We are delighted to announce our next lecture will explore the lost dystopian masterpiece They by Kay Dick.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

This is Britain: but not as we know it. THEY begin with a dead dog, shadowy footsteps, confiscated books. Soon the National Gallery is purged; eerie towers survey the coast; mobs stalk the countryside destroying artworks - and those who resist.

THEY capture dissidents - writers, painters, musicians, even the unmarried and childless - in military sweeps, 'curing' these subversives of individual identity. Survivors gather together as cultural refugees, preserving their crafts, creating, loving and remembering. But THEY make it easier to forget ...

Lost for half a century, newly introduced by Carmen Maria Machado, Kay Dick's They (1977) is a rediscovered dystopian masterpiece of art under attack: a cry from the soul against censorship, a radical celebration of non-conformity - and a warning.

For March, our booksellers were set the task of choosing a book with the theme of political expression. After considering a wide range of fantastic titles, we have decided on Visitation, the latest translation from Jenny Erpenbeck.

To book your place, please click here.

The book club will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.

About the book-

By the side of a lake in Brandenburg, a young architect builds the house of his dreams - a summerhouse with wrought-iron balconies, stained-glass windows the colour of jewels, and a bedroom with a hidden closet, all set within a beautiful garden. But the land on which he builds has a dark history of violence that began with the drowning of a young woman in the grip of madness and that grows darker still over the course of the century: the Jewish neighbours disappear one by one; the Red Army requisitions the house, burning the furniture and trampling the garden; a young East German attempts to swim his way to freedom in the West; a couple return from brutal exile in Siberia and leave the house to their granddaughter, who is forced to relinquish her claim upon it and sell to new owners intent upon demolition. Reaching far into the past, and recovering what was lost and what was buried, Jenny Erpenbeck tells a story both beautiful and brutal, about the things that haunt a home.

To book your space on the course, please click here.

Course Description

Would you like to discover the link between reading and wellbeing and how this can enhance your everyday life?

“Literature offers us a powerful language that can help us understand ourselves and others and gives us the words and perspectives that can help us talk about difficult experiences.” Dr Jane Davis, Founder of The Reader

“One sheds one’s sicknesses in books – repeats and presents again one’s emotions, to be master of them.” DH Lawrence, The Letters of DH Lawrence

Bibliotherapy dates back to ancient times when libraries were seen as sacred places where answers and healing could be found. My course explores reading as an active strategy to help cope with life’s challenges, looking at the wider and deeper ways in which fiction and non-fiction can 'find' people, emotionally and imaginatively, helping develop self-esteem, emotional granularity and interpersonal relationships. Participants will be introduced to the neurological benefits of reading “for pleasure” and to a wellbeing model to help us tailor our book choices in order to thrive.

Course Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course, participants will gain:

1. An understanding of the key principles of bibliotherapy and how to apply them, including choosing books ‘on prescription’ and making use of a practical, interactive approach

2. A powerful tool to foster group cohesion

3. The experience of using literature as a form of remedy and healing within our daily lives

The course does not require any prior reading ability or experience and absolutely everyone is welcome!

Course Schedule

Classes run at Books on the Hill from 11.15-12.45 on the Sundays listed below, or in London when specified

CLASS ONE - Sunday 9 March

What is Bibliotherapy?

· A potted history of Bibliotherapy and its origins

· Differences approaches to bibliotherapy and how they can be used

· The neurological processes behind reading and how they can help us thrive

CLASS TWO – Sunday 30 March

Options:

Travel from St. Albans or meet directly in the lobby of the British Library, 96 Euston Road, (times TBC)

The Library

· The role of libraries as memory keepers for societies and as a ‘house of healing’ for the soul

· The role of librarianship, libraries as ‘safe spaces’/warm hubs and the libraries of the future

Activity: Journey through The British Library, Euston Road, London with your instructor as guide

The British Library (BL) is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world’s largest libraries. Its collections include more than 150 million items, in over 400 languages including books, magazines, manuscripts, maps, music scores, newspapers, patents, databases, philatelic items, prints and drawings and sound recordings. The activity includes access to the Library “Treasures section” as a springboard for using literature as remedy

CLASS THREE – Sunday 27 April

Poetry therapy and the benefits of therapeutic writing

· Poetry Therapy and the qualities that make poems particularly helpful as a wellbeing tool

· The link between reading poetry and therapeutic writing.

