The Word Bookshop

19/09/2026

The Word is 10 years old today!

12/06/2026

Want to give Dad an extra special gift for Father's Day?

We've got loads of fantastic signed books in stock at The Word bookshop in New Cross, and here are just a few...
..from Robert Macfarlane
Michael Palin
Alan Davies
Matt Haig
Rory Stewart
Julian Barnes
George Saunders
Francis Spufford..and many many more.

Go on, make Dad's day!

There are limited numbers of these titles so do give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve something.

Cheers!

- David at The Word
Thanks for supporting a local independent business.

03/06/2026

NEW BOOKS IN, SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS...

There are limited numbers of these, so please give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy.

When they're gone, they're gone.

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Michael Palin - "In Nigeria"

With his eightieth birthday looming, it crossed Michael Palin’s mind that now might be the time to hang up his boots, to lounge about at home, to take things easy. Then the opportunity to visit Africa’s most populous nation arose. A few weeks later, he was at Lagos airport, camera crew in town.

In the journal he kept during his trip he gives a vivid account of the towns and cities he visited, the landscapes he travelled through, and the people he met: from vibrant but chaotic Lagos, to seemingly deserted streets of Nigeria’s hyper-modern capital, Abuja, to the polluted oil fields of the Niger Delta. Michael Palin is welcomed as an honoured guest by a powerful emir and harangued by a passerby in Benin City. He hears the testimony of a kidnap victim of the terrorist group Boko Haram and experiences the collective spiritual ecstasy of one of Nigeria’s mega churches.

And throughout his trip, he experiences at first hand the contradictions of a country that has so much natural wealth and human talent and yet simultaneously grapples with corruption, religious strife and deep inequality.

03/06/2026

NEW BOOKS IN, SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS...

There are limited numbers of these, so please give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy.

When they're gone, they're gone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Kae Tempest - "Having Spent Life Seeking"

Rothko Taylor has washed up with the tide, back in their hometown, Edgecliff. Fifteen years since they left it behind.

The past is accelerating towards them: the skateboard kids on the high street that remind them of their teenage years, the splintered benches looking out to sea, where their mum Meg clutched her cans. The nice bit of town, where their dad Ezra tried and failed to build a happy home. And Dionne's block.

Beautiful, extraordinary Dionne, the only person who had ever looked at them and seen what was there. Back then, overwhelmed and full of fear, they sank beneath the surface into chaos. But they made it out alive.

And this time, Rothko is determined that things will be different. A decade since Kae Tempest's last novel, Having Spent Life Seeking is about family and forgiveness; redemption and atonement; desire and abandon; selfhood and community. This book is about things we seek when we are hiding, and what finds us, if we can let ourselves be seen.

03/06/2026

NEW BOOKS IN, SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS...

There are limited numbers of these, so please give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy.

When they're gone, they're gone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Douglas Stuart - "John of John"

The stunning new novel from the Booker Prize-winning, Sunday Times-bestselling author of SHUGGIE BAIN and YOUNG MUNGO.

Out of money and with little to show for his art school education, John-Calum Macleod takes the ferry home to the island of Harris to find that not much has changed except for him. In the windswept croft where he grew up, Cal resumes his old life, caught between the two poles of his childhood: his father John, a sheep farmer, weaver, and pillar of their local Presbyterian church, and his Glaswegian grandmother Ella, who has kept a faltering peace with her son-in-law for decades.

While Cal wonders if any lonely men might be found on the barren hillsides of home, John is dismayed by his son’s long hair and how he seems unwilling to be Saved.

As the seasons pass, everything is poised to change as the threads holding together the fragile community become increasingly entangled.

03/06/2026

NEW BOOKS IN, SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS...

There are limited numbers of these, so please give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy.

When they're gone, they're gone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Deborah Levy - "My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein : A Fiction"

Who was Gertrude Stein?
Avant-garde American poet and art collector who made her home in Paris, godmother of modernism, q***r icon, friend to Picasso and Hemingway, self-declared genius — a writer who has baffled readers and critics for a century. And why does she matter?The narrator of Deborah Levy’s latest, dazzling fiction has gone to Paris to find out. There she meets Eva with the blinding gaze, an artist in a long-distance marriage, and F***y, a sexually adventurous financier; together they cook, walk, read and argue late into the nights.

As Paris sweeps her along in its ceaseless flow, she thinks – about what we have to lose to become modern, navigating anxiety, living with uncertainty, angry fathers, making a new life in another country, art and language – how all these things looked to Gertrude Stein in the early days of the twentieth century, and how they look to her and her friends in the early twenty-first. This is a book about how we put ourselves together— an exhilarating, witty, cosmopolitan meditation on the pleasures and challenges of friendship, desire and living with other people. But it is also crashes through genre to create an inspired portrait of Stein herself: a writer who experimented fearlessly with a new way of living and who wrestled herself free from the nineteenth century to invent a brand-new way of looking at the world.

03/06/2026

NEW BOOKS IN, SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS...

There are limited numbers of these, so please give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy.

When they're gone, they're gone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Matt Haig - "The Midnight Train"

If you enjoyed The Midnight Library, you'll love this.

The Midnight Train is exquisite storytelling and utterly brilliant. One of the most beautiful stories you'll ever experience' - JOANNA CANNON

When your life flashes before your eyes, what will matter most? For Wilbur it was his time with Maggie, the love of his life. Their honeymoon in Venice.

Before he threw it all away. Years later, on the brink of his own death, a train arrives. It can take Wilbur back in time.

To relive his most important moments. Soon he realises just how much he would have changed. An adventure through time, The Midnight Train is a story of love and second chances, from the world of The Midnight Library.

03/06/2026

NEW BOOKS IN, SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS...

There are limited numbers of these, so please give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy.

When they're gone, they're gone.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Elizabeth Strout - "The Things We Never Say"

Artie Dam is a man with a secret. He spends his days teaching history to high schoolers, expanding their young minds, correcting their casual cruelties, and lending a kind word to those who need it most.

He goes to holiday parties with his wife of three decades, makes small talk with neighbours, and, on weekends, takes his sailboat out on the beautiful Massachusetts Bay. He is, by all appearances, present and alive. But inside, Artie is plagued by feelings of isolation.

He looks out at a world gone mad—at himself and the people around him—and turns a question over and over in his mind: how is it that we know so little about one another, even those closest to us?And then, one day, Artie learns that life has been keeping a secret from him, one that threatens to upend his entire world. Once he learns it, he is forced to chart a new course, to reconsider the relationships he holds most dear—and to make peace with the mysteries at the heart of our existence.

With exquisite prose and profound insight, Elizabeth Strout captures the way grief reverberates through decades, the comfort found in deep friendships and the freedom that comes when we break free of our secrets.

03/06/2026

NEW BOOKS IN, SIGNED BY THE AUTHORS...

There are limited numbers of these, so please give me a call on 020 8355 9378 or email [email protected] if you want to reserve a copy.

When they're gone, they're gone.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Philippa Perry - "Shrink Solves Murder"

When a body is found near Beachy Head, the police chalk it up to su***de — a tragic but not uncommon end in these parts. But local psychotherapist Patricia Phillips isn’t convinced. The victim? Her three o’clock patient, Henry Clayton.

As Pat and Prichard look beneath the village’s thin veneer of normality — one that barely conceals its appetites — they discover a killer hiding in plain sight. Shrink Solves Murder is a warm, witty, and perceptive crime caper from the nation’s favourite therapist.

11/05/2026