Brindle Books Ltd: Bookshops

Showing posts with label Bookshops. Show all posts

Repeat Offender: Crime Wave at Tangents Earns Second Bollinger Wodehouse Prize Nomination for Roderick Easdale.

30th June 2026

Brindle Books Ltd is delighted to announce that Crime Wave at Tangents by Roderick Easdale has been nominated for the 2026 Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Literature.

Crime Wave at Tangents by Roderick Easdale

The nomination marks a remarkable second successive appearance on the prize nomination list for Easdale's Tangents series. His debut novel, Summer at Tangents, was nominated for the 2025 Bollinger Wodehouse Prize, establishing the fictional village of Tangents as a place where comedy, confusion and poor decision-making flourish in equal measure.

Now, with Crime Wave at Tangents, Easdale returns readers to the increasingly eventful community, where criminal activity appears to be spreading at a rate that local authorities find deeply concerning and literary judges apparently find highly entertaining.

Here at Brindle Books, we are absolutely thrilled. Having one Tangents novel nominated for the Bollinger Wodehouse Prize was wonderful. Having a second nominated suggests either a growing appreciation for Roderick Easdale's comic genius or a serious containment failure in the village of Tangents. We are choosing to believe the former.

The news was greeted enthusiastically throughout Brindle Books headquarters, where celebrations reportedly included tea, biscuits and several minutes of dignified cheering before matters got completely out of hand.

Roderick Easdale responded to the announcement with characteristic modesty.

"It is an enormous honour," he said. "I am particularly pleased that the judges have once again agreed to visit Tangents, although I feel obliged to apologise for what they found when they got there."

The Bollinger Wodehouse Prize for Comic Literature celebrates the finest humorous writing and is widely regarded as one of the most prestigious awards in comic fiction. To receive a nomination once is a significant achievement; to receive nominations in consecutive years suggests that the residents of Tangents have developed an impressive commitment to causing trouble.

Author Roderick Easdale

The nomination also arrives ahead of the publication of the third novel in the series, Terror at Tangents, which will be released later this year. Readers can therefore look forward to discovering what fresh chaos, confusion and questionable judgement await the long-suffering inhabitants of the village.

Industry observers have noted that most fictional communities are content with the occasional mystery or minor scandal. Tangents, by contrast, appears determined to experience every conceivable catastrophe while remaining oddly cheerful about the whole thing.

Whether Crime Wave at Tangents ultimately claims the prize remains to be seen. For now, we are celebrating a second consecutive nomination and preparing for the publication of Terror at Tangents with a mixture of pride, excitement and a growing suspicion that the village should perhaps invest in a larger police station.

You can find out more, read a sample, or buy a copy by clicking HERE

Brindle Author Sophia Moseley Joins Local Writers for Bookshop Relaunch

3rd September 2023

Sophia Moseley with a copy of My Time Again

One of Brindle Books’ fabulous authors, Sophia Mosely, joined local authors for the re-launch of an independent bookstore. The event took place on Friday 25 August, and was to celebrate the Owl & Pyramid indie bookshop moving to new premises, in Seaton, East Devon.

Sophia with Suzy Bussell on left and Sarah Underwood on right

The owner Jenny Eagles, invited local authors along to chat with guests and promote their latest books. The opening was very well attended and the shop was soon full of guests enjoying a glass of bubbly and chatting to the authors about their books and what inspired them.

Sophia with a customer who bought a copy of My Time Again

People were intrigued by the premise behind Sophia’s book, My Time Again, and it led to some interesting discussions! Sophia sold several copies of My Time Again and shared a few snippets from her next novella.

Brindle Books Titles Now Available from Blackwell's.

28th August 2023

In addition to our most popular sales platform over at Amazon and other outlets across the web, Brindle Books Ltd titles are now also available from Blackwell's.

Blackwell's, (established in 1879), is a trading name of Waterstones Booksellers Ltd.

CLICK HERE to see our books on Blackwell's website.

