Laughing Oyster Bookshop

Laughing Oyster Bookshop Laughing Oyster is a community based independent bookstore offering a generous selection of fiction, nonfiction and children's books. Come in and see us soon!

Welcome to our locally owned and operated independent bookstore. Pulling together charm from the past, choices from the present and knowledge of books to come, Laughing Oyster Bookshop provides a pleasant and stimulating shopping experience. Whether you want a light read or a challenge, a cookbook or a children's story, you will be delighted by our extensive selection. Watch for events featuring local and visiting authors. Take in our annual Book Club night in October, featuring staff recommendations for your Book Club's year ahead. On any day, we encourage browsing and welcome questions or special orders.

Recent to paperback.A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEARA NEW YORK TIMES AND WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEARA...
09/19/2026

Recent to paperback.

A GLOBE AND MAIL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES AND WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
A TIME MUST-READ BOOK OF THE YEAR
A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD

How does the greatest writer of our time tell her own story?

Raised by scientifically minded parents, Margaret Atwood spent most of each year in the wild forests of northern Quebec, where her entomologist father and independent, resourceful mother created an unfettered and nomadic childhood, sometimes isolated but also thrilling and beautiful.

From this unconventional start, Margaret unfolds the story of her life, linking key moments to the books that have shaped our literary landscape, from the cruel school year that would inspire Cat’s Eye to the unease of 1980s Berlin, where she began The Handmaid’s Tale. In pages alive with the natural world, reading and books, major political turning points, and her lifelong love for the charismatic writer Graeme Gibson, we meet poets, bears, Hollywood stars, and larger-than-life characters straight from the pages of an Atwood novel.

As she explores her past, Margaret reveals more and more about her writing, the connections between real life and art—and the workings of one of our very greatest imaginations.

Web store link: https://laughingoysterbooks.com/item/ssARrWrToAa3hEdZ1HFaCA

In-store displays this week in our Children's Section.
09/19/2026

In-store displays this week in our Children's Section.

For readers of One Dark Window and Fourth Wing comes a propulsive and darkly atmospheric romantasy set in a world where ...
09/19/2026

For readers of One Dark Window and Fourth Wing comes a propulsive and darkly atmospheric romantasy set in a world where buying magic comes at a horrific price

Years after the tyrannical High King banned magic, whispers persist that a mage remembered only as the Martyr lies in hiding, waiting to lead the people into their powers once more.

For Maeve, the stories are just that—stories. But when her sister is gravely injured, Maeve risks impalement on the dreaded Black Quay for a chance to buy the forbidden magic that could save her sister and trades her own life to a ruthless and dangerously alluring rebel leader.

Bound to do the rebel leader’s bidding, Maeve begins to suspect he knows more about the stories of the Martyr than he lets on. But as she probes deeper into his dangerous plotting, a dark past emerges, tying him to a prince who could be even more brutal than his father—and who could hold the key to whether they will live or die. With the Isle on the brink of war, trust, and survival come at a terrible cost—one that will tear Maeve’s world, and her heart, in two.

Web store link: https://laughingoysterbooks.com/item/ihViYpG-txWEBR9KeTCLuA

In-store displays this week.
09/18/2026

In-store displays this week.

The #1 international bestselling author of Life After Life returns with a thrilling tale of post-World War II London, a...
09/18/2026

The #1 international bestselling author of Life After Life returns with a thrilling tale of post-World War II London, a city eager to put the dark days of the war behind it, but where the peace proves as tricky to navigate as the past.

When foreign correspondent turned war reporter Harry Flynn returns to Britain in 1949 from Singapore, held for years as a POW, he takes a quiet office job with The Festival of Britain, a nostalgic government-funded endeavor to celebrate British creativity, grit, and ingenuity. There, he joins an oddball team of misfits, ne'er-do-wells, and downright chancers helping to ready the Festival of Britain for launch.

But when one of Flynn’s dates, a surly Frenchwoman, goes missing, everything is upended. The last person to see her prior to her disappearance, Flynn is thrust into the center of the investigation. At first, he finds the suspicions preposterous. But it’s true he has no memory of the hours following the Frenchwoman’s departure, and there’s the fact of the nasty black eye he had upon waking. As evidence mounts, Flynn begins to wonder, could he have killed her? And, importantly, are any of his new friends actually foes?

