture, mills, collieries, transport, river names - and stories, personalities and old customs.

Lancashire's Forgotten Heroes - Stephen Barker and Christopher Boardman (£18.99)

8th (Service) Battalion, East Lancashire Rgiment in the Great War. The soldiers came from Manchester, Liverpool, Burnley, Darwen, Preston, Nelson, Bolton, Colne, Accrington and Oldham - their everyday lives are described and the actions in which they fought examined. The book takes us from the initial euphoria of recruitment, through initation into trench warfare to the battles of the Somme, Arras and Passchendaele.

Local Authors

Men at Odds - Guy Meyler (£16.99)

From a Hebden Bridge author, eighteen engaging short stories examining universal themes of the human condition and the inevitability of human frailty - many of which have less of a twist in the tale than a barb!

 

Swanny: Confessions of a Lower League Legend - Peter Swan and Andrew Collomosse (£17.99)

Hebden Bridge sports journalist Andrew Collomosse has helped the former Burnley, Hull, Leeds and Port Vale defender tell his story.

 

Mourning Ring: Bronte related poems by Ian M Emberson, £3.00
From the Todmorden-based poet, a book of poems relating to the Bronte sisters, their lives and the landscapes which influenced them.

 

We were very sorry to hear of the death of Bill Marsden, whose entertaining "Shadows" booklets published with photographer Peter Coles have given enjoyment to many.


The Daily Mail Book Club

December: Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (£7.99). Steely retelling of one of the more scandalous chapters in the life of the great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

Costa Book Awards Shorlist

Announced 19th November as follows; the category winners will be announced on 6th January, and the Costa Book of the Year on 27th January.

First Novel Award
The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams
The Outcast by Sadie Jones
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith
Inside the Whale by Jennie Rooney

Children's Book Award
Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray
The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd
Just Henry by Michelle Magorian
Broken Soup by Jenny Valentine

Biography Award
Somewhere Towards the End by Diana Athill
Bloomsbury Ballerina by Judith Mackrell
If You Don't Know Me By Now: A Memoir of Love, Secrets and Lies in Wolverhampton by Sathnam Sanghera
Chagall by Jackie Wullschlager

Novel Award
The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry
The Other Hand by Chris Cleave
A Partisan's Daughter by Louis de Bernieres
Trauma by Patrick McGrath

Poetry Award
For All We Know by Ciaran Carson
The Broken Word by Adam Foulds
Sunday at the Skin Launderette by Kathryn Simmonds
Salvation Jane by Greta Stoddart

Books to Talk About

This initiative is tied in with World Book Day, and last year's winner was Jonathan Trigell's "Boy A". We intend to stock many of the books under discussion - find their site at http://www.spread-the-word.org.uk/pages/books-2009/book_results.asp

There are currently 50 books on the list - by public vote the list will be reduced to a shortlist of ten in early 2009.

Ladybird Books

Douglas Keen, the editorial director of Ladybird Books, has died aged 95. He went to work for Wills & Hepworth, Ladybirds' original publisher, in 1936, and, himself a scholarship boy from a one-parent working-class family, enthusiastically began to produce books to encourage children to enjoy learning, moving on to the Key Words Reading Scheme in the 1960s.His work encouraged millions of children to learn to read.


LITERARY QUIZ: this month's quiz from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker is on Snow. This the final one of the wonderfully varied and entertaining quizzes provided by the Parkers so enjoy it while you can! And our thanks to them for all the enjoyment and head-scratching. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm 
 
The answers to last month's quiz on Tea are:1. The Householder - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (1960); 2. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll (1865); 3. ‘Portrait of a Lady’, from Prufrock and Other Observations - T.S. Eliot (1917); 4. The Portrait of a Lady - Henry James (1881); 5. Flashman in the Great Game - George MacDonald Fraser (1975)
 

NEW TITLES 

As usual in December new publications are rather thin on the ground and we've eked them out with titles we missed earlier (having finally had time to read the catalogues). In hardback fiction, there's a new Elizabeth Jane Howard, and in paperback we're trying Margit Sandemo's novels set in 16th-century Norway, two novels from Arabia Books, one Iraqi and one set in the Sahara, and the Definitive Steampunk Anthology. There are reissues of Jerome K Jerome, Virginia Woolf, some more ghost stories on CD for Christmas, and Rose Tremain's earlier novels. Click here for the full list.
 
We're wondering whether to try stocking more of the 20th-century reprints now being published - for example from Persephone and Firecrest. The books are fine and we'd like to support the publishers; it's just that to a bookseller's eye, the covers are a bit understated. Any reactions? In the meantime, we're trying a few of the New York Review of Books Classics such as Richard Hughes's "High Wind in Jamaica", Christopher Priest's "Inverted World" and Geoffrey Household's "Rogue Male".
 
And we have in stock some of Henning Mankell's acclaimed Kurt Wallender books to accompany the Kenneth Branagh TV series.

December's Non-fiction includes:
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
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What you've been buying: NOVEMBER 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case
 
Diaries and calendars were strong in November’s sales at The Book Case, with four books of local interest continuing popular. A children’s book, a sheep identification guide and one of Barack Obama's books made up the remainder.
 
1. Hebden Bridge Calendar 2009 - Geoff Boswell, £4.50. Geoff’s colourful selection of local views has been selling briskly as always.

2. We’Moon Diary 2009; Gaia Rhythms for Womyn, £15.99. This colourful astrological moon diary, datebook and guide to natural rhythms is always popular. This year’s theme is "At the Crossroads".

3. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. This illustrated history of the town and area by a well-known local author published by our own Royd Press remains popular.

4. Know Your Sheep - Jack Byard, £4.99. Presents a description of the appearance, history and uses of each sheep. There are Tractors and Cattle in the same series.

5. The Ted Hughes Trail in Crimsworth Dean - the Elmet Trust, Donald Crossley, Nick Wilding & Lesley Alston, £2.50. This colour illustrated booklet with sketchmap takes you on a circular walk from Midgehole visiting places significant in some of Ted Hughes' poems, many of them from Elmet.

6. John Muir Trust Wild Nature Diary 2009, £13.50. The John Muir Trust is the leading guardian of wild land in the UK, and this stunning photographic diary shows some of the scenes and wildlife we must preserve.

7. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. Life and work in the textile areas of West Yorkshire as reported by a pioneering journalist in 1849. A Royd Press publication.

8. Oi! Get Off Our Train - John Burningham, £5.99. A tale for younger children of a little boy speeding through the night on his dream-train to far off lands where endangered animals beg for a lift.

9. Before the Mast in the Grain Races of the 1930s - Geoffrey Robertshaw, ed. Elvin Carter, £12.99. More than 70 years ago Mytholmroyd-born Geoffrey Robertshaw was an able seaman on the tall ships during the 12,000 mile voyage between Australia and Falmouth. This is his personal log with a stunning collection of photos of daily life on a square rigger.

10. Dreams from my Father: a story of race and inheritance - Barack Obama, £8.99. The sudden news of the death of Obama’s black African father who walked out on the family when his son was only two inspired an emotional odyssey to learn the truth of his father's life and reconcile his divided inheritance. "The Audacity of Hope" is also selling well.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
 
"There are few more powerful mirrors of the human brain's astonishing ability to rearrange itself to learn a new intellectual function than the act of reading." - Maryanne Wolf in "Proust and the Squid" (our November non-fiction Book of the Month)

28 November: Local Authors on the Radio!

Local author and journalist Geoff Tansey has won the Derek Cooper Award as the best food campaigner and educator as part of this year's Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards. There's a special edition of the Food Programme today at 12 noon - apologies for the short notice! Congratulations to Geoff and we have his book "The Future Control of Food" in stock.

And local novelist Stephen Clayton will be appearing on Matt White's BBC Radio Manchester show this evening at 10pm, talking about his book The Art of Being Dead, also in stock at The Book Case. Steve Clayton's band Tractor will be involved in next year's commemoration of the Peterloo Massacre, says Hebden Bridge publisher Kevn Duffy of Bluemoose Books.

NOVEMBER 2008
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
 
The Ted Hughes Festival has been a great success! It got lots of people interested, brought some very high-calibre authors and poets to the area (in addition to the ones already here) and showed off the Ted Hughes Theatre at Calder High School. Between The Book Case, the Erringden Room in Mytholmroyd and bookstalls at the events, lots of books were sold - which shows in our bestseller list below - and it was lovely to have a chance to see and hear the likes of Andrew Motion, Anne Stevenson and Frieda Hughes. We do have a few signed copies of books by Andrew Motion, Anne Stevenson and Lemn Sissay.
 
Frieda Hughes judged and awarded the first Elmet Poetry Prize, and also awarded the first Yorkshire Poetry Prize, which was judged by Anne Stevenson - this was won by Pauline Stephenson for her atmospheric poem about memory, "Glen Hume Mine 1948", which can be read here - and there's also a copy in the shop by the Poetry section. Pauline has worked at The Book Case in the past and we send our congratulations.
 
Speaking of signed copies, we have in stock ONE signed copy of Isabel Allende's "The Sum of All Our Days".
New into stock are some new colourful local photographic cards - including Stoodley Pike, Heptonstall and the canal - and Geoff Boswell's Christmas card packs are now out, showing a snowy scene with Stoodley Pike above Great House Farm, Todmorden. From next week, we will be putting our Fitzwilliam, Pomegranate and Sierra Club Christmas cards out on display, by popular demand!
 
We've also starting stocking the local geological map, showing what lies beneath the surface, and for Christmas, we are selling framed 3-D maps of Northern England with the Pennines and other high ground raised above the surface.
 
If you'd like advice or ideas about starting or running a Reading Group, then click here - the site gives all sorts of help and advice on lots of different aspects.
 
People have been rather unforthcoming about what they're reading, but we do have Enjoyment reported on Goethe's "Wilhelm Meister", Joanne Harris's "Lollipop Shoes", Geoffrey Robertshaw's "Before the Mast" and Germaine Greer's "Shakespeare's Wife" - and Rejection for Faulks's "Birdsong".
 
This month's Literary Quiz is on Tea. See below.

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THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and a CD.

Adult fiction: Difficulties of a Bridegroom - Ted Hughes. Nine powerful short stories, including "The Deadfall" (Crimsworth Dean), "Sunday" (rat-killing at Stubbing Wharf), plus "Snow" and "The Harvesting" which he reads on the recent CD. (£10).

Adult non-fiction: Proust and the Squid: the Story and Science of the Reading Brain - Maryanne Wolf.  Human beings invented reading only a few thousand years ago. And with this invention, we changed the very organisation of our brain, which in turn expanded the ways we were able to think, which altered the intellectual evolution of our species. (£8.99).

Children: Double Cross - Malorie Blackman: The fourth in the Noughts and Crosses series that tackles racial prejudice and gang conflict. Despite his best intentions, Tobey finds himself drawn into the shady world of gangs in an effort to make some money. Ages: 12 + yrs (£12.99)
 
CD: A Jazz and Blues Christmas: Putumayo delivers the perfect package of soulful jazz and blues to liven up the holiday season - with free 2009 Putumayo Calendar (£10.99)
 

NEWS

Local Interest

Solid & Drift Geology Map (77) - Huddersfield (£12.00)

We're now stocking these maps from the British Geological Survey, showing the distribution of various types of rock and deposits. This one goes from Hebden Bridge to Dewsbury and Bradford to Emley. And not quite so local, but we also now have framed 3D relief maps of Northern England (£13.99).

Small Town Saturday Night: Pop Music Memories of the Halifax in the Sixties 1- Trevor Simpson (£15.00)

Cliff Richard, Dusty Springfield, Rolf Harris and a host of other stars - they all appeared in Halifax and this well-illustrated and entertaining book by local author Trevor Simpson gives details.

Small Town Saturday Night: More Pop Music Memories of the Halifax in the Sixties 2- Trevor Simpson (£16.95)

Another look at the dance halls, groups and music festivals from 1954-1970. Includes Donovan, Lulu, Screaming Lord Sutch - and the Mytholmroyd group, Jay West and the Sinners! Published 20 November.

Helen of Four Gates - Ethel Carnie Holdsworth (£20.95)

A facsimile reprint of the 1917 novel about hard times in the Pennines, the 1920 silent film of which was shot around Hebden Bridge.

The Fastest Man: Steeple Jack's Adventures in Lancashire - Chris Aspin (£4.95)

During the 1850s, James Duncan Wright, a Scotsman who had settled in Ramsbottom, astonished vast crowds in Lancashire by hurtling down on ropes from factory chimneys and tall masts at more than 100 miles an hour. Illustrated, with visits to Preston, Burnley, Padiham, Failsworth, Bury and more, entertainingly reported from contemporary newspaper accounts.

Local Authors
Infamous Lancashire Women - Issy Shannon (£12.99)

The well-known local journalist follows up her entertaining illustrated book about wicked women of Yorkshire with a companion volume on Lancashire!. In stock at last!

The Atlas of the Real World: Mapping the Way We Live - Daniel Dorling; Mark Newman; Anna Barford (£29.95)

366 cartograms cover a vast array of subjects, providing a definitive reference on how regions and countries compare in resources, production, consumption, and more. Sophisticated software combined with comprehensive analysis of every aspect of life represents the world as it really is. Anna Barford lives in Hebden Bridge.

A Twist of Malice: Uncomfortable Poems by Older Women - ed. Joy Howard (£8.00)

A collection of work by 36 contemporary poets exploring the darker side of the female imagination. Here are poems that disturb and disconcert but also gleam with humour and delight in subversion. Grey Hen, the publishers, are West Yorkshire-based, and several poems by local authors are included.

Congratulations to local author and journalist Geoff Tansey - he has been shortlisted for the Derek Cooper Award for Campaigning and Investigative Food Writing. His works include The Future Control of Food (in stock) and The Food System (with Tony Worsley).

The Daily Mail Book Club

From October the Daily Mail Book Club will be merged with a new strand within the Richard & Judy show to promote new debut authors.

October's choice was Mudbound by Hillary Jordan (£12.99). It is 1946, and city-bred Laura McAllan is trying to raise her children on her husband's Mississippi Delta farm, a place she finds foreign and frightening. In the midst of the family's struggles, two young men return from the war to work the land.

This month's choice is The Marriage Bureau For Rich People by Farahad Zama (£7.99). Mr Ali decides to open a marriage bureau that will cater for a wide range of Indian clients from all walks of life. The marriage bureau flourishes as it sorts out the future for many happy clients, although meanwhile things are not running so smoothly for everyone in the office. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.
 
December: Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

Booker Prize

The winner was White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (£12.99) - an Indian boy's journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success. Now back in stock.


LITERARY QUIZ: this month's quiz from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker is on Tea. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm
 
The answers to last month's quiz on Sleep are:1. Philippa Pearce: Tom's Midnight Garden (1958); 2. William Shakespeare: Macbeth Act 2 Sc 2; 3. George Orwell, A Clergyman's Daughter (1935); 4. William Wordsworth: "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"; 5. Elizabeth Gaskell: Mary Barton (1848).

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in! Otherwise next month's may be our last ...
NEW TITLES 

New in hardback in November is fiction from Alexander McCall-Smith and Sabiha Al Khemir and the original version of Frankenstein as written by 18-year-old  Mary Shelley before Percy got at it. It sounds much more modern and colloquial, it says. The new paperback fiction is mainly whodunnit, with books from C J Sansom, Sue Grafton, Clare Francis and Natasha Cooper. "Bomber Boys" author Patrick Bishop has a new novel out. Reissues include Wilkie Collins, Jerome K Jerome and Alice Walker, and there are yet more chilling ghost stories on Naxos CD. Click here for the full list.

Non-fiction includes:
For a fuller listing, click here:http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm
E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
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What you've been buying:OCTOBER 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case
October’s sales at The Book Case were dominated by the Ted Hughes Festival, which accounted for six of the Top Ten. But the overall bestseller was Tony Earnshaw’s big colourful Yorkshire film book, followed by the new town centre Trail; and a Hebden Bridge history and the 11+ also made another appearance.

