Book ideas from bookseller pals - celebrating Indie Bookshop Week

Happy Independent Bookshop Week 2026 folks!

Indie bookshop week runs 13th - 20th June this year with bookshops all across the UK joining in on the celebration. At Lighthouse we’re raising a glass to not only indie bookshops but also the stars that are small publishers with a night of queer poetry from indie presses on June 18th.

We’ve also been chatting about a particular joy - that of receiving a recommendation from a fellow bookseller. Spending your days in bookselling, titles and authors swirl around, fly past and pop up constantly. Visiting a different shop and being introduced to a book you’d missed, or hadn’t paid enough attention to, is a real treat - often these are also titles with a local connection, or a special story behind them. We bring them back and pass them on.

Here are just a few examples of memorable books recommended to the team by other booksellers. Thank you, fellow indies!

Pao - I bought one of my favourite books in the world, Chanel Miller's Know My Name from my friend Ben Pope, manager at Review Bookshop in Peckham. Chanel's memoir is heartbreaking and beautiful and so important, and I'm so glad that Ben helped it find its way into my hands!

Jim - INJ Culbard's graphic adaptation of Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow, which I was once recommended in Argonaut. A great adaptation where the artwork both feeds on and enhances the atmosphere of Chambers' iconic eldritch horror stories. A chillingly effective way to experience The King for the first time.

Noor - I was recommended World Without End at La Belle Adventure on Leith Walk. It's a non-fiction graphic novel about environmentalism and human consumption of energy - super interesting!

Jess - last time I was in Bogotá to visit family, I went to the bookshop at Centro cultural Gabriel García Márquez and had such a nice chat with one of the booksellers. They recommended La Perra (The Bitch) by Pilar Quintana which is sadly now out of print in its English translation, and El Libro de Emma Reyes (The Book of Emma Reyes) which, luckily, is not. The latter is a memoir in letters about the author’s childhood. It narrates the trauma of extreme poverty as well as the surreal nature of growing up in a convent with no sentimentality and is all the more moving for it.

Mairi - Agnes Owen's For the Love of Willie with the intro from Heather Parry from the Wedale Bookshop.

Nic - Centrefolding by Kistry Dunlop. Argonaut held the launch for it and I just so happen to know the author! ( no bias here though, it is truly an excellent satire on the marketization and tech-broification of higher ed with many elements of surrealism ).

Check out the books! Visit the bookshops - in person or online!