Chapters Bookstore Parnell Street

Chapters Bookstore Parnell Street An Post Bookshop of the Year 🎉🎉Chapters is Ireland's largest independent bookshop selling new, bargain & secondhand books! Trade Ins always welcome!

Welcome to all. This will be our official page with updates on special offers, events and give-aways!

Someone has brought us what can only be described as the Freida McFadden Starter Pack for People Who Have Decided They D...
14/08/2026

Someone has brought us what can only be described as the Freida McFadden Starter Pack for People Who Have Decided They Don’t Need Sleep Between Now and Christmas.

The Locked Door.
The Boyfriend.
The Teacher.
One by One.
Dear Debbie.
Do Not Disturb.
The Surrogate Mother.
The Inmate.
The Intruder.
The Tenant.
The Perfect Son.
The Coworker.

And more.

Basically, enough sinister houses, questionable colleagues, deeply suspicious partners, unreliable people and extremely bad decisions to keep you saying “just one more chapter” until 3.17am.

The particularly excellent bit? They’re in Secondhand, where our 3 for 2 offer still runs instore.

So you can come in knowing comparatively little about Freida McFadden and leave with three books and the confidence of someone who has been studying her work academically for several years.

Buy another three and frankly you may start correcting other people.

We accept no responsibility for:
• missed bedtimes
• suspicious glances at your spouse
• distrust of locked doors
• suddenly deciding your co-worker is behaving oddly
• reading an entire thriller in one sitting and immediately reaching for the next one

Secondhand at 3. Freida McFadden edition.

Christmas is months away. Sleep when you get there.

I KNOW we are not supposed to judge a book by its cover.Unfortunately, these covers have mounted an extremely persuasive...
13/08/2026

I KNOW we are not supposed to judge a book by its cover.

Unfortunately, these covers have mounted an extremely persuasive case.

Look at them. Clothbound. Foil-stamped. Beautiful colours. Treasure Island behaving like actual treasure. Frankenstein covered in tiny anatomical hearts. Charlotte’s Web wearing a yellow jacket no reasonable person could be expected to resist.

I already own some of these books, which means I cannot buy them again merely because these editions are prettier. That would be cheating. Or wasteful. Or “building a carefully curated collection”, depending on how weak I become before 6pm. But seriously, I do have a very difficult relationship with books I already own and editions with covers I prefer ... it causes me endless grief ... I know I need to get a grip.

For now, I am behaving with tremendous restraint and putting them into Secondhand for you.

Prices start at €7.99. Please buy them quickly so that I can stop pretending this is an ethical dilemma.

🖖 SECONDHAND AT 3: THE LOGICAL PAIRING!Some books arrive in Secondhand & plainly refuse to be separated.Today: William S...
13/08/2026

🖖 SECONDHAND AT 3: THE LOGICAL PAIRING!

Some books arrive in Secondhand & plainly refuse to be separated.

Today: William Shatner’s Star Trek Memories and Leonard Nimoy’s I Am Spock.

It feels wonderfully appropriate. Kirk and Spock. Shatner and Nimoy. One book looking back at Star Trek, the other attempting the considerably more complicated business of explaining what happens when the character you played becomes permanently entangled with the person you actually are.

So yes, they are being sold separately.

But emotionally?

They are a bonded pair🖖

TONIGHT. AND FRANKLY, LOOK AT THIS LINE-UP. 🌲🖤Tonight at Chapters we welcome Melinda Salisbury to Dublin to celebrate he...
13/08/2026

TONIGHT. AND FRANKLY, LOOK AT THIS LINE-UP. 🌲🖤

Tonight at Chapters we welcome Melinda Salisbury to Dublin to celebrate her brand-new novel LOCAL GODS, published by David Fickling Books.

Melinda is a bestselling, four-time Carnegie-nominated author and Local Gods is her gloriously sinister new YA folk horror: strange woods, old magic, a dying god and the sort of local legend sensible people would probably leave well alone.

We have not, however, invited sensible people to discuss it.

Joining Melinda tonight are:

🌿 Deirdre Sullivan
⚔️ Dave Rudden
🔮 Courtney Smyth

Four extraordinary writers. One conversation. An alarming collective knowledge of witches, gods, ghosts, monsters, mythology, magic and Things You Really Should Not Do In The Woods.