· How to apply an interactive approach to poetry

CLASS FOUR – Sunday 18 May

Activity: Excursion to Spitalfields and its Bookstores

Options: Travel from St Albans or meet directly in London, Liverpool Street, for a guided tour of the Spitalfields area and its independent bookstores

Guided visit to this historically rich and diverse area, including visits to Libreria and the Brick Lane Bookshop, to consider the changing face of the bookstore, its relationship with its local community and to our wellbeing.

· Optional tea and cake in a café (not included in the course fee).

CLASS FIVE – Sunday 15 June

Putting bibliotherapy into practice

· Adopting a practical approach to bibliotherapy as an art therapy for ourselves and others

· How to set boundaries, create a safe environment and help select appropriate reading choices

· Incorporating reading for wellbeing into our daily routine

· Wrap up and farewell

What is included in the course fee of £145?

Qualified, experienced and evaluated Bibliotherapy instructor.

Venue for classes in central St Albans at Books on the Hill, 1 Holywell Hill, St Albans, AL1 1ER.

Instructor as guide to two excursions to London: The British Library and the bookstores of Spitalfields.

Reading materials, articles and online contact with the instructor throughout the course.

10% discount at “Books on the Hill” in St Albans to spend on a book of your choice at the end of the course.

NOT included

Travel to, from and around London on excursions

Tea and cake in a café in London on 18 May excursion (optional)

Please email bibliotherapyforme@outlook.com for further information or to register for the course and to embark on a journey for your wellbeing.

Places are limited – first come, first served!

www.bibliotherapyforme.com

To book your space on the course, please click here.

We are delighted to announce our next Poetry Lecture Workshop will explore the collection Politics by Carol Ann Duffy.

To book your place, please click here.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

About the book~

In Politics, Carol Ann Duffy, one of the English language’s best-loved living poets presents from her own archives, in chronological order, her favourites among her poems on the theme of politics and protest, drawing on work written over four decades. Duffy also adds to the selection her poem written for Danny Boyle’s Pages of the Sea memorial for The Great War. It makes for a sequence that is searching, memorializing, healing.

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together over breakfast to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 10 am in store for a fun-filled morning. This event is charged and is suitable for 18+ years.

Book here for your individual book club ticket or click here to purchase a one-year ticket.

During the event, the team may ask if we can take pictures of the event to promote future events held in store. By purchasing a ticket you are consenting to the team using these pictures for our social media channels but you are able to withdraw your consent at any time during the event.

Classics can be intimidating. They have a reputation of being too highbrow and incomprehensible for us mere mortals. We at Books on the Hill, however, think that is just not true. Classics speak of a universal theme we all have first hand experience of: love, loss, friendship, hope. They are for all of us. To tackle this, come along to our Book Club focusing on "The Classics" from recent and not so recent history.

For February, along the theme of love, we have chosen Lady Chatterley's Lover by D H Lawrence as our Classics Book Club book.

To book your place please click here, or to purchase a year long subscription to our Classics Book Club, please click here.

This Book Club will be held on the last Thursday of the month, and is suitable for ages 18+. Tea and coffee will be provided, as well as glasses should you chose to bring your own tipple.

About the book -

In the bleak aftermath of World War I, Constance, Lady Chatterley, is a young woman trapped in an unfulfilling marriage to an aristocrat whose war wounds have left him paralysed. With her husband's encouragement, she enters into a liaison with Oliver Mellors, the gamekeeper on their country estate in Nottinghamshire. As this illicit relationship grows into tenderness, mutual respect and sensual passion, Constance discovers that true fulfilment requires a real connection of both mind and body.

