Book Launch

Join us to celebrate Christ On A Bike by Orla Owen

Orla Owen was born in Belfast, and raised in Ireland and the UK. Christ On A Bike, published by the award winning Bluemoose Books, has been described as ‘strikingly original and utterly brilliant’. It was picked as a recommended read by Nina Pottell from Prima Magazine, who reviewed it as ‘Black Mirror meets Tales of The Unexpected with shades of Shirley Jackson’ and was recommended as a read for January by Martin Chilton, The Independent’s Chief Book Critic.

Tickets include a glass of wine on arrival. Tickets are £5 or free with the purchase of Christ On A Bike.
Tickets are fully redeemable against buying the books on the night.
Book orders will be available to collect and get signed at the event.

A free lunchtime talk with Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author Simon Scarrow in the Reading Room at Bristol Central Library. Simon will be in conversation discussing his new book A Death in Berlin, the latest in his CI Schenke series.
Simon Scarrow is a Sunday Times No. 1 bestselling author with several million copies of his books sold worldwide. After a childhood spent travelling the world, he pursued his great love of history as a teacher, before becoming a full-time writer. His books - which have sold 6 million copies - include two earlier Berlin thrillers featuring CI Schenke, BLACKOUT and DEAD OF NIGHT which was a No.2 ebook bestseller.

Join us to celebrate the publication of The Spirit of the Rainforest by Dr Rosa Vásquez Espinoza with an author talk and signing. 

Before you step into the jungle, there are a few things you need to know... Join scientist Dr Rosa Vasquez Espinoza as she uncovers one of the most unexplored regions on the planet. Dr Rosa is no stranger to the Amazon.

Growing up with the rainforest as her back garden, she learnt the lessons of the rainforest from her grandmother, a native healer in natural medicine. She went on to pursue a classical education in science, gaining a PhD in the US, but has always been pulled back to the heart of the Amazon. As a leading biologist in her field, Rosa continues to explore the region through a unique blend of scientific inquiry and ancient insight.

Dr. Rosa Vásquez Espinoza is a Peruvian Amazonian-Andean scientist, conservationist, National Geographic Explorer, and award-winning artist. She blends science with indigenous knowledge to protect biodiversity and culture.

Please join us to celebrate the publication of The Indefatigable Asa Briggs by Adam Sisman. Please RSVP to read@heronbooks.info. Order the book here.

Please note a change to this event: Jay Griffiths is unwell and unable to attend. The event will go ahead with Gareth Howell-Jones and we are so looking forward to hearing about his writing as well as to hear his kind reading of Jay's talk on her behalf. 
Jay Griffiths explores how animals can have a role in every level of healing, from the individual to the collective, guiding us in how we might create societies that are healthier, fairer and kinder. How Animals Heal Us puts animals at the heart of a restorative vision of health.

In Your Lowly Hedgehog Knows, Gareth Howell-Jones looks at the simple, everyday things around us – trees, woodlice, cats, people and, of course, hedgehogs – to develop a radical and heartening world-view based on nature rather than cultural traditions.

Together, they reimagine our place in nature with wonder, hope and a lot of humour.

Join us to launch Colin Bramwell's poetry collection Fetch.

Colin Bramwell was born in Ayrshire, grew up in Fortrose on the Black Isle and lives in Edinburgh. His poetry and criticism has appeared in Poetry Review, Irish Pages, The London Magazine, PN Review, Magma, The Rialto, New Writing Scotland, Interpret, Poetry Scotland, Poetry London, Poetry Ireland Review and The Scotsman, as well as in his pamphlet The Highland Citizenship Test. He was the runner-up for the 2020 Edwin Morgan Prize. His translations of Taiwanese poets won the John Dryden Translation Competition and the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. Fower Pessoas, his rendition of Fernando Pessoa into Scots, was published by Carcanet in 2025 and was shortlisted for Scots Book of the Year.

In Celtic folklore a fetch is a shadowy doppelganger that appears from the Otherworld, portending the beholder’s fate. Your fetch ‘fetches’ you to the afterlife, willingly or otherwise. Bramwell’s poetry uses the fetch as a model to explore a number of overlapping binaries - between the reader and the poem, most of all.
Fetch also meditates on the differences between music and speech, the sacred and the profane, the written and the real, humanity and nature, Scots and English. Incorporating multitudes of modes, forms, registers and subjects, Bramwell converses with the Anglo-Celtic lyric tradition in our own time and in his own distinctively amiable fashion. In other words, this poet takes poetry seriously - but not too seriously.
Fetch is an astonishingly musical tour-de-force from one of Britain’s most exciting new poets, in which reverence and irreverence, religion and faithlessness, the living and the dead, nearly rhyme.

Do join us for a drink, a reading and a discussion of the book.