1. Made in Yorkshire - Tony Earnshaw & Jim Moran, £25.00. A glorious celebration of all the feature films shot in the county up to the present day, including in-depth accounts of more than 30 movies. Lots and lots of original photos. The author gave an entertaining talk at Hebden Bridge Picture House and we have signed copies and a special price of £20 while stocks last!

2. Hebden Bridge Town Centre Trail, £2.00. Near the top again, this colourful new guide to a 45-minute walk around the town, with points of interest and photographs of the same scenes in times gone. You can download a commentary from the HBLHS website, and we have a display of splendid images at The Book Case.

3. Elmet - Ted Hughes and Fay Godwin, £15.00. This classic collaboration between the poet and the photographer to capture the fading historical character of our area in words and pictures emerged as the best seller of the Ted Hughes Festival.

4. Listener - Lemn Sissay, £7.99. "Love poems, inner-city odes and journeys through history, mystery and culture" from the poet and performer, who led a Poetry Performance Workshop for teenagers during the Festival, as well as reading from his own work.

5. A Laureate’s Landscape - John Billingsley, £4.50. "Walks around Ted Hughes’s Mytholmroyd" - an informative illustrated booklet that takes us around the area which inspired some of his most memorable work. The relevant poems are referred to in the text.

6. Stonepicker - Frieda Hughes, £7.95. Frieda Hughes talked to a packed audience at the Ted Hughes Theatre, and we rapidly sold out of all of her books - "Waxworks" and "Wooroloo" also made it into the top ten. Frieda Hughes is a poet, author and artist, and the daughter of Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath.

7. The Ted Hughes Trail in Crimsworth Dean - the Elmet Trust, Donald Crossley, Nick Wilding & Lesley Alston, £2.50. This colour illustrated booklet with sketchmap takes you on a circular walk from Midgehole visiting places significant in some of Ted Hughes' poems, many of them from Elmet.

8. Selected Poems - Andrew Motion, £12.99. The Poet Laureate opened the Festival and gave an absorbing and stimulating talk to a crowded audience about poetry - Ted Hughes’s and his own, and read from his forthcoming book of poetry, "The Cinder Path".

9. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. This illustrated history of the town and area by a well-known local author published by our own Royd Press remains popular.

10. Secondary Selection Portfolio: Verbal Reasoning Practice Papers (Standard Version): Pack 1, £6.50. The two series that help our youth practise for the 11+ exam continue to sell well.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history." - James Buchan, reviewing three books on money and the market in the Guardian Weekly, 24th October 2008.

OCTOBER 2008

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

Tony Earnshaw talked to a crowded Picture House audience about his big colourful book Made in Yorkshire on 30th September, and he and co-author Jim Moran, Yorkshire Post staff photographer, signed copies for buyers. The book, about film-making in Yorkshire since Victorian times, is beautifully illustrated with rare photographs, some supplied by the Halifax Courier and Hebden Bridge Times, and ranges from "A Girl, a Boy and a Bike" to "Brassed Off", with details of local incidents, filming and stars' comments. The book has been chosen as our Non-Fiction Book of the Month and we have some signed copies at a special price of £20! Think Christmas.
 
October sees the Ted Hughes Festival, 22-28 October (see below), National Poetry Day on October 9th, and the launch of Stephen May's first novel, TAG - see below.
 
Locally-based poet and Blackpool's Poet in Residence John Siddique has one of his poems, "Simple Economics", selected as an e-card on the National Poetry Day website - click here. And courtesy of John, we have sticks of Blackpool (Poetry) Rock(s) at The Book Case, with a nice verse of John's on the side, to give away to lucky purchasers of poetry books from 9th October.
 
Stephen May, director of the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre, will be launching his new novel, TAG, on Saturday 11th October, 2.00-5.00 pm, at the Ted Hughes Centre, Lumb Bank, Heptonstall. There will be a complimentary drink & the chance to buy this superb book. You can also hear readings of TAG at Ilkley festival on October 4th and Manchester Literary Festival on October 19th - and of course you can buy it at The Book Case where we have it on display! See below for details.
 
A reminder of our extensive and varied selection of calendars and diaries - and a warning that at least one of the Moleskine diaries has sold out and is not now available.
 
We're now stocking greetings cards with some colourful and characteristic local views - the photographer is Todmorden-based hypnotherapist and CAB/Age Concern volunteer Chris Stocks who spent decades in India as a director of Action Aid.
 
The Halifax Evening Courier is having another of its successful literary lunches on 22nd October - the authors this time will be Carole Matthews, Andrew Martin ("Blackpool Highflyer") and Todmorden-based Melinda Hammond. Watch the Courier for details!
 
Our Customer Comments board for September shows people enjoying "The Outcast" (but the one by Sadie Jones, Michelle Paver or Rosemary Sutcliff?), Patrick Gale, Benjamin Constant's "Adolphe" (1816; what classy customers we have!), "A Room with a View" (Forster), "My Cousin Rachel" (du Maurier), Melville's "Moby Dick" (sort of; bit upsetting for whale-lovers) and Wilkie Collins's "Armadale". Not being enjoyed were "The End of Mr Y" by Scarlett Thomas and "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" by Paul Torday.
 
This month's Literary Quiz is on Sleep. See below.

If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book.

Adult fiction: Smallcreep's Day - Peter Currell Brown (£7.99). Hurrah! Finally back in print, this 1965 brilliant surreal satire of automation and alienation as Smallcreep decides to investigate the factory in which he works.  The author wrote the book when working in a Gloucestershire factor, and its success enabled him to concentrate on his passion for craft enterprises. "He has always lived a green lifestyle, long before it became fashionable, and must have one of the lightest carbon footprints of all" says his entry on Wikipedia. Genesis bassist Mike Rutherford issued an album inspired by the book in 1980.

Adult non-fiction: Made in Yorkshire - Tony Earnshaw & Jim Moran (£20.00 at The Book Case). A glorious celebration of all the feature films shot in the county from the inception of film to the present day, including in-depth accounts of more than 30 movies. Lots and lots of original photos.

Children: Inkdeath - Cornelia Funke (£12.99). The eagerly awaited final book in the Inkheart trilogy from an author who has created 'a parallel world to rival Tolkien's' (The Times). With Dustfinger dead, and the evil Adderhead now in control, the story in which they are all caught has taken an unhappy turn. Even Elinor, alone in the real world, believes her family to be lost between the covers of a book. Ages: 12+ yrs
 
CD: Under Milk Wood and other plays - Dylan Thomas, read by Richard Burton and cast (£10.99). From Naxos, Dylan Thomas's unforgettable masterpiece. This is the classic and definitive 1954 recording.


NEWS

Local Interest
The Adventures of Tom Leigh - Phyllis Bentley (£5.95)
Young Tom, newly arrived in the Calder Valley from Suffolk in 1722, first loses his father; then he himself is threatened when as a weaver's apprentice, he uncovers a crime. The third of the popular Halifax author's historical novels for young people that we are publishing and the furthest back in time. This one involves tenterhooks so if you're a bit hazy about them, here's where to find out. The three books together give a good idea of the development of the local woollen industry over the centuries. We are doing a special offer of all three for £15.00.

Halifax and Calder Valley Memories (£12.99)

From True North in Halifax, photographs and descriptions of scenes in Halifax, Elland, Brighouse, Hebden Bridge and Todmorden from Edwardian times on, covering events, street scenes, the war years, royal visits, the shops, leisure and transport.

The Ted Hughes Trail in Crimsworth Dean - the Elmet Trust, Donald Crossley, Nick Wilding & Lesley Alston (£2.50)
This colour illustrated booklet with sketchmap takes you on a circular walk from Midgehole visiting places significant in some of Ted Hughes' poems, many of them from Elmet.
 
Portrait of the Pennine Hills - John Morrison (£14.99)
From the ex-local author and photographer, 144 pages of atmospheric colour photos. including some very nice and new local ones. Now finally in stock.

Local Authors

TAG - Stephen May (£8.99)
From the director of the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre at Lumb Bank in Heptonstall, a darkly humorous debut novel involving a gifted but unpredictable teenage girl and a teacher who's a recovering alcoholic who meet at a residential course for talented youth in Wales. See above for launch.

Before the Mast: In the Grain Races of the 1930s - Geoffrey Sykes Robertshaw and Elvin Carter (£12.99)

More than 70 years ago Mytholmroyd-born Geoffrey Robertshaw was an able seaman on the tall ships during the 12,000 mile voyage between Australia and Falmouth. During the four month voyages he took photographs and kept a personal log and these have now been edited into a fascinating book by relative Elvin Carter, with a stunning collection of Mr Robertshaw's photos of daily life on a square rigger complete with storms!

Radiants - Glyn Hughes (£2.00)
Little booklet with quiet and perceptive poems mostly about aspects of nature.

Necropath - Eric Brown (£7.99)

Science fiction meets crime noir, as Jeff Vaughan, jaded telepath, employed by the spaceport authorities on Bengal Station, discovers a sinister cult that worships a mysterious alien god. We follow Vaughan as he attempts to solve the murders and save himself from the psychopath out to kill him. From a local author who is also a Guardian columnist.

Priestley's Wars - Neil Hanson (£16.99 at The Book Case)
Written with the cooperation of Priestley's sons, this book opens with Priestley's account of his enthusiastic enlistment in 1914 and continues with his letters from the Somme, which mark the beginning of his transformation into a campaigner for peace and disarmament; there are copies of his "Postscript" radio broadcasts from WWII, and the book ends under "the shadow of the Bomb" - Priestley was a co-founder of CND.

And an odd bit of info - eminent local historian Juliet Barker is credited with helping Val McDermid with her thriller involving a possible link between Wordsworth and Fletcher Christian of the Bounty, The Grave Tattoo. In stock at The Book Case, £6.99.

TED HUGHES FESTIVAL 2008

This prestigious event celebrating the area's best-known author begins on 22nd October with a presentation and lecture by Poet Laureate Andrew Motion, and continues with

Click here for details. The ticket hotline is 07592 577482.
 
In addition, the eminent Hughes scholar Keith Sagar will be talking to Hebden Bridge Local History Society about "Ted Hughes and the Calder Valley - Remains of Elmet" on Wed. 8th October at Hebden Bridge Methodist Hall, Market Street at 7.30pm


The Daily Mail Book Club

They don't seem to have made a choice for October yet.

Booker Prize Short List

The shortlist was announced on Tuesday 9th September as follows. The winner will be announced on Tuesday 14th October. Most titles can be ordered in overnight.

Clothes On Their Backs - Linda Grant (£11.99) - the daughter of immigrants comes to understand how the clothes we wear define us      
Fraction Of The Whole - Steve Toltz (£17.99) - comic adventure spanning Australia, Paris and Thailand
Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher  (£17.99) -   epic chronicle of the last twenty years of British life 
Sea Of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh (£18.99) - first of a trilogy set around a ship transporting Indian labourers at the time of the Anglo-Chinese Opium Wars
Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry  (£12.99) - a near-centenarian patient at Roscommon Regional Mental Hospital looks back over her life
White Tiger - Aravind Adiga (£12.99) - an Indian boy's journey from the darkness of village life to the light of entrepreneurial success


LITERARY QUIZ: this month's quiz from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker is on Sleep. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm 
 
The answers to last month's quiz on Drinks are: 1. Charlotte Bronte - Shirley (1849); 2. Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland (1865); 3. William Shakespeare - The Winter's Tale Act 2 Sc 1; 4. Ernest Hemingway - Fiesta (1927); 5. John Keats - 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1820)

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in!
 

NEW TITLES 

The book trade is getting geared up for Christmas. New in hardback in October is fiction from John Le Carre, Susan Hill and John Updike. New into paperback will be Susan Hill, Geraldine Brooks, Sergei Lukyanenko, Alice Sebold, Allan Massie, John Francome, David Baldacci, Ken Follett and Stella Rimington. There's a galaxy of ghost stories amongst Reissues, from the likes of Dickens, Gaskell, Lovecraft and especially M R James, and there will also be Pushkin, Tressell, Marghanita Laski, Monica Dickens and Angela Carter (Perrault). Click here for the full list.

Non-fiction is even more Christmassy in mood (sorry about the unfinished sentence last month). Some of these categories are a bit amorphous:
 
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: SEPTEMBER 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case
 
September’s sales at The Book Case showed our usual prevalence of titles with local interest, but a seasonal rise in 11+ practice books also featured, and unusually, two hardback titles for younger readers made the Top Ten.

1. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99
This illustrated history of the town and area by a well-known local author published by our own Royd Press was back at the top in September.

2. 11+ Mathematics Pack 1 - Peter Firth, £4.99. Yes, it’s that time of year again! This is our bestselling one in the Alpha Series, and the Secondary Selection Series is also going well.

3. Hebden Bridge Town Centre Trail, £2.00. This colourful new guide to a 45-minute walk around the town, with points of interest and photographs of the same scenes in times gone by continued to sell well. Published by Hebden Bridge Local History Society and Hebden Bridge Walkers' Action. You can download a commentary from the HBLHS website, and we have a display of splendid images onscreen at The Book Case.

4. Growing Up in Sowerby ... and more - Jean Illingworth, £9.99. Jean Illingworth’s lovely self-published history of Sowerby has moved back up the charts. Lots of pictures and memories.

5. Narrowboat Dreams - Steve Haywood, £7.99. A "cantankerous old git" who travels by traditional narrowboat from Banbury to "the trendy affluence of Hebden Bridge". Still selling well.

6. Brisingr - Christopher Paolini, £14.99 at The Book Case. Third in the Inheritance cycle for younger readers and selling spectacularly well for a big hardback. Eragon is bound by promises he may not be able to keep.

7. The Art of Being Dead - Stephen Clayton, £7.99. From a Hebden Bridge author and local publishers Blue Moose, a visceral and edgy novel set in a bleak Northern English town in the late 1960s.

8. Oathbreaker by Michelle Paver, £9.99. Another hardback book for younger readers selling well - No 5 in the Chronicles of Ancient Darkness. Torak finally learns why he is the Spirit Walker and discovers the true cost of revenge.

9. Magic Moving Images - Colin Ord, £3.99. Draw the acetate film supplied across the pages and dolphins leap, horses gallop and birds fly. Good stocking filler.

10. Yorkshire Water Way 2 - Mark Reid, £3.99. From the southern edge of the Yorkshire Dales, this work, divided into four day stages, takes you on a journey through the valleys and across the Moorlands of the South Pennines to Langsett in the Peak district.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk
 
How happy I am in a quiet nook
All by myself with a well-loved book!
- Enid Blyton
 

SEPTEMBER 2008

30 September: A reminder about the exciting event at Hebden Bridge Picture House tonight, starting 7.30pm (doors open 7.00pm). Tony Earnshaw will be talking about his superb new book Made in Yorkshire - a glorious celebration of all the feature films shot in the county - and signing copies for customers before the showing of the 1949 local film classic A Boy, a Girl and a Bike. See you there!

18 September: Just in, the long-awaited updated version of the Hebden Bridge Town Centre Trail.  With lots of colour, details of points of interest and photographs of the same scenes in times gone by, the booklet is a guide to a 45-minute walk around the town, price £2.00. The trail is accessible by wheelchair. From Hebden Bridge Local History Society and Hebden Bridge Walkers' Action.

4 September:

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

Something to look forward to as dismal summer shades into unpromising autumn: the week after Nick Wilding's presentation of "Hebden Royd at the Movies" on Wednesday 24th September at Hebden Bridge Picture House, Tony Earnshaw will be talking about his superb new book Made in Yorkshire, also at the Picture House, 7 for 7.30pm, Tuesday 30th September. He'll be signing the book and the 1949 local film classic A Boy, a Girl and a Bike will then be shown. The Book Case will be there with a bookstall.
 