And it is FREE.

TONIGHT - Thursday 13 August at 6.30pm

If you love YA, fantasy, folk horror, gothic fiction, mythology, brilliant writers talking about writing, or you simply looked at those four names and thought YES, come in.

This is going to be an absolute cracker.

Dublin, we’ll see you at 6.30.








💀 HOW LUCKY AM I?Well, quite lucky actually, because Mr Skelly has arrived in Chapters and we have gone all in!How Lucky...
13/08/2026

💀 HOW LUCKY AM I?

Well, quite lucky actually, because Mr Skelly has arrived in Chapters and we have gone all in!

How Lucky Am I by Christian Watson is one of those slightly difficult-to-categorise books we rather love: part illustrated story, part meditation on being alive, part gentle reminder that we are all hurtling through existence in essentially the same set of bones.

Mr Skelly wanders through love, loss, grief, joy and all the strange ordinary bits in between, accompanied by Christian Watson’s beautiful hand-painted artwork.

It is tender without being twee. Philosophical without requiring you to lie down afterwards. And, despite the skeleton, surprisingly life-affirming.

Also, we have bookmarks. We have stickers. We have a new found affection for gentle skeletons.

Because apparently existential contemplation is even better with stationery.

📚 How Lucky Am I - Christian Watson
💀 Special Chapters price: €22.99
📍 On the table now at Chapters, Parnell Street

Life is short.
Read the nice skeleton book

🚨 DONAL RYAN. NEW NOVEL. SIGNED COPIES. 🚨We are attempting to behave normally about this.We are failing.WHERE ARE THE KI...
13/08/2026

🚨 DONAL RYAN. NEW NOVEL. SIGNED COPIES. 🚨

We are attempting to behave normally about this.

We are failing.

WHERE ARE THE KINGS, the brand-new novel from Donal Ryan, is out TODAY Thursday, 13th August and LOOK WHAT HAS ARRIVED.

💙 Beautiful hardbacks.
✍️ SIGNED BY DONAL RYAN.
💛 Sprayed Edge

Ryan's new novel takes us into the world of twelve-year-old Jack, a boy growing up surrounded by family, secrets, grief, love and all the bewildering business of trying to understand the adults around him. The publisher describes it as warm, witty and arresting; early critical reaction has already praised Ryan's extraordinary empathy for adolescence and family life.

And really, if you've read The Spinning Heart, The Queen of Dirt Island or Heart, Be at Peace, you probably don't need us to make the case.

It's a new Donal Ryan.

That's the case.

Our copies are signed and sitting here looking extremely blue, extremely beautiful and frankly rather difficult not to take home.



Now this is special.A 1956 Grove Press Evergreen edition of Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies, in its glorious Roy Kuhlman co...
12/08/2026

Now this is special.

A 1956 Grove Press Evergreen edition of Samuel Beckett’s Malone Dies, in its glorious Roy Kuhlman cover.

And really, the cover is half the story here.

In the 1950s, Grove Press was doing something thrilling in American publishing - under Barney Rosset it became the home of writers who were difficult, experimental, controversial, translated & occasionally banned. Beckett was central to that list. Grove brought his work to American readers and would go on to publish many of the writers who changed the literary landscape of the 1950s and 60s.

Then there was Roy Kuhlman.

Kuhlman designed hundreds of covers for Grove, creating that instantly recognisable mixture of abstract art, strange figures, bold typography and unapologetic modernism. His covers did not politely illustrate the books - they announced that whatever was inside was probably going to require your attention.

And look at this one! Orange. Black. Huge type. A strange skeletal figure sprawled underneath it all. MALONE DIES taking up almost the entire cover because apparently subtlety was not required.

Originally: $1.25.

Inside, the Evergreen list is almost as distracting as the book itself: Melville, Aphra Behn, de Beauvoir, Zola, Dostoevsky, Khushwant Singh, Waiting for Godot and Beckett’s Molloy.

Malone Dies itself began life as Malone meurt in 1951. Beckett translated it into English himself, with the English edition appearing in 1956. It sits between Molloy & The Unnamable in the trilogy & is every bit as cheerful as the title suggests.