Lady Chatterley's Lover shocked its original audience with its vindication of adulterous love across the class divide as well as its explicit descriptions of sex. It retains its power today as a hymn to erotic love and as an impassioned treatise on 'tender-hearted fucking' as a means to salvation from the horrors of war and the sterility of modern life. It is all the more poignant that Lawrence wrote this book - three times over - while he was dying from tuberculosis.

The modern world was not interested in its salvation. Lawrence had Lady Chatterley privately printed in Italy in 1928, but strict obscenity laws in the UK rendered it unpublishable there for more than thirty years.

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 7pm in store for a fun-filled evening.

Tea & coffee will be available for free on the night or if you prefer please feel free to bring your own alcoholic drinks with you (glasses will be provided).

To reserve your space please click here or to purchase a year long subscription to our afterhours book club, please click here.

Please note this event is 18+.

We are delighted to announce our next lecture will explore Booker 2024 winner Orbital by Samantha Harvey.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

Life on our planet as you've never seen it beforeA team of astronauts in the International Space Station collect meteorological data, conduct scientific experiments and test the limits of the human body. But mostly they observe.

Together they watch their silent blue planet, circling it sixteen times, spinning past continents and cycling through seasons, taking in glaciers and deserts, the peaks of mountains and the swells of oceans. Endless shows of spectacular beauty witnessed in a single day. Yet although separated from the world they cannot escape its constant pull.

News reaches them of the death of a mother, and with it comes thoughts of returning home. They look on as a typhoon gathers over an island and people they love, in awe of its magnificence and fearful of its destruction. The fragility of human life fills their conversations, their fears, their dreams.

So far from earth, they have never felt more part - or protective - of it. They begin to ask, what is life without earth? What is earth without humanity?

For February, our booksellers were set the task of choosing a book with the theme of love. After considering a wide range of fantastic titles, we have decided on Morning and Evening, the latest translation from Jon Fosse.

To book your place, please click here.

The book club will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.

About the book-

A child who will be named Johannes is born. An old man named Johannes dies. Between these two points, Jon Fosse gives us the details of an entire life, starkly compressed.

Beginning with Johannes’s father’s thoughts as his wife goes into labour, and ending with Johannes's own thoughts as he embarks upon a day in his life when everything is exactly the same, yet totally different, Morning and Evening is a novel concerning the beautiful dream that our lives have meaning.

We are delighted to announce our next Poetry Lecture Workshop will explore a collection of poems by John Betjeman.

To book your place, please click here.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

About the book~

Sir John Betjeman (1906-84) was born in Highgate, the son of a manufacturer of Dutch descent. His poetry enjoyed immense popularity, as did his personality, and his knighthood in 1969 and appointment as Poet Laureate in 1972 were universally welcomed.

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together over breakfast to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 10 am in store for a fun-filled morning. This event is charged and is suitable for 18+ years.

Book here for your individual book club ticket or click here to purchase a one-year ticket.

During the event, the team may ask if we can take pictures of the event to promote future events held in store. By purchasing a ticket you are consenting to the team using these pictures for our social media channels but you are able to withdraw your consent at any time during the event.

THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT.

Please call or email to join out waiting list.

Classics can be intimidating. They have a reputation of being too highbrow and incomprehensible for us mere mortals. We at Books on the Hill, however, think that is just not true. Classics speak of a universal theme we all have first hand experience of: love, loss, friendship, hope. They are for all of us. To tackle this, we are starting a new Book Club focusing on "The Classics" from recent and not so recent history.

For January, to lift your spirits, we have chosen to explore Persuasion by Jane Austen.

To book your place please click here.

This Book Club will be held on the last Thursday of the month, and is suitable for ages 18+. Tea and coffee will be provided, as well as glasses should you chose to bring your own tipple.

About the book -

At twenty-seven, Anne Elliot is no longer young and has few romantic prospects. Eight years earlier, she had been persuaded by her friend Lady Russell to break off her engagement to Frederick Wentworth, a handsome naval captain with neither fortune nor rank.

