Musings
A collection of stories, thoughts and news
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| NewsSaturday Morning Surgery
Weekly half-hour round up. The Saturday Surgery is open! Check out this week’s new releasesFind out out about industry book awards, winners and shortlistsHave a cuppa with us (bring your own mug)Share your book recsTake our book advice if needed In the basement from 11am We’d love to see you here. If there is any
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Staff picks
Non-Fiction Chosen by Jamie Jamie is our resident witch, yoga teacher and fantasy wizard with a deep love for Terry Pratchett. They read a lot of non-fiction and love giving recommendations, ranging from politics to science to history. They are also the perfect person to speak to if you are starting a pagan/witchcraft journey –
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Meet the gang
Meet the gang Jo Fiction Jo loves people as much as she loves books, and bringing the two together is her favourite thing to do. To achieve this she lives on little sleep and BBQ flavoured hula hoops. She prefers make-believe to reality, reads mostly fiction, hosts Appetite Book Club, and can often be seen
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Terms & Conditions
If your book is self-published fiction please click here If you have published a book with a strong local interest and would like to see your work on our shelves, here are our terms and conditions and initial guidelines. We have a standard approach to stocking self-published books by local authors which is a ‘sale
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Land by Maggie O’Farrell
Published: 2 June 2026 We are taking pre orders for Independent bookshop edition which includes a digital signature (not signed), bespoke endpapers and a letter from Maggie, written exclusively to Independent Bookshop readers Inspired by the mapping of Ireland in the mid nineteenth century, Land, the new novel from the author of Hamnet, is at once
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Returns Policy
Overview We do not give refunds. If you have a valid reason for returning a book we can usually offer an exchange or credit note, providing you show your receipt and return the unread book in mint condition. Posted items. If a book has been sent via a tracked service, but doesn’t reach you, it
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Love letter to a book
Which book will you choose? Anyone submitting a letter will be entered into a prize draw for a FABER 2026 Diary (winner announced on 20th Feb) Handwritten letters are the best sent and the best received.
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Death Club
A press article in the Metro Newspaper featured our Death Club. Read more HERE
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| News
Bibliotherapy
The Power of the Page At Red Lion Books, we believe that every story has the potential to soothe, inspire, and transform. Discover the practice of bibliotherapy—the art of using literature to support your mental and emotional well-being. More than just a quiet pastime, reading serves as a powerful tool for self-discovery and healing. This
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Loyalty Cards
You can earn loyalty points from your first purchase. A £5 purchase gives you 1 point. Once you have accumulated 20 points, we give you a £5 voucher to spend at Red Lion Books. You will be pleased to know that we have tweaked the system to round numbers up in your favour; i.e. a £9.99
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Dave Rowntree from Blur visits the book club he knew as a child
Click here for Ben Howard article
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The Appetite Book Club Reading List
Established in 2007, the Appetite Book Club continues to grow. There are evening and daytime options, meeting over supper twice a month or in the morning, on the last Thursday of the month, to discuss our book choice over a cuppa. We wonder how many of our book choices you have read and enjoyed? Or
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Local Authors
Your Books, Our Shelves We are proud of our history in supporting authors from the local area and have always carried a wide variety of self-published, small press and print-on-demand titles. Locally published books often feature amongst our best selling titles each year. However, we are unable to satisfy the recent and unprecedented increase in
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Giving Children the Freedom to Choose Their Next Story
Guest writer Brogan Tuxford, Primary School Teacher at St Mary’s School for Girls I was an avid reader as a child. I went to Narnia and to Hogwarts. I travelled back in time to solve mysteries and visited places far, far away (places that I now understand may not actually exist!). The pursuit of discovering
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Christmas in Colchester: “Surprising Mrs B” – the story continues
This is the conclusion to a story published in Christmas in Colchester 2025 magazine. If you would like to read the story from the beginning, click here. Otherwise the story continues here: ….After tea, Cally lay on her bed digesting and scrutinising Fleabags, who was sitting beside her cleaning himself vigorously. He was a long-haired
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| Musings
How Did I Get Here
Hello, I’m Lucy. This is the story of how I got to be holding a copy of my book, in Red Lion Bookshop It’s been a strange time, and while I might look calm on the outside, I can assure you that my insides look a lot more like this: First, some background. I’m a
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Wild Essex Imaginarium
Wild Essex Imaginarium University of Essex – 27 September 2025 This event will appeal to academics, art practitioners, heritage workers, activists and policy makers. The Wild Essex Imaginarium aims to re-engage/re-enchant the relationship between the arts and conservation practice in Essex over the next five years of this ‘critical decade’. We begin by asking how
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Renaturing
Contributor: Author James Canton So, just for a moment, imagine your most idyllic literary festival event… a marque packed full of an intelligent, wise and interested audience, a fellow speaker who fits perfectly, a chair who coordinates the chat with wit and ease. Then throw in a castle as venue, a little over two miles
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Writer In Residence (Jane- no longer tame)
A blog. Written by customer and friend of Red Lion Books, Jane Herd Jane- no longer tame Writer in Residence- Red Lion Book Shop, Colchester High Street, 5 th to 23rd August 2025 As Jane- no longer tame I am a feminist writer. My nom de plume arose spontaneously at the end of one of