Our usual splendid collection of diaries and calendars is now in - on and under the centre table, and also on a spinner at the bottom of the stairs. Choose from Geoff Boswell's Hebden Bridge calendar, We’Moon, Greenpeace, Moleskine, Desastre, Amber Lotus, Brush Dance, Pomegranate and many more. New to us is Moonshare's Earth Pathways, a colour-illustrated diary with moon phases, "inspiring our connection to the land". ..
 
Also new to us are Zazouk greetings cards with Mel Walker's moody pictures of decaying huts and ships - already attracting attention.
 
We've restocked on Tarquin's colourful and ingenious books which make maths fun - a new item sure to be popular at Christmas is Magic Moving Images by Colin Ord - draw the acetate film supplied across the pages and dolphins leap, horses gallop and birds fly. Good stocking filler, £3.99.
 
Brochures with details of The Ted Hughes Festival, 22-28 October, are now available at The Book Case. This will be an important event.
 
During August customers recorded enjoying Henning Mankell, Tanizaki’s "In Praise of Shadows" (thanks to the person who recommended his "Some Prefer Nettles" which has taken off quite nicely), Garth Nix, Stephen Pinker’s "Stuff of Thought", Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Quartet, Scarlett Thomas’s "End of Mr Y" and J S Foer’s "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close". There were complaints about Louise Erdrich’s "Birchbark House", Ursula Le Guin’s "Left Hand of Darkness" and two about Marina Lewycka’s "Two Caravans" (but her "Tractors in Ukrainian" was enjoyed).
 
This month's Literary Quiz is on Drinks. We probably all need one. See below.

If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book.

Adult fiction: Ice Land by Betsey Tobin (12.99). Well-reviewed evocation of an ancient volcanic land - Iceland in 1000 AD where society is on the brink of change.
 
Adult non-fiction: In Fact compiled by Tom Nuttall (£8.99). "You are One-Third Daffodil and other facts to turn your world upside down." Astounding facts from Prospect magazine.

Children: Oath Breaker by Michelle Paver (£9.99). The fifth adventure in Torak's quest to vanquish the terrifying Soul-Eaters. Torak becomes the hunter and swears to avenge the killing of one of his closest friends. To fulfil his oath, he must brave the hidden valleys of the Deep Forest. Here he finally learns why he is the Spirit Walker and discovers the true cost of revenge
 
CD: Gerard Manley Hopkins (£8.99). From Naxos, and read by Jeremy Northam - includes "The Windhover", "The Caged Skylark", "Carrion Comfort", "Spring and Fall" and "Inversnaid".

Price Promotions: Our excellent range of quality bargain books continues to occupy one side of our centre table; and they can also be found in boxes underneath it and on the shelves by the counter. We have a few copies of Kate Fox's very entertaining Watching the English for £3.99 and a facsimile hardback of The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook also for £3.99.


NEWS

Local Interest
 
"Discover Hebden Bridge" - Town Centre Trail (£2)
From Hebden Bridge Local History Society and Hebden Bridge Walkers' Action, a colourful new guide to a 45-minute walk around the town, giving details of points of interest and photographs of the same scenes in times gone by. The trail is accessible by wheelchair.
 
John Ramsbottom - A Victorian Engineering Giant by Robin Pennie (£9.95)
This well-illustrated book about Todmorden-born John Ramsbottom is published by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Society and is by a Todmorden author.
 
Infamous Lancashire Women - Issy Shannon (£12.99)
The well-known local journalist follows up her entertaining illustrated book about wicked women of Yorkshire with a companion volume on Lancashire!

Lancashire's Sacred Past - Linda Sever (£14.99)
From Prehistory to the Viking Period - monuments, buildings, copses, stone circles and early churches. We're waiting to see which geographical areas are covered.

Fanny Eliza Johnson: A Thoroughly Modern Victorian Headmistress, Bolton High School for Girls 1888-1893 - Veronica Millington (£6.99)

A story of the founding of Bolton High School for Girls and one of its early Headmistresses at a time of great social change. It includes many quotations from Miss Johnson's logbook detailing complaints and visits from parents. To be launched later this month. Published by our own Royd House.

Local Authors

Waiting for the Other Shoe - Maggie Handsley (£7.99)
The story of a family turned upside-down by the adoption of a child with Reactive Attachment Disorder, a first novel from a Huddersfield-born author now based in Halifax. Her knowledge of damaged children came from witnessing the struggles of a friend who adopted one, and from her years in teaching. We hope to be having a Hebden Bridge-based reading of this novel.

The Art of Being Dead - Stephen Clayton (£7.99)
From Hebden Bridge publishers Blue Moose, a visceral and edgy novel set in a bleak Northern English town in the late 1960s - "Rhinehart's Dice Man transferred to the North West of England". The author, who lives locally, is a founder member of the Lancashire band Tractor which were championed by the late John Peel. The book will be launched at Machpelah Mill on Saturday 6th September at 6pm. STOP PRESS - Stephen will be on Radio Leeds at 3.40 this afternoon, and there's also coverage in the Yorkshire Post on Thursday 11th.

The Joy of No Self - Mandi Solk
From local healer Mandi Solk, reflections on the Nondual nature of everything. There's a meeting on Non-duality at the Hope Centre in Hebden Bridge on October 4th, 2-5pm.

The Daily Mail Book Club

September's Book of the Month is Got You Back by Jane Fallon (£7.99)  "A husband. A wife. A mistress. And the ultimate plan for revenge..." The The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

Booker Prize Long List

The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 9th September and the winner will be announced on Tuesday 14th October. Italics mean we have them in stock; the others we can general get overnight.

Case Of Exploding Mangoes  - Mohammed Hanif
Child 44 - Tom Smith
Clothes On Their Backs - Linda Grant
Enchantress Of Florence - Salman Rushdie
Fraction Of The Whole - Steve Toltz
From A To X - John Berger
Girl In A Blue Dress - Gaynor Arnold  
Lost Dog - Michelle Kretser
Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher
Sea Of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry
White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
 

LITERARY QUIZ: this month's quiz from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker is on Drinks. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm 
 
The answers to last month's quiz on Facial Hair are: 1. P.G. Wodehouse, Uncle Fred in the Springtime, Chapter 13; 2. Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, chapter 8; 3. Henry James, Washington Square, chapter 2; 4. Angela Carter, The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories;5. Edward Lear, "There Was an Old Man With a Beard", Book of Nonsense; 6. Isabel Allende, House of the Spirits, chapter two

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in!
 

NEW TITLES

New in hardback in September is fiction from John Berger, Annie Proulx, Philip Roth and P D James. New into paperback will be Philip Roth, Peter Hoeg, Khaled Hosseini, Douglas Coupland, Maeve Bincy, Conn Iggulden, Natsuo Kirino, novels from Iran and Russia and more. Click here for the full list.

Non-fiction is beginning to show signs of the approach of Christmas with likely gifts and entertainments featuring strongly amongst the more
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: AUGUST 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case
 
Visitors to the area were keen to find out more about the town during August, and three other local interest books were also popular at The Book Case. We’Moon Diary made its customary autumnal appearance, and Shakespeare, an entertaining account of a canal journey, Rose Tremain’s Orange Prize winning novel and a guide to outdoor swimming made up the remainder.

1. Hebden Bridge Town Centre Trail, £2.00. From Hebden Bridge Local History Society and Hebden Bridge Walkers' Action, a colourful new guide to a 45-minute walk around the town, giving details of points of interest and photographs of the same scenes in times gone by.

2. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. This illustrated history of the town and area sold briskly in August. A Royd Press publication by a well-known local author.

3. We’Moon Diary 2009; Gaia Rhythms for Womyn, £15.99. This colourful astrological moon diary, datebook and guide to natural rhythms is always popular.

4. John Ramsbottom - A Victorian Engineering Giant by Robin Pennie, £9.95. A well-illustrated book about Todmorden-born John Ramsbottom, from a local author and published by the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Society. Selling well.

5. Gold Pieces by Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. Another Royd Press title proved popular in August - this is Phyllis Bentley’s story for young readers of a boy caught up with the Cragg Vale Coiners.

6. Narrowboat Dreams - Steve Haywood, £7.99. Entertaining account of "a cantankerous old git" who travels by traditional narrowboat from Banbury to "the trendy affluence of Hebden Bridge".

7. Growing Up in Sowerby ... and more - Jean Illingworth, £9.99. Still in the charts, this delightful self-published history of Sowerby with lots of pictures and memories.

8. Shakespeare: the world as a stage - Bill Bryson, £7.99. Brilliantly readable biography of our greatest dramatist and poet.

9. The Road Home by Rose Tremain, £7.99. This story of recently widowed Lev from Eastern Europe, in England to try and rebuild his life, continued popular.

10. Wild Swim - Kate Rew, £16.99. One of two books with similar titles on similar themes - this is the Guardian one telling of the best places to swim outdoors in Britain. Colour illustrated.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"In the mansion called literature, I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration."
- Junichiro Tanizaki, "In Praise of Shadows", 1933.

AUGUST 2008

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

Just in, the long-awaited updated version of the Hebden Bridge Town Centre Trail.  With lots of colour, details of points of interest and photographs of the same scenes in times gone by, the booklet is a guide to a 45-minute walk around the town, price £2.00. The trail is accessible by wheelchair. From Hebden Bridge Local History Society and Hebden Bridge Walkers' Action.

Best wishes from your local bookshop

-------------------------------------------

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

Despite or maybe because of the monsoony weather, we've been busy at The Book Case selling summer reads - our 3-for-2 promotion is proving popular, see below for details! - and local interest books, nature books and customer orders also keep us on our toes.
This month Readers' Opinions board records enjoyment of "Sea of Poppies" by Amitav Ghosh, Nathaniel Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables", books on the organic movement, "Two Degrees West" by Nicholas Crane, "Some Prefer Nettles" by Junichiro Tanizaki, "The Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs, "John Fowles's "The Magus" and Rose Tremain's "Road Home".  Not being enjoyed were Nicola Barker's "Darkmans", Peter Carey's "His Illegal Self" and Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar". I won't repeat the remark about it ...
 
This month's Literary Quiz is on Facial Hair. See below.
 
It's been reported from Down Under that Rabbit the Rabbit, last year's long-term inhabitant of the shop, has been visiting Samoa to show the family Robert Louis Stevenson's house. Click here for pictures. We're delighted he used his time with us to cultivate his literary taste.

If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book.

Adult fiction: Tree of Smoke by Denis Johnson (£8.99). Set in south-east Asia and the US, and spanning two decades, it ostensibly tells the story of Skip Sands, a CIA spy who may or may not be engaged in psychological operations against the Viet Cong - but also takes the reader on a surreal and vivid journey. Highly recommended by Geoff Dyer who says it’s "as excessive and messy as Moby Dick and "a big, dirty, unmade bed of a book".

Crow Country by Mark Cocker (£8.99). A prose poem on the trail of rooks and jackdaws, in a long tradition of English pastoral writing

Children: Little Mouse’s Big Book of Fears - Emily Gravett (£6.99). The paperback edition of the novelty picture book, with elements including flaps, die-cuts and a fold-out map. Young children will identify with the little mouse who uses the pages of this book to document his fears - from loud noises and the dark to being sucked down the plughole. Ages: 0-3 yrs.
We've got one of our summer 3 for 2 Summer Reading offers on, with a colourful catalogue. Included while stocks last are Alan Bennett's Common Reader (which has made the Top Ten), Sally Vickers' Where Three Roads Meet, David Baldacci's Stone Cold, Ali Smith's Girl Meets Boy, Esther Freud's Love Falls, and Andrea Camilleri's Patience of the Spider;
 
in Non-Fiction there's Robert MacFarlane's Wild Places, The Mitfords - Letters Between Six Sisters, The Mammoth Book of Boys' Own Stuff, The QI Book of General Ignorance, England - 1000 Things You Need to Know and Looking for Enid (Blyton).
 
For children in the 3 for 2 Summer Promotion (while stocks last) are Horrid Henry Robs the Bank, Dinosaur Cove - Stampede of the Giant Reptiles and Catching the Speedy Thief, A Hero's Guide to Deadly Dragons, Snakehead by Anthony Horowitz, Fire Dreamer by Beth Webb, Deeper (the sequel to "Tunnels"), City of Ashes by Cassandra Clare and Waves by Sharon Dogar.
 
The books for adults are on our centre table (left-hand side) and those for children are on their left-hand side display.
 
There's also our ever-changing display of quality bargain books on the right-hand side of the centre table (and in the boxes underneath!)
 

NEWS

Local Interest

Made in Yorkshire - Tony Earnshaw (£25.00)

A glorious celebration of all the feature films shot in the county from the inception of film to the present day, including in-depth accounts of more than 30 movies. With a foreword by the Oscar-winning screenwriter Ronald Harwood, whose film The Dresser, shot in Bradford, York and and Halifax, features prominently.


Portrait of the Pennine Hills - John Morrison (£14.99)

From the ex-local author and photographer, 144 pages of atmospheric colour photos.

Postcard Yorkshire (DVD) (£4.99)
A 35-minute journey through Yorkshire's most inspirational scenery with narration and music, on a colourful DVD packaged to look like a big postcard. Very nicely done and it's been well-received by Yorkshirephiles I've sent it to. Stoodley Pike, Heptonstall Church and a lot of cloud get a brief look-in towards the end; it basically works its way west from the coast.

Previously mentioned:

Narrowboat Dreams by Steve Haywood (£7.99)
"A cantankerous old git" travels by traditional narrowboat from Banbury to "the trendy affluence of Hebden Bridge". Got into our Top Ten.

Around and About Yorkshire 1 (DVD) (£5.99)

Three Peaks Fell Race, Rescuing Ilkley Moor, Restoring York Minster, Denby Dale Walk, Yorkshire Flat Caps, Whitby's Penny Hedge, Knaresborough's Hidden Treasures - and Gervase Phinn talks to Geoff Druett about his formative years in Rotherham. 110 minutes.

Around and About Yorkshire 2 (DVD) (£5.99)

Auction Marts, Pork Pie Championship, the "Tom Puddings" of Goole, wooden shops, agricultureal shows (Otley, Great Yorkshire, Bingley, Malham, Kilnsey and Nidderdale), Giggleswick and the carved rocks of Ilkley Moor with Gavin Edwards. 115 minutes.

(The above series is being praised by customers.)

Local Authors

Other Beasts - Sarah Corbett (£7.99)
The first half of this new volume is devoted to poems that re-create scenes from a youth haunted by trouble, but redeemed by a strong attachment to the beauties of nature. The latter half focuses on in-depth and often scary narratives of other lives, while closely identifying with survivors of trauma. Sarah Corbett is locally based, and the book was launched recently at Lumb Bank's Arvon Foundation.

Ladies of the Night by Barbara Green & Jean Wilkinson (£9.99)
A snapshot of how the real district nurses operate in the modern day - a long way from the beloved but outdated lady on the bike! Barbara Green is a retired registered general and psychiatric nurse, a state certified midwife and qualified district nurse based in Brighouse; Jean Wilkinson has worked locally in district nursing for over twenty years as a nursing auxiliary.

Well-known locally-based poet John Siddique is Poet in Residence for Blackpool, from June to December this year.

World Beach Project: devised by locally-based world-famous artist Sue Lawty! The idea is that you find a beach, make your own pattern out of stones (it must be stones, not seaweed or driftwood), record it with photographs and upload them to the world map on the V&A website. Then see what others around the world have done. Go to www.vam.ac.uk/worldbeach to join in! Sue Lawty's books Rock, Raphia, Linen, Lead and Two Weavers, Two Ways continue to sell well at The Book Case

Award-winning local poet and novelist Glyn Hughes reports that he's just put the last section of Life Class on his blog. You can see it at http://www.glynhughes.co.uk/blog.html

Local Publishers

New from our own Royd Press, "A Load of New Rubbish" by Rossendale-based historian Chris Aspin - light-hearted verse reflecting on the absurdities of modern life, with a Grand Opera included! The cover picture was done by Book Case member of staff Simon Manfield.(£4.99)

The Daily Mail Book Club

August's Book of the Month is Ghost by Robert Harris (£7.99)  Britain's former prime minister is holed up in a remote, ocean-front house in America, struggling to finish his memoirs, assisted by a professional ghostwriter - a man more used to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities than ex-world leaders. The July title turned out to be Sue Gee's Reading in Bed. Apologies! The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

Richard and Judy Summer Reads

In stock at The Book Case!

