Bookish by Matthew Sweet - ISBN: 9781529444445
Hardcover
Bookseller sleuth cracks cases amidst post-war London’s secrets and strays.

Bookish

a witty, warm-hearted mystery perfect for book lovers

$50.11

  • Hardcover

    384 pages

  • Release Date

    8 July 2025

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Summary

Adapted from the major television series created by Mark Gatiss - out now!

‘A delicious read’ ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ READER REVIEW

London, 1946. Gabriel Book is an erudite and unconventional London bookseller married to Trottie, the owner of the wallpaper shop next door. He is also a sleuth who uses the chaotic riches of his stock to crack the puzzling cases that come his way.

He does not work alone. Book’s shop is a magnet for waifs and strays - some of whom bring mys…

Book Details

ISBN-13:9781529444445
ISBN-10:1529444446
Author:Matthew Sweet
Publisher:Quercus Publishing
Imprint:Quercus Publishing
Format:Hardcover
Number of Pages:384
Release Date:8 July 2025
Weight:592g
Dimensions:37mm x 242mm x 164mm
Series:Bookish
What They're Saying

Critics Review

A whimsical account both of postwar London and of the world of bookshops. A kind book with considerable wit. Highly readable. Clever in the best of senses * The Critic *
Beautifully crafted … Sweet evokes the world of 1946 London so well * The Tablet *

About The Author

Matthew Sweet

Matthew Sweet is co-writer, with Mark Gatiss, of Bookish. He is a Fellow of the School of Advanced Study, University of London and the author of Inventing the Victorians, Shepperton Babylon, The West End Front, Operation Chaos and the crime novel The New Forest Murders. His biography, Barbara Cartland: The Great Dictator, is published in September 2026.

He is the presenter of Free Thinking (BBC Radio 4) and his 25 years of television and radio programmes include The Culture Show (BBC2), Checking into History (C4), 12 years of Sound of Cinema (Radio 3), five series of The Philosophers Arms (Radio 4), and 1922: The Birth of Now, a ten-part history of modernism (Radio 4).

He has been film critic of the Independent on Sunday, photography critic of Newsweek and fashion columnist for 1843/The Economist.

Liberation Radio – his collaboration with the artists Nhung Nguyen and Esther Johnson – has been staged at the Manzi gallery in Hanoi and at Index, the Swedish Contemporary Art Foundation in Stockholm. In 2017 he and the baker Frances Quinn achieved a chocolate-related Guinness World record that held good until 2022, when it was broken by Ant and Dec.

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