With her unique portraiture of place, Atkinson now turns her light on a nation rebuilding and the lengths some might go to determine its future. Charming, brilliantly plotted, and gripping as ever, Our Noble Selves cements Atkinson’s place as one of the greatest chroniclers of our times.

Web store link: https://laughingoysterbooks.com/item/1uI4GVaMjkoQwSp56x5bKw

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name comes a riveting novel about the risks we take to pr...
09/16/2026

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of By Any Other Name comes a riveting novel about the risks we take to protect the ones we love in a world where crisis is always just around the corner.

On September 11, 2001, when Molly Fitzgerald was only two months old, her mother went to an appointment at the World Trade Center and never came home. Her father and the stepmother who raised her couldn’t have loved her more, but she still grew up with a healthy dread of disasters.

Now an adult, Molly runs the Rhode Island Department for Emergency Preparedness, mapping out ways to save lives during storms, epidemics, and airplane crashes. She and her husband, Jesse—a police polygraph expert with his own history of crisis—have found a love that is a solace in a dangerous world. But then the unexpected upends their new marriage, leading them both to question everything they thought they knew.

Moving between past and present, Hollow Bones is an epic story of the lies we tell ourselves as we write the narratives of our lives, the plans we design to protect ourselves at the worst moments, and the ties that bind mothers and daughters.

Web store link: https://laughingoysterbooks.com/item/wkyfEt5V1pXdNwZurSo-cw

#1 New York Times bestselling author Richard Osman’s globe-trotting series “We Solve Murders” returns with the thrillin...
09/16/2026

#1 New York Times bestselling author Richard Osman’s globe-trotting series “We Solve Murders” returns with the thrilling new mystery, We Chase Shadows.

Back together.
Back on the case.
And back to solving murders . . .

At sunrise, high in the Italian hills, a body is found on the steps of a beautiful private villa. On the body is a threatening note, signed by a mystery man.

Back at We Solve Murders HQ, Amy, Rosie, and Steve leap at the chance to take on their first proper case. So what if their new client seems to have his own reasons for avoiding the police? All they need to do is uncover who left the note, and then find them. Simple.

But once they start digging, the suspects keep piling up: there’s Sweden’s most-wanted criminal, a canny ex-wife and a fierce business rival – yet the murderer keeps evading them. And as the trio chase a villain through the shadows, danger travels closer to home . . .

Between Italy and Palm Springs, via Barcelona and Steve’s village pub, can the team catch an elusive killer who knows EXACTLY where to hide?

Web store link: https://laughingoysterbooks.com/item/Y10lLSQ5wzOGyOnpgTMCBg

The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doub...
09/16/2026

The award-winning, bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility returns with a breathtaking novel of doubles, shadow worlds, and fractured timelines as a man disappears from a glittering Los Angeles party, and a woman—a gunrunner, an art collector, an operative of the State—searches for answers.

Los Angeles, 2031: The first spring after the collapse of the United States, peacekeeping troops withdraw from the city, the Jacaranda trees blossom, and the curfew is finally lifted. Ari Waker and her roommate pass the gauntlet of bomb-sniffing dogs, the shanty towns, and the Red Cross tents as they walk across Silverlake to a party. The mood is ecstatic inside the apartment, people drink and dance, a woman wears a silver dress, pleated like tinfoil. And then: A shift. A bewildered twin, an uncanny doppelganger stumbles through the crowd and out into the night, and Kareem, the party’s host, vanishes into thin air.

As Ari Waker unravels the mystery of this inexplicable night, Emily St. John Mandel unfurls a story that takes us from a future America splintered by civil war to the seaside cliffs of Greece where weapons dealers hide in an elegant resort, and from the domed city of Paris to a colony on the moon. An unforgettable literary feat, Exit Party is a novel about the price of safety, the perils of the surveillance state, a requiem for a world not unlike our own, and a breathtaking story of resilience in the face of cataclysmic change.

Web store link: https://laughingoysterbooks.com/item/ihViYpG-txVJpIBu6S5Iaw

Address

286 5th Street
Courtenay, BC
V9N1J6

Opening Hours

Monday 10am - 5pm
Tuesday 10am - 5pm
Wednesday 10am - 5pm
Thursday 10am - 5pm
Friday 10am - 5pm
Saturday 10am - 5pm

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