6th August Addition - Toni Jordan £7.99
Grace counts everything because that way there are no unpleasant surprises.

13th August The Resurrectionist - James Bradley £7.99
Gabriel Swift arrives in the city to study with a great anatomist but instead he finds himself drawn to the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies.

Booker Prize Long List

The longlist, chosen from 113 entries, has been announced, as follows. The shortlist will be announced on Tuesday 9th September and the winner will be announced on Tuesday 14th October at an awards ceremony at Guildhall, London. Because they're all hardbacks, we aren't keeping them all in stock but can generally order overnight. We do have the Tom Smith (locally known as Enid Stephenson's son-in-law) and Amitav Ghosh, and the John Berger is on order - it isn't even published yet!

Case Of Exploding Mangoes  - Mohammed Hanif
Child 44 - Tom Smith
Clothes On Their Backs - Linda Grant
Enchantress Of Florence - Salman Rushdie
Fraction Of The Whole - Steve Toltz
From A To X - John Berger - on order
Girl In A Blue Dress - Gaynor Arnold
Lost Dog - Michelle Kretser
Netherland - Joseph O'Neill
Northern Clemency - Philip Hensher
Sea Of Poppies - Amitav Ghosh
Secret Scripture - Sebastian Barry
White Tiger - Aravind Adiga
 
BBC 4 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-fiction 2008
The winner is Kate Summerscale's Suspicions of Mr Whicher - about the notorious Road Hill House murder case in 1860, which inspired the birth of modern detective fiction. In stock at the Book Case.

LITERARY QUIZ: this month's quiz from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker (with a bonus extra question) is on Facial Hair To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm 
 
The answers to last month's quiz on Bridges are: 1. E M Forster, ‘Notes on the English Character’ from Abinger Harvest (1936); 2. A A Milne, The House at Pooh Corner (1928); 3. William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying (1930); 4. Ambrose Bierce ‘An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ from Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891); 5. Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940)

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in!
 

NEW TITLES

There's a new Paul Auster hardback novel in August, and new into paperback will be Brian Aldiss, Pat Barker, Garrison Keillor, Alexander McCall Smith, Sophie Hannah and Ian Rankin amongst others, with reissues of Gaskell, Hardy, Le Fanu, Wilkie Collins, Conrad, Kate Chopin, John Wyndham, Elizabeth Jenkins and Jane Gardam plus some medieval comic tales. And there's a Rough Guide to Graphic Novels Click here for the full list.

Non-fiction:
  • Chinese paintings and a tiger on Shaftesbury Avenue in Art
  • Katherine Swynford, Katherine Whitehorn, Tolstoy and Proust in Biography #
  • seven wonders in Environment
  • preserves and vegetarian students in Food
  • organic fruit and veg in Gardening
  • Roman roads and railway station life in History
  • Scrabble, Polish and linguistics in Language
  • activities for siblings and napkin origami in Lifestyle
  • lots in nature, especially crows, but also birds generally, mushrooms, women on the Welsh landscape, plants in history and mankind's war against the nation's wildlife in Nature
  • Kierkegaard, Foucault and Nietzsche in Philosophy
  • films shot in Yorkshire, Sophocles, Shakespeare and bell hooks in Plays and Films 
  • 21st-century hotspots, citizenship, the NHS, William Morris, Trotsky and Fanon in Politics
  • Pears and the DSA theory test in Reference
  • British journeys, the Hindu Kush, travel without flying, kind strangers, Navajo medicine men, a potato oligarch in Russia, the Lake District and some new little maps and guides  in Travel
  • and a scared little mouse, a birdman, dragons and a new Artemis Fowl in Children's books
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: JULY 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case

Jean Illingworth’s engaging history of Sowerby led The Book Case’s bestsellers in July, with five other local or northern history books also popular. Rose Tremain’s Orange Prize-winning novel about an East European worker in England sold phenomenally and an Alan Bennett novel was also popular. An entertaining tale of a narrowboat journey featuring Hebden Bridge did well, and also popular were a local author’s examination of thinking and feeling plus a book about the transition from oil.

1. Growing Up in Sowerby ... and more - Jean Illingworth, £9.99. This delightful self-published history of Sowerby with lots of pictures and memories has been selling and selling!

2. Rebel Girls - Jill Liddington, £14.99. This account from locally-based historian Jill Liddington of forgotten Northern suffragettes is no stranger to our bestseller list. Jill is touring northern towns with readings from the book to mark the Equal Franchise Act’s 80th anniversary.

3. The Road Home by Rose Tremain, £7.99. Our Fiction Book of the Month and clearly that of a lot of our customers too! Lev from Eastern Europe, recently widowed, comes to England to try and rebuild his life, and finally those of his family and home village.

4. The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed - Andrew Bibby and John Morrison, £14.99. This illustrated hardback on the Pennine watershed by local author and journalist Andrew Bibby with photos by ex-HB photographer and author John Morrison remains popular and was featured during the Hebden Bridge Festival.

5. Narrowboat Dreams - Steve Haywood, £7.99. "A cantankerous old git" travels by traditional narrowboat from Banbury to "the trendy affluence of Hebden Bridge". He's rude about Huddersfield and Mytholmroyd and has an exciting time in a pieshop in Brighouse. Our Non-Fiction Book of the Month.

6. The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett, £6.99. A chance visit to the Westminster travelling library turns HM into a passionate and voracious reader - but the equerries aren’t happy ... One of the books in our 3 for 2 offer.

7. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. This illustrated history of the town and area shows how we have changed over the centuries. A Royd Press publication by a well-known local author.

8. A Cotton-Fibre Halo - Angus Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £7.99. Welcome mentions in Family History magazines have put our reprints of 1849 journalistic reports on milltown conditions back into the top ten.

9. In Search of Thinking - Richard Bunzl, £10.95. From a local author, a thought-provoking examination of memories, feelings and ideas written in vivid, down-to-earth language.

10. Transition Handbook - Rob Hopkins, £12.95. "From oil dependency to local resilience". The founder of the Transition Movement shows how we can move from anxiety about oil to positive practical action.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"... he’d suddenly understood ... she wanted to show him that words written long, long ago could travel beside you and help you at moments when you could no longer see the road."
- Rose Tremain, "The Road Home"
25th July:

Donald Crossley, one of Ted Hughes's closest childhood friends, will be leading a (long) walk from the poet's birthplace at 1 Aspinall Street, Mytholmroyd at 12.30 tomorrow Saturday up to Lumb Bank near Heptonstall. Lumb Bank house and gardens (the Ted Hughes Arvon Centre for creative writing) will be open to visitors from 2.30pm until 8pm, with light refreshments provided.

There will be poetry readings at Lumb Bank at 4.00pm by Alan Brownjohn, John Lyons, Gaia Holmes, Susan Wicks and others,

and at 5.30pm is the launch of Sarah Corbett's third poetry collection, Other Beasts. We'll be getting our copies for sale next month.

Coming up in October will be the Ted Hughes Festival, a major event organised by The Elmet Trust. Click here for the exciting provisional programme!

10th July: Moleskine Diaries, Yorkshire DVDs and a correction

Our wide selection of the legendary Moleskine Diaries for 2009 has arrived! As used by Van Gogh, Chatwin, Hemingway and Matisse, but now with a choice of hard and soft cover, red or black (but mostly black), lots of sizes, with or without notebook - and with the trademark elastic closure, sewn binding, accordion pocket and ribbon place-markers.
We also still have some of the 18-Month 2008-2009 Moleskine diaries in stock and are about to start stocking the Moleskine Storyboard Pocket Notebook as recommended by The Independent, for all our local creative types.
 
Also new in are the first two DVDs in the Around and About Yorkshire series, at £5.99 each:  No 1 covers Three Peaks Fell Race, Rescuing Ilkley Moor, Restoring York Minster, Denby Dale Walk, Yorkshire Flat Caps, Whitby's Penny Hedge, Knaresborough's Hidden Treasures - and Gervase Phinn talks to Geoff Druett about his formative years in Rotherham. (110 minutes.) No 2 has Auction Marts, Pork Pie Championship, the "Tom Puddings" of Goole, wooden shops, agricultural shows (Otley, Great Yorkshire, Bingley, Malham, Kilnsey and Nidderdale), Giggleswick and the carved rocks of Ilkley Moor with Gavin Edwards. (115 minutes and includes a free DVD of Yorkshire Customs and Traditions, previously on video).
 
Finally an apology for a mistake in our July newsletter: the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act giving all women the right to vote on the same terms as men was of course 1928 not 1908! (Otherwise the suffragettes would have been spared a lot of trouble.) Jill Liddington's talk on her bestselling book Rebel Girls at Todmorden Library was well attended and a great success.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Dear Book Case customer or friend,
 
It's been another busy month! Kate reports on the Tia Greyhound and Lurcher Rescue event:
 
Fantastic fundraising at The Book Case:
 
There was a fantastic turnout for the Book Case fundraising event for Tia Greyhound rescue. The event was inspired by the new children’s book from award winning children’s writer Michael Morpurgo, Born to Run, the story of a champion greyhound’s journey through life.
 
The shop was overrun with friendly dogs from Tia, and children and adults alike enjoyed petting them and finding out more about the charity.
 
Customers also donated food and bedding for the charity. People were incredibly generous and our back room was completely full of donations. Customers also had the opportunity to choose a name for a rescue dog. Our favourites  were Sniffer  and Twilight Magic, from Molly, age 8.
 
Richard Bunzl's new book In Search of Thinking - a thought-provoking examination of memories, feelings and ideas written in vivid, down-to-earth language - had a successful launch at the Rudolph Steiner Centre and is near the top of our bestsellers list.
 
Jean Illingworth's new book, Growing Up in Sowerby ... and More, met with a packed and enthusiastic reception at its launch at Halifax's Imperial Crown Hotel, and book's about to be reprinted. Comments so far include the following: 
 
" ... it's lovely. Brings Sowerby to life, and I love the photos" - Austin Mitchell MP; "Charming and gripping" - Linda McDougall, journalist and author; " ... a wonderful collection of events, characters, chunks of social history and personal memories which will have readers sighing with nostalgia" - Virginia Mason, Evening Courier
 
And for July?
Hebden Bridge Arts Festival of course has already started, with Blake Morrison appearing at Hebden Bridge Picture House this evening, and Andrew Bibby and John Morrison talking about their bestselling book The Backbone of England at Artsmill on Monday 7th July (but it's sold out already). The website is at http://www.hebdenbridge.co.uk/festival/2008/index.html
 
Richard and Judy are presenting their final Summer Reads before departure - see the list below.
 
We now have another of our displays of bargain quality nature books, a 3/2 summer reads offer, and many more quality books at silly prices - including our few remaining copies of Elaine Feinstein's biography of Ted Hughes, half price at £10 and some lovely big Yorkshire picture books. We continue to order in the latest Oxford University Press's relaunched World's Classics (click here for this month's listing).
 
Our Readers' Opinions board on our centre table this month has people enjoying Philip Pullman, Barry Unsworth's "A Ruby in Her Navel" (its third recent mention), "The Country of Pointed Firs" (Cranford-on-Maine) by Sarah Orme Jewett, "To the Lighthouse" by Virginia Woolf, "Time Traveller's Wife" by Audrey Niffenegger, "I Love You" by Celia Ahern, "The Prodigal Summer" by Barbara Kingsolver and Winnie the Pooh.  There was lack of enthusiasm for Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mocking Bird", Neil Gaiman, "Memory Keeper's Daughter" by Kim Edwards and Virginia Woolf's "The Waves".
 
This month's Literary Quiz is on Bridges. See below.

If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and a CD.

Adult fiction: The Road Home by Rose Tremain (£7.99) -  a wise and witty look at the contemporary migrant experience, as we follow the story of Lev, newly arrived from Eastern Europe and looking for work.

Adult non-fiction: Narrowboat Dreams by Steve Haywood (£7.99) "A cantankerous old git" travels by traditional narrowboat from Banbury to "the trendy affluence of Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire's answer to London's ciabatta belt". He's rude about Huddersfield and Mytholmroyd and has an exciting time in a pieshop in Brighouse. (£7.99)

Children: Percy Jackson & The Battle Of The Labyrinth - Rick Riordan (£9.99). Percy Jackson, young demi-god, is back in a 4th adventure and with a striking new foil cover look. A dangerous enemy has found his way through an ancient labyrinth built by the legendary Daedalus, and is intent on destruction. Can Percy and his friends find Daedalus and unlock the mysteries of the maze? Ages: 10+.
 
CD: Othello by W Shakespeare - With Chiwetel Ejiofor and Ewan McGregor. From the acclaimed Donmar Warehouse production in London. (£13.99, 2 CDs & DVD of interviews with the cast and the creative team)

 

NEWS

Local Interest
 
This month Historian Jill Liddington is visiting Sheffield Hallam University (5.45pm) today (0114 275 2152 and on 5 July, at 7.30pm will be at Todmorden Library (01422 392629) with her immensely successful book on northern suffragettes, Rebel Girls to mark the 80th anniversary of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act in 1928. Jill spoke on the book in Liverpool yesterday! We have the book on sale in the shop.

The Romans Came This Way - by Norman Lunn, Bill Crosland, Bonwell Spence and Granville Clay, pub. Huddersfield and District Archaeological Society (£12.99)

The story of the discovery and excavation of a Roman Military Way across the Yorkshire Pennines. The fascinating story of how a dedicated group of amateur archaeologists found themselves challenging all the accepted theories of where and how the Roman army built a major military way across the Pennines. A4, many colour photos and maps, CD with extra info. Roman Emperors passed this way ...

The Yorkshire Water Way 2 - South Pennines and Peak District - Mark Reid (£3.99)
A 62-mile walk between Ilkley and Langsett, via Haworth, Hebden Bridge and Marsden. Instructions, line drawings and sketch maps.

Local Authors

Teach Yourself Creative Writing - Stephen May (£9.99)

From a director of Lumb Bank Creative Writing Centre in Heptonstall, a guide to unlocking your creativity, finding your voice and choosing a genre of writing that suits you best. Fourth edition.

Cross-Stitch Countryside Collection - Carol Thornton, Claire Crompton, Caroline Palmer and Lesley Teare (£18.99)
Eight detailed cross stitch designs capture moments of timeless tranquillity, including one of our local canal and a West Country harbour from Book Case member of staff and artist Carol Thornton. Each major design has a collection of matching keepsake gifts to make.

Anatevka - Joseph Krasniansky (£9.50)
"From Russia with Love. And Death."  A first novel from an author based in Hebden Bridge.

Rhyme and Storytime - Kathleen McBurney (£6.99)

Verses, thoughts and memories with colour photos from a Halifax great-grandmother. This collection includes Ackroydon Model Village, Halifax Borough Market, Banksfield Museum and more!

The Daily Mail Book Club

June's Book of the Month is Ghost by Robert Harris (£7.99)  Britain's former prime minister is holed up in a remote, ocean-front house in America, struggling to finish his memoirs, assisted by a professional ghostwriter - a man more used to working with fading rock stars and minor celebrities than ex-world leaders. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

Richard and Judy Summer Reads

All in stock at The Book Case!

25th June The Outcast  - Sadie Jones £7.99
On a summer day in 1957, a young man stands alone at Waterford railway station. A portrait of small-town hypocrisy, transgression and redemption

2nd July No Time For Goodbye - Linwood Barclay £7.99
You wake up. Your house is empty. Your family has disappeared ...