What happens when they encounter each other again is movingly told in Jane Austen's last completed novel. Set in the fashionable societies of Lyme Regis and Bath, Persuasion is a brilliant satire of vanity and pretension, but, above all,it is a love story tinged with the heartache of missed opportunities.

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 7pm in store for a fun-filled evening.

Tea & coffee will be available for free on the night or if you prefer please feel free to bring your own alcoholic drinks with you (glasses will be provided).

To reserve your space please click here.

Please note this event is 18+.

Would you like to discover the link between reading and wellbeing and how this can enhance your everyday life?

“Literature offers us a powerful language that can help us understand ourselves and others and gives us the words and perspectives that can help us talk about difficult experiences.” Dr Jane Davis, Founder of The Reader

“One sheds one’s sicknesses in books – repeats and presents again one’s emotions, to be master of them.” DH Lawrence, The Letters of DH Lawrence

Bibliotherapy dates back to ancient times when libraries were seen as sacred places where answers and healing could be found. My course explores reading as an active strategy to help cope with life’s challenges, looking at the wider and deeper ways in which fiction and non-fiction can 'find' people, emotionally and imaginatively, helping develop self- esteem, emotional granularity and interpersonal relationships. Participants will be introduced to the neurological benefits of reading “for pleasure” and to a wellbeing model to help us tailor our book choices in order to thrive.

Course Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the course, participants will gain:

1. An understanding of the key principles of bibliotherapy and how to apply them, including choosing books ‘on prescription’ and making use of a practical, interactive approach

2. A powerful tool to foster group cohesion

3. The experience of using literature as a form of remedy and healing within our daily lives

The course does not require any prior reading ability or experience and absolutely everyone is welcome!

Fortnightly course schedule – Winter 2025 Classes run at Books on the Hill on the Fridays listed below, from 10.15am-12pm.

CLASS ONE - Friday 24th January

What is Bibliotherapy?

· A potted history of Bibliotherapy and its origins

· Differences approaches to bibliotherapy and what they mean

· The neurological processes behind reading and how they help us flourish.

CLASS TWO - Friday 7th February

Options:

Travel from St. Albans or meet directly in the lobby of the British Library, 96 Euston Road, (times TBC)

The Library

· The role of libraries as memory keepers for societies and as a ‘house of healing’ for the soul · The role of librarianship, libraries as ‘safe spaces’/warm hubs and the libraries of the future Activity: Journey through The British Library, Euston Road, London with your instructor as guide The British Library (BL) is the national library of the United Kingdom and one of the world’s largest libraries. Its collections include more than 150 million items, in over 400 languages including books, magazines, manuscripts, maps, music scores, newspapers, patents, databases, philatelic items, prints and drawings and sound recordings. The activity includes access to the Library “Treasures section” as a springboard for using literature as remedy .

CLASS THREE – Friday 21st February

Poetry therapy and the benefits of therapeutic writing

· Poetry Therapy and the qualities that make poems particularly helpful as a wellbeing tool

· The link between reading poetry and therapeutic writing.

· How to apply an interactive approach to poetry

CLASS FOUR – Friday 7th March

Activity: Excursion to Spitalfields and its Bookstores

Options: Travel from St Albans or meet directly in London, Liverpool Street, for a guided tour of the Spitalfields area and its independent bookstores

Guided visit to this historically rich and diverse area, including visits to Libreria and the Brick Lane Bookshop, to consider the changing face of the bookstore, its relationship with its local community and to our wellbeing.

• Optional tea and cake in a café (not included in the course fee).

CLASS FIVE – Friday 21st March

Putting bibliotherapy into practice

· Adopting a practical approach to bibliotherapy as an art therapy for ourselves and others

· How to set boundaries, create a safe environment and help select appropriate reading choices

· Incorporating reading for wellbeing into our daily routine · Wrap up and farewell

What is included in the course fee of £130?

