What are the opening hours?

Monday 10am - 6pm Tuesday 10am - 6pm Wednesday 10am - 6pm Thursday 10am - 6pm Friday 10am - 6pm Saturday 10am - 6pm Sunday 10am - 4pm

http://www.themargatebookshop.com/

The Margate Bookshop, 2 Market Place, Margate (2026)

20/06/2026

The Margate Bookshop invites you to...

SUN COUNTRY WITH HOWARD CUNNELL
THURSDAY, 2 JULY

Howard Cunnell discusses his new memoir Sun Country, a luminous love letter to his mother, his boyhood and the changing coast of southern England.

7-9PM FORT ROAD BAR

A homecoming and a homage, a remembrance and a reckoning, Howard Cunnell’s memoir Sun Country was written after the death of his beloved single mother Gillian, whose life is the book’s beating heart. In shimmering and lyrical prose, Cunnell charts a course back to the Sussex beachlands of his working class childhood, also retracing his steps as a writer and artist. At once deeply personal and expansive in its scope, Sun Country shines a meditative gaze on our sorrows, our stories and our shadows, the things we inherit and the transgressive power of art.

Howard Cunnell’s most recent books are a novel, The Painter’s Friend and an earlier memoir, Fathers and Sons. A former scuba instructor and dive guide, he is the contributing editor of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road - The Original Scroll. He’ll be discussing Sun Country in conversation with Margate-based writer and compere extraordinaire, Ryan J. Smith.

Booking essential. Free tickets available via Eventbrite – link in bio.

19/06/2026

The Margate Bookshop invites you to...

SUN COUNTRY WITH HOWARD CUNNELL
THURSDAY, 2 JULY

Howard Cunnell discusses his new memoir Sun Country, a luminous love letter to his mother, his boyhood and the changing coast of southern England.

7-9PM FORT ROAD BAR

A homecoming and a homage, a remembrance and a reckoning, Howard Cunnell’s memoir Sun Country was written after the death of his beloved single mother Gillian, whose life is the book’s beating heart. In shimmering and lyrical prose, Cunnell charts a course back to the Sussex beachlands of his working class childhood, also retracing his steps as a writer and artist. At once deeply personal and expansive in its scope, Sun Country shines a meditative gaze on our sorrows, our stories and our shadows, the things we inherit and the transgressive power of art.

Howard Cunnell’s most recent books are a novel, The Painter’s Friend and an earlier memoir, Fathers and Sons. A former scuba instructor and dive guide, he is the contributing editor of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road - The Original Scroll. He’ll be discussing Sun Country in conversation with Margate-based writer and compere extraordinaire, Ryan J. Smith.

Booking essential. Free tickets available via Eventbrite – link in bio.

17/06/2026

A compelling montage of memoir, criticism and candid interviews, Ryan Gilbey's nuanced movie spectacular It Used to be Witches regards all-things q***r cinema through various lenses, investigating the past, present and future both of real world q***rness and its on-screen representation. Gilbey speaks to directors like Andrew Haigh (All of Us Strangers), Cheryl Dunye (The Watermelon Woman), Isabel Sandoval (Lingua Franca) and Bruce LaBruce (No Skin Off My Ass) discovers how LGBTQ+ people make movies as a means of self expression and self interrogation, and in order to challenge, defy and shock a world that, at times, feels increasingly hostile and indifferent.

17/06/2026

A slim but potent novel from author Yuliana Ortiz Ruano and translator Madeleine Arenivar, Carnaval Fever is a vibrant, sensorial homage to Afro-Ecuadorian identity - its music, dance, and defiance - and to the many strong, resilient women keeping the nation's heart beating. Through the gaze of narrator Ainhoa, who lives within a household guarded and guarded by her formidable grandmother and many aunts, the reader feels the beat and the pulse of an Ecuadorian carnival celebration, and beneath this a darker daily reality for Ainhoa and her kin, the hardship, the heartache and the threat of male violence.

16/06/2026

Margate-based author Taíno Mendez lends an introduction to this comely new edition of Henry Van Dyke's q***r coming-of-age gem of 1965, Ladies of the Rachmaninoff Eyes. A delicate, dreamlike tragicomedy and a vision of racial and sexual enlightenment, the novel is draped around an unconventional family unit; namely the novel's protagonist Oliver, a black teenager who lives in rural splendour in Michigan with head of the household Etta, his aunt and Etta's housekeeper Harry, a peacock and their maid Della Mae, who is prone to fits of the 'Nasties'. The relative peace of Oliver and co's eccentric lifestyle is shattered when the impossibly-named Maurice LeFleur, a psychic warlock, comes to visit, with his second sight set on contacting the ghost of Etta's late son.

13/06/2026

An instant classic and a fierce, clear-sighted ode to liberation, love and forgiveness, The God of Small Things author Arundhati Roy's extraordinary memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me is now out in paperback. Central to the expansive arc of Roy's personal and political life is the barbed bond she shared with her mother Mary Roy, a formidable activist and complex woman whom she fled as a teenager, and whose death left her 'heart-smashed'.

12/06/2026

I Gave You Eyes and You Looked Towards Darkness is another wild, beautiful and supernatural novel set in the mountainous shadowlands of Catalonia from Irene Solà, author of abiding bookshop favourite When I Sing, Mountains Dance. At a centuries-old farmhouse a horde of its past and present inhabitants - crones and hags, maidens and matriarchs, the living and the dead - crowd at the bedside of a dying woman to share stories and memories. It's a party of sorts, as family members, carers and ghosts come and go, spinning yarns of strange visions, babies born without tongues and their feckless descendent who double crossed the devil himself.

11/06/2026

Social worlds collide in The Fathers, Scottish author John Niven's pacy and pathos-laden latest novel, a tragicomic study of class, masculinity and, of course, fatherhood. The dads of the book’s title, affluent TV writer Dan and petty criminal Jada, first strike up a palship in the maternity ward as they await the births of their sons; Dan's first, a longed-for IVF baby and Jada's fifth or sixth, he can never quite remember. Although they both live in Glasgow, they may as well be on different planets, but a sudden tragedy will drag the men’s lives into the same orbit, with dangerous consequences for them and their young families…

10/06/2026

Our next Bookshop Bookclub will be held on Wednesday, 24 June!

This month we're reading Cooking in the Wrong Century by Teresa Präauer. The 'perfect' dinner party descends into chaos in this delectable novella from Austrian author Präauer and translator Eleanor Updegraff, as an impeccable hostess tries in vain to bring her badly-behaved guests into line. A keen, careful cook with a taste for the finer things, she prepares her new apartment for an evening of civilised conversation with a soft jazz ambience and, of course, moreish food. When her guests eventually arrive they're late, drunk and loose, and the night soon takes a turn that sorely tests the hostess' composure.

Join us from 6.30pm (discussion starts at 6.45pm) at Fort Road Bar where we meet every last Wednesday of the month!

Cooking in the Wrong Century is available to buy from The Margate Bookshop with a 10% discount. The Bookclub is open to all and there’s no requirement to read every book and turn up to every meeting, come whenever you fancy! The wonderful Fort Road Hotel hosts our meet-ups in their basement bar with a delicious selection of drinks and snacks.

The Margate Bookshop

20/06/2026

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Monday	10am - 6pm
Tuesday	10am - 6pm
Wednesday	10am - 6pm
Thursday	10am - 6pm
Friday	10am - 6pm
Saturday	10am - 6pm
Sunday	10am - 4pm