9th July East Of The Sun - Julia Gregson £7.99
In the autumn of 1928, three young women are on their way to India, each with a new life in mind.

16th July Down River - John Hart £7.99
Banished for a murder he didn't commit: now he's coming home ...

23rd July The Pirate's Daughter -  M. Cezair-Thompson £7.99
When legendary swashbuckler Errol Flynn washes ashore in his yacht in Jamaica, teenager Ida Joseph makes it her business to meet him.

30th July The Private Lives Of Pippa Lee - Rebecca Miller £7.99
Pippa seems to have everything in life. But suddenly she finds her world beginning to unravel. Amid the buzzing lawnmowers and suburban coffee mornings, she starts to wonder how she came to be in this place.

6th August Addition - Toni Jordan £7.99
Grace counts everything because that way there are no unpleasant surprises.

13th August The Resurrectionist - James Bradley £7.99
Gabriel Swift arrives in the city to study with a great anatomist but instead he finds himself drawn to the most powerful of the city's resurrectionists and ruler of its trade in stolen bodies.


LITERARY QUIZ: this month's quiz from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker is on Bridges. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm 
 
The answers to last month's quiz on Rain are: 1. The Mill on the Floss - George Eliot; 2. The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene 3. A House for Mr Biswas -  V S Naipaul 4. Bleak House  - Charles Dickens 5. My Family and Other Animals  -  Gerald Durrell

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in!
 

NEW TITLES

July's novels new into paperback include Rose Tremain, Alan Bennett, Ben Okri, Jane Gardam, Robert Harris, Irvine Welsh, John Mortimer, Jeanette Winterson, Ruth Rendell, Michael Dibdin and David Baldacci to name but a few - another good month for fiction!  Amongst reissues are Philip K Dick, and from Oxford, the Brontes, Zola, Wilkie Collins, Checkhov and Erskine Childers. Click here for the full list.

Non-fiction:
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: JUNE 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case

A wide range of books were popular at The Book Case in June - the greyhound pulled ahead of the philosopher, five books of local interest continued to sell well, an Iranian comic-strip autobiography was popular, people were keen to identify sheep, and a local author’s football detective story made up the ten.

1. Born to Run - Michael Morpurgo, £5.99 - Bittersweet tale for children of a champion greyhound's journey through life, featured in our Doggy Saturday to raise money for greyhound rescue.

2. In Search of Thinking - Richard Bunzl, £10.95 - From a local author, a thought-provoking examination of memories, feelings and ideas written in vivid, down-to-earth language.

3. Ned Carver in Danger - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95 - The second of our reprints of Phyllis Bentley’s exciting historical novels for young people - a 13-year-old boy finds himself supporting the Calder Valley Luddites in 1812.

4. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper Calder Valley, £5.00 - This well-researched and illustrated history of watermills in the area continues to sell steadily.

5. A Century of Stars: Hebden Royd Red Star AFC 1908-2008 - Peter Thomas, £4.00 - Hebden Royd Red Star AFC, under its various names, is the oldest continuously-existing club in the Halifax League and celebrates its centenary in October this year. This colourful new book is full of memories, interviews, anecdotes and photographs.

6. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99 - This illustrated history of the town and area shows how we have changed over the centuries. A Royd Press publication by a well-known local author.

7. The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed - Andrew Bibby and John Morrison, (£14.99) - Still selling well, this illustrated hardback on the Pennine watershed by local author and journalist Andrew Bibby with photos by ex-HB photographer and author John Morrison. Andrew and John will be discussing the book at the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival.

8. Persepolis 1 & 2 - Marjane Satrapi, £7.99 - Growing up in Iran during and after the Islamic revolution all done through drawings - the film was recently shown in Hebden Bridge.

9. Know Your Sheep - Jack Byard, £4.99 - Colour photographs of and notes on the 41 breeds of sheep most likely to be found on British farms. "Know Your Tractors" is now also available.

10. Foul Play - Tom Palmer, £5.99 - From the Todmorden-based writer and reader-developer, an exciting new football detective story for young readers, chosen by the Booked Up campaign.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"James Harding's book Alpha Dogs is not a searing, gripping novel as we said in a diary item, page 31, June 26. It is a work of non-fiction about a firm of US political strategists."

- Guardian Corrections and Clarifications, Sat. 28 June.

Arising from this, we'd like to hear from anyone who has ever been seared by a novel and what it felt like. It seems to happen a lot these days.

JUNE 2008

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

We're supporting two widely differing events this month: on 7th June you can help raise money for Tia Greyhound and Lurcher Rescue based in Cragg Vale at an event at The Book Case at 2pm. You can meet a visiting greyhound, buy Tia's own book about "a decade of dogs", take part in a raffle, pledge to sponsor an abandoned greyhound, and for every copy we sell in June of Michael Morpurgo's new book about a champion greyhound, Born to Run, we're donating £1 to Tia.
 
Then on Sunday 8th June, there is a launch for local author and musician Richard Bunzl's new book In Search of Thinking. 4-6pm at the Rudolf Steiner Centre, Station Road, Hebden Bridge. What are our memories and feelings? What are ideas? What is the nature of time? How do our thoughts connect with the world at large? Is freedom of thought an illusion, or a possibility worth striving for? Afternoon refreshments will be provided.
Later this month we'll be publishing a new local interest book, Growing Up in Sowerby ... and More by Jean Illingworth (£9.99). This engaging history weaves Jean's own memories with the recollections of others in her local community to reveal a rich and detailed picture of the life and character of this ancient hilltop village. Numerous photos are included of people and places as they were. 
 
We were very sad to hear of the death of locally-based author and veteran political and CND activist Harry Sculthorpe, who is much missed.
 
Customers who remember ex-Book Case member of staff Valerie Cullinane, who had fought her way back to an extraordinary recovery after being severely injured by a van outside the shop, may already know that sadly she recently suffered a stroke. The latest news is that she is making good progress but it will be months before she is able to leave hospital.
 
More from Oxford University Press's relaunched World's Classics series this month; they make our window look so up-market! Click here for the full June list.
 
The Readers' Opinions board on our centre table has come back to life: this month we have applause for Barry Unsworth's "A Ruby in Her Navel" (again), "Daily Life in Ancient Rome" by Jerome Carcopino, "Violence" by Slavoj Zizeh, Erich Fromm's "Fear of Freedom", Tove Janssen's "Comet in Moominland", Enid Blyton's "Twins at St Clare's" and "Black Diamonds" (about a Yorkshire coal palace) by Catherine Bailey. Not enjoyed were "The Kite Runner" by Khaled Hosseini (two people), "Midnight" by Jacqueline Wilson and Paulo Coelho's "The Alchemist".
 
This month's Literary Quiz was selected with an eye to the recent unseasonal weather: it's on Rain. See below.
 
We're delighted to be stocking a selection of the eye-catching Photosphere cards from Greenwich Landscape Artists: breathtaking all-round spherical views of well-known landscapes.

If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and a CD.

Adult fiction: A Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh (£16.99 at The Book Case). The vast sweep of this historical adventure spans the lush poppy fields of the Ganges, the rolling high seas, and the exotic backstreets of China, and is centred on an old slaving ship manned by sailors, stowaways, coolies and convicts. From the author of "The Glass Palace".

Adult non-fiction: Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams, £8.99. "How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything". The knowledge, resources and computing power of billions of people are self-organising into a massive new collective force. An Economist and Financial Times Book of the Year.

Children: Born to Run by Michael Morpurgo. From the former Children's Laureate, this is a bittersweet tale of a champion greyhound's journey through life, from owner to owner. When Patrick saves a litter of greyhound puppies from the canal, he begs his parents to let him keep one. They become best friends, until Best Mate is kidnapped by a greyhound trainer and begins a new life as a champion racer. . "From the first sentence of a Michael Morpurgo book, you know you are in the hands of a natural storyteller."Guardian. Ages: 8-12 yrs (£5.99)
 
CD: Discover Chamber Music. Includes music by Gabrieli, Corelli, J S Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Brahms, Stravinsky, Bartok, Crumb and others. 2 CDs and booklet, £10.99.


NEWS

Local Interest

Growing Up in Sowerby ... and More by Jean Illingworth (£9.99). This engaging history weaves Jean's own memories with the recollections of others in her local community to reveal a rich and detailed picture of the life and character of this ancient hilltop village. Numerous photos are included of people and places as they were. To be published later this month.
 
Historian Jill Liddington will be visiting Whitby and Pickering with her immensely successful book on northern suffragettes, Rebel Girls to mark the 80th anniversary of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act in 1908: 15 June - Whitby (01947 606202); 16 June - Pickering (01751 475372)

Huddersfield Narrow Canal: a towpath guide - Dr Bob Gough (£4.99)

Nicely produced, sturdy and colourful guide to what you might see along the towpath of Huddersfield Narrow Canal. From Huddersfield Canal Society. Spiral bound.

Local Authors

Ndae's Promise - Jill Hopkins (£5.99)

This book for children by Halifax-based journalist Jill Hopkins was tested on the pupils of Heathfield School, Rishworth, and their enthusiastic reviews appear on the back cover. The story is about a swallow who migrates across Africa and to the Island of Smoke.

The Daily Mail Book Club

June's Book of the Month is Singled Out by Virginia Nicholson (£8.99) "How Two Million Women Survived without Men After the First World War." In 1919, a generation of young women discovered that there were, quite simply, not enough men to go round, and the statistics confirmed it. After the 1921 Census, the press ran alarming stories of the 'Problem of the Surplus Women - Two Million who can never become Wives...'. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

July: Ghost by Robert Harris (£7.99)

Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, 2008 

The Road Home by Rose Tremain -  a wise and witty look at the contemporary migrant experience, as we follow the story of Lev, newly arrived from Eastern Europe and looking for work. In stock in hardback at £14.99 - paperback due next month.


LITERARY QUIZ: this month's quiz from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker is on Rain in literature. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm 
 
The answers to last month's quiz on Song are: 1. A Passage to India (1924) - E M Forster; 2. Elidor (1965) - Alan Garner; 3. "The Dead" from Dubliners (1914) James Joyce; 4. Othello Act 4 Sc 3 - William Shakespeare; 5. The Catcher in the Rye (1957) - J D Salinger

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in!
 

NEW TITLES

June's hardback novels include Susan Hill and Amitav Ghosh, and amongst paperbacks, we'll have Don Delillo, Terry Pratchett, Salley Vickers, Armistead Maupin, Haruki Murakami, Irvine Welsh, Kate Morton, Ali Smith, Christopher Brookmyre, Jonathan Coe, Joan Smith, Scarlett Thomas, Esther Freud, Maggie Gee, John Grisham, Bernhard Schlink and Sergei Lukyanenko. You know where to find your summer reading!
 
Amongst reissues are the "Arabian Nights", stories by Jack London, Sherwood Anderson and Washington Irving, "Ulysses" (Joyce), "We" (Zamyatin), Patrick O'Brian, extreme fantasy, crime comics, four more Dostoyevskys, two Kiplings, four Woolfs, Poe and a Conrad. Click here for the full list.

Non-fiction:
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: MAY 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case

May saw four adult books of local interest selling well at The Book Case - two of them by the same author! The Green Weekend made an impact, two children’s books were especially popular (one of them locally based), and swimming wild plus Andrew Marr on Britain today made up the remainder.

1. The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed - Andrew Bibby and John Morrison (Was £12.00, now £14.99). This illustrated hardback on the Pennine watershed by local author and journalist Andrew Bibby with photos by ex-HB photographer and author John Morrison continues to sell. Andrew and John will be discussing the book at the Hebden Bridge Arts Festival.

2. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. This illustrated history of the town and area shows how we have changed over the centuries. A Royd Press publication by a well-known local author.

3. A Century of Stars: Hebden Royd Red Star AFC 1908-2008 - Peter Thomas, £4.00. Peter Thomas scores again! Hebden Royd Red Star AFC, under its various names, is the oldest continuously-existing club in the Halifax League and celebrates its centenary in October this year. This colourful new book is full of memories, interviews, anecdotes and photographs

4. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper Calder Valley, £5.00. This well-researched and illustrated history of watermills in the area continues to sell steadily.

5. How to Live Off-Grid: Journeys Outside the System - Nick Rosen, £7.99. People who live without mains water, power or phone line vary widely, but all are outside or in-between the criss-crossing lines of power, water and phone that delineate the civilised world.

6.The Transition Handbook: From Oil Dependency to Local Resilience - Rob Hopkins, £10.95. We live in an oil-dependent world. This manual will guide communities to begin an 'energy descent' journey.

7. Wild Swimming - Daniel Start, £14.95. All the practical information you need to enjoy 150 magical swims across the UK in Britain's rivers, lakes and waterfalls.

8. Bog Baby - Jeanne Willis, £5.99. Picture book about two little girls who find a new playmate - but they have to let him go!

9. History of Modern Britain - Andrew Marr, £8.99. Our May Non-Fiction Book of the Month - tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification.

10. Ned Carver in Danger - Phyllis Bentley, £5.99. A 13-year-old boy starts work at a Calder Valley cropping shop in 1812 just as his friend's mill-owning father introduces the cropping frames that will put his skilled companions out of work. The second locally-based historical novels for young people by Phyllis Bentley we’ve published.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

Amongst the objects taken in by London Transport Lost Property Office last year were 32,268 books - the most commonly forgotten item. They didn't say if the readers had finished them or if they had to go and buy another copy.

- TFL website

MAY 2008

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

The Upper Calder Valley is a magnet for talent! No fewer than three locally-based authors have nationally-published books out this month - see below under "Local Authors". Peter Thomas has added a new book - about Hebden Royd Red Star AFC -  to his current bestselling "History of Hebden Bridge", and Jill Liddington will be taking the nationally best-selling Rebel Girls on the road around Yorkshire again.
 
Oxford University Press has been relaunching its Worlds Classics series (the ones with the useful notes in the back), and we're taking the opportunity to restock. We've tried to make it a bit easier to get at our pre-20th-century fiction section by moving a card stand (space is always a problem at The Book Case), and the Greeks and Romans are where they usually are (unless of course they are in Philosophy).
 
New to Hebden Bridge is Piers Cross who has a range of CDs with magical stories for relaxation and sleep for children. We found them very soothing when we played them in the shop!

You've been a bit reticent about what books you're enjoying, but we do have acclaim for Philip Roth's Plot Against America, Scarlett Thomas's End of Mr Y, Barry Unsworth's Ruby in Her Navel and Anita Amirrezvani's Blood of Flowers. No one reports not enjoying anything. Buck up there!
 
There's another great Literary Quiz this month from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker, this one on Song. See below.
 
Just into stock are the latest issues of our US spiritual magazines, Sagewoman - celebrating the Goddess as the Queen Hera; Pan Gaia - on planetary change; and New Witch - featuring Raven Digitalis.
 
We've heard from New Zealand that Rabbit has temporarily gone AWOL again - but was eventually found in an old microwave oven in a shelter at the bottom of the garden. Jo comments: "We have borrowed a phrase that Rabbit the Rabbit learned when he attended your Harry Potter midnight book launch, and will hencerforth maintain constant vigilance over Elliot's selection of hiding places."

If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and a CD.

Adult fiction: Alfred and Emily - Doris Lessing (£14.99 at The Book Case). The first book after Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize takes her back to her childhood in Southern Africa and the lives, both fictional and factual, that her parents lead. 'I think my father's rage at the trenches took me over, when I was very young, and has never left me. Do children feel their parents' emotions? Yes, we do, and it is a legacy I could have done without.’

Adult non-fiction: A History of Modern Britain - Andrew Marr (£8.99). Confronts head-on the victory of shopping over politics. It tells the story of how the great political visions of New Jerusalem or a second Elizabethan Age, rival idealisms, came to be defeated by a culture of consumerism, celebrity and self-gratification.