Qualified, experienced and evaluated Bibliotherapy instructor

Venue for classes in central St Albans at Books on the Hill, 1 Holywell Hill, St Albans, AL1 1ER

Instructor as guide to two excursions to London: The British Library and the bookstores of Spitalfields

Reading materials, articles and online contact with the instructor throughout the course

10% discount at “Books on the Hill” in St Albans to spend on a book of your choice

NOT included-

Travel to, from and around London on excursions

Tea and cake in a café in London on 7th March (optional)

To register for the course and to embark on a journey for your wellbeing please click here and for further information please email bibliotherapyforme@outlook.com.

Places are limited – first come, first served!

We are delighted to announce our next lecture will explore The Vegetarian by 2024 Nobel Prize Laureate Han Kang.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

Yeong-hye and her husband are ordinary people - dutiful wife and mild-mannered office worker. One day, prompted by grotesque recurring nightmares, Yeong-hye decides to become a vegetarian.

But in South Korea, where vegetarianism is almost unheard-of and societal mores are strictly obeyed, it is a shocking act of subversion. Yeong-hye's passive rebellion rapidly manifests in ever more bizarre and frightening forms, from sexual sadism to attempted suicide, and in increasingly erotic and unhinged artworks, as all the while she spirals further into her fantasies... Disturbing and beautiful by turns, The Vegetarian is a revelatory novel about modern day South Korea; a tale of shame, desire and our faltering attempts to understand others.

For January, our booksellers were set the task of choosing a book with the theme of inspire. After considering a wide range of fantastic titles, we have decided on the debut novel Dog by Rob Perry.

To book your place, please click here.

The book club will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.

About the book-

When 18-year-old Benjamin Glass goes to look at a dead whale that has washed up on the beach, he meets an unfamiliar dog who follows him home to his caravan. Benjamin isn’t equipped to take care of a dog – he has a chronic fear of germs, and is currently living alone while his grandmother is in hospital. But when a delivery driver recognises the dog as The Mighty Gary, the fastest greyhound in the country, and tells Benjamin about his unsavoury owners, Benjamin is forced to trust the stranger on his doorstep and devise a plan to keep Gary safe. As Benjamin becomes more attached to the dog, it becomes clear that his trust in the delivery driver may well have been misplaced.

He will have to leave his comfort zone, take some unhygienic risks, cross paths with dangerous and powerful men and confront his very worst fears if he has any hope of protecting what he loves the most.

We are delighted to announce our next Poetry Lecture Workshop will explore Two Cures For Love Selected Poems 1979 - 2006 by Wendy Cope.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

The idea for this book grew out of Wendy Cope's experience of meeting her audience, when reading her poems in schools. This is an edition of the poems which identifies the references, verse-forms, contexts and occasions of her work, and which offers readers a new arrangement of the poetry as a whole. The notes also identify dates of composition, so that it is possible to observe the development of her work.

As well as drawing on Wendy Cope's three published books, the selection also includes a significant number of poems collected or published for the first time.

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together over breakfast to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 10 am in store for a fun-filled morning. This event is charged and is suitable for 18+ years.

Book here for your individual book club ticket or click here to purchase a one-year ticket.

During the event, the team may ask if we can take pictures of the event to promote future events held in store. By purchasing a ticket you are consenting to the team using these pictures for our social media channels but you are able to withdraw your consent at any time during the event.

We are delighted to announce our next lecture will explore Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

It is 1985, in an Irish town. During the weeks leading up to Christmas, Bill Furlong, a coal and timber merchant, faces into his busiest season. As he does the rounds, he feels the past rising up to meet him - and encounters the complicit silences of a people controlled by the Church.

We are delighted to announce our next Poetry Lecture Workshop will explore selected poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by John Stammers.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

In this series, a contemporary poet selects and introduces a poet of the past. By their choice of poems and by the personal and critical reactions they express in their prefaces, the editors offer insights into their own work as well as providing an accessible and passionate introduction to some of the greatest poets of our literature. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) was born in Stratford.

He attended Balliol College, Oxford where he befriended the future Poet Laureate Robert Bridges. While at Balliol he converted to Catholicism and after graduating he entered the Society of Jesus and was ordained in 1877. Having burned his early poems on entering the Church, Hopkins eventually took up writing again but apart from a few poems that appeared in periodicals he was not published during his own lifetime.