Inspiration From North of the Border

By Richard Hinchliffe

First Published 17th April 2022

A short post about our recent break in Gatehouse of Fleet, Scotland

My lovely partner, Emma, and I have just returned from a week in Scotland. We stayed in the beautiful East Cally Lodge, in the picturesque village of Gatehouse of Fleet, in the Dumfries and Galloway area of South West Scotland. The lodges are basically a pair of miniature mansions, originally built as gatehouses to the Cally estate in the 1700’s. In such beautiful and elegant surroundings there is a temptation to swan around, pretending to be Laird of the Manor. As you can see from some of the photographs, this temptation was, at times, too great for me 😊

You can find out more about East Cally Lodge here:

Cally Lodge Holiday Cottages, Gatehouse of Fleet, Dumfries & Galloway (callylodges.com)

Of course, when running a small publishing house, no holiday is just a holiday, so my laptop, and a briefcase full of ongoing projects went with us. When we did manage to go out on walks in the village itself, and the surrounding countryside, our thoughts often turned to books and writing, (to be fair, our thoughts often turn to books and writing).

Walking in the picturesque village, we happened upon a side street, off the main road, called Hannay Street. At the sight of the name, I was immediately reminded of John Buchan’s character, Richard Hannay, the main protagonist in his classic adventure novel, The Thirty-Nine Steps, and its various sequels. A little checking, however, revealed no direct connection. Hannay happens to be the name of one of the Clans from the area, whose ancient seat is at nearby Sorbie Tower.

One could hardly be disappointed, however, bearing in mind the inspiration to other great writers that the area has provided. At the top end of the High Street in Gatehouse of Fleet stands a public House called the Murray Arms. It is in this inn that Robert Burns wrote “Scots Wha Hae” in 1793.

A few hundred yards down the High Street and over the bridge is another public house with some literary history attached to it. The Ship Inn, at No. 1 Fleet Street, on the corner of Fleet Street and Old Military Road, was originally called The Anwoth Hotel. It was here, in 1931 that the great Dorothy L Sayers penned one of her Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries, Five Red Herrings, which is set both in the village and nearby Kirkcudbright.

Also on the High Street in Gatehouse is The Bakehouse: Bakehouse Community Arts is an organisation based in South West Scotland, dedicated to poetry and the spoken word. You can find out more about them here:

HOME (thebakehouse.info)

The surrounding area is also home to many bookshops, selling a wide range of works by a range of authors, from local historians to the world famous big names in publishing, along with a healthy number of antique and second hand bookshops, which I always find a joy to explore. On an all too brief visit to the bookshop in the local arts centre in the village, called The Mill on the Fleet, I picked up copies of a couple of the old ‘Bulldog Drummond’ shockers, along with a collection of George Orwell essays that I didn’t already have in my collection.

For those of you interested in cinema history and cult horror films, both Gatehouse of Fleet and nearby Kirkcudbright provided filming locations for the 1973 cult horror classic The Wicker Man, starring Edward Woodward. Although Dumfries and Galloway is a long way south of where the film is set, (the Highlands and Islands), the scenery is beautiful and remote. This may well be one of the contributing factors to the sheer wealth of creativity in the country.

Scotland has more than its fair share of creatives, be they authors, poets, sculptors or painters. In any of the small towns and villages in the area, it seems virtually impossible to go more than a few hundred yards without coming across examples of Scottish creativity. It is a part of the world where writers and artists are respected and encouraged by their local communities, much more so than many other places. This attitude seems to stretch the length and breadth of the country.

Much further North than our little break, one of the first authors that we worked with at Brindle Books has been a resident of Perthshire for twenty years. He has been inspired by the history of his local area to write many books, one of which; The ‘Lost’ Village of Lawers, we have been very proud to publish with him in eBook format. The book tells the story of the ‘lost’ and abandoned village of Lawers, on the shores of Loch Tay, and of the mysterious ‘Lady of Lawers’, who made eerily accurate prophecies about the area.

The ‘Lost’ Village of Lawers is also available in paperback from various outlets. You can find more information about this, and Mark’s other work here:

Mark Bridgeman Author