Children: Whale Gets Stuck - Karen Hayles. (£5.99) When Whale gets stuck on an ice floe, will his friends be able to rescue him? Wonderful illustrations by Charles Fuge help tell this story of friendship with a gentle ecological theme Ages: 2+ yrs.
 
CD: Joaquin Rodrigo: a Portrait (£10.99). A representative selection of the prolific composer's music, including the celebrated Adagio from the Concierto de Aranjuez. A Naxos bestseller.

Price Promotions

The quality bargain books on our centre table keep moving and we still have some copies of Andrew Bibby's Backbone of England  at a special price of £12 and Ted Hughes's Letters at £5.00 off.  We're keeping Puffin's 3-for-2 "Friends for Life" promotion of the following children's classics going:

A Little Princess; Little Women; The Secret Garden; The Wind in the Willows; Black Beauty; The Wizard of Oz; Treasure Island; Just So Stories; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Oliver Twist; and The Call of the Wild.
 

NEWS

Local Interest

A Century of Stars: Hebden Royd Red Star AFC 1908-2008 - Peter Thomas (£4.00)
Hebden Royd Red Star AFC, under its various names, is the oldest continuously-existing club in the Halifax League and celebrates its centenary in October this year. This colourful new book is full of memories, interviews, anecdotes and photographs, and due out 1st May!
To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Representation of the People (Equal Franchise) Act in 1908 when women over 21 finally won the right to vote, and the centenary of the Edwardian suffrage caravan tour when a horse-drawn caravan set off from Whitby harbour  to take the Votes for Women message out to the remotest Yorkshire dales and market towns in 1908, Jill Liddington and her bestselling Rebel Girls book will be touring Yorkshire over the summer, starting in June. We'll keep you posted, and the book is still selling well at The Book Case. It includes local heroine Lavena Saltonstall.

Local Authors

Foul Play - Tom Palmer (£5.99)
Danny is obsessed with two things: football - especially City Football Club - and investigating crimes. So when England and City footballing hero Sam Roberts is reported missing the day after Danny saw him being taken, blindfolded, into the bowels of the City FC stadium late at night, he's determined to get to the bottom of it. But is Danny getting into something he can't handle? From the Todmorden based writer and reader-developer, an exciting new story for young football fans, published by Puffin.

In Search of Thinking: Reflective Encounters in Experiencing the World - Richard Bunzl (£10.95)
What are our memories and feelings? What are ideas? What is the nature of time? How do our thoughts connect with the world at large? Is freedom of thought an illusion, or a possibility worth striving for? Hebden Bridge-based writer and musician Richard Bunzl addresses some of the oldest and most fundamental philosophical questions. Published by Rudolf Steiner Press and to be launched Sunday 8th June at the Rudolph Steiner centre, Macpelah.

The Scent Trail: A Journey of the Senses - Cecilia Lyttleton (£7.99)
Follows one woman's journey across the world as she explores the magic and history behind the ingredients of her own bespoke perfume. Sold well in hardback and now out in Bantam paperback. The author lives in Hebden Bridge.
 
British Orchids: A Site Guide - Roger Bowmer (£12.99)
A handy reference to the locations of the 51 species of wild orchid native to the British Isles; each one is covered individually, with a brief description of its habitat and natural history, and an explanation of its botanical name, with two colour photographs, and artworks provide details of specific points of interest. A full listing of sites gives national grid references for easy location, and there are complete listings of the relevant Wildlife Trusts responsible for each site. The author lives in Littleborough.

Galaxy British Book Awards 2008

Book of the Year and Author of the Year: On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan - £6.99
 
Richard and Judy Best Read of the Year: A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini - £11.99
 
Children's Book of the Year: Horrid Henry & The Abominable Snowman - Francesca Simon - £4.99
 
Newcomer of the Year: What Was Lost - Catherine O'Flynn - £8.99
 
Popular Fiction Award: The Memory Keepers Daughter- Kim Edwards - £7.99
 
All the above are in stock at The Book Case. We'll wait for the paperbacks on the others.

The Daily Mail Book Club

May's Book of the Month is Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (£7.99). In 1792 the Kellaways move from familiar rural Dorset to the tumult of a cramped, unforgiving London, jittery over the increasingly bloody French Revolution. Their neighbour is the printer, poet and radical, William Blake. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

June: Singled Out by Virginia Nicholson (£8.99)   

July: Ghost by Robert Harris (£7.99)
 

LITERARY QUIZ: another great quiz  to intrigue and delight, from Betsey and Geoffrey Parker - this month it's on Song in literature. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Wind in Poetry, click here.

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in!
 

NEW TITLES

May's hardback novels include Doris Lessing and Ismail Kadare, and amongst paperbacks, we'll have Alexander McCall Smith, William Trevor, Matthew Kneale, Barry Pilton, an archaeological dig, a camel bookmobile, a Venetian glassblower, the Great Hunger and a thriller set in the 1930s .
 
Reissued are Dumas (including the little-known Last Cavalier), two Dostoyevskys, Turgenev, "East Lynne" ("Coward! Sneak! May good men shun him, from henceforth!"), lots of Wodehouse, two WWII novels and a Daphne du Maurier.
 
Click here for the full list.

Non-fiction:
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: APRIL 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case

Peter Thomas’s history of Hebden Bridge and area is back at number one at The Book Case, with three other books of immediate local interest, and three more Yorkshire or Northern ones. A novel, a sheep identification book and a couple plus their whippet on a narrow boat in the south-eastern USA make up the diverse remainder.

1. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. Back at the top, this illustrated history of the town and area, showing how we have changed over the centuries. A Royd Press publication by a well-known local author.

2. Milltown Memories: the Upper Calder Valley Captured on Camera, £2.50-£2.80. We’re now selling back issues of this well-illustrated quarterly journal featuring aspects of local history and old photographs, and they’re going well!

3. The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed - Andrew Bibby and John Morrison, £12.00 at The Book Case. Lovely illustrated hardback by local author and journalist Andrew Bibby who walks the route of the Pennine Watershed exploring its history, ecology, geography and culture, with photos by ex-HB photographer and author John Morrison.

4. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper Calder Valley, £5.00. Now permanently in our bestseller list, this well-researched and illustrated history of watermills in the area.

5. Engleby - Sebastian Faulks, £7.99. Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think and is devoid of scruple or self-pity. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power. Daily Mail Book of the Month.

6. Know Your Sheep - Jack Byard, £4.99. Colour photographs of and notes on the 41 breeds of sheep most likely to be found on British farms. There can’t be an unlogged sheep in the district by now. Tractors following soon!

7. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. Our first publication still selling well, reporting on the textile workers of West Yorkshire in 1849, with lots of graphic detail and interviews. Royd Press.

8. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. The exciting 1968 locally-based children’s classic about the Cragg Vale Coiners. The second in our Tales from the Tops series, "Ned Carver in Danger", about the a boy who joins the Halifax Luddites for the 1812 assault on a mill, is just out. Royd Press.

9. Pies and Prejudice - Stuart Maconie, £6.99. Entertaining love letter to the North, finding out where the cliches end and the truth begins. Hebden Bridge gets a mention!

10. Narrow Dog to Indian River - Terry Darlington, £12.99 at The Book Case. The couple who took their whippet to Carcassonne by narrow boat are now in the south-east of the USA, navigating their English narrowboat from Carolina to Florida.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"No form can hold down what a novel can do because once within its walls, its borders are open."

Robert Colls, "England's history boy" (Melvyn Bragg) in Prospect, May 2008.

APRIL 2008

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

The launch of The Backbone of England by Andrew Bibby and John Morrison at Hebden Bridge Little Theatre went splendidly - thanks to publishers Francis Lincoln for their help. We are still offering the book at the special price of £12.00.

Our Opinions board has a fresh crop of comments. Being enjoyed were Halldor Laxness's Atom Station, Kathleen Jamie's Findings, Elizabeth Goudge's Little White Horse, Anne Tyler's Digging to America, David Mitchell's Ghostwritten (disliked by someone else last month), Nella Last's War and Marina Lewycka's History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Not being enjoyed was Ian McEwan's Atonement.

Good news for those of you missing the Literary Quiz is that the reigning champions, Betsey and Geoffrey Parker, have sent in a splendid collection for your delight, and they'll be unveiled over the coming months, starting with a lovely one on Wind. See below.

If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS

We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction, a children's book and a CD.

Adult fiction: The Blood of Flowers - Anita Amirrezvani (£6.99) Set in seventeenth-century Iran, the story of a village girl whose dreams of marriage end on the death of her father. She and her mother are reduced to servitude until she reveals a talent for designing carpets. Lots of fascinating detail about traditional carpet-making.

Adult non-fiction: The Gough Map - the Earliest Road Map of Great Britain? - Nick Millea (£25.00) Illustrated hardback about the Bodleian Library treasure, the earliest surviving map to show routes across Britain and show recognisable coastlines 650 years ago.

Children: Snakehead - Anthony Horowitz (£6.99): Now finally in paperback, Alex Rider’s latest adventure sees him on a secret mission in South East Asia. Another page-turning extravaganza from the master of action-adventure. Ages: 9+ yrs
 
CD: Elgar - Part Songs (Naxos, £5.99). A wide-ranging selection featuring twenty of Elgar's finest songs, including "My Love Dwelt in a Northern Land". Currently Naxos's best-selling CD.

Price Promotions

In addition to our special price on Andrew Bibby's Backbone of England  (£12), we still have a few copies of Ted Hughes's Letters at £5.00 off, and we're continuing to promote children's classics, with a 3-for-2 offer on the following "Friends for Life":
 
A Little Princess; Little Women; The Secret Garden; The Wind in the Willows; Black Beauty; The Wizard of Oz; Treasure Island; Just So Stories; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Oliver Twist; and The Call of the Wild.
 
See the colourful display at the back of the children's section!
 
NEWS

Local Interest

Ned Carver in Danger - Phyllis Bentley (£5.95)
The second of our reprints of the respected Halifax novelist's exciting historical novels for young people - a 13-year-old boy starts work at a Calder Valley cropping shop in 1812 just as his friend's mill-owning father introduces the cropping frames that will put his skilled companions out of work. Ned's sympathies are with the Luddites who plot violence.

A Century of Stars: Hebden Royd Red Star AFC 1908-2008 - Peter Thomas (£4.00)
Hebden Royd Red Star AFC, under its various names, is the oldest continuously-existing club in the Halifax League and celebrates its centenary in October this year. Full of memories, interviews, anecdotes and photographs, and hopefully out later this month.
Milltown Memories - back issues (£2.50 or £2.80 each)
We're delighted to have in stock copies of the Upper Calder Valley quarterly magazine featuring aspects of local history and old photographs: a list of contents can be found at http://www.milltownmemories.org.uk/. We don't have issue 2. Milltown Memories ran from 2002 to 2006
 
Facsimile Mill Rules poster of 1851 from Waterfoot Mill, Haslingden, £1.00
21 rules laid down for the Hands, covering lateness, untidiness, damage, Talking, behaviour in the Necessaries, Oaths and insolent language, Smoking and especially personal cleanliness: “The Masters would recommend that all their workpeople Wash themselves every morning, but they shall Wash themselves at least twice every week, and any found not washed will be fined 3d for each offence.”

Local Authors

Farewell Britannia: A Family Saga of Roman Britain - Simon Young
From brilliant young ex-Hebden Bridge historian a multi-generational family, part Roman, part Celtic (invaders intermarrying with natives) to tell the dramatic story of 400 years of Roman rule in Britain. Now in paperback. (£8.99)

World Book Day

Went with a swing! -  Where's Wally was the most popular of the £1 special books. Local schools liked the new arrangement whereby we supplied a range of books direct to the schools for the children to choose from.

Spread the Word: Books to Talk About

Boy A  by Jonathan Trigell  was voted the Book to Talk About - Jack has spent most of his life in juvenile institutions, to be released with a new name, new job, new life. 

Ishq & Mushq by Priya Basil, about a Sikh family who come from Uganda to England, and Salt And Honey by Candi Miller, about a tribal girl in South Africa, were the runners up. However we had several customers comment on Gods in Alabama by Joshilyn Jackson - a girl in America's Deep South finds her future threatened by an event from her youth. All in stock at The Book Case, £7.99 each.

http://www.worldbookday.com/spreadtheword/

Richard and Judy Book Club 2008

Stand by for the Galaxy British Book Awards on 9th April! We have a selection from the various shortlists and a free magazine on our centre table. Click here (Nibbies) or here (Guardian) for the full shortlists and we'll be displaying (most of) the winners.

The Daily Mail Book Club

April's Book of the Month is Engleby by Sebastian Faulks (£7.99).  Mike Engleby says things that others dare not even think and is devoid of scruple or self-pity. Yet beneath the disturbing surface of his observations lies an unfolding mystery of gripping power. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

May: Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (£7.99)
June: Singled Out by Virginia Nicholson (£8.99)   
July: Ghost by Robert Harris (£7.99)

LITERARY QUIZ: hurrah for Betsey and Geoffrey Parker who have supplied us with a wonderful new collection of quizzes to keep us all happy for months. This month it's a real corker on Wind in literature. To find it online, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm
 
For the full answers to last month's quiz, on Underpants in literature, click here.

And if anyone else would like to send in a set of five quotations on any theme to make a literary quiz, please email them in!
 

NEW TITLES

April's hardback novels include Salman Rushdie and Will Self, and amongst paperbacks, we'll have Sebastian Faulks, Isabel Allende, Blake Morrison, Primo Levi, Nick Hornby, Niall Griffiths, Joanne Harris, Tolkien and Andrew Martin amongst a good range of others - click here for the full list.

Non-fiction:
For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: MARCH 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case

The Book Case’s last month’s bestseller, A History of Hebden Bridge, was nudged aside by the Pennine Watershed, with a further four books of local interest also appearing in the top ten. There were also three enjoyable novels, and of course the £1 children’s specials from World Book Day.

1. The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed - Andrew Bibby and John Morrison, £12.00 at The Book Case: Local author and journalist Andrew Bibby walks the route of the Pennine Watershed exploring its history, ecology, geography and culture - photos by ex-HB photographer and author John Morrison. There was a very successful launch at the Little Theatre and we still have copies of the book at a very special price.

2. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99: From ancient times to the present day, an illustrated history of the town and area, showing how we have changed over the centuries. A Royd Press publication.

3. World Book Day Special: Where’s Wally? £1.00: This was the most popular of the World Book Day Specials, and the other "Where’s Wally?" books are also selling well (as is "Where’s Bin Laden?" for the adults).

4. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper Calder Valley, £5.00. The fame is spreading of this colour-illustrated pamphlet from Hebden Bridge Alternative Technology Centre with the history of watermills in the area - people from afar come in and ask for it!

5. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95: Our first publication, reporting on the textile workers of West Yorkshire in 1849, with lots of graphic detail and interviews. Royd Press.

6. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95: The exciting 1968 children’s classic about the Cragg Vale Coiners. The second in the series, "Ned Carver in Danger", about the local Luddites, is just out. Royd Press.

7. Two Caravans - Marina Lewycka, £7.99: A field of strawberries in Kent ...And sitting in it two caravans - one for the men and one for the women. The residents are from all over. But these days England's not so pleasant for immigrants.

8. Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones, £7.99: On a small village on a lush tropical island in the South Pacific, a reclusive white man introduces the children to Dickens as war encroaches. Booker shortlisted and one of Richard and Judy’s Best Reads of the Year.

9. Gone Walkabout - Anna Carlisle, £6.00: The ever-popular book of local walks - the weather must be improving!

10. Miracle at Speedy Motors - Alexander McCall Smith (£12.99 at The Book Case) When Precious Ramotswe she receives a threatening anonymous letter, she is compelled to reconsider her belief in a kind world and good neighbours. But there are very few troubles that cannot be solved with kindness. Hardback.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,
The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com  
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"There was ... no other furniture and no pictures or ornaments. But the room did not need them because of the books, that stood there upon the shelves breathing out a friendliness that seemed to furnish and ornament the room ... Maria had no doubt that the loving usage that had turned the books into living creatures was Old Parson’s."