Since the publication of his poems in 1918 he has become one of the best known poets of the Victorian age and his are among the greatest poems written on the subject of faith and doubt.

SOLD OUT

TO JOIN THE WAITING LIST PLEASE CONTACT THE BOOKSHOP.

Classics can be intimidating. They have a reputation of being too highbrow and incomprehensible for us mere mortals. We at Books on the Hill, however, think that is just not true. Classics speak of a universal theme we all have first hand experience of: love, loss, friendship, hope. They are for all of us. To tackle this, we are starting a new Book Club focusing on "The Classics" from recent and not so recent history.

For November, to tie in with our upstairs exhibition, we have chosen Jamaica Inn by Dapne Du Maruier.

To book your place please visit us in-store, call us on 01727807248 or click here.

This Book Club will be held on the last Thursday of the month, and is suitable for ages 18+. Tea and coffee will be provided, as well as glasses should you chose to bring your own tipple.

About the book -

Her mother's dying request obliges Mary Yellan to make a grim journey across bleak Cornish moorland to Jamaica Inn, the home of her Aunt Patience and her overbearing husband, Joss Merlyn. With the coachman's warning echoing in her mind and affected by the inn's brooding power, Mary is thwarted in her intention to help her aunt. She finds herself drawn unwillingly into the misdeeds of Joss and his accomplices, and even more disturbing are her feelings for a man she dare not trust ...Jamaica Inn is a dark and gripping gothic tale that will remind readers of two other great classics, Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 7pm in store for a fun-filled evening.

Tea & coffee will be available for free on the night or if you prefer please feel free to bring your own alcoholic drinks with you (glasses will be provided).

To reserve your space please click here.

Please note this event is 18+.

We are delighted to announce our next lecture will explore Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

'Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place.' George and his large, simple-minded friend Lennie are drifters, following wherever work leads them.

Arriving in California's Salinas Valley, they get work on a ranch. If they can just stay out of trouble, George promises Lennie, then one day they might be able to get some land of their own and settle down some place. But kind-hearted, childlike Lennie is a victim of his own strength.

Seen by others as a threat, he finds it impossible to control his emotions. And one day not even George will be able to save him from trouble. Of Mice and Men is a tragic and moving story of friendship, loneliness and the dispossessed, with a stunning new cover by renowned artist Bijou Karman.

For November, our booksellers were set the task of choosing a book with the theme of tradition. After considering a wide range of fantastic titles, we have decided on the debut novel The Muslim Cowboy by Bruce Omar Yates.

To book your place, please click here.

The book club will be held upstairs in our reading rooms and are suitable for ages 18+ years.

About the book-

In the aftermath of the Iraq war, an odd Iraqi man entranced by Americana and old Western movies dresses in double denim and roams a lawless landscape in search of his own Western story. Amidst the disorder he meets a young girl, and together they set out across the tank strewn desert on his trusty camel to find safety. Written with a simplicity of direction that captivates like a film, The Muslim Cowboy is an extraordinary and mesmerising literary debut about the search for identity, the struggle to reconcile conflicting values, and sacrifice as that great virtue we all must embrace in order to find meaning and purpose in a world of chaos.

Winter Reads - An Evening with Elizabeth Macneal

Join bestselling author of The Doll Factory, Circus of Wonders  and The Burial Plot  for an in-depth interview and there will be opportunities for you to ask your own questions. Find out what it takes to create bestselling characters and make it as a professional full time author.

Thursday 7 November

7.30pm

Tickets £7. To purchase a ticket, please click here.

Please note, this event is being held at St Albans Library, Level 2 The Maltings, St Albans, Hertfordshire, AL1 3JQ and not at the bookshop.

“There’s not a day in the year that something can’t be propagated.”–Anya Lautenbach

Spend the evening in The Apple House with bestselling author Zia Allaway and Instagram’s propagation queen Anya Lautenbach, to celebrate the launch of Anya’s brilliant new book The Money-Saving Garden Year: A Month-by-Month Guide to a Great Garden that Costs Less.

