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Nightingale Books, nestled on the high street in Peasebrook, a picture-postcard Cotswold town, is a dream comes true for booklovers. Everyone who enters falls in love with something.
But owner Emilia Nightingale is struggling to keep the shop open and the developers are circling. The temptation to sell up is proving enormous - but what about the promise she made to her father? Not to mention her customers, for whom the shop is a comfort, a meeting place, a lifeline.
There's Gary, a stable lad for a nearby trainer, who buys books to read to Nikki, who is lying in a coma. He spends every spare hour at Nikki's bedside, never giving up hope that she will come round.
Betty, who runs a supper club from her tiny cottage, has a huge crush on a man she met and then lost in the cookery section, somewhere Auguste Escoffier and Marco Pierre White.
Mrs Norris repeatedly 'forgets' to pay for her books - and Emilia never has the heart to remind her. But Mrs Norris isn't quite as forgetful as she pretends ...
And then Emilia meets Dexter, local jack-the-lad, who is looking to improve his English so he can better himself. He buys all Emilia's recommendations, and together they re-discover all her favourite authors. But Dexter has a secret, and is not all he seems...
How to Find Love in a Bookshop is the delightful story of Emilia's fight to keep her bookshop alive, the customers whose lives she has touched - and the books they all love.
231 pages, Paperback
First published May 19, 2016
There's a book for everyone, even if they don't think there is. A book that reaches in and grabs your soul.
So that was why people read. Because books explained things: how you thought, and how you behaved, and made you realise you were not alone in doing what you did or feeling what you felt.
She knew now that everyone had heartbreak in their life at some point. What had happened didn't make her special or unusual. It was part of being human. A broken heart was, after all, the source material of myriad books. Some of those books had become her comfort, and had made her realize she was not alone.
After all, a town without a bookshop was a town without a heart.
Now that he was here, in Peasebrook, he wanted it to be his home - their home. It was a mystery, though, why there was no bookshop in such an appealing place.
After all, a town without a bookshop was a town without a heart.
Julius imagined each person he passed as a potential customer. He could picture them all, crowding in, asking his advice, him sliding their purchases into a bag, getting to know their likes and dislikes, putting a book aside for a particular customer, knowing it would be just up their alley. Watching them browse, watching the joy of them discovering a new author, a new world.
It was the sort of bookshop that stole time.
There's a book for everyone, even if they don't think there is. A book that reaches in and grabs your soul.