Elizabeth Goudge, The Little White Horse, ch. 7, 1946. To be released as a film this year, but apparently with a race-against-time quest in place of the book’s message to slow down and adapt to local rhythms.
Pennine Backbone, Literary Underpants and the Kiwi Rabbit, 19 March
Dear Book Case customer or friend,
 
A reminder about tomorrow's launch of Andrew Bibby and John Morrison's splendid new book, The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed.
 
The Book Case is hosting a launch at the Little Theatre, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge, on Thursday 20th March at 6.30pm.
 

The book's now available for purchase in the shop at our special price of £12.00 and of course it will also be available at the launch where Andrew will sign copies.

The famous Book Case Literary Quiz has been revived by Betsey and Geoffrey Parker who have sent a selection of Literary Underpants. Answers next month!

And Rabbit the Rabbit is now back home in New Zealand, thanks to Mike and Christine from Russell Dean; see photos of the reunion with Elliott here. 

MARCH 2008

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

 
It's an eventful month for books! On 6th March is World Book Day. £1 Book Tokens have been distributed to all school children in the UK and Ireland and can be redeemed from 3-30th March 2008 inclusive. See below for the list of £1 specials for all ages and the "Spread the Word - Books to Talk About" for adults. 
 
Well-known Hebden Bridge author and journalist Andrew Bibby collaborated with ex-Hebden Bridge photographer John Morrison to produce a splendid new book on "Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed", entitled The Backbone of England. This will be launched at the Little Theatre, Holme Street, Hebden Bridge, on Thursday 20th March at 6.30pm. Entry is free, and the book, normally £20, will be at an astonishing special price of £12.00 while stocks last.

It’s been a month or so since we reported on our Opinions board and we now have a fine collection. Being enjoyed were Ursula le Guin’s Farthest Shore, John Hillaby’s Journey through Britain, Robert MacFarlane’s Wild Places (twice), Sri Karunamayi’s Blessed Souls, Robert Luhr’s Skakanstantomaten, James Morris’s Venice, Carla van Raay’s God’s Call Girl, James Robertson’s Last Testament of Gideon Mack, C. Nicholl’s The Lodger - Shakespeare on Silver Street, Roger Deakin’s Waterlog and Wildwood, Rose Tremain’s Restoration, Ian McEwan’s Atonement, Audrey Niffenegger’s Time Traveller’s Wife, Christopher Rus’s Will, Jonathan Bagley’s All my Ghosts, Mark Haddon’s A Spot of Bother, Frank McManus’s March and Muster, Kressman’s Address Unknown and Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor. Not being enjoyed were Margaret Atwood’s Blind Assassin, Germaine Greer’s Shakespeare’s Wife, Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley (does anyone?), David Mitchell’s Ghostwritten and Nabokov’s Ada or Ardor (by the same person who reported enjoying it).

Marianne Goss in Chicago is setting up a site promoting upbeat novels at  www.positivelygoodreads.com - a cousin for our nice novels page which lists among other things books where "characters overcome obstacles and have the will to live and to celebrate life"
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS
 
We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book.

Adult fiction: Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith (£10.99 at The BookCase). KGB Officer Leo is blindly faithful to the Party line – until he is ordered to arrest his own wife. Ridley Scott has bought the film rights. There is a connection to an ex-organiser of Hebden Bridge Arts Festival!
Adult non-fiction: Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas (£5.99) This very readable history of the area  by local author Peter Thomas takes you from early times to the present day. Illustrated.
 
Children: Collected Poems for Children - Ted Hughes (£10.99) Now available in paperback, this collection brings together the poems Ted Hughes wrote for children throughout his life. They are arranged by volume starting with those for the very young and moving up to the ones aimed at older children. Beautifully illustrated throughout by the award-winning Raymond Briggs.
 
CD: John Milton - The Great Poets (Naxos £8.99). This collection of John Milton's finest poetry marks the 400th anniversary of the poet's birth. Read by Samantha Bond and Derek Jacobi, it brings together his brilliant early poems, including Il Penseroso, L’Allegro and Lycidas, as well as some of the finest and most touching works of his maturity, such as On His Blindness and Methought I saw my late espoused saint,  with extracts from Comus and Samson Agonistes.
 
Price Promotions
 
Children are in for another treat in March - Puffin are relaunching their excellent classics imprint, and while stocks last, we will be selling the following, with splendid new covers, 3 for 2:
 
A Little Princess; Little Women; The Secret Garden; The Wind in the Willows; Black Beauty; The Wizard of Oz; Treasure Island; Just So Stories; The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Oliver Twist; and The Call of the Wild.
 
We've had two more big deliveries of good books at silly prices - see our centre table (until they get pushed off by World Book Day) and around the shop.

NEWS

Local Interest

The Backbone of England: Landscape and Life on the Pennine Watershed - Andrew Bibby, photos John Morrison (£20)
To be launched, later this month. Hebden Bridge-based journalist Andrew Bibby walks the route of the watershed in England that separates the water flowing westwards to the Irish Sea and the Atlantic from the water heading towards the North Sea and explores various aspects of the area's history, ecology, geology and culture, and meets many of the people whose lives are shaped by the landscape. Ex-Hebden Bridge John Morrison supplies atmospheric colour photos. To be launched in Hebden Bridge just before Easter - see above.

Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas (£5.99)
As Royd Press, we're delighted to be publishing an updated and revised version of a very readable history of the area first written by local author Peter Thomas back in the 1970s. Now in stock and selling briskly.

Local Authors

Collected Poems for Children - Ted Hughes
Now in paperback version. The book is presented by reading age, beginning with poems for younger readers and working up to Hughes's material for young adults. Illustrated by Raymond Briggs. (£9.99)

One Autumn: work, family life and Rugby League in the 1990s - Geoff Lee (£9.95)
Last in a series of four novels on the general theme of Northern working-class life in the Rugby League heartlands in the second half of the twentieth century, from a former Halifax draughtsman. 1992 and 1993 were tough years in the south Lancashire town of Ashurst.

Local Publishers

Arc Press of Todmorden have published an unusual book, Speech with Humans, in which American poet and jazz drummer Clark Coolidge and Leeds-born surrealist cartoonist Glen Baxter collaborate in a quirky combination of text and pictures. £9.99 at The Book Case.

Local Book Events

There's a fascinating exhibition of Tenniel's work, "Looking in Wonderland" at the Piece Hall, Halifax, till 9th March. Prints from the original wooden blocks for "Alice" are on display, along with interesting explanatory comments.

The Todmorden Library event with Stella Duffy and Paul Magrs was a great success, with Stella Duffy's new hardback novel making it into our bestsellers. We have a couple of signed copies ....

National Book Events

World Book Day
 
This year's £1 specials for children are as follows, available at The Book Case:
 
  • Paddington Rules the Waves by Michael Bond, 2+
  • Princess Poppy: The Fancy Dress Party by Janey Louise Jones, 3+
  • Magic Kitten: A Very Special Friend by Sue Bentley, 6+
  • Adventure According to Humphrey by Betty G Birney, 6+
  • Where's Wally? by Martin Hanford, 7+
  • Jane Blonde - The Perfect Spylet by Jill Marshall, 7+
  • Captain Underpants and the Attack of the Talking Toilets by Dav Pilkey, 7-12
  • Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman, 10+
  • CHERUB: Dark Sun by Robert Muchamore, 11+
Spread the Word: Books to Talk About
In conjunction with World Book Day, an appeal was made for "hidden gems" and "books to spark discussion" for adults, and the shortlist is as follows - all in stock at The Book Case. The winner will be announced on 6th March. Find out more at http://www.worldbookday.com/spreadtheword/
 
Before I Die - Jenny Downham, £10.99
Boy A  - Jonathan Trigell, £7.99
Death Of A Murderer - Rupert Thomson, £7.99
Gods In Alabama - Joshilyn Jackson, £6.99
In Cold Daylight - Pauline Fathom Rowson, £6.99
Ishq & Mushq - Priya Basil, £7.99
Lint - Steve Aylett, £7.99
One Night At The Call Centre - Chetan Bhagat, £6.99
Playing With The Moon - Eliza Graham, £7.99
Salt And Honey - Candi Miller, £7.99
Speaking Of Love - Angela Young, £7.99
 
Richard and Judy Book Club 2008
 
It's the last month for the current run of Richard and Judy titles. The book club forms the shortlist for the Best Read award at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2008. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on the 9th April.

March 5th  - Blood River - Tim Butcher- £7.99. When "Daily Telegraph" correspondent Tim Butcher was sent to cover Africa in 2000 he quickly became obsessed with the idea of recreating H. M. Stanley's famous expedition - but travelling alone.

March 12th - Welsh Girl - Peter Davies - £7.99. In 1944, a German Jewish refugee is sent to Wales to interview Rudolf Hess; in Snowdonia, a seventeen-year-old girl, the daughter of a fiercely nationalistic shepherd, dreams of the bright lights of an English city; and in a nearby POW camp, a German soldier struggles to reconcile his surrender with his sense of honour.

 
The Daily Mail Book Club
March's Book of the Month is Resistance by Owen Sheers (£7.99).  It is 1944, Germany has invaded Britain, and a group of Welsh farmers' wives wake up to discover that their husbands are gone. A portrait of a community under siege. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.
April: Engleby by Sebastian Faulks (£7.99)
May: Burning Bright by Tracy Chevalier (£7.99)
June: Singled Out by Virginia Nicholson (£8.99)    
July: Ghost by Robert Harris (£7.99)


NEW TITLES 

February's hardback novels include Louis de Bernieres, Alexander McCall Smith, Paulo Coelho and Tom Rob Smith, and amongst paperbacks, there are Marina Lewycka, Anne Enright, Robert Harris, Nicola Barker, Paulo Coelho, Fay Weldon, Iain Banks, Nicci French and more. Reissues include Maupassant, Gaskell, Alcott and a Naxos audio version of E. Nesbit's Enchanted Castle.

Non-fiction:

For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
 
_____________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: FEBRUARY 2008's bestsellers at The Book Case

Six local interest titles made The Book Case’s top ten in February - four of them from our own stable. A library event produced good sales of a hardback novel, and Khaled Hosseini and Patrick Gale emerged as our Richard & Judy winners.

1. Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas, £5.99. From ancient times to the present day, an illustrated history of the town and area, showing how we have changed over the centuries. A Royd Press publication.

2. A Cotton-Fibre Halo - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £7.99. Companion volume to Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents, covering the textile workers of Manchester and the surrounding area in 1849. Young journalist Angus Reach revolutionised investigative reporting but sadly died at 36. Royd Press.

3. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. The exciting 1968 children’s classic by the popular Halifax author about the Cragg Vale Coiners. Our next Phyllis Bentley reprint will be "Ned Carver in Danger", about the local Luddites. Royd Press.

4. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. Our first publication, reporting on the textile workers of West Yorkshire in 1849, with lots of interviews. Royd Press.

5. Room of Lost Things - Stella Duffy, £14.99
Author Stella Duffy appeared with Paul Magrs at a Calderdale Libraries event at Todmorden Library. We a couple of signed copies of this new novel, set in south London.

6. Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini, £7.99. In 1970s Afghanistan, twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon. Now a film.

7. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini, £11.99. From the author of "The Kite Runner", a gripping drama of beauty, destruction, sadness, and suspense, a chronicle of the last thirty years of Afghan history, and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, and the salvation to be found in love. A Richard and Judy choice.

8. Notes from an Exhibition - Patrick Gale, £7.99. When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up. A Richard and Judy choice.

9. The Forest of Bowland: with Pendle Hill and the West Pennine Moors - Andrew Bibby, £7.99. A Freedom to Roam guide from the local author and journalist, produced in association with the Rambers’ Association.

10. Pies and Prejudce - Stuart Maconie, £5.95. Exiled Northerner tours the North (including Hebden Bridge) to find his own Northern soul ... He approves of John Morrison’s Milltown writings! Now in a mass market edition.

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"What matters to me is that every time that book [Catcher in the Rye] and I get together, it's like being in the best company ever. Fine: dazzle your pals with your (wafer-thin) grasp of why Middlemarch is the greatest English novel. But this is a delight that will last only seconds; reading Middlemarch will give you hours (and perhaps a lifetime) of deep satisfaction."

Rachel Cooke, "Is reading really just about making you look cool?", The Observer,  2 December 2007. She is commenting on Pierre Bayard's book How to Talk about Books You Haven't Read.

Spelling-binding Saturday Play by local author

Local playwright and poet Amanda Dalton's adaptation of Francis Beeding's 1927 murder mystery The House of Dr Edwardes, upon which Hitchcock's film Spellbound was based, will be broadcast as this week's Saturday Play on Radio 4 from 14.30-15.30. Staff at Landry House in North Yorkshire are anticipating the arrival of Dr Murchison, who is to replace the retiring head, Dr Edwardes. The rather odd new doctor arrives and forms an unlikely but seemingly strong immediate bond with new trainee Dr Constance Sedgewick.  

And our newest publication, A Cotton-Fibre Halo - Manchester and the Textile Districts in 1849 by Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, is now in stock, price £7.99. Journalist Angus Reach, who died in his thirties, didn't mince his words in describing what he saw around Manchester, and his reports were described as "an unparalleled exploit in journalism":

FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER

Dear Book Case customer or friend,  

We have two pieces of good news - we didn't get flooded recently despite Market Street being under water (Anna had the clever idea of putting the sandbags on the edge of the pavement so the bow-wave of speeding cars didn't have room to tsunami) and Lost Rabbit is going home! The forlorn toy rabbit that has been gracing our shelves over the past year turns out to be a Kiwi, and we were astonished to get a call from New Zealand claiming him for four-year-old Elliott who has been missing him badly. He made the local press (Halifax Courier, Hebden Bridge Times) and now has his own webpage.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS
 
We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book.

Adult fiction: Independent People - Halldor Laxness (£8.99) Superb, darkly funny Icelandic novel, telling the story of a stubborn and grim sheep farmer determined to be independent, come what may. The author won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1955.
 
Adult non-fiction: A Cotton-Fibre Halo: Manchester and the Textile Districts in 1849 - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin (£7.95) A highly readable collection of reports on life and work in Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham, Egerton, Macclesfield, Middleton and Saddleworth in 1849 with many interviews and accounts of home and mill conditions, reading habits and the drugging of babies with opium. Published by Royd Press at The Book Case. Due in soon.
 
Children: The Diamond of Drury Lane - Julia Golding (£5.99). Cat Royal is an orphan who lives at the back of the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. She mingles with the high and low of society, from the actors onstage to the lords and ladies in the stalls to the barrow boys in the grimy marketplace. A reissue of the multi award winning novel, available now for the first time in paperback, Set in 1790s Covent Garden, it's packed with local colour and authentic detail. Ages: 9-12 yrs.
 
CD:  Enkelit (£12). From the sensational locally-based upper-voice group who performed so memorably at Square Chapel last year, their first CD. They sing contemporary vocal music primarily from Finland, strongly influenced by folk traditions and characterisd by beauty and melancholy. The powerful title track tells the moving and terrifying story of the experience of a woman who loses her twin babies. The leader, Richard Pomfret, is Todmorden-based.

Price Promotions

Things are a little dishevelled in the shop at present owing to stock taking; it's all there but not necessarily in the right place. We're still selling Ted Hughes's Letters at £5 off, and a big display of bargain books on the centre table.

NEWS

Local Interest

Hebden Bridge: a short history of the area - Peter Thomas (£5.99)
As Royd Press, we're delighted to be publishing an updated and revised version of a very readable history of the area first written by local author Peter Thomas back in the 1970s! We expect it later this month.