With a new gardening year ahead, Anya will be in conversation with gardening writer, author, editor and long-standing Plant Library volunteer, Zia Allaway, about her best advice on what to do in the garden each month, while keeping budget in mind, to get the most out of your plot all year round. During the talk Anya will offer practical advice on everything from when to plant seedlings to the best time to propagate different plants, as well as demonstrating some easy propagation techniques. Afterwards, Anya will be signing copies of her new book, which will be for sale at the event by local independent bookseller Books On The Hill. The ideal gift for your Christmas list.

To purchase a ticket, please click here.

About the book:

In her new book, Anya Lautenbach has done all the planning so you don’t have to. With planting lists, clear practical advice, and a comprehensive propagation chart for easy reference, Anya helps readers find true joy in being outside in nature–along with all the benefits it brings. An advocate for the positive impact gardening can have on wellbeing, Anya hopes to help more people access this mood-boosting activity by showing what you can achieve even on the smallest of budgets.

Alongside beautiful photography, Anya explains what to sow, plant and prune when, as well as monthly maintenance tips. Throughout, she encourages readers to embrace every season with timely projects, garden highlights, and notes on how to find happiness in the garden, even in the depths of winter. Her clear, practical, yet mindful approach will help anyone grow a glorious garden.

Please note, this event is being held at The Apple House, Serge Hill Lane, Bedmond, WD5 0RZ, and not at the bookshop.

We are delighted to announce our next Poetry Lecture Workshop will explore Selected Poems by Thomas Hardy, revised and edited by Tom Paulin.

Tea and coffee will be provided throughout the session.

To book your place, please click here.

About the book~

A selection of the writer's greatest nature poetry, selected by Tom Paulin, published in a beautiful new edition by Faber. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overheadIn a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited;An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, In blast-beruffled plume,Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom . .

. -The Darkling Thrush

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together over breakfast to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 10 am in store for a fun-filled morning. This event is charged and is suitable for 18+ years.

Book here for your individual book club ticket or click here to purchase a one-year ticket.

During the event, the team may ask if we can take pictures of the event to promote future events held in store. By purchasing a ticket you are consenting to the team using these pictures for our social media channels but you are able to withdraw your consent at any time during the event.

SOLD OUT - To join the waiting list please call on 01727807248

Classics can be intimidating. They have a reputation of being too highbrow and incomprehensible for us mere mortals. We at Books on the Hill, however, think that is just not true. Classics speak of a universal theme we all have first hand experience of: love, loss, friendship, hope. They are for all of us. To tackle this, we are starting a new Book Club focusing on "The Classics" from recent and not so recent history and what classics could be more appropriate for this spooky season than Dracula by Bram Stoker.

This Book Club will be held on the last Thursday of the month, and is suitable for ages 18+. Tea and coffee will be provided, as well as glasses should you chose to bring your own tipple.

To book your place please visit us in-store, call us on 01727807248 or click here.

About the book -

A chilling masterpiece of the horror genre, Dracula also illuminated dark corners of Victorian sexuality. When Jonathan Harker visits Transylvania to advise Count Dracula on a London home, he makes a horrifying discovery. Soon afterwards, a number of disturbing incidents unfold in England: an unmanned ship is wrecked at Whitby; strange puncture marks appear on a young woman's neck; and the inmate of a lunatic asylum raves about the arrival of his 'Master', while a determined group of adversaries prepares to face the terrifying Count.

Here at Books On The Hill, we love all things books so thought it would be great to get people together to have a chat about books. Discussions will be around books you love or books you are currently reading and how you are finding them. So if you love to talk about books, but don't have the time to read a set text, join us at 7pm in store for a fun-filled evening.

Tea & coffee will be available for free on the night or if you prefer please feel free to bring your own alcoholic drinks with you (glasses will be provided).

To reserve your space please click here.

Please note this event is 18+.