Our copy has lived a life. There is wear, age-toning and some evidence that previous owners were enthusiastic believers in Sellotape - we approve - books from 1956 are allowed to look as though somebody actually read them.

The utterly lovely Carina McNally came in to sign copies of her debut novel Mithim and, having discovered a little more ...
11/08/2026

The utterly lovely Carina McNally came in to sign copies of her debut novel Mithim and, having discovered a little more about this book, we are now VERY intrigued.

Wexford, 1657. Ireland has been devastated by Cromwell’s campaign. Mithim McMurrough, daughter of a Gaelic lord, healer and keeper of her family’s knowledge, is living alone & hidden in the forest. Soldiers are moving closer, she is searching for her brother Eoin, and what she carries with her is more valuable than possessions: generations of healing knowledge, memory, mythology & connection to the land.

And this is the bit that really got us.

Carina began thinking about all the women who disappear from the historical record. We know the battles, the generals, the treaties & the men who supposedly made history - but what happened to the women trying to survive it?

Mithim mixes historical fiction with Irish mythology, herbal lore, An Cailleach and the Celtic tree calendar, giving us a woman who refuses to be erased.

Ireland has magnificent women - I am so delighted and enthused to see writers finding them and reminding us of their wonder.

And now we have SIGNED COPIES. ✍️📚

Thank you so much for visiting us, Carina. We promise the stack was significantly less neat after we started picking copies up!

Signed copies available instore and online now.

OH, YOU’RE READING HOMER NOW? HOW LOVELY!There comes a moment in every literary bandwagon when one feels the wholly unre...
11/08/2026

OH, YOU’RE READING HOMER NOW? HOW LOVELY!

There comes a moment in every literary bandwagon when one feels the wholly unreasonable need to establish that one was there before it was a bandwagon.

We are not proud of this.

We MAY have done it.

And yes, we are here to provide supporting documentation!

While everyone is quite rightly talking about The Odyssey, Emily Wilson, new translations, retellings and the extraordinary afterlife of these stories, you could simply arrive with an edition of The Iliad that looks as though it may actually have accompanied somebody to Troy.

Faded cover? Excellent.
Foxing? Provenance of enthusiasm.
Corners gone? Clearly studied.
Spine thoroughly broken? Ah.

Now, we cannot condone deliberately breaking the spine of a book merely to establish your classical credentials. That would be barbarism.

However.

If somebody else broke it years ago and you merely purchase it in that condition, we are fairly sure you are morally in the clear!

We currently have a lovely little Homeric gathering in Secondhand, including some beautifully well-read older Penguins, alongside Emily Wilson’s Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea and Erica Stevenson’s The Odyssey Effect.

So yes, absolutely join the bandwagon.

Just consider doing it with a book that makes it look as though you joined several decades ago 😂

I have learned my lesson with Steve Cavanagh.Once, I posted about a new book before I had actually read it. I was restr...
11/08/2026

I have learned my lesson with Steve Cavanagh.

Once, I posted about a new book before I had actually read it. I was restrained. Sensible. Bookseller-ish. Didn't lie, said reviews were very good. A bit without tone.

A few days later I had to come back and essentially say:

IGNORE PREVIOUS ME.
MIND BLOWN.
UTTERLY TERRIFIED.
WHAT ON EARTH WAS THAT?

So this time I’m skipping the cautious bit.

Steve dropped into Chapters with ONE OF US IS GUILTY, the new Eddie Flynn thriller, and I am prepared to make the following entirely measured professional assessment:

Quality assured. Just pick it up.

I’m not underselling Steve Cavanagh twice. I have some dignity.

Not much. But some.

📚 One of Us Is Guilty by
Published by Headinline Books

Signed copies instore and online now.

And yes, I fully expect to be back after reading it shouting in capitals again.

Address

Ivy Exchange, Parnell Street
Dublin
D01P8C2

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 6pm
Tuesday 9am - 6pm
Wednesday 9am - 6pm
Thursday 9am - 6pm
Friday 9am - 6pm
Saturday 9am - 6pm
Sunday 12pm - 6pm

Telephone

+35318792700

Website

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