A Cotton-Fibre Halo: Manchester and the Textile Districts in 1849 - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin (£7.95)
Companion to our "Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents" which covered the West Yorkshire textile districts, Angus Bethune Reach's graphic reports on Manchester, Ashton-under-Lyne, Oldham, Egerton, Macclesfield, Middleton and Saddleworth with many interviews, accounts of home and mill conditions, reading habits and the drugging of babies with opium. Published by Royd Press at The Book Case.

We are delighted that our publication Phyllis Bentley's "Gold Pieces", about the Cragg Vale coiners, has been selected by the magazine Northern Life as their Book Club choice.

Moves to have a plaque on the White Lion commemorating Liszt's breakfast there were unfortunately scheduled  at the same time as the Council discussion of Garden Street carpark. The breakfast is commemorated in Chris Aspin's book of light verse, The Jingle Book, £4.99 at The Book Case.

And a reminder to everyone of Malcolm Bull's Calderdale Companion, a highly informative website packed with information and trivia about Calderdale. Contributions welcome!

Local Authors

Two Marriages by Glyn Hughes (£7.00)

From the prize-winning local author, a long autobiographical poem in two sections, the first of Hughes’s books to be illustrated by the writer himself who began his career at art school. NOW IN STOCK.

Poetry in the Making - Ted Hughes (£9.99)
A reissue of his 1967 publication which accompanied his broadcasts to schools. The purpose throughout is to lead on, via discussion of the poems, to some direct encouragement to the children to think and write for themselves. He makes the whole venture seem enjoyable, and somehow urgent.

The Future Control of Food: A Guide to International Negotiations and Rules on Intellectual Property, Biodiversity and Food Security - ed. Geoff Tansey; Tasmin Rajotte (£18.99)
The first wide-ranging guide to the key issues of intellectual property and ownership, genetics, biodiversity and food security - "the best single summary of the political choices facing food and agriculture policymakers that has been written in this decade". Hebden Bridge-based writer and consultant Geoff Tansey is working for a fair and sustainable food system.

Local Music

Enkelit CD (£12)

From the sensational locally-based upper-voice group who performed so memorably at Square Chapel last year, their first CD. They sing contemporary vocal music primarily from Finland, strongly influenced by folk traditions and characterisd by beauty and melancholy. See their website at http://www.enkelit.org.uk/. The leader, Richard Pomfret, is Todmorden-based.

Local Book Events

Calderdale Libraries at hosting an event on February 16th 11.30am-2pm at Todmorden Library, with authors Paul Magrs and Stella Duffy.

National Book Events

Richard and Judy Book Club 2008
 
As usual, Richard and Judy have been making their mark on the bestsellers. The book club forms the shortlist for the Best Read award at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2008. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on the 9th April.
 

February

6th - Notes from An Exhibition - Patrick Gale - £7.99 - A Richard and Judy choice. When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up.

13th - We Came To The End- Joshua Ferris - £7.99 - Office colleagues spend their days - and too many of their nights - at work. A book about sitting all morning next to someone you cross the road to avoid at lunch.

20th Feb - Visible World- Mark Slouka- £7.99 - To a boy growing up in New York, his parents' memories of their Czech homeland seem to belong to another world; it's only when he visits Prague as an adult it all begins to make sense.

27th Feb - Mister Pip- Lloyd Jones - £7.99 - A reclusive white man reopens the school on a Pacific island, planning to introduce the children to Dickens. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. An unforgettable tale of survival by story.

 

March:

5th  - Blood River - Tim Butcher- £7.99

12th - Welsh Girl - Peter Davies - £7.99
 
Costa Book Award 2007
 
The winner was A L Kennedy's fifth novel Day, the story of a former RAF prisoner-of-war returning to Germany to confront his demons. On sale at The Book Case at £5 off.
 
The Daily Mail Book Club
January's Book of the Month is The Editor's Wife by Clare Chambers (£10).  When aspiring novelist Christopher Flinders drops out of university to write his masterpiece, his family is sceptical. But when he is taken up by the London editor Owen Goddard and his wife Diana, it seems success is just around the corner; but then, on the brink of realising his dream, he makes a desperate misjudgement which results in disaster. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.

Oneword Radio
We were sorry to hear of the demise of the books digital radio station, Oneword Radio. The station, which could be accessed through broadband as well as digital receivers, was devoted to serialised readings of classics and discussions about books.
 

NEW TITLES 

February's hardback novels include Joanna Trollope and Peter Carey, and amongst paperbacks, there are Ian Rankin, Tracy Chevalier, Alexander McCall Smith, Jane Gardam and David Nobbs and more. Reissues include a Dostoevsky and a splendid Naxos audio version of The Sword in Stone.

Non-fiction:

For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.
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What you've been buying: JANUARY 2008's at The Book Case

Richard and Judy have exerted their usual spell at The Book Case, so there are an unusual number of novels in our top ten, with four books of local interest

1. Power in the Landscape: water-powered mills in the Upper Calder Valley, £5. This colour-illustrated pamphlet from Hebden Bridge Alternative Technology Centre with the history of watermills in the area is back at the top. There is an accompanying DVD and/or CD.

2. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan, £6.99. A honeymoon couple at a seaside hotel in 1962. A story about how the entire course of a life can be changed by a gesture not made or a word not spoken.

3. A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini, £11.99. A Richard and Judy choice. From the author of "The Kite Runner", a gripping drama of beauty, destruction, sadness, and suspense, a chronicle of the last thirty years of Afghan history, and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, and the salvation to be found in love.

4. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. Our reprint of the exciting 1968 children’s classic about the Cragg Vale Coiners. Our next Phyllis Bentley reprint will be "Ned Carver in Danger", about the local Luddites.

5. Mr Pip - Lloyd Jones, £7.99. A Richard and Judy choice. A reclusive white man reopens the school on a Pacific island, planning to introduce the children to Dickens. But on an island at war, the power of fiction has dangerous consequences. An unforgettable tale of survival by story.

6. Weird Calderdale - Paul Weatherhead, £7.99. We’re delighted this account of strange and incredible events from the Calderdale area is again available and selling strongly.

7. Notes from an Exhibition - Patrick Gale, £7.99. A Richard and Judy choice. When troubled artist Rachel Kelly dies painting obsessively in her attic studio, her saintly husband and adult children have more than the usual mess to clear up.

8. Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid, £30 (£25 at The Book Case) This selection begins when Ted Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of his resolutely private life. Critics’ choice for 2007. In the same spot as last month.

9. Kite Runner - K Hosseini, £7.99. In 1970s Afghanistan, twelve-year-old Amir is desperate to win the local kite-fighting tournament and his loyal friend Hassan promises to help him. But neither of the boys can foresee what will happen to Hassan that afternoon. Now a film.

10. Folktales from Calderdale Vol. 1 - John Billingsley, £7.50.
The Witches of Eagle Crag, the Cliviger Boggart, the Bride Stones, the Eve Stone, Stoodley Pike, Great Rock, Tom Bell's Cave, the Miller's Grave and Churn Milk Joan are included. The first edition is nearly sold out!

Best wishes from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

"The best storage system we have is the book. Few artefacts have lasted as enduringly - and few will. If you dropped Chaucer into the middle of Oxford Street today he wouldn't have a clue what was going on, but if you took him to a bookshop he'd know exactly what they were, even be able to find his own work." - John Sutherland

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7178598.stm

JANUARY 2008

Dear Book Case customer or friend,

We hope you had a good Christmas break, and if it was rather too good, many of January's books aim to help you detox and become fit, lissom, calm and positive - see our MBS section below, or the full version at http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm
We have been sorry to hear of several deaths during December: that of author and journalist Shelley Rohde - Lowry's biographer and publisher of the Lowry card games; Beryl Williams, known to many and who worked at the Book Case in the 1980s, and Rita Collier, a customer who had been with us since the beginning, much liked by the staff. They will all be missed.
If you do not wish to receive this monthly mailing, please click on Reply and type CANCEL in the Subject box.)
 

THIS MONTH'S FEATURED BOOKS
 
We highlight every month books we think are of particular interest: from adult fiction and non-fiction and a children's book.

Adult fiction: On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan (£6.99) Now into paperback, the bestselling Booker-shortlisted novel about an unhappy honeymoon at a seaside hotel.
 
Adult non-fiction: The Death of Woman Wang by Jonathan Spence (£7.99) A vivid picture of provincial China in the late 17th century. Against an endless cycle of floods, plagues, crop failures, banditry and heavy taxation, a tenacious tax collector, an irascible farmer, and an unhappy wife act out a poignant drama at whose climax the wife, having run away from her husband, returns to him, only to die at his hands.
 
Children's: Airman by Eion Colfer (£9.99). Conor Broekhart was born flying. For him flight was more than just a dream, it was his destiny. In one dark night on the island of Great Saltee, a cruel and cunning betrayal destroyed his life and stole his future. Now Conor must win the race for flight, to save his family and to right a terrible wrong... 10+.
 
Price Promotions
We continue to offer Ted Hughes's Letters at £5 off, and we finally have room to display some of our selection of bargain books on the centre table, with more in the MBS section.

NEWS

Local Authors

Twenty More Parish Poems - Geoffrey Whiteley (£4.00)
From a local author and ex-English teacher, more poems inspired by memories, local scenes and Biblical references.

Local Music

From Open Mic Surgery based at the Stubbing Wharf pub, Hebden Bridge, a commemorative CD in tribute to Josh Phillips and Rob Armstrong, on sale at The Book Case, price £7.00.

National Book Events

Richard and Judy Book Club 2008
 
The nation’s favourite book club returns in 2008 with 10 new reads to keep us entertained through January to March. The book club will once again form the shortlist for the Best Read award at the Galaxy British Book Awards 2008. The winner will be announced at an awards ceremony on the 9th April.
 

January:

9th - Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini - £11.99 - From the author of “The Kite Runner”, a gripping drama of beauty, destruction, sadness, and suspense, a chronicle of the last thirty years of Afghan history, and a deeply moving story of family, friendship, and the salvation to be found in love.

16th - Random Acts Of Heroic Love - Danny Scheinmann - £7.99 - Leo Deakin wakes up in a hospital somewhere in South America, his girlfriend Eleni is dead and Leo doesn't know where he is or how Eleni died. Moritz Daniecki is a fugitive from a Siberian POW camp separated him from his village and his sweetheart. The author paints a dramatic portrait of two men sustaining their lives through the memory of love.:p>

23rd - Rose Of Sebastopol - Katharine McMahon - £6.99 - Quiet Mariella leaves Victorian London to search for her surgeon fiance and her headstrong cousin Rosa in the shattered landscape of the Crimea

30th  - Quiet Belief In Angels - R J Ellory - £6.99 - A new crime thriller from the author of Candlemoth and City Of Lies

February

6th - Notes from An Exhibition - Patrick Gale - £7.99 :p>

13th - We Came To The End- Joshua Ferris - £7.99 :p>

20th Feb - Visible World- Mark Slouka- £7.99 :p>

27th Feb - Mister Pip- Lloyd Jones - £7.99

 

March:

5th  - Blood River - Tim Butcher- £7.99 :p>

12th - Welsh Girl - Peter Davies - £7.99
 
The Daily Mail Book Club
January's Book of the Month is In My Father's House by Miranda Seymour (£7.99). The first "posh misery memoir" - an extraordinary account of Miranda Seymour's father George, and his relationships with her, her mother and his male lover. A beautifully written and heart-wrenching story of misplaced love and its devastating consequences. The Book Case will accept Daily Mail National Book Tokens against one-half of the cost of this month's recommended title.
 
February's choice is Editor's Wife by Clare Chambers.

NEW TITLES 

2008 starts with some good new novels, including Garrison Keillor and Bernard Schlink in hardback fiction, and amongst paperbacks, Ian McEwan, Doris Lessing, Thomas Keneally, Jim Crace, Fred Vargas, Andrea Camilleri and Boris Akunin, plus two about Chinese immigrants, one translated from the Armenian and more. Reissues include Sweeney Todd, classic horror stories and Victorian/Edwardian crime stories.

Non-fiction:

For a fuller listing, click here: http://www.bookcase.co.uk/new_title_bc.htm

E-mail, phone or fax us to reserve any of these new titles.

LITERARY QUIZ: You can find the answers to the last quiz - Lions in literature - at http://www.bookcase.co.uk/competition.htm and the full past seven years' worth, with answers, at http://www.btinternet.com/~bookcase/PastQuizzes.htm#Quizzes
 
Congratulations to Betsey and Geoffrey Parker for again walking off with the crown (and a £20 Book Token); they now enter the Book Case Literary Quiz Hall of Fame, and a very wonderful place it is.
______________________________________________________________________________________________

What you've been buying: DECEMBER 2007's and the YEAR'S BESTSELLERS at The Book Case

December’s bestsellers at The Book Case were a mixture of local interest and humour, plus the ever-present We’moon Diary. Unsurprisingly, Harry Potter emerged as 2007’s bestseller, but Phyllis Bentley was hot on his heels and the remainder of the bestsellers were local, Yorkshire or Northern, with an award-winning novel as the only exception.

1. Gold Pieces - Phyllis Bentley, £5.95. Our reprint of the exciting 1968 children’s classic about the Cragg Vale Coiners is still our bestseller.

2. I Think the Nurses are Stealing My Clothes - the very best of Linda Smith, £8.99. Witty compilation from the late lamented Linda Smith.

3. We’Moon Diary 2008: Gaia Rhythms for Womyn, £15.99. Always popular, this colourful astrological moon calendar and datebook; this one is on "Mending the Web".

4. Folktales from Calderdale Vol. 1 - John Billingsley, £7.50. Back in the top ten, local folktales. The Witches of Eagle Crag, the Cliviger Boggart, the Bride Stones, the Eve Stone, Stoodley Pike, Great Rock, Tom Bell's Cave, the Miller's Grave and Churn Milk Joan are included.

5. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents - Angus Bethune Reach, ed. Chris Aspin, £6.95. An eloquent eyewitness description, with interviews, of the conditions of textile workers around West Yorkshire in 1849. Our first publication. Reach’s report on the textile towns around Manchester is due out soon.

6. Pies and Prejudice - Stuart Maconie, £10.99. Exiled Northerner tours the North (including Hebden Bridge) to find his own Northern soul ...

7. Rebel Girls - Jill Liddington, £14.99. Nice to see our 2006 bestseller about Northern suffragettes back in the Top Ten!

8. Letters of Ted Hughes, ed. Christopher Reid, £30 (£25 at The Book Case). This selection begins when Ted Hughes was seventeen, and documents the course of his resolutely private life. Critics’ choice for 2007.

9. Crap Cycle Lanes: 50 Worst Cycle Lanes in Britain, £4.99. Hilarious collection of photos of cycle lanes designed to challenge (or possibly exterminate) the unwary cyclist.

10. A Pig with Six Legs and other clouds - ed. Gavin Pretor Pinney (£10). From the Cloud Appreciation Society, a delightful little book of colour photos of cloud formations that look like something (with captions).

BESTSELLERS OF 2007: 1. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J K Rowling; 2. Gold Pieces by Phyllis Bentley; 3. Folk Tales from Calderdale by John Billingsley; 4. Fabrics, Filth and Fairy Tents by Angus Bethune Reach, ed. C. Aspin; 5. Rebel Girls by Jill Liddington; 6. Gone Walkabout by Anna Carlisle; 7. Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie; 8. Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; 9. Infamous Yorkshire Women by Issy Shannon; 10. A Village Childhood by Gertrude M. Attwood

A very Happy New Year from your local independent bookshop,

The Book Case
29 Market Street, Hebden Bridge HX7 6EU
Telephone 01422-845353
Fax 01422-844295
email: bookcase@btinternet.com
url: www.bookcase.co.uk

“Did they admit novels?” “Yes,” with a melancholy shake of the head, “they found that they could not get on without something of that kind – the people liked stories.”

Angus Bethune Reach interviewing a Manchester librarian in 1849, from our forthcoming publication, "A Cotton Fibre Halo".

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